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S2E38: ADHD - Late Understanding, Early Shame & Making Peace + guest Carolyn Mallon

• Julie Legg • Season 2 • Episode 38

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0:00 | 31:24

Julie Legg sits down with psychiatric nurse practitioner and mental health advocate Carolyn Mallon, whose journey from high school dropout to doctorate-level clinician is both inspiring and deeply relatable for late-diagnosed ADHDers. Carolyn shares how understanding her neurodivergence in adulthood radically shifted her ability to study, self-advocate, and succeed both academically and emotionally.

The conversation explores the messy, non-linear paths many ADHDers walk, the grief that can accompany diagnosis, and how resilience often looks like simply showing up, trying again, and choosing compassion over shame. This episode is a great reminder that healing and success take many forms, and that it's never too late to start again... with better tools.

Key Points in this Episode:

  • Carolyn’s diagnosis at 28 and how it changed her entire trajectory
  • Why ADHD can mask as laziness or failure in school settings
  • The emotional impact of late recognition and academic shame
  • Making peace with your “past self” through compassion, not criticism
  • How resilience is built in the middle of the mess, not just in hindsight
  • The importance of redefining success beyond degrees and careers
  • Why mental health providers with lived experience are uniquely powerful
  • The joy of offering others the kind of care she once needed

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CAROLYN: Well, I think success looks different for different people and resilience looks different and like I said earlier, you know, different people have different types of privilege in their life and access to different supports. So what one person goes through, it could very well be that just getting through that with their self intact and surviving a lot of adversity can be just as huge an accomplishment as somebody else going and getting their doctorate. It's great that I've been able to, you know, achieve what I've achieved despite and because of my ADHD diagnosis, but by no means is that the only mark of success. And I've seen people go through such hard things. And the fact that they get up in the morning and they come to the office and they're engaged in their treatment and willing to take on maybe a little advice and willing to try it and give it a go and be scared and do it anyway. That's success.

JULIE: Welcome to Season two 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'm joined by Carolyn Mallon, a psychiatric nurse practitioner, mental health advocate and someone whose path into this work was anything but linear. Building a mental health practice grounded in the kind of care she once needed herself, Carolyn brings a rare blend of clinical expertise and lived experience to conversations about ADHD, anxiety, and emotional resilience. She speaks openly about late understanding, early shame, and the quiet persistence it takes to keep moving forward when you feel behind or uncertain. Today, we're talking about what resilience really looks like while you're in it and how to make peace with who you were before you had the answers. Welcome to the show, Carolyn. Thank you. Thanks so much. It's great to have you on board. Lots of questions today for you. So, I'm going to start with your path into mental health and into yourself really, wasn't a straight line and you dropped out of high school. You returned to education at 28 after being diagnosed with ADHD while raising two kids of your own. So, can you please take us back to that period and share what it felt like before you had all the answers? 

