ADHD and the “Model Minority” Mask With Emily [Video]

By Understood

Emily’s executive function and sensory processing challenges sounded very similar to those of her mental health clients with ADHD. Emily, who lives in Australia, does peer work, and her interactions with other young people with ADHD ultimately led to her own ADHD diagnosis.

Emily talks about masking her ADHD symptoms and feeling like a failure not just to her family, but to Asian people in general. And she shares how she finally felt seen and “broke the mask” when she got diagnosed with ADHD.

To find a transcript for this episode and more resources, visit the episode page at Understood. https://www.understood.org/podcast/ad…

We love hearing from our listeners. Email us at ADHDAha@understood.org.

Understood is a nonprofit and social impact organization dedicated to shaping a world where the 1 in 5 people who learn and think differently can thrive. Learn more about “ADHD Aha!” and all our podcasts at u.org/podcasts.

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Transcript provided by YouTube (unedited)

0:00
i was very honored to work with a lot of
0:02
really diverse young people particularly
0:04
a lot of young people that have been
0:05
diagnosed with adhd when they shared
0:07
their stories with me
0:08
that was the first time i really really
0:10
felt understood and i was really able to
0:12
relate to what they were saying and i
0:14
was like yeah that makes so much sense
0:15
to me like i really relate to that here
0:17
is an example of how i also had that
0:19
experience and they were like okay
0:22
you should probably check that out
0:24
because you potentially have adhd and it
0:26
was maybe like the 20th person that i
0:29
worked with that had said that that i
0:30
was like okay i should probably get this
0:31
checked out
0:33
[Music]
0:34
from the understood podcast network this
0:36
is adhd aha a podcast where people share
0:40
the moment when it finally clicked that
0:42
they or someone they know has adhd
0:45
my name is laura key i’m the editorial
0:47
director here at understood and as
0:49
someone who’s had my own adhd aha moment
0:52
i’ll be your host
0:53
[Music]
0:57
i’m here today with emily unity emily is
1:00
a young person who lives in australia
1:02
and she refers to herself as a
1:04
miscellaneous blob i’ll let her tell you
1:07
why that is
1:08
hi thanks so much for having me my name
1:10
is emily i pronounce it she they i
1:12
definitely feel like i am a
1:14
miscellaneous blob because
1:16
there’s just so much about me that
1:17
doesn’t necessarily discreetly fit into
1:19
certain categories i’ve just found
1:21
myself to be really interested in the
1:23
world in general and
1:25
really attracted to very weird niche
1:27
things that don’t really have anything
1:29
in common so i’m culturally diverse in
1:31
sexual and gender diverse and also
1:33
neurodiverse but also
1:35
like even career-wise i’ve been an
1:37
artist and engineer and now i’m a mental
1:39
health advocate and this is just me just
1:41
now and so if you talk to me in a week
1:43
maybe everything will be different but i
1:44
just love being a weird blob and
1:46
existing in spaces that are new and it’s
1:48
just yeah
1:50
not not really able to describe myself
1:52
in a very succinct way i love that
1:55
so why don’t you tell our listeners what
1:57
it is that you do so about 50 of my work
1:59
is like
2:00
policy advocacy but i’d say the other 50
2:03
is peer work so i’ve always been really
2:05
passionate about mental health and i’ve
2:06
been volunteering since a young age and
2:08
when i went and did my studies in
2:10
post-grad psych i
2:12
found that it was a little bit too rigid
2:13
for me or didn’t quite sit with me too
2:15
well so i went and found other
2:17
alternative things of therapy and one of
2:20
the pathways that i went down was peer
2:22
work and peer work essentially is
2:25
when you have a lived experience of a
2:28
mental illness and you work alongside
2:30
someone else that has that lived
2:31
experience as well and it’s much more
2:33
mutual than a psychologist and patient
2:36
relationship like you’re working with
2:38
each other you’re walking alongside each
2:39
other in your journey like neither of
2:40
you
2:41
are recovered
2:43
in a binary sense you’re consistently
2:45
working through things and it’s very
2:47
reciprocal and lovely i found that like
2:49
in my journey it was definitely such a
2:52
big catalyst for me to find other people
2:54
that really understood what i was
2:55
feeling because they had lived it and
