Diagnosed as an Adult with ADHD (Part Two)
Continuing, Diagnosed as an adult with ADHD:
So, I have a bodyworker that I have worked with for about a year now. She does something called- well, I can’t even really quantify what she does. She’s worked through many layers of very high-level bodywork, but most of it centers around neurology. So, we’ve done a lot of clearing of my vagus nerve, which controls your sympathetic and parasympathetic responses, so your rest and digest, your fight and flight. And if you’ve ever read the book The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, you understand that the body remembers trauma. So, you can do a lot of talk therapy. You can take your ADHD meds, and you can regulate your system that way.
But to actually clear the trauma out of your system, you’re going to have to do some variation of energy work.
The neurological bodywork that I’ve done over the last year has cleared much of the trauma I’ve experienced in life. It’s re-regulated my nervous system in some exciting ways. When I was doing the neurofeedback, the brain electrode thing that I did for a year, I changed my brain to such a degree that the stimulant medication became stimulant again. When you have ADHD, it calms you down, and it doesn’t show up the same way. It’s not a stimulant medication for you if you have been diagnosed with ADHD. It does the opposite in your brain.
I reached a point where my stimulant medication suddenly singled me out. It was like I was tweaking, or I was on meth, espressos, or something. So, I fixed my brain to the point where I could no longer take stimulant medication, and I did see some results in how I was able to work, how I was able to process, how I was able to focus. But in the last year, I’ve up-leveled my life. We moved companies a year ago, and I’ve got my mortgage practice established. It’s doing great.
My business bestie handles everything loan-related, and I’m solutions, troubleshooting, and sales. I’m more of the high-level stuff. And in that vacuum, having created good support, I’ve founded and launched another company, GeboCall. I’m going to be spending more time telling you about GeboCall. Still, I want to lay some of the groundwork of how I’ve arrived at the drive that I have, how I’ve reached the level of neurological regulation that I’m trying to create in my life.
I’m in such a place of expansion.
One of the things that I noticed in some of the neurological work that I’ve done over the last probably four months is that when my vagus nerve connected into my optic nerve, I had some right, left, up, down processing problems. When my optic nerves crossed and sight reached the back of my brain, there was a processing problem. I think it probably was a type of learning disability that I’ve had since I was a child. It may have been from concussions. Who knows when it originated, but it’s something I’ve been compensating around for my entire life.
If you’ve met me in person, you know that I’m super weird.
My chiropractor is my primary care physician. He’s the doctor I see most regularly for the last 25 years. Being in alignment with my structural system and now the added layer of being in alignment in my neurological system have been the most crucial base points to re-establish a connection in my body. Considering that I had a traumatic upbringing, a difficult relationship, a brain that didn’t work the same way everyone else’s brain worked.
Back to my sight, when asked to look up and right, every time I looked up and left. When asked to look down and left, I looked up and right. So, when I realized that there was some backward confusion in my optic nerve, it took me about a week to figure out what the problem was. My bodyworker noticed it right away. She’s like, “Oh! That’s really hard for you!” It wasn’t until I was driving in my car that I realized I still use the left hand has an “L” trick learned as a kid.
When somebody says take a left turn, I still pop my fingers up to see which way is left and which way is right, and that seems weird for an adult to confess to.
But honestly, it is one of those things that I’ve compensated around. So, it wasn’t until somebody said to take a left turn and I put my fingers up that I realized what my bodyworker who’d been working on my neurology was asking me, I was doing the exact opposite of what she was asking.
I had my second appointment with Denver Vision Therapy. I’ll be getting glasses that will train my brain in a different way than the progressive glasses that I’ve been wearing for the last decade have trained my mind. The doctor prescribed me something called Light Therapy. I went in, and I picked up my equipment, and we went through a whole series of assessments, noticing where my blind spots are in my vision because, apparently, we all have blind spots.
I did not know that. But she located mine. She said they’re shaped weird, which didn’t surprise me because I’m weird. And then, I’m at about 70 percent peripheral vision. So, I have about 30 improvements that I can create in how I spatially see the world, how I see the world through the sides of my eyes. Partly that’s because I’d worn dark-framed glasses for a long time. And of course, your glass arms as they go out impacts your peripheral vision.
As someone who has very big aspirations as a leader, seeing as much as possible and having expansive sight is very important to me.
My doctor focused on the green spectrum, and I chose between lemon-lime and teal, and I chose lemon-lime. But Dr. Dudley insisted that I do teal. What I didn’t know is that this particular spectrum of color will bring down inflammation. It will strengthen my rest, digestive system response and help regulate my nervous system in a way that color through the optic nerve does. Now, this is nothing I wouldn’t have known about on my own.
To be continued.
Wishing you The Gift of Discovery,
