Welcome And Guest Setup

Fatima Bey 0:02

MindShift Power Podcast This is Mind Shift Power Podcast, the number one critically acclaimed podcast where we have raw, unfiltered conversations that shape tomorrow. I'm your host, Fatima Bay, the Mind Shifter. And welcome everyone. Today we have with us Caitlin Fisher. She is a neurodivergent career coach with Colorful Futures based in Ohio in the USA. Caitlin spent years moving through career after career before finally understanding why. ADHD. She now helps other people with ADHD find a path that actually fits the way their brain works. Today we're going to talk about how career planning is different for them. So how are you doing today, Caitlin?

Caitlin Fisher 0:51

I'm doing great. Thank you.

Fatima Bey 0:53

And thank you for coming on. It's been a joy to talk to you off air. So I hope this conversation goes as good as it has off-air. So I like to dive right in.

Finding Out At 30

Fatima Bey 1:03

So let me ask you, when did you find out that you had a ADHD? And what did that moment actually do to you emotionally when you finally had a name for what your brain had been doing your whole life?

Caitlin Fisher 1:15

That's a great question. I was almost 30 or had like just turned 30. Um I think I had just turned 30. Not that it matters to be so specific, but that's ADHD for you. Um, and I was getting started with a new therapist, and I was going through this list of all my different projects. I have, you know, I have this kind of uh I'm working on a book. I have this art project. I do freelance work, I have a full-time job. And this therapist just leaned back in her chair and was like, Have you ever been evaluated for ADHD? And I said, No, absolutely not. And she gave me a little checklist and I filled it out. And she's like, Yeah, you're you're gonna want to talk to a psychiatrist. Oh, wow. So she clocked in the first 20 minutes of meeting me that I have ADHD. And for 30 years, I just thought I was kind of a lot. So being able to put a diagnosis to it and to say, like, oh, I have been like, I've always felt weird, you know, like I'm a weird kid. I'm different than the other kids. But finally at 30, to discover, yes, your brain literally works differently than everybody else who has been around you was really validating in a way. Um, I already had a lot of like neurodivergent friends. I had people in my life who had ADHD who are autistic, things like that. So I was already a little familiar with it and it it kind of gave me a sense of belonging because I knew that there was a welcoming community for people with ADHD, especially late diagnosed ADHD.

Fatima Bey 3:16

I'm gonna put it this way. You felt like something was wrong with you. Yeah. And how did that make you feel?

School Struggles And Shame

Fatima Bey 3:26

Uh bad.

Caitlin Fisher 3:28

Um I had I had a rough childhood. My parents divorced. Um it was hard for me to pay attention to things, especially during the divorce. My homework was not getting done on a very reliable routine. There was a lot of upheaval, and the teachers were just sort of like, oh, well, Caitlin is usually like such a good student. This is probably just, you know, the stress of the divorce and everything going on with parents and home life. But like I remember sitting on a Sunday night trying to fill out this entire weekly reading journal. And I was trying to read like seven whole chapters of a book. And this is like, I don't know, fourth or fifth grade. So I'm trying to read a week's worth of reading so I can write it all down in this journal. And my dad is sitting with me to quote, help me with my homework. And I'm just crying because I don't, I don't, I couldn't do it little by little. I could only wait until the last minute. And then that was way too stressful. I also didn't know that I was allowed to kind of bullshit a reading journal. And like I could have, I could have just skimmed these chapters and written a basic summary of them, but I don't know. I was nine or ten or however old, and that didn't occur to me. So like I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I was gonna say, like, I've always felt like the last minute deadline of assignments has always been part of my life. I would always like study at the last minute, do a paper at the last minute, and then I always got A's. So I thought that was just how how does that relate to ADHD?

