The AuDHD Paradox with Guest Kay Burnham

In this episode, Wendy speaks with Kay Burnham about late diagnosis, unmasking, and the unique experience of being both autistic and ADHD (AuDHD).

Diagnosed with autism and ADHD in her 50s, Kay shares how they changed her life and perspective. After years of advocating for others, including her own children, she is now learning to advocate for herself. Our conversation explores identity-first language, self-trust, and the challenges of navigating two seemingly contradictory neurotypes.

Kay also discusses her work, including The Art and Science of Raising Your Autistic Child and her next book, Mapping Your Paradoxes, which explores the lived experience of managing both autism and ADHD. 

Takeaways:

• Your mask is not the enemy. It’s a set of skills and a tool you can choose when to use.
• Late diagnosis is both difficult and empowering, often a non-linear process.
• Replace the word “broken” with “wounded." Wounds can heal. The world might be broken, but you are not.
• Trust yourself. If you can't access a diagnostic assessment, trust your lived experience to self-identify.
• If an accommodation helps you, you deserve to use it.
• Don't believe people who tell you that you can't be autistic; if you know, you know.

About Kay Burnham:

Kay Burnham is a late-diagnosed AuDHD adult and author of The Art and Science of Raising Your Autistic Child. She supports individuals on their unmasking journey and works with companies to implement neurodivergent-affirming practices.

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kayunmasked

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kay_unmasked

Substack: https://substack.com/@kaymburnham

Relevant To This Episode:

Ask for these books at your public library, local independent bookstore, or by using my affiliate link below. As an Amazon Associate, I earn a commission from purchases through these links, which helps support the podcast at no extra cost.

The Art and Science of Raising Your Autistic Child by Kay Burnham 

Amazon: https://amzn.to/41jxoXw

Recognizing Autism in Women and Girls by Wendela Whitcomb Marsh

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/194917784X/

About Your Host:

Wendela Whitcomb Marsh, MA, RSD, is an award-winning author, TEDx speaker, and host of Amplifying Autism. Though not autistic herself, Wendy has dedicated her career to supporting the neurodivergent community. She is the founder of Adulting While Autistic and helps late-diagnosed autistic adults find clarity and community. 

Website: wendelawhitcombmarsh.com

Books Available on Amazon

Instagram: @wendela.w.marsh

Adulting While Autistic: @adultingwhileautistic 

Join the Newsletter: https://forms.aweber.com/form/49/591191449.htm

Thank You for Listening:

If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it. Your support helps us reach more late-diagnosed autistic adults and those who care about them. 

YouTube: @AmplifyingAutism

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

This is Amplifying Autism, where every voice matters and every story shines. Join us as autistic authors, professionals, and trailblazers share their journeys, real stories, and real insight from those changing the world, one conversation at a time. I'm so pleased to welcome to Amplifying Autism my friend Kay Burnham. Kay is a late-diagnosed Audult. That is, she has both autism and ADHD. As a parent of an autistic child, she's the author of The Art and Science of Raising Your Autistic Child. Kay supports individuals on their unmasking journey. And she also works with companies to implement neurodivergence-affirming practices. That's so important. Her upcoming book, The Aud Paradox Map, is for people like her who live with the paradox of having both autism and ADHD. It explores the understanding she has learned after decades of unconscious adaptation. When she finally had the language to know and communicate the contradictions she's lived with and managed her whole life, she decided to write her map and share it with the world. Welcome, Kay Burnham. Kay, it is so lovely to have you here with us today.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

How are you? I'm doing good. Thank you for having me here. This is wonderful. I'm excited for this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Yeah. Now you and I know each other from other places, but we don't always get a chance to just chat one-on-one. So um now, one thing I know about you is you have not always known that you were autistic. Can you tell me how you came to learn that?

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Sure. Um, my story is fairly similar to a lot of late-diagnosed adults, where it was my children that brought me to my realization. However, my children were adults. I had raised two neurodivergent children into their 20s before uh I realized that I was neurodivergent. My oldest was moving home, and when she was younger, she had a diagnosis of ADHD, but not autism. And she got that diagnosis as an adult. And I was like, oh, you you can get diagnosed with that as an adult? I I didn't know that. And I started to explore that, and it happened to be at the same time that I was writing my my book I published a little over a year ago on raising autistic children. And between the research I was doing for the book and what I was reading for her, I started to see my childhood in a different light and thought, oh, this explains so much if this is true.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

So, how has your life changed or your perception of yourself and the world around you since you learned this about yourself?

