Episode 17: Why Can I Do the Hard Things… But Not the Easy Ones?

Have you ever wondered why you can solve complex problems, support everyone else, or perform under pressure… but still struggle to reply to an email, make a phone call or keep on top of everyday tasks?

You’re not alone.

In this episode of the ADHD Wise Podcast, I explore one of the most common questions I hear from neurodivergent people:

“Why can I do the hard things… but not the easy ones?”

Together we’ll explore why “easy” isn’t the same for every brain, how executive functioning affects everyday life, why neurodivergent profiles are often wonderfully spiky, and why strengths and challenges can exist side by side.

We’ll also talk about:

- Why neurodivergent brains often think differently rather than incorrectly.
- Lateral thinking, creativity and those infamous side quests.
- Why knowing what to do isn’t always the same as being able to do it.
- The invisible effort that other people often don’t see.
- How to stop comparing yourself with somebody else’s brain and start working with your own.

Whether you’re ADHD, autistic, dyslexic, AuDHD, exploring your own neurodivergence, or simply trying to understand somebody you care about, I hope this episode helps you replace self-criticism with self-understanding.

Because perhaps those things were never “easy” in the first place. They were simply easier for somebody else’s brain.

💜 If this episode resonates with you, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with someone who might need to hear it.

#ADHD #Neurodiversity #Autism #AuDHD #ExecutiveFunction #ADHDPodcast #LateDiagnosis #ADHDAwareness #Neurodivergent #ADHDSupport

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Thank you so much for joining us on ADHD Wise Podcast. If something in this episode has helped you, made you think, or given you language for something you've been living with, you can support the podcast by following or subscribing, leaving a review or connecting with ADHD WISE on YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn and Facebook. Every share, review, comment and follow helps the podcast reach more people and helps us create conversations and resources that support neurodivergent people, families and professionals. Thank you. Your support really does mean the world. Welcome to ADHD WISE Podcast. I'm Janine Perryman, and this is a space for open conversations about ADHD and neurodiversity, bringing together lived experience, professional insights, and the questions that help us move forward. Wherever you are in your journey, you are welcome here. Hello and welcome to ADHD Wise Podcast. My name is Janine, and today I want to talk to you about why I can do the hard things but not the easy ones. Because that seems to be something that everybody that I speak to who's neurodivergent expresses in some way or another. So the problem isn't that you're inconsistent, actually. Although it might feel like you're inconsistent with regards to these things, because ultimately we often hear, particularly with ADHD, people being referred to as being consistently inconsistent. And I certainly used to think of myself that way. And I don't anymore. I've come to realise the ebb and the flow of things that actually makes it difficult for me to do the things other people expect me to be able to do, but I find other things really, really easy. And the reality is we're all a big bunch of strengths and challenges. Every single one of us has strengths and challenges within us. Doesn't matter what your neurotype is, this is the whole beautiful thing about neurodiversity, is that every single human, every single brain is as unique as our fingerprint, and therefore we're going to have a different bunch of strengths and challenges. I am increasingly uncomfortable with this idea of there being a neurotypical type presentation because ultimately I think that's a bit of a I think that's not particularly helpful, but I don't really have something different for you right now. So what I'd like to do is just to define what I mean by neurotypical in this context. I'm going to talk about the construct of neurotypicalness, that there is a way of being. Alright, so that's a social construct in itself, that there is a way of being, a way of doing everything, a way of communicating, a way of reading time and being on time, and a way of where you're supposed to be and what you're supposed to do and how you're supposed to use language. So I'm using that as neurotypical in this particular context, but I'm recognising that neurotypical in itself is a social construct because there isn't a neuronormative development plan actually. All progress is still progressed, regardless of the age of the person who's going to that. There isn't a particular way you're supposed to do things. I didn't do, I didn't, for example, follow the average approach to education. I didn't do my GCSEs, then my A levels, then my degree, and then my master's, etc. I did them all back to front. I did my degree before I did my GCSEs. And so what? There isn't actually uh there is it's not as linear as as people think that it is. There's just a social construct of that you're supposed to do this at this time, at this stage, at this age, in this particular year group, this category that we've placed you in. But the reality is progress is progress, and those are all social constructs. So the social construct that I'm going to use for neurotypical is those who fit reasonably neatly into that neuronormative framework that this is how we are supposed to operate, which I completely disagree with, but I think that's the best language I have for that right now. Alright, so in that context, we're leaving that like that, you are not inconsistent, you are completely consistent in your own way. So, say for example, you are exceptionally well at