Navigating a Whole Career Before a Mid-30s ADHD Diagnosis

Hi, I’m Becky, founder of Same Shit, Different Brain. I’m a freelance content marketer, writer, mental health podcaster, speaker, actress and breathwork facilitator. I don’t say all that to randomly brag - although I am proud - but to illustrate how ADHDers often become multi-hyphenates…

I always knew I could do well and had big ambitions but also, I always felt like I was a bit weird. I had a successful life and career on paper, but there was always this underlying feeling that there was something wrong with me as I couldn’t get my brain to work like everyone else’s.

I quite liked being a bit different a lot of the time, don’t get me wrong; but it also causes you to constantly feel that you somehow don’t belong.

I did very well at school and uni and work. I always got promoted in roles wherever I went; if I worked in contract positions, I got asked to stay on with the company full time; I’ve been hired abroad to start a new department for a big company; I’ve been in charge of creating and managing whole teams; I’ve completely switched industries after working hard on a side hustle; etc etc.

You might not have known how badly I actually felt about myself as I hid it well, but working in permanent employment often felt like hell for me.

I loved being around people and getting to be creative, make a difference and innovate when I could, but I just couldn’t get my head around things like processes, personal development meetings, which felt torturous, or using corporate jargon and ‘playing the game’ rather than talking like humans and supporting each other.

I also constantly looked for new challenges as I’d quickly become bored doing the same old thing, which doesn’t always work if you’re in a company longer than a year.

I could only meet deadlines if I attacked them last minute, when I would find this incredible surge of motivation that was otherwise unavailable to me, which allowed me to complete piles of work in record time.

And I could rarely ask for help as I constantly feared being sacked over the smallest thing, for no rational reason; so I was terrified of anyone finding me out for not having it all together. I was too ashamed to ask for what I needed and I wish I’d known then what I do now.

I gave a talk this week at a Bloom North launch event for their new neurodivergent handbook for businesses. And I loved what producer Emma Jackson, who wrote the handbook, said about supporting neurodivergent employees: “We’re not asking people to slow down; we’re asking you to get out of people’s way”. I was getting in my own way for years because I didn’t realise that speaking up for what I needed, in order to be able to thrive, would benefit companies just as much as me.

It was constant late nights (and I mean LATE) to get stuff done, just battering my health and battling with myself to stay focused, rather than constantly feeling the urge to do anything else but the job at hand.

I knew I wasn’t lazy, because it wasn’t a case of ‘I can’t be arsed with this’; it was more ‘OK I know I can do this mundane task I’ve done a thousand times, so that’s no problem; I’ll get it done in no time (delusional - Google time blindness, if you don’t know) - so I could just try getting everything else done at the same time’, or, I could obsess over a small detail in a task for hours, delaying other tasks by feeling completely unable to switch focus; or, ‘What about this incredible new idea I’ve suddenly got that could change the whole company and I could create a big strategy document for right now?’ Because surely that’s more important than the small everyday stuff…right?

Just for context on what that’s all about, a deficiency in certain chemicals for the ADHD brain impairs executive function, so that it can feel more difficult to complete everyday tasks. There are exceptions to this, such as when we’re hyperfocused on something (which we can’t always choose); tasks with an element of stress (such as when they’re attached to a dangerously-looming deadline), as they produce energising chemicals like cortisol; and tasks we’re particularly interested in and feel highly motivated by, as they produce chemicals that are central to our reward and pleasure centres, like dopamine.

I just didn’t get why everyone else seemed to innately know, and passionately champion, the rules of life in the workplace. At the risk of sounding a bit Noughties Mark Zuckerberg, I couldn’t understand why people didn’t break more rules or make more noise in order to do radically interesting things. It was ironic really (and yes, maybe a touch arrogant, on reflection), because I’d been masking to try and fit in, and follow what I thought were ‘the rules’, for most of my career.

ADHDers are full of contradictions. So it’s also the case that because we’re so used to not really feeling we belong and constantly fearing rejection, we kind of preempt that and it makes us quite rebellious sometimes, too. On a good day, this can equate to thinking outside the box. So that can definitely be harnessed by businesses to get the most out of employees, if you don’t try and make everyone fit into the same box. (Because in an ideal world, everyone can ask for what they need in order to do amazing work - it’s about true inclusivity and support across the board.)

After spending the first decade-plus of my career working in agencies and for big brands like Bupa, Priory Group and Betfred, I’ve now been self-employed for almost three years. It was my plan all along as I knew it was the only way I’d ever thrive, doing things on my own terms, enjoying lots more variety in my working life and pursuing my passions. (I will say that I also look back at most of the companies I’ve worked at with a lot of fondness and gratitude; there’s no blame game here.)

