Interview: Iman Gatti was Late to the Party

An interview with certified grief recovery specialist, transformational speaker and bestselling author Iman Gatti on her late diagnosis of ADHD.

“Diagnosis taught me that I know myself best. That I know when something is true or when it feels off. That my brain is truly magical and I am extremely lucky to have my brain because the way I see and experience things is so beautiful.”

A therapist once asked me what my three greatest strengths were and "resilience" flew out of my mouth before my tongue had time to assemble the vowels.

I reach for it with the subconscious ease of reaching for a scroll on my phone.

My bounce-back-ability really came into its own during 2020 and 2021 which I’m sure was the same for many of you as we were continuously fucked by two massive C words (shout out the virus and the UK Government).

If 2020 was the resilience warm-up act, 2021 was the all singing, all dancing, hands-to-the-flipping-sky Las Vegas Residency that included but wasn’t limit to my ADHD diagnosis, a traumatic burglary, a house sale falling through, unexpectedly moving countries and back, breakdowns of relationships while working full time and writing a book amid a global pandemic.

I felt like it was coming at me from all angles and yet I continuously picked myself up and powered on, regardless of how burnt out I felt, scared that if I stopped i’d never start again.

I scaled the Everest of tasks, circumstances, shit storms, relentless in my pursuit of conquering whatever was thrown my way and stubborn with the thought that failure was not an option. Overriding introspection with action sometimes feels like the only way to get through it all, doesn’t it?

But at the end of 2021, around that ten month post diagnosis stage, I fell to pieces and was forced to forensically reexamine each one in order to put myself back together.

As a result, I made a commitment to look after and look inwards towards myself. To work on replacing self-improvement with self-understanding and self-compassion and graciously stepped over the threshold of 2022 acknowledging and accepting that sometimes what is required isn’t the ability to push through and keep it all together, but to surrender and come apart.

And so that’s what I worked on for an entire year, i’m still working on it, but it is working.

As the poet Raquel Franco wrote “sometimes the wreckage brings you home.”

No-one quite encapsulates that statement more than Iman Gatti.

Iman’s husband would describe her as “resourceful, driven and tenacious. A good communicator, emotionally intuitive, compassionate and a caretaker. “He was clearly being generous!” she laughs “I’m also impatient, intense and an odd mix of confident and insecure.”

Her best friend Emily would describe her as her strongest and softest friend in one.

“It takes a brave person to be fully integrated and that is Iman” she said.“ I think of her as a whole human, someone who knows herself very well and understands the world around her by way of astute observation, and this is why I deeply respect her.”

I asked Iman what she considered her greatest strengths to be as a human,

“Deeply intuitive, persistent & creative” was her response.

A certified grief recovery specialist, transformational speaker and bestselling author, Iman works with people to help them recover from grief and trauma, elevate their self-esteem and in her own words “step fully into the greatness they were born for.”

Iman was born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta, her parents moved to Canada from Tunisia, North Africa, and she says she is extremely proud of both her Arab heritage and the opportunity her parents gave her by emigrating to Canada to raise their family.

Iman’s decision to become a grief recovery specialist was inspired by her own experience of living with traumatic loss. Just two months before her seventh birthday, she witnessed her father brutally murder her mother.

From that moment, Iman effectively became an orphan as her father was sentenced to 25 years in prison and she was put into foster care. She spent the next 12 years moving from home to home, experiencing abuse and neglect as she did her best to survive her childhood, day by day.

In “Cracked Open - Never Broken”, her bestselling memoir, Iman takes readers on a journey through her childhood of loss, heartbreak, and isolation as she clings to the hope of a life she always dreamed of.

Its written for anyone who refuses to succumb to the role of the victim, and instead chooses to live with an unbreakable spirit and overflowing compassion. Through sheer determination, strength, and resilience Iman overcomes the unimaginable. She is proof that, when faced with extreme suffering, the power of the human spirit can endure and transcend.

