From Silent Struggle to Purpose: Adam Dayan’s Story

 

Transcript

ANNOUNCER:  This is Curious Incident, a podcast for special needs families, and your window into the world of special education. Special needs parenting can be challenging, and we want to make it easier by providing you with the resources you need to help your child. Step deep into the world of learning differently with your host, special education attorney Adam Dayan. 

KRISTINE:  Welcome back to the Curious Incident Podcast. My name is Kristine Champagne. I am Adam Dayan’s executive assistant, and I am also your guest host today. Today we are featuring Adam Dayan as our guest, so a little bit of role reversal here. And as many of you know, Adam is a special education attorney. He is an advocate for families. But today’s conversation is going to be a little bit different. Today we are going to pull back the curtain and talk about experiences that shaped him long before the law, long before the firm, and long before many families ever came to know him in the role he is today. We are going to talk about anxiety, perfectionism, OCD, and what it means to struggle quietly, especially as a child who looks like they’re doing everything right on the outside. We’re also going to explore how those experiences shaped the way Adam shows up for families today, both personally and professionally. Adam, thank you so much for trusting me to host this conversation and for being willing to share your story with us. Let’s start at the beginning. 

ADAM:  Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. I’m so glad that we’re doing this and let me just acknowledge how strange it is to be on the other side of this. 

KRISTINE:  I can imagine it kind of feels a little bit strange for me as well. But I will say that having worked as your assistant now for three years, I feel like you and I have established a report together where we have a level of comfort to talk to one another, share our similar stories. So let’s get started. All right. Before the law, before the firm, what experiences in your own life shaped how you show up for families today? 

ADAM:  From when I was young, I had a lot of anxiety and the way this showed up for me was in perfectionism. And I wanted to get things right and yet it felt like, however, I did it, didn’t feel right. And I think the primary example that I think of is when I was in the first grade working on an Egyptian mummy project for social studies. And I just kept erasing and erasing and erasing because I couldn’t get the letters I was writing to be perfect. And by the end, there were shards of rubber all around me and I was frustrated and just couldn’t get it the way I wanted it to be. And I think I was always trying to control things when there were circumstances in my life that felt uncontrollable, whether it was a social situation at school or something I was feeling emotionally, if I didn’t have the words to express what I was feeling or my emotions just felt too big, and this continued throughout childhood. 

KRISTINE:  How did different kind of triggers, big or small, what kind of impact did those have on you? 

ADAM:  I had a hard time identifying what was bothering me. I remember somewhere around the third or fourth grade, I had some gastro issues that were affecting me and there were some social situations in school that were bothering me. And one way I found to manage these things was to focus on schoolwork because academic success was something that I could control. And my anxiety drove me to continue achieving. What happened in the fourth grade is I got my first pair of eyeglasses. Somehow all of my anxiety that I was feeling about things happening in my life shifted to those eyeglasses. So I was uncomfortable with getting them to begin with and then over the years as my prescription change that made me uncomfortable and I was always trying to perfect the eyeglasses to distract me from other things that were happening in my life. So you’re anxious about something that’s happening with friends, focus on keeping your eyeglasses straight or checking them to make sure that nothing’s blurry that you’re seeing properly. 

KRISTINE:  Did you recognize at the time that that is what was happening or is this something that you recognize now as being something that manifested as a result of the anxiety but you didn’t know it at the time? 

ADAM:  Right. The latter. I did not know at the time what I was doing exactly or why I was doing it. It was a coping mechanism that my brain came up with. I actually marvel at how creative it is as far as distracting from anxiety goes. But it was unproductive because while you’re obsessing over a thought or repeating a certain behavior to distract you, you’re not dealing with the thing that’s causing the anxiety in the first place. So many years went by. This was very unconscious until I realized that I was doing something that wasn’t helping me and it felt strange and it was confusing and I really didn’t understand the purpose behind the behaviors. 

KRISTINE:  So it stopped providing you that temporary sense of relief you sometimes feel when you act out a compulsion. 

ADAM:  Not really. And that’s what’s so troublesome about OCD. Let me take one step back. So I think the temporary relief is really important. You and I both know that the purpose of a compulsion is that your brain is telling you there’s some emergency and however irrational it may be that if you do this behavior, it’s going to solve the emergency. And so you do the behavior, you get the reassurance that you’re looking for and that gives relief. You feel good momentarily because the emergency is over. The problem is solved. Right. Sometimes the compulsions are continuing. I think you keep generating that relief. You do the behavior, you get the relief, but at a certain point, hopefully you realize that it’s a band-aid. Right. And you’re not solving the main problem. 