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Oh my gosh, I am still in the midst of that change. I think I will be in the midst of that change for the rest of my life, um, given that I was over 50 when I made this discovery. That's a lot of decades of stuff. Yeah. But there was an instant, my life now makes sense. And accompanied very quickly with a lot of anger and a lot of grief. Um and that has changed my life because I'm actually processing the emotions of my life for the first time. Wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

So everything is through a different lens now, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 4:03

It's through a completely different lens. And another aside to this is that um my previous career, one of the main things that I did was run all of our accessibility programs for a live performance venue. So I um implemented sensory-friendly or relaxed, they go by either name, performances in our venue for uh Autistic the Autistic community for children. Wonderful. And so I'd already known all these like accommodations and the way things work and how it goes. And so luckily I was able to pull on all that, and that helped me change my life because I was like, oh, all of these accommodations that I was putting in place for these kids, as well as mine, I can now pull those strings too. Aha. Brilliant. Harder than it sounds. I I like to say things that sound simple doesn't mean they're easy.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Oh, that's so true.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Yes. Um, especially because as an autistic person, I speak in very literal, concrete, direct, concise language most of the time. And so I have been accused many times of making something sound easy when it's not.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Yeah, well, and that's that's an important distinction. Is it easy or is it simple? Right. It can be simple if it's just one thing, but if that one thing is extremely difficult, it's it's not it's not easy.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

Right, right. A simple two-step process doesn't mean it's easy, especially for me.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

And for many, yeah. Now you mentioned your book, and I know this is an excellent resource for so many people. I'm glad you wrote it because you know the world is full of people who need to read that. Tell us more about that book.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Uh yes, it's called The Art and Science of Raising Your Autistic Child, and it takes a holistic approach at what that looks like, not only as a parent, but for a family dynamic. Um, I was also raised in a house. My brother now would have been diagnosed with autism, but in the 70s, he never got a diagnosis of anything. Um, and so I knew what it was like to be navigating this household from a child's perspective, and then again from an adult's perspective with my two children. And it was important for me to make this about the entire family, not just the child. And it is meant to be a very flexible, non-prescriptive way that teaches you how to connect to your child's signals. Um, it talks about you know, identity first language versus people first language. Yes. Um, and I think one of the biggest things for me in here is it really helps people navigate IEPs. Oh, that's so important.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

Before we get too far away from it, though, uh, in case we have listeners who are not familiar with the distinction between identity first and person first language, could you talk about that a little bit?

SPEAKER_00 7:12

Sure, sure. Uh identity first language is saying autistic person, whereas people first language is person with autism. And the majority of the community, and my own personal experience, is that identity first language is the preference. That being autistic is not something that you put on or put off. It is, it's it's it's who I am. I can't say that uh, you know, I'm a person with whiteness. Like that doesn't make sense, right? I am a white person. So I am an autistic person is what makes sense to me. I can't separate that physically from me.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Yeah, and you know, uh, it seems to me that if you have to make the big point that this is a person first and then also autistic, it's like assuming a person is a person seems like a baseline. Yeah, we should not have to make a case for it, you know, that that we are that you are a people. It's like that should be a given. Absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

And and on the other side of it, as I always say, too, if you are autistic, it's your choice. You have a choice, which you know, a lot of us didn't feel like we had most of our lives, so it's important to have a choice. And if you want to use I'm a person with autism, go for it. Fantastic. I support you in doing that, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

And uh, I know many people in my generation, especially in like education and therapy and counseling, that kind of thing, we were taught the other way. We were taught to always say child first, so you remember. And um, I remember way back when my own kids were teens and young adults diagnosed, and my late husband was the parent in our family that we didn't know until he was, you know, like you. Um, and one time I saw this in my reading and research, and I said, So what do you guys think? And they all three just almost in one voice said, Well, of course, identity first. It just and and that really, I was not necessarily expecting that because of what I'd always been taught. I was like, uh-huh, that was very clear. I need to change the way I talk, and that was some decades ago. Um, and I think most of the time I get it right now.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Yeah, my my brain still likes to tell me I'm saying it wrong or this sounds awkward. Um, but I've learned to kind of separate what my brain wants to do from what my mind wants to do. I see my brain is kind of like the physical wiring of a computer. It's gonna do what it's gonna do, and I get to layer my mind on top of that so that how I talk to myself, uh the choices I make around what my brain is doing, that's my mind.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Ah, I love that distinction. And I think a lot of people who have uh maybe transgender family members or non-binary where they have to learn a new name or a new pronoun. Um programming, you can know in your mind what you want to say, but your brain may have had decades of saying what we now know to be the wrong pronoun and the wrong name. And uh that can be tricky for people.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