2:57
were still living it and that was such a
3:00
game changer for me instead of talking
3:02
to someone who felt like they were
3:04
trying to fix me or felt like they
3:06
didn’t quite get it it’s been absolutely
3:08
game changing for me and
3:10
apparently game changing for a lot of
3:11
the young people that i work with and
3:13
through that work you actually started
3:15
to hear a lot from clients with adhd is
3:18
that right yeah definitely so i
3:21
didn’t think that i was necessarily
3:23
neurotypical before peer work but
3:26
i
3:26
was only labeled with like certain
3:28
labels like depression and anxiety but
3:31
through doing peer work i worked with a
3:33
number of young people that
3:35
had diagnoses of adhd and were in like
3:37
quite formal treatment settings and
3:40
it was then that they were sharing a lot
3:41
of experiences with me
3:43
and what they were saying
3:45
were a little bit too relatable so they
3:48
highly encouraged me to go seek out that
3:50
pathway for myself
3:52
so tell me about the two relatable
3:54
things what were you hearing from your
3:56
clients about adhd
3:58
that perked your ears up so to speak and
4:00
made you think is this related to
4:02
anything that’s going on with me there
4:04
were like these small anecdotal things
4:06
that they would tell me particularly
4:07
with like sensory stuff there’s like
4:09
over stimulation of like i’m sorry i
4:11
can’t hear what you’re saying over the
4:13
sound of my shirt tag being itchy and
4:15
like the one strand of hair touching my
4:17
face like i was like oh yeah i totally
4:18
get that and they’re like that’s not
4:20
tied specifically to my depression or my
4:22
anxiety so i should probably explore
4:24
that more or like under stimulation with
4:27
trying to go to sleep and then the
4:29
latent noise in your brain being too
4:31
loud so you need to put on something
4:32
else to sort of drown that out and then
4:35
lots of like
4:36
executive dysfunction like let’s clean
4:38
the table but before that you should
4:39
clean the sink but i need to take the
4:41
trash out oh i should get changed and
4:43
there’s just all this like stuff going
4:45
on and then feeling like you can’t do
4:47
any of it because there’s too much and
4:49
not enough happening and like i tend to
4:51
info dump a lot which i’m currently
4:52
doing which is like at my request thank
4:55
you exactly putting a lot of information
4:58
there going down these tangents because
5:00
i’m just so passionate and focused on it
5:02
it’s just all those small cognitive and
5:04
like sensory things that it just
5:06
happened over and over again and hearing
5:08
my young people’s stories
5:10
and
5:11
just be able to relate to them way too
5:13
much but also be able to see the immense
5:16
amount of like pleasure and
5:18
understanding that they had within
5:19
themselves once they
5:21
got help tell me a little bit more about
5:23
the sensory stuff that you’re
5:24
referencing
5:26
i think it sounds like sensory overload
5:27
right like a lot of information coming
5:30
in and also like seeking out sensory
5:32
stimulation which can be pretty common
5:34
with adhd because you know we can look
5:36
at like trouble with self-regulation or
5:38
trouble switching gears as
5:40
leading to sensory overload tell me a
5:42
little bit more about your experience
5:43
with that from a very very young age we
5:46
used to go on ski trips overseas and my
5:49
mom would get me to wear gloves because
5:50
it was freezing and i just
5:52
i really hated wearing gloves because i
5:54
felt like the world was completely on
5:56
mute like i just felt like i was
5:57
experiencing the world through this
5:59
really thick shield and that’s because i
6:01
realized later that like my touch
6:03
sensors were dulled and that’s such a
6:04
big thing for me and like nowadays to
6:07
manage even my anxiety and like lots of
6:09
my adhd i do a lot of stimming which is
6:11
like self-cemetery behavior of trying to
6:14
regulate my sensory input so if there’s
6:16
not enough like i’ll tap my hand a
6:18
little bit or i’ll play with a fidget
6:20
toy or if there’s too much then i’ll try
6:22
to like redirect that somewhere else
6:24
sometimes i’ll eat some food that’s just
6:26
so good like sometimes i really love
6:28
peanut butter on toast but i will not be
6:30
able to concentrate on what the other
6:32
person’s saying because i just i really
6:34
love the peanut butter so yeah just
6:35
being aware of that i think you’ll be
6:37
able to communicate with the other
6:38
person in that environment be like i’m