something, and you are go-go, you're achieving things at the top end of what you can possibly achieve, and then all of a sudden you can't maintain that anymore, and you've dropped down into needing to rest. Maybe you've burnt out, maybe you've hit the wall, maybe your efforts have just worn you out, and now you are a bit of a puddle trying to pull yourself back together again. I'm just gonna say to you, of course you are, because you've just rode a wave. So I've recorded other podcast episodes where I've talked about this concept as well, and I talk about it quite a lot. If you ride a wave, what happens? You know, if you're riding a wave, that you are eventually going to drop off the end of that wave, you're going to drop into the ebb, you're going to need to recover, regroup, learn any lessons, and go again. Society actually prefers it things. People who kind of take this middle road where they don't really ride the wave, they ride the current. Neurotypical people are not so great at riding the current. We are much, much more likely to ride the wave and then needing to drop into the ebb and to recover in the ebb before we go again. And then society hates you for being in the ebb, and you hate yourself for being in the ebb because you feel like you should be riding the wave the whole time, which is just not achievable. Alright? So if you think about all the brilliant people that you know, think about those brilliant people that you know. Are they brilliant all the time? Or do they need to rest and recover so that they can go and be brilliant again? So I'm going to give you the example of Simone Biles, who is very open about her ADHD, and I'm going to say to you, Simone Biles is a classic example of someone who is absolutely brilliant at the top of her craft, but still made the decision at one point to duck out of competition in order to put her mental health first because she recognised that the ebb is something that she must embrace in order to have that not just flow, but that riding of the wave. To be as brilliant as she is, she needs to be able to drop down into the ebb to rest, to recover, learn the lessons from the last wave before riding the next one. And that is very, very neurodivergent. We are not so good with just that flow, that just sort of taking riding the current. That isn't really, particularly an ADHD way of doing things. We are much more dopamine-seeking, we are much more riding the wave of dopamine and adrenaline, etc., and then we drop down into. Now I might be from generalizing too much there in terms of neurotypes, etc. Um, and so I'm just going to acknowledge here and now that what I've just said won't fit every single neurodivergent, neurotype, or expression. It just will not, and that's not actually possible for me to do or for anybody else to do because our brains are as unique as our fingerprints, and therefore there's going to be different expressions. But I hope you can see just from there. It's like, ah, yes, of course. And therefore, when you recognise that you've got this riding of the wave and then you've got this ebb, that it isn't inconsistent at all. It's completely predictable, it's completely consistent with the way your brain functions best. So society might like the predictability of people who ride the current, not people who ride the wave and then fall into the ebb. But the reality is that is how you function. And the social construct that everybody should just be following the current, then that's just a social construct, and your brain isn't designed to do that. So that whole thing around recognizing that your inconsistence is ink actually incredibly predictable. If you're riding the wave, you're gonna have that drop down into ebb because the ebb is just as important as the as the wave riding. Um, and the social constructs don't make that easy. That isn't actually a you problem, albeit that you'll be experiencing it as a you problem. That's an example of society disabling neurodivergent people because they don't fit into this writing the current aspect of things. Okay, so neurodivergent brains often process, prioritise, and respond differently to things compared to their neurotypical peers. Um, this creates remarkable strengths and some very real challenges. Um, not least of all the way society expects people to behave. The goal isn't to become more like everybody else, it is to understand how your own brain works. I talk quite a lot about learning how to do things differently versus learning how to do more and more and more. When you think about autistic burnout, and it isn't just limited to autism autism, um, when you look at burnout full stop, when you look at the the implications of masking and trying to behave the way everybody's expecting you to behave, um, and the way you might be expecting yourself to behave. Burnout is a thing across all neurotypes, um, and society is incredibly demanding. We've got everybody on a tread on the treadmill of life, and we're wondering why people are struggling with their mental health. Um the idea here is that we learn to, or society needs to learn how to be more flexible about how things are achieved. We can say we need to achieve this thing. So if we say, for example, we're employed, it's like this needs to be achieved, it needs to be achieved by them, this is the standard, these are the criteria, but to be flexible about how it can be achieved. Um we were doing um really well with this in the neurodiversity movement, was pressing ahead with accepting that difference does not mean deficit and disorder. We are receiving pushback at the moment, and I just want to remind you that pushback is inevitable when we are making progress, and the neurodiversity movement is making progress. No progress has ever happened without pushback, and we are experiencing that within the neurodiversity movement