🧠✨Why Language Matters for Us ADHD Founders
Hello beautiful humans! Recent experiences working with Neurodivergent children and their families IRL have had me reflecting on the language we use to describe our experiences. So if I may be so bold, I wanted to speak directly to you.... the passionate, creative, neurodivergent founders who build businesses from inside the turbulence of our own nervous systems. It's likely to be a long one [zero surprises there 🤣] so maybe grab a cuppa, fidget, weighted blanket [whatever works best for you!] If there’s one thing I’ve seen over and over in decades of working alongside neurodivergent women, children, and families, it’s this: the words we hear become the stories we carry. Inevitably, those stories become the architecture of our business and lives. When we consider the evidence based research that has identified that by the time children with ADHD reach between ages 10-12, they are estimated to have received at least 20,000 more negative messages/interactions with teachers, parents, coaches and other adults than their neurotypical peers,💔 it's no wonder the prevalence of imposter syndrome, masking, and identity mirroring that we embody and experience. 🔑These aren’t small moments. These are cumulative. They gather like debt in our nervous system. Now maybe this hasn't been a part of your story...and to you I send a wholehearted HELL YEAH! However, maybe this was very much your experience, and subconsciously you internalised some of that negative interactions or experiences. Maybe you still feel the echo of it when you’re pitching, when you’re networking, when you’re sitting in front of your laptop doubting whether you belong in the ‘entrepreneur’ club at all? That’s where imposter syndrome creeps in. For us ADHD‐founders, it can often feel less like “I don’t know enough” and more like “I don’t deserve this.” But here’s the truth, the good news I want you to hold today... 🔑You are not broken. 🔑You are not behind. 🔑You are not the problem. 🔑You are wired differently, and that wiring holds an immense creative, strategic, intuitive capacity that your world desperately needs.