CAROLYN: Well, spoiler alert, it was trial by fire. It was. It was a challenge. There were a lot of challenges right in a row. And you know, academically things were really difficult for me when I was younger. I had not been identified as having ADHD. And so like a lot of people in that situation, I'd sort of muddled through, not very well to be honest. I had no treatment and also nobody recognizing the right ways to support me. And you know, I have to acknowledge that I still had privilege compared to some people whose journeys are even more difficult. I was lucky to be in a decent school that was able to offer me an IEP. And even though I didn't finish my high school journey, it was still something that not everyone has access to. And for anybody who's not familiar, that's an individualized education plan and it's a way of sort of structuring supports in the school setting for people who are not meeting potential, which I heard a lot. And yeah, so I finished... well, I didn't finish high school, but I finished my period of schooling thinking, thank God that's done. You know, I kind of just got out early and thought, I don't want to revisit that. That was an awful experience. But, life has a funny way. And what happened was that I had two children and unfortunately divorced. And as a result, suddenly I needed a game plan like really yesterday. And having not been successful in high school, I didn't have much to rely on in terms of getting a job. I didn't have much work experience because I had gone from being a a child in my mother's home to being a girlfriend and then wife of my ex-husband and hadn't lived independently. It was like learning everything all at once. And if you have an executive functioning problem, this makes it so much harder. So you know, I was facing a lot of challenges even before I decided to go back to school. But when I started back at school, the difference compared to high school, or so I thought, was that I was motivated in a different way now by necessity. I didn't have an option of not being successful at this point in school if I wanted to be able to support myself and two kids. And yet that wasn't enough. Like I'd read and reread the same thing. My notes were a mess. Like I couldn't remember anything at the end of a lecture. Didn't even have the skills, you know, available to me to apply myself. But there wasn't any effort I could put out that would make up for the fact that there was something different on a different level. I was struggling some of my peers. So I was diagnosed with ADHD at that point. I saw a doctor and explained what was going on and you know there was this period of grief almost realizing that maybe things didn't have to be that hard that whole time. But boy did it make a difference, allowing me to go back to school and for the first time in my life be successful in that setting. It was huge. But then, you know, fast forward to today and I have a group practice, a mental health practice. I'm a psychiatric nurse practitioner. And so to get here, I not only completed nursing school and again with the two kids, but then I went back to school and I got my doctorate and became a psychiatric nurse practitioner. So I get to evaluate folks sometimes for ADHD, supporting them for other mental health things. And I'm a prescriber, so I'm able to treat them with medications, the same medications that were for me so life-changing. So it was definitely a circuitous path to get to where I am. 

JULIE: That's amazing. And finally at 28 rather than giving up, which many would do, to go back... a lot of hard work but understanding your brain at that point with ADHD and with a clear focus and as you said, a mindset that you will succeed. Wow. What a journey you've been on. It's amazing. 

CAROLYN: Yeah. I mean it's funny because I say like it was necessity right and it really was. I went and got a job, a retail job, and as many people I'm sure can relate, the hourly rate I was being paid was not very far off from what I had to pay for the child care to be there. So, it felt like there literally was no option. If I didn't get an education and increase how much money I was making, I simply I don't know what I would have done. But the diagnosis of ADHD really clicked some things into focus and equipped me with, you know, something that had been missing in terms of the support I had available and I was able to learn how to study for the first time in my life. And that was remarkable. So yeah, there's a book out there I was going to mention because it was so influential, and it's called Learning Outside the Lines. And it was written, it so inspired me, by two people who had dropped out of high school and then gone back to school later to an Ivy League school where they met. It was ADHD and dyslexia were the conditions they were dealing with and they wrote this book about how to study. And I it was huge. 

JULIE: What a huge help. Wonderful. I will just add that a link to that book, along with links to you too, will be in the show notes. So any listeners who have pricked their ears, go to the show notes and we'll have that link in there for you. 

CAROLYN: Yeah, there's lots of things that people can be really proud of and really important moments in their lives. And for me, because of the challenges that I had to overcome to get there, the day that I graduated nursing school is huge. I mean, it allowed me to really reframe things. And I was... I went from high school dropout to going back to college and I became president of our student nurse association and I was selected to be a speaker at our graduation. And for me, I mean, I think for a lot of people that would feel like success, but for me, having come from where I'd come from, it was huge. And I still carried this chip on my shoulder. Maybe that's not the right phrase, but this shame, right, that I was carrying around that I was a high school dropout and that nobody knew this about me and that I was trying to like compensate and show everybody that I could be successful. But the day that I graduated, I got up and I gave a speech to everyone and I said that the biggest hurdle to overcome for me was the shame that I carried about being a high school dropout. And how now that I'd come to where I was, I realized that, you know, this was a strength, right? That I demonstrated this ability to like move past what was at one point seemingly impossible and to reach this like this relative self-actualization, this place in my life where I could be really proud and I could reframe this. And my daughter was there in the audience and my mother was there. And it was such a big moment because my mom always said, you know, you'll go to college when you're ready. And I appreciated that she said that, but it didn't feel true for me. I didn't think that was going to happen for me. And to get up there in front of my mother and give this speech and acknowledge that she had that unshakable faith in me, that was just I'm still so proud of that moment. 

