November 30, 2023 • 51 mins
In 2021, Ellie Middelton received a diagnosis of ADHD and autism at the age of 23. It was one of the best things that happened to her. Today, she joins us to discuss why neurodivergence is typically overlooked in women, the misconceptions we have about ADHD and autism, unmasking and how to navigate a diagnosis later in life. She also discusses how to manage neurodivergence in our 20s, why self diagnosis is valid, and why the path people want you to take, may not always be the one for you. Listen now!
Follow Ellie here: https://www.instagram.com/elliemidds/?hl=en
Purchase Ellie's book, Unmasked: https://www.amazon.com.au/Unmasked-Ultimate-Guide-Autism-Neurodivergence/dp/0241651980
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast, new listeners, old listeners, Wherever you are in
the world, it's so great to have you here. Back
for another episode as we break down the psychology of
your twenties. We have a guest on today that I
I pursued. I'm gonna say it that way. I pursued her. Sorry, Ellie,
(00:22):
I just spoiled who you are, but you would have
read it in the title. I was like, I need
this person on for this topic. She is the perfect
person to discuss this, to discuss ADHD autism in our twenties.
She has such a unique story and an incredible voice
to this matter that I think is both personal but
also very informed and a little bit different. So welcome
(00:42):
Ellie Middleton. It's so great to have you here.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Thank you so much, so nice to be here. Thanks
for the lovely introduction. I feel like I always sit
here like blushing at the style and people are saying
nice things about me.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I'm like, oh, yeah, that's me, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
No, I get that it's something you kind of have
to learn to take sometimes. But imagine if someone like
sat here and I was like, yeah, I'm not that
keen on this, like, thanks for coming on. I guess
like that would even more imparison. Yeah, that's true. And
you're calling in from the UK, so we got like
an international podcast crew going on here.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah, I know worldwide.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
I know, missus worldwides here. So I kind of introduced
you briefly. You're Ellie Middleton. You have this incredible story.
You've just released a book on Masked, which is available
in the UK right now, hopefully by the time people
are listening to this internationally because it's incredible. But for
those of the listeners who don't know you, can you
(01:37):
just talk briefly about who you are, your story, your work,
kind of a free space to just chat Ellie, I.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Guess, yeah, thank you. So yeah, I'm Ellie.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I'm an artistic and ADHD content creator, speaker and writer.
So I guess the short version is that I got
diagnosed with both ADHD and autism when I was twenty four.
So up until that point, I'd always struggled with my
mental health, had quite a rough time in my teenage years,
but I'd always been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and
(02:09):
like anxiety related depression and panic disorder and agrophobia and
all that good stuff in the mental health space. But
then when I was kind of twenty four, kind of
realized that that didn't seem to really fit, like it
wasn't really explaining my experiences properly. Like I wasn't an
anxious person. I just became really overwhelmed really frequently, So
it wasn't like anxiety, it was overwhelmed. But I think
(02:30):
those two things are so closely linked that all the
doctors I'd seen in the past had kind of just
assumed that it was anxiety. But yeah, anyway, when I
was twenty four, I finally got diagnosed with both autism
and ADHD, and getting those diagnoses just like changed my
life completely, Like it just made everything made sense. It
made me kind of understand who I was, and I
(02:53):
kind of, I guess I've just felt so grateful that
I got those answers that I was like, oh, my goodness,
like I can finally like be myself now, I can
finally like work out how to make my mental health
better like all of this stuff. That I just felt
that there must be so many other people out there,
especially women, who were like in the same boat that
I was. So they had always been diagnosed with anxiety.
They knew that they were different somehow, like they knew
(03:14):
that something else was going on, but they just didn't
know what that thing was, and they just never had
been picked up by their doctors or their teachers or whatever.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
It might be.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
So I started speaking about it online, just like hoping,
like knowing that, like if I'd have seen me speaking
about it like a few years earlier, then it might
have been like, oh, that kind of sounds similar to me,
So maybe I should look into that as well, and
maybe I would have got diagnosed like a whole lot
sooner than I actually did. So kind of wanted to
try and at least like just make one person think, oh,
(03:43):
maybe that that could be me, and I could go
away and look into that as well, and then it
all kind of spiral from there, I guess. So I
kind of very quickly grew quite a big audience online
and then I go into quite a lot of companies
talking about how they can be more inclusive, and then yeah,
as very kindly mentioned, I've just written a book about it,
which is like my baby is like the protesting that
I've ever done. I'm so happy with it. I'm so
(04:05):
grateful that I've had the chance to do it. But yeah,
I guess basically, I shout about the importance of like
understanding the way that your brain works and like being
gentle with yourself, but also kind of advocate for people
having the chance to get those answers because so many people,
like women, people marginalize their gender, people of color, where
people especially are spending so much of their lives undiagnosed
(04:27):
and just kind of being missed completely by the system.
So it's like honors to advocate for ourselves. So yeah,
that's a a long and short version.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
I guess I love it. It's really interesting what you said.
What you just said about how you had this litany
of diagnoses before you got to the right one, And
I don't know if that's even the right way of
saying it, Like it's almost like the answer seems quite
obvious now. I'm sure like you're probably questioning, like, how
(04:55):
come no one ever said this to me? How come
it was never an option, how come it was never
on the table. I'm sure that must have been so frustrating.
And speaking from like the experience of friends, I was saying,
I had a close friend who was recently diagnosed. And
when you said everyone just told me I was anxious,
I just immediately thought of her and how much that
(05:17):
that was always the reason given to her for this
pattern of behaviors, this pattern of tendencies, and it wasn't
the right answer. No one thought to look deeper into
it. It must be like so mentally frustrating.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Yeah. I think there's like a couple of stories in
particular from my childhood and teenage years that I look
back now and I'm like, how the heck did nobody
like notice what was going on there? Like there's one
I think my mom like struggles with this one a lot,
Like I think she feels a lot of guilt. When
I'm an August baby, so I was always the youngest
in my year group. In the Uki year group's run
for I don't if it's same over there, but we
(05:49):
run from like September to August. So I'm like the
youngest in my year. And when I was at nursery,
so I was like three and the rest of the
kids in my year were four and we were about
to go up to primary school. The nursery teacher like
pulled my mum in and was like Okay. Academically, Ellie's
definitely ready to go up to school, Like she's really bright,
she knows what's going on. But socially, you might want
(06:10):
to consider holding her back a year.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Like she's very shy.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
She doesn't really interact with the other kids, like she's
just not really interested. Like we've tried to encourage her
to play in their games and do all these different things,
but all she really wants to do is like she
just comes in every day and I would like sit
in the same room, on the same table and just
do like painting every single day. And that was all
that was interested in. And I look back at that
now and it was kind of just like, oh, okay, well,
you know, she's just the youngest girl in the year,
(06:34):
so she's just a bit shy, Like it'll be fine,
it'll come with age, Like it's no, like, no worry.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
She's just like a shy little girl.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
And I look back and I'm like, if that was
like Elliott rather than Ellie or Ethan or whatever, it
might be like a little boy, a young boy that
is like very academically bright but struggles socially, does the
same thing every single day, Like I don't know, he's
lining up his dinosaurs in a row every single day.
He doesn't want to talk to anybody. They've tried to
encourage him to, like straight away, that would be like
(07:01):
alarm bells. They'd be looking into it, they'd be trying
to find out what was going on. They'd be thinking
that was autism. But because it was a little girl,
it was like, oh, she's just a bit shy, Like
it's fine, she's just a young girl. And it's like
that was like I was three years old at that point.
Like if I'd have been diagnosed at that point or
even had it looked into at that point, like my
whole life could have been so much different. And then
there's like kind of similar stories in high school where
(07:23):
teachers were saying that, like I was being had a
really hard time like socially and was kind of being
bullied quite badly. And one of my teachers had said, like, oh, well,
Ellie says things that are rude sometimes, so she can't
be upset when other people are rude back to her.
And my mum was like, well, what does she say
that's rude, because like she's not she's not a nasty person,
like she wouldn't she wouldn't do that, and then be like, oh, well,
(07:45):
she had got like an A rather than a star
in one of her exams, and she was kind of
saying to the other girls like, oh, I'm so annoyed
that I didn't get the A star that I wanted,
whereas some of the other girls had struggled to scrape
a C or a D and they were like, that's
kind of, you know, inappropriate. You shouldn't be saying that,
And I was like, well, I didn't know that that
was rude. Like I'm not saying that they should have
got an A or and a star. I'm just saying
(08:06):
that I'm upset with myself and not being able to
read those social cues is like a key sign of
autism as well. But instead it was like, oh, no,
she's just rude, she's just a bit, she's just whatever.
Like I think so much of it is closely tied
to misogyny unfortunately, but yeah, I think looking back, there's
like so many things where it is like, yeah, what
the heck, Like it was literally like I might as
well have had a neon sign flashing above my head.
(08:29):
That was like this girl is autistic, But no one
like ever kind of considered that that was what was
going on.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
It's so interesting you point to misogyny and how I
think one of the deepest problems in how we approach neurodivergence,
particularly ADHD and autism, is that the entire diagnoses criteria
is built around the behavior of boys and the behavior
of men. And we know that culturally those two you know,
(08:57):
binaries that society often sees. They're raised different, they are
taught differently as to how to behave their personalities, their
temperaments are different. But when you have this kind of
systematic bias and the healthcare system, it's no wonder that
people such as yourself slip through and it's kind of
a tragedy. And I know you're like, the things that
(09:19):
you've done now is so amazing, But what if you
had had the opportunity to start at that earlier, What
if you had had that opportunity to actually get the
help you need, not experience so much self blame and
negative self belief when you were three, when you attend
when you were fifteen, Like, I'm sure that's really rough.
So I think you've kind of already touched on it.
But why do you think so many women in particular
(09:40):
struggle to receive a diagnosis, have their symptoms recognized, and
kind of alongside that, why is it always that they
get the anxiety diagnosis first before people consider other options,
other potential things going on.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, I think like you kind of nailed it really
well there, that the diagnostic criteria is just not set
up to account for the experiences of women, the experiences
of people marginalized for their gender, the experiences of people
of color. They're based on basically, like the easy way
to explain it is like the only people that these
psychologists were basing the research on was like the young
(10:20):
middle class white boys whose parents could have thought basically,
if they had a young boy that wasn't behaving in
the way that they wanted him to, they would pay
to take him to this private psychiatrist. And then they
were the people that the research was based on. So
anyone outside of that, their experiences are just not accounted
for in the diagnostic criteria. So I think one example,
(10:42):
like for me, this is a question that I had
to answer as a twenty four year old woman trying
to get diagnosed, and the question is, like, you know, say,
if this is like a highly highly true, a bit true,
not true, or slightly true, whatever, And it's like I
collect information about categories of things, for example, types of birds,
(11:05):
types of planes, types of car, types of plants or something.
So me reading that question, I'm like, well, no, I
don't collect information about any of those type of things.
And then like the more research you do, it's like, well, yeah,
that's because I'm not an eight.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Year old boy. I'm a twenty four year old woman.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Like I collect information about I don't know, if I
like a certain band, I will listen to their albums
over and over and over again. If I like a
certain fashion creator, I will like constantly be checking to
see if they've uploaded new content because I want to
see what's going on. Or if I like a certain
clothes brand, then I will like be obsessed with when
the new drops are coming out and checking the website
(11:43):
and like wanting everything to do. Like I do still
do the same thing of like having these really strong
interests that I become like obsessed with, but they're just
not birds, cars, trains, or planes, because they're very like
stereotypically like young boy interests. And I think that's like
a really good example of like just how much the
(12:04):
diagnostic criteria is not designed, Like it's like you could
sit there as a fully like one autistic person and
still get a really like low score on these tests
that they're doing, just because the questions don't explain your experience.