at the moment, okay? So just recognising that the pushback and the difficulty with diversity, equity, equality, and inclusion, these things were making great strides. Pushback. We wouldn't have, we wouldn't be um on the top of the agenda for the powers that be who benefit from the status quo if we weren't having success. So remembering that the pushback is actually just evidence that the progress was working. So keep on it, keep on it. Um, recognise that your difference is still beautiful, you are still beautiful, you're still valid, your challenges are still a point of law as well in terms of protection, but that is kind of like where we are. So I would say to you that there are so many things in this world that I find really easy that other people find difficult. Um, I can like I am an ideas machine, for example. That's my particular neurotype, is I am my brain literally comes up with new ideas, new concepts really, really fast, and I can see the possibilities. My my my thinking goes laterally um before it funnels down to hopefully something that's usable. And my support that I need around me is that that whole sort of like capturing that and sort of like pulling that down so that something useful comes of my thoughts because there are so many and they come so fast, and I can think about the the outcomes of the possibilities, and that might sometimes take me away from the criteria that was originally set, the idea that somebody planted in my head perhaps if I've got an employer what they wanted me to achieve, I may struggle to uh to stick to their criteria, but that doesn't mean the output wasn't great, for example. Academically, we see this quite a lot where people will be told, great Simon, great, what you wrote was fantastic, except it missed the criteria and therefore you failed. Um, and we can say, Oh, well, that doesn't mean that it was rubbish, it just means it wasn't on the criteria, and sometimes we can repurpose what was written for something else. Um, and certainly in the workplace, we would kind of like hope that if we'd written something that was brilliant, even if it missed the criteria for that thing, that it could be repurposed. But sometimes we have to recognise that employers need us to write to criteria, um, and that exam questions need us to re write to write to criteria, um, and so there is this whole balance of needing to work that through. Incidentally, while we're talking about writing to criteria, one of the things I find very frustrating in our world and um something that I was inspired to talk about and explore more because my my nephew had a particular challenge along this front and I helped him to challenge his university on it, is exam questions. Exam questions are not actually, there is no requirement to access, check them, to check that they are accessible to all neurotypes. And I know of many autistic brains who really struggle with exam questions. Essay questions can be a bit different because there is the potential to take them to somebody and say, what do you mean by this? So if you're an employee, for example, you can go to your employer and you can say, You've you've said you want me to do this, can I ask some questions? But if you're not going to be able to ask any questions, which you're not in an exam situation, there needs to be a requirement on whoever is setting those exam questions to make sure that they are accessible. An example that was uh the one from my that my nephew raised was a psychology question, and it was does psychology want to be a science? And this was a real challenge for this but my my nephew's um autistic brain because it was like, well, what does that even mean? Because a psychology isn't a person, it doesn't want anything, and it created a barrier to answering those questions. So there was this whole push around we need to make exam questions more accessible. And there is work now being done in universities, particularly in psychology departments, because it makes sense that they'll be leading on this to make exam questions accessible in a way that there is not quite the same requirement for other essay questions because you can ask a question with an essay, you cannot with an exam, and therefore there isn't an opportunity, and therefore there needs to be more responsibility placed on the person setting the question that makes sure that they are going to be accessible. This is one of those things, examples, by the way. What I've just said to you is an example of me taking a tangent, which is potentially a brilliant tangent, but is kind of potentially off topic. And if I was being employed by somebody else to record this podcast, they might say, Janine, you missed the point. Okay, I might be missing the point of the podcast, however, I'm making a valid point, um, but it's my podcast, so I can't see kind of make those tangents, and then to bring it back again. But look, it goes comes back around, and the reason I thought it was worth sharing that with you is that we have all these social constructs and we have this balance that we have to meet and in terms of what the individual can take responsibility for in terms of still thriving and what the environment needs to do in order to make sure that everybody has fair access and can thrive. And that was just kind of like one of those examples where um what can seem easy to one person can be really challenging for a different person because a my understanding is that a neurotypical person would just be able to go, I even though I think that's badly worded, I can kind of work out what they mean, I'm gonna be able to answer the question. Whereas an autistic person was just like, wait, wait, what? and got caught up in that and wasn't able to answer the question. So we can recognise that the two things can be can be true at once, that there is a an obligation on