2404: Flair, ADHD, and Inclusivity with Coach Kim To
Kim To is CEO and Founder of Flair, a new platform designed to help you access a range of healthcare services to manage your life with ADHD. She's also Asian living with ADHD, and has spent much of her effort since her diagnosis exploring what it means to experience ADHD in a culture she describes as unaccustomed to the ADHD experience. She joins us today to talk about her ADHD coaching practice, what it means to share the responsibility of exploring ADHD in her community, and building a practice around inclusivity and understanding.
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Episode Transcript
Pete Wright: Hello everybody. And welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast on TruStory FM. I'm Pete Wright, and I'm here with Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer: Hello everyone. Hello, Pete Wright.
Pete Wright: Hi Nikki. How are 'ya?
Nikki Kinzer: I'm doing great. How are you?
Pete Wright: I'm all fired up. I got new glasses, new peeps. Yep. I can see better.
Nikki Kinzer: Green and orange.
Pete Wright: It's really nice to be able to see. [crosstalk 00:00:33] Talk about accommodations, and how.
Nikki Kinzer: Seeing is important.
Pete Wright: It is important. In your ADHD journey, it's not even seeing or not seeing, it's being mad about seeing all the time that's really where it gets you. That's where it got me.
Nikki Kinzer: That's right.
Pete Wright: So got some new peeps, feeling better. I can read the stuff that I'm supposed to read, and that's very exciting. And we have a great show. I think we have an awesome guest joining us today, Kim To is an Asian ADHD coach in London, and she is going to talk to us about what it means to look for inclusivity in a culture that has limited awareness and understanding of what ADHD is and how it impacts so many people silently. The silent focus problems, that's what they are. Someone you ignore those focus problems. But before you do that, please head over to TakeControlADHD.com. You can get to know us a little bit better. You can listen to the show right there on the website or subscribe to the mailing lists right there on the homepage. And you'll get an email each time a new episode is released. Connect with us on Twitter or Facebook at TakeControlADHD. And if this show has ever touched you, please head over to patreon.com/TheADHDPodcast and become a supporting member of this show and this community.
Pete Wright: We work hard to bring resources, great resources to you by way of this podcast, and supporting members are voting with a few bucks a month that what we're doing is useful to them, is valid, is something that they can use to make their lives better. And we have some stuff coming up over the next couple of months that I think are really exciting. The first one I need to talk about, TextExpander. TextExpander is a sometimes sponsor of this show. They're our current sponsor of the show for the next six months, not this episode, but I do have an announcement. The member workshop this month for February, they have donated a trainer from the TextExpander team named Vic, and Vic is fabulous. And Vic is going to join me next Tuesday. It's actually, as you are listening to this, it'll be today. We're going to be recording a walkthrough of what TextExpander is, how it can help you personally, and how, if you work on a team, it can help you with your team.
Pete Wright: I mean, TextExpander is a mind-blowingly useful tool. You've heard me talk about it before, I use it every single day, it is built into my fingertips at this point, saves me so much time in working on the computer. And that workshop, we're recording next week, it will be our February member workshop. And so if you are a member or if you've ever thought about becoming a member and you want to learn more about TextExpander, patron.com/TheADHDPodcast, join us over there, get access to that workshop and you can get access to our member channels in Discord and send me questions that you want me to ask Vic about TextExpander, how it works, problems you'd like to solve using TextExpander. I use TextExpander to talk to our members every single week. It's a TextExpander snippet that does all the time zone calculations, amazing, mind-blowing-
Nikki Kinzer: Amazing.
Pete Wright: Fantastic. So, that is our February workshop. So that's coming. And Happy Hour, I just want to give a shout out to Happy Hour, which comes to our Supreme members. I just love Happy Hour so much. I missed it in January, Nikki, and it broke my heart that I was not able to be there in January. So the February Happy Hour was just a couple weeks ago now, it fills my cup just being able to join in on video with a group of people not struggling all the time, but just being able to share lives and jokes and laughs and stories and get to know each other a little bit better. So that is a member benefit, but it is absolutely... it's something I cherish, personally.
Nikki Kinzer: Oh, me too.