And there's other ones where it's like would you prefer
to go to a museum or to a party? And obviously, well,
(12:27):
I guess the correct answer is like they think that
you'd rather go to a museum as an autistic person,
And it's like, well, it kind of depends on on
the museum, Like am I going to Yeah, Like it's
like am I going? Like what sort of party is it?
Am I going with friends? Am I going with strangers?
Like it's like that question does not in any way
kind of explain whether I'm autistic or not. And I
(12:49):
think it's the same like with ADHD as well that
like I think it's like this like ditsy blonde stereotype
is one that I speak about in the book quite
a lot, which I think is the reason why a
lot of girls go undiagnosed, because I mean, previously it
was kind of said that a lot more girls would
have like the inattentive type of ADHD, which is the
more like forgetfulness and struggling to concentrate and doodling and
(13:12):
rather than the hyperactive type, which is more like outwardly visible.
I guess so that was kind of an idea of like, well,
they're presenting a different type of ADHD which isn't as
outwardly visible. But I think we've kind of moved on
from that as well, to be like, maybe they're not
presenting any differently, like the experiences that they have on
any differently, they're just socialized in a different way. Like
(13:37):
I'm hyperve I have combined ADHD, which means I'm both
hyperactive and inattentive, but my hyperactivity is very much internal,
like my brain is like a million miles an hour
all of the time. So it wasn't ever at school
that I was like rocking backwards and forwards on my chair,
like causing chaos, Like the teachers were like finding me
annoying all of this stuff because girls are told to
(13:58):
behave to be quiet, whereas boys it's like, oh, boys
will be boys, like they're allowed to be a bit
more chaotic, and girls are very much socialized to fit
in to be well behaved, to be polite, to be sensible,
to be like so much more mature, I guess, like typically,
So I think it's like a combination of the fact that,
(14:18):
like one, we're not getting diagnosed at a young age
because the diagnostic criteria aren't accounting for how we show up.
And then secondly, because we're not like learning that we're
different at a young age, we're then being socialized in
the way that kind of this patriarchal system socializes all
of like women and people marginalize for their gender. So
(14:40):
by the time, like by the time we get any older,
we're not showing any differences because we've learned how to
mask them and cover them up, Like my mum. We
have like a lot of conversations where it is obviously
that thing of like the grief I guess of getting
diagnosed later in life, where it's like what could have been,
Like I had to drop out of school, I had
to decline my offers, like I've had to quit jobs,
(15:01):
all of this stuff, and I'm like, that wouldn't have
happened if I'd have been diagnosed early. And like we've
had the conversation with my mum where my mum has
been like, but when I was fifteen was when I
first got referred to the mental health services in the UK,
And at that point they wouldn't have been able to Like,
(15:21):
I'm like, how could they not have seen like I
was seeing a psychiatrist every week? Like how like how
could they have not noticed that that was what was
going on for me? And it's like, well, by that point,
they wouldn't have been able to see it in you
because you were doing such a good job of covering
it up. Like by that time, you'd have like you
were in high school, you'd learned that you had to
fit in, you had to make friends, you had to survive,
(15:41):
so you weren't showing any differences for them to pick
up on.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
All that they were being able to visibly.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
See was the fact that you were having these like
meltdowns and shut downs and becoming overwhelmed because it was
almost like you were keeping it all in for such
a long time that then it had all just like
burst out in these like intense things that would look
a lot like pan attacks, because it was just that
I like would become so overwhelmed, I won't be able
to speak, I would be crying I'd be overwhelmed, and
(16:07):
it's like, well, that's all that they had to work
with because they couldn't see all of that that you
were holding it in, like containing it.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Most of the time.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
They just saw these kind of like volcano eruptions of
when it came out. So yeah, I think it's a
really it all like ties into it as well, and
it's like equally as well.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
The more that.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
The diagnostic criteria only account for the experiences of these
like young white CIS boys, the more that they're the
only people that do get diagnosed. So it's like they're
the only people that are going about life with a diagnosis. Yeah,
So then it's like that kind of reinforces it of
like they're the only people, like the only people that
you would meet I guess that would know that they
were autistic, and ADHD is those people. So then in
(16:47):
your head you're like, oh, well, everyone that I've met
that's autistic is a young white boy, so maybe it's
just young white boys. And it kind of goes like
it goes on for such a long time, Like now
I think we're seeing a wave of like, yeah, people
in their twenties, thirties, forties getting a diagnosis and realizing
for themselves and you know, whether that's medical diagnosis or
self diagnosing or all of these things, like, but they're
(17:08):
realizing later in life. And I think that's amazing that
we're like catching all of these people that were missed.
But I still don't know if we're getting any better
at picking up the girls like the Elliot three in
the Like, I don't. Yeah, I still it's almost like
it's like, yeah, it's amazing that we're finding out now,
but we we need to fix it so we don't
have to find out, like the next group of people
don't have to find out in their twenties they find
(17:29):
out at the same time.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Yeah, it's a really like tricky one.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
I think to fix without they basically just need to
like redo the whole research and the whole diagnostic criteria.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
I guess it honestly sounds like that and also like
to avoid that grief that you spoke about. But from
what you've said, it's like, yeah, it doesn't account for
differences and gender, in sex, in ethnicity, in really anything.
And then it also sounds like they kind of haven't
adapted it for like a new generation that has a
(17:59):
new and vironment like social media, like technology, and something
you said really stood out for me there. It was,
you know, going online and following a certain influencer or
following a certain fashion company. That is a whole new
way of kind of processing our environment and how symptoms
might show up. And I think that that profile that
(18:20):
we spoke about is only going to be exacerbated if
you don't have those nuances, not just for different groups,
but for different generations that are also growing up more
aware of it. The final thing that I that I
think is actually really interesting if you've ever spent much
time looking into neurodivergence ADHD, autism, but autism in particular,
(18:42):
the idea of masking is really fascinating. And your book
is Unmasked, fabulous title, big shout out to that, But
can you explain what that means? Because I think that
a lot of the time, and this is one of
my biggest pet peeves with discussions in the mental health
CAMUT is that terms that actually have a real clinical
(19:03):
and personal meaning for people get adapted to mean something
a lot more colloquial and a lot more every day.
So for people who've maybe heard that term don't know
what it means, what does it mean to mask? What
does it mean to unmask? I guess as well.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Yeah, so masking put very kind of simply is covering
up your neurodivergent traits to appear more neurotypical.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
So it was typically and like.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
First used by the autistic community, so basically covering up
your artistic traits to appear realistic or non autistic. But
I guess it's kind of yeah, spread out to be
used more widely by the neurodivergent community. But I guess
the important thing is to say, like, it's not a
choice a lot of the time, like it's a safety
thing of like I have grown up learning that I
(19:51):
have to behave a certain way to be accepted, to
avoid being ostracized, like to get through situations like And
I think, yeah, it's both. It's both conscious behavior and
like subconscious or unconscious behaviors. So it can be things
that are super simple, like for example, as an artistic person,
I struggle with eye contact. Like eye contact to me
(20:11):
just it feels like I'm literally you're starring into my soul.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Like it feels so uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
But when I was growing up, I was told you
have to look at people in the eye when you're
speaking to them, like, that's a polite thing to do,
Like look at me when I'm talking to you, show
me that you're listening to me. All of these things.
So I just learned, Okay, that's the right thing to
do talking to people.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
So I would just.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Force myself to do that, and that's just the way
that I learned to behave even though that's not a
natural thing for me at all. But I almost didn't
know at that point that it wasn't a natural thing
for me because I didn't know that I was autistic.
So it was like, oh, everyone must find it. There's uncomfortable,
and everyone must just force themselves to do it because
it's polite.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
So I've got to do that as well.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
So it can be like things as simple as that
all the way through to things like the things that
you're talking about. So we kind of touched on, like before,
the special interest autistic people have where you'd have like
one topic that you like a ride and die for,
basically like you're obsessed with this topic, you love it,
you are so interested in it, but you might have
(21:09):
learned that if you talk about it all the time,
then people are like God, can we talk about something else, please,
like or not this again, Like so you've learned to
do the small talk that other people do, or you've
learned that I don't know at high school, like when
you're a teenager, like oh, it's it was supposed to
talk about the boys that we fancy, and we're supposed
to talk about the clothes that we wear. So I'll
talk about those things instead because that people like me
(21:31):
if I talk about those things and like yeah, it's
like a whole range of experiences and it's something that
is so I guess ingrained as well. Like for me,
I guess I thought when I got my diagnosis that
I was like woho, Like I'm on mask now, like
I can be myself, Like I've learned that I'm adehg.
I've learned that I'm autistic, Like here we go, Like
(21:52):
I can be myself, but still like to this day,
I'm masks so so heavily, like now I'm I'm masking.
Probably I'm like speaking in a way like my natural
tone of voice is quite like blunt and quite monotonous.
Whereas I've learned that that's not well received by It's
not easy for people to listen to it's not easy
(22:12):
to get my point across. So I've kind of learned
to speak in a more up and down way, in
a more bubbly way. But it's not meming. I've not
go on this call and been like I need to
you know, come on, Ellie, let's like, let's put our
best accent on and talk in this certain way. It's
just a natural thing that when I talk to people
it comes out like this now because it's so ingrained
in the way that I am. And I think, yeah,
(22:32):
that's something that I underestimated so much of like how
difficult it would be to unmask? Like I think I
was like, you know, I've got the answers now, like
here we go, like let's be ourselves. And it's like, actually, no,
Like it's it's so I don't even know who's under there, really,
because I've spent my whole life being ye some like
being someone else and copying the people around me and
(22:53):
doing what I've been told to do, and it's like
I don't even know how to be.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Like it's so it's so much easier to slip into
this car that has.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Been so defined and you've had twenty four years of
practicing this character to then actually being yourself, which is
like your real self, is so much more like I
don't know how to explain this, Like there's no black
and white, really, it's very much more gray areas. It's
very nuanced, it's very flowing, like we're all kind of fluid,
Whereas that character was clearly defined, like this is what
(23:20):
Ellie likes, this is what Elle doesn't like, this is
how Ellie behaves, this is how Ellie doesn't behave. So
it's so much easier to fall into that, like you've
got the rules of how to behave, whereas if you're
trying to actually I guess it's the same for everybody.
When you're trying to be yourself, it's you don't know
exactly what that looks like, but I think it's the
same thought unmasking of like I know that I naturally
speak in a certain way when I'm around other people,
(23:44):
but how do I like, I don't know how I
speak naturally because I don't speak to myself when I'm
at home on my own, do I Like? That's when
I'm the most unnasty is when I'm at home on
my own, not being perceived by other people not interacting
with other people, but then I'm not having conversations then
because I'm on my own. So it's like, how do
I even get to know that kind of thing? But yeah,
it's I guess it's it. That's the kind of a
(24:04):
very long explanation, but basically covering up your your neurodivergent
traits to appear neurotypical, and a lot of the time
it's like done without realizing or done for safety or
And I think it's like important to point out as
well that like I'm quite lucky that I'm able to
unmask in certain ways because I'm very like non threatening.