the individual to to function as best they can, and an obligation on society to make those sorts of shifts. So if you're listening to this and you've got any psychology training of any kind, or you've been in an exam situation and you're thinking that exam question wasn't accessible, this is something that society needs to change. Right? It just is. Society needs to make exam questions accessible because you can't ask questions. But then on the other hand, I'm also saying then that um any level of exam question, any any assignment that your boss sets to you, any anything that you're supposed to be doing, any any project or any anything, to be able to ask questions and say, what do you mean by this in terms of being able to access it and do something with it? And that's autistic brains, that's ADHD brains, that's dyslexia brains, every neurotype they're in. This whole thing around thinking there is it's okay to just say something and be vague about it and still get and then be um say they didn't meet the criteria when it comes back a different way, is um a challenge that we need to be thinking about and doing more about. So I do a lot of public speaking, and I'm not going to say to you that I find public speaking easy. I don't, I actually find it very difficult. I'm increasingly more comfortable with it, but there was a point in the middle of my uh master's degree where I realised I could perform because I've always been able to do that. I've always been involved in dance and drama and theatre, and um I've been I can perform. What I found I couldn't do was present. I would go to pieces when I had to present, and so I had um I had to do something about this because I couldn't allow that to stop me from achieving the things that are potentially going to stop me from being able to get my master's or get the grade from a master's that I deserved to get. And so I went and I volunteered to deliver um assembly presentations on preparation for work experience because it was back in the day when it was typical and common for young people to go and do work experience in year 10. So I used to go and give the year 10s an assembly talk on preparing for their work experience, and I earned the only award I'd ever won during that, which was um an investors in people award for my presentations to school-aged year 10 students on preparing for work experience. So I took responsibility for the fact that I found something difficult and I made a decision I wasn't going to let it stop me because I know I deserve to thrive, I know I've got something to say, I know I've got something to offer, and I have a responsibility to navigate my own barriers to things as best I possibly can, to identify and accept what the barrier is, and then to make a commitment to work around. So mine was I was going to throw myself in the deep end and start talking to Year 10 kids about work experience, and it worked. So I'm not going to say to you that I find public speaking easy, I don't. The example here though is I can find public speaking relatively easy now. I still really struggle to make a phone call and to receive phone calls. Um, I find that to be a real challenge, and I know that is really common in neurodivergent terms. There are so many aspects to making a phone call, whatever it happens to be, whether it's phoning your utilities company or your council tax or your bank or somebody you might want a job from. These things are very, very challenging actually when you don't know what to expect. So yeah, you can be somebody who is is competent at public speaking but struggles to make a phone call because of the unpredictable nature of what you're going to get on the other end, what you might get asked what barriers there might be, and therefore it can be very, very challenging. Solving complex problems versus replying to an email. I can absolutely solve a complex problem. If I understand the problem, it's mine, it's got it's mine to sort of fix if you like. I can sort of see I can with the lateral thinking around things, I think. Oh, and my brain goes outwards before it goes overly funneling down to solve the problem. I'm good at that. Replying to an email, I'm like, that's loads of information. I'm not sure what I want to say. Uh because I'm dyslexic, I also have to make sure that my spelling, punctuation, and grammar are correct, that I've got the right tone of professionalism, but not being too formal, or maybe I need to be formal, and all of those social expectations, those social constructs that I need to consider before I answer an email that are incredibly challenging for neurodivergent brains. Supporting someone else versus organising my own paperwork, yes, I can absolutely help somebody else to organise their paperwork. Can I sort my own? Oh no, I cannot. I find it incredibly challenging and I need support with that. So I need support for things that I support other people with, and that can create so much confusion for the rest of society. But if you're neurodivergent, you probably know exactly what I mean. I know people who can navigate travel when they have somebody else with them who struggles with travel because they put themselves in the role of caretaker of that person and they can navigate it. It changes the dynamic. Whereas if they were on their own and they were having to think about their own needs, they may absolutely struggle. I'm somebody who's like that. I will do things for when I'm doing them for somebody else. I will guide somebody else through something, but when it's for me, I'm finding it so, so much harder. And I think that's okay. I think it's unacceptable for us to struggle in those ways, but I think society thinks that we do because it finds it confusing. We tend to judge what we don't understand, which is a real shame. I think the lateral thinking is something that we should