JULIE: How did not understanding your ADHD earlier in life affect the way you judged yourself or explained your earlier struggles? 

CAROLYN: Wow. It really affects a person. And I see this in my practice now when I'm working with folks who have previously undiagnosed ADHD. You're comparing yourself against other people who do not have an executive functioning deficit. They do not have the same challenges. It's not an equal playing field. Comparison really assumes everybody is starting at the same place and has access to the same things like your home environment and your brain operating the way it should be, as well as your educational environment which I've mentioned. But, you know, when you're comparing yourself to your peers who seemingly are successful with what seems like less effort, it really... and then you're reinforced, this idea is reinforced. You, when you hear phrases like "You're not reaching your potential" or "You're lazy because you have the ability but you're not doing it." And with ADHD, you can be very productive in certain areas at certain times. You can be very creative. You can throw yourself into something and perform very well but you're not able to be consistent with it. So people see the potential. They rightly see the potential. But if you don't have what you need to make that a consistent performance, it really makes you feel like there's something wrong with you, that you're broken, and it just deflates your confidence. 

JULIE: You mentioned earlier the word grief when it came to first being presented with your ADHD diagnosis and many adults will look back on their pre-diagnosis years with exactly that, a mix of grief and compassion. How have you learned to make peace with who you were before you had the language for what's actually was going on? 

CAROLYN: Yeah, I mean I would, you know, I would say that grief is something that I see other people experiencing too. And when I diagnose ADHD and we start a medication, I always warn them of it up front. I say "When this works, you are going to feel like such relief and yet it makes you realize things didn't have to be this way this whole time. You know, it's like putting on glasses for the first time. And you know you have to really have a lot of compassion for the you that existed before you realized. You have to be... you have to make peace with the person that you used to judge so harshly and give a little grace to that person who put forth effort but just couldn't like hit those marks." And so it definitely takes a lot of, it takes a lot of compassion for that earlier person. And myself, speaking for myself, and I know I speak for others because I've seen it. This the difficulties you face with undiagnosed ADHD cause you to have so much anxiety about your performance, about how you're being perceived because you're very often, you know, saying the wrong thing or being impulsive and acting out of turn. And there's so many ways that it affects you and it can lead to depression. And people with ADHD when it's not treated especially are more likely to have internalizing behaviors. They get very frustrated with themselves or disappointed or angry and they will internalize that. And you see behaviors like self-harm, you see substance use disorders. And when you're older and hopefully have access to treatment and see how different things are, you're still left with this history that you have to make sense of and put it into context so that you can realize that you weren't just this messed up, unmotivated, lazy kid, you know, that you needed help that you hadn't recognized yet. 

JULIE: Definitely. And that is a journey in itself. And it's not an overnight "Yay, I've got my diagnosis now. Everything makes perfect sense. I've got it all sorted." It does take some time. Yeah, it can take a lot of time. It can take Yeah. a long, long time. How do you now hold those parts of yourself that once felt like obstacles, whether it was distraction or fear or this inconsistency? How do you hold that as part of your strength rather than something to fix or even erase? 

CAROLYN: Therapy, lots of therapy. I mean, jokes aside, it really is helpful as an adult to engage in a therapeutic process and get an accurate picture of, you know, your own strengths and being able to reframe this as resilience, being able to recognize that resilience comes and develops from having a hard experience. If life has been easy, you're not going to necessarily be very resilient because resilience is something that you earn through putting in that effort when it's hard and through tolerating really difficult times and challenges. And it's something to be proud of, but to acknowledge that, you know, it sucks. It sucks to have to gone through tough times to get to where you are. But those people who go through those periods and show up every day and try again and forgive themselves for faltering but get back on the path and keep trying. Like that is such a strength and that's a strength that develops a lot, I think a lot for people with ADHD because of how not easy things are. And sometimes even unbeknownsted to us we've been resilient in our undiagnosed life as well because there was no other choice we had to get ourselves up and carry on and progress. 

