To the outside world, Kat Brown was a professional success. What her colleagues didn’t know, however, was how much effort it was putting her through. “I had this kind of nagging voice in my head: ‘You’re not good enough, you’re not normal, you have to try five times harder than everyone else,'” says Brown, author of the ADHD memoir It’s Not. A bloody trend. “The only way I could calm him down was with alcohol, and along with alcohol, coffee. It was how I left my brain to do what I wanted.”
That meant downing as many as nine Americans a day, relaxing with drinks after work — and sometimes bursting into tears of exhaustion when she got home. It wasn’t until she was diagnosed with ADHD at age 37, shortly after quitting her media job and becoming a freelancer, that it all started to make sense. Some people with ADHD, she explains, find that caffeine helps stabilize rather than stimulate an already agitated mind. Meanwhile her anxiety, she thinks, reflected a sense that she was different and a terror of being somehow exposed.
However, four years later, Brown has learned to see the advantages of her neurodivergent brain. “A friend I used to work with said, ‘you have so many strings to your bow you’re practically a harp,’ and I think a lot of people with ADHD have that Swiss army knife mentality of, ‘OK this is the situation. what am I supposed to do here?’”
Her busy mind likes to multi-task, making her very productive and she thrives on deadlines. “As long as I have a constant amount of work to do and tasks to complete, that’s great. When I really struggle is when I run out of work.” She has learned to make a detailed weekly schedule, filling the empty time with tasks to keep herself motivated.
Rising diagnosis rates for both ADHD and autism in adults—a 2021 study found that autism diagnoses increased 787% between 1998 and 2018—are prompting a new understanding of the hidden role neurodiversity plays in working life, both for better and for worse. Comedian Fern Brady, who was diagnosed as autistic at the age of 34, has described how “everything in my personality that caused me trouble at university or most jobs” seemed like a magical power in standup. Chef Heston Blumenthal, who has ADHD, credits his “very busy head” with helping him make creative connections.
However, not everyone is so lucky. A US study found that workers with ADHD were 60% more likely than neurotypical staff to be fired and three times more likely to quit impulsively, while in the UK research suggests that only 30% of working-age autistic Britons have a job despite most saying they want one. Unhelpful stereotypes such as the idea that autistic people are better suited to solitary data-gathering jobs still persist, says Richmal Maybank, employment engagement officer at the National Autistic Society (NAS), which has supported people in fields from the arts creative to cognitive behavioral therapy. . Meanwhile, fear of discrimination prevents some from disclosing a diagnosis or exercising their legal right to request “reasonable adjustments” at work — often small changes that make a surprisingly big difference.
An autistic healthcare professional supported by Maybank was so afraid of misunderstanding the social norms of office tea that she dared not drink a hot drink at work. “She had to travel to clinics and there were a lot of different rules — one used a kitty system, the other you had to be careful which cup you used,” says Maybank, who explains that deciphering the unspoken rules can be harder for some autistic people. . “She said, ‘do I make a cup of tea for the person sitting next to me or for the whole room?’ Trying to understand that it was so stressful, she said it was easier to never have a cup of tea.” NAS will help firms compile an “initial checklist” for new recruits that explains this kind of informal etiquette alongside formal work.
Since both autistic people and those with ADHD can be hypersensitive to bright lights and noises, Maybank also often recommends warmer office lighting, letting people start work early when it’s quiet, or turning off the radio of the office and allowing staff to listen to music with headphones.
But for many neurodivergent workers, the biggest hurdle is landing a job. A recent government-commissioned review into autism and employment, led by former cabinet minister Robert Buckland, found that autistic graduates were twice as likely as their non-autistic peers to not have found a job after 15 months , with many feeling “they have to mask autistic traits to succeed”.
Buckland, whose daughter is autistic, insists his report is not about forcing anyone to take away benefits at work, but about helping people who “suffer from being able to have a job and enjoy the same quality of life that other people take for it. given.” Sometimes, he says, that means a supported job (about a third of autistic people also have a learning disability). But for others, it simply means making inclusivity “a normal part of recruiting” for everyone. His report recommends that candidates see interview questions in advance so they can prepare and set more practical interview tasks that focus less on social “fit” and more on what applicants can do in it. really. However, his finding that autistic people are likely to be disproportionately overqualified for the jobs they are in suggests that, even once hired, some still face subtle barriers to promotion.
Jo Desborough is a neurodiversity coach, working with employers and employees to help bridge the gaps. Desborough herself is autistic and still remembers being punished as a child for talking in class. The teacher said, “Who is speaking?” so I raised my hand and got a detention. I was bored”, she remembers. Confused, she asked him why he was being punished for answering honestly. “And suddenly now I’m labeled ‘challenging’ and all I’ve done is try to figure out what I did wrong. If that teacher had said ‘stop talking,’ I would have understood.” In the workplace, this tendency to tell the literal truth—rather than tell managers what they want to hear—can sometimes hurt promotion prospects even though honesty is potentially very valuable to an employer, she points out.
Clare McNamara, a neurodiversity coach with whom Desborough often collaborates and who was diagnosed with ADHD and some autistic traits in her 50s, points out that coaching isn’t about “fixing” people, but building up points. their strong. “Being able to say to somebody, ‘tell me how you experience things, what are your strengths, what do you do in this kind of situation, what can we borrow from this to apply this?’ – it’s almost like they’ve been given permission to be authentically themselves.”
McNamara specializes in coaching senior executives who have been successful in some ways because of their neurodiversity and in other ways despite their peers’ reaction to it. She says: “They can be very good at seeing the bigger picture, good strategic thinkers. They are often good at bringing people along and are very devoted. They will work very hard, very innovatively.” However, even for high achievers, feeling forced to act at work in ways that don’t come naturally can be exhausting. Both she and Desborough say they set firm boundaries and pace their workloads to avoid feeling overwhelmed.
For employees who don’t have as much control over their hours and worry about coming across as neurodivergent, Desborough suggests asking for adjustments without specifying exactly why you want to (for example) wear noise-canceling headphones or work partially from home.
For Brown, working from home allows her time for exercise — which helps her focus — and also crucially allows her to manage the odd energy slump. If she had been diagnosed before she went freelance, she’s not sure she would have felt confident telling an employer. Yet in many ways, she still wishes she had known him sooner. “The main thing that would have changed, apart from removing that desperate need to prove myself, is that I could have been a little bit happier.” Isn’t that what we all want from work after all?