talk about more. When we're given a question, we as neurodivergent people might have different expectations or different thinking around what things mean. We might find patterns, we might consider consequences that people might not think about, and opportunities other people might not think about, exceptions to the rule that other people might not have, connections to different projects and different people, and we will think about the bigger picture. And this can be a real strength because it's got creativity in it, it's got innovation in it, it's got problem solving in it. We were seeing things that other people miss, and this can be our strength. The challenges that come with it is the side quest. Like I just took, for example, with the exam question things. It doesn't necessarily fit, but it does fit because it was relevant too. But it's a tangent that an employer might find difficult, but it wouldn't fit within easily within an exam context or an assignment or a book writing or life or cooking a meal or looking after somebody or whatever else. But the reality is tangents are sort of they can be quite beautiful in themselves. Um, missing the criteria uh is is a real challenge for neurodivergent brains because we maybe scan, read it, read it rather than deep reading it, or we there's a misinterpretation. Maybe the exam question was written badly, maybe the boss didn't communicate things as clearly as they could have done. Um, so therefore there's um The whole thing around misunderstanding what was in there in the first place and the producing some brilliant but not necessarily doing what was what was asked for. Do you feel there is more going on for you or for your child, but you are unsure where to start? At ADHDWISE, our neurodiversity pathway offers a cross-neurotype assessment for adults, children and young people. Cross-neurotype means we look across a range of neurodevelopmental profiles and differences, including ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, language communication, sensory processing, executive function and regulation. The pathway includes WISEGLIF, which helps collect detailed information from you about everyday experiences, strengths and challenges. It also includes Craos, which gives us an evidence base based on activities that you perform online that shows us things like attention, memory, reasoning and cognitive processing. We then build this together with a semi-structured interview so that we can triangulate the information and build a clearer picture of what may be going on for you. The aim is to help you know where you are, what might be contributing to the challenges that you or your child are having, and deciding on next steps, whether that be a diagnostic, support in school or in work, coaching, adjustments, or simply better understanding yourself or your child. The Neurodiversity Pathway is about clarity, direction, and helping people be better understood. You can find out more at adhbwise.uk and look for the Neurodiversity Pathway. So we tend to have these spiky profiles, and I think this is something that is often misunderstood. What do I mean by spiky profile? We know, and I know because I do quite a lot of assessments for people's cognition and learning and processing, etc., that you can have really, really great strength in terms of one area, but not have them across the board. So a neurotypical people, and we've already said that neurotypical is a weird turn of turn of phrase, but say your your average person who's got average intelligence, average processing, can follow the flow of things, can follow the current of the river, for example, where it was we're riding the wave and then falling into ebb because we're riding the dopamine waves and then falling into the ebb, and we have to recover and go again, they will be much more consistent and employers think that that's what they want. But the reality is brains like ours, neurodivergent brains, tend to be really strong in some areas and really challenged in others. So you can have really great working memory, but maybe terrible long-term memory or the other way around. You can process information in this domain, but not in this domain. I'm thinking of an engineering student that I used to coach, very capable with her engineering-based maths, and she could do any sum that was put her way. But she had to have it written down. She had to be able to see it in front of her. She couldn't hold it in her head and be able to manipulate those numbers in order to do that thing. So she's got a spiky profile where her working memory is such that she can't hold it and then do the complicated, complicated thing around being able to put things together. You can have episodic memory where you can remember the events and how they all fet followed through, but still struggle with your working memory where you can't hold a number in your head or a sequence in your head for any level of time. Spiky profiles are part of neurodivergence. I am yet to see a neurodivergent person who, when I've done some assessments with them, hasn't come back with the spiky profile. So massive strengths in one area and limitations in the other. Maybe even still within the average band, but at the higher end and the bottom end of what the average band looks like. And it's just that whole thing of recognising that that spiky profile, that inconsistency in terms of ability is an underpinning, underlying aspect of neurodivergence that I just never hear anybody else talking about. That I think is really, really important to recognise that. This results then in brilliant ideas but forgotten appointments, calm in a crisis, but overwhelmed by routine, bored by routine, underwhelmed by routine, exceptional memory for one thing, but complete forgetfulness in others. Deep expertise alongside everyday struggles. One doesn't