🧠✨Why Language Matters for Us ADHD Founders

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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.

🔍 Why language matters

While you may not have had control over the 20,000+ negative corrections/disciplinary action you received by adolescence, once you have worked through A) the fog and the fracture, B) naming and normalising, you can reclaim and rewrite the narrative! You get to reframe words that you hear, rewrite stories that you carry, and rebuild the architecture of your business and lives. And surrounded here in this incredible community; through

@Bill Widmer

there is ridiculous amounts of support and expertise to do so!

Am I saying that being a neurodivergent business owner is easy? Heck no! Our experiences clearly scream that loudly. However, I am saying that it's not the full story. And especially for us late diagnosed women, this reframing is critical! The research doesn't yet fully understand us, so the way we carry our stories matter.

🔍 Our nervous systems already heard those 20,000 extra negative corrections/experiences

🔍 Our internal feedback loop of shame, self-correction and hidden exhaustion doesn't need to be escalated by describing our brains as “disordered”

🔍 When we don't acknowledge the parts of us that are expansive, visionary and resourceful, we rob ourselves of identity, agency, and the pen to rewrite the narrative.

🎬 So if you're still with me - well done! And here's my challenge for us all [myself included] What can you reframe and shift in your language to help support your nervous system today? I'll go first, here are 3 of my current re-frames:

🔑“I’m neurodivergent, and I build systems that align with how my brain works.”

🔑“I access my speed, creativity, and my hyper-focus as a strategic advantage.”

🔑 “I allow for rest like it's rebellion, and plan for recalibration and nervous-system support as part of my business rhythm.”

🎬 So how about you? Which language can you give yourself that supports your regulation rather than fights it, that invites clarity not chaos.

🎬 What's something small today that you can do to transform internalised feedback loops (that started in childhood) into empowerment loops that serve your business and your life?

You are remarkable and I'm so glad you're here!

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