KRISTINE:  I know for me in my personal experience, there was always that temporary sense of relief when I would act out compulsions, but they were temporary in two different senses. They were temporary because they never provided me that long-term relief that I was looking for in terms of providing a solution to whatever was driving the anxiety. But they were also temporary because they would often manifest into bigger compulsions or more frequent compulsions. I think it’s kind of like taking a medication. When you take a medication for a long time, sometimes the effects of it will begin to not be as strong or as effective as they were in the beginning because you’ve been taking them for a long time. So then you have to take more of that medication. And I feel like compulsions are often the same way where eventually the effect of them wears off and it needs to become something more. And sometimes you recognize that and sometimes you don’t. When you talk about having OCD as a small child, that would be almost impossible to recognize as a young child that this is what’s going on. And so when you talk about the eyeglasses and your fixation that came as a result of your anxiety, it’s so interesting to me. That is how you channeled that anxiety in that moment. 

ADAM:  Yeah. And I think there are some people who present with overt behaviors that a teacher or an adult could notice. But other people like me are wrapped up in thoughts inside their heads or are doing the behaviors discreetly in private and those children can go unnoticed. And those are the children I’m most worried about. 

KRISTINE:  Because who would ever notice a child who is playing frequently or adjusting frequently the new glasses that he has gotten? Is there is a certain expectation that there will be that adjustment time to getting used to wearing them and perhaps even adjusting the prescription, it may or may not be exactly how it should be or the most effective that it can be. So when you see a child who is frequently taking on and taking off their glasses and fidgeting with them, to me, all of that would be very natural. I can certainly say as a parent, I don’t think I would ever recognize that my child is doing something out of the ordinary or more frequently than can be expected because who’s to say? So the fact that it did manifest for you in a way that is really easy to disguise as just a typical behavior, that is the scary part of OCD because that means that it’s likely happening with far more young people than we realize. 

ADAM:  Right. Very concerned about the children who fly under the radar and maybe there are some young kids out there who have the wherewithal and the self-awareness to tell their parents, I’m doing these strange behaviors or having these repetitive thoughts or I need help. I didn’t have that skill set and I had wonderful parents who were incredibly loving and attentive and this didn’t come out. I’ll just add that as I’ve been speaking out more about OCD, I’ve attended OCD conferences and spoken with other people who are managing with OCD and this story of going unnoticed through childhood and early adulthood and getting a diagnosis as adults is very common. I spoke to so many people who had that experience. 

KRISTINE:  You and I have talked about many times because we are working on a separate project that does align with the podcast and the reasons for everything that you’re doing currently and you and I have often talked about the generation gap that seems to exist when it comes to mental health. As you mentioned that you had great parents, they were very attentive, very loving. You also can recognize that you did not have the kind of relationship for lack of better word with them where you could openly talk about some of the things that you were struggling with. 

ADAM:  I would put that more on myself. That I was not the personality that was comfortable bringing up this hard stuff and having a conversation around it. If you’re comparing the generation then to our generation and the generation after us, you’ve come so far in terms of awareness about special needs and talking about it. That experience of not having talked about has shaped me. I am very passionate about getting the word out and nurturing a new culture, of putting it all on the table, talking about the stuff and finding the resources because the resources are out there. Even with my kids and I’ve got four beautiful children, I hesitate to talk about them specifically, but I am comfortable saying that it’s very important to me to have a culture in our family where everyone knows that we talk about stuff. I do share with them about my anxiety. My kids are young. I’ve got an eight-year-old, I’ve got twins who are six and a half and a little one who’s three and a half. They may understand this stuff on different levels, but I bring it up and they know that we’ve got some book projects going and they ask what they’re about and I tell them we’re writing about anxiety and they have follow-up questions and I say it has to do with children who have anxiety and need help figuring out how to manage it. To me, that’s a transformation and is a very healthy way to be approaching difficult topics that don’t get any easier if you keep quiet about them. 

KRISTINE:  Absolutely. I wholeheartedly agree. 

ANNOUNCER:  If you have thoughts, questions, comments, or would like to suggest ideas for a future episode, we’d love to hear it. So email your feedback to podcast@Dayanlafirm.com. 

KRISTINE:  So we’re moving forward a little bit. We know that you struggled as a young child. You had different issues occurring and one of your ways to have that sense of control while that anxiety was happening was for you to channel that anxiety into the compulsion of adjusting your eyeglasses quite frequently. 

ADAM:  And checking the eyesight. 

KRISTINE:  And checking your eyesight. 

ADAM:  Is the right eye seeing better than the left eye? Are they blurry in some way? Has it changed from how they were seeing last week? 

KRISTINE:  My goodness, that must have felt overwhelming in and of itself because how anxiety as we know from a number of guests that we featured on our show, how anxiety is its own beast? It’s exhausting. It really is. 