Yeah, absolutely. My uh my oldest daughter is trans, and uh it was that that transition was was difficult. Our brains, uh neuroprivileged, neurotypical, neurodiverse, whatever you want to say, our brains as humans don't like change. Some of them just don't like it more than others.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Yes. But I it it is true for all of us, uh, as you say, those of us in the neuroprivileged, we also have brains that you know don't want to change. Um, but I think your daughter probably knows that you know who she is.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

Oh yeah, oh yeah, and that was years ago now. So it's totally normal, natural. And I I can't even like I wouldn't even be able to, it would sound really weird to try to go back to something else. That's not who she is. That's her identity.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

And that's wonderful. So um is the do you have any other projects or um things uh that are going on with you that you would like to share with people?

SPEAKER_00 11:43

Sure. I'm I'm in the midst, probably about the towards the two-thirds of the way through, I guess, um, my next book, which I'm really excited about because this is more based on my personal lived experience with late diagnosis and understanding my wiring and how to create a life that that really works for me instead of working against me. And the whole thing is based on for people who are like I am autistic and have ADHD, is that these two systems are contradictory a lot of the time, and they want opposite things, and so I'm calling this mapping your paradoxes. I love that. And so I about a year ago sat down and started to try and figure this out for myself. What is going on here? I'm trying to do time blocking, I'm trying to do the Pomodoro technique, I'm trying to do these things that I'm told will help with my ADHD, and I am just failing at them miserably. And I realized, well, that's because my autistic brain wants predictability and it wants to focus and stay with what it's doing. It doesn't want to arbitrarily change because the clock did. And if I don't get to that thing at that time, then I feel like so. I was like, oh, I gotta find a different system. Yeah and that one realization started me mapping all of the ways that my brain works in opposites. And I thought, wow, this is a process I can actually document and give to other people. I can I can put it down, I can talk about it. So it talks about the years without the manual, it talks about all of this stuff that we did for years without knowing anything about our brains.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

And I talk about mining the mask. That the mask on its own isn't a bad thing. It's just a set of skills that snap into place for survival. Yes. But that if you start to really engage with it, you can figure out that there are some pretty cool skills in that mask that you can now take and apply to other things that make your life easier, right? And so you start to make conscious choices, you start to see where all these skills are. I started mapping what I am good at? What have I been told I'm good at? Now I have a lifetime achievement award in the industry I was in previous. And so I want to, I'm good at things. Yeah, here are the things I'm good at. What are these skills? Here are the skills. Oh, how am I using these in my mask? And what else could I do with these? What if I have these skills and I went out and I looked to find what uses these skills? Oh, it means I can look at all of these things as skills I have and things like, and I just started creating this, and it has allowed me to engage on a daily basis with my energy and the way my brain works. And I hate to use this word, but I'm going to in a much more productive way. Sometimes you have to use a word, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

But you know, I love that concept of mining the mask, and I know there are a lot of people who might feel trapped by their mask and um not see the value in it that they can mine from what has been a useful survival tool and strategy, but has become exhausting and burdensome. I'm so excited that you're writing this book. And you must come back on when it's done, and I can hold up a copy of it and show people because I don't know of anyone else who's doing this particular work, and it's so important.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

I haven't been able to find it because that's that's where my brain goes. I go, oh, if I'm doing this work, maybe someone else is. Let me see if it exists. And I start going down my research rabbit hole, and yeah, I start looking at peer-reviewed studies, and I start looking at people's blogs and articles, and I was like, oh, no one's quite put this together yet in this way. I see pieces of it here, I see pieces of it here. This is what I'm good at. I can take these pieces that are all over the place and weave them together.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

And and it is so important because I'm seeing more and more people discovering as adults that they are not just that they're autistic, but that they are ADHD, autistic and ADHD. And like you said, it's like a war going on. ADHD and autism want opposite things, but they're in the same person wanting those opposite things. And to have a roadmap or a guidebook like you're writing is going to be so useful to so many people. I'm thrilled that you're doing that work.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Thank you. I am I'm I'm hoping it is of service to the community. That is that is my goal in everything I do now. You know, people call it turning your pain into purpose, and that is what I want to do. I want to take all of this lived experience, all of my academic knowledge and research, and I want to combine it all and talk to the community and get their input and just be of service because there is, as you said, a growing, growing population of adults finding this out.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

