Why These Conversations Matter

0:02

Hello, um, and welcome back if you've listened before, and if not, welcome for the first time. The aim of these podcasts is to have as many conversations as possible with people in academia who identify as being in some way neurodiverse. I want to talk to as many people as possible, so I want us to have the opportunity to um emphasize the diversity of neurodiversity, both within and between labels, but also to see common struggles whilst highlighting some of the incredible successes. The aim is to hear individual personal experiences and to get an understanding of what their journey has been. A chance for people to tell their own story without being told what they should be like or who they should be or how they should feel. As a result, in every episode we get an opportunity to see diversity. Since we're hearing personal journeys, the terminology will be theirs based on their experiences and will be describing their own personal journeys. And it's really important not to lose the impact of their generosity by getting lost in semantics and worrying about what words we might like or might not choose to use. What's important is we hear authentic voices in a ways that they feel comfortable. So,

Meeting Anna And Early Life

1:12

excellent. Hello. Hello and um Anna, how are you doing? It's good to have you. Thanks for doing it. I'm doing pretty well. Okay, so having me. I met Anna through um an event that we did together where I got to splurge about um my new diversity to an audience. So now it's her turn to splurge back. Yeah, so um okay, so first question, let's get to it. Um, can you tell us a little bit about yourself beyond new diversity? I know that's difficult because it's who you are, but um where you're from, that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's really exciting. Yeah. So I'm American by extraction. I uh was born and raised uh near Washington, DC, um, which is sort of on the east coast of the US. It's the nation's capital. Um, it was a very interesting place to grow up. Um still whoa. Yeah, well, so I I grew up in the suburbs, and it was like very homogenous. Almost everybody was uh of a similar race. Um basically everybody was white. It was all a lot of like government contractors, very interesting. Um, and it's quite transient, which is an odd thing because the administration changes every four years, and so you know, people would kind of come and go, but then the actual like federal employees are quite permanent. And so I had some friends who just kind of came came and went. I had some friends who their parents were military desk jockeys, and from TV, yeah. I would get a lot of TV about about watching this all everyone's very much government workers, it's all kind of that's the industry there. Is that the yeah, yeah. That is that is basically it. So, but what's interesting is like there's also this periphery of like government contractors. So there's the actual government employees who are employed by the government and have like very cushy jobs, but then there's also contractors who are um basically contracted to the government to do a variety of different jobs. So um it includes things like defense contractors, but then also just like I don't know, people who cater for events and stuff. So basically everything is sort of centered around the act of government, and then kind of you're either directly involved or you're sort of on the periphery. So my dad, he worked as a government contractor my whole childhood. So so it got hot hit by when they kind of got those pay freezes when they can't do the government things? Was that some of the experience? Yeah, so it's interesting with the government freezes because the people who are most impacted are the actual employees themselves. So the the people who are actually employed by the government, who are um like civil servants, they still get paid eventually, hopefully theoretically, um, but they have to stop working. The contractors are a little bit less impacted in some ways because the contract, the physical contract, as plays like already being paid. The money's still and so it's like the money's still there, and so you still have to work. It's just you may not be able to go into the federal office that you might sit in. It's kind of weird. Yeah, it's a weird system. It is it's quite interesting, but anyway, back to you. No, it was just it's just kind of part of how I grew up. Um, so yeah, I I didn't my I lived there my whole childhood. I didn't leave until I went to uni. Um and yeah, I don't know. Pretty typical upbringing. Yeah, not that interesting. Um, I went to what's in the US called a small liberal arts college. Okay, yeah, yeah. Which is um it's a private college, um, private university, I guess. Uh had 2,000 students total. Wow. Um and so like I when I was growing up, I really was not interested in science much. Um I was really fascinated by history and psychology, and I loved thinking about the way that people think about things, which is very, I would say, neurodivergent coded, right? Yeah, try to understand why people think differently. Yes. Right. Yeah, it was a huge fascination for me. But like I didn't grow up knowing that I was neurodivergent. It has emerged later that um my parents tried to get me diagnosed early on, and it didn't, and like they this we we can sort of get back to this later, but um yeah, but basically I was like very what they called right-brained at the time because I was growing up in the 90s and like this was a whole thing, uh, right brain, left-brained type thing. So explain that, what's right brained? Oh, yeah. So when when we were in elementary school, we would do these like personality tests, which are essentially bogus, right? They're they're fake, but it would determine whether or not you were left-brained or right-brained. So right-brained is like you're creative, you're original, you can think outside of the box. Left brained is like very analytical, very mathematical. And so they they give you these tests and they tell you because you're right-brained, you would be good at being an artist, right? Yeah. So they they try to like yeah, put you in boxes from very early on. I don't know if that happens here, but yeah, it was we did we did kind of career quizzes where we're bizarre enough, I I don't remember messing about at the time. Uh, I don't remember putting false answers, but I came out as a ballet dancer. I love it. Well, uh yes, but not me. You have a second career ahead of you. Yeah, but yeah, so we had the similar sort of thing, but not I think probably less so. Yeah, yeah. I don't know what it was about where I grew up, but so it was quite creative, is what they said. Yeah, I was quite creative, um, very humanities-centered. Um, but then I got to uni, and in the US, it's a four-year degree,