ADAM:  And I’ve talked about this with people who wear glasses and they’ve said, wow, I wear glasses and never thought about this in this particular way. And for me, it was very unsettling that my eyes were getting worse. I said, am I going to go blind? What’s happening here? Yes. And so to address that fear, this routine of checking and checking and checking and checking. And when you get wrapped up in those loops, and we’ll talk about one example of a loop when I was in high school, it’s just exhausting. 

KRISTINE:  We brought up high school. So let’s talk about how your anxiety shifted over the years, how the focus of your anxiety shifted over the years and how your compulsions functioned for you emotionally, how the sense of relief or not relief that you got from them, how did all of that progress as you began to grow? 

ADAM:  I don’t know where to start on that one. I think about some of the classrooms that I’ve walked through as an adult for my own kids or if I was touring a school related to the work that we do. And sometimes on the wall, there are posters about emotions. Is this a big problem or is this a little problem? What are possible solutions for this bigger little problem? And I just don’t remember ever receiving that in school when I was younger. And so emotions would pop up and it was hard enough sometimes to identify what the emotion was. I’m feeling rejected. I’m feeling sad. I’m feeling nervous and to connect that with what was creating that feeling and then to figure out what to do about it. So I think that whole mix felt overwhelming. 

KRISTINE:  Absolutely. 

ADAM:  And there were times when I didn’t know where to begin. What’s the first step? I say this not to plug the podcast, but just to give a sense of its purpose that this resource is meant to help parents figure out what’s the next step. Right. Because if you’re overwhelmed with information and you don’t know the first thing to do, it’s very hard to move forward. So that’s how I felt. It seemed really hard to move forward. And OCD was easy. I made up the rules. I created the routines. And while I was doing those routines, I wasn’t thinking about the things that were anxiety inducing. So in the short term, it was very effective in the long term. 

KRISTINE:  It was not healthy because eventually the fix or the relief stops being enough. And then it becomes something more than that. 

ADAM:  Yes. And whatever is underlying the anxiety, whether it’s you need a skill set to navigate a difficult social situation or something academic in nature, you need planning skills so that you can execute on that paper that’s due in two months, but there’s a lot of steps that have to happen between now and then or any other concern that shows up in your life that you are developing the skills for. If you’re wasting your time on compulsions that are based on irrational thinking, then you’re not investing and getting the skills that you need to handle the real life stuff. You’re not going to get better at those social situations. You’re not going to get better at the planning for that project. And it compounds. It compounds if in third grade, you needed those planning skills to do the project. And by fifth grade, you still haven’t developed them. You’re going to run into some walls. 

KRISTINE:  Absolutely. 

ADAM:  And the same socially. There are situations that you can learn how to handle well when you’re young that by the time you get to middle school or high school, where everything ramps up, especially now with technology and social media. Yes. If you don’t have the social skills to navigate difficult situations, it’s going to get harder. 

KRISTINE:  That actually leads me to thinking about some of the work that we do with the firm. And one of the things that I say often is we now recognize that every child learns differently, that every child learns at different paces, that there will be certain things that will come naturally to one child that will not to another. And so we know that education is most successful when it is individualized for that person. And when I stop and think about a child who is struggling with all of the things that you yourself struggled with and are trying to also learn and be a successful student. And while carrying all of those other burdens around with you, how effective is the teaching that is happening in a classroom that you’re sitting in, because you have all of these other factors that are occurring emotionally. And you’re having to navigate all of that while you’re still trying to absorb a lesson that is being taught by a teacher. It just even as an adult sounds so overwhelming to me. 

ADAM:  Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. I think the concept of the IEP is so basic. It’s an individualized education program. Everybody should have that, whether they’re general education, special education. And sometimes teachers and adults look at a student who’s succeeding academically and assume that they’re fine without looking at the whole individual. And so this goes back to the concept of the IEP too, because it’s meant to address academics, social skills, and emotional and behavioral skills. So we need to be looking at the whole child and understand what makes them tick, what makes them struggle, bring out their strengths and help them in areas of difficulty. 

KRISTINE:  We’ve talked about the different things that you experienced as a young child. And you personally, in many of our conversations, we talked about a moment where a spiral began to happen for you as you were in high school. And I know that that’s also going to lead up to us talking about law school and how things changed again for you at that point. But can you talk a little bit more about that moment in high school when you recognized the spiral that was occurring? 