6:40
really sorry i do
6:42
want to listen to what you’re saying can
6:44
i please just finish like what’s
6:45
happening in my mouth
6:47
for me there’s so many small things like
6:50
i need to take out the trash i need to
6:51
take out the trash i need to take out
6:52
the trash but there’s a plane flying
6:53
overhead and i can hear the sound of the
6:56
plane but i need to take out the trash
6:58
because of that i can’t listen to the
6:59
plane or take out the trash um like it’s
7:01
it’s very silly i feel like that sort of
7:03
executive dysfunction is something that
7:05
was really lovely to understand about
7:07
myself because normally i would just
7:08
beat myself up about it and be like
7:10
you’re useless like why can’t you that
7:12
makes no sense you can’t take out the
7:14
trash because it’s a plane but i think
7:15
it’s about
7:16
being like a lot more kind with myself
7:18
and having that language to really
7:20
communicate what’s going on with me
7:21
because i think
7:22
for a lot of people around me they just
7:24
see me like frozen like i can’t do
7:26
anything and they can’t help and they
7:28
can’t understand
7:30
[Music]
7:37
you’re talking about executive
7:38
functioning difficulties which i have to
7:41
be honest emily it kind of surprises me
7:43
in my interactions with you i found you
7:45
to be one of the most organized people
7:47
i’ve ever interacted with thank you i i
7:50
highly appreciate that people tend to
7:52
say that quite a bit about me and i
7:54
think honestly it comes from a place of
7:56
sort of being forced into that so i was
7:58
only diagnosed with adhd quite recently
8:00
like in the past couple of years and i
8:02
think because i was sort of punished for
8:04
a lot of the symptoms that i exhibited
8:06
from adhd i hid a lot of it or i like
8:09
built up
8:10
different structures in my life to just
8:11
cope with it when i hear sort of
8:13
constructive criticism i take it on
8:16
quite personally i’m working on that
8:17
obviously but i definitely used to carry
8:19
a lot of criticism with me all the time
8:21
and was just like compulsively trying to
8:23
organize myself because i felt really
8:25
awful any time that i let anyone down
8:27
with my dysfunction of not being able to
8:30
remember things you know so now i have
8:32
like spreadsheets upon spreadsheets and
8:33
lists upon lists just trying to
8:36
get to that point where i can be
8:37
accountable for my own actions and
8:39
people don’t have to be like let down by
8:41
me all the time which i’ve definitely
8:43
felt a lot when i was younger you felt
8:45
like you let people down yeah intensely
8:48
can you say more about that so i grew up
8:50
sort of surrounded by
8:52
a lot of expectations like i come from a
8:54
first generation immigrant background
8:56
like my mom’s a refugee and my dad’s
8:57
migrant and i think
8:59
a lot of people from those sorts of
9:00
backgrounds they come to a new country
9:02
and they want to just flip that
9:04
narrative around as quickly as possible
9:06
and so they want the best for their
9:08
children they build up this like really
9:09
amazing life and i grew up so privileged
9:12
but in doing so i had so many
9:13
expectations on me to be smart to be
9:16
good at everything to get a good husband
9:18
and that sort of stuff to find like a
9:20
privilege like
9:21
pristine and prestigious career path and
9:25
be this like perfect human but i’m so
9:28
imperfect as a person and now i’ve come
9:30
to love that but at the time i
9:31
definitely felt like it was a bad thing
9:33
and i just
9:34
really tried my best to shape myself
9:36
into something that i wasn’t and i think
9:38
that’s why like my adhd went undiagnosed
9:40
for so long is because i was really good
9:43
at that at the time within like school
9:45
settings and
9:46
i really benefited from a lot of the
9:48
routine and structure that was imposed
9:50
on me but when that was taken away after
9:52
school
9:53
everything fell apart how did it fall
9:56
apart
9:56
not having like class in the morning
9:58
consistently and not going to all these
10:00
specific things i would just
10:02
not be able to function it was sort of
10:04
the first time in my life like i
10:06
definitely
10:07
had that adhd symptom of if something is
10:08
not interesting it is like almost
10:10
physically painful to do but i had
10:13
people around me at the time that the
10:15
expectation and like the fear of letting
10:17
them down was so much louder and like i
10:19
would just be able to push through it
10:20
and push through the pain because like
