Rising Above Self Doubt and Finding Your Potential
Self-doubt stops many people from even trying to do things they are interested in doing. I was one of those people for a very long time. Read my story and see if it will help you or allow you to help your child who struggles with learning.
Everyone in life struggles with something. We often evaluate others who are facing similar struggles and think…They make it seem so easy. However, we don’t see the background of those struggles. How many valleys did they go through before reaching the top of their mountain of struggles. How many times did they cry and think they could not finish.
People I meet now look at all my degrees and the confidence I have now but do not realize what I had to go through to get where I am today. They don’t know about all the tears and self-doubt I felt. They don’t know that I almost did not graduate with my high school class. They don’t know that I almost flunked out of the community college I now work for.
I have always known that sitting still was not easy for me. All through elementary school they could not get me to pay attention. In first grade I received spankings every day for talking. When I realized her paddling didn’t hurt, I would bend over and take the spanking and go back to what I was doing. It’s a wonder I ever got out of first grade. It makes me wonder if she passed me just to get rid of me.
As I got older, I really did try to do better…sometimes. Once I made it to middle and high school, I noticed how hard I studied for tests, and despite being the last to finish, I was lucky if I made a 70. When you see others around you studying less and getting higher grades it increases your feelings of self-doubt. My early years of college were a continuation of my educational struggles. I didn’t understand why it was so hard for me to learn and make better grades. It wasn’t until years later when I had a child who struggled in school that we found out that I had a learning disability. By the way I really hate that phrase. I’ll explain why later.
My daughter was diagnosed with ADHD and Autism. While learning about her, it helped me understand myself. When I went back to college in 2013, I had a better understanding of how I learn. I began evaluating things I was doing and how I could change it to work better. One example of what I changed is where I was sitting in class. I knew that if I was in the back of the room I was liable to get distracted by someone’s sparkly shoes, especially if they were boots. If I was sitting in front, I had more control over my ability to focus on what the teacher was saying.
Another way I was able to help myself is by reducing the number of words going into my brain. Let me break this done for you. Most people with ADHD see everything at once. It is hard for us to focus on one word at a time. I would be trying to read but my brain would throw a word down the page, or even something someone said, in the middle of my sentence and suddenly I had no clue what I just read. Then I discovered highlighters. I found that if I used highlighters to draw attention to the important words it helped my brain focus on what the sentence was saying. There are many people who learn faster when they had to do something with their hands. I am one of these people. When I used a highlighter, it turned my reading into a hands-on project allowing me to focus and comprehend quickly. I started using this method for test. I had accommodation that allowed me to print off the online test so that I could use my highlighter strategy. I would work on the problem on paper and then answer it on the computer. This worked well for me. My grades went from C’s, D’s, and F’s to A’s and B’s.
Understanding how I learn and using strategies that work for me allowed me to develop into a better student. My GPA came up enough that I was able to get accepted into a master’s program. Keep in mind that once acceptance came through so did self-doubt. I feared that I wasn’t smart enough to complete that goal. Which is normal. We only fail if we let it stop us from trying. It wasn’t just my learning struggles that made it difficult to finish my master’s degree. I had 10 surgeries during that 3-year period. Try taking an exam and having a kidney stone drop…. ouch. I completed my masters in May of 2017 and thought I was done with my education. Oh how wrong I was.
In the summer of 2019, I was alone at the office. It is not good when an ADHD person has time on their hands. I started searching for a doctorate in leadership. I had no idea why because it is not something I ever thought I could do. That was something only strait A students did. After requesting information for 4 places, I heard from one within 15 minutes. The guy asked me for certain information which I gave to him, while thinking that nothing would come from it. The next morning, he calls me and say’s “You’re in!” I said “What? Are you sure?”
In the beginning I only told two people because, of course, the panic set it along with all self-doubt. “I’m not smart enough for this.” It ended up that GOD had my back all along. My struggles have always been with tests and at that college there were no tests. My advisor told me “Wendy, it is only writing, power points, and presentations at this level. I told her that those were always my best grades. She then said, “It sounds like this program was made for you.”
Earlier I mentioned that I hate using the term disability. People have the attitude that if you have a disability you are broken. I’m not broken, and neither is your child nor you. Being different and learning different doesn’t mean you are broken. Are they people who won’t overcome their challenges, probably. Most of the time it will be because they give up too easy or they have too many others tearing them down instead of building them up. The support a person has around them can make a big difference. I have been fortunate enough to have a wonderful support system.
Other things that can help a child or adult with ADHD are structure and noise blockers. The structure can often be a simple calendar system that allows them to see everything they have to do. It is basically a check list. We are bad about seeing only what we haven’t accomplished, which makes us frustrated. If we can see all the check marks it helps us feel accomplishment versus frustration. As for a noise blocker, I am not talking about total silence, that is worse. The reason it is worse is because we hear everything squeaking doors, floorboards, cars, airplanes, you name it, it distracts us. I have found that I can have one ear bud in my ear with music or some other type of sound and I can focus better because it drowns out everything else around me. If you call my name I can still hear you and look up but I am not as distracted by all the smaller noises that you probably never notice.
The best advice I can give is don’t be afraid to try. Growth means stepping outside our comfort zone and doing something different.