ADAM:  Definitely high school and law school were two pivotal points. High school, I was 17 years old. I was in my room and my childhood home. It was late at night. I think everybody else was sleeping. I was obsessing about something. I don’t remember what. And I got really worked up about it, really angry. I was trying to understand. I remember looking in the mirror, sitting in a swivel chair, looking in the mirror, trying to understand what is happening with me right now. What is this about? And I couldn’t make any sense of it. And I was shaking a little bit and I wanted to escape from whatever I was tangled up with. But I didn’t know how to do that. I looked up and I said something along the lines of help me use this pain for something. Help me use this pain to do something meaningful. I want to do something that matters and I want others to not have to experience this. So when I look back, everything we do today and have been doing for the last 16 years stems from that moment, it was a commitment that I made to use what I’d been through to help people. And I think when you experience something like that, it carves out empathy inside of you. And so I like to think that, and you can check me on this, but I like to think that that empathy shows up in the work we do every day and the way we are with our clients from the very beginning, even the first meeting when we’re speaking with a new parent or a parent who’s new to our office. It’s hard and parents need people who understand and are committed to guiding them through this process with sensitivity. 

KRISTINE:  Absolutely. I feel like you and I first connected when I shared my story about battling OCD for most of my life and that I feel like open to door. So I can certainly say as your assistant, if that opened the door for me to feel like I can have conversations with you, I think from a client perspective, the impact of having you share your experiences the way that you are today, I think that that is profound. 

ADAM:  And I’ll just be real vulnerable for a second. I do public speaking. In other words, I’m not Tony Robbins, but I am before judges and do give presentations and that comes with the territory for attorneys. Right. I also do podcasts regularly. I’m used to the microphones and the lights and all that. And yet it can be hard. It is hard. I want people who are sitting with this right now and it feels like a huge burden because it’s internalized and they haven’t brought in other people or reached out for resources. I understand that it’s hard to talk about it. And we were chatting a little bit at the start of the episode. I mentioned that I’m not a person who has decades of experience talking about my OCD with other people. I’ve only started speaking out about this over the last few years. And I’m a baby in that sense. I’m still feeling it out. Right. Getting used to it, getting comfortable. So it’s interesting to do this conversation at that stage. You’re going to fumble around a little bit. The words are not going to come out readily at first. It’s going to feel awkward, but it does get easier the more you talk about it. Now I will say that for me at least, right, I can only share my personal experience, but from the moment I started talking about it with other people, the burden lessened. 

KRISTINE:  Absolutely. 

ADAM:  And has lessened exponentially the more I’ve embraced it and understood it and spoken with people about it. 

KRISTINE:  One of the things I think that people feel when people start to recognize that, hey, there is something going on. There’s a feeling of isolation. There’s a feeling that you are in it by yourself and that there’s no possible way anyone else could ever understand what it is that is happening. I know for myself that was one of my biggest things. I can recall spending hours and hours, hours, days probably of my time thinking, am I crazy and I don’t know it? And one day somebody’s going to just come and say, hey, you shouldn’t be out in gen pop. You need to be someplace else. All of those feelings of being alone, those only started to go away from me when other people shared their stories. One of the things I think with anxiety and OCD is that you are often in an uncomfortable space, whether you want to be or not. They just happen. It’s very individual. What is uncomfortable for you may not be uncomfortable for me or what is comfortable for you may be uncomfortable for me. And so I think that this feeling of sharing your story, as you said, feels uncomfortable. But the more you do it, the more comfortable you begin to feel in that space. Or I hope that when you stop and think about where you were in the beginning to where you are now, all of the things that you’ve done, you’re sharing your story, you’re talking about things openly, even though it’s still not something that feels 100% natural, the impact that you’ve made, the lives that you’ve changed is absolutely profound. 

ADAM:  I don’t know what to say to that. It’s nice to hear. So all I ever wanted to do and this stuff builds momentum. You open the door for me to have this conversation. I can’t tell you enough how much your passion and commitment for the work we do elevates the work that we do. 

KRISTINE:  I’ve said so many times that there are jobs everywhere. And many of the things that I do could be applied into so many different fields. And one of the things when you talk about passion, and I know that this is something that’s similar for you that drives you, is that at the end of the day, even when I’m exhausted or I know I still have things that have to get finished, and some of these tasks are not necessarily fun. But at the end of the day, does it not revitalize you when you think, hey, I changed the life of a child today for the better. 

ADAM:  One thing people may not know about this area is that it’s an annual process and families keep looking to us to help secure or maintain their children’s education from year to year. And the result is that we get to see the fruits of our labor and the fruits of the students’ labor. As they’re growing, developing, succeeding from one year to the next, parents are keeping us in the loop about that. And so I can’t think of many fields that are that way where you really get to see the effect your work is having, and that’s so incredibly rewarding and meaningful. 

KRISTINE:  And it drives you. Totally. It really is what keeps you going. 

ANNOUNCER:  Definitely. If you like what you are hearing, please let us know by subscribing to our podcast and letting others know about it too. If you have thoughts, questions, comments, or would like to suggest ideas for a future episode, we’d love to hear it. So email your feedback to podcast at Dayanlawfirm.com. 