(24:25):
I guess, like I'm a small white woman. I you know,
I have got pretty privilege. I'm like quite slim, I'm
quite small, Whereas like a six foot five black man
can't do that in the same way that I can,
because where I'm stood outside rocking backwards and forwards, feeling
(24:46):
stressed out, and that's like, oh, look at this poor
young lady who's having a difficult time, Whereas if a
black man does the same thing, it's like he's getting aggressive,
he's been dangerous, like that could be like, you know,
that could be a I risk for his safety.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
It could it could end up.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
In him being in prison, it could end up it
getting really like dangerous situations. So unmasking is like a
necessary thing for us to do to be able to
be healthy because it is so draining, like do it
like covering yourself up all of the time without realizing.
But it's also a huge privilege to be able to
do that as well, because it can be like perceived
(25:23):
in different ways for different people depending on what you
look like. It can you know, be yeah, like even
even me sometimes, like I've had times where I've been
super tired and I've had loads going on, so I've
been more in mass and I've kind of spoken more
bluntly to people without realizing just that I'm kind of
my tank is so empty that i don't have it
(25:45):
in me to like cover it up anymore. And people
have been like, you know, you're being rude, like why
are you being off with me? And I'm like, I'm
not being off with you. I'm just like all I've
got in me to do right now is communicate in
the most concise and like natural way, Whereas that can
like be end up in people thinking you're behaving a
certain way, And yeah, I think it's a it's like
a it's both like the thing that I guess a
(26:05):
lot of people are aiming for being able to unmask,
but it's also comes with like dangers for certain people,
and it comes with being misunderstood and like maybe being
kind of yeah, yeah, misunderstood.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
A discriminated against. Yeah, I think that's the thing. Like,
that's so interesting. When you said that, I was like,
I actually had never thought about that before. I've never
thought about that, And I think it's such an interesting thing,
once again, an argument to retire the profile of like
we it's it's so linked to not just misogyny, like
we've spoken about like racism, like prejudice in so many
(26:41):
in so many like intricate ways. And I think also
because we as a society have really been taught from
a young age how you are supposed to act, which
has contributed to the masking. Right, there is a I think,
very defined formula of like correctness and politeness that people
are taught from a very young age. That also means
(27:02):
that not only have you kind of forced yourself to
take upon what sounds like a character, what sounds like
a persona no wonder you don't know who's underneath that
you've been method acting for twenty four years, like method
acting to like an A plus standard, like to the
point where doctors couldn't even see through it. Like that's
kind of like insane, that that's just that's it, like
(27:24):
so hard for me to even comprehend how exhausting that
must be.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
But I think it.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Also from what I'm hearing from you, comes from this
idea that we actually don't know a lot as a
general population about what this looks like because of how
we've been taught to say it. So that kind of
leads to my next question, which is, like, what are
some of the elements of neurodivergence that you think there
needs to be more conversations around that is excluded from
(27:48):
the narrative that is maybe less comfortable to speak about
or people are less informed about, not because it's rare,
just because we aren't having conversations about it.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
Yeah, I think think so.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
In the book, I have like chapter the first couple
of chapters are where I go through like the kind
of scientific basics of like what actually is ADHD, what
actually is autism? And what is the diagnostic criteria that
a doctor will go through to decide if you have
it or not. But then the next chapter after that
is like translating those traits to how they show up
in real life, because I think that's where the education
(28:25):
is missing in society of like we understand to a
certain level the traits like on paper, but we don't
understand how that translates to real life experience, especially in
people that aren't the young white boys. So, like, one
example is literal thinking is I think one that we
all know that autistic people are literal thinkers, but the
(28:46):
way that we've been told of that is like that
they don't understand jokes or we don't understand sarcasm, or
we don't understand like sayings you know where it's like
I don't know break a leg and stuff like that,
And they're the examples that are given on like the
medical website and stuff like that. But actually, literal thinking
and literal processing for me means that I take words
(29:08):
as gospel. Like if someone tells me something, I will
believe it because they've told me it, so I take
it very literally that it must be true. So even
if you know someone when I was younger, my parents
couldn't say McDonald's out loud because if they said, like, oh, maybe, well,
you know, if you're good, maybe we'll get a McDonald's
on the way home, I'd be like, but you said
(29:30):
if I was good, we could have McDonald's, and I've
been good, so we need to go and get McDonald's,
you know, Like I would take it very like literally
what they said, but also like it goes the other
way of like if you haven't told me something, I
won't know it to be true because I'm a very
literal person. So whereas other people might assume that something's
(29:51):
like going on in the background, or like that someone
else has got something going on, for example, or that
things are happening. If you don't tell me something, then
I don't know it. So like for example, like recently,
my dad's had quite a lot going on at work,
and like the rest, like my mum will be like,
you know, if he's stressed at home, it's because he's
(30:12):
got a lot going on at work.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
But I'm like, but.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
If he doesn't tell me, you know, other people might
be able to think, oh, he's acting different, maybe something's
causing him to act different, whereas I'm like, but if
you don't tell me that you've got a lot going
on at work, I don't know that you've got a
lot going on at work. So I'm thinking, why is
my dad not talking to me? Or why is my
dad seeming stress? Like what's going on? Like I'm trying
to solve that problem, but I don't have the information
(30:36):
because no one has said, your dad's got a lot
on his plate at the moment. So it's that like,
you know, people think, oh, yeah, I understand the autistic
people literal thinkers, but it's like, okay, no, but you
think that I can't understand sarcasm, But actually it's that
I can only process the world with the information that
I am like physically given, like in black and white basically.
So I think that's like, yeah, people don't understand how
(30:58):
the traits actually show up in real life. So I
think that's like a big one that I have tried
to kind of go through each trait and that way
of being like, Okay, this is what you know, what
we think it is, and this is how it actually
shows up for people. And then I think another really
big one, especially with ADHD, is RSD, which is rejection
(31:20):
sensitive dysphoria, and it's basically like real bad emotional dysregulation,
and it's like this basically very extreme response in response
to kind of perceived or real rejection. So if you
think that someone's upset with you, or you think that
you're being rejected, or you think that you haven't done
(31:41):
a good job or anything is like pointing you in
the direction of some sort of perceived rejection, then it's
like a full body like it feels like the world
is closing in on you because you've just been rejected
in that way. And I think that's I think that's
a big one as to why so many women don't
get diagnosed or they do throw the young sciety card
or the depression card, because all they're seeing again is
(32:03):
these like extreme emotional reactions and they're like hormones, anxiety
or like all of these things.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Or BPD as well, Like, yeah, that would be another
one where I'm like, so that sluts in.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Yeah, So I actually yeah, when I so, before I
got to my actual diagnosis, when I kind of got
to the point where I was like, anxiety is not
quite right, but I didn't have the answers yet. I
actually went through there was like a couple of months
where I was convinced that I had BPD. I was like,
I started researching online and that was the first thing
(32:37):
that came up, like you know, mood swings going from
being really high to being really low, like kind of
irrational behavior and like when someone's leaving, like you know,
having abandonment issues. And I was like, that's me. I
was like, all of these things are me. I've found
the answer, like I've got BPD. And I was like
literally going to my doctors. I was like, I need
(32:58):
to be referred for a BPD assessment, like I've got BPD,
Like I found the answer, this is it. And they're like, no, Elliott,
it's not, like that's not you. And I was I
was like, no, but it is. It is, and like,
I mean, I guess it isn't, but yeah, the experiences,
Like I read those traits and I was like, that's me.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
That's me, that's me, that's me. But yeah, yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
And I think what makes it even more I was
actually having this conversation with a friend yesterday. What makes
it even more difficult is that things like BPD and
CPTSD are caused by trauma and growing up as an
undiagnosed autistic person or undiagnosed person with ADHD that is
trauma in itself. You're you're masking all the time, You're
living in a world that's not designed for you. You're constantly misunderstood,
(33:39):
You're constantly told that what you're like, if you're yourself,
it's wrong. You're constantly told that you're lazy, or that
you're sensitive or all of these things. Like growing up
as an undiagnosed you're ad divergent person is trauma. And
these other conditions that are so similar in their experiences
are caused by trauma. So it's like, how the heck
are you supposed to disentangle? Like it's so common for
(34:01):
people to have a combination of all of these things.
Like I am almost certain that I've got CPTSD because
just the things that happened in my teenage years and
the way that I respond now to things that happen
versus like it's I'm not just dealing with the thing
that's happening, I'm dealing with all of the stuff that
happened when I was undiagnosed, but that the actual experience
(34:25):
it like it'd be really difficult for me to get
diagnosed with CPTSD because they could probably explain away all
of the experiences that I was having through ADHD emotional dysregulation,
protecting sensitive dysphoria, through autism, like being hypervigilant. That's again
like I'm autistic, so I have Yeah, I'm autistic, so
(34:46):
i pick up on things really easily, and I'm really
sensitive to sound, and I'm really sensitive to change, and
I like to have a routine and all of those
things also our behaviors that people with CPTSD would show
because it's hypervigilance, it's protecting yourself, it's all of those
Like it is just a minefield of like over laugh
and complication, and I think, yeah, that's a really kind
(35:06):
of big, big thing that a lot of people face
of like what is going on here? And a lot
of the time it's probably a bit of a combination
of everything.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
So interesting as well, because it's only been recently that
people can actually get more than one diagnosis, like it
used to be like here, you have bipologus order, you
have borderline personality disorder, you have autism. There's your box,
sit in it now, And I think you point to
a really interesting point that a lot of people don't understand,
which is that your experience with mental illness can actually
(35:39):
create further mental illness and actually can be a trigger
for things like complex post traumatic stress disorder. I think
we often think about that in particular. It's really a
really like that you brought that in. We think about
trauma in the sense of something really really terrible, external,
violent happening to you. But trauma is just like the
(36:01):
disruption of security and peace and you know, safety that
is as simple as it is, and that can come
from so many different things, including like an experience of
growing up in as you said, a world that is
not designed for you. That is so traumatic, and it's
not just one of it. It's a continuous cumulation of stress,
(36:23):
of anxiety, of as you said, masking. So I'm glad
that you brought that up, and I think it literally
leads into this next thing, which is if I'm sure,
I'm so sure that there is probably someone listening to
this right now who is like, holy shit, why is
this describing me? I thought I had VPD. Everyone told
(36:45):
me I had anxiety. I was said rude things when
I was a teenager without realizing it, without even consciously knowing.
So what would your advice be to someone who thinks
that they have ADHD they have autism in the same
position you now that they're an adult in their twenties.
Like you said, there's going to be so many more
people who are coming through in the next few decades
(37:08):
who could have received a diagnosis at three, nine, ten,
but aren't going to do so until they're twenty. What's
your advice as someone who kind of lived that.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Yeah, I think it's a really really tricky one now
because because of the fact that so many more people
are realizing, it means that services and support just aren't there.
Like the waiting lists to get an actual diagnosis are
so long, it's so tricky to get diagnosed. And also
the medical professionals are kind of a lot of the
time behind us in our understanding. Like they were trained, however,
(37:43):
many years ago, when they were at university or whatever
it might be, they were taught the stereotypical diagnostic criteria.
They were taught that it was more common in CIS
boys than it was in anybody else. You know, they
maybe don't have the understanding to be able to see
your experiences and see them for what they are even
(38:03):
if that's if you're even kind of lucky enough to
get in the room with somebody, Like now, waiting lists
are really long, like private assessments are really expensive. Like
it's a really tricky time at the moment because it's
like so many people are having these realizations and then
they can't really go away and do anything with that.
