If you’ve always felt like everyone else got an unwritten handbook about how to behave at work – and you’ve had to figure it out yourself, one interaction at a time – this episode is for you.
This week, Rachel’s in conversation with Kirstie Pickles: vet, autistic ADHD professional, and EDI advocate. Kirstie was diagnosed as an adult – after years of masking in a high-stakes clinical role, performing competence while running on empty underneath.
You don’t need a diagnosis to recognise yourself here. A lot of us in high-achieving, high-pressure roles have neurodivergent traits we have never had a name for. We just learned to mask through it.
Our ingrained programming tells us to keep performing, keep adapting, keep looking like we’re coping fine. But that performance has a cost – and it will affect your next decision, and the one after that.
Different is not defective.
Kirstie is an autistic ADHD vet, neurodiversity advocate, trainer, coach, researcher and academic. She currently works part-time as EDI Lead at Harper & Keele Vet School and runs her own neurodiversity and mental health consultancy, Unedited Minds.
