Emergence Education
This was a speech given on October 12, 2022 at the ‘Mental Health and Neurodiversity Workshop with Sydney Alliance and Sydney Policy Lab’ held at the United Workers Union office in Glebe. Thank you to
for the invitation. Thank you to fellow speakers David Barrow, Judy Singer, Charlie Wood and co-chairs Dee Nguyen and Jade Luu. Thank you to all that attended, and the leaders in collaboration that made the event possible.This was the first public step towards a long term community organising project that aims to explore the sociopolitical dimensions of mental health and neurodiversity, or ‘brain difference’. In the practice of public narrative developed by Marshall Ganz, I have shared some of my story in order to invite connection to this work.
Apparently when I was a young child, I was a bit of a know-it-all. Dad likes to tell me about how he would read the dictionary to me over the phone, while he was away for work. I would devour whatever I could find, colourful little books on dinosaurs or astronomy. I’d eagerly share those facts with whoever was around, like “Did you know that Saturn’s rings are made of ice??” I can still remember that feeling of wonder, lying in my bed tucked under 90s zig-zag patterned sheets, looking up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling.
My curiosity made me a quick learner. I was told I was smart, and had the hope placed on me that I would be the first in our family to attend university. Through Years 4–6 at a small town primary school, I was in a combined class under the Gifted and Talented policy. We were encouraged to work on projects and learn at our own pace. On completion my friends were enrolled in selective or private schools that were unaffordable, and so I went on to the nearby public high school alone.
My family life was a loving one but we led a rocky path. We adapted to Mum and Dad’s separation after an abusive relationship, Dad’s schizophrenia and addiction issues, Mum’s breast cancer, two of my uncles dying from suicide. I developed a fear of the dark and would have vivid nightmares. But I was the eldest child, and I needed to be the strong one for my two sisters. Boys don’t cry anyway right?
In high school, teachers could not grasp why I could problem solve and test very well, but not stick with rote learning or completing homework. I would easily grow bored, fidget and daydream. I can remember the moment my exasperated teacher called me out in front of the entire class, he said: “Sheree here is trying her absolute hardest to improve, while you come first and do nothing for it. You should not be in this class!” A pit dropped in my stomach from embarrassment.
I dropped my favourite subject, Society and Culture, as the teacher would just get us to answer questions in old textbooks so he could duck out to take smoke breaks. I started to spend more and more of my time on the internet after school. How could the slow and stale classroom compare to the sum of human knowledge at lightning ADSL speeds?? I learnt more from political discussions on a comedy forum¹ than I did from that subject.
I began collecting report cards that said “Ben would do better if he listened during lessons… stopped joking around… applied himself more”. Over and over, I was not meeting my Potential. My educational difficulties started to become moral failings. I felt different.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do after school, and the pressure from HSC exams was overwhelming. I struggled, and received a bitter ATAR result of 48. It took two years of encouragement afterwards to work up the nerve to apply for tertiary study.
But when I started uni, something quickly became apparent. I wanted to be there. I knew I could do it. I was interested, but I was completely out of sync. When talking to people I would zone in and out of conversations, accidentally interrupt, or trip on my sentences; my thoughts were moving faster than my mouth could speak them. I found it hard to wake up or be anywhere on time. I’d procrastinate on studying until the last second, then become overwhelmed and shut down. I was stuck in a paralysis of indecision, forgetting what to do, when.
After two years of this, with little progress made in my degree to show for it, I couldn’t help but label myself as ‘lazy’, ‘stupid’, and a ‘failure’. I withdrew.
Do you know… what shame feels like?
Like shit.
I was lost in a rut so deep I wasn’t sure I’d ever get out of it.
It was at that lowest point that I stumbled upon the symptoms for ADHD. I asked my GP about it and waited 6 months for a specialist appointment. During that time Centrelink had sent me a debt notice in the thousands for not updating them on my circumstances. But how could I explain to them what was happening for me when I didn’t understand it myself?
With everything riding on it, I met the senior psychiatrist who diagnosed me with predominately inattentive ADHD, depression and anxiety. He said that because of current regulations, he’d need to lie and say I was previously diagnosed as a child to get medication subsidy². I was given a box of Strattera and out the door I went.
Afterwards I had a lot to process, relief. Frustration. Grief. But I was also struck with a confusing and underwhelming thought: “that’s it?” I had to refer myself to Headspace to talk to a psychologist about what it all meant — and I had to do it quickly before I soon aged out of eligibility to access them. Headspace helped me to lodge an appeal to have the Youth Allowance debt waived. Telling people about my ADHD became a second coming out that seemed more taboo than the first.