Finding Biology And Plant Research

7:40

and you don't really decide what you what it is that you want to do until you get there. So I took a bunch of different classes in a bunch of different disciplines, and I took a biology class, and it was like a light bulb went off. My professor, her name is Susan Stinger, she's the most amazing person I've ever met. I was like, I want to be like you. Um yeah, I just kind of I was like, cool, this is my path. She was a plant biologist, so I was like, cool, I'm gonna be a plant biologist. So I research in her lab uh during undergrad, and then that's why I went to pursue a PhD in plant biology. Okay. Um and yeah, so I'm a plant biologist by training. Um I did my PhD in plant cellular biology. Um, so I studied how plants form symbiotic interactions with bacteria and microbes that live in the soil. Okay. Um, I was specifically focusing on how the movement of subcellular organelles has an impact on symbiosis. So we were interested in nuclear movements. Um, so the nucleus in plants is sort of an organizing center for a whole bunch of different stuff, um, including um stuff that you might expect, like the endoplasmic reticulum and other sort of protein production machinery. But then also it's a little bit different from animals in that the um microtubule organizing centers are located on the nuclear envelope. Okay. In plants as opposed to centrosomes. Um, and so basically what that means is that wherever you put the nucleus, you're also uh putting the machinery to be able to make cellular changes, essentially. So what we found is that the movement of the nucleus was really critical for allowing these symbionts to come into the plant. Um so yeah, that's basically my PhD. So kind of kind of like the plant microbiome. Exactly. Yes. Cool. Yeah, that's really exciting. So yeah, it was it was cool research, but I also realized very quickly that research was not

Choosing Teaching Over Research

9:49

for me. Um okay. Yeah, it's uh yeah. So anyway, what I ended up getting really, really interested in was teaching. Yeah. So I did some pedagogical training while I was doing my PhD. Um, and then I worked a couple of different like short-term teaching positions afterwards. Um, because it's it can be a little bit hard to break into teaching, as it turns out. Um, there's not a ton of teaching track positions out there, as I'm sure you know. Yeah, quite yeah, yeah. I worked a couple contract positions at a community college, which I found really, really rewarding. Um, really loved that. But um, that then allowed me to get a job, uh, my first like permanent academic job, which is at the University of Pittsburgh. Then my partner and I did our honeymoon in the UK. We loved it, and we wanted to live here. Okay. Um, and so we sort of traded our PhDs and experience for um jobs here. So they work at University of Sheffield. Um, and then I got a job at UCL, worked there for two years, and now I work at Durham. Excellent. Okay, so um, and your job now is it you're kind of on the teaching track. Um yeah, so I'm on the teaching track. So uh the the job is what 60% teaching, 20% scholarship, so educational research, and 20% um service. Okay, so and you you you have that clear definition of yeah, well, sort of very recently, especially for another time defined. Yeah, I'd like to hear more about that, but yeah, different origins, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Excellent. So um, and you you you you you're settled here now, yeah. This is home. Yes, I love living in the northeast. Everybody is so kind. Shh, don't I know. Yeah, it it's it's the most incredible place to live. You have the sea, you have the hills, you've got, you know, it's incredible. We're we're big and out outdoorsy, so we hike a lot. And so it's like the perfect place to live, basically. Excellent. Okay.

