ADHDifference

S2E11: ADHD, Medication, Focus & Creativity Unleashed + guest Angela Harvey

• Julie Legg • Season 2 • Episode 11

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Julie Legg speaks with Angela Harvey – a social worker, facilitator, speaker, author, poet, filmmaker, and founder of Let’s Talk University. Angela reflects on her late ADHD diagnosis, the shame she once felt about medication, and how embracing her neurodivergence has sparked a creative explosion in her 50s.

Angela shares her evolving relationship with productivity, identity, and purpose, weaving in stories of her award-winning film, her self-help poetry book, and her unapologetic approach to living out loud.

Key Points from the Episode:

  • Angela’s journey to a late ADHD diagnosis and the pivotal moment medication changed her self-perception
  • Why shame, not ADHD, was the real obstacle 
  • The power of self-embrace and how Angela customises her days to honour her neurodivergent strengths
  • How ADHD has fuelled her creativity and led to projects like her documentary Black Rainbow Love and poetry/self-help book
  • Angela’s mindset of “healing in public” and encouraging others to talk openly about their neurodivergence
  • The origin of her identity as a “Growthologist”: someone who helps grown folks grow up
  • Encouragement for newly diagnosed individuals to define success on their own terms

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JULIE: Welcome to Season 2 of ADHDifference. I'm your host, Julie Legg, ADHD advocate, author of The Missing Piece: A Woman's Guide to Understanding, Diagnosing, and Living with ADHD, and an unapologetic doer of many things. This season, we're turning up the volume with a global lineup of brilliant guests bringing their lived experiences, insights, research, strategies, and resources. And of course, along with a healthy dose of humour and humility. Whether you're neurodivergent yourself or just curious, there's something here for every curious brain. Let's dive in. Today, I have the pleasure of welcoming Angela Harvey to the podcast. Angela is a social worker, facilitator, author, poet, columnist, filmmaker, and personal development coach with over 25 years experience. She's the founder of Let's Talk University where she creates transformative programs that helps, as she puts it, grown-up folks to grow up. Angela's work spans mental health, emotional wellness, the LGBTQ+ advocacy, and weaves her lived experience with ADHD into everything she does. Well, welcome to the show, Angela. [Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. It's definitely a pleasure.] Yay. Good to have you. Right, so we're going to dive straight into these questions. Firstly, you described ADHD not as a limitation, but as a unique lens that now shapes how you create and connect and contribute. So, I'd love you to take us back to your diagnosis and to share how that moment really invited you to reimagine your story and your relationship with yourself. 

ANGELA: Absolutely. Let me first say that it's such an honor to be here with you today because this is actually the first time I thought about it before I joined. This is the first time I've talked about my ADHD out loud. I mean, in this form. So, it's amazing as I looked, you know, over the question, I'm like, wow, you know, I had to think back. I can remember when I was in college is when it first came up and all I knew about things at that time because I was raised in a family and an environment where we didn't do things proactively, you know, something had to be wrong and it had to be physically wrong. So even the teeth that were in my mouth, if they, you know, there were certain things that my family, my mother just didn't tend to. But what I realized is when I got to college and you know, you got to go to all different classes and things just were not shaping up for me. People were studying in a library and oh my goodness that was horrible to me. I'm like there is too much happening even though there it was just too quiet there. I would ride the bus and this how I knew it was a challenge. I would have to ride the city bus from one end to the other to be able to study, to be able to read, to be able because otherwise I was too much quiet. I was all over the place. And so I ended up going to see the school psychologist, psychiatrist. So I mean I was just trying to figure out what was the matter. And they said, "Well, this might be it." And when I heard that, the first thing I thought about was, "I'm not taking any medication. I'm not taking any pills. I'll just figure it out." And literally for the next four years, for the next almost 15 years, I figured things out. But that there were so many things that I now know that I could have done and could have done better in a different way if in fact I had zeroed in to what they were really saying, that it wasn't just about medication. It was a... yeah it just didn't occur to me. I could have been an architect. I could have been a lawyer because I'm a horrible test taker. But I realized that so much of that had to do with my diagnosis. So fast forward and I'm in my late 40s now, and I have taken and not passed an exam seven times. And I'm like, something is the matter. I have to tend to this. And I finally end up going to see somebody. They gave me an exam and then they gave me this fast-acting Adderall or some medication. And I could visibly, physically, psychologically see the difference between my before and my after. And I was like, "Oh my goodness." It was mind-blowing to me. Here I am a therapist and a social worker. I deal with diagnosis all the time. And all I knew is that I just did not want to be confined to taking something to fix something. I watched my grandmother and my mother and my aunts all take pills. And I just was determined that was not going to be my story. But the minute I saw that, I thought to myself, "Oh my, do you know I could... I could do anything if I'm able to focus in that way." And that's kind of the way that it happened for me. I went if... I'm not sure how they did the test back when I was in college, but for them to give me something and literally in the next hour say come back and have it activated was mind-blowing to me. It was just like I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. And so now I do talk about my ADHD all the time. And if I could tell you how many people like, "Oh my goodness, that happens with me. Oh my goodness." I mean, so I've been able to but talking out loud in this way, I've not ever done it before. So thank you very much for asking the question. That's the first time I've journeyed through that as well. But it was a "a-ha" for me and a "wow" and taught me many, many lessons about the shame because that's what it was for me. It was like, "Okay, I don't want anybody to see me taking a pill." All I could think of is back in school, the kids got called out, you know, like in the middle of the day and they had to go down to the office and take a pill and come back and we knew something was the matter with them. And I even took that to college even though I would have been taking it on my own. I thought that's not going to be me. I'm not going to be confined to this. This is not going to alter me. I didn't smoke or drink because I didn't want to be altered in that way. Never seen it as a good thing, just as something that that I should just learn how to manage. So, it was just a wild and crazy ride for me, for sure. 

