Wondering where to start this post...
I’ve always been an anxious person. Age 15 I suffered from Bell’s Palsy – where basically half your face stops working. Just what you want age 15. After my eye also stops working my neurologist thought it might be Multiple Sclerosis. I also came-out as gay to my parents that year. This was the year 2000 and Ireland was a very different place, but that’s another post. I was lucky enough to have parents that understood the best way they could support me was to bring me to therapy.
2008
Finished college and landed my first role as a Technical Trainer in the Telecoms industry. I was the globe-trotting Irish lad bringing the tech talk to corners of the world that weren't exactly tourist hotspots! Summer in Saudi anyone? 🌍✈️
I had the gift of the gab and the confidence of youth. I was frequently learning the course I was teaching on the plane to wherever I was teaching it. Sometimes only a chapter ahead of the students. I loved arriving at swanky hotels in ripped jeans and a t-shirt and being greeted by the suits.
2010
I was kinda over jet lag and missing life's events in Dublin. The glam hotels started to feel a tad repetitive. I moved into my first manager role. I’m eternally grateful for those early managers who took me under their wing and coached the overly-ambitious career driven megalomaniac out of me!
It’s was such a gift to have therapy normalised from such a young age, especially since it had worked wonders on my anxiety. I’ve also always been a person that is interested in something so much it becomes all consuming.
2016
So, I didn’t just continue therapy, I qualified as a Therapist. Imagine four years of group therapy with the most amazing group of people – we laughed, cried, broke through barriers, and yes, got annoyed at our own snail-paced progress. It was a total transformation!
I had plans to quit my job and do therapy full time. I have to admit that I’m not cut out for it. So my career kept going through various Learning and Leadership roles. Doing okay-ish, but I always had this itch for something new.
2020
New role as a Learning CSM at LinkedIn and, of course, a global pandemic! Oh and I go blind in my right eye again. The "Suspected Multiple Sclerosis" morphs into the real deal. Anxiety barges into my daily routine.
I chat to my GP – who reassures me that anxiety is a fairly appropriate response. I look at the bit of his face I can see over the face-mask and think “You know what, he’s right!”. It was as the covid and MS started to feel normal and the anxiety wasn’t abating that I started to question it.
Yes, I was surprised.
After a few more visits I ended up in a psychiatrist’s office and he was asking me if I’d be surprised to know I had ADHD. I was 37 and a qualified psychotherapist, the thought never crossed my mind.