EP105- Internalised Ableism, Burnout & Owning Your Soundtrack

Mad About with Maddy Alexander-Grout
Episode: Internalised Ableism, Burnout & Owning Your Soundtrack

💥 What this episode is about

This is a real, honest chat about internalised ableism — what it is, how it shows up, and why so many neurodivergent and disabled people end up pushing themselves to breaking point trying to “keep up.”

Maddy shares what this has looked like in her own life, from burnout and overworking to navigating new health challenges, and why learning your limits is actually where your power starts.

🧠 In this episode, we cover:

•  What internalised ableism actually means (and how it sneaks in) 
•  Why calling yourself “lazy” is complete bullshit 
•  The pressure to act “normal” in business and life 
•  Burnout, guilt, and the toxic productivity trap 
•  Learning your capacity and working with your energy, not against it 
•  Why rest is not something you need to earn 
•  The importance of boundaries, even in your business 
•  How community can help you unlearn ableist thinking 
•  The reality of advocating for yourself (and why it’s so hard) 
•  Accepting new diagnoses and evolving health challenges 

🔥 Key takeaways

•  You are not broken. Your brain just works differently. 
•  “Should” belongs in the fuck it bucket
•  Pushing through burnout is not strength, it’s self-abandonment 
•  Your worth is not measured by productivity 
•  You are allowed to do things in a way that actually works for you 
•  Support is not a weakness, it’s a strategy 

🎧 Maddy’s real-life moments in this episode

•  Navigating multiple chronic conditions and new diagnoses 
•  Coaching clients from bed on low-energy days 
•  Using a walking stick for the first time and dealing with the mindset around it 
•  Letting her community step in and support her 
•  Having honest conversations with her kids about her limits 

🌈 Big message

Owning your “soundtrack” means accepting every part of you — your brain, your body, your limits, and your strengths.

When you stop trying to fit into a world that wasn’t designed for you, you can finally start building one that is.

🧩 Resources & mentions

• Access to Work (UK) – Government support for disabled people in employment 
•  The Maddyverse – Free community for neurodivergent and chronically ill humans 
•  The Core – Paid membership focused on money, life, business, and support 

💬 Final thought

You don’t have to prove your worth by burning out.

You get to build a life and business that actually fits you.

📲 Connect with Maddy

•  Instagram: Maddy Talks Money
•  TikTok: Mad About Money Official
•  More: Maddy Alexander-Grout

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Visit Maddy's ⁠⁠⁠Stan Store⁠⁠⁠