So I would say, like my first point is like
(38:23):
that self diagnosis is completely valid and is kind of
necessary in the current world that.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
We live in.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
I think with ADHD it's slightly different because medication can
be helpful, and obviously you would need to see and
have a medical diagnosis and see a professional for that.
But other than that, like you are the expert of
your own experiences. If you're going through all of this information,
if you're doing all of these online tests and you're
seeing that, yeah, this is right for me, this is
(38:50):
who I am, then you can tell you can give
yourself that ance that you don't need to have like
a green tick of approval from a medical professional, because
it's just.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
You know, in an ideal world, yes.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
We would all be able to go and see a
psychiatrist and get those answers, but we don't live in
an ideal world. We live in a world where it's
impossible to do that for a lot of people at
the moment, and it's a privilege to be able to
do that. So like, firstly, yeah, that's completely a valid
thing to do, and also like remembering that it's not
a piece of paper from a doctor that changes your life.
(39:22):
It's changing your life that changes your life. So it's like, I,
you know, anyone can change the way that they're working.
They can work more flexibly, they can give themselves more rest,
they can honor their sensory needs more, they can wear
ear defenders when they're in noisy venues, they can buy
planners that will help them manage their time better. They
can you know, all of these things that are the
(39:42):
reason that my life is so much better now. Anyone
can do it.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Does need a.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Doctor to go, Yes you are autistic. Yes you have
ADHD for you to be able to do those things.
So I think it's really you know, the narrative at
the moment that like, oh, everyone's self diagnosing and you
have to you know, you don't know, but you do know,
like you can do that for yourself. And I would
say the main thing as well. That helped me in
terms of like validation and actually understanding and feeling comfortable
(40:10):
in knowing that that was what was going on for
me was looking like searching out the experiences of other
people that had similar lived experience to mine. So, like
we were saying, when I was reading through the diagnostic criteria,
there were some things where I was like, hmm, you know,
maybe that's me, but it doesn't one hundred percent sound
like me. But then I would go onto social media
(40:31):
and I would find another twenty twenty something year old
woman talking about her experience of that thing, and I'd
be like, oh, yeah, that's just like me.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
I do that, I'm exactly the.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Same as that because obviously if we're both the same age,
the same gender, and we have similar interests, then the
way that our traits show up are going to be
more similar as well. So I think that's a really
helpful thing to do. You know, if you're a woman,
look for the experiences of women. If you're a person
of color, look for the experiences of people of color.
If you're a mother, looks for the experiences of other mothers,
(41:02):
Like look for people who have similar like a wider
range of similar experience to yours than the way that
their trade show up is probably more likely to going
to be more similar to yours as well. So I
think that's a really helpful that for me, that was
like what kind of tipped me over the edge from hmm,
maybe maybe I should look into these things to Yeah,
(41:23):
I'm confident that this is what's going on for me
was seeing other people who were similar to me talking
about their experiences because they were obviously a lot more
similar to mine.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
So I would say.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
That that is like the best, the best thing that
I could recommend. It's like a far from ideal situation
because it's like I obviously would love for everybody to
be able to get the actual answers and the support
that they need and the medication that they need for
ADHD if they choose to do that, but it's a
tricky time at the moment where these services are just overloaded.
(41:55):
So I think just like knowing like that it's okay
to self diagnose that it's okay to put these things
in place for yourself without someone telling you that you're
allowed to do that, and then also seeking out the
experience and even like connecting with other neurodivergent people where
you can like for me, obviously, I'm kind of very
public about it. It's my job to talk about it online.
(42:16):
But the friends I have made through doing that and
having autistic friends ADHD friends has literally been the best
thing that has ever happened to me in my entire life.
Like I've always had such a hard I've had such
a hard time with friendships, Like school was awful for me,
Like I think I massively underestimate it actually, where it's
been one of those things where I've just had to
survive it. So I just I'm like, we don't talk
about school, we don't think about it, like I dropped
(42:37):
out of school. I had I was bullied awfully, Like
I just had an awful time, And I guess I
just kind of got used to the fact that, Okay,
maybe I'm never gonna find their friendship group, maybe I'm
never gonna fit in anywhere, because it just doesn't seem
to have happened up to now, Whereas now I'm like,
oh no, I actually can find people that I relate to,
where I was just not finding the right people. So
(42:58):
I think if you can join communities, I have another
Instagram account called We Are Unmasked, which is a community
for your divergent people, and we try and set up event.
It's kind of on the back burner at the moment
because I've been writing a book and stuff, but yeah,
hopefully we'll be doing more like online events and things
like that, and even just looking through the comments, you'll
be able to find people who are in a similar
(43:18):
position to you. And I think finding those friendships is
like a huge thing that you can do for validation
as well.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
One hundred percent. I honestly love that, not just I
obviously don't have ADHD or autism, but like even from
my perspective, if you can relate to that, like the
best is yet to come, Like you're not going to
find your people in a high school of six hundred people,
Like maybe you will, but the world is so much
(43:46):
bigger and broader and wider than that you have no
idea what's coming, and not in an anxious sense, in
like the most beautiful sense. And also I really like
that point because I think in the cycle the point
you made earlier, like the psychology community, there is a
big fuss around like ADHD is so overdiagnosed. Everyone's on
(44:06):
you know, Riddlin or adderall whatever. And I'm like, okay, great,
are you their doctor? No, So you have no opinion
on this. Literally, you're someone on the internet who has
made their mind up around what this does and doesn't
look look like. And I think that is so insulting.
And it's additionally the thing of like I always think
about the comparison to depression. You can know you're depressed
(44:28):
without a doctor telling you, and you can do things
in your life to mitigate that. What is to say
that you can't do that for other things as well?
And obviously medication comes into it. You might need a
helping hand in that sense, but it doesn't mean that
you have to wait until someone goes Yeah, you're like
approved for a diagnosis to be making the changes that
you think are going to benefit your life. So I
(44:50):
think that's such a beautiful message. One final question but
I would love for you to answer, is you've just
released a book. I know we've talked about it so much,
and I honestly hearing your story of being like I
had to drop out of high school. I was bullied.
(45:10):
I never for what I was going to get that far.
That's and here you are now is like honestly quite emotional.
So what would you tell that person, that kind of
younger version of you who was really struggling for answers?
Speaker 2 (45:23):
Yeah, I think a big one is like focus on
the people that love you rather.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
Than the ones that don't.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
So I think, like, especially through high school, I think like,
obviously I didn't know that I was asking. I didn't
know that was autistic. Was that I had ADHD, but
I always had it was almost like an internal thing
where I always tried to become friends with the popular people.
I think it was like this innate need to fit in,
this innate need to be liked, to be approved of,
(45:53):
like to be validated, that I would always like try
and be friends with the popular group and it would
always end badly for me, like I had so many time.
I can literally could probably point to like ten different
times in my life where I've sat down with my
mum and she's been like, Ellie, why do you always
try to be friends with like the loud girls, the
popular girls, Like they're not like you, like you're you're soft,
(46:13):
you're gentle, Like it's it doesn't end well for you,
like why? And it was almost like I think like
all kind of women and people marginalized for the gender
that have gone through high school know that feeling of
like it's a rock and a hard place, Like it's
like the plastics Inminger, Like if you're friends with them,
then it's life as hell, but if you're not friends
with them, then it's even worse. So I think it
was that thing of like I would always try to
(46:35):
be liked by everybody and by the popular people, whereas actually,
if I'd have got there on my first day in
year seven and gone, I actually really like maths, I
actually really like puzzles. I you know, maybe I should
make some friends that maybe other people are gonna call
us weird. Maybe we're not gonna have the nicest time either,
but I'm at least gonna have these three solid friends
(46:56):
that we all love each other for our weirdness and
our geekiness and our strangeness and all of whatever it
might be like that would have been. It still wouldn't
have been easy, right, because no one has a nice
time at high school, especially if you're like different in
any way. But at least I would have had like
the like that solid group of friends that would have
loved me for me whereas I was still like focused
(47:17):
on making everybody like me or trying to fit in
with the popular people that I kind of denied myself
the opportunity to make friends that might not have been
as popular, but they would have been friends. So I
think that would be my thing of like focus on
finding people that love you for you rather than being
like it's that thing of like, don't be everyone's cup
(47:37):
of tea, be like someone's shot of whiskey, or I
don't know whatever the saying is of like basically.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
I never heard that, but I love that. I'm gonna slide.
Speaker 3 (47:47):
I don't even know if that's right. We've made it
up now it's we'll go with it.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
But yeah, kind of that thing of like trying to
focus on finding a place rather than being like mass liked,
I think would have been a good one for me
to know. And I think almost like I think it's
one of those things where it's like it's a worse
thing that someone can say to you at the time,
but over time you realize that it's so true of
just like trusting the process, Like I genuinely thought that
(48:12):
because I didn't go to union, because I dropped out
of school, like that was it. I was never going
to get anywhere in life, Like I was going to
be miserable. I was going to do low paid jobs.
I was never going to be successful. I was going
to be overworked. Like when actually, you know, I've been
really lucky. I'm really grateful for what's happened. But I've
not needed a degree for any of this, Like I've
not needed high school.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
Qualifications for any of this.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
It has all worked out in the end, and like
maybe it could have worked out a lot sooner. But
I think just like trusting that you don't have to
do things the way that everyone else is doing them,
Like you can do what it's better that you drop
out and you're still healthy and you're well, you're working
on becoming healthy again, and you're looking after yourself and
you're being gentle with yourself. Then forcing yourself to do
(48:54):
things because you think that you should do them and
you think that's the only way that you're going to
achieve anything, and all of that stuff, and I guess, yeah,
reading like the Path and redefining what success is I
think was because I think, yeah, at school, there's so
much pressure of like you have to be the top
grade student, you have to go to UNI, you have
to get a good job you have, and that doesn't
work for everybody, Like life happens, and also that life
(49:14):
is not the life that everyone wants. So I think
if someone would have been like, it's okay if you're
not top of the class, it's okay if you don't
go to UNI, that would have been a really helpful
thing for me to know as well.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
Hmmm, I'll trust the process. I love that also totally true,
Like it's there is such a different path than the
jobs that we might be working in like twenty years
probably don't exist. Yet what you and I are doing
did not exist twenty years ago. Like maybe what I'm doing,
like technically podcast did exist, but not to this level.
Like the world is evolving, and I think that's so important.
(49:49):
Something I always think is like I'm most grateful for
the things that I wanted and didn't get, Like I'm
so grateful for the things that I like begged for
that I thought were going to make me happy, like
that internship that like, you know, university entry that boyfriend
and I didn't get them, And at the time, I
was like, I'm so miserable that this is the end
(50:09):
of my life and everything I know. I hate saying
everything happens for a reason, because I don't think it does.
But there are some things that happen for you, not
to you. I think that's like, yeah, a beautiful way
to end things. So I want to say thank you
so much for coming on, thank you for being one
of our guests for this like wonderful December holiday series.
(50:31):
It's just like such a beautiful perspective, one that I
think more people need to hear. And I'm so so
thankful that you were able to make time to talk
to us.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's been
so nice to have a very nice, wholesome chat to
start the day for me.
Speaker 1 (50:48):
Yeah, and to end the day for me. Look at that.
It's like a beautiful bookmark for our days. I'm gonna
put all of Ellie's links in the description here. Please
go and buy her book if you if you resonated
with any of this, if you have a friend, a
family member who this sounds like them, buy it for them.
