Preface
I decided to write this book because, in my experience, people’s understanding of neurodiversity and its manifestations is woefully inadequate. Because of this, society (and especially the workplace) is missing out. Neurodivergent people have much to offer an employer and I want our voices to be heard.
I especially want the voices of autistic females to ring out loud and clear because autism has been seen as a male condition for too long. My autism wouldn’t have been ‘picked up’ years ago, but now we’re seeing so many more people (especially women and famous ones at that) receiving a diagnosis. I think this is probably due to an increase in awareness and more refined diagnostic criteria.
Opinions differ when it comes to the prevalence of autism. However, about one in one hundred people (1%) are believed to be autistic, so that’s around 700,000 of us here in the UK. I think the figure is much higher, especially due to the underdiagnosing of females.
The workplace can be daunting for many people, but it’s often an incredibly stressful environment for neurodivergent people, and given that we spend huge chunks of our lives at work, it needs to be made more autism friendly.
Furthermore, in the UK in 2021, only 29% of autistic adults were employed. Admittedly, some are unlikely ever to be able to enter the workplace, but I think a lot more could and would like to; they may just need a few small changes to be made. This group of people has a lot to offer, so as a society, we need to raise our game.
I am not an authority on neurodiversity. I’m merely drawing on my own experience and understanding of autism and other types of neurodivergence to help people and raise awareness.
Throughout this book, I’ll share with you my understanding of my neurodivergence through the female prism of a ‘later-in-life’ diagnosis and how so many things suddenly made sense, especially around why I was like I was as a child and why I struggled with what many would consider simple tasks, situations and circumstances. I’ve shared my experiences so I can provide first-hand what I’ve encountered and how things could be better for people, especially women like me.
Shortly after I’d received my diagnoses and while still learning about my conditions, I found myself working in a new career with clients, some of whom were neurodivergent themselves. So, I had to learn quickly, not just how to best manage the ‘new me’ but how to best serve a diverse and challenging client group.
Introduction
Professionally, I dealt with people accused of serious criminal offences, people who’d been in prison for decades, people with profound mental health conditions and others who were facing the prospect of having their children removed from their care, to name but a few of the areas in which I worked.
At the same time, I was trying to understand my ‘new’ diagnoses. The office environment was unconventional and not what one may expect of a law firm. Some of the stories are tragic, some are hilarious and most were like nothing I had encountered before. We were seeing people at some of the lowest points in their lives, so we got to see the very worst and the very best of human nature.
I’ll share with you how I got to grips with retraining later in life in a thought-provoking environment while still trying to understand neurodiversity. I encountered clients from a world many don’t get to see and I blend these two distinct narratives.
At age thirty, I decided to pursue a career in law. I left my job in the corporate world to retrain as a solicitor. Three years later, I was diagnosed with several conditions, including autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Shortly after being diagnosed, I joined a tough, gritty law firm as a trainee solicitor, where much of the work was publicly funded.
Starting a new job and career in your thirties would be challenging for most people. However, when you’ve just received diagnoses that you’re still learning about and trying to fathom how best to get along with these ‘new’ facets in your life, the experience is not to be underestimated.
These ‘newcomers’ had always been part of me and my persona but had previously gone undetected while hiding in plain sight. Little did I know that my newcomers would be the most straightforward aspect of my newly acquired life.
I had joined a working environment that would have tested the mettle of the steeliest hard case. Not only was there poverty and deprivation but the breadth and depth of legal assistance some clients required was incredible.
The firm helped many people, including those facing serious criminal charges, individuals with mental health issues, people with housing and employment problems, prisoners, and parents trying to have their children returned to their care following local authority removal. These are just a few examples of the expertise and services undertaken, and I worked in a number of areas. Sometimes, clients would utilise many of the firm’s departments simultaneously, such was the complexity of their needs.
As comical, enlightening and humbling as some of the cases were, nothing could have prepared me for the incendiary office environment, explosive characters and volatility on an almost daily basis and this was coming from some of the staff.
However, though the clients were a constant source of amusement, frustration and heartbreak, the person who was the day-to-day boss was incredibly unassuming and benign upon first meeting. Brenda had grafted her way up to manager and had made herself, family and friends cogs in many aspects of the firm’s machinery, whether required or not.
This book covers some of my time at this firm and concludes when I qualified as a solicitor. Brenda was an essential part of this journey, but before I introduce her and the office in more depth, I’ll first share with you a bit about my neurodivergence.