JULIE: Well, that's... it's interesting you mentioned shame, too, because a lot of people may feel shame about their undiagnosed ADHD life, but yours was actually around taking the medication. That's ... yeah, that's really interesting, really interesting. I can see... 

ANGELA: Absolutely around that. Mainly because I didn't see and I don't know that anybody else paid enough attention to me to see that I was not able because I wasn't, I wasn't the hyper piece of it. I was just literally you could say squirrel. I'm like, "Okay, over here. Okay, over here. Okay, let's do this. Okay, let's do that." You know, so I was always into many, many different things, completing some of them, but it would take me long periods of time where somebody else could do something in 10 minutes. It was definitely going to take me two hours easy. So, the shame for me was around taking the medication because that's what I, that's what I perceived at the moment as being shameful. Watching the kids having to leave called on the... well I'm old school and I'm old so called on the thing and they have to go and take a pill. Everybody know they were going to the nurse's office and nobody, I don't even think we knew what it was about a lot of it. All we knew is that they I mean we would call them... I say we. I was a part of that. We would call them names. They were slow. They were this. They were that. And so the shame for me came around having to get out of my chair and go do something that everybody else didn't have to do. All these years on now, you wear so many hats, right? You author and a filmmaker, facilitator and founder of Let's Talk University. I want to hear all about that and what's exciting you right now. Oh my goodness. So given this happened I'm now... I'll be proud to say I'm 59 years old now, and I this happened around it I guess around 10 years 11-12 years ago when I was able to get a hold of things. And know more because I found out more about my diagnosis after this miracle pill in my head worked and miracle meant I just could stay focused. It didn't mean that it was doing anything else. It just meant I could do this, and finish this, and be done with it. And I think when I say that it connected me, it absolutely fed my creativity because that means I could start something and finish and stop and taper it off, and start and stop and taper it off. And I have been doing just that ever since then. I started Let's Talk University back in 2002. I stutter and so I didn't think that God was trying to get me to talk in front of people because I stutter. So why would I do that? But I knew that I had something to say. Things kept coming out. People kept saying, "Oh, you do that." Well, I started Let's Talk University facilitating personal growth workshops and then I started doing retreats and things of that nature. And when I tell you my creativity is just it blossomed like this after I turned 50. It was like, "Woo!" In the last three years, I have been Miss Full Figure North Carolina 2022. I've written a book. I'm an award-winning documentarian and a filmmaker.  And right now, the things you see behind me is my new art exhibit called Head of Statements. I actually made my first hat because I was in church and my hair… I was having bald girl problems and that air was coming down on my head and I couldn't praise anybody. So I made me a hat and then I just kept... I kept coming up with these things that I wanted to say. And I don't think I realized until almost a year after I kept making them that they were speaking for me. They were speaking for me. They were speaking to me and building my self-esteem because all of them say things like, you know, 'queen of the night' and 'I slay' and 'unapologetic'. So, they were speaking to me in a way. And it's funny that we're talking about ADHD now because literally I come from such a long way of thinking that, okay, because you have this, you're now different in not a good way. Now, what I can do, oh my goodness, what I can do between my creativity and my ability to focus and my ability to be able to navigate and control what happens on the inside and outside of me, I am a creative beast these days. And so, literally, I'm able to use it for that, for all of that. I thought to myself after I wrote the book, because everything that I've done, like literally had not ever come to me before. I'd never wanted to be a filmmaker. I didn't go to film school. I didn't do any of those things. And we've been in 36 film festivals and won 11 awards. I have a poetry self-help book and I wasn't a poet. I didn't consider myself an artsy craftsy person, but here I am copy and pasting and even I did all the photography and all the editing with all the pictures. And just literally I felt like if I had to give you an analogy, it's like before I was this and it was okay, do whatever it is you can do to get by to now do whatever you want to do and you can still get by. And that's what, that's has been a difference. 