KRISTINE:  So we’re talking about those moments that really grab hold and really just reaffirmed the work that we’re doing. I know that there is a case for you that stands out in your mind to this day that really reaffirms how important the work is that we do. 

ADAM:  Yes, there is. There’s a girl who’s one of the most severely impaired clients we’ve ever had. And I’d say at this point, we’ve been representing her for well over a decade. She probably started with our firm when she was three or four years old. She had been getting a robust array of services, all kinds of therapies and special instruction, 40, 50 hours a week, maybe more over a 52 week school year, mind you. So most students get 10 months of instruction. Some cases you can get 46 weeks of instruction. We had secured for this child 52 weeks of instruction. So it gives you a sense of house of really impaired. As we said before, it’s an annual process. And each year you can get a different hearing officer. 

KRISTINE:  Most years you do get a different hearing officer. 

ADAM:  And it’s possible to get a different outcome. And one particular year, we did get a different outcome. The hearing officer reduced the services that this girl was entitled to. The parents were devastated. We take the hits really hard too. This was a child who needed the full level of support for her own safety and the safety of others. When there was a gap, she started harming other people. And in some cases, harming herself. And so the parents were very nervous about what this would mean for her. 

KRISTINE:  Regression can happen very, very quickly. 

ADAM:  Yes, it can. We regrouped. We secured updated expert evaluations and expert witnesses. We got creative and presented the case again. And we were able to get back what that hearing officer had taken away. And I can’t tell you how much it means to be able to do that and to see what it means to the family to achieve that. This girl needed these services for the reasons we’ve just said. And we fought hard. We weren’t going to let them down. We got the services back and that girl is getting what she needs. And so going through that process, working so closely with the family, really understanding the child’s specific needs, which we strive to do with every single child we represent, not just what are they good at at school or what sort of therapies do they need, but what are they interested in? What gets them going? What are they doing there? Every time, who is this person that you’ve come to us to help you with? So it feels really good to get to the other side of the hearing process and be able to deliver the result that the family needs and that the child needs to continue flourishing. 

KRISTINE:  Yes. And I want to say that in this child’s case, in particular, with her needs, it became a parent almost immediately when those services were reduced, the impact that they were going to have. But there are also cases where that impact of reduced services or never being provided those services may not be as obvious upfront, but down the road is where they will become more and more recognizable. And I feel like it’s important for us as well to say that we recognize that as a firm. Totally. And it’s part of the reason I think that it’s so important that parents who are going through this process realize just how helpful coming to a firm like ours can be for them. I know we’ve jumped around a little bit, but that’s inevitable. We do that so often in our conversations on a daily basis. Let’s go back and let’s talk about what changed for you when you reached law school. So you’ve had that moment when you were spiraling and you recognized that this was big. This was something that was big for you. You knew that this was going to be something that’s going to help change the direction of the path you’re going in life. So when you got to law school, what changed for you even more so? 

ADAM:  Law school amplified everything. So even for someone who doesn’t have OCD law school can be intense. And for me, the perfectionist that I was, I wanted to read every line perfectly and the reading homework was voluminous. And remember every piece of information and note it down, keep everything organized. And it was time consuming. It was taxing. It made forced me to see that the tools I had used or been relying upon up to that point were not going to serve me going forward. I knew something had to change. And I decided that I wanted to speak with a professional. 

KRISTINE:  And what did that look like for you when you finally recognized that you needed more support that that all of the coping skills that you had developed thus far were not going to cut it anymore. 

ADAM:  First, I’m going to take this opportunity to pat myself on the back because sitting here now talking to you 20 years later, I’m proud of myself for getting to that point of realization and being able to say, I need to speak with someone who’s more expert than me about this. It’s really hard to come to that point. It is so hard. I mean, this is something that I’ve been managing with since at least nine years old and to be able to take ownership of that. This is what it’s about. It’s about taking ownership and to say, I see what’s going on. I need to do something different. I’m going to reach out and figure out what this is and what I have to do about it. There’s such power, such tremendous power in being able to do that. 

KRISTINE:  Absolutely. It really is a pivotal moment that I think everyone who is battling with anxiety, OCD, depression, various mental health issues, that moment needs to occur before any real meaningful change can happen. So let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about what that was like for you, beginning therapy, finding someone that you were able to establish a rapport with that you felt comfortable enough to have the hard conversations with. What did that look like for you? 

ADAM:  It was incredibly liberating and I’ll explain why. I think lots of people struggling with something have a version of am I crazy going through their heads and it’s wonderful to be able to answer that in the negative and say, no, I’m not crazy. I have this specific issue and I’m getting the clarity I need to work on it. And that’s what reaching out and getting a diagnosis was for me. Probably at that point, OCD was something I had suspected but had not gotten confirmation on and from this profession, I got confirmation. Some people are afraid of labels. I was so happy to have one because it narrowed down the territory I knew what I was dealing with and could begin the conversation of, okay, what do we do now? And the conversation revolved around OCD tools. What is effective for managing this? How do I practice those tools? How do we assess progress? What should I expect the outcomes to be? 