Dopamine, Adrenaline, And Deadlines

Caitlin Fisher 5:26

Um great question. So with ADHD, if you're not gonna get like dopamine from a task, which in a neurotypical brain, like just doing a task and then seeing it, you know, if you clean the kitchen counter and then you look and you're like, mm, clean kitchen counter, your brain gives you a little hit of dopamine. And it's like, yes, job well done. You want to keep your kitchen clean because it makes you feel good. But with ADHD, every task is a negotiation from scratch. There is no like ingrained habit to fall back on. And if there's not dopamine, then typically what happens is we run on adrenaline. So that would be the last-minute deadlines. You know, if you have six months to write a paper, it'll take you six months to write a paper. But if you have a week to write a paper, it'll take you a week to write a paper. The planning in advance was not something I was very good at unless it was part of the assignment. Why? So sometimes, you know, teachers will be like, give us a rough draft, and then you'll flesh it out, and then there's a final draft. But for me, I didn't understand what a rough draft was. Like I always went straight to final draft because I guess I just I knew what I wanted to say. And for for whatever reason, I do try to outline more now and get the shape of something that I want to write before I go in and finalize it. I have finally learned how to like outline and draft things at almost 40. Um, but it's pretty typical for students to run on that adrenaline and the last minute deadline to get assignments in. And sometimes that reflects in poor grades. And sometimes it reflects in good grades. And if if you're getting good grades, they're gonna miss the ADHD because there's no sign that something's wrong.

Fatima Bey 7:43

Good point. Good point. And the reason I'm asking you those questions that way is I know there's a lot of people out there listening right now who are experiencing everything you're saying and they don't know that they're not retarded, stupid, dumb, lazy, all the other derogatory terms that people get called, they might just actually be ADHD. And once you're diagnosed, you can finally do something about it.

Caitlin Fisher 8:10

Yes. Yeah, once you're diagnosed, you can get help. If you're in school, you can get an IEP. If you are the an adult out in the the working world, you can get accommodations at work. ADHD is a recognized disability, which also means that stigma comes along with it. And then people people do just feel like, oh, well, you're lazy, you can't follow through. My mother called me lazy my whole life.

Fatima Bey 8:37

Yeah, it it I yeah, that's what I want people to understand. And the reason we're talking about ADHD today, specifically, is because I find, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I find very often the conversation is about neurodivergence, and people overgeneralize neurodivergence, but don't realize that that is a uh a blanket term for a lot of different things, and ADHD is one of them, and very often, you know, autism and ADHD, they are neurodivergent, but they're not the same thing. So yeah, no, they're way different. They're not the same thing, but often they're lumped in the same conversation as neurodivergent. But I want people listening to understand what it's like to be someone with a to have to be someone with ADHD. I'm gonna tell you this. Now I did not tell you this in our other conversation. There's someone that I formerly worked with, and she told me that she had ADHD. I didn't understand that at the time. I found her annoying. She wouldn't, we were trying to have meetings and going to to showing her things, and she was just all over the place, and but she would show, you know, she would she would still get it done, but it was just like it was really annoying. But now I understand because I've learned more from talking to people like you. And and it and I now I understand that she was a lot more challenged than I realized. But the good thing is that she actually said something to me because I'm looking at her like, girl, what's wrong with you? Because I'm serious. I I was really ignorant, I did not know any better. So she explained to me that she's ADHD. I'm like, yeah, but that didn't really mean anything to me. It just meant, okay, you have short tension span. Like that's what that's what I really thought it meant. But she actually took the time to explain to me not everything you're saying, but some of the things from her experience, what it's like, and how people do treat you like you're dumb, like there's something wrong with you. That's what I was doing, and I was wrong. So talking to you people like you has helped. Now, on that vein, what other things do people misunderstand about people with ADHD?

Hyperfocus And ADHD Misconceptions

Caitlin Fisher 10:51

Oh, so much. Um, one of the like the questions that you brought up in our before we started recording was um people think ADHD means no focus, but some ADHD means a lot of focus. We can get so hyper-focused on something that we we won't get cues from our bodies. So we won't feel hunger, we won't feel that we have to pee, we won't feel thirst until suddenly you look up and it's like 8 p.m. and you've been working on something for hours. You you actually said that you you didn't send me an email in advance because a project was taking over your whole life. And sometimes we just get into something, and if if the groove is there and we're really in like go mode, we're gonna forget that the world exists outside of us.