JULIE: Yeah which makes us tough little cookies, one can say. It does. You said something that really resonates too and that was resilience doesn't always feel like a strength when you're living through it. So what does resilience really look like in real life, especially say for people navigating ADHD, anxiety or single parenting without a safety net? 

CAROLYN: Resilience doesn't always look that way until you've got to, you know, the future period of you where you can look back on it and say, "Wow, I developed such resilience as a result of a lot of adverse experiences and challenges that you know, until you've got that hindsight can just look like a lot of struggle." And so I think it's really difficult in the moment at a certain place in life where things are really tough to recognize your strengths. But the fact that you're existing and you're getting through that time even if you're not doing it gracefully, that is a strength and that is what you know you can later reframe and realize that that's resilience. But not everybody does it gracefully and it's not always from point A to point B. You know, like I said it can be... you can have you know, places where you lose your spot on that journey and you need to take a break and who knows when you come back to it. But that's the wonderful thing about life is that you always can come back to it. You can get back on the path and hopefully get the support you need if it's a diagnosis that you need, if it's treatment that you need. But yeah, a non-linear path is I think the rule rather than the exception for people with ADHD. And no wonder so many people fail to recognize their own resilience when they're surviving in that survival mode. 

JULIE: I can completely understand and relate to that. As someone who once felt behind though for you educationally, professionally, and to some degree personally. How do you now think about comparison and the pressure to have life all figured out by a certain age? 

CAROLYN: Yeah, that's tough. I think so many people struggle with that. You have all these preconceived ideas about how you're supposed to have it together at these different stages of life, you know.  I think that it can be easy to hold yourself to this very unrealistic standard or you know society shows us people, you know, being married and having their careers and their educations at these different points in their kids and you see it in a lot of ways like people thinking "Oh I should have had kids by now." For me it was I should have had some sort of education. Because even though I'd struggled academically when I was younger, I did have aspirations. I just didn't know how to get there, you know. And I think that a lot of people can probably identify with similar things. You face really difficult times and it really challenges you to keep your eye on prize.

JULIE: Yeah. And so what would you think maybe wish people understood about these non-linear timelines? You mentioned that before it's certainly not that, especially for us neurodivergent adults. So what would you like other people to understand about how we work in that nonlinear timeline? 

CAROLYN: Yeah. Yeah, that non-linear path, like I said, it's the rule. It's not the exception. I have yet to meet somebody with a with ADHD, especially when it was diagnosed later that has an easy path or even just a path that was challenging, but they kind of like saw one thing after the other happen. Like that's it's not how it happens for people whose brains are different. And they are in ADHD, you know, you have difficulties, not just, you know, in an academic setting, but at home and socially and in your relationships. You know, it affects everything and nobody's path is going to look the same as somebody else's. And people need to give themselves grace and realize that, you know, they can come back to things. I see in my practice all the time, people who feel a sense of shame over not having that linear path and who have a hard time always showing up to engage in the process. But like the process is it. There is no like destination you're going to arrive at and like things are done. You wrapped it all up like this is the work and maybe not comparing ourselves to others but to look at ourselves and determine what path we will follow or going with the flow. 

JULIE: And as you said, reinvestigating potentially some paths that we didn't follow in our younger years now we understand our brain and how it works. Today as a psychiatric nurse practitioner, you offer the kind of care you wish you had earlier in your life. So, how has your lived experience shaped the way you sit with your patients, especially those carrying shame and fear and uncertainty about their own path? 

