My oldest kid wrote this five years ago for the college application essay. It didn’t work for a college essay. But I was so glad to read it. If you haven’t read my first post on multiple personality disorder, you can read it here. I will answer any questions you have on this topic on Monday, Nov. 24 at 5pm Eastern. Zoom link forthcoming.
On my sixteenth birthday, my mother told me she has dissociative identity disorder. It means that she has multiple identities – alters – that’s what people with DID call them. She’s had it my whole life. DID only occurs when a person experiences such terrible trauma as a child that they create another person in order to hide from what is happening to them. Read more
photo by Joshua Sariñana
I have multiple personality disorder
I’ve actually known this since 2013 when a psychiatrist at Northwestern University told me.
At the time I told myself it’s a misdiagnosis and I have autism. I told myself mental health professionals are so stupid and they are always misdiagnosing everyone and I have to figure out everything myself. I spent the next decade figuring out everything about autism.
I figured out my whole family has autism. I put myself and my kids on medicine for ADHD. I turned my career into identifying autism and being frustrated that people didn’t believe me when I told them. They’d say, “How do you know?”
I’d be incredulous: “I’VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR YEARS. IT’S SO EASY FOR ME TO SEE!” Read more
Screenshot from Ray Dalio’s video on economics
I tutor Art History Girl for six hours a day. It’s a lot of alone time to give up, but empty-nesting in my apartment took a turn for the worst when I agreed that for the last year of school Y could move back to my apartment with the boyfriend.
This year we’re doing AP World History.
During the unit about capitalism we watched cartoon videos that billionaire hedge-funder Ray Dalio made for members of Congress to learn how the economy works. In the videos everyone charges everyone money (“That’s the whole economy! It’s that simple!”) and it nagged at me that the boyfriend is not paying rent. Read more
Detail of The Rehearsal of the Ballet Onstage (1874) by Edgar Degas
Researchers studying autistic kids give secret autism tests to parents because it’s so easy to see that parents are autistic, but it’s such a huge pain to try to get the parents to understand. Think about it: no one benefits enough from telling you that you’re autistic that they are willing to try to convince you. But research becomes much more useful when we can label parents as autistic for studies even though parents would say it’s only their kid. Read more
The CDC’s fixation on Tylenol is a distraction. Every few years op-eds ask if Tylenol causes autism. The latest? Evidence inconclusive. Yes, autistic women take more Tylenol. And the debate stops right there.
Meanwhile, autistic women live in reality. The run on Tylenol is because doctors communicate poorly with autistic women. Autism is tied to chronic pain, gut issues, asthma, and PCOS — the impact on physical health is so significant that computers can pick out autistic people just by watching us walk. Read more
TIME magazine celebrated the 100 Most Influential Women with TIME’s Wealth Leadership Forum, where the message was clear: you’re incompetent at managing your money.
On stage, three unimpressive women scolded The Most Influential about risk-taking, wealth accumulation, and the dangers of not thinking ahead. Each of three panelists used trumped-up titles to hide the same formula: marry rich first, glossy career second. Read more
I was at the World Trade Center when it fell. I write about it every year on 9/11.
Nino and I are eating dinner while Y buzzes around the kitchen looking for something to take to his room.
Nino says to me, “What are you going to write about for 9/11? Read more
Nino says he’s having a heart attack. I laugh. He walks into my apartment and says, “I’ll just sit here a little.”
I have to put my head in my hands to give myself time to get rid of my smile. He asks if I’m crying. Read more
My son’s personality type is ISFJ. I’m an ENTJ. We’ve always worked well together: I could see where to climb, and he could see how to do it. I offended people, and he smoothed things over. At first his people-pleasing, detail-oriented nature made me think I was failing as a parent. Then I worried that we were such a good team that we’d become codependent.
Now that he’s in college, he doesn’t trust my plans. He relies on advice from friends at school who are obsessed with positioning themselves well for an AI-infused workforce. Read more
When you think about doing something remarkable, remember that remarkable results come from paths most people aren’t on.
Passion comes from hard work
Passion does not lead to hard work. So don’t tell yourself that you’re picking a path of hard work if you don’t know what you’re passionate about. Here are some examples in my life where this has been true:
My oldest kid didn’t choose to play violin. I chose it when they were three years old. But when they were twelve and I said they could quit, they didn’t want to. All that complaining about practice led to a passion for playing.
I didn’t choose to play volleyball. I was the tallest kid in my freshman class at college. The volleyball coach recruited me during orientation week. For the next two years I practiced on the side of the gym with a coach. No playing. By the time I graduated from college, all I wanted to do was play volleyball.
Many people who have exciting, engaging careers will tell you they “fell into it.” What that really means is that someone asked them to do something, and they decided to work hard at it. (One of the best stories of this phenomena is pro basketball player Khaman Maluach. An NBA scout in Uganda saw Maluach, age 14, and suggested he try basketball. So Maluach taught himself how to play from YouTube videos.)
Yearning for a result is not a passion
If you are not working very hard at something, you probably have a yearning (author, inventor, speaker, athlete, entrepreneur, influencer, etc.)
Passion is specific. Yearning is vague. Sometimes people say they are passionate about something so broad as to be meaningless. Like travel. Health. Writing. If you’re talking about something in such vague terms, then you have not spent a lot of time on it.
Passion is process
People who have a passion are constantly adjusting their process to get better and better at the daily tasks. Michael Jordan is famous for how he practiced. Mark Zuckerberg was writing code when he was a kid. Beyonce has been performing since childhood. When you focus on process every day, you are in the world of specifics and minutiae.
Passion and fun are not the same.
Going to a movie is fun. Taking a trip is fun. Fun people get invited to a lot of stuff. But passionate people are dangerous. They prioritize their passion before everything else. They are preoccupied. They are often a little crazy. This is why Michael Jordan wasn’t interested in his family, and Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t interested in college. And Beyonce is performing at her kid’s school fundraiser instead of just donating money.
Growth mindset is a disorder
The world is obsessed with growth mindset. We know that growth mindset is a combination of grit and passion. Which means that people with a growth mindset are the crazy, preoccupied, distracted types. Humanity would die if everyone had a growth mindset because we need most people to be caring about each other. So we’re lucky that most people don’t have a growth mindset.
Growth mindset is misogynist
The origin of growth mindset was a professor who was obsessed with her research and concluded that everyone should be like her. Twenty years later, educators and executives are beating the growth mindset drum like their lives depend on it. And they fork over millions in dollars a year to train everyone to have a growth mindset.
Men are much more likely to have a growth mindset than women. Someone who does not have a growth mindset has a fixed mindset. Both have equal levels of grit, but they apply that grit differently. How much passion you have determines if you have a fixed mindset or growth mindset.
People with a fixed mindset prioritize stability over personal growth. In fact, a fixed mindset is protective against terrible parenting. Because it’s impossible to be devoted to your kids if you’re devoted to your passion.
So why don’t we all shut up about growth mindset and passion? The people who have that type of brain already know it. And the people who have yearning and a fixed mindset are the ones who are caring, dependable, and connected.