It's Christmas time, why the fuck not? You know, Share
the joy around, share the information around, and as always,
(51:11):
if you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to leave
a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you're
listening right now, Share it with a friend if you
think they'd like it, and if you have any further
questions comments. If you have an opinion on this episode
or an episode suggestion, please feel free to follow us
at that Psychology podcast and we'll see you again later
this week.
Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast, new listeners, old listeners, Wherever you are in
the world, it's so great to have you here. Back
for another episode as we break down the psychology of
your twenties. We have a guest on today that I
I pursued. I'm gonna say it that way. I pursued her. Sorry, Ellie,
(00:22):
I just spoiled who you are, but you would have
read it in the title. I was like, I need
this person on for this topic. She is the perfect
person to discuss this, to discuss ADHD autism in our twenties.
She has such a unique story and an incredible voice
to this matter that I think is both personal but
also very informed and a little bit different. So welcome
(00:42):
Ellie Middleton. It's so great to have you here.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Thank you so much, so nice to be here. Thanks
for the lovely introduction. I feel like I always sit
here like blushing at the style and people are saying
nice things about me.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I'm like, oh, yeah, that's me, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
No, I get that it's something you kind of have
to learn to take sometimes. But imagine if someone like
sat here and I was like, yeah, I'm not that
keen on this, like, thanks for coming on. I guess
like that would even more imparison. Yeah, that's true. And
you're calling in from the UK, so we got like
an international podcast crew going on here.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah, I know worldwide.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
I know, missus worldwides here. So I kind of introduced
you briefly. You're Ellie Middleton. You have this incredible story.
You've just released a book on Masked, which is available
in the UK right now, hopefully by the time people
are listening to this internationally because it's incredible. But for
those of the listeners who don't know you, can you
(01:37):
just talk briefly about who you are, your story, your work,
kind of a free space to just chat Ellie, I.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Guess, yeah, thank you. So yeah, I'm Ellie.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
I'm an artistic and ADHD content creator, speaker and writer.
So I guess the short version is that I got
diagnosed with both ADHD and autism when I was twenty four.
So up until that point, I'd always struggled with my
mental health, had quite a rough time in my teenage years,
but I'd always been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and
(02:09):
like anxiety related depression and panic disorder and agrophobia and
all that good stuff in the mental health space. But
then when I was kind of twenty four, kind of
realized that that didn't seem to really fit, like it
wasn't really explaining my experiences properly. Like I wasn't an
anxious person. I just became really overwhelmed really frequently, So
it wasn't like anxiety, it was overwhelmed. But I think
(02:30):
those two things are so closely linked that all the
doctors I'd seen in the past had kind of just
assumed that it was anxiety. But yeah, anyway, when I
was twenty four, I finally got diagnosed with both autism
and ADHD, and getting those diagnoses just like changed my
life completely, Like it just made everything made sense. It
made me kind of understand who I was, and I
(02:53):
kind of, I guess I've just felt so grateful that
I got those answers that I was like, oh, my goodness,
like I can finally like be myself now, I can
finally like work out how to make my mental health
better like all of this stuff. That I just felt
that there must be so many other people out there,
especially women, who were like in the same boat that
I was. So they had always been diagnosed with anxiety.
They knew that they were different somehow, like they knew
(03:14):
that something else was going on, but they just didn't
know what that thing was, and they just never had
been picked up by their doctors or their teachers or whatever.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
It might be.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
So I started speaking about it online, just like hoping,
like knowing that, like if I'd have seen me speaking
about it like a few years earlier, then it might
have been like, oh, that kind of sounds similar to me,
So maybe I should look into that as well, and
maybe I would have got diagnosed like a whole lot
sooner than I actually did. So kind of wanted to
try and at least like just make one person think, oh,
(03:43):
maybe that that could be me, and I could go
away and look into that as well, and then it
all kind of spiral from there, I guess. So I
kind of very quickly grew quite a big audience online
and then I go into quite a lot of companies
talking about how they can be more inclusive, and then yeah,
as very kindly mentioned, I've just written a book about it,
which is like my baby is like the protesting that
I've ever done. I'm so happy with it. I'm so
(04:05):
grateful that I've had the chance to do it. But yeah,
I guess basically, I shout about the importance of like
understanding the way that your brain works and like being
gentle with yourself, but also kind of advocate for people
having the chance to get those answers because so many people,
like women, people marginalize their gender, people of color, where
people especially are spending so much of their lives undiagnosed
(04:27):
and just kind of being missed completely by the system.
So it's like honors to advocate for ourselves. So yeah,
that's a a long and short version.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
I guess I love it. It's really interesting what you said.
What you just said about how you had this litany
of diagnoses before you got to the right one, And
I don't know if that's even the right way of
saying it, Like it's almost like the answer seems quite
obvious now. I'm sure like you're probably questioning, like, how
(04:55):
come no one ever said this to me? How come
it was never an option, how come it was never
on the table. I'm sure that must have been so frustrating.
And speaking from like the experience of friends, I was saying,
I had a close friend who was recently diagnosed. And
when you said everyone just told me I was anxious,
I just immediately thought of her and how much that
(05:17):
that was always the reason given to her for this
pattern of behaviors, this pattern of tendencies, and it wasn't
the right answer. No one thought to look deeper into
it. It must be like so mentally frustrating.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Yeah. I think there's like a couple of stories in
particular from my childhood and teenage years that I look
back now and I'm like, how the heck did nobody
like notice what was going on there? Like there's one
I think my mom like struggles with this one a lot,
Like I think she feels a lot of guilt. When
I'm an August baby, so I was always the youngest
in my year group. In the Uki year group's run
for I don't if it's same over there, but we
(05:49):
run from like September to August. So I'm like the
youngest in my year. And when I was at nursery,
so I was like three and the rest of the
kids in my year were four and we were about
to go up to primary school. The nursery teacher like
pulled my mum in and was like Okay. Academically, Ellie's
definitely ready to go up to school, Like she's really bright,
she knows what's going on. But socially, you might want
(06:10):
to consider holding her back a year.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Like she's very shy.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
She doesn't really interact with the other kids, like she's
just not really interested. Like we've tried to encourage her
to play in their games and do all these different things,
but all she really wants to do is like she
just comes in every day and I would like sit
in the same room, on the same table and just
do like painting every single day. And that was all
that was interested in. And I look back at that
now and it was kind of just like, oh, okay, well,
you know, she's just the youngest girl in the year,
(06:34):
so she's just a bit shy, Like it'll be fine,
it'll come with age, Like it's no, like, no worry.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
She's just like a shy little girl.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
And I look back and I'm like, if that was
like Elliott rather than Ellie or Ethan or whatever, it
might be like a little boy, a young boy that
is like very academically bright but struggles socially, does the
same thing every single day, Like I don't know, he's
lining up his dinosaurs in a row every single day.
He doesn't want to talk to anybody. They've tried to
encourage him to, like straight away, that would be like
(07:01):
alarm bells. They'd be looking into it, they'd be trying
to find out what was going on. They'd be thinking
that was autism. But because it was a little girl,
it was like, oh, she's just a bit shy, Like
it's fine, she's just a young girl. And it's like
that was like I was three years old at that point.
Like if I'd have been diagnosed at that point or
even had it looked into at that point, like my
whole life could have been so much different. And then
there's like kind of similar stories in high school where
(07:23):
teachers were saying that, like I was being had a
really hard time like socially and was kind of being
bullied quite badly. And one of my teachers had said, like, oh, well,
Ellie says things that are rude sometimes, so she can't
be upset when other people are rude back to her.
And my mum was like, well, what does she say
that's rude, because like she's not she's not a nasty person,
like she wouldn't she wouldn't do that, and then be like, oh, well,
(07:45):
she had got like an A rather than a star
in one of her exams, and she was kind of
saying to the other girls like, oh, I'm so annoyed
that I didn't get the A star that I wanted,
whereas some of the other girls had struggled to scrape
a C or a D and they were like, that's
kind of, you know, inappropriate. You shouldn't be saying that,
And I was like, well, I didn't know that that
was rude. Like I'm not saying that they should have
got an A or and a star. I'm just saying
(08:06):
that I'm upset with myself and not being able to
read those social cues is like a key sign of
autism as well. But instead it was like, oh, no,
she's just rude, she's just a bit, she's just whatever.
Like I think so much of it is closely tied
to misogyny unfortunately, but yeah, I think looking back, there's
like so many things where it is like, yeah, what
the heck, Like it was literally like I might as
well have had a neon sign flashing above my head.
(08:29):
That was like this girl is autistic, But no one
like ever kind of considered that that was what was
going on.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
It's so interesting you point to misogyny and how I
think one of the deepest problems in how we approach neurodivergence,
particularly ADHD and autism, is that the entire diagnoses criteria
is built around the behavior of boys and the behavior
of men. And we know that culturally those two you know,
(08:57):
binaries that society often sees. They're raised different, they are
taught differently as to how to behave their personalities, their
temperaments are different. But when you have this kind of
systematic bias and the healthcare system, it's no wonder that
people such as yourself slip through and it's kind of
a tragedy. And I know you're like, the things that
(09:19):
you've done now is so amazing, But what if you
had had the opportunity to start at that earlier, What
if you had had that opportunity to actually get the
help you need, not experience so much self blame and
negative self belief when you were three, when you attend
when you were fifteen, Like, I'm sure that's really rough.
So I think you've kind of already touched on it.
But why do you think so many women in particular
(09:40):
struggle to receive a diagnosis, have their symptoms recognized, and
kind of alongside that, why is it always that they
get the anxiety diagnosis first before people consider other options,
other potential things going on.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, I think like you kind of nailed it really
well there, that the diagnostic criteria is just not set
up to account for the experiences of women, the experiences
of people marginalized for their gender, the experiences of people
of color. They're based on basically, like the easy way
to explain it is like the only people that these
psychologists were basing the research on was like the young
(10:20):
middle class white boys whose parents could have thought basically,
if they had a young boy that wasn't behaving in
the way that they wanted him to, they would pay
to take him to this private psychiatrist. And then they
were the people that the research was based on. So
anyone outside of that, their experiences are just not accounted
for in the diagnostic criteria. So I think one example,
(10:42):
like for me, this is a question that I had
to answer as a twenty four year old woman trying
to get diagnosed, and the question is, like, you know, say,
if this is like a highly highly true, a bit true,
not true, or slightly true, whatever, And it's like I
collect information about categories of things, for example, types of birds,
(11:05):
types of planes, types of car, types of plants or something.
So me reading that question, I'm like, well, no, I
don't collect information about any of those type of things.
And then like the more research you do, it's like, well, yeah,
that's because I'm not an eight.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Year old boy. I'm a twenty four year old woman.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Like I collect information about I don't know, if I
like a certain band, I will listen to their albums
over and over and over again. If I like a
certain fashion creator, I will like constantly be checking to
see if they've uploaded new content because I want to
see what's going on. Or if I like a certain
clothes brand, then I will like be obsessed with when
the new drops are coming out and checking the website
(11:43):
and like wanting everything to do. Like I do still
do the same thing of like having these really strong
interests that I become like obsessed with, but they're just
not birds, cars, trains, or planes, because they're very like
stereotypically like young boy interests. And I think that's like
a really good example of like just how much the
(12:04):
diagnostic criteria is not designed, Like it's like you could
sit there as a fully like one autistic person and
still get a really like low score on these tests
that they're doing, just because the questions don't explain your experience.