Follow Maddy on ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Mad About. I'm Maddie Alexander Grout, and this is the podcast where we talk about all the things that we are mad about. It is your neurodivergent podcast. We focus on money, life, business. And today I want to talk to you a little bit about internalized ableism, where you kind of try, even though you're disabled, you may be neurodivergent, you might have hidden conditions or things that are going on in your world, you try to live up to the societal expectations of what a non-disabled person actually looks like. So you might, on a day-to-day basis, you might struggle through even though you're burning out. You might try and try and cope. You might beat yourself up about it, call yourself lazy, or like you try and overwork to prove your worth. I know that I am so bad at that because I give so much for free to my communities. By the way, if you haven't checked out my free community, the Maddieverse, go and check it out. It's for people who are neurodivergent, people who have chronic pain, chronic conditions, things that you're struggling with in life. Now you're burning out. You are constantly blaming yourself because you should be working harder. But we all know that it should needs to go in the fuck it bucket. When you're disabled, working to your own energy rhythms, your own flow, you kind of have to do what you what you can do. There's no like, let's push through this, let's burn out even more, because it just doesn't make sense. You you feel guilty because you're resting, you feel guilty because you're not doing the amount of work that should be done. Um, and it happens because we've grown up in a world that completely rewards productivity, which really sucks. But we can try and fix it. So if you are neurodivergent and you're not talking about the fact that you're neurodivergent, I'm not saying you have to, but owning that shit, own your soundtrack, own the fact that actually you do have a difference, a brain difference. You might have chronic conditions. Um, over the last couple of weeks, I have added some new chronic conditions to my fruit bowl, which is quite annoying. I don't really want to add any more. Um, I'm now on HRT, which is interesting. I've got patches all over my leg of dry skin. Not the one. Um, but also I was putting on my pajamas the other day and something tweaked in my back. And I have a bulging disc, a trapped nerve, um, a misaligned pelvis. Um, I have pain that goes all the way down my leg. I've got pain that goes into my groin. Um, I'm constipated to fuck, which is really not great because I'm on so many medications. Not that you guys needed to know that, but you know, it's a TMI. Um but pushing through that, I could I couldn't. So the good thing about that is that I have some passive income that, well, semi-passive, because I still have to actually show up a little bit, but from my membership, which is really nice. So I built this thing which is somewhere that people enjoy coming, they really like it, and you know, they also accept the fact that I'm disabled and I've got some things that that don't always work. So setting boundaries when you have internalized ableism, when you think that you are supposed to do something, I tell my membership that actually I'm really not very well, or my energy levels are broken, or like could we change this session to being on Zoom to being on the phone and I'll coach you from my bed because I don't want you to see me in my state of like pittedness. Pittedness is all we're kind of gonna go with. Make sure that you are getting support if you are disabled. Like, so many people won't speak up and they're struggling. They're struggling in the workplace, they're struggling to run a business, they don't know what's going on with their brain. So speak to people about coaching. Let look at access to work. Access to work is such a good resource for people who are disabled. If you're in the workplace and you are working, access to work is a government-funded grant that can help you to potentially get some support within the workplace. Fucking long waiting times. That's the only thing I will say. Stop it with the language, the bad language. You're not lazy. You're really not lazy. Like, you don't want to be typical or normal because actually, when you tell yourself that you're trying to be typical or normal, it doesn't work, especially in business. Like we have different brains, so we want to do things in a way that suits our brains, not in a way that actually limits us because that's really difficult. Like, start noticing the things that you are doing, the things that you've done, the things that you are overcoming, those hurdles, and start saying to yourself, Do you know what? I've done a really fucking good job considering. Like, you know, we do things despite our disabilities, not because of them. Um, and actually, like, we don't have to be stuck in that place where we're like, oh, I've got ADHD, the world is awful. Because there are so many positives when you've got ADHD. It really does help to actually accept that we're not, you know, we're not broken. We're not, we just have a brain that operates on a different frequency. So be around people who actually understand that you have limited capacity. Like my membership are absolutely bloody brilliant. Like the members of the core, like I say to them, I can't do this today, I can't do that today. People will step in. I've had other coaches come in to help me, I've had people like run my body doubling sessions for me if I can't do them. And yet, people still pay me because they know that when I do give, I really, really do give and that it's an amazing place to be. But sometimes my energy levels are fucked. Sometimes I can't walk. So last night I went to a gig and it was the first time that I was out with my walking stick. Now, I have bought a Rainbow Zebra walking stick so that I can feel cool because obviously, you know, you want to. But I still had in my mind, oh my god, like, are people gonna judge me? Are people gonna think I'm faking it? Like, you know, are people gonna think that I've, you know, I've just got in there to get accessibility stuff, like whatever. Like, you do have that internalized ableism where you're like, oh, it's a new thing. I have to like you kind of overcompensate a little bit. Um, I was like, I was really struggling standing up and I was too scared to go and ask them for a chair, but my friend went and asked them for a chair for me. It's like, why do we struggle to advocate for ourselves, but other people can advocate for us? So being in a situation where actually people can help you to advocate for yourself is is really a really good place to be. Um, but everything that you have inside of you can be unlearned. You can unlearn ableism. It's not a, you know, it's not something that you that you feel, like the internalized thing is like actually you you don't want to burn out. You don't want to be in situations where you feel like you don't fit in. And the workplace is horrible for this, the business world is horrible for this. So many accessible places that say that they're accessible, but then actually just because you don't feel normal or you're not the right standard of of inclusive, um, you don't you don't get that that spot. Um so the core, um which is my membership, which is like it's just a really nice place to hang out. It's full of neurodivergent, chronic condition people who just, you know, we get it, like parents, people who understand where you're at. Um, my my last six months has been pretty damn horrible. But one of the things that I've really learned about myself is what my own capacity is. So if you can learn what your capacity is, and learn to say no if you feel like you're pushing yourself too hard. That's a really important thing to do. Um, think about ways that you can actually celebrate your disability, celebrate your difference. Like I talk about ADHD on my