Autism ADHD And Dyscalculia

12:09

So neurodiversity. Yes. So you kind of got at school, you kind of got this right brain, left brain kind of introduction to the idea that people are different. Yeah. Where did that take you? So what what what what how would you describe your neurodiversity and yeah? So um I'm autistic, ADHD, and discal, I have dyscalcula. Um sort of the the process by which I ended up at these different things is quite different. Um, maybe now is the good time to talk about. Yeah, yeah, that'd be cool. Um, so basically throughout my entire childhood, I was sort of an an okay student. I was a medium student. I had I was really good at paying attention in classes that I was really interested in, right? So I did really well in art class, I did really well in history class. Um, I did not do so well in math class. And so that's kind of why I ended up being labeled as this sort of like right-brained person, is because I had some deficits in some different um fields. And my parents brought in someone to school to look at a diagnosis for me. Um, and basically they uh they assessed me during art class. And so they were like, She doesn't have attention deficits in one class, one class. So, yeah, so basically my parents were like, she's probably different, but we have no evidence for that. So you're pretty forward-thinking then, yeah. And yeah, really, they they they were my my mom is really invested in making sure that we have everything that we could need. Um, and so that was one of the ways in which her parenting was really awesome. Um so in I would say that one thing that they also did that um we can kind of have a conversation about is I think even if I had had a diagnosis when I was early on in childhood, I don't know that they would have wanted me to either know that or have that to be part of kind of the way that I was labeled in school. Um, I think, especially growing up in the 90s, it was not really something where that would have necessarily been of benefit to me because at the time I was in this like gifted and talented classes. I had been labeled by the school as this high achiever, yeah. Which is, I think, actually not that atypical for especially like Audi HD girls, because I think we've we're often given this like she's very high achieving, she can pay attention, she does well in class, um, sort of label. And so I don't think that they would have wanted me to have been then put in this like remedial group of disabled children, um, and and have that impact the way that I moved through the rest of my education. So it would be a kind of way for them to know how to better support you, but not necessarily to give to you as a uh Yeah. Well, and also like neurodivergence is highly genetic, right? And so a lot of the behaviors that I had were just typical in my family, um, which is like I would go to school and then I would come home and I would crash and be like unable to speak. I get nonverbal very frequently um when I'm sort of overstimulated. And so we basically didn't talk to each other at all, other than dinner, once everybody was home. Like we all had our own little spots in the house where we would sit and read our books. And you know, maybe sometimes there would be some light music on. But other than that, like we weren't that family that's like doing stuff together all the time. Like it was very much like different spaces for different people. And we all had pretty strong sensory needs, and you know, you know, we didn't have a ton of like super spicy food growing up, like it was always sort of autism-friendly food in a lot of ways, but I think maybe not interesting intentionally. So you created your own home of lack of sensory, exactly. Yeah, yeah. That's really interesting. And like all of the textiles were always soft, and so it was something where, like, growing up, I think I was very supported, whether that was intentional or not, um, by the fact that I would grew up in a neurodivergent family. Um now my parents aren't diagnosed, nobody in my family is diagnosed or has even thought about whether or not they're neurodivergent. Um, but yeah. They wouldn't use a name. That's but um they would not. They would not. Um, so yeah. So, but that kind of changed when I got to uni. So when I got to uni, it was it became very clear very quickly just how much my parents had been compensating for some of my sort of story. Yeah, yeah. And so what happened is I discovered that I had no organizational

