The pros and cons of Spidey senses
Neurodivergence in the workplace
TL:DR (Too Long, Didn’t Read)
The experience of being neurodivergent in the workplace is often misunderstood. Our powerfully active senses mean we notice everything and can be an asset to any organisation. Unfortunately these senses can also come to bite us on the butt in the form of overstimulation and rejection sensitivity.
Neurodivergent people being misunderstood and mistreated in the workplace is a serious issue we need to talk about more. I did a presentation about all this to a group of managers and senior leaders and got a really thoughtful response, so I am sharing it here.
Neurodivergence at mahi
One of the things I do for my grown-up job is deliver presentations on all things accessibility. I was recently asked to present on neurodivergence at mahi (work) to a group of managers and senior leaders.
What we covered spoke to the issues neurodivergent people face in the workplace every day, and ways to support us so we can continue to be assets instead of burning out. The discussions afterwards were really worthwhile and ones I firmly believe need to be front and centre. (Yes this is a long one, but I think it is worth your time. I have done my best to break it up with headers and pretty pictures!)
Ticking away the moments
While preparing the presentation I agonised about how I would be able to keep it to time. I had 10 minutes, so I made five slides to break it down to two minutes per slide. Problem being, I am time-blind - I literally have no idea how long two minutes is.
I tossed a few timing ideas about in my head, but I couldn’t work out how to make them unobtrusive. Then it hit me, this was a perfect example of the sort of mental gymnastics neurodivergent people have to do to in the background that most don’t know about. I wasn’t going to hide it - I would make my timing Obtrusive As. It would be a teaching moment! This is what I said:
Staring at my phone
Before I start – one of the concepts I will briefly talk about is time-blindness. That’s why I have my cell phone sitting here. It’s acting as a timer to help me stick to two minutes per slide. I could talk on this topic for hours without realising I was talking for hours, so if I am looking at my phone from time to time, I’m not distracted or checking text messages, it’s for your own benefit!
Pointing this out is also a way of giving you an example of the mental gymnastics many of us have to go through each day to fit in. Often neurodivergent people get accused of doing things we’re not (not paying attention, being disrespectful) when we’re trying to find tools to help us function in a world not set up for our brains.
Spidey senses
The words I’m going to share now are what I had hoped I would cover in 10 minutes. Unsurprisingly I was not able to manage it, but I sent the full text afterwards. I highlighted the points I really wanted to get across before the two minute alarm went and I had to switch slides. It was actually a really useful trick, I definitely recommend it!
According to the latest figures, 10% to 20% of the global population is neurodivergent and between 4% and 5% of those have persistent ADHD – in New Zealand it’s estimated to be 5%. When you have a workplace with a lot of smart people in it, like a Ministry, these numbers could potentially be higher.
It’s probably pretty easy for you to guess which one of these scans belongs to a neurodivergent person – just think about the ‘diverge’ part of the word.
Note: you should always take these sorts of images with a grain of salt – no two brain scans are the same – but this is as solid a representation of any comparison I’ve seen.
The image of the neurotypical brain shows sensory input coming in through the same place, moving in a nice orderly path to let your mind and body know what to do. The one lit up like a Christmas tree is a neurodivergent brain, showing input coming from every which way all at once, and with much more intensity.
The good thing is – we notice everything
Our senses are finely honed. We notice everything – which is why we’re great at our jobs. We pick up things others miss. We’re the people who will dive deep into the things we are passionate about. We have amazing pattern recognition and memory. We’re the people you want on your team for policy, data, risk analysis and comms. We’re problem solvers. We work hard and fast and organisations are full of us.
The problem is – we notice everything
The flip side of this is that we are taking in everything from every which way at once. Our highly tuned senses mean light comes in brighter, sounds are louder and more intense, touch, when you’re not expecting it, can feel like an electric shock, our emotions literally feel bigger.
For many of us, particularly those who use public transport, by the time we arrive at work we have had to mute enough sensory input to knock out an elephant. This is why we struggle with open plan offices and hot-desking.
