Ep 14: Understanding AuDHD in the Real World – School, Work, Relationships and Burnout in ADHD, Autism & AuDHD

🎙️ Episode 14: AuDHD in the Real World – School, Work, Relationships and Burnout

Episode Summary

In this episode of The AuDHD Psych Podcast, clinical psychologist Aaron Howearth moves from talking about AuDHD traits in theory to how they actually show up across school, work, relationships, and daily life. He explores what school can look like for autistic, ADHD, and AuDHD kids behind the report cards: bright, capable students who miss key details because their attention is pulled to everything happening around them, collecting “failure” experiences and perfectionistic self‑criticism even when they’re genuinely trying. Aaron shares a primary‑school story about getting absorbed in playground handball, missing a chance to use the bathroom, then rigidly following a teacher’s “you should have gone at recess” rule and wetting himself in class, illustrating how interest‑based attention and autistic rule‑keeping can collide in inflexible systems.

He then looks at why neurodivergent students so often struggle more consistently than their neurotypical peers: the extra cognitive load of sitting still, suppressing stims, noticing every distraction, and trying to hold and process information in working memory at the same time. Aaron explains how people whose overall abilities are above average can still have relative weaknesses in working memory or processing speed that make standard classrooms and “just keep up with the teacher” delivery especially hard. Rather than framing these differences as laziness or defect, he reframes them as a mismatch between our cognitive profiles and systems designed by and for the statistical middle, and outlines practical accommodations like extra test time, movement breaks, and offering information in multiple formats.

Shifting into adulthood, Aaron discusses how the same patterns re‑emerge at work: fluorescent lights that trigger migraines, noisy open‑plan offices that overload attention, and instructions given in ways that don’t match a person’s processing style. He emphasises that adjustments like quieter rooms, flexible lighting, clear written instructions, and task structures that fit how someone’s brain works are not special treatment but good workplace design.

Key Themes & Takeaways
Executive Functioning & School – How distractibility, missed details, and perfectionism shape self‑esteem and “I’m not good enough” narratives from early on.
Rules, Rigidity & Social Fallout – How autistic rule‑following and ADHD‑style attention can combine to create painful but misunderstood social moments.
Systems and Mismatch – Why education and workplace systems built around the “average” brain leave neurodivergent people overworking just to keep pace.
Working Memory & Processing Speed – How uneven cognitive profiles make standard teaching and instruction styles harder, and why multi‑format information helps.
Workplaces, Sensory Load & EF – The impact of lights, noise, busyness, and unclear instructions on task completion, performance, and wellbeing.
Masking, Burnout & Capacity – What it looks like when masking tips into neurodivergent burnout, and why change needs to happen before full collapse.
Relationships & Assumptions – How an “all the details” brain plus anxiety can generate inaccurate, negatively skewed stories about other people.
Redefining “Disorder” – Viewing diagnosis as a description of mismatch between person and environment, not proof of personal defect.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:08

Hello friends, welcome to the Audi HD Psych Podcast. I'm Aaron Howard, political psychologist, and we are different, not defective. Thank you everybody for joining us and listening to our previous episodes and liking, following, subscribing on our Instagram and on your streaming platforms. We really appreciate it. And it helps us get the word out there. Now, today I've got Dan is being the lovely Uma for me and going to keep me on track and ask me some questions over the next half an hour. So, Dan, um, what are we talking about today? Impacts in daily life, I think.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

Uh and the first question.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Alright, so um, what does school actually look like for an Audi HD kid in real life and not just on paper?