And you know, I also know you on uh the TikTok. I just started doing TikTok in uh uh October of 25, and I love it. Uh astonishingly, it was like a day or of you know, challenge to try TikTok. It's like so when I first started following you, I didn't know that you were the K that I already knew at first because I'm looking at a little phone and your picture is about this big. Um and then at some point I'm thinking, I know you. You're not just Kay unmasking, you're Kay Burnham. Yeah, so um, so I'm thrilled to be able to follow you on TikTok. Um, and and what I was round about going for was I have met so many people there and in other social media who are both, who are Aud. And they all will benefit from this. It's gonna be just a huge uh the the answer to so many people's questions.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

Well, then I better get finished writing it.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

So you should. That book won't write itself. No, it won't. It really doesn't. It really doesn't, as much as I wish it would. I'll tell you something that works for me. I have a sister who is well, both of my sisters are writers and my brother, but my younger sister and I have a writing date twice a week. And um, we're not in the same place. She'll just call me up and say, Go. And then we both start working on our books. And then an hour later, she'll call me up and say, How'd you do? And that keeps me focused because during those two hours a week, I am only working on a specific project, not all the other things that I might be doing.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

I like that. I like that. I have a friend, I have a friend who's a writer, and there was a while where we were trying to do something similar, but I like your approach to that. That's really simple. Just a quick check-in go and a check-in done.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

Yeah, you don't have to show up at the same place.

SPEAKER_02 19:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

I mean, I love going to a coffee shop, but it's not always convenient. Um, so any other projects you've got going on? You've you've got TikTok, you've got your book, the books that's already out there for parents, which is wonderful for parents, and also the one you're working on that I can't wait to see. Any other uh things that you're doing right now?

SPEAKER_00 19:37

Um, well, I have I started a Substack. Um free, it's totally free to subscribe to uh last summer that's called Belonging to Yourself. And it is all of the things that I am pondering or learning or have learned or think about that are about how to connect to yourself. Because honestly, I started my unmasking journey before I knew I was neurodivergent. Wow. Um, when I lost my late husband, my late husband, it set my world into a spin. And so I went back into therapy and I started into this kind of self-discovery. And a lot of the tools I was learning, like self-compassion and mindfulness and things like that, that I was tweaking on my own, um have really been critical to this unmasking process. And so I just thought I'm gonna write about this. I feel like I want to go deeper than what I can do on TikTok, right? TikTok can you can do longer videos, but it's really short form and it's not the same as writing a whole article and all of that. So I do my TikToks and I direct people to my Substack for a more in-depth look into my brain and what I'm thinking and and real, concrete, easy, simple baby steps that people that is so needed.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

That is so needed. Nobody wants to take a big giant step, you know. We we all do better if we can just say what's the next step? What's the next step? Yeah. And uh and get there gradually. Um, I'm gonna have to follow you on Substack because I'm just learning what Substack is. I'm I'm new to a lot of this social media stuff, but um, but I hear good things about that one.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

It is a there's a large community on Substack of autistic writers. Oh neurodivergent writers.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Well, that's lovely. Now, um w what the audience that we're talking to right now, I think a lot of them have only recently discovered that they're autistic or neurodivergent in some way. Or they're suspecting, but they don't really know yet. Now that you have Known for a while that you've been autistic and you've gone gone through some processes and the realizations. Do you have some words of advice or um insights? Anything that you would like to say to these people who are where you were a few years ago?

SPEAKER_00 22:17

Um wow, it's it's it is a brutal and beautiful journey, and you will have amazing highs where you just feel like I got this, I understand it, I can do it, and then you will crash down again because something else will come up. This is a multi-layered, non-linear process that once you know, you can't stop. So trust yourself, and that's hard, I know, because even my brain wanted to just rely on the experts that were out there and wanted to rely on a diagnosis from someone who knew to tell me that my lived experience was valid and it did match what I was seeing. And what I will say in hindsight, I already knew it. Yeah, trust that if you can't access a diagnosis because that is so, so hard in this world. Yes, it is. Trust, trust your live experience. You will hear lots of people out there saying things like, Well, there's there are things that can mimic this, and they're right, there are other diagnoses and non- non-official diagnoses that can have shared traits. And what I say to that is it doesn't matter what is causing the traits, it doesn't matter what is causing the struggle in your brain, whether it's ADHD or autism or OCD or dyslexia or whatever neurodivergence it is, if a support works for you, use it.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