Pete Wright: I wanted to shout that out. What do we have to news? What kind of news do you have for this week?
Nikki Kinzer: You know what, no news this week.
Pete Wright: I had all the news?
Nikki Kinzer: We're going to go straight to Kim. Yes. You had all the news. Let's go into our interview.
Pete Wright: Goodness. I dominated the news. Let's do it. Let's go ahead and let's call Kim To.
Pete Wright: Kim To is CEO and founder of Flair, a new platform designed to help you access a range of healthcare services to manage your life with ADHD. She joins us today to talk about the tool and her work as an ADHD coach, building a practice around inclusivity and understanding. Kim, welcome to The ADHD Podcast.
Kim To: Hey. Thanks for having me. Gosh, that sounded so important. I was sitting there going, "Wow, does this sound like that?" Because I don't feel like I'm doing anything important, but when you say it, it sounds important.
Nikki Kinzer: It is important, absolutely.
Pete Wright: It is important. It is absolutely important.
Nikki Kinzer: Welcome.
Pete Wright: Tell us a little bit about yourself. Now you've got a fascinating background, you jumped ship from big business and decided, you know what? ADHD coaching is my jam.
Kim To: Yeah, it's a bit crazy. Well, like my background is pretty much, I worked a bit in management consulting, and then got a bit bored and went back to school to study development. Because I thought I was going to work for UN, and I realized I didn't want to work for the UN. It was very bureaucratic and not meritocratic at all. It's just not my sort of vibe. And then I decided to pick the next hardest industry, which was finance, because I thought, you know what, why not try it? It sounds exciting. I think at the time, Brexit was happening and I was like, wow, financial markets is moving. I really want to be involved. So I just thought it would be an exciting place to be. Then after working in finance, I guess when the pandemic happened, I was basically working from home like every else and realized, something's going on. And that along with many other women who were undiagnosed for a long time, realized that I had ADHD.
Kim To: And so that really shifted a whole sort of mindset and a shift in career for me, because I thought, well, I really need to leap into what ADHD is about and what my strengths are. So that's why I jumped ship from finance to ADHD coaching.
Pete Wright: So wait a minute. You are very fresh diagnosis then.
Kim To: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Basically December 2020.
Pete Wright: No way, that's fantastic.
Kim To: Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't sound too long ago, but for me it feels really long.
Pete Wright: It doesn't sound too long ago in hindsight, but as you're living it and learning and realizing, what was that like getting that confirmation that, hey, you're living with ADHD?
Kim To: I think it's really shocking. I mean, because I guess first, because I'm Asian, and in our culture, we don't talk about neurodiversity. We don't talk about any of these things. So it came as a shock to me because I thought, oh, is something wrong with me? I can't keep a job. I can't keep my super high-paying job, which I worked really hard to get. Am I a failure? Am I a failure to my family? It was really hard. And then the other thing is also obviously the female side. Like I thought, oh, the more I kind of went online and realized a lot of females are undiagnosed statistically, and the more women I started speaking to, I realized that a lot of women were getting diagnosed the same time as me. So it was really shocking. But then a relief, because I always knew I was different and finally had an answer to why, and finally found a community. So it's a lot of mixed feelings.
Nikki Kinzer: How did it come about? What made you even think about getting a diagnosis?
Kim To: Yeah, so really it was again, the pandemic, because I guess before that I was doing things like going to the gym three, four times a week, seeing friends, my life was very stimulated. And then where suddenly we had to work from home and I was working 12 hour days, the markets were going crazy. I was pretty much working, waking up, working, going to sleep. And that was when I became really restless and quite depressed. And I actually got diagnosed with severe depression during that phase of time because there was just no stimulation. I couldn't leave my flat. If I went to the park, I would get told off because yeah, that time you couldn't leave unless you were exercising. And so it was just a nightmare situation. And what really kind of prompted me to have a look because I was already diagnosed with dyslexia back at university. And so I Googled does dyslexia have to do with something with me not paying attention? And that was when I realized that there is a high correlation between dyslexia and ADHD. And when I read the symptoms, everything just made sense.