SPEAKER_02 0:50

So I think that's a really broad question, and it looks different for every single kid, but I can speak to my school experience, which is uh, you know, we talked in the past about autism as a details orientation, and ADHD can deviate from the task at hand. So for me, it was a matter of I want all the details, if I don't have them, I don't feel comfortable. And when that comes to learning, it can be uh I don't have all the details, so I'm not good enough. Um, I don't get the right responses on tests, the right scores in tests. Uh why is that? Because when I'm trying to learn, my attention is distracted from who is the teacher to for me, it always seemed to be the gardener doing gardeny things, um, or the dog in the park, or the bird in the sky, or the kid walking past on their way to the office. And that means I missed some of the details. And so then I had a recurring experience of perceived failure that compounded across time. Um, that's my particular experience, but it's broader than just the academic side. Uh, and I'll share a personal story of my own that I think beautifully demonstrates both autism and ADHD in children and the social difficulties that it can cause. And that is in year two, I peed my pants in class. And how did that happen? I can laugh at it now, it's not a distressing uh memory for me. But how did that happen? It was beautiful. ADHD meets autism. And I needed to go to the bathroom, and it came to break time, and the bell rang, and I went out, and one of my friends was playing handball. Uh, and so I'm like, oh, handball, let me. And so I played handball for the 15-minute recess, and then the bell rang, and I went back into class. And then I sat down and we started doing the work, and I realized I still need to go to the bathroom. And so I put my hand up and I was like, Miss Slack, can I go to the bathroom please? And she said to me, No, you just went uh to recess, you should have gone during the break. Now my autism latched onto that and was like, Well, you've set a rule and now I have to follow the rule. So I sat there, busting to go to the toilet, until I was sitting in my own little yellow pool. And obviously, that had social repercussions for me. I was pissy pants for quite some time after that. But it beautifully demonstrates how Audi HD can cause social difficulties for students because we forget to do the important thing, and then we get told something that's not necessarily all the information we need to go on. Haven't put my hand up again. My teacher probably would have let me go to the bathroom five or ten minutes later. But for me, as a little autistic kid, my brain went, okay, that's the rule. I should have gone during the break, so I can't ask again. And so I wet my pants, and there were social difficulties that arose out of that. Um, and there you go. So there's obviously the academic side where I'm missing details and I can potentially become perfectionistic and self-critical alongside my academic underachievement, but also there's the social repercussions. Sometimes I do funny things. I've scuffed my feet on the carpet for a long time and then zapped a friend of mine in the neck with static electricity. Not an amazing thing. And Dan is waving his hand, like it's time for me to wind up with this question.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

No, it's just uh if your parent or teacher was listening, you know, uh thinking this might be my kid, what are three practical accommodations that they can try in the classroom right often?

SPEAKER_02 4:20

Well, I think first of all, know your children, um, as most parents do, and just think about what are the what are their particular needs. But practical accommodations in the classroom, I think, moving back out of my stories, uh, practical accommodations for kids in academic environments are things like extra time on tests for people who take longer to process information. Things like the capacity for kids to get up and walk around and actually move their bodies because that helps many of us uh pay attention. STEM toys. Uh, there's a bit of research out there that shows that stimming might actually be really good for attention in those of us that are in that ADHD space. So speaking to teachers and if necessary, getting individual learning plans set up and created for our kids to cater to their learning styles because I know I learn best in dialogue and conversation. Because that's how I retain information, it's how I process and manipulate it, so I store it in my long-term memory. But if I'm just sitting there reading a book, I don't retain the information, and by the time I get to the bottom of a paragraph, I've forgotten what was at the top, and I have to reread. Um having information available to kids, students in different formats. Some people will learn best by listening to it, some people will learn best by talking, some people will learn best by reading. But knowing what works for us or our children and making sure that as best as possible, because we're limited resources in school systems, but as best as possible, we can cater to individual learning styles.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

So I know that you covered on it a little bit before, but why is it so common for Audi HD students to have more persistent difficulties than then your typical peers?

SPEAKER_02 6:02

I think it is really that combination of a details orientation in the academic sense, pardon me, and either there's an overcompensation, that perfectionism that we often see, which comes with a lot of stress, particularly for a lot of internalizing Audi HDs, but also it's so much more work for us to sit in a boring classroom not moving and having to pay attention to the thing. And so not only am I more likely to notice all of the distractions, but then I'm also focusing a lot of my energy on not moving, not fidgeting, not bouncing my feet, not distracting the other class members. And that draws away from my capacity to pay attention, hold that information in working memory and manipulate it so that I can then link it into pre-existing memory and store it in long-term memory for recall when I do my tests.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

So why do current education systems create extra stress and difficult and difficulty rather for autistic and ADHD students?

