In 2021 Angela Loucks Alexander spoke on Escaping the Hidden Prison of Auditory Processing Disorder.

If your auditory system works like a computer, your ears are the hardware and your brain is the software. Even when the ears hear normally, errors in the software (the processing) can interfere with understanding or remembering what was heard. This is called Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) and often leaves sufferers feeling isolated and disconnected.

One of the TEDxTauranga team members recently caught up with Angela to see how being involved with TEDxTauranga has impacted her both personally and professionally.

Read on for Angela's response below..

How has the TEDx Talk affected or changed your life?

I would say as a quote back, ‘how has giving a TEDx talk NOT changed my life?'

This has been one of the biggest game-changers in my life. First of all, it's a huge opportunity to figure out how to take something that swirls around in your mind all the time and distill it into 18 minutes. And so the distillation of your message is the first benefit of doing this work.

The other thing that this has done is it's provided me a platform unlike any I've ever had in my life before. I've never had this many people understand the message I'm trying to get across and do something to change their lives.

I've had people reach out to me from around the world, looking for auditory processing testing and treatment. I get Facebook messages, LinkedIn messages, emails from clinicians who say that, hey, they just saw a new client because they saw the TEDxTauranga talk, like nearly daily.

Let me tell you something nerdy, on my way to the TEDx dress rehearsal, I did an audio recording. And on that audio recording, I was like, Okay, what are the best things that could ever come from this event? What if two or 3000 people watch my TEDx Talk? What if literally hundreds of people watch my TEDx talk?

That would be mind-blowing! Next minute. Um.. over 1 Million views!

 I also said you know - what if I could do documentaries? what if I could do a reality TV series? What if I could publish a book? What if even one single person decides to seek out an assessment or treatment who hadn't ever heard about auditory processing before?  and I'm happy to tell you that my documentary is in the works and my book has just been published on Friday. (February 24th 2023)

This has been the best, but also sometimes the hardest thing I've ever done.

My book is a textbook so it's not going to have universal appeal. It's called therapy for auditory processing disorders. But stay tuned for bigger and better things.

One last thing that I want to say is that the TEDx process for most people is fraught with rejection. You apply, and you get rejected. You do a practice run, people tell you it's crap. It is mentally quite hard and I feel like I was really well prepared and supported, especially emotionally by I would say the whole TEDxTauranga team, It was a pain-for-growth kind of situation, but I highly recommend it.