cancel out the other. And typically is true that you can be both brilliant and baffled, and that you can be really, really capable, but also really, really challenged. And an area of particular interest in mine is that you know I feel like I'm a very, very strong person. I feel like I come across like a strong person. And that doesn't negate the fact that I have massive vulnerabilities in some areas, need massive amounts of support in some. And and that that juxtaposition is seen as juxtaposition when actually it's just a spiky profile. It is just being human, actually, is to struggle and to and to have massive successes in the same person, is actually very, very human and very, very typical. The neurodivergent. Knowing isn't always doing. Russell Barclay talks about ADHD, for example, not being a condition of not knowing what to do, because we typically do know what to do, it's not being able to do it. Now I'm going to challenge that slightly and say that tends to be because we're trying to do things in a neurotypical way versus being able to do things in a way that's that fits our neurotype. So in ADHD terms, it's like not doing it the way, not feeling like we have to do it the way everybody else would do it, but actually finding our own way of doing it, and that sits very nicely as well within within autism. It's like you want me to achieve this as your end result. What you're saying to me doesn't make sense in terms of how that is achieved, even though I understand where you want me to get to, it makes much more sense to me to do it this way. So then you get all your why questions, etc. And actually, why not why not have the liberty to be able to be flexible at how that is achieved? This is what I want you to achieve, and you do you, you find your own way to achieve that thing. And autistic brains can be incredibly good that way. They can get sort of stuck on some aspects, but if they're at liberty to be able to flex and move around things in their own way, and the stuckness isn't something that is coming from the uh from the outside, it still may come from the inside. But you've got support to get through that and to be flexible in that thinking. You get the best thinking from an autistic brain. The the problem solving the uh that comes from an autistic brain when it's allowed to be to be operating in its best way, when it's calm, relaxed, and allowed to follow its own logic, it's extraordinary, but society doesn't like it because it says, Oh, this is the scheme of of how you're supposed to do things, you're supposed to do this. If that doesn't work for your brain, why are you not at liberty to be able to do it a different way? I would argue that you should be. So it can be difficult to start, to prioritize, to organise. Switching attention when it's being the switch of attention is being directed by other people can be a real challenge. Staying on task when it feels underwhelming or overwhelming can be a very real challenge, and finishing that attention to detail and being a sort of finisher, being able to tie off all those loose ends at the end can be a real challenge for neurodivergent brains, and it might be that, say, for example, you have an office-based team that somebody else does the finishing off. So, for example, I have a technical author in my team. So if I'm like, here's everything, and it's almost done, and somebody else finishes it off me, what's wrong with that? And I think that's actually okay, but then I'm self-employed, therefore I employ other people to fill in those gaps for me. But actually, I know of lots of examples in highly functioning teams where they absolutely maximise the strengths of of every every member of staff, and if this person is very good at dotting the i's and crossing the t's, then they are the person who who gets the work towards the end of things. Doesn't mean they never get involved from start to finish, but we know this person is a great finisher, and therefore we think about who we've got on our team, and we mix and match to make sure everyone's strengths are maximised, and therefore the team is incredibly successful, and we're not burning people out and making them go and go back in and do that minutia detail if that's not their thing, and so that can really really work. We do a lot of comparing our reality with other people's projections, and I'm going to talk about social media here as an example. People tend to put on social media their best projection, it isn't actually a reflection of all of their life, and actually, as somebody who posts a lot on social media, I've been criticised for being um as authentic as I actually tend to be besides of a neurodivergent life. But actually, I think that that that criticism is is unjust and unfair, and ultimately um we do need to be acknowledging that life is not picture perfect because ultimately somebody else is going to come along and they're going to assume that you're thriving, they're struggling, therefore there's something wrong with them. No, I struggle. I am both strong and vulnerable. I am, and I will talk about that until the cows come home because I think it's really important to ex to to be honest about the fact that in the same person you can have strength and challenge. I think it's important that we understand that about all humans anyway, but about neurodivergent ones in particular, because you know, we do have this thing where we compare our reality to other people's projection. Because social media doesn't really isn't with stuff like that, don't air your dirty laundry in public, which it just basically means only show the the the positive side of life, be more concerned with what things look like rather than what they are. That doesn't suit me. I don't know about you, it doesn't suit me. I think that if we're just pretending everything is rosy when actually