Chapter One: A Smörgåsbord of Diagnoses
On 15 March 2017, I was diagnosed with autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia and right-hemispheric deficit syndrome.
I was thirty-three, and it was a Wednesday.
For me, autistic thinking and neurotypical thinking are like two different operating systems used by different smartphone brands. Each functions very effectively, however, they are ostensibly quite different. More importantly, they aren’t naturally compatible with one another without at least some kind of adaptation.
For years, autistic people just haven’t had that adaptation. Society has not understood their format or been able to convert behaviours and characteristics into reasons and explanations for neurotypicals, the so-called ‘normals’, who are the majority and ruling class.
In my experience, having autism and ADHD is like having a wife and a mistress, although I’m not always sure which is which as they can be subject to change, rivalry and the odd spat.
At times, these developmental disabilities mitigate one another, and sometimes, they battle for primacy. ADHD gives me a relentless supply of energy, quick thinking and a flurry of ideas. However, this is soon tempered by the autism returning the much-needed order, logic, caution and structure to my thinking and behaviour. They are a bit of an odd couple, really, but they’ve been together for decades and have learned to rub along.
When my ADHD is in full flow and in need of a harness, I feel like a charioteer, battling the reins against the pull of my horses. Sometimes, I don’t present as being particularly well-house-trained either, and it’s a wonder anything comes out of my mouth with any semblance of order. My brain feels like an internet browser with thirty pages open all at once. I occasionally have little or no ‘thought filter’, and whatever is in my head tends to get propelled from my mouth with the rapidity of a bullet, although I’m getting better at auditing the content as I get older (assuming I can catch it)!
I always thought honesty was the best policy, but surprisingly, that’s not true. ‘Autistic honesty’ and ‘regular honesty’ aren’t necessarily the same thing because when somebody asks a question in search of an answer, it’s not always honesty they’re seeking. They might be looking for reassurance or support. Now, I’m not saying that I’m incapable of offering the latter; however, it’s not my signature dish, so to speak.
When my autism is in the driving seat, I’m tense, intense, detail-obsessed, socially awkward and fraught with anxiety. In short, my ADHD is the accelerator, my autism is the brake and I’m a better motorist for hosting the two.
Increasing numbers of adults (especially women) and children are diagnosed as autistic. Whether this is because there is a genuine increase in numbers or whether it’s because awareness has improved and professionals are just getting better at diagnosing, it’s difficult to say.
In my opinion, it’s the latter.
Those of us who are autistic haven’t just materialised; we’ve been around for years. While diagnostic improvements are being made, girls, in particular, have often been overlooked. This is not because autism is a male condition or because girls aren’t affected. I think it is because girls are more proficient at hiding their autism as well as presenting differently to boys. Professionals have largely worked from a male template, which I think accounts for many girls being missed.
I suspect this is why I wasn’t picked up until I re-entered higher education years after leaving university. Initially, I thought I was just a little rusty as I’d been out of a learning environment for some time, coupled with knowing that numeracy had never been my strong suit. However, I became increasingly aware that I was struggling with some relatively straightforward tasks while managing others along with the rest of my contemporaries.
When I decided to study law, I completed a law conversion course designed for people who already held a degree, although not in law, but wanted to become a solicitor or barrister. It’s a type of fast-track programme. The essential components of the law are condensed into this conversion course. Following the successful completion of this aspect of learning, one could then complete the Legal Practice Course (LPC) along with those who had studied law as an undergraduate to become a solicitor. This is where legal skills such as drafting documents, interviewing clients, working with accounts and undertaking tax calculations are taught.
During my LPC, I was advised that I might benefit from an assessment. So, I saw an educational psychologist. I’d never previously undergone any similar assessment. I was tested all day on many aspects of my intelligence, thinking and processing. When my results were shared with me, I had very mixed feelings.
As a child, I always felt very different from my peers. I hated going to parties and I didn’t like group games or events. I didn’t share in the interests of other children, be it in the latest doll or a cool new show on TV. This didn’t bother me, as most of my peers just got on my nerves.
Getting my diagnosis was not like seeing a doctor and being provided with a solution, treatment, referral, prescription, or reassurance that there was nothing wrong. That’s because if you present with a bacterial chest infection, you will be given an antibiotic, and you’ll probably be referred for an investigation if you've found a lump. However, on the face of it, once you receive your neurodivergent diagnosis (whatever aspect of neurodiversity that may be), nothing happens, and nothing changes for the most part.