An extract from “Cracked Open- Never Broken” by Iman Gatti

At the age of 39, Iman was diagnosed with ADHD after a conversation with a friend who had ADHD prompted her to read up about the condition and she recognised so much of herself in what she found out. The specialist who gave Iman her diagnosis was amazed no one had spotted the condition earlier. Iman was then prescribed medication which she says has made a huge difference to her life. 

“It made life so much easier and I realised I was now the way I had always meant to be. I had designed my life to work for my brain but it was like I had learned to live with one leg and then suddenly been given two.” She said.

But Iman’s relief was soon replaced by shock when a conversation with her brother revealed she had already been diagnosed with ADHD in childhood. Growing up in the care system after the death of her mother none of her foster carers or doctors had ever told her she had the disorder. 

“They kept it from me because they didn’t want me to face any obstacles.” Iman says, “Ironically, I have faced more because of that choice. I grieve the idea of who I could have been had I been supported and not felt so unseen and rejected by the world.”

Now aged 41, Iman can talk frankly about how finding out she had ADHD as an adult has changed her life for the better.

When I first put a call out to speak to adults navigating neurodiversity, I offered participation in the form of a podcast or written interview. I recognise that not everyone is comfortable speaking. Iman kindly agreed to do both and this interview was conducted via email initially with some moments taken from the podcast.

Given that it is a combination of our two encounters, I have voiced this interview for those who struggle with reading for consistency but you will be able to hear Iman’s voice and more about her story on the podcast at the end of this month.

“After a life of extreme violence, honestly, one of my biggest compliments is that you would never tell by hanging out with me today! You would be like, oh, look at this big squashy softy like you know, I'm very generous and kind. But it's an active choice to be as kind and loving as I am.”

Hana: I'm really curious about your journey and how you ended up in this position, having been through so much , to turn that around and dedicate your career to helping other people in the way you do.

Iman: I think we always give to the world what we need the most. I think it's comes from a deep desire, personally, from feeling so lost and so helpless growing up in foster care, orphaned; I really had a desperate life. It was just really empty, tragic and sad, and I never felt connected. I had a really hard time connecting to anyone. And so I think when I started gathering the tools for myself, it started to get to point that I would be doing a disservice to not see if anyone else could benefit from this.

I didn't wanna be a gatekeeper of the things that really just changed my life for the better. And its been hard! I grew up with low self-esteem and not really anyone telling me, “oh, you're doing great” I never had anyone say that I was smart or capable. I heard horrible things. So, I think it just got to the point where it was like, well, I kind of feel greedy. I kind of feel bad if I don't share this. So I just started saying it slowly and comfortably until people were responding and wanted more. And I really have had to learn to silence that imposter's sounding voice in my head!

Hana: That’s a really difficult thing to do or undo - especially if you've had it from being a kid, it becomes such a part of your make up that its difficult to even know yourself without it isn’t it?

Iman: Yes, I used to think that everyone had their thoughts and you couldn't do anything about them like it was like some kind of computer program. That the thoughts you had were the ones you got and that was that. Until I started really working on it and realising I'm not my thoughts. I'm actually witnessing those things. So whose voice is that? And I realised that wow, those are my abusers. They are the people that I keep having on the megaphone and so once I realised that it wasn’t me or some holy thing that it was just the things i’ve picked up because people kept saying I were really bad! If they were telling you you were really good, your megaphone would be screaming how great you are. And so I was like man, I have to change the tape that's playing back to me!

Hana: I think there's also like a misconception about this sort of stuff where you know you can just flick a switch and it's gone, do a therapy session, knock out a yoga class and BAM! FIXED! But in the same way that people would go to the gym to work on their strength, or work on their stamina, or even just to get abs, it requires commitment and practice and that is lifelong…

Iman: That's right, and I actually call myself a personal trainer for your soul. I love that idea of muscle memory and I think we do that with consistency and kindness. I’m not one of those “ kum-by-ya let’s hold hands” kind of people, but I think it's when you grow up with such dire circumstance and such desperation I think it’s a great testament of my courage and strength, to be kind.