Late ADHD Recognition At Uni

17:27

skills. So my mom had always been the keeper of my calendar and she would always remind me when things were happening. And so all of a sudden, I didn't have anybody sort of giving me that structure, and I had had no way to develop that structure myself. Um, and so at in the first year of uni, it fell down essentially. I didn't do very well. Okay. I was struggling to make friends, which is not very surprising. Um, in hindsight, I didn't really have, I mean, I didn't really have any friends growing up at all. Um, and so it that didn't change when I got to uni. Um, I really struggled to make friends, struggled in my classes. I was doing well, I was doing okay, but I was having a hard time. So after my first year of uni, I went to a therapist essentially. Um, and she was like, Have you considered whether or not you might have ADD? And I was like, What? Because you know, at the time, this was 2008. I think there was still this sort of cultural picture of this male child with ADD who can't sit still. And I was back in the classroom sticking of other bands and right, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I was like, what do you mean? So um basically, so she was a in, I don't know if there's the the same kind of differentiation here, but she was a psychologist, not a psychiatrist. And so she was not able to diagnose me um like officially. So um I then went to a psychiatrist. This man was we're still in the US. We're still in the US. This was we're still in the US. Okay. So I went to a psychiatrist and he straight up looked me in the eyes and said, I don't think that girls get ADHD, but I will give you stimulants. And if you don't, quote, bounce off the walls, that means that you have it. And so this guy was just like giving me like highly regulated drugs. Just to see what happened. Just to see what happens basically. It was so, so weird. Did you see it as being weird at the time, or did you just think oh we're just doing this? I guess, like I think I was kind of like, oh, this must be how this goes. Yeah, it was uh it was so weird, but yeah. So I went on um a stimulant medication, um, which I think here is called Elvance. Um at the time where it was called Vivance, um, where I was, um, it's like a 12-hour um stimulant. Um it worked quite well for me. Um it helped me sort of yeah. That's a relief. Yeah, it was a big relief. And it the way that I would describe stimulant medication, it's almost like like a curtain being parted in front of your brain. It was like all of a sudden my thoughts actually made contact with my environment. Okay. Um, and yeah, it was a crazy, crazy feeling. And I did a lot better after that. I I coped a lot better and um I started to develop some coping skills, started to develop some ways of organizing my life. Um and yeah, did did quite well for the rest of uni. Um so then that I sort of I was on stimulants for about eight

Medication Help And Diagnosis Gaps

21:39

years. So did they give you a diagnosis at this point on the back of the fact the the metaphor? It's funny that you ask that. Uh there is there is actually no record of a diagnosis anywhere. This is something that I tried to get when I moved to the UK. Um, because essentially what I had been doing is I had just been basically showing evidence of my prescription to successive GPs. And and they were like, sure, I'll keep subscribed. So I'll keep giving you this. Um and essentially, so I don't know how it works here, but I had to physically go to a doctor's office every 30 days in order to keep my prescription. No way. Because it's a scheduled substance. Yeah. And so I had to constantly prove that I wasn't dealing my medication essentially. And so after about eight years, I was like, I can't do this anymore. Like it's the the irony of having a person with an attention disorder have to make and keep an appointment every 30 days is so insane to me. And so I was like, I'm done. I'm going to try going off of this. And fortunately by that point I had enough um coping strategies that I was doing okay. That of course led to some pretty significant I essentially crashed. Wouldn't recommend going off of ADHD medication without consulting a physician. But yeah. So yeah. So then I I that was sort of during my PhD um and then it wasn't really until about 2021, 22 um that I sort of started considering that I might be autistic.