JULIE: It does sound as you said like a creative explosion since your 50s which is brilliant. I'd like to rewind slightly and talk about your book and also about your film which sounds amazing. So tell me about both please. 

ANGELA: Okay absolutely. So, I saw a program and looked at the program and I thought that almost everybody did this where they go, "Well, where are stories?" And that's what I said. I said, "Where are stories?" And it was very clear to me that I had the connections. I knew the people that I could absolutely bring forth this story. And so, I created a movie called Black Rainbow Love. And Black Rainbow Love is just the unmuting of black LGBTQ voices. It's done so with from a what people call queer joy. There's no... there's no drama in it. There's no oh look at us. We came from this place. It's all about love, and love of self, love of community, love of passion, love of friends, love of intimate love, and the love of ourselves. And that came from me being able to craft all these relationships I've had over the years as a therapist, as a motivational speaker, as a facilitator. So, I knew everybody. So, when I reached out and say, "Hey, well, you think you could would be open to telling your story," they were like, "Yeah, yeah." So I had all these people and then everything else just kind of... I wish I had this great story to say that I but it was just a fluke that I entered into the film festival and it just kept going and kept going. I looked up and it's now been two years. I'm still screening it in different colleges. It's still being screened Inspect. It's going to be screened in two weeks in California and then we're going to be in New York at the end. And this is just yeah bigger than my wildest dreams which is the reason I don't limit myself to just my dreams. I go with the universe as well. And then in 2019 I had a breakup.  But bigger than a breakup I had a heartbreak. It was devastating to me. I thought I had experienced heartbreak before but this was something else. And my grief and my pain came out in poetry, which again was odd for me because I'm not a poet, you know. I was Yeah, I didn't know at the time, but as I'm writing these things, I'm thinking, woo, that felt better. Woo, I'm glad I could get that out. It really and truly was a release for me. I made a decision then to put it in a book, but I knew I didn't want to have just a poetry book because I wasn't a poet. I just didn't feel like I thought that would be like not a good thing for a non-poet to put out a poetry book. But I am a therapist and I know the things I went through to have those poems help me. So I made a poetry self-help book. So it's my poem that came from my feelings in that moment. We go through healing, growth, and transformation. And then I take you on the ride with me by probing and prompting you to think about how you could relate to something, how you start hard conversations, how you define certain words, how you manifest creativity in your world. And I put those, it's 14 questions, seven intentions after every poem in the book. And when I tell you it's a lifesaver, I believe that not just because I'm the author. I believe that because I've had to go back to that book and I've had friends of mine to read me things from that book to empower and encourage me and they were my words. And sometimes I didn't even know it because with the hurt that was in the book with the different poetry some of it you know, you read it and you don't want to ever read it again because it caused you such pain to experience, what you were experiencing it. So when some of them were reading things to me, I was like, I wrote that? Like that came from me? And so I believe it's my pain repurposed. It's what I felt like I needed to do to be able to take something I went through and have people grow from it. And I believe that shared stories save souls. And that being said, I wanted to be able to help as many people as I could. And as I think about it now, these creative things that are happening are all just little links to different ways as a growthologist, I can continue to help grown folks grow up. 

JULIE: Now, Angela, I'm so glad you used the word growthology. Please explain that to our listeners. What does that mean? 

ANGELA: Absolutely. Very early on in my career, I began to capitalize the word grow and all versions of it. And I would replace grow with anything that was action. Like grow have an amazing day. And don't go through it, grow through it. And so I began to be known for the word grow. And a client of mine then said, "Well, I guess you're a growthologist since you teach grown folks how to grow up." And I was like, "Oh, oh, okay." It wasn't actually a word, but I thought it was an amazing word and that growthologist. And I began to use it ever since then. So growthologist to me means me helping grown folks grow up. A growthologist is someone who helps grown folks grow up. You are a growthologist because you help grown folks grow up. And I love love love the name because it came from the word grow. And I am a woman on the grow all the time. 