SPEAKER_02 7:03

Why do they create extra stress? I don't uh I think perhaps how is probably a better question, just in the context of why implies that there's some deliverance. Why? Well, I think primarily when we talk about, when we talk in diagnosis, uh we're usually talking about clinically significant symptoms. Um, as many who listen will know, I advocate that we're different, not inherently defective. However, when we diagnose, we're looking for where our characteristics and the environment don't match. So schools and all societal systems are built by societies for societies, and that means that they're generally planned by the middle bunch, the middle 70, 80% of people are the people out there that are contributing to the construction of systems like schooling systems. And so if that's the case, then the people at the edges, that sort of top 5 or 10%, bottom five or 10%, um taking away any judgment labels in there. Uh they're less represented in systems. And again, school systems like our healthcare systems have limited buckets of money. Even in the wealthy Western world, countries like Australia have limited buckets of money to spend. And so they need to make sure that money goes as far as it can, which unfortunately means that the bulk of the system is set up for the majority of people. We're not the majority of people, where a significant minority, on top of that, often we sit at intersections of other things like gender diversity, sexual diversity, uh, multiple neurodiversities in many, if not most of us. Um, and so we have extra stresses, extra needs for us to learn or be productive in optimally in a typical setting. So I think it's a matter of because most people are catered to, it means that some people are not, and we happen to be the some people in these instances.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

So, how does that change a young person's trajectory when the environment adapts, not to them in this case, but instead of them having to constantly adapt to that environment?

SPEAKER_02 9:18

So I think it just takes away a lot of that stress. You know, we think of think about uh my story about peeing my pants. That was stressful and that was an extra distraction for me from the coursework for that day. But also every single time somebody called me Pissy Pants, that was a reminder, and then I become self-focused and social anxiety would kick in. That then impacts on my capacity. As I'm sitting there thinking, ah, you're judging me, or child language version of that. That is my working memory being tied up from um five plus five equals ten. So I think if we can accommodate, if we can go, oh, you're inattentive, okay, maybe you didn't go to the bathroom and say, you can't go to the toilet right now, but if you can hold off for 20 minutes, we'll have a break in between the lesson. Thinking about things like that as teachers, as parents, in terms of um those accommodations and how they can impact our children, we can consider where is our child not ideally suited to that particular environment and seeking accommodations that allow for that. You know, I do cognitive assessments as part of some of my diagnostic assessments, and one of the things that we often see is um if my cognitive abilities sit at, say, the above average range, we'll often see working memory or processing speed, two of the four characteristics underneath an IQ, um, might be lower than my other scores. So they're a relative weakness for me personally. In that case, if I process information more slowly, then you can give it to me in a form that I can refer back to. So I'm not trying to constantly keep up with the teacher speaking faster than I'm processing. Or if my working memory is not as strong as my other capacities, you'll hear me speak and see how much information I can process and think, oh, above average. But if my working memory is at an average level, then you'll assume it's at above average, like the rest of my cognitive uh abilities. Uh, but I might be able to process 10 bits of information at once, but I might only be able to store seven. So I'm dropping three and again giving me the information in a format that I can refer back to, and one that works for my learning style and my processing style just makes it easier for me or your child to hear that information, process that information, and store it for recall in long-term memory.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Um, just quickly, do you can you explain how there might be a mismatch between our patterns and system patterns?