And there's other ones where it's like would you prefer
to go to a museum or to a party? And obviously, well,
(12:27):
I guess the correct answer is like they think that
you'd rather go to a museum as an autistic person,
And it's like, well, it kind of depends on on
the museum, Like am I going to Yeah, Like it's
like am I going? Like what sort of party is it?
Am I going with friends? Am I going with strangers?
Like it's like that question does not in any way
kind of explain whether I'm autistic or not. And I
(12:49):
think it's the same like with ADHD as well that
like I think it's like this like ditsy blonde stereotype
is one that I speak about in the book quite
a lot, which I think is the reason why a
lot of girls go undiagnosed, because I mean, previously it
was kind of said that a lot more girls would
have like the inattentive type of ADHD, which is the
more like forgetfulness and struggling to concentrate and doodling and
(13:12):
rather than the hyperactive type, which is more like outwardly visible.
I guess so that was kind of an idea of like, well,
they're presenting a different type of ADHD which isn't as
outwardly visible. But I think we've kind of moved on
from that as well, to be like, maybe they're not
presenting any differently, like the experiences that they have on
any differently, they're just socialized in a different way. Like
(13:37):
I'm hyperve I have combined ADHD, which means I'm both
hyperactive and inattentive, but my hyperactivity is very much internal,
like my brain is like a million miles an hour
all of the time. So it wasn't ever at school
that I was like rocking backwards and forwards on my chair,
like causing chaos, Like the teachers were like finding me
annoying all of this stuff because girls are told to
(13:58):
behave to be quiet, whereas boys it's like, oh, boys
will be boys, like they're allowed to be a bit
more chaotic, and girls are very much socialized to fit
in to be well behaved, to be polite, to be sensible,
to be like so much more mature, I guess, like typically,
So I think it's like a combination of the fact that,
(14:18):
like one, we're not getting diagnosed at a young age
because the diagnostic criteria aren't accounting for how we show up.
And then secondly, because we're not like learning that we're
different at a young age, we're then being socialized in
the way that kind of this patriarchal system socializes all
of like women and people marginalize for their gender. So
(14:40):
by the time, like by the time we get any older,
we're not showing any differences because we've learned how to
mask them and cover them up, Like my mum. We
have like a lot of conversations where it is obviously
that thing of like the grief I guess of getting
diagnosed later in life, where it's like what could have been,
Like I had to drop out of school, I had
to decline my offers, like I've had to quit jobs,
(15:01):
all of this stuff, and I'm like, that wouldn't have
happened if I'd have been diagnosed early. And like we've
had the conversation with my mum where my mum has
been like, but when I was fifteen was when I
first got referred to the mental health services in the UK,
And at that point they wouldn't have been able to Like,
(15:21):
I'm like, how could they not have seen like I
was seeing a psychiatrist every week? Like how like how
could they have not noticed that that was what was
going on for me? And it's like, well, by that point,
they wouldn't have been able to see it in you
because you were doing such a good job of covering
it up. Like by that time, you'd have like you
were in high school, you'd learned that you had to
fit in, you had to make friends, you had to survive,
(15:41):
so you weren't showing any differences for them to pick
up on.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
All that they were being able to visibly.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
See was the fact that you were having these like
meltdowns and shut downs and becoming overwhelmed because it was
almost like you were keeping it all in for such
a long time that then it had all just like
burst out in these like intense things that would look
a lot like pan attacks, because it was just that
I like would become so overwhelmed, I won't be able
to speak, I would be crying I'd be overwhelmed, and
(16:07):
it's like, well, that's all that they had to work
with because they couldn't see all of that that you
were holding it in, like containing it.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Most of the time.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
They just saw these kind of like volcano eruptions of
when it came out. So yeah, I think it's a
really it all like ties into it as well, and
it's like equally as well.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
The more that.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
The diagnostic criteria only account for the experiences of these
like young white CIS boys, the more that they're the
only people that do get diagnosed. So it's like they're
the only people that are going about life with a diagnosis. Yeah,
So then it's like that kind of reinforces it of
like they're the only people, like the only people that
you would meet I guess that would know that they
were autistic, and ADHD is those people. So then in
(16:47):
your head you're like, oh, well, everyone that I've met
that's autistic is a young white boy, so maybe it's
just young white boys. And it kind of goes like
it goes on for such a long time, Like now
I think we're seeing a wave of like, yeah, people
in their twenties, thirties, forties getting a diagnosis and realizing
for themselves and you know, whether that's medical diagnosis or
self diagnosing or all of these things, like, but they're
(17:08):
realizing later in life. And I think that's amazing that
we're like catching all of these people that were missed.
But I still don't know if we're getting any better
at picking up the girls like the Elliot three in
the Like, I don't. Yeah, I still it's almost like
it's like, yeah, it's amazing that we're finding out now,
but we we need to fix it so we don't
have to find out, like the next group of people
don't have to find out in their twenties they find
(17:29):
out at the same time.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Yeah, it's a really like tricky one.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
I think to fix without they basically just need to
like redo the whole research and the whole diagnostic criteria.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
I guess it honestly sounds like that and also like
to avoid that grief that you spoke about. But from
what you've said, it's like, yeah, it doesn't account for
differences and gender, in sex, in ethnicity, in really anything.
And then it also sounds like they kind of haven't
adapted it for like a new generation that has a
(17:59):
new and vironment like social media, like technology, and something
you said really stood out for me there. It was,
you know, going online and following a certain influencer or
following a certain fashion company. That is a whole new
way of kind of processing our environment and how symptoms
might show up. And I think that that profile that
(18:20):
we spoke about is only going to be exacerbated if
you don't have those nuances, not just for different groups,
but for different generations that are also growing up more
aware of it. The final thing that I that I
think is actually really interesting if you've ever spent much
time looking into neurodivergence ADHD, autism, but autism in particular,
(18:42):
the idea of masking is really fascinating. And your book
is Unmasked, fabulous title, big shout out to that, But
can you explain what that means? Because I think that
a lot of the time, and this is one of
my biggest pet peeves with discussions in the mental health
CAMUT is that terms that actually have a real clinical
(19:03):
and personal meaning for people get adapted to mean something
a lot more colloquial and a lot more every day.
So for people who've maybe heard that term don't know
what it means, what does it mean to mask? What
does it mean to unmask? I guess as well.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Yeah, so masking put very kind of simply is covering
up your neurodivergent traits to appear more neurotypical.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
So it was typically and like.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
First used by the autistic community, so basically covering up
your artistic traits to appear realistic or non autistic. But
I guess it's kind of yeah, spread out to be
used more widely by the neurodivergent community. But I guess
the important thing is to say, like, it's not a
choice a lot of the time, like it's a safety
thing of like I have grown up learning that I
(19:51):
have to behave a certain way to be accepted, to
avoid being ostracized, like to get through situations like And
I think, yeah, it's both. It's both conscious behavior and
like subconscious or unconscious behaviors. So it can be things
that are super simple, like for example, as an artistic person,
I struggle with eye contact. Like eye contact to me
(20:11):
just it feels like I'm literally you're starring into my soul.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
Like it feels so uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
But when I was growing up, I was told you
have to look at people in the eye when you're
speaking to them, like, that's a polite thing to do,
Like look at me when I'm talking to you, show
me that you're listening to me. All of these things.
So I just learned, Okay, that's the right thing to
do talking to people.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
So I would just.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Force myself to do that, and that's just the way
that I learned to behave even though that's not a
natural thing for me at all. But I almost didn't
know at that point that it wasn't a natural thing
for me because I didn't know that I was autistic.
So it was like, oh, everyone must find it. There's uncomfortable,
and everyone must just force themselves to do it because
it's polite.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
So I've got to do that as well.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
So it can be like things as simple as that
all the way through to things like the things that
you're talking about. So we kind of touched on, like before,
the special interest autistic people have where you'd have like
one topic that you like a ride and die for,
basically like you're obsessed with this topic, you love it,
you are so interested in it, but you might have
(21:09):
learned that if you talk about it all the time,
then people are like God, can we talk about something else, please,
like or not this again, Like so you've learned to
do the small talk that other people do, or you've
learned that I don't know at high school, like when
you're a teenager, like oh, it's it was supposed to
talk about the boys that we fancy, and we're supposed
to talk about the clothes that we wear. So I'll
talk about those things instead because that people like me
(21:31):
if I talk about those things and like yeah, it's
like a whole range of experiences and it's something that
is so I guess ingrained as well. Like for me,
I guess I thought when I got my diagnosis that
I was like woho, Like I'm on mask now, like
I can be myself, Like I've learned that I'm adehg.
I've learned that I'm autistic, Like here we go, Like
(21:52):
I can be myself, but still like to this day,
I'm masks so so heavily, like now I'm I'm masking.
Probably I'm like speaking in a way like my natural
tone of voice is quite like blunt and quite monotonous.
Whereas I've learned that that's not well received by It's
not easy for people to listen to it's not easy
(22:12):
to get my point across. So I've kind of learned
to speak in a more up and down way, in
a more bubbly way. But it's not meming. I've not
go on this call and been like I need to
you know, come on, Ellie, let's like, let's put our
best accent on and talk in this certain way. It's
just a natural thing that when I talk to people
it comes out like this now because it's so ingrained
in the way that I am. And I think, yeah,
(22:32):
that's something that I underestimated so much of like how
difficult it would be to unmask? Like I think I
was like, you know, I've got the answers now, like
here we go, like let's be ourselves. And it's like, actually, no,
Like it's it's so I don't even know who's under there, really,
because I've spent my whole life being ye some like
being someone else and copying the people around me and
(22:53):
doing what I've been told to do, and it's like
I don't even know how to be.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Like it's so it's so much easier to slip into
this car that has.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Been so defined and you've had twenty four years of
practicing this character to then actually being yourself, which is
like your real self, is so much more like I
don't know how to explain this, Like there's no black
and white, really, it's very much more gray areas. It's
very nuanced, it's very flowing, like we're all kind of fluid,
Whereas that character was clearly defined, like this is what
(23:20):
Ellie likes, this is what Elle doesn't like, this is
how Ellie behaves, this is how Ellie doesn't behave. So
it's so much easier to fall into that, like you've
got the rules of how to behave, whereas if you're
trying to actually I guess it's the same for everybody.
When you're trying to be yourself, it's you don't know
exactly what that looks like, but I think it's the
same thought unmasking of like I know that I naturally
speak in a certain way when I'm around other people,
(23:44):
but how do I like, I don't know how I
speak naturally because I don't speak to myself when I'm
at home on my own, do I Like? That's when
I'm the most unnasty is when I'm at home on
my own, not being perceived by other people not interacting
with other people, but then I'm not having conversations then
because I'm on my own. So it's like, how do
I even get to know that kind of thing? But yeah,
it's I guess it's it. That's the kind of a
(24:04):
very long explanation, but basically covering up your your neurodivergent
traits to appear neurotypical, and a lot of the time
it's like done without realizing or done for safety or
And I think it's like important to point out as
well that like I'm quite lucky that I'm able to
unmask in certain ways because I'm very like non threatening.
(24:25):
I guess, like I'm a small white woman. I you know,
I have got pretty privilege. I'm like quite slim, I'm
quite small, Whereas like a six foot five black man
can't do that in the same way that I can,
because where I'm stood outside rocking backwards and forwards, feeling
(24:46):
stressed out, and that's like, oh, look at this poor
young lady who's having a difficult time, Whereas if a
black man does the same thing, it's like he's getting aggressive,
he's been dangerous, like that could be like, you know,
that could be a I risk for his safety.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
It could it could end up.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
In him being in prison, it could end up it
getting really like dangerous situations. So unmasking is like a
necessary thing for us to do to be able to
be healthy because it is so draining, like do it
like covering yourself up all of the time without realizing.