It's an active choice to be kind, and I have to work on it because my instinct is to snarl and rip your jugular out. That's why I was taught, you know. It really took me a long time. A lot of therapy and work and I was reading a book that referenced how thoughts are clouds and you should just let them pass you by. You don't have to acknowledge or eally encompass every thought that passes through your mind and they're just ideas or things you've heard right? So, I took my phone, set the alarm every hour for months and  every hour when it would go off I would just sit there and ask, how am I feeling right now? What is my brain saying right now? And I was just really introspective and I would examine my thoughts.

If you grew up in a house of abuse and are hit or yelled at every time you do anything wrong, you just start doing that to yourself. I used to get in trouble if I was broke anything and I’m clumsy and so I would be my own abuser. I would break something and I would tell myself, “Oh, you're just so stupid! How could you do this!” Like it was like the end of the world. It’s ridiculous because I should have been more important than a glass! I have a five year old daughter and we just have a saying in our house that everyone makes mistakes you're allowed, it doesn't make you a bad person.

Iman tells me that she broke something recently and made a mess everywhere. She swore at the top of her lungs. She was so mad at herself she tells me. At that moment her daughter came down the stairs and said to her “Oh well, mom! Everyone makes mistakes, don’t they?”

Iman replied “Yes, that's so true love and I'm so glad that I've said that to you a thousand times because I really needed the reminder.”

Hana: Let’s go back a little bit, with everything that you were going though that you speak about so eloquently and bravely in your book, how did you navigate school? It feels like that’s where the signs are first especially with neurodiversity though they aren’t picked up for a variety of reasons.

Iman: Obviously, not knowing I was neurospicy added to that mental distress. I would often be in class hungry and emotionally distraught because of the abuse I endured. This made learning and paying attention nearly impossible. I also moved through 10 schools in 12 years which meant I missed a lot of lessons. I was always clambering to catch up and I’m shocked that I managed to graduate high school and go to college. I also have dyscalculia, which made maths and sciences extremely painful for me.

Hana: Did you feel like your peers?

Iman: Oh absolutely not! Ha! I have always been sure I am not like anyone else. I am the classic outlier/witchy type outcast weirdo. I absolutely love it, but it has of course been trying at times. Obviously, suffering such severe traumas and losing my family at a young age was devastating and changed my brain and heart in unimaginable ways.

On top of that, my ADHD meant that I could not focus or remember things and it filled me with so much anxiety. I always felt cursed. As though I was born into a terrible fate of suffering. I knew I wasn’t like my peers and I used to be so jealous of how unfair my life seemed compared to my friends. Nothing came easy to me apart from writing and I didn’t give myself any credit for that because I figured if I liked something, it mustn’t be very good or special. It’s such a shame to think how much low self-esteem stops people from living their dreams.

Hana: Absolutely. Its a constant battle with self esteem, especially for the ADHD brain and i’d say more so for women. Did you know anything about neurodiversity or have any references for what you might be experiencing?

Iman: I am stunned that it never occurred to me that I would be living with neurodiversity. Growing up, I only heard of rambunctious boys having it and because my hyperactivity displayed as anxiety and productivity, I wouldn’t have guessed.

“My diagnosis taught me that I know myself best. That I know when something is true or when it feels off. That my brain is truly magical.”

The first steps towards Iman seeking a diagnosis came after a friend pointed out that she seemed “very neurodivergent” and her curiosity lead her to start reading up on it. She tells me that everything she saw felt very accurate, she knew it was ADHD and wanted confirmation. She went to a doctor and asked for a referral and was later contacted by a therapist's office that said she would need to wait five months to be seen.

She then obsessed about finding a quicker appointment and found an office that only had a six week wait, so she went back to the doctor and got referred again. She tells me she had to be persistent, that the doctor “didn’t appreciate” her asking again, but she insisted and got another referral form for the second place.

“I went to my appointment and met with a psychiatric nurse and she assessed me for around 90 minutes. She was so kind and compassionate. She said I had scored 100% for both inattentive and hyperactivity.” She said “I am full of combinations as I am both inattentive and hyperactive.”