10:21
that pain of letting them down was so
10:23
much more important to me but when i
10:25
finished school i was just like
10:26
completely moved away from like most
10:28
things that i knew and i think because
10:30
of that i also moved away from a lot of
10:33
the active like expectations and like
10:34
the criticism which is you know
10:36
partially a good thing but also the like
10:39
physical pain that i felt not being able
10:40
to do something that i wasn’t interested
10:42
in that was
10:43
everything so i fell into like a lot of
10:45
you know following the like i call it
10:48
like the adhd demon and i mean it in
10:50
like a really wholesome way i love my
10:51
adhd demon but they would leave me down
10:53
these like
10:54
really like interesting and beautiful
10:56
pathways but they were completely like
10:58
non-productive and definitely derailed
11:00
the life that other people had sort of
11:02
set up for me in terms of going and
11:04
getting like this set degree or and
11:05
doing this job i just started pursuing a
11:07
lot of miscellaneous things which
11:10
now i’m entirely grateful for but at the
11:12
time it just felt like i wasn’t in
11:14
control but i was still having like the
11:16
best time
11:18
is that related to um this idea of
11:21
masking that you talked about in the
11:23
article for our listeners emily wrote a
11:26
beautiful article called how culture
11:28
affected my adhd diagnosis
11:30
and in it she talks about the model
11:32
minority mask
11:34
there’s a quote from your article
11:37
you say there was this model minority
11:39
myth that claimed all asians are
11:41
obedient and academically gifted and you
11:44
go on to talk about how model minorities
11:47
are supposed to be quiet and well
11:49
behaved and they’re meant to be high
11:51
achievers
11:53
yeah i studied so hard in school
11:56
i like i really tried and i think
11:58
because of that i
12:00
ended up being quote unquote high
12:01
achieving but
12:03
i think at the time i didn’t afford
12:05
myself that sort of hey you did it
12:07
feeling because i assumed that if i was
12:10
good at something particularly in school
12:12
it was just a product of my genetics
12:13
because i’m asian like i genuinely just
12:15
thought that because i’m asian i have to
12:18
be good at this and anything less than
12:19
100 is
12:21
like a complete failure and i’m not just
12:23
letting myself down i’m not just letting
12:25
my family down i’m letting down like the
12:26
entire collective that is asian people
12:29
which is right a ridiculous sentiment
12:31
but i definitely felt that at the time
12:32
that sort of model minority mask of me
12:35
pushing myself and being this like high
12:38
achieving quiet human it just goes
12:40
against every like stereotypical idea of
12:42
what adhd is when someone thinks about
12:44
adhd i think particularly when i was
12:46
younger i thought it was you know a
12:47
young boy that’s like restless in class
12:49
like the class clown but for me i was
12:51
like just i felt all this weight of
12:53
expectations i felt like if i acted out
12:55
like if i was fidgeting with anything it
12:57
was a bad thing and i would be punished
13:00
for it and so i just
13:01
really contained myself even though it
13:03
was like sometimes physically painful to
13:05
sit still and i just did everything that
13:07
was expected of me because i
13:09
i just felt like there would be severe
13:11
consequences to not just myself but like
13:13
the people that i love if i didn’t
13:15
and i think later on it took me so long
13:17
to take off that mask it was like
13:19
permanently on my face but that sort of
13:21
high-functioning quote-unquote which i
13:23
think is a really harmful term that
13:25
high-functioning aspect i was
13:26
demonstrating
13:27
was used to deny me support there was
13:29
like you’re too smart to have adhd
13:31
you’re too intelligent to like need
13:33
support like why aren’t you working up
13:34
to your full potential and that was just
13:37
so distressing and i just always felt
13:39
like i was you know too asian to have
13:41
adhd like agents can’t have adhd you
13:43
know you’re meant to be good at math and
13:44
like you meant to be organized and quiet
13:46
and
13:47
i just felt this huge imposter syndrome
13:49
of i don’t deserve help which is
13:51
something i felt when i was a lot
13:52
younger but it just translated so easily
13:54
into the adhd context as well that
13:57
sounds really exhausting emily
13:59
yeah it really was like just this
14:01
internal battle in my head