But it's also a huge privilege to be able to
do that as well, because it can be like perceived
(25:23):
in different ways for different people depending on what you
look like. It can you know, be yeah, like even
even me sometimes, like I've had times where I've been
super tired and I've had loads going on, so I've
been more in mass and I've kind of spoken more
bluntly to people without realizing just that I'm kind of
my tank is so empty that i don't have it
(25:45):
in me to like cover it up anymore. And people
have been like, you know, you're being rude, like why
are you being off with me? And I'm like, I'm
not being off with you. I'm just like all I've
got in me to do right now is communicate in
the most concise and like natural way, Whereas that can
like be end up in people thinking you're behaving a
certain way, And yeah, I think it's a it's like
a it's both like the thing that I guess a
(26:05):
lot of people are aiming for being able to unmask,
but it's also comes with like dangers for certain people,
and it comes with being misunderstood and like maybe being
kind of yeah, yeah, misunderstood.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
A discriminated against. Yeah, I think that's the thing. Like,
that's so interesting. When you said that, I was like,
I actually had never thought about that before. I've never
thought about that, And I think it's such an interesting thing,
once again, an argument to retire the profile of like
we it's it's so linked to not just misogyny, like
we've spoken about like racism, like prejudice in so many
(26:41):
in so many like intricate ways. And I think also
because we as a society have really been taught from
a young age how you are supposed to act, which
has contributed to the masking. Right, there is a I think,
very defined formula of like correctness and politeness that people
are taught from a very young age. That also means
(27:02):
that not only have you kind of forced yourself to
take upon what sounds like a character, what sounds like
a persona no wonder you don't know who's underneath that
you've been method acting for twenty four years, like method
acting to like an A plus standard, like to the
point where doctors couldn't even see through it. Like that's
kind of like insane, that that's just that's it, like
(27:24):
so hard for me to even comprehend how exhausting that
must be.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
But I think it.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Also from what I'm hearing from you, comes from this
idea that we actually don't know a lot as a
general population about what this looks like because of how
we've been taught to say it. So that kind of
leads to my next question, which is, like, what are
some of the elements of neurodivergence that you think there
needs to be more conversations around that is excluded from
(27:48):
the narrative that is maybe less comfortable to speak about
or people are less informed about, not because it's rare,
just because we aren't having conversations about it.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
Yeah, I think think so.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
In the book, I have like chapter the first couple
of chapters are where I go through like the kind
of scientific basics of like what actually is ADHD, what
actually is autism? And what is the diagnostic criteria that
a doctor will go through to decide if you have
it or not. But then the next chapter after that
is like translating those traits to how they show up
in real life, because I think that's where the education
(28:25):
is missing in society of like we understand to a
certain level the traits like on paper, but we don't
understand how that translates to real life experience, especially in
people that aren't the young white boys. So, like, one
example is literal thinking is I think one that we
all know that autistic people are literal thinkers, but the
(28:46):
way that we've been told of that is like that
they don't understand jokes or we don't understand sarcasm, or
we don't understand like sayings you know where it's like
I don't know break a leg and stuff like that,
And they're the examples that are given on like the
medical website and stuff like that. But actually, literal thinking
and literal processing for me means that I take words
(29:08):
as gospel. Like if someone tells me something, I will
believe it because they've told me it, so I take
it very literally that it must be true. So even
if you know someone when I was younger, my parents
couldn't say McDonald's out loud because if they said, like, oh, maybe, well,
you know, if you're good, maybe we'll get a McDonald's
on the way home, I'd be like, but you said
(29:30):
if I was good, we could have McDonald's, and I've
been good, so we need to go and get McDonald's,
you know, Like I would take it very like literally
what they said, but also like it goes the other
way of like if you haven't told me something, I
won't know it to be true because I'm a very
literal person. So whereas other people might assume that something's
(29:51):
like going on in the background, or like that someone
else has got something going on, for example, or that
things are happening. If you don't tell me something, then
I don't know it. So like for example, like recently,
my dad's had quite a lot going on at work,
and like the rest, like my mum will be like,
you know, if he's stressed at home, it's because he's
(30:12):
got a lot going on at work.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
But I'm like, but.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
If he doesn't tell me, you know, other people might
be able to think, oh, he's acting different, maybe something's
causing him to act different, whereas I'm like, but if
you don't tell me that you've got a lot going
on at work, I don't know that you've got a
lot going on at work. So I'm thinking, why is
my dad not talking to me? Or why is my
dad seeming stress? Like what's going on? Like I'm trying
to solve that problem, but I don't have the information
(30:36):
because no one has said, your dad's got a lot
on his plate at the moment. So it's that like,
you know, people think, oh, yeah, I understand the autistic
people literal thinkers, but it's like, okay, no, but you
think that I can't understand sarcasm, But actually it's that
I can only process the world with the information that
I am like physically given, like in black and white basically.
So I think that's like, yeah, people don't understand how
(30:58):
the traits actually show up in real life. So I
think that's like a big one that I have tried
to kind of go through each trait and that way
of being like, Okay, this is what you know, what
we think it is, and this is how it actually
shows up for people. And then I think another really
big one, especially with ADHD, is RSD, which is rejection
(31:20):
sensitive dysphoria, and it's basically like real bad emotional dysregulation,
and it's like this basically very extreme response in response
to kind of perceived or real rejection. So if you
think that someone's upset with you, or you think that
you're being rejected, or you think that you haven't done
(31:41):
a good job or anything is like pointing you in
the direction of some sort of perceived rejection, then it's
like a full body like it feels like the world
is closing in on you because you've just been rejected
in that way. And I think that's I think that's
a big one as to why so many women don't
get diagnosed or they do throw the young sciety card
or the depression card, because all they're seeing again is
(32:03):
these like extreme emotional reactions and they're like hormones, anxiety
or like all of these things.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Or BPD as well, Like, yeah, that would be another
one where I'm like, so that sluts in.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Yeah, So I actually yeah, when I so, before I
got to my actual diagnosis, when I kind of got
to the point where I was like, anxiety is not
quite right, but I didn't have the answers yet. I
actually went through there was like a couple of months
where I was convinced that I had BPD. I was like,
I started researching online and that was the first thing
(32:37):
that came up, like you know, mood swings going from
being really high to being really low, like kind of
irrational behavior and like when someone's leaving, like you know,
having abandonment issues. And I was like, that's me. I
was like, all of these things are me. I've found
the answer, like I've got BPD. And I was like
literally going to my doctors. I was like, I need
(32:58):
to be referred for a BPD assessment, like I've got BPD,
Like I found the answer, this is it. And they're like, no, Elliott,
it's not, like that's not you. And I was I
was like, no, but it is. It is, and like,
I mean, I guess it isn't, but yeah, the experiences,
Like I read those traits and I was like, that's me.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
That's me, that's me, that's me. But yeah, yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
And I think what makes it even more I was
actually having this conversation with a friend yesterday. What makes
it even more difficult is that things like BPD and
CPTSD are caused by trauma and growing up as an
undiagnosed autistic person or undiagnosed person with ADHD that is
trauma in itself. You're you're masking all the time, You're
living in a world that's not designed for you. You're constantly misunderstood,
(33:39):
You're constantly told that what you're like, if you're yourself,
it's wrong. You're constantly told that you're lazy, or that
you're sensitive or all of these things. Like growing up
as an undiagnosed you're ad divergent person is trauma. And
these other conditions that are so similar in their experiences
are caused by trauma. So it's like, how the heck
are you supposed to disentangle? Like it's so common for
(34:01):
people to have a combination of all of these things.
Like I am almost certain that I've got CPTSD because
just the things that happened in my teenage years and
the way that I respond now to things that happen
versus like it's I'm not just dealing with the thing
that's happening, I'm dealing with all of the stuff that
happened when I was undiagnosed, but that the actual experience
(34:25):
it like it'd be really difficult for me to get
diagnosed with CPTSD because they could probably explain away all
of the experiences that I was having through ADHD emotional dysregulation,
protecting sensitive dysphoria, through autism, like being hypervigilant. That's again
like I'm autistic, so I have Yeah, I'm autistic, so
(34:46):
i pick up on things really easily, and I'm really
sensitive to sound, and I'm really sensitive to change, and
I like to have a routine and all of those
things also our behaviors that people with CPTSD would show
because it's hypervigilance, it's protecting yourself, it's all of those
Like it is just a minefield of like over laugh
and complication, and I think, yeah, that's a really kind
(35:06):
of big, big thing that a lot of people face
of like what is going on here? And a lot
of the time it's probably a bit of a combination
of everything.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
So interesting as well, because it's only been recently that
people can actually get more than one diagnosis, like it
used to be like here, you have bipologus order, you
have borderline personality disorder, you have autism. There's your box,
sit in it now, And I think you point to
a really interesting point that a lot of people don't understand,
which is that your experience with mental illness can actually
(35:39):
create further mental illness and actually can be a trigger
for things like complex post traumatic stress disorder. I think
we often think about that in particular. It's really a
really like that you brought that in. We think about
trauma in the sense of something really really terrible, external,
violent happening to you. But trauma is just like the
(36:01):
disruption of security and peace and you know, safety that
is as simple as it is, and that can come
from so many different things, including like an experience of
growing up in as you said, a world that is
not designed for you. That is so traumatic, and it's
not just one of it. It's a continuous cumulation of stress,
(36:23):
of anxiety, of as you said, masking. So I'm glad
that you brought that up, and I think it literally
leads into this next thing, which is if I'm sure,
I'm so sure that there is probably someone listening to
this right now who is like, holy shit, why is
this describing me? I thought I had VPD. Everyone told
(36:45):
me I had anxiety. I was said rude things when
I was a teenager without realizing it, without even consciously knowing.
So what would your advice be to someone who thinks
that they have ADHD they have autism in the same
position you now that they're an adult in their twenties.
Like you said, there's going to be so many more
people who are coming through in the next few decades
(37:08):
who could have received a diagnosis at three, nine, ten,
but aren't going to do so until they're twenty. What's
your advice as someone who kind of lived that.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Yeah, I think it's a really really tricky one now
because because of the fact that so many more people
are realizing, it means that services and support just aren't there.
Like the waiting lists to get an actual diagnosis are
so long, it's so tricky to get diagnosed. And also
the medical professionals are kind of a lot of the
time behind us in our understanding. Like they were trained, however,
(37:43):
many years ago, when they were at university or whatever
it might be, they were taught the stereotypical diagnostic criteria.
They were taught that it was more common in CIS
boys than it was in anybody else. You know, they
maybe don't have the understanding to be able to see
your experiences and see them for what they are even
(38:03):
if that's if you're even kind of lucky enough to
get in the room with somebody, Like now, waiting lists
are really long, like private assessments are really expensive. Like
it's a really tricky time at the moment because it's
like so many people are having these realizations and then
they can't really go away and do anything with that.
So I would say, like my first point is like
(38:23):
that self diagnosis is completely valid and is kind of
necessary in the current world that.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
We live in.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
I think with ADHD it's slightly different because medication can
be helpful, and obviously you would need to see and
have a medical diagnosis and see a professional for that.
