"Was I Wrong?": Diversity faced by an ADHD.

You're not strange, you just think a little differently

If you have ever felt "weird" or, even worse, if you have sometimes had the impression that something is wrong with you, you have ended up in the right article.

You see, I'm exactly like you and I know how painful that feeling is, especially when you're among others (the "normal" ones in your opinion) or when you find yourself at a crossroads and you don't know what to do because everything, in the end, It feels wrong for you.

You know, it's a bit like I see you.

Diversity is experienced as an inconvenience, especially by those who are neurodivergent. You sit there, with a world inside you which, however, you don't know how to communicate outside of yourself and, when in doubt, perhaps you remain silent and increasingly in the shadows.

Here, the words that follow are all for you and I know they will vibrate powerfully because they will find the right ground.

2019 - The collapse 

Do you know what it means to spend your days trying to attract attention to yourself?  It's a bit like turning into a time bomb: at the first opportunity, you explode. This was mostly because I kept brooding over the same problems. 

I was neurotic, on the verge of mania. 

If by chance, 5 years ago, you had suddenly found yourself inside my head, you would have done everything to escape like hell. I already had this idea of ​​going to a psychologist and so it was that, a few months after the end of my last relationship, I actually found myself sitting on a white leather sofa.

From the summer of 2019 to the autumn, things took a very bad turn.

Have you ever noticed how complicated the business of identity is? But why is the brain so strange? All it takes is a snap of the fingers and you know you're on the wrong path. And suddenly you want to do something completely different, you become interested in psychology, in human behavior, when, only the previous day, you could be seen hunched over drawing paper. 

“Okay, come on. Change is part of the game!”. 

Yes, you're right but trust me that due to the discoveries that occurred later, the mental disorders would have been explained. 

I started the Brera Academy. Since middle school I had an obsession as solid as concrete: to create a comic. 

Cool, huh? Too bad I always found myself throwing away 99% of the pages out of frustration and constant changes of ideas.

2020 - Introspection

I received a first compliment about myself in addition to the drawing. My psychologist told me that I have excellent introspective skills. I? Good sign. However, the joy of the moment was easily broken. I thought I was slow to understand things, I felt less than others. She told me that I have a higher than average intelligence.

So why the hell was I struggling?

Meanwhile a spark lit in my routine.

I didn't even realize it, I enjoyed helping others. I started getting bored in drawing lessons, the redundant question was:

“Why the hell am I here? Passion for art? The desire to assert myself?".

I knew I was entering new waters, on the trail of psychology. An initial idea was to undertake Educational Sciences. The only figure I knew was the psychologist or broadly speaking the coach.

Let's try.

Studying for the entrance tests was a different matter. The swag that integrates the national library with the secret knowledge of magical arts and the dark secrets of the Paleolithic, also called General Knowledge, was waiting to make my eyes water. 

Not out of emotion, let's be clear.

Damn, you know when in video games there's that enemy that you've challenged so many times that you still haven't figured out how to defeat it? Memory palace video, study method, image association... nothing!

Nothing worked! Maybe I was wrong?

The insecurity bit so much that it nagged at me. “As you know, it's not good!”. As a precaution I took an IQ test, for supposed dyslexia. The end result was that I was a boy with S.E.N., Special Educational Needs. My reasoning works in a reticular way, that is, it does not follow a sequential order. It goes by concepts, in a rather quick and intuitive way; the connections even concern apparently distant concepts, the perfect den of dispersion.

Or was there something else? 

I began the University of Bergamo, which I saw as a redemption. I was the warrior about to continue up a jagged climb, intending to reach the army. The satisfactions came, but I felt a great uncontainable energy, which claimed the space. 

2021/2022 - Double sided

I decided to open a blog, where I could direct knowledge.

Writing has distinguished me since I was little. I loved poems, stories and inventing characters. Here it is, the ideal city in which to express what I feel and dispense reading advice.

Meanwhile, the distance from my peers seemed to increase. I felt really different, distant from the common way of thinking. A sense of impatience was beginning to take hold, while another was opening up.

Psychoanalysis was no longer enough. I perceived that I had distinct traits, from susceptibility to stimuli, to hyperactivity, to impulsiveness. They complicated everyday life and the gravity of the choices made.

The revelation of a diagnosis is complicated to accept, even if I would have remained myself. 

What if I were ADHD? 

The thirst for exploration was unstoppable. The calendar looked like an impressionist painting, with a thousand activities associated with a thousand colors. Over the course of the day, 4 completely disconnected objectives had to be completed.

2023 - My "Superpower"

Have you ever had a distinctive trait? A kind of sixth sense, a gift that others didn't understand or recognize in you? Well, my superpower was doing a thousand things at once.

“Multitasking?”

Not exactly, I'm about to tell you. When my peers did just one thing during the day, I did 4. For me, it was inconceivable to stay on just one thing, even for a week. The research continued, and I made another unexpected discovery. The cause of that traffic of unfinished projects and unstoppable curiosity.

I am multipotential.

It is a term in recent use, so it is normal to be taken aback.

I'll make it simple: if I had triple the time in a day I would work on 10 thousand things in parallel. Multipotential people find it extremely difficult to trace a straight path, which follows a single purpose. They are renowned for changing jobs, requiring constant learning, as well as an overdose of creativity on a daily basis.

“So are you ADHD or multipotential?”.

Based on some interviews carried out, I discovered that I have ADHD, but compensated for it with the path of personal growth. Multipotentiality is part of the package.

And just think, it is precisely thanks to this superpower of mine that I created Grautivity, exactly in January 2024. Without it, in all probability, it would not have seen the light. In fact it derives from my loneliness, from wanting to find the common heart of the disciplines and thus transmit my perception of the world. As they say, artists are at their best by converting suffering into value, right?

2024 - In the crosshairs

In March I experienced burnout.

In that "I met" the handshake was not at all welcome. His demonstration carried with it an important message:

I had to choose.

Organizing a list of priorities was a very difficult task. I was convinced that getting along with strategies was not in my DNA. I was managing Grautivity, writing a book, work, and I don't remember what else. I turned to a coach, the first for multipotentials in Italy. I asked her for help in building an effective strategy that was right for me.

Navigating without a compass, however, was risky. 

Something magical happened.

I dug deep into my why, why I cared so much about moving forward with Grautivity, what my internal driving force was. I worked for months on this alone, a challenge on which the path of me and the team depended. Finally, in September 2024, I refined a personal method, with which to do justice to the multitude of interests.

After 5 years of storms, flat waters and the occasional seagull, I learned to tame my multipotentiality, and consequently ADHD.

What do I want to tell you with all this? The message I want to communicate is that every person can transform. Nature has given us an ability, that of modifying our mental states, of gaining experience. The downside of school is that it doesn't teach us this. Are you DSA? Give up doing math, or literature, or any subject that involves skills where you are lacking. Are you ADHD? Give up having personal satisfactions, you will endlessly tend towards inconstancy. 

Neuroscience, biology, epigenetics, evolution and psychology, however, are disciplines with a common heart, which can be summarized in the proverb of the famous mathematician Lorenz:

“nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, everything is transformed” - H. Lorentz

You can transform yourself too.

During this journey together, I will make you understand that reasoning and perceiving differently are a great value, if cultivated.

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