JULIE: Now, I'll be having links in the show notes to both your poetry book and also your film so listeners can go and read up more. The thing that sort of jumped out from what you were sharing with me is that you no longer see limitations. It seems to me limits are almost within your control. And if you shed them, you're just doing amazing, bountiful energy and creativity. 

ANGELA: And I would absolutely encourage people. Thank you very much for noticing that. Again, this is... I'm almost getting chills because it's the first time I'm hearing feedback specifically around this particular thing. So people can say I'm creative all the time and they say you're this and you're that. But for someone to know where I came from with all of this and to be able to see this thing blossom. But the thing that comes to mind especially as it relates to limits because we are very, very... our society I believe sees that something can happen to someone and automatically sees that there's a limit in it. You know if you get diagnosed with a disease there's a limitation. If you get this there's a limitation. If you get this there's a limitation and nobody hones in on the fact that there are for every negative to something there is absolutely a positive. I believe that so many of our blessings are in the valley of places. Many of the places that I have grown from have been in deep dark places that caused me much hurt and pain. But my goodness when you make it to the mountain top when you come from the valley and make it to the mountain top, there is no limits in many cases. In my head, the way I think about it is when you learn how to navigate what is confining you, what is keeping you in bondage. That could relate to sexism. It could relate to homophobia, racism. All when you know what binds you and you know how to grow around that, there is no limit. There is no limit. And so I would absolutely... I'm not sure whether this is going to be a question or not, but I would say to anybody that is challenged with ADHD specifically, I need them all to know there is something great in that because when you have to work to manage something, it builds a muscle that most people don't exercise. Just know that there's greatness that comes behind every limitation. There's growth behind every limitation that you can ever think of, including those things that take us out of here. 

JULIE: You've said that living with ADHD has challenged you to reimagine bits and pieces, whether it be structure or looking for support rather than sort of living in this area of shame. Is there a daily practice or a mindset or a good old strategy that helps you stay grounded and keep moving forward? Do you have a tool that you use?

ANGELA: I absolutely embrace myself every morning because I wake up knowing. I mean people that have to deal with any challenge, any limitation of sorts, you wake up with it. And so you wake up and I embrace it. And I do that every day. And nowadays I'm embracing all of me. I'm embracing my gender. I'm embracing my sexuality. I'm embracing all of those things. And ADHD is absolutely one of those things. The other thing I'm very clear about is that I know that I am the most productive in the morning. So, one of the things I do is that I plan things in the morning to the early afternoon. The other thing I do, which some people are going to find this funny, but in the evening, I don't take a whole lot of calls in the evening. I have a few clients that I see in the evening, but most of my friends know like Angie's not going to answer the phone after 9:00 because in those moments where I do feel scattered. Even in casual conversation, it makes me feel uneasy. So, I want to be composed as best I can. There's nothing wrong with being scattered at all, but I don't want to be scattered on somebody else's time. If I'm talking to a client or somebody else's time, if I'm talking to a friend, you be like, "Angie, are you doing something else?" I'm like, "No, I was just thinking about something. I'm off over in here, you know, in LA." So, those are things that I say and I say them out loud. The other thing I do is that if misery loves company, we're almost always in great company. We just don't know it. So, when I say out loud that I have ADHD, or I say, "Oh, wait a minute. I haven't taken my Adderall yet." you know, say something of that. I'm almost always able to get people to go, "Oh, me too. Oh, you oh." And so, it's a way of being able to call people in and then we can have conversations about it where people instead of doing this, we go, "Oh, this is what I got." I'm absolutely all about healing in public and healing on purpose. I had to understand that it wasn't about me taking a pill to fix me. It was about taking something to heal me on purpose. And I could take the shame out of it and it was not something that I did to myself because I think because I had limited knowledge. And so those things me waking up and embracing all of me and all of who I am unapologetic without shame without guilt on purpose. Me being very clear about when I am productive and when I could get the most done, the most bang for my buck and operating and creating a schedule around just that. And then on the weekends and evenings really allowing myself to go whatever that looks like and feeling nothing about it. So I can go hang out with my grandkid at 9 and everybody else is tired or sleepy at 9:00 and me and her are up, you know, like, you know, acting up. And so I allowed me to embrace that piece of me because that piece of me there's a side to it that I absolutely love. I love not having to be laser focused at times. And I allowed that to be a part of what I experienced daily. Initially I had a prescription that would allow me to taper off and then, you know, if I needed to take something else and I told myself I was going to allow my evenings to be just as scattered as they needed to be on purpose because it only affected me and I have a little puppy, well, dog. Um, but other than that, I don't have to rub off on anybody. Nobody has I don't you know I don't have to pied piper to anybody. So yeah I get to do that. And so again that's me embracing all of me. All of me. And I love that. I love being able to do that. It took me a long time to be able to do that. I think the one thing that that could have helped me at some point was for one, if you see something say something. And so now I'm speaking to the adults who have children or nieces or nephews. It would have helped if somebody had saw something because I'm just a kid knowing that I don't want to get called down to the nurse. So I'm not going to tell anybody that I can't focus. So if you see something, say something and know that it's not shame that you're bringing. You're bringing clarity. And that's really and truly what I think about. I think about how my lens it feels like was out of focus for decades and then it came into focus. I'm like, "Oh my goodness, there's a whole world out there." And kids sometimes don't know. They don't know. All they know is something is the matter. And so if you see something, if you feel something, say something. Because a lot of times for us and for the people around us, if it's not a scar someplace, I don't know that there's anything the matter. And so ask questions and then be supportive. And support can just look like it not being a big deal. Like literally not making it a big deal and asking questions. You know, I love when people say, "Angie, is that going to work for you?" Because they know like if it's after 7:00, you know, Angie's liable to do a three-hour show versus, you know, 30 minutes. So asking questions and equip yourself with knowledge directly from the source. I think that's so very important. Who better to ask than somebody that's experiencing it. There's nobody that can tell you about us like us. 