But other than that, like you are the expert of
your own experiences. If you're going through all of this information,
if you're doing all of these online tests and you're
seeing that, yeah, this is right for me, this is
(38:50):
who I am, then you can tell you can give
yourself that ance that you don't need to have like
a green tick of approval from a medical professional, because
it's just.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
You know, in an ideal world, yes.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
We would all be able to go and see a
psychiatrist and get those answers, but we don't live in
an ideal world. We live in a world where it's
impossible to do that for a lot of people at
the moment, and it's a privilege to be able to
do that. So like, firstly, yeah, that's completely a valid
thing to do, and also like remembering that it's not
a piece of paper from a doctor that changes your life.
(39:22):
It's changing your life that changes your life. So it's like, I,
you know, anyone can change the way that they're working.
They can work more flexibly, they can give themselves more rest,
they can honor their sensory needs more, they can wear
ear defenders when they're in noisy venues, they can buy
planners that will help them manage their time better. They
can you know, all of these things that are the
(39:42):
reason that my life is so much better now. Anyone
can do it.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Does need a.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Doctor to go, Yes you are autistic. Yes you have
ADHD for you to be able to do those things.
So I think it's really you know, the narrative at
the moment that like, oh, everyone's self diagnosing and you
have to you know, you don't know, but you do know,
like you can do that for yourself. And I would
say the main thing as well. That helped me in
terms of like validation and actually understanding and feeling comfortable
(40:10):
in knowing that that was what was going on for
me was looking like searching out the experiences of other
people that had similar lived experience to mine. So, like
we were saying, when I was reading through the diagnostic criteria,
there were some things where I was like, hmm, you know,
maybe that's me, but it doesn't one hundred percent sound
like me. But then I would go onto social media
(40:31):
and I would find another twenty twenty something year old
woman talking about her experience of that thing, and I'd
be like, oh, yeah, that's just like me.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
I do that, I'm exactly the.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Same as that because obviously if we're both the same age,
the same gender, and we have similar interests, then the
way that our traits show up are going to be
more similar as well. So I think that's a really
helpful thing to do. You know, if you're a woman,
look for the experiences of women. If you're a person
of color, look for the experiences of people of color.
If you're a mother, looks for the experiences of other mothers,
(41:02):
Like look for people who have similar like a wider
range of similar experience to yours than the way that
their trade show up is probably more likely to going
to be more similar to yours as well. So I
think that's a really helpful that for me, that was
like what kind of tipped me over the edge from hmm,
maybe maybe I should look into these things to Yeah,
(41:23):
I'm confident that this is what's going on for me
was seeing other people who were similar to me talking
about their experiences because they were obviously a lot more
similar to mine.
Speaker 3 (41:33):
So I would say.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
That that is like the best, the best thing that
I could recommend. It's like a far from ideal situation
because it's like I obviously would love for everybody to
be able to get the actual answers and the support
that they need and the medication that they need for
ADHD if they choose to do that, but it's a
tricky time at the moment where these services are just overloaded.
(41:55):
So I think just like knowing like that it's okay
to self diagnose that it's okay to put these things
in place for yourself without someone telling you that you're
allowed to do that, and then also seeking out the
experience and even like connecting with other neurodivergent people where
you can like for me, obviously, I'm kind of very
public about it. It's my job to talk about it online.
(42:16):
But the friends I have made through doing that and
having autistic friends ADHD friends has literally been the best
thing that has ever happened to me in my entire life.
Like I've always had such a hard I've had such
a hard time with friendships, Like school was awful for me,
Like I think I massively underestimate it actually, where it's
been one of those things where I've just had to
survive it. So I just I'm like, we don't talk
about school, we don't think about it, like I dropped
(42:37):
out of school. I had I was bullied awfully, Like
I just had an awful time, And I guess I
just kind of got used to the fact that, Okay,
maybe I'm never gonna find their friendship group, maybe I'm
never gonna fit in anywhere, because it just doesn't seem
to have happened up to now, Whereas now I'm like,
oh no, I actually can find people that I relate to,
where I was just not finding the right people. So
(42:58):
I think if you can join communities, I have another
Instagram account called We Are Unmasked, which is a community
for your divergent people, and we try and set up event.
It's kind of on the back burner at the moment
because I've been writing a book and stuff, but yeah,
hopefully we'll be doing more like online events and things
like that, and even just looking through the comments, you'll
be able to find people who are in a similar
(43:18):
position to you. And I think finding those friendships is
like a huge thing that you can do for validation
as well.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
One hundred percent. I honestly love that, not just I
obviously don't have ADHD or autism, but like even from
my perspective, if you can relate to that, like the
best is yet to come, Like you're not going to
find your people in a high school of six hundred people,
Like maybe you will, but the world is so much
(43:46):
bigger and broader and wider than that you have no
idea what's coming, and not in an anxious sense, in
like the most beautiful sense. And also I really like
that point because I think in the cycle the point
you made earlier, like the psychology community, there is a
big fuss around like ADHD is so overdiagnosed. Everyone's on
(44:06):
you know, Riddlin or adderall whatever. And I'm like, okay, great,
are you their doctor? No, So you have no opinion
on this. Literally, you're someone on the internet who has
made their mind up around what this does and doesn't
look look like. And I think that is so insulting.
And it's additionally the thing of like I always think
about the comparison to depression. You can know you're depressed
(44:28):
without a doctor telling you, and you can do things
in your life to mitigate that. What is to say
that you can't do that for other things as well?
And obviously medication comes into it. You might need a
helping hand in that sense, but it doesn't mean that
you have to wait until someone goes Yeah, you're like
approved for a diagnosis to be making the changes that
you think are going to benefit your life. So I
(44:50):
think that's such a beautiful message. One final question but
I would love for you to answer, is you've just
released a book. I know we've talked about it so much,
and I honestly hearing your story of being like I
had to drop out of high school. I was bullied.
(45:10):
I never for what I was going to get that far.
That's and here you are now is like honestly quite emotional.
So what would you tell that person, that kind of
younger version of you who was really struggling for answers?
Speaker 2 (45:23):
Yeah, I think a big one is like focus on
the people that love you rather.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
Than the ones that don't.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
So I think, like, especially through high school, I think like,
obviously I didn't know that I was asking. I didn't
know that was autistic. Was that I had ADHD, but
I always had it was almost like an internal thing
where I always tried to become friends with the popular people.
I think it was like this innate need to fit in,
this innate need to be liked, to be approved of,
(45:53):
like to be validated, that I would always like try
and be friends with the popular group and it would
always end badly for me, like I had so many time.
I can literally could probably point to like ten different
times in my life where I've sat down with my
mum and she's been like, Ellie, why do you always
try to be friends with like the loud girls, the
popular girls, Like they're not like you, like you're you're soft,
(46:13):
you're gentle, Like it's it doesn't end well for you,
like why? And it was almost like I think like
all kind of women and people marginalized for the gender
that have gone through high school know that feeling of
like it's a rock and a hard place, Like it's
like the plastics Inminger, Like if you're friends with them,
then it's life as hell, but if you're not friends
with them, then it's even worse. So I think it
was that thing of like I would always try to
(46:35):
be liked by everybody and by the popular people, whereas actually,
if I'd have got there on my first day in
year seven and gone, I actually really like maths, I
actually really like puzzles. I you know, maybe I should
make some friends that maybe other people are gonna call
us weird. Maybe we're not gonna have the nicest time either,
but I'm at least gonna have these three solid friends
(46:56):
that we all love each other for our weirdness and
our geekiness and our strangeness and all of whatever it
might be like that would have been. It still wouldn't
have been easy, right, because no one has a nice
time at high school, especially if you're like different in
any way. But at least I would have had like
the like that solid group of friends that would have
loved me for me whereas I was still like focused
(47:17):
on making everybody like me or trying to fit in
with the popular people that I kind of denied myself
the opportunity to make friends that might not have been
as popular, but they would have been friends. So I
think that would be my thing of like focus on
finding people that love you for you rather than being
like it's that thing of like, don't be everyone's cup
(47:37):
of tea, be like someone's shot of whiskey, or I
don't know whatever the saying is of like basically.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
I never heard that, but I love that. I'm gonna slide.
Speaker 3 (47:47):
I don't even know if that's right. We've made it
up now it's we'll go with it.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
But yeah, kind of that thing of like trying to
focus on finding a place rather than being like mass liked,
I think would have been a good one for me
to know. And I think almost like I think it's
one of those things where it's like it's a worse
thing that someone can say to you at the time,
but over time you realize that it's so true of
just like trusting the process, Like I genuinely thought that
(48:12):
because I didn't go to union, because I dropped out
of school, like that was it. I was never going
to get anywhere in life, Like I was going to
be miserable. I was going to do low paid jobs.
I was never going to be successful. I was going
to be overworked. Like when actually, you know, I've been
really lucky. I'm really grateful for what's happened. But I've
not needed a degree for any of this, Like I've
not needed high school.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
Qualifications for any of this.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
It has all worked out in the end, and like
maybe it could have worked out a lot sooner. But
I think just like trusting that you don't have to
do things the way that everyone else is doing them,
Like you can do what it's better that you drop
out and you're still healthy and you're well, you're working
on becoming healthy again, and you're looking after yourself and
you're being gentle with yourself. Then forcing yourself to do
(48:54):
things because you think that you should do them and
you think that's the only way that you're going to
achieve anything, and all of that stuff, and I guess, yeah,
reading like the Path and redefining what success is I
think was because I think, yeah, at school, there's so
much pressure of like you have to be the top
grade student, you have to go to UNI, you have
to get a good job you have, and that doesn't
work for everybody, Like life happens, and also that life
(49:14):
is not the life that everyone wants. So I think
if someone would have been like, it's okay if you're
not top of the class, it's okay if you don't
go to UNI, that would have been a really helpful
thing for me to know as well.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
Hmmm, I'll trust the process. I love that also totally true,
Like it's there is such a different path than the
jobs that we might be working in like twenty years
probably don't exist. Yet what you and I are doing
did not exist twenty years ago. Like maybe what I'm doing,
like technically podcast did exist, but not to this level.
Like the world is evolving, and I think that's so important.
(49:49):
Something I always think is like I'm most grateful for
the things that I wanted and didn't get, Like I'm
so grateful for the things that I like begged for
that I thought were going to make me happy, like
that internship that like, you know, university entry that boyfriend
and I didn't get them, And at the time, I
was like, I'm so miserable that this is the end
(50:09):
of my life and everything I know. I hate saying
everything happens for a reason, because I don't think it does.
But there are some things that happen for you, not
to you. I think that's like, yeah, a beautiful way
to end things. So I want to say thank you
so much for coming on, thank you for being one
of our guests for this like wonderful December holiday series.
(50:31):
It's just like such a beautiful perspective, one that I
think more people need to hear. And I'm so so
thankful that you were able to make time to talk
to us.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's been
so nice to have a very nice, wholesome chat to
start the day for me.
Speaker 1 (50:48):
Yeah, and to end the day for me. Look at that.
It's like a beautiful bookmark for our days. I'm gonna
put all of Ellie's links in the description here. Please
go and buy her book if you if you resonated
with any of this, if you have a friend, a
family member who this sounds like them, buy it for them.
It's Christmas time, why the fuck not? You know, Share
the joy around, share the information around, and as always,
(51:11):
if you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to leave
a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you're
listening right now, Share it with a friend if you
think they'd like it, and if you have any further
questions comments. If you have an opinion on this episode
or an episode suggestion, please feel free to follow us
at that Psychology podcast and we'll see you again later
this week.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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