The next day, Iman went back to the clinic for the second part of her assessment which was with the psychiatrist. He spent nearly three hours with her going through everything the nurse had done and also explaining to her, in detail, how her brain worked. He showed her a slideshow and gave her book recommendations and some tools that would help. He then discussed medication options and the pros and cons of each. He shared that skills made up 70% of the treatment and pills were the other 30%. She was told that self diagnosis via online tests are 95% accurate.

“So that is great news if someone is unable to access an official diagnosis!”

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Hana: Who were you before your diagnosis?

Iman: A very anxious person and I was super hard on myself, very self-critical. I have developed a lot of coping mechanisms and organisation in my life in order to not completely lose my mind because of my brain.

I developed OCD tendencies so I could stay on top of my life. I really noticed it after having a family and having a lot of extra things to remember and organise. I found it so hard to concentrate on anything that was not an interest of mine. I would just zone out if people spoke on things outside of my passions and expertise. I also found it stressful when people were talking to me because I would also be hearing so many other sounds around me.

Now, I understand my brain better and people with ADHD are often unable to choose which sound is processed in the foreground and which ones are background. Also, sounds get louder the longer they are heard. So if the water is running it starts to sound like a waterfall eventually and I can’t focus on people speaking at the same time. It’s like having someone constantly blasting music in your ears if no-one else notices and so they speak at regular volume while you strain to pay attention.

I also really couldn’t stand working in offices - most especially open-concept ones! My brain takes a very unique path to get focused so I might need to do random odd tasks for an hour or two before focusing on what the priority task is. But once I’m focused it’s really hard to be interrupted or to shift gears.

In corporate environments, that is highly unacceptable and so I just started my own business because it was excruciating to follow other people’s schedules and ideas of how to spend my time productively. I’m extremely efficient and once I get focused I am much quicker than a neurotypical person, but it caused a lot of grief having to be like the rest of the group.

Hana: I’m curious about what the process of diagnosis as taught you

Iman: Its taught me that I know myself best. That I know when something is true or when it feels off. That my brain is truly magical and I am extremely lucky to have my brain because the way I see and experience things is so beautiful.

Hana: Did you ever feel support was lacking throughout that journey?

Iman: The only time I felt support could have been better was in asking for a referral from the doctor. They didn’t seem too concerned if I had to wait months to be seen and were vocal about their annoyance when I wanted a second referral request. I had to be quite pushy so I feel for anyone who isn’t as stubborn as I am.

“I think it's irresponsible to walk around the world, not knowing how you are injured and how you could injure. For me, when someone isn’t exploring themselves like that or just isn't aware, they're dangerous to me.”

Hana: We’ve seen neurodiversity minimised to a “trend” and we still aren’t seeing nuanced representation. What do you think needs to change?

Iman: People need to realise that the reason it looks like a lot of people “suddenly” have neuro-spicy brains is because most of us have been dismissed, overlooked and called “lazy” and “stupid” all of our lives, instead of people investigating and acknowledging that perhaps our brains function differently.

Hana: What are some of the things that have helped you on your journey?

Iman: Educating myself on how my brain works and accommodating myself in my own life. I think the world is so neurotypical friendly and so the rest of us are constantly feeling ‘less than’ because most of those systems don’t consider us or benefit our brains. It is very helpful to start living your life in a way that works for neurodiversity.

I have changed my house around so I can see things that I need to use because if I don’t then I forget they exist! I also love using headphones more and loop earplugs to reduce the noise around me. I’m also more conscious of being overstimulated and mitigating that for myself. I embrace my need to putter before getting focused and so I make space for that whenever possible. I have become very aware of how well my brain functions when I get lots of sleep, eat well and minimize alcohol consumption. I’ve also been more communicative with people as to my time blindness and that I’ll likely always be a few minutes late! Ha!

Hana: What is something you wish people knew about neurodiversity?