Self-Identifying Autism And Real Risks

23:47

It was I think largely because this idea of a sort of female presentation of autism had sort of started to enter the general cultural consciousness. And I was sort of I I I was like oh that might be me like started looking into it started doing some of my own research and then um there's several um sort of psychological diagnostic tests that are available online that you can take um like the Radzar for example where it's meant to be used by a clinician but good luck getting an appointment to have that used by a clinician. So I took it and my partner took it and scored very high. Okay. Both of you so I scored very high Denny did not and I was like what do you mean these are all like things that you would obviously identify with and they were like no it's just he did it's it's it's common isn't it because you perceive things to be the norm and actually when you tell people well we all do this don't we say uh no no yeah yeah yeah so then with with the autism I'm not I have no intention of getting diagnosed to be honest. Okay. Um partially just because I don't really feel the need like I I I don't really think that it's that would benefit me enough to have to go through like a rigor deficit model isn't it yeah of because like you know what really matters is my ability for me is my ability to accommodate myself and so all that I'm doing is using autism as a sort of scaffold as a set of criteria to then allow myself to sort of accommodate myself in my everyday life. And to understand yourself better. Yeah exactly so that's for me is sufficient at the moment um but yeah there's also the question of immigration status um there are some countries where you're not even allowed to get a visa if you're autistic because you're seen as being a potential strain on the healthcare system. But that's not yet so not here yet. Not here yet Australia for example yes that blows my mind yeah it's crazy and it's not like tourist visas but you can't really move there if you have an autism diagnosis. So it's something and like I've heard stories of like you know because autism is seen as something that's potentially that's that's like more disabling than other specific learning disabilities like um ADHD there's a potential that you could end up in a situation where um you could have child protective services called on you because you're seen as less fit of a parent. And I guess one of the ways one of the autistic traits that I have is I I tend to script very far out. Okay. And so I I have a tendency to not really catastrophize but follow every possibility and try to minimize risk. And so um it's something where it's the risks just don't feel worth it to me. Yeah okay that makes sense that makes sense it's horrible but it makes sense um yeah so you got no diagnosis at all for autism no but for ADHD either because well yeah no you got a medical yeah there's so there's no official diagnosis on anywhere on record so this is actually something that I've been talking to to my partner about I I think I might try to get a diagnosis for ADHD on on the NHS. I did actually reach out to my GP the other day but apparently they don't accept any shared care agreements period. So it's a bit of a mess at the moment isn't it not sure how to deal with that um but yeah.

Tools For Memory And Organisation

28:23

Okay any listeners if you've got a way to deal with that let us know yeah I mean with the with the ADHD it's a lot of very structured planning. Yeah I have a ton of different um kind of to-do lists and calendars and everything has to be in my calendar or it does not exist. Notion, I don't know if you've heard of Notion um runs my entire life um basically it's it's sort of like a relatively open-ended technology that has a bunch of different types of like lists and databases and things that you can build into it. So everything is in one place which is really critical for me because I cannot find anything unless it's all in one place. So yeah so there's with the ADHD there's a lot of different ways that I sort of accommodate the fact that my memory is non-existent essentially um I have a I have a really hard time converting short term into long term memory. It's one of the biggest aspects of my ADHD um and so basically the only way that I can remember anything unless it's incredibly critical is if it's in my sort of organizational management area. Yeah. There's so many amazing technologies now aren't there that to kind of yeah I used to have to keep a physical planner like a paper planner but then my life got too complicated to put in a physical paper planner um and okay I've lost you a bit there. Oh no bit but it's fine. Oh yeah sorry the Wi-Fi can cut in and out every once in a while I do wonder how I'd have managed in life before the phone as well before smartphones right remind me to do oh my god so other people could quickly remind me to do things and um yeah um okay so time's moving on um we've got left and we've got not got to the questions yet so are there any of the questions I essentially um something you particularly like to talk about any hot faves or should we just um so uh one of the things that you you have one question that says can you describe how it affects you in your day-to-day life in a way people might not expect so this is one that I have for um so I'm married to a person with ADHD yeah so I'm ADHD and autistic my partner's ad and they don't always match in in ways that you might not imagine.