SPEAKER_02 11:51

Well, I think just generally, you know, we talk about, and I'll step back from the academic, but um when we think of autism, for example, as a social and communications difference, and then there's sensory differences thrown in there just for boot, um, and we have the restricted and repetitive patterns of behaviour. If my if my pattern of thought is I must be perfect, otherwise I'm not good enough, I must get an A on every test, otherwise I'm a terrible student, that's going to change my interaction with the schooling system that I might not be ideally matched to anyway. But then if my social style is different from the average person, you know, you come in wearing a shirt that looks to me like it might have been chewed up and regurgitated on New Year's Eve, and I tell you that, it's a difference of communication style, a difference of social interaction. You know, uh you and I might actually have a bit of a giggle about that, but someone who's neurotypical and has different social expectations than I are going to have a very different interaction. And again, that can impact on me, not just in my school system, that can impact on me in work. Uh, that can impact on me in social settings at parties where I'm meeting new people. Yeah. I'm not sure if that answered the question. I might have forgotten what the question was.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

No, I'm it sounded good to me. But um, just uh moving on to the work aspect of things. Uh what are some of the most common ways the executive function difficulties show in the workplace for autistic and ADHD patients?

SPEAKER_02 13:24

Uh not dissimilarly to schooling systems, I think, but I think also our sensory differences can come into play a lot more, um, arguably, and very arguably, that could be linked to the levels of stress that we have as children versus as adults. But there are lots of children out there with significant sensory differences that impact them in day-to-day life. But in a workplace, if I'm required to sit under fluorescent lights consistently all day, every day, and they trigger migraines for me, that's going to impede my capacity to engage in the usual 38-hour working week in the typical office system. If I have sensory sensitivities to busyness, and I'm not sure if anyone could see Yoda just strolling around in the background, um, if I have sensory differences, perhaps to busyness, to sound, to movement and lights, working in a busy office where people are chatting away and having Zoom calls all around me is going to become overwhelming. And so we can accommodate that. We can have spaces that are set up as library type spaces where people can go, where maybe the light's a bit dimmer, there's not lots of distractions and sound. Um, or for sensory seekers, we can, you know, actively go into those environments that are quite social. Excuse me. Uh, as managers, same as with teachers, if I as a staff member, or if I process differently in whatever way, um seeking information and instructions in a way that suits the way I process information, I think is really, really important. And for workplaces to be willing to cater to that, it doesn't just serve the people that we're helping out, the people that we're trying to accommodate, it serves organizations as well, because we want people who want to come to work. You know, in my little organization, I want people who feel valued, who want to come to work because that means that the people that we serve, the communities that we serve, are coming to see people who want to be doing what they're doing. So they're getting a better product. What are we doing there? We're increasing health and well-being in community more broadly. The same is true of large organizations, you know. If we cater to our staff, our staff do usually um good jobs, or their productivity is increased. And I don't think productivity is the be-all and end all of a good organization. But that is the business of business for a lot of people. If we look after our people, our people look after our organization, our product is better. In our case, it's mental health care. Um, but it's true in any business. If we make it a good place for people to work, people want to come to work, and it means that the job gets done in a better way.

SPEAKER_01 16:09

Talking on individual experiences, uh, can you give an example of how inattention impulsivity might derail a task at work, even when the person is genuinely trying hard?

SPEAKER_02 16:20

Yeah, absolutely. Um, there's a little research out there, and I'm terribly sorry to the other author, I can't think of their name, but it was Rhapsody Gomez, and uh certainly that wrote a paper and looked at different models for ADHD and the underpinning cognitive characteristics. And it actually showed a little bit of an indication that impulsivity may actually underpin inattention to some degree as well. So if there's two factors that are impulsivity and inattention, all of the questions about inattention also sat on the uh impulsivity factor for those psych nodes and uh stats nodes. Uh why does that matter? Because whether at workplace or a schoolyard or a school classroom, if I'm trying to pay attention, um, but there's a noise. And my impulse is to check the noise, um, but I should be studying for an exam, and I don't challenge that impulse. There's inattention, my distractibility, and then there's the impulse to follow that distraction that I'm not suppressing in the same way that an average person does. So I really do want to sit down and pass my exam or get that report done for my manager, but my brain is innately wired to be more likely to be pulled away from the task at hand. Uh, roll in the someone's doing something fun in the corner while I'm trying to focus on the not amazing admin thing. And I'm more likely to get up and go and interact with those people and do the fun thing, even though I do want to get a good performance appraisal at the end of the six-month period uh and get this report done and it'd be an amazing report. So we're just the inattention and impulsivity can lead us to, and obviously this is more in the ADHD space, can lead us to be less likely to be able to sit down and do the task that isn't inherently um magnetic to our attention and motivation.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

You mentioned admin then, and uh, why is there often such a big gap between someone's core skills and talents and their ability to manage the surrounding structures like admin planning and follow-through?