14:03
did you burn out at any point
14:06
yeah i think there are a couple points
14:07
where like adhd definitely feeds into a
14:10
lot of my other like
14:11
diagnoses i suppose once one thing sort
14:14
of starts falling down everything else
14:16
falls down as well like a house of cards
14:18
and i think it’s just it’s incredibly
14:20
difficult for me
14:21
at the time to understand what was going
14:23
on i think particularly with adhd
14:25
because i didn’t have
14:27
the understanding or the label or the
14:29
medication i just
14:30
felt like
14:32
i knew who i was and i was just obedient
14:35
high achieving human and then suddenly
14:37
without all that structure
14:39
i couldn’t be that person and i just had
14:41
this
14:42
huge identity crisis that was also part
14:44
of exploring my own identity and
14:46
nothing really made sense so i did have
14:48
a lot of
14:49
breakdown points that were not just
14:51
burning out from work or study
14:53
they were also like burning out from
14:55
just
14:56
life from having to like discover who i
14:59
am by like trial of fire i just wanted
15:02
softness and
15:03
understanding and i just i couldn’t find
15:05
that
15:08
[Music]
15:15
i wrote down something from one of your
15:17
emails i’m writing down a lot of things
15:18
that you say by the way emily you’re a
15:20
very great communicator but you said
15:22
diagnoses are ways to communicate myself
15:26
i thought that was really lovely that
15:27
you said that and i’m hoping that you
15:28
can
15:29
share a little bit more what you mean by
15:31
that this is like a fairly controversial
15:34
opinion but it’s something that’s widely
15:36
shared i think within particularly
15:37
complex mental health i think that
15:39
diagnoses are sort of ways that we try
15:41
to categorize people to help them on a
15:43
certain path and i think clinical
15:45
psychology is really good in that sense
15:46
that like you can investigate certain
15:48
experiences and then have treatment
15:50
pathways that are like evidence-based
15:53
i think that they can be really really
15:55
harmful diagnosis i think that
15:57
they can be a label that like becomes
16:00
like who you are and people tend to just
16:01
minimize the complexity of your
16:03
experience down to just a certain label
16:06
but i found that diagnosis for me the
16:08
benefit of it is being able to
16:10
communicate
16:11
who i am and find my shared people like
16:13
i wouldn’t have better find you
16:16
if i didn’t identify by the label of
16:18
adhd and i think that like that label
16:20
for me is something that is very
16:21
positive but i think for a lot of other
16:23
people it’s very negative it’s a way of
16:25
just saying like hey like this is
16:26
something that i have been
16:28
labeled with necessarily and you can go
16:30
and like look it up for yourself and i
16:32
think that was just excellent for me
16:33
like growing up you know when i was
16:34
diagnosed with depression anxiety or
16:36
like certain other things people that i
16:38
loved that
16:40
weren’t really able to
16:42
understand me could go and look that up
16:43
in their own time and particularly
16:44
because i didn’t have the language to
16:46
explain to them this is how i’m feeling
16:48
then it would be a lot easier for us to
16:49
come to that sort of shared ground
16:51
and i think adhd for me has just been
16:54
it’s ah not that i should have a
16:56
favorite diagnosis or anything like that
16:58
but it’s been such a wholesome
17:00
experience coming and finding
17:02
more people that really identify
17:04
positively with that label and now it’s
17:06
like this is my kin this is how we are
17:08
and it’s lovely to have that shared
17:10
experience whether it be good or bad
17:12
it’s just nice to be a part of that team
17:15
yeah your adhd demons can hang out and
17:17
have fun together right yeah yeah i
17:20
appreciate that you laid out what can be
17:21
the downside of diagnosis and labels but
17:25
also talking about what the positives
17:26
can be the downside i think if i got
17:29
this right that you mentioned is that
17:30
they can be an excuse to minimize
17:32
certain things is that something that
17:34
happened with you growing up because you
17:36
had other diagnoses did your adhd quote
17:39
unquote stuff kind of get pushed to the
17:41
side
17:42
absolutely i think that when you get
17:44
labeled with certain things particularly
17:45
within like very formal clinical
17:47
settings
17:48
whatever experience that you have later
17:50
this is not generalizing all mental
