📍 📍 📍 📍 Welcome to the Neurotribe, the podcast where authenticity meets empowerment. Your host, Theresa, is a certified business executive and life coach, navigating the intricate tapestry of neurodiversity. She's someone blessed with ADHD, dyslexia and gifted a widow and a mother to four incredible neurodiverse children.
Each episode of the Neurotribe is an intimate exploration of life. Love, business, and parenting through the lens of neurodiversity. Subscribe to the NeuroTribe on your favorite podcast platform or on YouTube and never miss a story. And if you really like this show, be sure to like, subscribe, rate, and of course, share the podcast with anyone who needs to hear it.
Join us on this unfiltered journey where no topic is too challenging, no triumph too small. Let's unravel the layers of our community's experiences, embracing the struggles, celebrating the gifts, finding empowerment and authenticity in every episode. And let's start right now.
📍 📍 Hey friends. Welcome to episode number one. I am so grateful and excited to come and talk and have this. Podcast where there. Is total transparency. Lots of value, tons of tools. And no rules. Let us talk all about neurodiversity. Now this first episode, I really wanted to tell you who I am. Because when people reach out to me, the first thing that they asked me is, are you neurodiverse. And friends, I would not call myself the neuro-diverse life coach if I was not neuro-diverse and I neurodivergent, I should say, and I'm incredibly proud of who I am and how my brain works. How my brain works within itself and with society. So I'm going to give you kind of a rundown of how I came about who I am. When I was young, I definitely knew and understood that there was something different about me.
And I really did not understand why or what made me different. Quote, unquote. As I got into school. What seemed to be so easy for other people seem to be so hard for me and they couldn't figure out why until I was diagnosed with dyslexia. No I'm old. So back then, if you were diagnosed with dyslexia, it just meant you were dumb. So, this was one of the stories that I had about myself was that I was dumb, not so not helpful, but yet that's something that I have spent years deconstructing. And deciding that that's no longer my story. We'll go into that more later. As I was growing up, what I really notice is that I thirst for knowledge.
I really loved learning and I very much enjoyed wanting to learn new things, especially things that I was excited or interested in. So the other thing. Really annoyed me is that I would zone out when I was learning these new things. So I would have to stop and rewind things, or I would just miss the information and hope that I could piece things together. I very much had to read things over and over again.
And I think that I really beat myself up a lot for zoning out. I never really understood why I would. . I also really felt that I had to work so much harder than everyone else. And I didn't understand why, but I very much embodied this idea that I had to work hard, harder than everybody else. So. As I grew. would learn random facts about random things and found them super interesting. Like, you know, herbs or natural pathic medicine or muscles in the body, you know, what you name it?
Whatever. It was interesting to me. I also found that socially, I was very awkward. I liked to be around one, maybe two friends. Three is okay. Once it got to a group, I really felt like there were rules that I didn't know, and I never got the memo or the manual. And so it caused a lot of anxiety. Even in general of meeting new people.
I always seem to not know the rules of engagement. Now I did have trauma as a young person. And I wasn't sure if maybe that was it or what was wrong with me? I had no idea. So. I definitely got beat, beat up teased. Laughed at ridiculed. You name it. It wasn't fun. I also was told that the things that I did were on purpose. Not cleaning my room was on purpose.
Not turning things in on time was on purpose. Not doing this or that or the other. It was all on purpose. And here I am trying as hard as I can putting more effort than everybody else around me. And yet I was constantly told what I wasn't, what I couldn't do, what I was bad at. And I inside. All I wanted to do was help people.
I really wanted to be good. I wanted to be a good person. And so why , Did everyone seem to be so willing to tell me how awful I was when inside I just wanted so badly to be good. And so it really created this self doubt and it. Taught me to question my own reality.
So fun. No. Not so fun. The point of all of this is I am explaining to you. All of these very unhealthy stories that I grew up with about myself. And as I got older, it definitely. Encouraged some unhealthy relationships, whether they be romantic relationships or friendships. . I didn't always attract the greatest individuals that had my best interest. I think the other thing that is. Really different quote unquote about me is that I have always felt feelings very, very deeply. I have always been incredibly in pathic.
So not only do I feel my feelings and needed to learn, to manage and cope my own feelings, which felt very big to me. And I felt that not only on the inside and outside, but. It's almost like if I was hurting, it would hurt my stomach. You know, I could physically feel the pain in the inside. I also felt like I could pick up and feel everybody else's feelings. So. Navigating my own and other peoples, and it didn't matter where I was.
It seemed like I was always picking up other people's energy and feelings and emotions. It's very challenging to grow up and learn how to turn on and off that faucet. So to speak of picking up everybody else's stuff.
So.
As I got into the work field.
Business came easy to me. It's like if I got a job and I liked the thing that I needed to learn, and I would totally be able to pick things up easy.
As long as I understood. Why I was doing the thing I was doing and I had interest in it. I could take it on and I knew I was capable of anything. So things like getting a job with absolutely no experience. And then within a few months becoming top five in the company. Or starting a. MLM and becoming top 18% within a year, or getting a certificate to a business and starting a business and having people tell me, oh, it'll take you a year, maybe two years to get your schedule full.
And within two months I would have a full schedule and a wait list. These are all things came like natural to me. I really developed this ability to help other people also with their business. It's just part of my DNA. I think it's part of the way that my brain works. So when I was 30, I found this document that was made when I was a kid, when I was in school.
And the document said that I was gifted with an IQ of 152. So that's fascinating here. I grew up thinking that I was dumb because I was dyslexic. Yet I had an IQ of 152. It's very confusing. Right? It's like,
It makes you. Wonder why you had this story, your entire life that you were done yet? Your IQ is 152. It also said possibility of ADHD, but not disruptive. So not gonna pursue diagnosis.
That's interesting. So I was always in trouble my entire life, but I wasn't disruptive enough to get a diagnosis. Diagnosis of ADHD. So late in life. Getting a diagnosis of ADHD in my forties. It is eye opening to finally understand why I had all of the struggles. I always had an always feeling. I was always coming up short. Even though I did very good in business.
It was like I was white knuckling my way through my business. I was heavily masking not understanding that's what I was doing. And I would push myself to my very limits. And often that would lead to me getting sick or getting a cold or coming down with pneumonia or you name it. It usually is something that would take me out. And it was always because I pushed myself past my limits because remember the old story that I had about myself, that I had to work harder than everybody else. Yes, not so helpful. So one of the things that I do with my coaching clients, with my. People. That I work with either in my business course or my one-on-one clients or in my membership. I really help people deconstruct the story that they have about themselves.
Quite often. They don't even realize that they have these stories about themselves, and it's very much in the subconscious and it's playing out in their life and making decisions for them about them. They don't even realize. So we really do break apart. These stories. Also getting so many tools about how to manage anxiety and stress and decision fatigue. Confidence self-trust. You name it?
We do all of the things. So having said that a little bit more about me. I am a widow. My husband passed away a few years ago. God love him. And I have four kids. My kids are all four of them are neurodivergent and then my youngest also has something called Marfan's, which is the same thing my husband passed away from.
So in my home, I have everything from autism to ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, anxiety, depression, sensory needs, you name. I think the only thing that we don't have is Tourette's in this house. So when I am airing these podcast episodes, I am airing the episodes as an individual who is neurodivergent and I'm. Talking about being a person that is a parent that's neurodivergent, I'm talking about being a parent of neurodivergent children.
I'm talking about entrepreneurship, business ownership, small businesses companies being an employee. I am talking about all of the things. I really hope that you guys like. Download subscribe. And share. Thank you so much. I'm looking forward to this journey with you. Take care of. Bye. Bye.