JULIE: I was just going to agree with you with regards to not making it a big deal and talking openly about ADHD whether it's in youth or adults. And this is partially why ADHDifference why the podcast exists because I wanted to normalize ADHD. I wanted it to be a conversation, something that can be listened to in the living room with your family present or it could be on a podcast, you know, in while you're driving in the car. But it is such a continuous conversation to have and I love having guests like yourself that can share a really personal journey and your strategies work so well for you and are going to be an inspiration for others. So, thank you. That was... I'm so glad you talked about that. That's good. That's good. 

ANGELA: I'm very, very excited about all of that as well. And that's what.. that's for me that's what it's about. It truly is about us being able to share our stories because I do believe that shared story save souls. 

JULIE: For someone who's just beginning to navigate their life with ADHD and maybe still wrestling with some old narratives about what success 'success' should look like. What would you want them to hear? 

ANGELA: Okay. Come very close. Let me tell you what I want you to hear. I want you to know that you get to define what success is. That no one gets to define that for you. And if you embrace all of who you are, success is going to happen. Like there is no doubt. No matter who you are, no matter what arena you're operating in, when you when you embrace all of who you are, and you learn places where you can get help or get healed or get humbled, absolutely, there is not anything that you can't do. And anything that you start to do that you complete to the best of your ability is a success. So, you get to define that. I am not... I'm definitely not limited by anybody else's definition of anything because definitely as an ADHD I have to... what people consider to be focused. My definition of focus is very different than anybody else definition of focus. I would absolutely tell them to define things that mean something to you for yourself and use that as your guide because the words and most of the definitions that could come up in this arena were guided by people who have no clue what it's like to deal with the things that we deal with. You know, so when somebody talks about focus, like that's not focus, or when somebody talks about success or completion or any of those things, you get to define that. And by my definition, I hit the mark every time. Every single time. And you can too, for sure. 

JULIE: Beautiful advice. Thank you so much, Angela. Angela, I just want to thank you so much for being on the show today and for sharing your journey. It's been wonderful, wonderful stuff. So, thank you. 

ANGELA: Don't go already. I'm not ready to go. Don't go. But thank you. It definitely has been a pleasure. And thank you for allowing me to open up this new piece of me. And it's not new, but it didn't occur to me until today. I was like, I've never spoke about this in public in in this global type of way. And so, definitely it was my pleasure. You took me on a journey as well, and I'm hopeful that the two of us then helped some grown folks grow up as well. 

JULIE: I'm sure it will. Thank you so much. [Thank you. I appreciate that. And you.]

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Julie Legg

Host
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Jel Legg

Co-host
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Angela Harvey

Guest