SPEAKER_02 18:29

So I think again, distraction plays a big part, but also um the behavioural tradition tells us that the more we experience something, the more it becomes our normal, the more it becomes um informative to our self-concept. If I have naturally high intellect, but I don't know how to pay attention and study and learn, and I repeatedly have experiences of failure in exams, I learn that I'm not academically gifted. When I don't think that I can do something, I'm less likely to try. So you know, I've used this example in the past. I failed year 12 twice, so I didn't believe that I could complete a uni degree, and I finished high school at 18, I joined the Navy at 19, and I finally went to uni at 40, 41, one of the two, memory. Um, and only because a friend of mine convinced me too, who was doing a psych degree at the time. I had repeatedly learnt that I failed exams and that I could not study. Um the flip side to that is when we leave things to the last minute and then we get them done at the last minute, we start to learn, oh, I can get it done at the last minute. I always pull through, but that comes with a lot of stress, so that can reinforce the procrastination cycle. And then we find one, we're averse to doing the tedious thing. Two, we associate it with the stress of doing it at the last minute. Three, we think I can always get it done at the last minute. So I get stuck in a cycle of procrastination for a long period, then the stress of doing it and getting it done, and potentially failing. Um, certainly uh doing much more poorly than I could have had I done it spaced out over the month time. And I'm trying to remember the question now.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

Uh the ability to manage surrounding structures like admin tank. Yeah, absolutely. Quickly, you might have touched on the next question as well. Um why do many neurodivergent people find task switching and managing the boring bits so hard, even when they do deeply care about the main work?

SPEAKER_02 20:33

So task switching is one question, the boring bits is another. Yeah. Um I'll speak to task switching. So, task switching, we're referring there to um set shifting or cognitive flexibility, is another language that we use for that. And that's that ability to go from one thing to another um quickly and without warning. Uh, we often talk a lot about the restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior in autism, uh, likely underpinned by set shifting to some degree or cognitive flexibility to some degree. Um, you know, if I've got something on right now and then I'm doing that same thing again at midday, it's difficult for me to shift in and do something completely unrelated in between that. That's one of our cognitive characteristics. Whatever the cause happens to be, be it neurodevelopmental, um, which neurodivergence is neurodevelopmental differences. Um, it's some difference in the way our brains are functioning in our context. So um the difficulty with set shifting or shifting what I'm working or what I'm doing, uh, that's linked directly to neurodivergence. The second part of that was the admin, um, getting admin tasks and boring tasks done. And that's you know, there's a conversation out there about interest based attention. It's a bit broader than that. Um, I really like the nice framework. Our attention for many neurodivergent people is not amazing for a lot. Term planning. I can't think I've got this goal in two years, and that's why I'm doing this right now. So I need novelty, interest, challenge, or emergency, anxiety, um, nice, uh, to anchor my attention more so than the other people than the average person. If I don't know that strategy, if I don't know to I don't know, maybe do 10 minutes of work and then put something I enjoy in there, the interest as a little reward, and do that regularly because our neurodivergent brains need reward a lot more than the average brains do boring things. Um, I might then again slowly learn that I'm bad at doing admin. Yeah. And that becomes central to what I think of myself. And so when I've got admin to do, there's always something, I've got to do the dishes, I've got to dust the plants, oh, I need to feed the dog. There's always something else that can come up. So I'm constantly reinforcing those things behaviorally and not actually learning the strategies for me to get the boring thing done, except emergency. We're all really good at leaving something to the last minute, and then with 24 hours to do a four-week job, just trying to get that work done. And I'm not against using that uh judiciously and strategically to motivate myself and other people, but it's managing the cost-benefit analysis. Am I doing this so much that it's actually taking away from my life? Or am I harnessing it to get started and then using something else to reduce the actual stress of that workload?