Fatima Bey 11:52

I I've heard that repeatedly, and uh to a certain degree, I actually understand it. I can go down a rabbit hole, and I have gone, been on extra adrenaline, what I call um special crack, and just like I'm not on any substance. I'm just super excited, and I could work on something till literally three in the morning. I'm like, I should be asleep right now, but let me get a couple more things done. Well, yeah, and of course, because passion is dopamine. Yes, it it is, and I'm a very, I'm a very passionate person. So I I do, I maybe not on the same level as you, but I do understand that at least to a certain degree. Um, you know, at least the dopamine part.

The Pinball Career Path

Fatima Bey 12:34

Now, I mentioned about what you do at uh Colorful Futures. So your winding road eventually led you to coaching people who are walking in a similar path. So you coach people who are neurodivergent, not just ADHD, but that's a part of it. How does everything you went through make you better at what you do now than someone who had just figured it all out at 22?

Caitlin Fisher 12:56

Oh my gosh. Um, because I have been through the same struggles. So a lot of my clients come to me and they're like, so I have a degree in this and then I got a job in it and realized I hate it. And that sucks. But I can relate because I also went to school. I got a master's degree. I don't really use it. Well, that's I guess that's kind of a lie. I I do use skills that I got from the experiences I had in grad school. But we're sort of sold this idea that you go to college, you get a degree, you get a job, and then success starts from there. And we're just on this escalator of life. But that is boring. And people with ADHD, boredom is death. Like only doing one thing for the rest of your life is not a very exciting outlook with ADHD, at least in my experience. Maybe somebody out there has a specific flavor where they're like, no, I actually want to do the same boring thing every single day until I die. Good for you. Love that. It could not be me. All right. So I've been through like all sorts of jobs. I've been in purchasing for chemical companies. I have done marketing for mattress companies. And what I found was all my skills related to like jobs in other industries. And you have to get creative with how you leverage those skills, like in a resume or a job application. Cause sometimes people will look at it and be like, Well, you're not, you don't have experience in this industry. And I'm like, Well, yes, but I have done this skill for 10 years. Right, right. And that is what I think makes me as an ADHD career coach better at working with people who have a similar, similar brain chemistry. Okay. Because somebody who graduated at 22 and just went into a job and then worked their way up one corporate ladder, they had a very different life.

Fatima Bey 15:20

You just said something that I want to take a deeper

Why “What’s Your Plan?” Fails

Fatima Bey 15:24

dive into. So the if the um why is the standard what's your plan question almost impossible for a teen with ADHD to answer the way everyone expects?

Caitlin Fisher 15:40

Oh gosh. Well, first of all, I think I think that's unfair to ask any teenager to plan out their life. Like, no matter what your brain is. Because you you don't know. Like, school is supposed to prepare us for life outside of school and our nuclear family. But then you get out in the real world and there's there's nothing that can teach you like experience does. And so asking, oh, what's your path to somebody who's 17, 18, graduating high school, they might have a plan and then find out that they don't like any part of that plan. That happens a lot. Like that that actually happened to me in college. I thought I was going to be a biology teacher. And I went and I had to take, you know, different biology classes to get like your life science component for that. And turns out I hated learning about like plant cells. Now, these days I would love plant cells, but at in my 20s, I was like, this is boring. I don't like it. And so I changed my major to psychology, loved psychology. Absolutely use my psychology passion and degree today because that's like all I talk about is brains. I'm here talking to you about brains. Also, how I got an entire psychology degree without realizing I have ADHD is a miracle.

Fatima Bey 17:11

Yeah. I yeah. Well, I think I'm gonna guess that you just found methods to work and didn't think about the label.

Caitlin Fisher 17:18

Well, absolutely. And you know how I said when when you're getting good grades, it's easy for teachers and school administrators and even parents to miss the signs of ADHD, especially in girls, because it typically manifests differently in boys versus girls. And part of that is like a socialization thing, like the things that we expect from girls versus boys. Boys are typically allowed to be more like rowdy and loud. And so their ADHD is going to be rowdier and louder, which gets them labeled a problem kid, and they're like, little Johnny needs Ritalin.

