I am a volunteer with the Neurodiversity Network and recently become a mentor, which I’m really looking forward to getting started on. One of the reasons I became a mentor was the opportunity to provide the kind of support I wish I’d had after I was diagnosed Autistic a few years ago. A diagnosis of ADHD came this year.
There is a lot to navigate as a neurodivergent person in the workplace, particularly if you are only discovering this part of your identity later in life. Even if you’ve been in the same workplace for a long time, questions around disclosing your diagnosis, explaining your needs and asking for accommodations will probably arise. In some ways this can be harder because your colleagues see you in a certain way.
Like me, you might decide that the workplace can’t accommodate your needs as you’d like and consider other ways of earning a living. This year, things in my life aligned in a way that made it possible to become self-employed. It sounds like a privileged position to be in, but with unsustainable workplace environments and an unemployment rate of around 34% for autistic people, being self-employed is a viable alternative.
I started my career as a lawyer somewhat by accident. After completing an enjoyable but not highly marketable arts degree, I opted for the graduate law degree I’d applied for on a whim. I managed to survive the rigour of the course, complete practical training and clock up resume points in volunteer and contract work before landing in family law, just as accidentally as I had ended up studying law.
I realise now how little agency I had over my career direction, not because anyone pressured me into a particular career, but because I didn’t see myself as having a lot of options. I didn’t have a good understanding of my strengths or anyone to help me identify and build on them.
Although I was worked in the legal profession for over twenty years, finding work that suited me was a process of elimination. I figured out that I was better at work that required sustained periods of deep and analytical thought but not work that required thinking on my feet and relied on verbal expression.
Litigation was probably the most unsuitable kind of work that I could possibly do – a hellscape for a neurodivergent person. It was one of the most stressful periods of my life and for years afterwards I blamed myself for failing at it. When I could, I got out of there and turned to non-litigation roles.
Ulitimately, I found it wasn’t just the type of work that was the problem, but the environment. I was a neurodivergent person trying to get by in a neurotypical world and the ways of working, communicating and thinking that went along with it felt increasingly ill-fitting.
Even if I felt like I was on top of my actual job, there was always another layer of work siphoning off my energy. It was exhausting. I took an extended break from my job, left it, took another break and then another job. But I couldn’t get way from the feeling that my nervous system was under siege from the very fact of being in a workplace.
That’s when I decided to take the plunge and become self-employed. In some ways it wasn’t a dramatic decision, more of a natural progression to focus on projects that I had been doing for a while, including writing. There’s are challenges – particularly the level of planning and organisation involved – but the autonomy, freedom and control over my environment make it worthwhile. There’s so much I can do from home, or anywhere for that matter.
The main things I do are family law mediation, editing and writing but I’m always up for a project and never know what’s going to land in my inbox. I love having time for volunteer work and things I feel passionately about. It’s a matter of looking at what skills you have and how you can utilise them to benefit others and hopefully, make some money.
