Transcript – Episode 013 – The Ring of Fire

Transcript 013
Ring of Fire

You can listen HERE.

Have you ever looked at a SPECT Brain Scan? I recently had my child’s brain scanned. She insisted I do a podcast on her brain. At first I wasn’t sure that it would be relevant. But as I put the pieces together about what makes her brain act differently than mine, a lot of things make sense to me about how to be a better manager and mentor. 

Hi, I’m Daava Mills, the Rebellious Recruiter. Today I’m going to talk about the powers of observation, and how people’s neurological differences can actually be deployed as your secret weapon. Doing this by reflecting on my child’s neurological difference. Today is about training, mentoring, and putting the pieces of your team together as you grow. 

Pull up a seat, let’s chat. 

Intro music…

Seems like half of America has a neurological difference these days. I’m one of “those” people. My daughter is one of “those” people. My family is filled with “those” people. And companies I’ve worked for have plenty of people with their own unique differences. Plus, we have the ADA, American’s with Disabilities Act, that requires most employers to accommodate people who have differences within our capabilities. 

Side note: did you know there is a comprehensive resource for employers when you are working with people who have disabilities? There is, and it’s magnificent. It’s called AskJAN.org, for Job Accommodation Network. A VP and mentor of mine first turned me on to this website when I was assigned the task of accommodating a service dog. During my research I discovered that accommodating a dog is fairly easy. Accommodating employees with dog allergies is a little more complicated. And they are considered to be two separate accommodations, in the law of ADA one accommodation does not cause the other to exist. Seemed a little weird to me as I did the research and spoke with a couple experts, but I rolled with it. The important part was that at the end of the day we successfully accommodated a dog AND dog allergies. And people were happy and proficient. 

So back to my child’s brain. I’m going to draw a metaphor at the end of this story. 

She went to Kinder, 1st and 2nd at our neighborhood school. It was a bad fit all the way around. From her kinder class with no less than three chair-throwers, caused by the fact that the school didn’t evaluate the kiddos before the school year started. They’ve since implemented a process to evaluate the kids and create classes to not have this type of concentrated issue. She was bullied, mercilessly. Once she was hit over the head with a snowball so hard it knocked her dizzy. The school didn’t call us when that happened. She was bullied in her after school program, you name it. 

We were lucky that there was an opening in our local charter school, so in third grade we moved her over there. We noticed about halfway through the year that she was finally making friends. And we watched other behaviors not go away. So we took her to the doctor. She was diagnosed with inattentive ADHD. Over the next year we tried 3 different meds, one somewhat worked, but she lost a lot of weight. My kid is already a stringbean, so this didn’t work. The other two didn’t work. We went through fourth grade largely without meds, and largely fighting with her to get homework done. Then COVID hit, I watched as she was clearly not capable of doing a lot of the work. So, we went through the summer, created a plan to get a tutor… couldn’t get tutor to call me back at the start of the year. About 6 weeks in, and she was 30+ assignments behind. It was painful to watch. She was not paying attention, I had to prod her to grab a pencil to take notes, you name it. Plus, I’m working full time. 

Her father and I spoke and I had been very aware of a revolutionary type of evaluation pioneered by Dr. Daniel Amen. We had held off when she was younger because it involves an IV and a Brain Scan. Well, faced with the fact that I could clearly see how my child was not learning, I called the closest clinic, which was three hours away, and started the process. This is when you know that it’s meant to be. 5 minutes after setting up the appointments, they called back with a cancelation within 5 business days. You guys, I am so glad we did this. 

We went through two brain scans, both using a type of radioactive marker. One marker was the result of her brain under concentration, the other was her brain at rest. 

