Neurodiversity with Dr. Justin Lee
Listen to Full Episode Here
About My Guest
Dr. Justin Lee is a clinical psychologist and neuropsychologist, which basically means he's a big nerd about brains. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in pediatric neuropsychology and then stayed on as faculty at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.
After a number of years at OHSU, Dr. Lee and his family moved to the tiny island of Guam, where he now has a private practice serving the island community. He loves spending time traveling with his family, reading fantasy and sci-fi, and raising a little one.You can find Dr. Lee online at momentumpsych.net
In This Episode
Dr. Lee helps listeners understand the difference between psychology and neuropsychology, which has a more explicit focus on brain function. He helps to highlight the important message that neurodiversity covers vastly more than ADHD and Autism, two diagnoses included in this label. More helpful than seeing neurodiversity as a rigid cut off system for diagnoses, Dr. Lee uses the framing of thresholds--the differences we all have on various forms of brain functioning and neurology. When we learn to work within our thresholds, then we can strategically leverage our strengths, compensate for areas of relative weakness, and build overall resilience.
Dr. Lee discusses science as the perpetual pursuit of failure and nonjudgmental awareness as a helpful tool for evaluating our thresholds. He explores what failure can feel like when dealing with neurodiversity and how assessment can help individuals shift from an internal sense of failure to a sense of agency in managing the brain and nervous system they have.
Finally, Dr. Lee shares what it was like to move to a tiny island from an academic institution and how that shifted the course of his career. He graciously reflects on choosing to be a parent first in an academia and rejecting judgements that frame this as "failure." Being able to identify your priorities, make choices congruent with those priorities, and respond kindly to those who may not understand are all modeled with ease as Dr. Lee talks about finding contentment in different stages of life.