Pete Wright: I want to go back to your family. You dropped, you said the question of, am I a failure to my family? How'd that hit?
Kim To: Really hard. Really, really hard. I mean, even now I haven't met barely any Asians who have ADHD, maybe they're not diagnosed, maybe they're not. And I can't even talk about these feelings with someone who doesn't come from a high pressured culture where success is a certain way, you think of it's likely Asian minority myth, lawyers, doctors, all that stuff. And it was just really hard. I remember telling my mom, "Mom, I'm going to leave my finance job. I have something called ADHD." And the thing that my mom said to me was, "You can't have this, you're too intelligent, no way do you have this." And it really bothered me.
Kim To: But that's the culture and I'm not angry. That's why I trained as an ADHD coach because I want more visibility in my community about neurodiversity, and more acceptance, and just more people talking about it. And I guess just to make sure the world knows about ADHD, that it transcends gender, culture. And there's so much more when we think about ADHD because I do think trauma has a role to play in ADHD, and that's definitely a theme in my life. Trauma amplifies a lot of my symptoms. So these are the things that I kind of, that's why I'm striving towards, inclusivity and diversity in my practice.
Pete Wright: Are you seeing more and more people, Asian people with ADHD coming to you?
Kim To: Well, actually I actually found a community online, ADHD, sorry. I can't remember the Facebook group off the top of my head, but actually all my coaching clients currently have been Asian clients. And I've learned so much from them and I'm really grateful that more Asians are getting the help that they need, and coming out and trying to learn about ADHD and accepting it.
Pete Wright: I remember coming out to, coming out to my parents with ADHD, and it was an interesting experience because I did it also as an adult, it's been almost 20 years, or it's been over 20 years, but their feeling was, I think there was probably a dose of, no, there's no way you have ADHD because you are X, Y, Z, but it was very much more, you can't have ADHD because that would imply that I have failed somehow. I would've noticed, I would've known if that were real. And it took a long time to align with the experience of the reason I did these things when I was in junior high and high school is explainable with the ADHD diagnosis in a way that it is not explainable any other way.
Kim To: Yeah.
Pete Wright: I feel for it because I am sure there is a cultural thing going on there too. And also a parental thing. And the weight of both of those elements together on your parents. It has got to be heavy.
Kim To: Yeah. I mean, I was thinking about this because I also said to my mom it's genetics, and I think you might have it, because I've seen your struggles. I've seen your emotional dysregulation and I can understand it now, before I didn't, and now I understand it. And I think for my mom in particular, to think it's genetics, to think that she might be responsible, I think that is really hard on her. And yeah, obviously a lot. So I don't bring it up anymore, but I realize even with dyslexia, I remember telling my friends back at university, "Oh, I just got diagnosed with dyslexia. I'm going to get extra time on exams." The response was, "There's no way you have dyslexia. You're too intelligent." So I do feel like there is this thing where, just lack of awareness that people associate neurodiversity with not being intelligent. I don't know, that's my experience of interacting with people.
Nikki Kinzer: I've had several Asian clients in the past in the several years that I've coached, and something that just clicked when you were talking about your background with your family is perfectionism has definitely been a key trend or pattern that I'm seeing in all of them, especially in women.
Kim To: Yeah. I agree with that.
Nikki Kinzer: I'm curious what you think.
Kim To: Yeah. I agree with that. There is a lot of pressure on females in particular, for my experience being the first born and being a female, I had to be the perfect Asian child, straight A's, going to the best university. I got the best jobs. I got the highest paying salary, that was literally sort of the bar that was set, especially for females. Well, for me in particular, I can't talk about other female Asians, but perfectionism is what the goalpost is for a lot of Asians. Females in particular I think there's a lot more to it because in our culture, I guess the female especially, if you're the oldest, you look after your siblings, I always looked after my siblings, my siblings got to explore whatever career they had.