The idea was that freelance life would leave me with time and headspace for all the businesses I wanted to start. This sounds pretty grand, I know, but fellow ADHDers will know how the endless new ideas can torment us. Only yesterday, at a group business coaching event (full of neurodivergent freelancers, I was not surprised to find), I was talking to a brilliant woman who owns multiple businesses and was about to start yet another; but she too berates herself over the ones she hasn’t got round to yet. I think up a new venture every other day and feel like a failure if I don’t see them all through, which of course isn’t very realistic, so I’m a bit of a dreamer and a sucker for punishment. (Allow me to refer you to the latest Desert Island Discs ep with Greta Gerwig, because neurodivergent girlies are currently loving that - not for the first time - she credits her ADHD for her relentless ambition.)

That said, I have learned to get out of my head more with things like meditation, yoga and breathwork, which previously I never cultivated the patience for or sat still long enough to do. But that’s for another article - my stillness practices opened up a whole new world for me post-Covid (which is how I got to know myself and realise my ADHD tendencies in the first place).

I got my ADHD diagnosis just before summer 2022, when I was in my mid-30s, and then I started talking about it publicly later that year, for my mental health podcast and events, Same Shit Different Brain (which you’re on the website for right now, if you didn’t know).

The very first time I spoke about my ADHD publicly, though, was in the audience at a Bloom North event, asking Emma Jackson a question during the Q and A. I was just so inspired by her passion on the topic of neurodivergence, how she proudly owned the fact that she too has ADHD, and attributed her hugely impressive career to being neurodivergent. She was later a guest on my podcast, if you want to listen to our conversation.

Being diagnosed is both very scary/identity crisis-inducing, and extremely validating. Because you always suspected that you were different, and it’s incredible to finally find out why and to be able to start being seen for who you are, owning your individuality and working with your own brain.

Of course, ADHD isn’t a whole identity and we’re all more than our conditions, whatever we have. But being neurodivergent is so closely tied to our being, and not everyone agrees with this. (‘Stop making ADHD your personality’, etc. The same people who preach about what ‘normal’ communication and human behaviour is supposed to look like…’plenty of eye contact and a firm handshake in interviews’; you know the ones.)

It's so illogical because the thinking behind distancing ourselves from neurodivergence is to simply be ourselves and own our differences, rather than jumping on this supposed bandwagon. But that’s exactly what we’re all trying to do, by getting diagnosed or self-diagnosing, accepting ourselves at last and finally understanding what’s going on in our minds and bodies.

For a while that kind of talk shamed me into being quiet again. Not to mention the regular headlines and posts along the lines of ‘everyone has ADHD now; stop jumping on the bandwagon’, etc (always written by neurotypical people, of course, because god forbid we let the people *with* the conditions ever talk about the conditions). It was upsetting when it seemed like the world quickly started to turn its back on neurodivergent people once again, when we’d only just started being able to find a place for ourselves.

So after starting out on this journey proudly speaking up for over a year and strongly wanting to advocate for people who felt alone in their experiences, I felt the shame again and wondered whether I was doing the right thing in talking about it so much. It would have been a massive shame for me to continue thinking like this because I already came so far, after only a few years earlier being terrified to even Google ‘mental health’ or ‘depression’, and of course, after masking my whole life.

That’s why initiatives like Bloom North’s are so important to continue championing people and making them feel seen, as I felt at their event; the work is never over.

So it’s good for managers to be aware that even people who seem confident with who they are and will usually speak up, might not ask for what they need at work. And to go one further, undiagnosed neurodivergent people might not even *know* what they need to thrive, let alone survive.

It’s about having the emotional intelligence to spot when a person might need support and ask them directly if they’d like help, or to do something differently, rather than disciplining them. Encourage individual strengths and avoid having a specific model for how you want the ideal employee to behave. Empower people to show you what they can bring to the world, in a way that works for them. Because neurodivergent people have a lot to bring. So let’s be honest, get the best out of them and they could be making you look good, like any thriving employee does for their managers.

Thank you so much to Bloom North for inviting me to share my experiences at such a wonderful event. And thank you to Emma Jackson for inspiring me to start speaking out about my experiences in the first place, and being an incredible role model for neurodivergent women. Without these role models, who would inspire us to speak up for ourselves? I can only hope to try and do the same for others by continuing to share my whole self, rather than a masking, shame-filled husk of a person. And that’s more than can be said for Zuck; the big Meta-peddling robot.