Fatima Bey 17:56

Yeah. Oh, I hate it for the city.

Caitlin Fisher 18:00

But when you have pharmaceuticals down your throat. Yes. Um, and you know, medication for ADHD can be life-changing. There are also ways to to manage symptoms without the medication. And, you know, sometimes it's a little of this, a little of that. It's it's different for each person. But yeah, just immediately going to like, he's rowdy, so give him some pills. Maybe not the best. That's what I'm talking about.

Fatima Bey 18:27

When is the first when is the first line of of defense? It's the first thing you do. You're not looking for a solution, you're looking for a pacifier. Those are different things.

Caitlin Fisher 18:36

Those are different things. And you could go in and like make accommodations. Like, yeah, you need you need a fidget toy, or you need to be able to have a snack during class so you can focus, or you need to do something with your hands. Like, there are people who will knit in corporate meetings because they just need to move their hands.

Fatima Bey 18:55

Oh, wow. I did not know that. Oh, yeah. I can actually see it though.

Caitlin Fisher 18:59

I can see that.

Fatima Bey 19:00

Oh yeah.

Caitlin Fisher 19:00

Especially people who like really know how to knit and they don't have to look at it, which is witchcraft. Um if I'm trying to knit, I'm like staring at it and I'm like, okay, and then it goes over here, and then you teach knit and crochet, so that couldn't be me. Yes. Yeah. Especially with crochet. Try just playing with some yarn while you're trying to pay attention to something and see if you don't focus a little better.

What Career Planning Works Instead

Fatima Bey 19:27

So let me ask you this. With traditional career planning, when the traditional career planning approach doesn't work, uh, for an ADHD brain, what does actually work?

Caitlin Fisher 19:39

Love that. Um, so what does actually work is first of all, you have to like unshame it. You you have to allow yourself to be somebody who likes different things and who it takes a couple tries to find the thing that you really like to do. ADHD, living with it, managing it requires trial and error because you have to try stuff and then figure out does this work for me? Yeah. And whether that's a career or a college major or just a friendship, like sometimes two people don't get along. Everybody in life should be able to try something, decide they don't like it, and then move on and try something else. With ADHD, it is imperative that we figure out the things we actually do like. Otherwise, we're gonna be miserable.

Fatima Bey 20:34

So what I'm hearing is that we all need to be divorced, and I do mean divorced, from the idea that especially for someone um who has ADHD, uh, that they have to do just one thing for the rest of their life. I kind of I mean, I just think brain type or not, that none of us have to do the same thing for the rest of our life anyway. But but especially for a person with ADHD, they have to absolutely try things. And I think uh I correct me if I'm wrong, but I think those of us who are around people like you, who are young and teenagers, that we need to change, rearrange our thinking around they have to pick, they have to be like us and pick one career path. And you're I want to also add, you are so right. I've had people on here talking about it all the time. There are half of the adults you know ain't doing what they thought they was gonna do at 18. I mean, let's be real. There's so many people with with who have degrees and certifications in nursing and they ain't doing nothing with it because they don't want to do it anymore. Same thing with people who are done hair all their life, and now they're a chef, and now they want a food truck. People change careers all the time. And there's nothing wrong with that, and we need to stop acting like there's something wrong with people that aren't, you know, some people do the same thing their whole life and they're happy. There's nothing wrong with that. But that's not most of us, actually. Most of us, we have to do stuff to figure it out. I think it's more. Sad when a person stays stuck where they don't want to be because they think they have to stay there. That to me is worse.

Caitlin Fisher 22:06

Yes, it is. And there's also like we act like it's a moral failure to change our minds. It's not, you can you can change your mind. Nobody's, I mean, people are gonna judge you, but you can't care. Like you were just telling me before we started recording. Like, you have to tell the truth. And if your truth is that you don't like doing hair anymore and you want to go start a food truck, then baby, go get a food truck. Try it. If you love it, you love it. If you hate it, you hate it. What will probably happen is that you like some parts of it and you don't like other parts of it. And the more you get experiences like that, the more your list of things I like to do will grow. And then that can inform the types of jobs you want to look for. Like maybe you know that you work really well on teams of like under five or six people. Like you like a small team, not a huge department where your emails get lost with everybody else's emails. And I am talking like very corporate-y, and I know that we're we're supposed to be talking about like teenagers. So teenagers probably are not getting lost in the corporate email chain, but you know, you got to find out what you like and don't like, and that applies at every level.