Kim To: But for me, if I came out and said, I wanted to be an artist, for example, that would not go down well. So definitely perfectionism. It's also probably an immigrant sort of thing as well. Being first generation, the image of success is perfectionism, but yeah, there is a lot going on. Definitely perfectionism is a theme. But another theme that I've noticed with my clients is definitely trauma. So not being able to speak your mind, not being able to be your true self. If you, especially with ADHD, you're probably making a lot more, I don't know, I wouldn't say mistakes, but you're making different decisions. Compared to maybe somebody else and that doesn't go down well. I remember being 15 and I had aspired to be a fashion designer when I was young because I just loved making clothes.
Kim To: I still remember being 10 and cutting up my clothes. And I remember my dad shouting at me and going, "You do not do that. Why would you do that?" Instead of asking, "Oh, how come you did that? Why did you want to make it into a crop top?" It's very different. So I reflect back and think there's a lot of things that I did, that ADHD can explain, but how my parents reacted is definitely very traumatizing and doesn't really help when you want to lean into who you are.
Pete Wright: Yeah, totally. I could totally see that. The ADHD just like prevents the gate from closing on the application of scissors to perfectly fine clothes. There is nothing that's going to stop me from turning these clothes into some other clothes. I get that. Sorry.
Kim To: Sorry Nikki.
Nikki Kinzer: Oh, no worries. So I'm just curious with your coaching. How do you work with clients around the perfectionism and the trauma and some of the things that you're seeing?
Kim To: Yeah, this is quite tricky because definitely for me, a lot of it is 80% listening and 20% asking the tough questions. asking so where does this image of you come from? Can you tell me more about your family dynamic? Is it different to how you interact with friends, teachers, family? So it's a very fine line to tread, but I think being able to say, I know what you've went through. I can understand that really helps with those discussions. I think it's really hard as well, because I feel like in ADHD coaching, if you ever talk about the past, it's like you might be going down the counseling group. So being super careful to bring it back to the present and bring it back to, okay, so we realized this might come from your childhood. How can we kind of move forward? What are the next steps?
Kim To: So that sort of approach. But to be honest, I'm still kind of developing my own way of addressing it. Trauma's not something that, so I trained at the IACT, so International ADHD Center, actually in the US. And trauma wasn't really a big topic in our training. So I think it's an area that does need to be a bit more kind of researched or talked about. So can't give you a good answer, but hopefully that gives a bit of color.
Nikki Kinzer: Oh, absolutely. And it makes sense because when we talk about RSD and we talk about rejection sensitivity dysphoria, that is coming from some kind experience, some kind of trauma that you have felt. And I think that the more research they can do on that too, will help coaches be able to address it in a way that, like you said, isn't therapeutic, but I agree. I think there has to be some history that we need to know, in order to go forward, but not as a therapist where they keep talking about that and processing that, there is definitely a difference.
Kim To: Yeah. And I think this is really important as more adults get diagnosed with ADHD because the conversation between adults and ADHD has only really occurred in the past 10 years. So there is a lot more, I guess my ADHD journey didn't begin as they got my diagnosis. It began when I was young. So we need to know all of that. So I'm hoping more and more discussions and yeah, trauma's definitely where I want to focus on going forward and talking about.
Pete Wright: I guess I want to poke at that a little bit too, because I think there's, well to back up, we had somebody on the show, Sonal Singh, who is a wonderful human being and coach, and at the time was India's really only licensed certified ADHD coach.
Kim To: Oh, wow. Okay.
Pete Wright: So you talk about, we're talking about the cultural sort of weight of responsibility that you take on as an Asian person who is taking at least to some degree ownership of teaching people in the culture, in the community, how to talk about and think about ADHD, and any associated disorders that you may be living with in a healthy and responsible way, that is really heavy. So as soon as we mentioned trauma, we've had these conversations before about capital T trauma, which is this major incidents, traumatic singular events, and small T trauma, the trauma that is the insidious kind of behavioral trauma or bullying or treatment that comes that add up into traumatic behavior. That's very much considered a therapeutic experience. Like you need a trauma therapist to go talk about that. And I'm curious your take on how coaching and therapy is accepted from that cultural perspective. At what point would you see your parents going to a therapist to talk about anything?