Iman: That it’s a super power. It allows for a truly deep and integrated human experience. I truly love having my brain. Yes, it has challenges but that’s mostly because of how the world is, not how I am.

Hana: What advice would you give someone who might be thinking about seeking or going through a diagnosis themselves?

Iman: Go online first and take all the tests your heart desires. From there go to the doctor if you’d like the official assessment. It’s a wonderful feeling to find answers about things you’re experiencing. It’s so validating. But so is self diagnosis. You are valid no matter what your experience is. You are exactly as you ought to be. Change your environment to suit your needs and don’t worry about what everyone else is doing or what they expect from you. TAKE UP SPACE!

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Hana: Why do you think that you were late to the party?

Iman: Mostly because I was surrounded by idiots who weren’t good guardians. I also lived in a state of trauma for almost my entire life so I was focused on other emergencies that were more urgent than noticing why I couldn’t find my keys or be on time!

Hana: What have been some of the traits that make you unique/stand out?

Iman: My intuition is very highly tuned. I can “feel” everything and tell when people are sad, nervous, upset etc. I have always been this way and it’s quite distracting actually. It works well for my coaching practice though. I’m extremely creative and resourceful. I see patterns and themes in behaviours and that’s what makes me successful in my work because I can witness someone else and then create businesses, books, tools, tasks and habits based on that and design roadmaps on how they would maximize their own gifts and strengths and ultimately monetize them.

I am extremely hard-working and focused so when I come up with an idea I literally obsess over it until it’s finished. I illustrated my first children’s book in two days having never used the program or written a children’s book before. I just couldn’t stop until I was done and it was published. I’m proud of that.

I am proud that I am still here. There have been so many obstacles and reasons to give up. I am so proud I never gave up on myself and that I have had the privilege to be a mom and know the kind of love that my own mom felt for me. It’s been so healing. I’m 41 and it feels like the party is just getting started!

Hana: How has your life changed since diagnosis?

Iman: I have been arriving my whole life. I changed some things after diagnosis but I’ve been working on myself long before that. I think the diagnosis just validated my inner knowing and now I’m even more bold and unapologetic which is very liberating.

I learned to be resilient because the alternative was just very dire. It was a sink or swim kind of thing. I don't think any child should have to make the choics I did but you get resourceful when you don't have anything and you're really hungry. You really learn to make something out of nothing.

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Iman loves the word “no” and any obstacle is intriguing to her.

“I just think oh ok, so there's a way, but you're not going to tell me the way. You sid no but I still want it, so now you’re an obstacle now that I’m gonna go under over around through!” she says.

Of course, she’s also been called disobedient,

“But it shouldn't be called disobedience, because I'm literally being myself. Maybe i'm disobeying your expectation of me because everyone wants you to be the lovely little lady who's very classy and quiet and demure but I know that if I'm quiet, I don't get to eat. I learned that when I was six. So, what do you want me to do? Elbows out, tits out head up. Let's go! The quiet people perish thanks very much. I'm not into that in my world. Someone is always hunting for the quiet people.”

I tend to agree.

It doesn’t mean you have to always be shouting but coming forward and having the courage to speak your story, to take ownership of it, to ask for what you want and to vocalise what you don’t, to call out inequality or bad behaviour- of others and yourself, to get very honest with how you’re feeling and who you are; it’s empowering and perhaps doesn’t always align with how the world wants to receive you, especially as a woman.

If you don’t speak up for yourself, someone is going to speak for you.

You can hear more of Iman’s story and journey on the Late to the Party Podcast which launches at the end of March. Subscribe to the blog so you don’t miss it!

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I’m putting this together as a passion project since I wanted to take back some of the narrative around neurodiversity. I felt it was needed in a world that continuously debates the validly of our existence. But I also want it to be available to everyone so you can currently subscribe for FREE. If you value the words here and are in a position to support my work with a paid subscription that option is also available. Given that this is driven mostly by coffee, you can keep me topped up below.

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My next post will be about imposter syndrome and how an encounter with a twelve year old Jeff Goldblum lookalike at summer camp still haunts me.