CAROLYN: Yeah. I mean, I think it's an asset and not everybody realizes this. I certainly didn't when I was, you know, less experienced and younger, but when people go into the mental health field, that's not for no reason. So many of the people I know working in mental health are here because we've experienced adversity and challenges and had struggles either in our personal experience or with our family members or close friends with mental health conditions, you know, with ADHD. And now I'm in a position, like the nurse practitioner who diagnosed and treated me, to help other people and that really like it just it gives me such a sense of accomplishment but satisfaction to feel like I can make a difference for somebody. Somebody who comes to my office who might not feel like they've been heard and seen, to think that I can help or play a role even in a small part to getting them feeling better and feeling better about themselves. And I mean it's really great and I know that it's you know there's a lot of mental health providers like myself who work in this field because of that personal experience. It really adds something I think. And I think clients also appreciate knowing that their provider hasn't had that linear path either, you know, to the extent that, you know, we let on a little of that, but you have to be careful with boundaries. But there's something called therapeutic self-disclosure where you can share a little bit of the things that you are able to identify as similarities if it's in the best interest of the client and that experience. And I find that with ADHD, it's so helpful to be across the desk from somebody who gets it, you know, who's seen these changes and faced the same sort of challenges. 

JULIE: What's feeling most meaningful or exciting for you right now where you're at? 

CAROLYN: Well, you know, I started my practice about five years ago and then expanded, hired a few people, and now we have this group practice here in New Hampshire. And I just love that I get to have the approach that I think is going to be helpful for clients and to hire other people who have a similar belief. I don't have to go through committees to make decisions. You know, in our office, we specialize in working with neurodivergent adults and also people who identify as an LGBTQ community member. And I love that we can have this focus and I don't have to ask anyone's permission to, you know, we have a drawer in our office with condoms, birth control, morning after pills, like fentanyl test strips and all sorts, anything that could be of use to any part any of our clients who come in the door. And again, like I get to decide if I think that this is something that's really valuable for me and going to be of service to our clients and sort of choose the focus of my practice and it's really meaningful. 

JULIE: Wow, that's great. And you can be so nimble too when it's when you're very much hands-on and as you said, you don't need to consult to the board or the committee every 5 seconds. 

CAROLYN: Right. Exactly. I mean, and we see adults for all sorts of different mental health concerns, but I love that we're able to sort of specialize a little bit in working with these two populations. And I've heard people say that like, "Oh, so that's your niche." That's not my niche. That's basic care. And that's one of the things that I really believe is that everybody who walks into my office deserves the same level of care and it shouldn't require specialized training. It's good to get it and I'm glad that I have it and the rest of my employees as well, but it should be standard practice to support every adult who walks in your office the same way and with the same level of kind of cultural consideration and empathy. 

JULIE: That's wonderful. May I ask when someone feels quietly ashamed that their life looks different from what they imagine? What's a gentle reframe or perhaps a practice you may offer them to help them build up some self-trust while doing the hard things to make that happen? 

CAROLYN: Right. I mean, I tend to think about what would have been helpful for me to hear. And one of the things that I heard around the time that I was going back to school was this this Buddhist thought like "Leap and the net will appear." And it's just to me it represented like you don't know the outcome. You can't, you know, but you know about the decision you're going to make. And sometimes you have to make these risks and give it your all. And it's not brave if you're not scared. I mean, you've got to do the hard things. You've got to do the scared things. And you can be scared and do it anyway. 

JULIE: That's a brilliant quote. Thank you. And for listeners who are feeling a bit uncertain or behind or feel like their resilience maybe hasn't counted because if it didn't look impressive on paper, what would you most want them to hear today? 

CAROLYN: Well, I think success looks different for different people and resilience looks different and like I said earlier, you know, you different people have different types of privilege in their life and access to different supports. So what one person goes through, it could very well be that just getting through that with their self intact and surviving a lot of adversity can be just as huge an accomplishment as somebody else going and getting their doctorate. It's great that I've been able to, you know, achieve what I've achieved despite and because of my ADHD diagnosis, but by no means is that the only mark of success. And I've seen people go through such hard things. And the fact that they get up in the morning and they come to the office and they're engaged in their treatment and willing to take on maybe a little advice and willing to try it and give it a go and be scared and do it anyway. That's success. 

JULIE: Such wise words and great advice, Carolyn. Thank you so much. And on that note, I wanted to thank you so much for being on the show today. I really appreciate your words and your lived experience and to be such an inspiration for other listeners out there to reconsider their path and to be happy with a nonlinear approach.

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Julie Legg

Host
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Jel Legg

Co-host
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Carolyn Mallon

Guest