Kim To: Yeah. That's probably not happening in my lifetime, unfortunately. And it does pain me to see just because the older generation, there's just so much trauma embedded. I can share that my parents were Vietnamese refugees. So I know in their DNA and their system, this trauma has just been encoded. And just to even suggest for them, firstly, there isn't even therapists that can actually speak Vietnamese. There's not a lot. So more Asians need to train as ADHD coaches, as therapists, as holistic healers, whatever. But I think, unfortunately I don't see that happening with my parents' generation. However, with my generation, I'm way more optimistic because of especially, I think the pandemic has just opened up so much conversation about mental health, especially when you talk about therapy and ADHD coaching, I think that is incredibly important, because I couldn't do my ADHD coaching journey without dealing with my trauma.
Kim To: And going forward, when I talk about holistic sort of health, I'm talking about yoga, I'm actually studying to be an acupuncturist, because I think there's a lot that I want to explore with Chinese medicine when it comes to dealing with ADHD and trauma, et cetera. So I think healing comes in many forms, essentially. And for me, yoga has definitely been important for calming my nervous system. And there's other ways to heal outside therapy and ADHD coaching. But I do think for me, therapy and ADHD coaching was the crucial thing for me to get a good foundation.
Pete Wright: Nikki, I know I'm going to surprise you when I say this. I do yoga too, And it's straight dope. I love it so much. Once I learned how to Downward Dog, I get great calm from the Downward Dog. You bring me a warrior pose any day.
Nikki Kinzer: That's right. That's right. So I'm curious about Flair. Tell us about that.
Kim To: Yeah. So it's come from many iterations, but essentially for me, Flair was embracing your uniqueness. And if I was to reflect on my life, how could I embrace my uniqueness? Beyond my ADHD as well, because my life is, I'm just not about my ADHD diagnosis. I'm so much more than that. Beyond that, for me, I envision it as a a go-to place where you can get that holistic healing and growth, not just medication. I think medication is really important. I take medication, but I remember taking medication and thinking, okay, well, what next? I want to grow as a person with my ADHD, where else can I go to? I just didn't know where to start. So I envision it as a place where people can go to and find that healing journey and growth journey all in one place. Whether that's therapists which knows about ADHD or trauma, or it's yoga teachers that know about ADHD, because honestly I cannot attend a yoga class that is more than 45 minutes. It literally needs to be really fast, 20 minutes, in and out sort of thing.
Pete Wright: I like my mindfulness in a microwave.
Kim To: Really, really intense, not in yoga, can't do it. The point is, is that I would really love it to be a place where practitioners who are offering many different types of healing can actually have an awareness of ADHD and actually offer that and make it more accessible for people like me. So that's how, but it's a long journey I think. So I would encourage any practitioners who are interested to join the movement. That's what I'm interested in.
Pete Wright: I just need to hear a little bit more about what is it? Is it like a center that you're building, or is there an app or is it a online community?
Kim To: So, yeah, so I think it would be, first, it has to be organic growth. So online community where people are interested in holistic healing as well. And then the other thing is I'm envisioning it as not a marketplace, but there are practitioners who would be on the platform. For example, someone who comes in there, I just got diagnosed. I'm interested in learning more about my body, exploring this and exploring that. And we could direct them to the best services. Because I think that doesn't happen when you go to a GP and tell them I have ADHD. They kind of give you pills.
Pete Wright: Yeah, not at all.
Kim To: They don't really care what you want in terms of your journey. So I'm hoping that would be a place where I can connect you with a practitioner to help you with your journey.
Pete Wright: Sure, sure, sure.
Nikki Kinzer: Oh, it sounds wonderful. It sounds wonderful. So this is something you're creating, it's not available right now. Is that correct?
Kim To: No. Yeah. I'm definitely creating. So it's a lot of talking to people, finding the right practitioners who want to help people with ADHD who want to learn more about what it means to work with people with ADHD.
Pete Wright: Well, what I love about it and I mean this as the compliment that is fully intended here, this is the most ADHD that I think I have seen on this show that you were diagnosed under two years ago, and that you decided I'm going to start an online clearinghouse of professionals to help other people with ADHD. And I'm just going to go ahead and do it right now and totally upend my life and do this thing. That is as pro ADHD a compliment as I can offer. That's very, very cool.