A couple days later we had a follow-up with a psychiatrist that was trained in reading brain scans, as well as working with behavioral issues. We get on our Zoom call, and he shows us a brain scan of a typical adolescent female under concentration. Then he showed us the pics of our daughter’s brain at rest and at concentration. She did not have a typical ADHD response. Remember, she had been diagnosed as Inattentive ADHD, in that type of ADHD the Amen clinic scans would normally show fairly normal brain activity at rest, but under concentration the blood flow actually stunts. Which is why kids seek activity when concentrating, it’s to get blood flow going. My kid’s brain did not look like that. 

First, at rest her brain was easily 10 time more active than a typical adolescent female under concentration, and that is not an exaggeration. Then under concentration it doubled on itself. We’ve always noticed she was dramatic, and had big emotions. Besides the fact that this is my child, she never seems to be able to shut her emotions down, that’s because her executive function, while active, was not as active as other kids. Basically my child feels things way more intensely than most people do, and she is not able to use logic when those emotions flare up. They call this sub-type of ADHD the Ring of Fire. 

The psychiatrist then told us that traditional ADHD meds are not what she needs. We spent the next hour going over a different nutritional protocol, one that includes lots of low-glycemic carbs to help her produce serotonin (or maybe it was dopamine?), appropriate vitamins, medication, and two types of therapy that I had never heard of. We were told to keep her in dance, and if she wants to… let her learn to play drums. 

Skip ahead a month, we’ve implemented carbs, vitamins, and meds. Kept up dance, and are experimenting with drums. Therapy starts after Christmas, and the results have been eye opening. My child is still my child, sarcastic, witty, somewhat inappropriate jokes, busting ballet moves in the kitchen, and flying off the handle over silly things. BUT!!! School work is getting done, she’s paying attention, taking notes, engaging more, not day dreaming, doing her homework quickly, and actually sleeping on a more regular basis. Prior to this she was sleeping 3 hours a night, because her brain was incapable of shutting down. 

When she has a melt-down now, I can actually see how her brain works in my head, and I’m approaching her with more compassion. And my kid’s ability to feel empathy is off the charts. She has huge feelings for everyone, so she responds when people are empathetic. From there, her emotions settle down enough so her executive function can take over, and she can actually use logic. 

Her secret weapon, the one that will set her apart is her empathy. We each have a secret weapon, a super power. Mine is unabashed enthusiasm. I’m a cheerleader at heart. My kid’s will be her compassion, and when she finds herself employed when she is older my hope is her employer understands how to deploy that part of her and it pushes the company forward. 

So where’s the metaphor? Well, first… when we hire people we hire them blind from their past issues. We don’t know what traumas they’ve experienced. We can’t separate their bad habits from bad management experiences, and if they have a brain that is not mainstream. Once we get past their traumas, and they are becoming productive their unique style shows up, usually shows up in a way that doesn’t work for what we expect. Then we spend a ton of capital trying to make them do things like we would. 

The reality is that all of our brains work differently. If you had a scan of each of your employees, you’d be able to see what skills light up. You see when we looked at her brain scan the psychiatrist pointed out where her empathy center is, it was HUGE. 

If you scanned your people, what area is HUGE in their brain? How does it benefit your business? If you were to look at askJAN.org, what would special things would you put into place to help someone. And if you did that, what might make them exceptional? What if we looked at supporting the nuance of our employees in a similar fashion to how we support our customers. 

So taking a page from my kid’s brain, I’m doing my best to show more empathy. It’s not a natural state for me, but her unique talents are only just developing. I hope the world feels her special form of care and understanding as she grows up. I want my work community to understand each person’s special brand of talent, skill and uniqueness to continue to build our work environment. 

As always, I’ll be bringing you new information weekly. Be sure to subscribe wherever you are listening to this. Feel free to comment, rate, and review what you hear. Share this podcast with other leaders that may be building “out of this world teams.” You can email me with your thoughts or questions. I may use your subject matter in upcoming shows. 

It’s great to meet you and thank you for listening. I know you only have so many hours in the week, and I am grateful to spend this time with you. Until then, make it a great day! See you on the flip side.