To the outside world, Kat Brown was a professional success. What her colleagues didn’t know, however, was how much effort it cost her. “I had this underlying sort of buzzing voice in my head of ‘you’re not good enough, you’re not normal, you have to try five times harder than everyone else,’” says Brown, author of the ADHD memoir It’s Not One bloody trend. “The only way I could calm that down was with alcohol, and along with booze, coffee. It was the way I tricked my brain into doing what I wanted.”
That meant drinking up to nine Americanos a day, relaxing with drinks after work – and sometimes bursting into exhausted tears when she got home. It wasn’t until she was diagnosed with ADHD at age 37, shortly after quitting her media job and starting freelancing, that everything started to make sense. Some people with ADHD, she explains, find that caffeine helps stabilize, rather than stimulate, an already buzzing mind. Meanwhile, her fear, she thinks, reflected a sense of being different and a fear of being exposed somehow.
But four years later, Brown has learned to see the benefits of her neurodivergent brain. “A friend I worked with said, ‘You have so many strings on your bow that you’re almost a harp,’ and I think a lot of people with ADHD have that Swiss army knife mentality: ‘Okay, this is the situation. what am I supposed to do here?’”
Her busy mind loves to juggle multiple projects, which makes her very productive, and she thrives on deadlines. “As long as I have a constant amount of work to do and tasks to check off, that’s fine. When I’m really struggling is when I’m out of work.” She has learned to create a detailed weekly schedule, filling the empty time with tasks to keep herself motivated.
Rising diagnosis rates for both ADHD and autism in adults – a 2021 study found that autism diagnoses were increasing 787% between 1998 and 2018 – fuel a new understanding of the hidden role that neurodiversity plays in working life, for both good and bad. Comedian Fern Brady, who was diagnosed as autistic at the age of 34, has described how “everything about my personality that made me a problem in college or in most jobs” seemed like a magical force in stand-up. Chef Heston Blumenthal, who has ADHD, says his “very busy mind” has helped him make creative connections.
Yet not everyone is so lucky. A US study found that employees with ADHD were 60% more likely to be fired than neurotypical workers and three times more likely to quit impulsively, while research in Britain found that only 30% of autistic workers Working-age Britons have a job, despite the majority saying they do. want one. Unhelpful stereotypes such as the idea that autistic people are best suited to lonely, data-crunching jobs persist, says Richmal Maybank, employment engagement officer at the National Autistic Society (NAS), who has supported people in areas from the creative arts to cognitive behavioral therapy. . Meanwhile, fear of discrimination prevents some from disclosing a diagnosis or exercising their legal right to request “reasonable adjustments” at work – often small changes that make a surprisingly big difference.
An autistic healthcare professional who supported Maybank was so afraid of misinterpreting the social norms of office tea that she was afraid to drink a hot drink at work. “She had to travel to clinics and there were lots of different rules – one used a cat system, one where you had to be careful which mug you used,” says Maybank, explaining that deciphering unspoken rules can be more difficult for some autistic people. . “She said: ‘Do I make a cup of tea for the person sitting next to me or for the whole room?’ Trying to understand that was so stressful that she said it was easier to just never drink a cup of tea.” The NAS will help companies create a ‘starter checklist’ for new recruits, explaining this type of informal etiquette in addition to the official job.
Because both autistic people and people with ADHD can be hypersensitive to bright lights and sounds, Maybank also often recommends warmer office lighting so people can start work early when it is quiet, or turn off the office radio and let staff listen to music through a headphones.
But for many neurodivergent employees, the biggest hurdle is getting hired in the first place. A recent government-commissioned study into autism and employment, led by former minister Robert Buckland, found that autistic graduates were twice as likely as non-autistic peers not to have found a job after 15 months, with many felt ‘that they had to mask their work’. autistic traits to succeed”.
Buckland, whose own daughter is autistic, insists his report is not about forcing someone from benefits into work, but about helping people who “yearn for the chance that they can have a job and enjoy the same quality of life that other people take for granted.” Sometimes, he says, that means a supported job (about a third of autistic people also have learning difficulties). But for others, it simply means making inclusivity “a normal part of recruitment” for everyone. His report recommends showing candidates the interview questions in advance so they can prepare, and setting up more practical interview tasks that focus less on “social fit” and more on what applicants can actually do. Yet his finding that autistic people are disproportionately overqualified for the jobs they find themselves in suggests that even once hired, some still face subtle barriers to promotion.
Jo Desborough is a neurodiversity coach and works with employers and employees to bridge the gap. Desborough is autistic herself and remembers being punished as a child for chatting in class. “The teacher said, ‘who’s talking?’ so I raised my hand and got an arrest. I was terrified,” she remembers. Confused, she asked why she was being punished for answering honestly. “And suddenly I’m now labeled ‘defiant’, and all I’ve done is try to understand what I did wrong. If that teacher had said ‘stop talking’ I would have understood.” In the workplace, this tendency to tell the literal truth – rather than telling managers what they want to hear – can sometimes hurt promotion prospects, even though honesty is potentially very valuable to an employer, she points out.
Clare McNamara, a neurodiversity coach with whom Desborough often works and who was diagnosed with ADHD and some autistic traits at the age of 50, emphasizes that coaching is not about ‘fixing’ people, but about building on their strengths. “To be able to say to someone: ‘tell them how you experience things, what are your strengths, what do you do in these types of situations, what can we borrow from that and apply to this?’ – it’s almost like permission is given to be authentically themselves.”
McNamara specializes in coaching senior executives who have been successful in some ways because of their neurodiversity, and in other ways despite colleagues’ reaction to it. She says: “They may be very good at seeing the bigger picture, good strategic thinkers. They are often good at taking people along and are incredibly dedicated. They will work very hard and very innovatively.” But even for high achievers, having to work at work in a way that doesn’t come naturally can be exhausting. Both she and Desborough say they set firm boundaries and adjust their workload to avoid feeling overwhelmed.
For employees who don’t have as much control over their own hours and who are concerned about revealing that they are neurodivergent, Desborough suggests requesting accommodations without specifying exactly why you want to wear noise-cancelling headphones or partially want to work from home.
For Brown, working from home provides time for exercise – which helps her focus – and also allows her to manage the odd energy slump. If she had been diagnosed before she started working as a freelancer, she is not sure she would have felt confident telling an employer. Yet in many ways she still wishes she had known sooner. “The biggest thing that would have changed, other than taking away that desperate need to prove myself, is that I might have been a little bit happier.” Isn’t that what we all ultimately want from our work?