SPEAKER_01 23:28

Um, at what point does the cost of say compensating or masking just become too high?

SPEAKER_02 23:34

That's so different for every person. Um, you know, many people can mask for many, many years, and conversation about menopause is a really good example. So many high-functioning women mask and manage families and careers, full-time roles, and all the other things.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

Maybe a better question would be what does that look like for ODHD adults? Sorry, can you frame the question for me? So instead of saying what that what point does that become too high, which is, as you said, differ different for everyone, what does that maybe look like for people?

SPEAKER_02 24:02

And again, it depends on the person. It's so different for everybody. But um, yeah, just jumping back to that menopause question. I think that's a great example of when life's context changes what I have capacity for. Um previous episode I chatted about the impacts of um estrogen changes and menopause on high functioning, and I use that language because you know what it means, not because uh, or not to invalidate the difficulties that come with it. A lot of high-functioning, very intelligent women manage careers, manage families, run households, hit menopause, and with the changes in estrogen, there's changes in neurotransmitters. Those changes in neurotransmitters increase brain fog and distractability, and so many of the ADHD type characteristics. And all of a sudden, women who have functioned, and I quote, air quotes, um have functioned high, um, are struggling to keep up with that. And it's because those neurodivergent characteristics are being amplified and I can no longer mask. So um the masking, when it becomes too stressful versus um just the right amount, that's individual for each person, and we just want to be checking in with ourselves and going, where am I sitting? Am I enjoying this thing? And if I'm not, why am I not enjoying it? Is it because my manager is a D-head, or is it because every time I go into this environment I feel a bit sick, my IBS plays up, or I find I'm getting hives? In that case, there's probably some masking going on. That's the cost-benefit analysis is not great there. It's costing me physical health for maybe a 5% increase in productivity or going to some social event that I don't really need to be going to, and that doesn't bring value into my life.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

Um, from a clinical perspective, when would you say this is the point where something needs to change?

SPEAKER_02 25:54

Uh probably about a year before you notice it. Uh, generally, most of us we notice it when we hit burnout. Um, you know, if you're flirting with chronic fatigue as a neurodivergent person, you're flirting with what we call autistic burnout. It is that you're exhausted, and we don't know why, we call that chronic fatigue. Uh, when it's specifically related to the minority stresses of being neurodivergent and masking in all contexts, that's neurodivergent burnout. Um how do we monitor for that? There is no single way, but uh a nice way, I guess, is am I content with my life overall? And if not, why am I not? And if it's in spaces where uh at work I'm constantly compensating for my distractability because I'm in a busy office space. Can I seek an accommodation? Is it because the lights are too bright for me constantly? Because I have a light sensitivity. Can I work in a darker space? Managing those little things as they come up is probably a better point of focus than how do I know when I'm reaching burnout? Because burnout isn't a single unitary thing that just suddenly slaps us in the face. It's a combination of all of the different little stresses that we have in the various contexts in our lives. Sometimes we can change the stressor, we can change the lights, we can change the busyness, sometimes we can change the whole environment. I can go and work from home or I can set up my own business. Yeah. Sometimes I can change just one or two things in a lot of different areas of life that can have the same impact as not working in that environment. You know, maybe I maybe my partner can take on some child rearing responsibilities if they aren't already. Maybe my workplace, I can have a separate office where three of us who don't love noise and light, we can go and work there and be more productive for that work organization. Maybe I can not have to go out to the bars that all my friends go to five times a weekend or to the shopping centres every week if I can order my groceries in to save me having to go to that busy, loud, bright environment.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

On a smaller scale, how can relationships be impacted by your Audi HD characteristics?