things are difficult, then I think we're setting ourselves up for pe f to fail. And I think we're making things harder for society as well. I think that we should be a bit more balanced about saying this is difficult, this is easy, I am struggling right now. But we don't, and society doesn't, and therefore we end up in a situation where we are typically measuring our reality with other people's projection, and we shouldn't, because actually most people are winging it. And one of the one of the biggest things in life and parenting and adulting is recognising that most people are winging it and just doing the best that they can. If they are operating within their capacity, if they're operating and they've got a great support network, they're gonna have more success than somebody who is managing just at the edge of their capacity and doesn't have a support network, those people are gonna fall over more. Of course they are. That just makes sense. Um, so recognising that people are winging it generally speaking, and the people who have more successes are just those who are operating more within their comfort zone where they can overcome the difficulties more than somebody who hasn't got an entourage or a team or whatever happens to happen. But the neurodivergent people, we are typically operating at the top of what we can manage because we are having to mask and we're having to conform, etc., and these things are putting us on the backfoot, and therefore it's difficult for us to always rise above things because we're on the backfoot so much of the time. I think it's important that we understand our profile, is one of the reasons that I do um cross-neurotype profiling because none of us fit neatly into our diagnostic criteria. We don't tick all the boxes for our diagnostic criteria and we tick some other ones for other ones. Um, and that creates a bit of a challenge, and most people don't understand their neurodivergent profile, and I think that that's not fair. I think we should do more exploration of that so that we know what's going on for us because we don't fit neatly into boxes. That's kind of the whole thing about neurodivergents, is that we don't fit into boxes, and then we say, Oh, I'm autistic, or oh, I'm ADHD, or I'm uh AUDHD, oh I'm dyslexic, or I'm dyspraxic, I'm I've got threats, I'm this, I'm that, I've got this, I've got that, and it's like, well, yeah, that's all valid. But the reality is that none of these conditions ever operate in silo. So your profile will absolutely be have at least a splattering of other neurodivergent traits because that's your unique neurodivergent fingerprint, if you like, because all our fingerprints are as unique as our brains. We are all completely different, um, even if we've got overlapping factors that sort of fit within a diagnostic framework that will likely get redefined the next time around because they're human-made versus neurodiversity, which is just part of being human, um, and then neurodivergence because we differ from from the norm, from the standard, whatever that actually means. We need to be building systems around our strengths. So I'm always saying that using your strengths to mitigate your challenges is where the wisdom is. It's like, okay, I struggle with this, but I find this easier. So I'm gonna I'm gonna focus on these things so that I can get ahead, and then I'm gonna have to work hard on that, or I might have to outsource that bit. So, for example, when I have to do statistics, I don't do that myself. Why get somebody else to do that bit because I I can do it, but it's not my thing. Um, and there are various technical things like I I outsource because I would rather be writing and creating and talking than doing all those technical things because I want to be working to my strengths and allowing somebody else to do those jobs for me. Again, an advantage to being self-employed versus working for an employer. Um, but it's one of those things that we'd like employers to be doing is being more flexible about who does what, so everything gets done, but we're working to the strengths of a team rather than thinking everybody should be all things to all people. We need to reduce unnecessary barriers, and sometimes they're about expectations, sometimes they're about things in the environment. Um, so I remember when I was doing my um specialist teacher training, because I am a send specialist, so I actually have a qualification in additional needs. So I remember one of the barriers to education that I came across that I just thought was ridiculous was that to log on to a college um IT system, you had to use the control, alt, and delete, and you have to push those things down all at once. And I had a young person who I was teaching who had cerebral palsy, so couldn't do control, alt, delete. And my argument was: can we take that barrier away? Can we just make it so that you only have to press the space bar to activate the college computer and then you just put in your password and carry on? No, they wouldn't shift, but I would have been absolutely an example of the environment disabling the individual because they were like, Well, we'll just get somebody else to do it for them, they can just get a learning and support assistant to do that. And I was just like, why? Just create more accessibility by allowing the spacebar to be the button that you press rather than having to control or delete, which excludes some people. So there's lots of things within society that are disabling that are just completely unnecessary, and there are things within ourselves that are disabling that we can actually do something about, and that's kind of one of the reasons that we have of coaching. Shame being one of those things where we've struggled so much, and shame has been used as a strategy to get us to conform so much that actually