TikTok channel, uh, Maddy Talks Money, um, on Instagram, Mad About Money Official on TikTok. I talk about everything that's going on in my life, like all of the stuff, because I feel like that helps people to feel less alone. Like you're not broken, you're not a fuck up, you're disabled. And by calling yourself broken, by calling yourself a fuck up, by saying that you do everything wrong, you are actually being ableist to yourself. That is what internalized ableism is. It's trying to ignore the fact that you're disabled and try and act like you're neurotypical or that you don't have a disability. When actually, if you are embracing it and you are being the real you, you are going out into the world being a proud disabled person. Like I am a proud disabled person. Like I will shout it from the rooftops, I will support disabled people until the cows come home. God, I've turned it to my mother by saying that. Um, but I it's it is very important that we learn about ourselves, learn about our conditions so that we can we can actually start changing the narrative. Like if you think of your life as a soundtrack, think about every single record, every single, every single piece of music that fits together in your life. Think about that, think about your soundtrack, all of the different things that have happened in your life, each one of those is a track. We can change that record, we can change that, we can amplify it. But unless you understand what's going on in your brain, what's going on with your body, like you can't, you can't understand that, and you can't change all of the things to make yourself fit into the world. So by accepting and by celebrating who you are and understanding that every single person's disability is different, like everybody's everybody's experiences is different, are different. You know, you have like just one person who's got ADHD is not going to present their symptoms or their you know the things that they go through in the same way because we've all got different lives, we've all got different things that we go through. Um, you know, I've got a list of conditions as long as you're arm. I've got PMDD, I've got I'm perimenopausal, I have Hashimoto's disease, um, I have um I'm autistic, dyspraxic, I've got dyslexia, dyscalculia, um, I've got um dysgraphia, which is problems holding a pen. Um, I am I've got OCD. What else have I got? Fuck. I mean, like there's so many things. Um I'm pretty sure I've got Earl's Dan loss as well, actually. So one of the things that um I've I've recently learned about all of my connective tissue and the fact that all of my joints and stuff pop out of place all the time is that that could actually be another disability that I've got. I mean, it's I don't think it's normal to be able to do that, is it really? Sorry for grossing you out, or like, you know, I'm incredibly, incredibly flexible. Um, I used to be able to put my legs behind my head, can't do that anymore, but I think that's mainly because of the fact that I have a belly now. Um, but my hips are misaligned, like I have this back problem. It's it's it's a it's a difficult situation when you have like new things. But I'm like, hey, do you know what? If I've got a new disability to add into my fruit bowl, um I I can talk about it more, I can help more people. So think about what your disabilities are. How can you help other people to feel less alone with the things that that are going on in your world? Like, you know, if I do get an early stem loss um diagnosis, which I think is like it's not just it's connective tissue, it's the the stuff like bowel problems and IBS and like heavy periods, and like I mean, there's a list of like 52 symptoms, and I tick like 49 of them, so I'm pretty sure that that's what it is. Um, but I'm just like, hey, you know, I'm gonna have to walk with a walking stick now because I've got to that point where my hips are really painful. Um, I have shooting pains down my legs, and I'm proud. I'm like, do you know what? Yeah, proud walking stick person here. I'm a proud neurodivergent. But you have to get to that point where you don't beat yourself up about being different. That's that's really what this is all about. Um, and I I have rambled a little bit today, um, but I felt like you all needed a little bit of um a little short maddy version, like just a bit of an update on things that are going on in my world. Um, Rufus, my dog, who you might have seen on social media, still a dickhead. Uh, children, still neurodivergent, still annoying, love it a bit, but fuck me, Easter holidays, like it's hard work, really hard work when you're disabled and neurodivergent, and also like can barely walk at the moment. So I'm feeling a little bit, I've been feeling like a bit of a useless parent, but again, that's internalized ableism. I'm not actually realizing that my capacity to look after my kids at the moment is slightly limited. So I have spoken to my kids about what my limits are, and my husband's helping me, and that's been really nice. Um, but it is it's something that we do need to be aware of. Like when things change in our bodies and things change in our brains, and when we're going through things, it's about having those very open conversations to say, I'm struggling, not how not holding it in, not being like, oh, I'm the shittiest business person in the world. I'm really shit with money, I'm like, I'm really not doing very well. Fucking find people to talk to about it, people who get it. Like my community, I do have a free version of my membership, which is the Maddiverse. It's just a place where you can come and you can talk to other people who are disabled, who have neurodivergent conditions, people who actually get it. Um, so you can come and come and hang out with us. Come and like just chill. Or if you want the extra, we've got the core, which is all about strengthening your core, funnily enough. Um, and that's not about strengthening your core as in like sit-ups and press-ups, it's not that kind of core. It's like your insides. I want to strengthen your insides so that you can be the person who you want to be. Um, and whether that is an amazing business person who can show up on social media and be fucking amazing, or um, whether it's just you want to be able to advocate for yourself in the workplace, or you want to have people that you can talk to about your problems, you can have people that you can talk to about your special interests and your hobbies without people going, oh my god, you're a fucking weirdo. Because we're not, we're neurodivergent. We have things that we want to talk about, and actually, it's embracing ourselves. So the core is£10 a month. Um, you can cancel any time if you don't like it. There's a WhatsApp support group, there's loads of trainings, we do group coaching, we do body doubling, um, we do um like just sessions where you can drop in and ask me anything. Um, it's focused on money, it's focused on life, it's focused on business. You don't have to be a business owner to come and hang out in the core. Um, it's all about you, the person. Um, we do do business trainings, but we also do trainings around things like parenting, um, well-being, like breathing, like how to actually exist when you have neurodivergent conditions. Um, but it's about being in a place where you've got a community where people actually understand you. And then you can start to turn off the internalized ableism because you're in a place where everybody understands. Um, and that's that's what it's all about. So, short one from me today. Um, sorry if I rambled, but lots of love to all of you. And uh I will see you on the next show. If you've enjoyed today, please subscribe, hit that like button, um, give us a follow, leave us a review, and uh yeah, follow me on my socials. Uh Maddie Talks Money on Instagram, Mad About Money Official on TikTok, and I'm Maddie Alexander Grout everywhere else. Um, thanks for listening, and I will see you next time.