Use it. That's the only thing that matters. Sometimes a person can have many little separate diagnoses, you know, um uh OCD, as you mentioned, a ADHD, and uh anxiety, depression, and all these different things. But if you put them all together, um and autism describes the whole instead of a little fractured pieces, then go with that. That is the the simplest answer. And also, if if a professional tells you, oh, you aren't autistic, you can't be autistic because you made eye contact with me, because you've had a job, you're married and have kids, and you know, people who are autistic cannot do those things, um, don't believe them.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

Don't believe them. Don't believe them. As I said, I have a lifetime achievement award for the changes I made to an industry and leading in an industry that I was in for 30 years. Yeah. I'm autistic. You did that while autistic, yeah. Did it while autistic. It was not easy. I burned myself out. There were lots of downsides to not knowing. Yeah, but it was still possible. And it wasn't in spite of my neurodivergence that I had success. For me, I have been able to track back, it is actually because of my neurodivergence that I had the success I have.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

Well, that's that's an important thing to to recognize and to share with others. Now, is there a question that you wished that I had asked you that I have not asked you so far? Something else that you might want to talk about that hasn't come up.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

I do have something I want your audience to hear from someone from the community. And that is replacing the word broken with wounded makes a big difference. Instead of thinking, because I know I can still get into thought patterns where I am like, oh, I am so broken. When I stop myself and say, oh no, no, I am so wounded. I have been deeply wounded by a world that didn't see me as who I was and who I am, that's not broken. I'm not the one that's broken. The world is broken.

SPEAKER_01 26:57

Yes, because the world was not created for you. I love that because wounds can heal. Um, and and of course, uh autism is not something that anybody should try to cure or heal from, but the wounds from being unrecognized for so long and not having your needs met, not having accommodations, those wounds can heal. That's a wonderful word. I'm glad you shared that.

SPEAKER_00 27:27

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

Now I know people are gonna want to follow you and get in touch with you. What's the best way that people can reach you?

SPEAKER_00 27:36

Uh either through TikTok or Instagram. Both of them are K Unmasked, um, or through my Substack belonging to yourself. Those are the three best ways to get in touch with me right now. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

And I'm gonna put those in the show notes so that uh people will be able to just click on it and find you. Great. Well, Kay, it has been so wonderful having this chat with you today. Thank you for being here and thank you for the writing that you're doing. It's so important. Thank you. Thank you for the encouragement. I loved our conversation with Kay Burnham. I hope you did too. It was great to learn how being diagnosed with autism and ADHD in her 50s changed her life and perspective. After years of advocating for accommodations for others, including her own children, she's finally beginning to advocate for herself, to have the accommodations she needs. We talked about why we use identity first language rather than people first language. Kay shared about her first book, The Art and Science of Raising Your Autistic Child, and her next book, which I can't wait to read, Mapping Your Paradoxes. It's a personal story of late diagnosis and wiring for people like her, who are navigating the two contradictory systems of autism and ADHD. Here are five important takeaways from this episode. First, mine your mask. The mask is not bad. It's a set of skills that you can apply to make your life easier by making conscious choices rather than being at the effect of your mask. Second, late diagnosis is a brutal and beautiful journey. You'll have amazing highs where you feel like, I've got this, I understand, I can do it. And then you might crash down again because something else came up. This is a multi-layered, nonlinear process. It can help to replace the word broken with wounded. You are not broken, even if you've been wounded by a world that didn't see or accept you for who you are. The world might be broken, but you are not. And wounds can heal. Third, trust yourself. Don't just rely on experts to know that your lived experience is valid. If you can't access a diagnosis, because that's hard, trust your lived experience. Fourth, if a support or accommodation works for you, use it. Don't be shy. And finally, fifth, don't believe people who tell you you can't be autistic. If you know, you know. I learned a lot from Kay Bernham. Thanks for joining us on Amplifying Autism. I'm Wendell Lewitt Kamarsh. Looking forward to next time. You've been listening to Amplifying Autism, celebrating the voices that shape a more understanding world. Don't miss the next episode. More stories, more insight, and more voices that matter.