it becomes a barrier to us actually doing the things that we want to do. So we probably need to speak to somebody about that and do some work on that in order to overcome those shame barriers because we don't deserve them. You know, I am I um there was a moment just today, and I'm I'm with people I I like, so I'm not having a particular pop, but there was a moment today where um I felt a bit awkward about something because I'm in somebody else's house at the moment, hence a different background, and I was talking about struggling with the fact that I'm usually a person in charge of the household and I usually do the most of the cooking, etc. And I'm in somebody else's house, that's not happening, and I was going, Oh, I'm finding this really difficult, and I was a bit sort of like jiggly in myself because I'm ADHD and I'm very physical in terms of um how I regulate myself, so I was moving more than would be kind of expected. And I'm a 53-year-old woman, so maybe that looked a bit weird. And one of the people in the vicinity went, What is she doing? and that made me feel real uncomfortable for a millisecond, and then I said to myself, you know what, if that person is judging me, that is not about me, that is about them. And so that's what I mean by overcoming shame and realizing that that those shame things that person was saying that because they are used to shame. That that's that's their work to do, that's not my work to do. My work is to look at that and go, that's not about me, that's about them feeling uncomfortable with the fact that I'm unashamedly me. I'm doing nothing wrong, even if it looks a bit odd. And so I don't allow, I do my best to not let shame be a barrier to me doing the things that I'm and meet to meeting my own needs, um, and to me expressing myself and saying I find it difficult to be in somebody else's house, in somebody else's kitchen space, and know what I should do, what I shouldn't do, what I can do, what I can't do, what's expected of me, what's not expected of me. I find that difficult, and it came out as movement as I was having a conversation with this wonderful person, and somebody else judged it. Somebody else tried to put shame on me. And that's not about me, that's about them, and that's what I mean by um unnecessary barriers that are internal. So we talked about the external ones there, but we talked about some internal ones too. Asking for support where you need it. I will ask for help. It's important that we do, and I and you've got to feel safe, you've got to feel psychologically safe to ask for help, and that in itself, I think society has so many barriers to us asking for the help that we need. Um, but we we should feel able to do that. But the reality is that we don't always, and society can be a challenge that way, but also we can be a challenge to ourselves that way. And stop expecting your brain to work like somebody else's. Your brain is as unique as your fingerprint, your brain needs what it needs, it operates where it does. Knowing the strengths of your of the way you operate is such an empowering thing, and I really want to encourage you to do that. You don't have to prove that you're intelligent, you don't have to prove that you're trying. You don't have to apologize because your strengths and your challenges don't make sense to other people. Please get curious about how your own mind works. Work with it, not against it. You deserve to thrive. We all deserve to thrive. So I use a lot of acceptance and commitment theory and therapy in my coaching work. If you can accept your brain and learn to love yourself, respect yourself, honour yourself, challenge yourself, um, you can you can do an awful lot in terms of making commitments to how you're going to be, how you're going to operate, how you're going to expect other people to treat you, how you're going to learn how to put down barriers and say no to people. You absolutely deserve to thrive, and you often that means learning how to say no to other people, respecting yourself, valuing yourself, um, and learning how to do things differently and not comparing yourself with other people. So I think I need to stop there. But I've really, really enjoyed recording this. I hope you've enjoyed listening to it and I hope that it resonates. Please understand that I know that there isn't there is no way in the course of recording any one podcast that every single thing I say is going to apply to you. Because you're not me. You haven't experienced what I've experienced, and I haven't experienced what you've experienced. Please take from this what works for you. Adjust what almost fits to whatever happens to be working for you, and let go of what doesn't, because you should be doing that with with anybody and anything that you hear. Don't absorb anybody else's stuff and assume it's the way, the way to view things, the 100% truth, because that will not be the case. That is not how this works. Encouraging critical thinking in you is one of the things that I really want to do because you know I'm just a human being. I contain my own bias, my own perspective, and so does every other theorist, practitioner, person, human. Everyone contains their own bias, their own everything. And so take everything that you hear from somebody else, take from it what works for you, and let go have the rest. You deserve to thrive, and I hope you've enjoyed listening today. Um, and thank you for listening, and maybe I'll see you on another podcast. Thank you. Thank you for listening to ADHDwise podcast. ADHDWISE exists to help bridge understanding and support for people exploring ADHD and broader neurodiversity. If you would like to know more about us and our services, please visit www.adhdwise.uk. Follow ADHDwiseuk on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn. Take care and we'll see you next time.