Embracing Neurodiversity with Diann Wingert

The Soloist Life

Does your brain seem to work differently than those around you—maybe you even went solo so you could operate at your best? Coach (and former psychotherapist) Diann Wingert shares her experience advising the neurodiverse:

Neurodiversity—what it is, why it’s a spectrum and how experts look at it today (hint: don’t think of it as a disorder).

Why so many neurodiverse people become entrepreneurs—and serial entrepreneurs.

The signs you might be on the ADHD spectrum (and what to do with that if you are).

How understanding the unique challenges and opportunities of how your brain works plays into the design and success of your Soloist business.

Why radical self-acceptance—whether you’re neurodiverse or not—is the way to go.

LINKS

Diann Wingert Shiny Objects | LinkedIn | Instagram

Rochelle Moulton Email List | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

BIO

After a twenty-year career as a psychotherapist and mental health administrator, Diann pivoted into business strategy and coaching for neurodivergent entrepreneurs. Her passion is helping those who think differently build a profitable, sought-after business based on their unique brilliance.

Diann has extensive experience working with neurodivergent individuals, especially those who are gifted, ADHD, or both. On the personal side, Diann loves dark fiction, strong coffee, and laughing out loud. She is also a Peloton enthusiast, practicing Buddhist, and host of the newly re-branded ADHD-ish podcast.

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TRANSCRIPT

00:00 - 00:25

Diann Wingert: Understanding, oh, there is a name for my difference. I am actually neurodivergent. I've always known I was different. And trust me, if you're listening to my voice and you are neurodivergent, You've always known it. We know we're different, but if we don't know why, what most people do is go to shame.

00:30 - 00:45

Rochelle Moulton: MUSIC Hello, hello. Welcome to the Soloist Life podcast where we're all about turning your expertise into wealth and impact. I'm Rochelle Moulton and today I'm so happy to welcome my new pal, the incomparable Diann Wingert.

00:45 - 00:47

Diann Wingert: That's a great intro.

00:48 - 01:35

Rochelle Moulton: Well, wait, there's more. So after a 20-year career as a psychotherapist and mental health administrator, Diane pivoted into business strategy and coaching for neurodivergent entrepreneurs. Her passion is helping those who think differently build a profitable, sought after business based on their unique brilliance. And Diane has extensive experience working with neurodivergent individuals, especially those who are gifted, ADHD, or both. On the personal side, she loves dark fiction, strong coffee, and laughing out loud. She's also a Peloton enthusiast, practicing Buddhist, and host of the newly rebranded ADHD-ish podcast. Diane, welcome.

01:35 - 01:37

Diann Wingert: I'm so excited to have this conversation.

01:38 - 02:01

Rochelle Moulton: Well so am I. So let's just dive right in. And I first just want to understand, do you identify as a soloist yourself? I certainly do and proudly so. Yay. So what made you pivot from psychotherapy to coaching? I mean, there's some, you know, you could make some logical reasons why, but it really is a different way of operating. What made you go there? It's a really great question and

02:01 - 02:34

Diann Wingert: I love being asked it. On a practical note, my husband was interviewing for another job, which meant we were probably going to leave the state, if not the country, and you may or may not know that a therapy license is only good in the state you're in. But there was something going on with me personally, which is the bigger, deeper, and I think more important reason. I had outgrown the role of being a therapist. I wanted to be more directive. I wanted to help people move forward at a faster pace. And I was ready to work

02:34 - 03:15

Diann Wingert: with people who had done the work of healing and developing insight and were now wanting to move into growth, change and reaching their highest potential. So I knew that was no longer a therapy role. And I had also been a serial business owner, and I wanted to bring my 2 skill sets together as what I like to refer to as a psychologically savvy business coach. Because if you work with soloists and you know this, the business can only be as successful as the business owner is healthy, mentally, physically, spiritually. So I like to work with the

03:15 - 03:19

Diann Wingert: whole person so that both they and their business can thrive.

03:19 - 03:39

Rochelle Moulton: Oh, preaching. I know. You preaching. I know. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. So, I want to talk about neurodivergence. I still have the worst time saying that word. So define it for us and is there a spectrum that we should be aware of? Like how is this being discussed now? I feel like it changes moment by moment.

