Jun 3, 2026 · 40 min · 11 segments
Lindsay Scola on late diagnoses, medical gaslighting, and never taking "you're fine" for an answer Have you ever known something was wrong — in your body, your gut, your bones — and had someone else…
Lindsay ScolaGuestMeghan French DunbarHostWhen we feel those, a lot of us just say like, this is par for the course.
When in reality, we're neurodivergent and we are really struggling in a system that isn't built for us to be able to thrive within it.
And I'm curious, as you were going through this, at least my experience, growing up as a people-pleasing woman who was not allowed to make people uncomfortable, the idea of pushing back, on medical professionals and people who are perhaps in the wrong.
Did you have any of that? And how did that feel for you? And were you in relationship with the former doctors at all at that point?
You know, the thing about the work that I was doing in the political world is that I was moving a lot.
So I would be someplace for a year or, you know, maybe two years, but never longer than that.
So I was... didn't have doctors for long periods of time now the the doctor that eventually got me to the sleep specialist she remained my gp for a number of years after that and so you know she got to learn what narcolepsy was along with me um but i you know i didn't have that moment of being able to go back to doctors who had completely dismissed me and say like look there was a thing there um I did a lot of people pleasing, uh, earlier before the mask sort of fell off, uh, with the ADHD.
Um, you know, I, I am grateful to parents who made sure that they, they, they told me that I was to, I was supposed to be an advocate for myself and when, when I needed them, they were going to be an advocate for me too.
And, you know, I took my school on about this and the school board and, you know, my parents were standing there right behind me.
ended up getting my first job with NARAL Pro-Choice Washington while I was a senior in high school to make sure that we had medically and scientifically accurate sex education in Washington state.
So I didn't know that I should be pushing back harder on how I felt about my sleepiness and neither did my parents.
When we feel those, a lot of us just say like, this is par for the course.
When in reality, we're neurodivergent and we are really struggling in a system that isn't built for us to be able to thrive within it.
And I'm curious, as you were going through this, at least my experience, growing up as a people-pleasing woman who was not allowed to make people uncomfortable, the idea of pushing back, on medical professionals and people who are perhaps in the wrong.
Did you have any of that? And how did that feel for you? And were you in relationship with the former doctors at all at that point?
You know, the thing about the work that I was doing in the political world is that I was moving a lot.
So I would be someplace for a year or, you know, maybe two years, but never longer than that.
So I was... didn't have doctors for long periods of time now the the doctor that eventually got me to the sleep specialist she remained my gp for a number of years after that and so you know she got to learn what narcolepsy was along with me um but i you know i didn't have that moment of being able to go back to doctors who had completely dismissed me and say like look there was a thing there um I did a lot of people pleasing, uh, earlier before the mask sort of fell off, uh, with the ADHD.
Um, you know, I, I am grateful to parents who made sure that they, they, they told me that I was to, I was supposed to be an advocate for myself and when, when I needed them, they were going to be an advocate for me too.
And, you know, I took my school on about this and the school board and, you know, my parents were standing there right behind me.
ended up getting my first job with NARAL Pro-Choice Washington while I was a senior in high school to make sure that we had medically and scientifically accurate sex education in Washington state.
So I didn't know that I should be pushing back harder on how I felt about my sleepiness and neither did my parents.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