Kim To: Yeah. Pure hyper-focused.
Pete Wright: And bold, super bold. Yeah, right? I can see it.
Nikki Kinzer: And so needed. I mean, that's the thing that I love about what you're saying here with Flair, and I hope that anybody that's listening that wants to be a part of it will reach out to you and we'll make sure that we have all of the information available because it is, it's so overwhelming, you can go, like you said to your GP and they can say, "Oh, well try mindfulness or yoga. That might help." But then what do you do with that? Where do you go?
Kim To: Where do you start? Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer: Yeah, exactly.
Pete Wright: Well, and there are a lot of... we've run into a lot of holistic healing centers. But those healing centers don't offer a focus on ADHD. And that is a piece, ADHD is secondary to the, sure you can get acupuncture and meditation teaching and yoga and all and therapy. But the real outward focus on this is something that people with ADHD, this is a home for you, for your healing efforts is I think really special.
Kim To: But I also think it places emphasis on practitioners being more aware of ADHD. Because I feel like, especially, I don't know, I went to my therapist speaking about ADHD and he didn't really care. And I was like, this is so important to my DNA. And I've had so many people ask me, I want to find a therapist that actually knows about ADHD. And you realize, these practitioners, they don't even get a text. They don't even get a chapter on ADHD. And so I'm more interested in practitioners who actually care about community and want to support our community and invest that time. So I think that's really important and our community needs it. We need more practitioners who are aware of ADHD and how we work and actually care because we deserve well-rounded healing options and services beyond medication and beyond ADHD coaching. ADHD coaching's great, right? But for me, it didn't help with stuff like my nervous system being on full whack all the time. I needed more stuff. And so that's how I started the idea.
Pete Wright: I feel like that would be the caption underneath my LinkedIn headshot, Pete Wright, nervous system on full whack all the time.
Kim To: Yes. But please help, send help.
Pete Wright: Right? Help.
Kim To: Yeah.
Pete Wright: Kim, you're awesome. Where do you want to send people to learn more about you, connect with you on LinkedIn? We'll put that. Is that okay?
Kim To: Yeah, definitely LinkedIn. Honestly, I'm such a prolific LinkedIn person now, I have my old employers on it, so I just continuously write, I'm like, yeah. New journey. This is what I'm up to. But yeah, definitely LinkedIn, my Instagram for my ADHD coaching is own your flair. So OwnYourFlair.
Nikki Kinzer: Oh I love that. What a great name. It's awesome.
Pete Wright: And that's website too, OwnYourFlare.com.
Kim To: Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. And I write a lot on Medium. You can find me on medium.com as well. So yeah.
Nikki Kinzer: Well, and I assume with Zoom, you work with clients all over the world.
Kim To: Yes I do. I do. I'm very excited. So actually, most of my clients have been in the US, because I think ADHD coaching is just more well known there, and it's starting to, I mean, I'm starting to get British clients, but again, ADHD coaching is so niche here, and it's still up and coming. I'm hoping not so much because there's so many people getting diagnosed right now. But my goal really is beyond the US and beyond the UK. Definitely Asia where I'm from, where my home is. So I really, I'm thinking of ways to do it such as translating my content into either Chinese or Vietnamese or other languages, I'm still thinking of ways I can branch out there. Because unfortunately I can only speak English, I can speak Vietnamese, but I won't be able to coach Vietnamese that well. So there's a language barrier there, but yeah, all over the world is what I aim for.
Pete Wright: Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, we sure appreciate you taking your time at the end of a long London day for you to sit down with us and talk about what you're up to.
Kim To: Yeah. I'm so sorry I'm late. I mean, London traffic, what can I say?
Nikki Kinzer: It's an ADHD podcast. No one cares.
Kim To: No one cares if you go late.
Pete Wright: You're okay. You're okay.
Kim To: Nice to meet you both.
Pete Wright: So thank you. And you too.
Nikki Kinzer: You too, you too. Take care. Thank you.
Pete Wright: Thank you very much. On behalf of Kim To and Nikki Kinzer, I'm Pete Wright, and we'll see you next week right here on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast.