A diagnosis is just that. It’s not a roadmap to explain how to manage your condition(s), and while you may now know that you’re autistic or dyslexic, especially as an adult, what’s changed? Several people asked me, “What will you do about it then?” Or they’d say, “What’s next?” At first, I just shrugged my shoulders because I was just pleased and somewhat relieved to have some answers.
A diagnosis doesn’t facilitate any ‘solution’, but a diagnosis did provide me with an opportunity to get to grips with coping strategies. Although, I think I was naïve when I thought everybody would be helpful and supportive. Some people were, but some certainly were not.
Once diagnosed, part of me felt relieved that I finally had an explanation as to why I was how I was, and the many things I didn’t understand or I’d never heard of, I could go and read up on. But part of me felt saddened. I wondered what I might have achieved if I’d known earlier and coping strategies had been implemented. I’d never had extra time in exams or had people take time to explain things to me in an accessible or bespoke way, and that could have made things so much easier and less stressful for me. Instead, I’d just have to get on with it and rely upon my own coping strategies and determination to get where I wanted to be.
Having thought about this for some years, I believe I found out at the right time. I think having been diagnosed earlier with my ‘smörgåsbord’ in an era when even less was understood than it is now could have held me back. I think educational settings might have underestimated me or assumed that I couldn’t do things I could. That’s because, from what I discovered, my assessment results were quite unusual and extreme.
It took me a while to get to grips with my hefty report and one thing I learned through reading it was that autistic people often have what is called a ‘spiky profile’. This means that we can have things we’re really skilled at and also things we struggle with. So, when the results of assessments are plotted on a piece of paper, a neurotypical person will have a relatively straight horizontal line with perhaps the odd bump, peak or trough here and there. Conversely, I and others like me are likely to have results that go up and down on the page and look like lots of spikes, giving the appearance of a mountain range when the points are joined up. These peaks indicate things that we’re particularly good at, and the dips are a testament to the things we’re less skilled at or struggle with.
Following my assessment, I discovered that such things as my numeracy left me statistically in the bottom echelons of the population. Conversely, my abilities with language and vocabulary placed me at the top end. Seemingly, to have such a huge disparity in a set of results was very unusual.
I am either very good at something or very poor. By way of an example, I struggle with sequencing. For some people, sequencing could relate to alphabetical order, directions, how numbers relate to one another, or perhaps patterns in numbers. Which disability this relates to in me, I don’t know because when you have a smörgåsbord, or ‘buffet of disabilities’ to choose from, it’s difficult to know where one condition starts and another ends. This is also complicated because there are commonalities across conditions such as dyslexia and dyscalculia.
Nonetheless, it was particularly problematic for me in the workplace trying to explain to somebody that while I could write legally complicated and detailed representations for a client, or explain an intricate legal matter to somebody with cognitive difficulties, I couldn’t accurately put a court bundle of documents and papers together because of the problems I had with working out what went where, despite it being a straightforward task for many. I faced much criticism because some people thought I didn’t want to do it because I saw it as too menial. This certainly wasn’t the case. I found it incredibly difficult.
I suspect either being really good at something or really poor assisted the masking of my conditions and masked my difficulties to those around me. I shall explain more about masking shortly.
I think the starkness of the extremes of my report is also evident in my personality. If I were a food, I’d be a Scotch bonnet chilli, and if I were to be a haircut, I’d be a Mohican.
I feel that I have always been the exception to the rule. If a clinical trial consisting of one million people were to show that a medication worked in 99% of all cases, I would be in the 1% group.
I’m the ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’ when that rule doesn’t apply, like with such words as ‘weird’, ‘feisty’ and ‘foreign’. When people say, “What usually happens” or “It should be fine”, you can guarantee it doesn’t apply to me. I am the person who needs two courses of antibiotics because the ones given to the vast majority of people cannot get to grips with me. I was also born in the era of confectionery laden with sugar, additives and E numbers, and yet have no fillings in my teeth. In fact, I still have two baby teeth in situ!
Like most people in school, I’d gravitated towards subjects I was good at, such as humanities, but now, during my legal training, when I couldn’t pick and choose to play to my strengths, basic balance sheets, accounts and simple formulae for tax calculations were anathemas to me. I’d always loved learning about history and literature, and what bit I didn’t immediately grasp didn’t matter, because I had something else – a visual memory.
Pictorially, I could recall information and images and almost ‘replay’ them in my mind like a video. So, the discussion held in class around a concept or recalling the explanation given by a tutor to a student enabled me to ‘revisit’ things I hadn’t been able to grasp or process at the time.