Fatima Bey 23:20

So speaking of the teenagers, for every teen with ADHD who feels lost, behind, and broken, what do you want them to hear from you right now?

Caitlin Fisher 23:31

I want you to hear that your brain is fine. You are fine the way that you are. And the discomfort of feeling like your brain is messed up is just other people expecting you to act a certain way. You don't actually have to act that way. You, your job is to be you.

Fatima Bey 23:53

I love that. Um, and it's true. I hope that somebody actually takes it to heart. It's not just generic advice, it's it's real.

Caitlin Fisher 24:01

It's yeah, and it's something that I need to tell myself too, because you know, I grew up with parents who had expectations of me, parents who don't don't understand where I'm coming from on some things. I I actually haven't talked to my parents in several years, and then I got back in touch with my dad last January. So he's only been in my life now for going on two years. And man, he has ADHD. Oh, really? Like reconnecting with him. I was like, oh my God. You recognize it now. You're not normal either.

Fatima Bey 24:40

And I got it from you. Another reason why I'm having this conversation, I said it earlier, but I want to uh say it differently. There are many listening right now who do not know that this is you. You just think something's wrong with you. And Caitlin and I are here to tell you, no, there isn't. You just need to be diagnosed so you know what you're dealing with. And the sooner you know what you're dealing with, the better off you can be, right?

Caitlin Fisher 25:08

Yes. Yeah. Some people don't want to get a diagnosis because they're like, I don't want to know. I don't want that to change me. But a diagnosis can free you. A diagnosis means you can say, oh my God, I'm not just crazy that, you know, the advice that's out there for people has never worked for me. Because when the advice that is normal doesn't work for you, you feel like you're abnormal, you're messed up. And there's nothing wrong with being different than the average or different than the norm. The only reason that there is a norm is because of all of the variety that we have. You're just a little further out of the norm that's allowed.

Support With Curiosity Not Judgment

Fatima Bey 25:52

That's a good way to put it, actually. So let me ask you this: what advice do you have for the people who are around a teenager or someone with ADHD?

Caitlin Fisher 26:03

Gosh. Okay. My advice for somebody who's around a teenager with ADHD is to not use judging words like, why didn't you do it this way? But use curious words. Ask them to explain their thought process, ask them to explain where this breakdown is happening. So rather than, you know, why can't you brush your teeth every night? It's not hard. I do it every night. Maybe say, hey, what's what's the challenge about brushing your teeth at night? And please have a conversation with your teenagers. They are almost adults. They can talk in conversations, especially the closer they get to adulthood, they need to learn curiosity and critical thinking too. They need to learn how to look at different angles of something and figure out, okay, the problem is over here or the disconnect is over here. Not, well, just get mad at the thing that's wrong.

Colorful Futures And Next Steps

Fatima Bey 27:06

What is colorful futures and how can people find it?

Caitlin Fisher 27:10

Uh, Colorful Futures is a, we're like all remote, all virtual. We are a neurodivergent and queer career coaching company. So we use the term neuroqueer, which sort of encompasses all of it. Like it encompasses um gender identity, uh, sexuality, and neurotypes that are out of the norm. Because those of us who are out of the norm typically face kind of unique challenges, right? The career advice that your average person needs is not the same as somebody who maybe is trans or non-binary and also has ADHD and doesn't quite know how to apply that advice to them. So we help, we help neuroqueer individuals. Um, and we whether you want to start a business, which is another thing that a lot of people with ADHD end up doing because they can't handle the corporate life. They're like, nope, having a boss is not it. And I understand that so, so much. Why?

Fatima Bey 28:19

Because you're not robots.