SPEAKER_02 28:15

So I think that's uh fascinating. You know, I I can only speak to my brain, but I've spoken in the past about that Audi HD style of brain. That's all the details, need all the details, but also all the inattention and tangentiality. What that can do is if I want all of the details between one and ten, but then I one, two, two, and then I deviate, oh, X, Y, Z, AA. I'm missing a detail there, so I don't have all the information. But also each of those deviations takes me away from the central information that I want, giving me a different background of information, which means all of the assumptions that I make, which if I only had information related to the question at hand, our relationship, um, I would then probably make really good assumptions when I don't have that information, and when I have maybe information that my anxiety has produced in past environments, past situations, that becomes my knowledge base. And so my assumptions become based in that anxiety as well, or anger, or depression, sadness. It overlays, and when I fill in those blanks, I fill it in with anxiety reinforcing information. So my reality starts to deviate from objective reality and your reality. Why does that matter? Because then I have a constructed version of you, and potentially so do you of me, or of Auntie Julie, or Uncle John, or cousin Bartholomew. I'm not sure why Bartholomew, but that's not really. You know, I have a version of you in my head as somebody that I am in a relationship, personal, professional, academic, social, in a relationship with that doesn't truly represent you. And if a negative or an unhelpful emotion is overlaid on that, that impacts the way I interact with you directly. That impacts the way you see me, the way you interact with me directly. If I have that with a lot of different people in my life, um that can have huge impacts on me and my well-being. And you know, I often talk about borderline personality, which we as a society we vilify people with borderline characteristics, but I'd argue that often it is not always, often it is an Audi HD style of thinking overlaid with interpersonal trauma and stresses and anxiety. And so it is I'm filling in the blanks about what you think about me, and that's reinforcing my negative beliefs about myself. And so I I burn the bridge with you and with the next person and with the next person because I have these subjective perceptions of you, because my Audi HD brain has incorrectly filled in blanks that changes our relationship, which changes my self-esteem and my self-concept and my overall well-being.

SPEAKER_01 31:12

I don't think that answered the question at all, but I'm going to pretend it'd be for someone listening who recognizes themselves in what you've described school struggles, work difficulties, and masking and burnout, what would you want them to take away from this episode?

SPEAKER_02 31:25

Um, there's nothing inherently wrong with you. Your difficulties are an interaction between your characteristics and the environment, your context. And that includes your current environment and your history. Um and being able to sit with that and reflect on what part of my history might be coming into now, um, how might that be interacting with me in my current context, but also being able to sit with who and what we are and recognizing that if I can achieve the same as everybody else with a slight change to the environment, which is what we're talking about with accommodations, then I'm actually not defective at all. I'm not disordered, I'm just different, and I can manage myself in different ways. I can have other people help me manage my difficulties so that I can achieve what aligns with my goals. I don't subscribe to the need for productivity in the typical sense, because I think trying to meet those typical expectations is often what leads us to burn out. Um, so many of us just trying to do more, be more of the typical thing. Um when we try and do more and be more of ourselves, we tend to live more fulfilling lives. And interestingly, in my experience, we actually tend to be more productive in a typical sense as well when we're doing things in our way.

SPEAKER_01 32:50

Yeah. Um, we're pretty much at time by the look of it. Exquisite. Um but just quickly, uh if somebody feels that they're already at or beyond their limit, what should they do this week that is concrete, small, and self-productive?

SPEAKER_02 33:04

Uh take a break. I've said millions of times. Um, some mindfulness, but just take a break from the thing in any way you can. And I want to honor the fact that sometimes if we're neurodivergent, we're looking after neurodivergent kids who might have high support needs, whatever it looks like for you, whether it's um when my children are in bed, just taking a five-minute walk around the block, take a break and have some time that is all about you and just looking after yourself, even if it's five minutes a week. Anything is better than nothing. Just take a break and get some rest. Well, thank you, Dan, for uh filling in for Uma today. And thank you, everybody, for listening again. Uh, I'll beg one more time. Please like, follow, and subscribe on our Instagram, Facebook. I think we're on TikTok as well, uh, and on your streaming platforms because it helps us get the word out there, and we really appreciate your support. Uh take care, friends, and different not defective. See you next time.