03:39 - 04:16

Diann Wingert: No lie. In fact, it's a really hot topic that it seems like came from out of nowhere and is suddenly on everybody's lips. So I'm going to talk about neurodivergence and neurodiversity because you're going to hear both. And I have a friend who's in the field who gets really upset when people get them confused. So I'm going to try to set the record straight. Neurodiversity means simply this, differences in the way people's brains work. The notion that there's no 1 right way for a brain to work really flies in the face of the psychiatric model, the

04:16 - 04:56

Diann Wingert: medical model, and the DSM, which I was a practitioner of for many years as a therapist. This notion that there's a right way for things to be and a wrong way, neurodiversity honors the fact that different brains work differently, and there's no 1 correct way. So neurodiversity means there's a range of ways that people perceive and respond to the world around them at that these differences can be embraced and even encouraged. Now neurodivergence means that you diverge from the norm. So we're kind of moving away from norms and calling it typical. So there are, instead of

04:56 - 05:28

Diann Wingert: saying, well, this is normal and this is abnormal, and I sat through so many courses in abnormal psychology, But if you embrace a diversity model and think, okay, there's different ways for people's brains to work, and by the way, it's not just brains, it's nervous system too, and that includes the emotions. If that's the way we're thinking now, then instead of normal and abnormal, we are talking about typical and atypical, neurotypical and neurodivergent. Does that

05:28 - 05:29

Rochelle Moulton: help? Yeah.

05:29 - 05:30

Diann Wingert: And I just

05:30 - 05:47

Rochelle Moulton: want to embrace the neurodiversity term. Like, I just love that because it just flies with everything else that I think about the world right now in terms of how we need to understand that everybody's not like us. Exactly. And just to add how your brain works as another form of diversity, I think, is

05:47 - 06:28

Diann Wingert: a really powerful way to think about it. Well, how your brain works, Rochelle, how your brain perceives self and others, how your brain perceives and responds to and interacts with the environment, This influences and affects everything. And it starts from birth because babies who are born to be neurodivergent are going to behave differently. They may be harder to soothe. They may be more irritable. They may be more excitable. They may be more active. They may be more passive. There's so many different ways that they may be different from babies that are developing typically, and it's why

06:29 - 07:06

Diann Wingert: conditions like autism and ADHD are still in the psychiatric manual and are still considered to be a form of neurodevelopmental disorders. But if we practice what I like to call radical self-acceptance, It's this is who I am, this is how I am. I might as well work with the brain and nervous system that I have instead of trying to conform to the norm and do so unsuccessfully. That's where I think the symptoms come from that most of us try to mask, hide, or medicate.

07:07 - 07:36

Rochelle Moulton: Yes. And I feel like that's what I keep reading about. Is it just my imagination or are more adults being diagnosed as, let's call it, neurodiverse right now? I mean, I think LinkedIn is a good example where so many people in my circle are already all of a sudden coming out, if you will, saying, hey, I've been diagnosed as this and it explains so much about my life and my experiences up to this point. So is this just happening more often now? Like what's happening?

07:37 - 08:14

Diann Wingert: It's not your imagination. It's like slug bug, okay? Or when we don't look for something, we don't find it. And that's 1 of the things I say over and over and over. There's so many generations of adults, most especially women who are realizing it midlife or later, some of them younger, some in their 20s and 30s, especially if they're on TikTok because there's a lot of creators. And, you know, God bless them. Like, there's so many people who are kind of what I call falling into these diagnostic categories by recognizing themselves on TikTok because there are

08:14 - 08:49

Diann Wingert: creators who are saying, hey, you may be autistic if or these are signs that you have ADHD. And while they're not professionally trained, most of them, and while, you know, nobody should be trying to diagnose people off social media or the internet, if you can help people see who they are and point them in the direction of learning more, I don't think there's any way that can be a bad thing. And frankly, in my opinion, and 1 of the reasons why I have rebranded my podcast ADHD-ish is that after many years of having the legal right

08:49 - 09:20

Diann Wingert: and responsibility and privilege even of diagnosing people with various mental disorders, I no longer think it's necessary or even beneficial for many people to choose that Because understanding who you are, understanding literally how you tick, what lights your brain up like a Christmas tree with dopamine, and what makes you feel like you just need to take a very long nap, These are the things that are important, not what diagnostic category you fit in or

09:20 - 09:51

Rochelle Moulton: how many symptoms you can check off the list. You know, I just, you can't see me, I'm bowing down right now. Because It's really a shift from viewing anything that's not typical as abnormal or a disease, disorder disease. And I just don't know how that's helpful in a situation where there isn't a prescribed thing to do, right? A medically prescribed thing to do. Or even if there is Rochelle, because here's the thing,

09:51 - 10:21

Diann Wingert: you know, a lot of people, and to your point when you say people are coming out with their, and that's the term I use to because a lot of my friends are queer, but it's like coming out with your ADHD or your autism or you might have heard of AudiHD, which is people that are realizing, oh, actually, I'm both ADHD and autistic. So they've combined the 2. Some people don't like any of those medically-oriented diagnostic labels, So they come up with clever ones like NeuroSpicy, which I think is great.

10:21 - 10:22

Rochelle Moulton: I've heard that 1.