17:52
health professionals but like the ones i
17:54
engaged with tended to tie different
17:56
symptoms down to what was already on my
17:58
record and so because of that i was you
18:00
know misdiagnosed with a number of
18:02
things like certain
18:04
eating disorders were actually like
18:06
diagnosed by itself instead of
18:08
attributed to like different sort of
18:10
body dysmorphia things that i was
18:11
experiencing or like identity crises i
18:13
had a lot of my experience that was tied
18:15
down with adhd to just oh you’re you’re
18:18
just really depressed or like you’re
18:19
really traumatized from this thing like
18:20
ptsd and depression anxiety all have
18:23
overlapping symptoms with adhd but
18:25
there’s a lot that i was experiencing
18:27
that was just adhd like it wasn’t
18:29
explained by all the other labels that i
18:31
had but i think those things were just
18:33
sort of glossed over be like okay you
18:35
already have this label so we’ll just
18:36
try to funnel it into that it was such a
18:38
struggle to get
18:40
a diagnosis because i think a lot of
18:42
psychiatrists that i engaged with
18:45
either had this stigma of adhd
18:47
particularly women with adhd and then
18:49
particularly
18:50
non-white people with adhd because
18:52
there’s a lot of cultural nuance that
18:54
came into
18:55
my presentation and i think it took a
18:57
really long time to find a psychologist
18:59
or a psychiatrist that really understood
19:01
that
19:02
i genuinely cried
19:03
when i found the psychiatrist who was
19:05
able to like validate my experience and
19:07
i remember reading in their notes that
19:09
they were like explicitly
19:11
emily was able to
19:13
hide her symptoms within the structure
19:15
of her family and within the culture
19:16
that she was raised in but away from
19:18
that structure everything became a lot
19:20
more apparent and so that was what
19:23
brought like all the things to the
19:24
surface and like broke the mask so to
19:26
speak i never felt so seen in my life
19:30
thank you so much for being here with me
19:32
today emily it’s been such a pleasure to
19:34
talk with you no really it’s such a
19:36
pleasure to talk with you as well i
19:37
really love these conversations and it’s
19:39
really nice to find people with that
19:40
shared lived experience if any of the
19:42
things i’ve shared today like really
19:44
resonate with you i just want to let you
19:45
know that like your experience is really
19:47
valid with just the way that it is and
19:49
that you really don’t need to shape
19:51
yourself into someone else’s idea of who
19:53
you are whether that be like you don’t
19:55
necessarily identify with adhd or you
19:57
don’t identify with any sort of label
20:00
you’re valid in just who you are and how
20:02
you’re experiencing the world is
20:04
completely important without needing to
20:05
like translate that into someone else’s
20:07
idea of mental health
20:09
[Music]
20:13
you’ve been listening to adhd aha from
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20:18
listen and subscribe to adhd aha on
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20:23
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20:25
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20:31
and if you want to share your own aha
20:33
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20:35
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20:38
or leave us a voicemail at 646-616-1213
20:41
[Music]
20:44
extension 702
20:47
i’d love to hear from you you can go to
20:49
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20:50
adhd aha to find details on each episode
20:54
and related resources that’s the letter
20:56
u as an understood dot o r g slash adhd
21:01
aha
21:02
understood as a non-profit and social
21:04
impact organization
21:06
we have no affiliation with
21:07
pharmaceutical companies
21:09
learn more at understood.org
21:13
mission
21:14
adhd aha is produced by jessamine mali
21:17
say hi jessamine hi everyone justin d
21:20
wright created our music seth melnick
21:22
and brianna berry are our production
21:24
directors scott kosher is our creative
21:26
director
21:27
and i’m your host laura keith editorial
21:30
director at understood thanks so much
21:32
for listening
21:35
[Music]
22:01
you

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This post was previously published on YouTube.

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The post ADHD and the “Model Minority” Mask With Emily [Video] appeared first on The Good Men Project.