KRISTINE:  I think that getting that label, as you said, some people feel uncomfortable having that label and or some people worry about what comes with that label, the stigma that is often attached to it, it can open up a whole new can of worms, so to speak. But I think knowing that you have an idea of what it is that you need to work on, knowing that you have something tangible now instead of all of the what ifs and wonder about what it is that’s going on with you really is a moment that makes such a difference for people who are struggling with these kinds of things. Just knowing that, hey, this is what’s going on with you and it’s very recognizable. It means number one, you’re not alone. Other people have experienced it, so you’re not alone in going through what you’re going through, which is just, oh my gosh, the sense of relief that you feel from that is just incredible. Just knowing that you can see the path that you’re going to go down is life changing. I commend you for being able to recognize on your own that you had been going through all of this and to be able to take that step even further and find the support on your own to do that. I didn’t have to do that. Thankfully, I was younger when that moment came for me and I had said to my mom that I needed help and she was the one who was able to find that support for me. And so I didn’t have to go through that piece of it. And I feel like truly honestly, if I did have to, I’m not sure I would have because that feels overwhelming. But to hear you talk about doing that, picking up the phone, looking at the computer, doing your research, finding the resources yourself, it’s doable. 

ADAM:  Yeah, it’s doable. OCD is something that sneaks up on you. And I remember when I was younger thinking, how am I going to be successful when this thing pops up out of nowhere at the most unexpected inopportune moments? I thought I was going to have a regular day today and then out of nowhere, this sneaks in. And when you figure out what’s going on, you start to realize, as you said, you’re not alone. There are other people who are dealing with this too. And you can still be successful. You can manage this thing. You can manage this thing and be successful. And successful means a lot of different things. There’s successful in relationships. There’s successful in work. There’s successful with friends. There’s successful in self-esteem. There’s so many types of successful and OCD doesn’t have to get between you and that. 

KRISTINE:  Right. So we talked a little bit about how you sought therapy and we’re able to get some help from professionals who are a little bit better equipped to handle some of the things that you were struggling with. How has therapy and the tools that you’ve gained as a result of that helped you to recognize and redirect? 

ADAM:  I want to frame my answer in terms of the pause. And what that means is the distance between when an anxious feeling comes on and the temptation to do a compulsion and being able to stop in that moment and say, wait, is this compulsion really what I want to be doing right now? Because usually the desire to do a compulsion is a sign that there’s some underlying emotion that’s not getting acknowledged. So being able to stop in that way and say, you know what, this is my brain’s way of telling me that there’s some really important thing under the surface that I’m not paying enough attention to and I’m going to zone in on that because once you do, you start feeling less anxious and the need for the compulsion fades away. 

ANNOUNCER:  If you like what you are hearing, please let us know by subscribing to the Curious Incident Podcast and letting other special needs parents know about it too. Give you a thoughts, questions, comments, or would like to suggest ideas for a future episode, we’d love to hear it. So email your feedback to podcast at Dayanglawfirm.com. 

KRISTINE:  That actually leads me to the next question that I have. You had previously shared a very vulnerable story with me. Your grandmother passed earlier this year and there was a moment shortly after your grandmother’s passing that had occurred and I was wondering if you would feel comfortable enough to share a little bit about that moment because it is a very recent experience for you and I think it really helps to show our listeners that this is still an ongoing battle and it’s something that you will always likely have to manage. 

