To the outside world, Kat Brown was a professional success. What her colleagues didn’t know, however, was how much effort it was costing her. “I had this underlying kind of whirring voice in my head of ‘you’re not good enough, you’re not normal, you need to try five times harder than everybody else’,” says Brown, author of the ADHD memoir It’s Not A Bloody Trend. “The only way I could calm that down was with alcohol, and along with booze, coffee. It was the way I lassoed my brain into doing what I wanted.”
That meant downing up to nine americanos a day, unwinding with drinks after work – and sometimes bursting into exhausted tears when she got home. Only when she was diagnosed with ADHD at 37, shortly after quitting her job in the media and going freelance, did everything begin to make sense. Some people with ADHD, she explains, find caffeine helps stabilise rather than stimulate an already whirring mind. Meanwhile her anxiety, she thinks, reflected a sense that she was different and a terror of being somehow exposed.
Yet four years on, Brown has learned to see the advantages of her neurodivergent brain. “A friend I used to work with said, ‘you have so many strings to your bow you’re practically a harp’, and I think lots of people with ADHD have that Swiss army knife mindset of, ‘OK this is the situation, what do I need to do here?’”
Her busy mind likes juggling multiple projects, making her highly productive, and she thrives on deadlines. “Provided I have a constant amount of work to do and tasks to tick off, that’s great. When I really struggle is when I run out of work.” She has learned to make a detailed weekly schedule, filling empty time with tasks to keep herself motivated.
Rising diagnosis rates for both ADHD and autism in adults – a 2021 study found autism diagnoses rose 787% between 1998 and 2018 – are fuelling a new understanding of the hidden role neurodiversity plays in working life, both for good and for ill. The comedian Fern Brady, who was diagnosed as autistic at 34, has described how “everything about my personality that made me a problem at university or in most jobs” seemed like a magic power in standup. The chef Heston Blumenthal, who has ADHD, credits his “very busy head” with helping him to make creative connections.
Yet not everyone is so lucky. One US study found workers with ADHD were 60% more likely than neurotypical staff to be fired and three times as likely to quit impulsively, while in the UK research suggests only 30% of working-age autistic Britons have a job despite the majority saying they want one. Unhelpful stereotypes like the idea that autistic people are best suited to solitary data-crunching jobs still linger, says Richmal Maybank, employment engagement officer at the National Autistic Society (NAS), who has supported people in fields from the creative arts to cognitive behavioural therapy. Meanwhile fear of discrimination deters some from disclosing a diagnosis or exercising their legal right to request “reasonable adjustments” at work – often small changes that make a surprisingly big difference.
One autistic healthcare professional Maybank supported was so afraid of getting the social norms of the office tea round wrong that she didn’t dare have a hot drink at work. “She had to travel to clinics and there were a lot of different rules – one used a kitty system, one you had to be careful which mug you used,” says Maybank, who explains that deciphering unspoken rules can be harder for some autistic people. “She said, ‘do I make a cup of tea for the person sat next to me or the whole room?’ Trying to understand that was so stressful she said it was easier just not to have a cup of tea, ever.” The NAS will help firms compile a “starter checklist” for new recruits explaining this kind of informal etiquette alongside the official job.
Since both autistic people and those with ADHD can be hypersensitive to bright lights and noises, Maybank often also recommends warmer office lighting, letting people start work early when it’s quiet, or turning off the office radio and letting staff listen to music on headphones.
But for many neurodivergent workers, the biggest hurdle is getting hired in the first place. A recent government-commissioned review of autism and employment, led by the former cabinet minister Robert Buckland, found autistic graduates were twice as likely as non-autistic peers not to have found a job after 15 months, with many feeling “they must mask their autistic traits to succeed”.
Buckland, whose own daughter is autistic, insists his report isn’t about forcing anyone off benefits into work but about helping people who “ache for the chance that they can have a job, and enjoy the same quality of life that other people take for granted.” Sometimes, he says, that means a supported job (about a third of autistic people also have learning disabilities). But for others, it simply means making inclusivity “a normal part of recruitment” for everyone. His report recommends letting candidates see interview questions in advance so they can prepare, and setting more practical interview tasks which focus less on “fitting in” socially and more on what applicants can actually do. Yet his finding that autistic people are disproportionately likely to be over-qualified for the jobs they’re in suggests that, even once hired, some still face subtle barriers to promotion.
Jo Desborough is a neurodiversity coach, working with employers and employees to help bridge the gaps. Desborough is autistic herself and still remembers being punished as a child for chatting in class. “The teacher said ‘who’s talking?’ so I put my hand up, and I got a detention. I was mortified,” she remembers. Confused, she asked why she was being punished for answering honestly. “And suddenly I’m now labelled as ‘challenging’, and all I’ve done is tried to understand what I did wrong. If that teacher had said ‘stop talking’, I would have understood.” In the workplace, this tendency to say the literal truth – rather than telling managers what they want to hear – can sometimes damage promotion prospects even though honesty is potentially very valuable to an employer, she points out.
Clare McNamara, a neurodiversity coach with whom Desborough often collaborates and who was diagnosed with ADHD and some autistic traits in her 50s, stresses that coaching isn’t about “fixing” people but building on their strengths. “To be able to say to someone, ‘tell me how you experience things, what are your strengths, what do you do in this kind of situation, what can we borrow from that to apply to this?’ – it’s almost like permission is given for them to be authentically them.”
McNamara specialises in coaching senior executives who have been successful in some ways because of their neurodiversity, and in other ways despite colleagues’ response to it. She says: “They might be very good at seeing the bigger picture, good strategic thinkers. They’re quite often good at bringing people with them, and incredibly dedicated. They will work very hard, very innovatively.” Yet even for high achievers, feeling compelled to operate at work in ways that don’t come naturally can be exhausting. Both she and Desborough say they set firm boundaries and pace their workloads to avoid feeling overwhelmed.
For employees who don’t have so much control over their own hours and who worry about disclosing they’re neurodivergent, Desborough suggests requesting adjustments without specifying exactly why you want (for example) to wear noise-cancelling headphones or work partly from home.
For Brown, home working allows time for exercise – which helps her focus – and also crucially lets her manage the odd energy slump. Had she been diagnosed before going freelance, she is not sure she would have felt confident telling an employer. Yet in many ways, she still wishes she’d known sooner. “The main thing that would have changed, apart from taking away that desperate need to prove myself, is that I might just have been a bit happier.” Isn’t that what we all ultimately want from work?