10:22 - 11:01

Diann Wingert: I love that 1. Yeah. I love it. And here's the thing. I think for many people understanding, Oh, there is a name for my difference. I am actually neurodivergent. I've always known I was different. And trust me, if you're listening to my voice and you are neurodivergent, you've always known it. You may not have known what to call it. You may have had to deal with other people's labels and feedback, because trust me, you've got labels even if you don't have a diagnostic 1. People think of themselves as spacey. They think of themselves as scattered. All

11:01 - 11:44

Diann Wingert: the jokes about squirrel and rabbit holes and all that. We know we're different, but if we don't know why, what most people do is go to shame. Shame. Because, Let's face it, we are living in a world, by and large, that is made by and for the benefit of neuro-typical people, people who think in the typical way. And because all the systems were built by and for them, because they are neuro-normative, We try to fit our square peg into their round hole and it's either really tight, really uncomfortable, we just simply can't do it and we

11:44 - 12:08

Diann Wingert: opt out, which by the way is 1 of many reasons why so many of us become self-employed soloists. We don't want to go to meetings. We don't want to have arbitrary bureaucratic rules that make no sense to us. We want to explore and express our own creativity. We want to do things our way because we've tried to do it their way and it just wasn't a good time.

12:08 - 12:26

Rochelle Moulton: Amen. So, I mean, you've alluded to this, but let's get into this. So, if a listener has not been diagnosed with some form of neurodiversity or ADHD specifically, what are some signs that they might be? I wish we still had our cameras on.

12:28 - 13:01

Diann Wingert: When I was still a therapist, Many, many people came to me with diagnoses of anxiety, depression, both often, eating disorders, adjustment disorders. Some people were told they're bipolar, they're borderline. And once I started to get to know them, I thought, you know, is there any possibility that you could be ADHD? And of course, their jaw drops and they're like, why would you say that? I'm like, well, I'll tell you what, let's just make this a fun experiment. I'm gonna get out the manual and I'm gonna read you a list of things and every 1 of them

13:01 - 13:40

Diann Wingert: that applies to you most of the time and has across your lifespan, just put up a finger. By the time they've run out of fingers and we start having them take off their shoes, they get my point. Let's play along as the audience. Let's do it. Let's play along. Good, good, let's play along. Okay, now let me put in a caveat. The term neurodiversity or neurodivergence applies to a wide variety of brain-based differences, including, but not limited to, autism, ADHD, OCD, giftedness, specific learning disabilities. And because this is a relatively new and expanding field I'm sure

13:41 - 14:11

Diann Wingert: the list is going to be expanded over time because there are just so many different ways that people think, feel, and do things differently than the typical norms. So my expertise is in ADHD and in giftedness. So if it's okay, I'd like to just stick to the symptoms of ADHD because I don't think we have enough time to do all of the different lists. Okay? Let's do it. I'm not going to give them to you straight from the DSM because I choose not to use that anymore. I'm going to give them to you from like real

14:11 - 14:25

Diann Wingert: life, real things you would like, oh, I do that. Because if they're in clinical terminology, sometimes we go, I don't really relate to that. So are you ready? Ready. Okay. And you don't have to yell out yay or nay.

14:25 - 14:28

Rochelle Moulton: I'm going to keep some hash marks, so I'll be honest when we're done.

14:28 - 14:57

Diann Wingert: Girl, this could get cringy really fast, you know. And I actually also want people listening if they're not trying to drive a car, feed a baby or lift heavy machinery, like you can play along too. So here we go. We don't say yes or no, I'm just gonna go through the list. Okay, if you do this often and you always have, because by the way, there's no such thing as adult onset neurodivergence. If you are this way, you have always been this way. And it's something I cannot stress enough because a lot of people are like,

14:57 - 15:35

Diann Wingert: I became this way. Let me tell you this. If you are ADHD, you always have been, but it's possible that you had the safety structure, systems, and supports necessary to keep you functioning like a neurotypical person. Once you become a soloist and you remove yourself from those structures and supports, and then you suddenly find, oh my God, I think I'm ADHD. You always were, you just had workarounds and things that kind of kept you, you know, more organized and focused and so forth. So starting with this 1, 1 of my favorites, because I am very guilty

15:35 - 16:17

Diann Wingert: of this, interrupting others. And I'm just going to run quickly through so it doesn't get boring, because boredom is a life threatening condition. If you have ADHD. Interrupting others, easily distracted, forgetful, difficulty organizing tasks or possessions, Trouble staying seated. So you might not get up, you might fidget. Difficulty engaging in something quietly. Fidgeting or squirming. Trouble taking your turn. Like I'm terrible for playing games because I interrupt people, I start playing for the other side, it's terrible. Inability to focus or priority unless you're doing something you really, really like in which case you hyper-focus and you

16:17 - 17:04

Diann Wingert: forget everything else that isn't what's right in front of you. Feeling restless. Difficulty managing time. You either don't think you have enough time or you take on more than you have time to do. Trouble with impulsivity, impatience, trouble taking your turn when...