ADAM:  Yeah, so let’s talk about Grandma Frida. My Grandma Frida was a sweetest old lady, lived to 101, had a great life, dealt with tough times in the sense that her husband, my grandpa, passed away when he was only 53 I believe and she was left with five kids whom she gave all her energy to and stayed single for the rest of her years. Up until three months before she died, she was in great condition, all things considered cognitively there, present. She remembered everything warm, loving, wonderful. She had her ailments, she was frail, hearing loss, arthritis on the whole, she was in great shape. Then she had a stroke and didn’t recover from it, watching her over those last three months was really difficult but I’m grateful for those moments with her even in the hospital as hard as it was to see her in that state. So she dies and I’m thinking this is not sad. I’m going to miss her. She lived to 101, she had a good life, health, family surrounded by love. We should celebrate her, we should celebrate that. It’s two days before her memorial service. So it’s five days after her funeral. I’m standing in front of my closet, trying to pick out my clothing for the work day and I’m stuck. I can’t think straight. I’m obsessing over what I’m going to wear. All I want to do is an eye compulsion and I tell you, I have gotten this thing under control. This doesn’t happen to me often anymore. So the surprise me came out of nowhere and it was strong. I hadn’t felt this way in a long time. I should do it. I should check my eyes. Is the right, seeing the same as the left, maybe they’re blurry. I do it once, I do it twice, I do it three times and I’m feeling guilty because I’ve worked so hard not to do these compulsions. This is not healthy or productive. And then I said, wait a second. Something is off here. It’s not about the eyes. This is my way, my brain’s way of saying there’s something, there’s something I’m ignoring. So I pulled myself away from the closet, went to my bedroom, only down on my bed, started crying a little bit. Eyes are closed, thinking about my grandma, just letting the memories flood over me and it feels good. It feels like I’m letting my body do what it wants to do. I don’t care that you live to 101. I don’t care that we’re celebrating her life. She’s gone now. That feels sad. I’m going to miss her. My body wants to do this. So I let it and the tension started to melt away. I didn’t feel like I needed to do a compulsion anymore. It was hard for me for whatever reason to bring myself to that place of just being with it. It’s not like I was consciously denying it. It was below my awareness. I didn’t realize that this is what I needed. It felt good to be able to see that and sit with it. 

KRISTINE:  I’d like to recognize you talked a little bit about seeing your grandmother in the state that she was in after she had the stroke, the medical, the machinery, the tubes, seeing her not getting better, but instead declining slowly. It’s really difficult because as human beings, our brains can recognize something. But the emotion that comes with that recognition doesn’t always happen immediately. When you talk about that moment before her memorial service, when you were feeling obsessive over what you were going to wear, that you felt the need to do that old, reliable compulsion, the one that you know, you felt those senses of relief from so many times, to me, as you were just telling that story, what I was hearing was that you had then been carrying all of the emotion for the past three months. And we’re also conflicted as human beings when we hear of a loved one or a friend who has passed away at an elderly age. We think it’s not really tragic in the sense that they’re gone too soon. But it is still sad and it’s okay to still be sad because somebody who is 101 years old, yes, we can recognize that they lived a great long life. We know that she had a family who clearly loved and adored her. And that’s a wonderful thing. And we can also recognize that it’s sad that she’s now gone because those moments are now memories. And I think it’s important that we say two things can be true at once. It’s lovely that she had such a long life, but it’s also okay for us to still feel sad and mourn and grieve for someone who had a long, lovely life. And I think that that’s a conflicting emotion that occurs. So I think some of that was some of what you were also probably carrying around with you. But to have that moment in that moment when you were already dealing with so much. To have the knowledge of being able to recognize what was happening and then to allow yourself that pause, I want to commend you for that. To being able to do that. And to be able to share that story as well because as somebody who has battled with OCD, I know that guilt is something that you carry around frequently. And it’s a battle in and of itself. And so to have that moment when you felt like, oh my gosh, I’ve reverted back to that person who who does the eye compulsions. Are you kidding me? And then you feel like a failure because you you went there and you thought I’m never going to have to go there again because you got the help you got therapy. You you sought everything from the professional who could help you and you have all the tools in your basket now. And yet you still went there. I know what that’s like to feel that sense of defeat. I want to commend you for sharing that with us because to know that it’s something that is so recent, it’s difficult to share experiences as a child and things that you went through in life, but to share something that is so fresh is really helpful because that is something that I think a lot of people don’t talk about as well. The setbacks, if you will, those moments when you feel like you’ve taken three steps back instead of continuing to move forward and the guilt that comes from those feelings. It’s a really, really tough thing to navigate. And I think it’s wonderful that you shared that with us. Thank you. Grandma Frida sounds like she was a wonderful person. 

ADAM:  She was. 

KRISTINE:  Thank you. So let’s talk about the firm. When you started the firm, what kind of practice did you want to build? What did it look like in your mind? 

ADAM:  I started the firm in 2009 and I knew for a long time that I wanted to work with people. I was never interested in transactional work. And to me, meaningful work involves helping people with something that’s deeply personal to them and having that connection, that spark, that fuel that we talked about earlier. We try to focus everything we do on the child. And at the end of the day, every meeting we have, every legal strategy we debate, every expert we speak with, it’s all to help a child get a quality education. These kids have strengths that they can access to transform their lives. And we get to be a part of that process to help them get there. And it’s still very important to me for parents to know that we’re there for them. They’re not alone. They have a support system and for them to feel that they’re getting care, attention, and clarity from our team. Because it is a complicated process. It can feel overwhelming. Parents oftentimes come to us feeling exhausted and sometimes desperate. And we get to assure them that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel that we can help them get to a better place. And they don’t have to shoulder this all by themselves. They don’t have to know all the answers. And they definitely don’t have to have everything figured out before making a phone call. And parents have the power. They are in a position to assemble the team they want to get their children what they need. 