Sensory Needs Inside A Relationship

31:30

So my partner has this incredible need for sound at all times. And so if they're home the radio is on yeah and I've had to sort of learn how to deal with it because like they will be anxious anxious anxious all day unless there's music happening but then also I have um a lot of sensory needs around eating okay so um I um oh my god I've forgotten what it's called now but um essentially chewing noises put me straight into fight or flight and so I need there to be music happening all the time when I'm in a room with anybody else who's eating and so like it can be hard actually for us to like share a meal because I'm sitting there like trying to hold down this like rising panic while my partner's just trying to eat lunch. Okay. Um and so it it's when you when you're partnered with a neurodivergence yeah it's it's like an extra element of your relationship that has to be negotiated. And I wasn't really it's something that I think doesn't get discussed a lot because I think there's a lot of like tips for helping your partner accommodate your neurodivergence. But they don't always work when the ways in which you need to be accommodated run directly counter to each other. Yeah yeah yeah that's that's really good.

Guilt And Asking For Support

33:23

I think also um something I've been thinking about it's probably not necessarily a popular view is as life goes on I feel quite sympathetic for people who partner partner to people who are neurodivergent. Yeah because it must be hard work let's be honest it's gotta be hard work well and yeah I I don't I don't know about anybody else but I deal with a lot of like feelings of immense guilt in some sometimes in my relationship because I feel like I'm so much extra work. Yeah and and like I it's hard for students too because um we did a survey where we asked about asked groups of students about how hard they found it asking for extra support and the ones who found it the hardest were the neo divergent students because they'd already been felt they'd been given the support and therefore they would be demanding by asking for more. Whereas others who didn't need that initial support and therefore the support they were getting was leveling the playing field so to speak. Yeah felt able to ask I think I think a lot of us are told as children that we're a little bit too much. I know I was because I had really big feelings especially this is common for autistic children huge feelings mood swings. Yeah and I was told many times by many different people to tamp it down basically that I was being way too much. And it affects the way that you conceptualize yourself and so I think for a lot of us it like it's incredibly hard even to ask for the accommodations that we absolutely need in order to function in a non-neurotypical society not in a non-neurodivergent society let alone then ask for the things that we don't need need but that would make our lives a little bit easier um just because it's we I think a lot of us have this self-narrative of you need to be less in order to be acceptable. Yeah that's really yeah excellent which kind of leads us on to kind of the last question and that might be the answer to the question.

Therapy Advice And Closing Thoughts

35:41

Do you have any advice or insights you'd like to share yeah um I would say that so I've learned a lot of things through therapy I guess maybe the number the number one thing is get therapy. But yeah no absolutely and people resistance no please please get therapy um there's no stigma it's just do it there's no stigma oh my gosh please like just talk to someone I I had really a critical autistic burnout during my PhD I became suicidal it was incredibly difficult and nobody had told me that it was okay to reach out nobody had told me that sort of the feelings that I was having mattered or were important or were sufficient to need to to get help. And so it was it I think that's kind of the biggest thing that I always tell people is please don't be afraid to reach out. Yeah there's I think a lot of us think that there's something wrong with us that we're not deserving of kind of help. I know I did I I felt like I wasn't deserving of anything really and it really wasn't until I worked with a professional who could look at me and say Anna you're just like anybody else you are allowed to have the feelings that you have you're allowed to struggle with memory sometimes that doesn't make you bad it doesn't make you less it doesn't make you anything other than just a unique human being so working with somebody who is an outside observer who doesn't have a bias who's literally just there to help you it makes a world of a difference. Excellent thank you and we're just about to get kicked off so um yeah yeah yeah thank you so much that was really I really enjoyed that thank you hopefully I didn't go on too much no no it was perfect thank you thank you very much thank you for having me