Caitlin Fisher 28:21

Yes. It's like, it's just crazy because bosses will be like, well, you need to be at the meeting. I'm like, but this meeting doesn't pertain to anything I'm working on. My time would be better spent over here. And they're like, but you have to be at the meeting because everybody's at the meeting.

Fatima Bey 28:36

Oh, that's not true.

Caitlin Fisher 28:38

Being neurodivergent. No, that's God, that's so true. Like being to be neurodivergent is to constantly be like, why are you doing it like that? That makes no sense. And then neurotypical people being like, you're the one who makes no sense. Do this weird thing I said. Anyway, back to colorful futures. So we work with entrepreneurs, we work with job seekers. Um, a lot of our job seekers are like a few years into a career and then they want to pivot. And that's where like those transferable skills and the pinball machine of a career kind of comes in for the for the ADHD of being like, okay, well, let's look at what you like and then find a job that actually fits and hit checks all those boxes. Um and we also do like consulting for companies who want to be more inclusive in their hiring.

Fatima Bey 29:36

Okay. Yeah, I'm I first I'm really glad that um what I hear when you say neuroqueer, I'm like, oh, the people that have been othered in society. There's other people that have been othered, but that's a special set of others.

Caitlin Fisher 29:50

Yeah.

Fatima Bey 29:50

So you guys help them. Uh I love the fact that if someone has a transition and they are part of that community, there's nuance needs to, you know, most communities do have nuanced needs, but you're able to actually help them with nuance needs. So I think I see that as a good thing. Uh, whereas otherwise they might be a little more hopeless. Um, so I love that you guys do that. And uh is it colorfulfutures.us, is that the website? Yes.

Caitlin Fisher 30:16

Yep, colorfulfutures.us. We don't have the dot com, unfortunately.

Fatima Bey 30:22

Um well, that will be on the episode page. And um, I have really, really enjoyed talking to you, Caitlin, uh, on and off air. You really are a joy to talk to. And one thing I want to I love about you uh that I want to say publicly, you really are, you have a genuine heart for what you do. It's so obvious from our first conversation. So obvious. You really love the people that you help. You love the people that you help. And I love the I love the fact that you love the people that you help. And you are in the right position, I believe, because you're really helping people. You're spending your whole life and you're getting paid to do what you love, which is help people. I'm sure there's parts of it that get on your nerve, but it's every job.

Caitlin Fisher 31:03

But yeah, that's that's the other thing is nothing's ever gonna be perfect, but you are allowed to check more boxes, you don't have to just suffer.

Fatima Bey 31:12

I'm glad that they have you though, instead of someone that just does a job, you know? Yeah. I'm glad they have you. That's true. Thank you so much. Like I feel really seen. Well, thank you for coming on. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to to the to the audience. Absolutely. Thanks for inviting me on.

A Mind Shifting Moment

Fatima Bey 31:29

And now for a mind-shifting moment. I want you to think about something I talked about a little bit earlier. I mentioned that I worked with someone who informed me that they were ADHD. And at the time I was genuinely ignorant. Ignorance does not mean stupidity, it doesn't mean dumb, it simply means lack of knowledge. I did not understand what I now understand about ADHD. And that lack of understanding caused me to make judgments and be annoyed and have a perspective that was simply wrong. And I want you to take that same concept and look in the mirror. How often are you judging someone due to your own ignorance, due to what you don't understand? How often are you looking at someone like, what's wrong with you? Why do you think that way? This goes beyond ADHD. Maybe they don't think that way because they're raised in a different culture, raised in a different household, which is a different mini-culture. I want you to think about how you can be more curious about people and slower to judge. Because curiosity might lead you to discovering and understanding something you didn't before. When you're quick to just be like, oh, these people are stupid, or what's wrong with them, or whatever. You lose out on the opportunity to have a better understanding and your attitude affects everything around you. Just want you to think about how you can be more curious instead of judgmental of whomever. You've been listening to MindShift Power Podcast for complete show notes on this episode, and to join our global movement, find us at fatimabay.com. Until next time, always remember there's power in shifting your thinking.