Things finally started aligning when I began connecting more to others. I started a long term relationship, moved to Sydney on Gadigal Land and made like-minded friends. I discovered queer community and club culture. I found ADHD peer groups and felt seen by fellow mad people. I learned strategies and supports to help manage my differences.
When I practised yoga I would feel lighter afterwards. I had experiences of total catharsis on psychedelics. I went to therapy and started talking to my inner child. I learned how to create space from my thoughts and emotions to witness and accept them. On my bookshelf I have a copy of How to Do The Work³ next to How to Do Nothing⁴. I wasn’t afraid anymore of the darkness when it came back to visit me. I started composting⁵ the shame to let myself feel worthy of joy and love to grow in its place. I was writing new scripts to my personal narrative⁶. For the first time in my life I began to feel grounded.
Did you know you can make friends with your shadow?⁷
One sunny day I met someone that told me they had completed an internship with the Sydney Alliance, and thought I should ‘totally do it’. Last year I was humbled to meet many leaders from the Oz International Students Hub, and across the constellation of the Alliance. I was seeing politics put into practice, by powerful people across our community, and given the tools to do the same. I tried to apply the same curiosity of compassionate inquiry I’d used on myself, to the world around me.
When we look wider than the context of the individual everything changes.
One major study into childhood development⁸ found that stress in the environment, and whether parents had support during that stress, was the biggest factor in whether children developed attention problems. I can remember the fear on Mum’s face seeing the news that the Gillard government had cut the single parenting payment⁹. That same face Dad had the numerous times that a formerly-public-owned-telecommunications company would tell him they were trying to kick him off his medically retired pension.
Historically, children didn’t always learn the way they do today. Our old industrial model of a school system is lacking the fuel for kids’ intrinsic motivation; a sense of autonomy, mastery and purpose. I didn’t fail at school, schooling failed me. I received expectations when I needed acceptance of my learning difference.
Did you know that nothing is fixed in time and space?¹⁰
I noticed something quite curious over the last couple of years. People in lockdowns started to express that they were having trouble focusing, remembering, thinking clearly. They were feeling a heaviness, like a brain fog. The days would go by either at a snail’s pace or a rapid blur of sameness¹¹. Clearly there was something more than biological happening here. Our bodies and minds are not separate, nor are we to one another. Collectively we’d experienced trauma, isolation and uncertainty, without a way to process it.
I discovered I had been very successful at the queer art of failure¹². I realised from failing that I don’t need to be a know-it-all. Not-knowing, asking questions, and listening before acting was the path to success.
With this first workshop today, we have the incredible opportunity to change people’s minds. When we respect our intersectionality and build interdependence, we see the interconnectedness of everything.
Having grown up on Birpai country on the Mid North Coast, urban life can feel too busy for me. Whenever I get the chance to escape the light pollution of the city, I like to find a dark spot and look up at the stars, searching for the invisible threads between them. How many of us are doing the same?
Footnotes
- AusPol on Something Awful
- In 2021, this was finally changed to allow adults diagnosed with ADHD to access some Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) subsidies, and not pay completely out of pocket for medication. Further explanation from the ADHD Foundation
- How to Do the Work by Nicole LePera
- How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
- Credit to Emma Mae Gibson and her avatar Betty Grumble for her process of composting, performed in the show Enemies of Grooviness Eat Sh!t
- Schema therapy
- Shadow
- Stolen Focus by Johann Hari, p476 discussing the work of Dr L. Alan Sroufe, in particular The development of the person: The Minnesota study of risk and adaptation from birth to adulthood
- The Guardian — Julia Gillard defends single parent benefit change
- Aeon — What is Movement? Thinking in terms of processes, not objects [video]
- The Guardian — Brain fog: how trauma, uncertainty and isolation have affected our minds and memory
- The Queer Art of Failure by Jack Halberstam
- The Power Threat Meaning Framework — The British Psychological Society offers an empowering series of questions that can be used to build self-worth, meaning and identity.
Constellations
- Sydney Alliance
- Oz International Students Hub
- Sydney Policy Lab
- United Workers Union
- Disabled and Neurodivergent Workers’ Alliance
- ADDults with ADHD
- The Commons Library
If you need someone to talk to, call:
Lifeline on 13 11 14
Beyond Blue on 1300 22 46 36
Headspace on 1800 650 890
QLife on 1800 184 527