KRISTINE:  What does that look like that first conversation that you have with a parent? 

ADAM:  That first meeting is really about listening and understanding what the parent has been through up to this point and who they’re fighting for. What is their child like? As I said earlier, what are they interested in? What are their hobbies? What are they strong in? What are they struggling with? And another part of that meeting is assuring them that they’ve come to the right place. I mean, at this point, we’ve been doing this work for a decade and a half. And every child is unique. Every case is unique. And at the same time, we’ve probably seen many cases similar to the one that they’re presenting with. And we talk about what they’re hoping to achieve. And sometimes they know exactly what they want to achieve, whether it’s a particular school or a service. And sometimes they don’t know at all. They just know that the current program is not working. Both are fine. You can come with a specific outcome in mind or not know just the fact that you’re picking up the phone is a huge step. And then we go from there and we talk about what we can help them achieve and how we would go about doing it. I want parents that I’m meeting with to feel a sense of relief that they’ve reached a team that gets it and can help them figure out next steps. 

KRISTINE:  Perfect. All right. So we’re in the home stretch. When you reflect on your work, what makes you most proud? 

ADAM:  I’m really proud that we are there for families. I’m super proud of our clients growth and success, what the students accomplish year after year, academically, socially, emotionally. It’s beautiful the way they’re unlocking their potential and talents. I’m really proud of the team that we’ve built. I think we’ve got an incredibly caring, passionate, dedicated team of people who want to support families navigating this process and help their children. And when I think back to that moment at 17 years old wanting to use that to do something meaningful, I’m just proud of what we’ve built together because it’s exactly what I hoped to be able to make out of that experience. 

KRISTINE:  Absolutely. If you can share something you want parents who are listening right now to know if they feel alone or unsure what would be one thing of advice that you can share with us. 

ADAM:  I don’t know that I can stop at one thing, but let’s see what I got. First of all, you’re not alone. There are many professionals out there who want to help you figure this stuff out. Second, you need to be talking to people who get where you are. There are parents who have children with similar issues, experts who can help you clarify what’s going on if you’re confused. But make sure you’re talking to people who get it. And that will definitely help with any feelings of being alone. This is not your burden to carry all on your own. You don’t have to figure everything out. I understand the temptation to want everything figured out, but that’s not your responsibility. Reaching out goes a long way. Trust your instincts. You know your child best wherever you are in your journey. Know that it can get better. So I just want to thank anybody who is listening for tuning into this episode. I’ll pass it off to Christine in a moment for the final wrap up. But if this helps one listener out there, it will mean the world to me personally. And I wish you good luck taking one step at a time, figuring this out, and knowing that there are people who want to make it easier for you. 

KRISTINE:  Absolutely. Well said. Well, Adam, I want to say thank you. I want to say thank you for so many things, but I want to say thank you today because you allowed me the opportunity to sit on this side and to speak to you and learn things about you. I think in a way that have really opened up my eyes and I think will really open up the eyes of our listeners who may not have realized until now that we are more than just a law firm. We are people who truly care about their children and the well-being of their children. We care about the families that we are helping and we want to make whatever we can easier for them so that they can go back to being parents and enjoying their children the way they were meant to. 

ADAM:  It feels appropriate to end on the image of opening your eyes given the specifics. 

KRISTINE:  I didn’t even see what I did there. 

ADAM:  Of what we’ve discussed in this episode, I want to shine a light on OCD. If you know of any resources that would be helpful to people with OCD, please send them over to us at podcast at dianlawfirm.com. 

KRISTINE:  I want to say that I look forward to continuing to make a difference in the lives of our clients and even for those who aren’t our clients. If we’re making a difference for you, that’s exactly what we want. Thank you so much. 

ADAM:  And you are a wonderful guest host. Thank you so much for doing this. 

KRISTINE:  Thank you. 

ANNOUNCER:  Thanks for listening to Curious Incident, a podcast for special needs families. Don’t forget to subscribe for a new episode every month. For more resources and helpful information, check out our website and blog at dayanlawfirm.com. This podcast provides general information which is not intended to and does not constitute legal advice. You should not rely on this information for any purpose. For legal counsel, you should consult with an attorney to discuss your specific circumstances. You are listening to this podcast does not create an attorney-quiet relationship between you and the law offices of Adam Dayan, PLLC. No attorney-client relationship is established unless a retainer agreement has been executed between the clients and the law offices of Adam Dayan. This podcast may constitute attorney advertising. For our results, do not guarantee a similar outcome. Any guest featured or resources mentioned on this podcast are for information purposes and are not endorsed by the law offices of Adam Dayan PLLC.