For me, there is no such thing as ‘background noise.’ My brain tunes in to the conversations around me whether I want it to or not. Often, I’ll be sitting at my desk and I’ll hear a key word or a question I know the answer to. I’ll meerkat up and go help the person, which is handy for them, but does not help me finish the piece of work I’m trying to focus on. It made me a fantastic journalist, but a terrible office worker. I need to wear earplugs to be able to concentrate and get my work done and, while I get a lot out of working with a team, I am definitely more productive when I work from home. We can make these situations work, but without the appropriate accommodations, it can be incredibly draining.
That bl**dy printer!
A good example of the differences in our sensory experiences is when a printer in an office I was working in started malfunctioning. It still worked but made this shrill shrieking noise every time it printed. To me it felt like someone was sticking a hot knife into my brain, but the people around me didn’t seem to notice. By day two I finally snapped and asked my manager if anyone was going to do anything about the printer before I took a hockey stick to it. They paused and said “oh, yes, I guess it is making a bit of a noise…”
20,000 more negative comments by age 10
I was diagnosed with ADHD and autism late in the piece (at 43) and I kept hearing this figure being bandied about – that children with undiagnosed neurodivergence receive 20,000 more negative comments then neurotypical children by age 10.
I was convinced this was an exaggeration until I saw a reel by a psychologist (with ADHD) on Instagram. In less than a minute he rattled off everything you can see on this slide, and each phrase sat like a stone in my gut.
The ones I have highlighted here are the ones that hurt or confused me the most.’ You just need to be more careful, you’re overreacting, stop making excuses.’ I wasn’t making excuses - I was telling people how I experienced things. I learned very quickly that was not a safe thing to do. And trust me I was being so careful I was practically paralysed – I had no idea I had things neurologically stacked up against me.
Listening wrong
‘Look at me when I’m talking to you’ – This flashed me back to school where I really struggled to focus on a teacher and listen to them at the same time. If I looked directly at them I would start noticing things, get distracted and not take in what they were saying. It was easier for me to look out the window while I listened or fidget with something that was bound to get confiscated from me.
I would get told off for not listening and then parrot back what the teacher had said verbatim, with a bit of context added in to show I had been paying attention. I would then get told off for being a smart arse and, if I challenged it, would end up in the corridor.
I couldn’t understand what was going on. I was listening, I just wasn’t listening in the ‘right’ way. In the end I learned that taking notes was the answer. It was an acceptable way of listening without looking directly at the speaker that gave me something to do with my hands. I still do it now. I’ll take notes in a meeting that I don’t need and will probably never look at again. People often say “oh we’re sending out the minutes, you don’t need to take notes.” I know this, it’s not why I’m taking them.
Why we don’t ask for help
Showing you this isn’t about having a pity party. It’s to help explain why neurodivergent people often don’t ask for help until we’ve hit the floor.
We’ve had a lifetime of being told that we’re wrong, that our experiences aren’t real. We have learned that we are different, and that our difference is something we need to hide. There is a lot of shame and confusion bound up in that, particularly if we weren’t diagnosed until later in life. We literally had no idea why we were the way we were. Why we could be so good at some things but really struggle with things that came naturally to most. We started not believing ourselves.
Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria
This primes us for a condition called Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD). We’ve been rejected so many times that we start to see it where it isn’t there, and small rejections feel much bigger than they really are. We opt out of support offers because of this. We’re convinced we will be rejected, not believed, or are not worthy of that support.
In the current job climate, we also don’t want to draw attention to ourselves. Rightly or wrongly, we fear being perceived as expensive or troublesome if we ask for accommodations. This bites particularly hard when we have politicians using phrases like ‘diversity hires’ and ‘merit-based employment’ (with the implication that if you are disabled it was not merit that got you this job.)
If you do have a staff member who self-discloses as neurodivergent, know that it was a hard (and brave!) decision for them to do so. They are placing a lot of trust in you, and you should honour that.
When the mask is too good
A coping strategy neurodivergent people learn from a very young age is masking. We often realise we are different to others after we upset or annoy then. So, we study people to learn how they react to things and modify our behaviour accordingly. We’re attuned to body language, changes in tones and sighs.
This is usually very subconscious and can make routine conversations hard. Often, it’s easier to not make eye contact because then we don’t start trying to analyse someone’s facial expressions. Through experience we learn when we need to hold ourselves back or push ourselves to do things that feel uncomfortable or unnatural to us, so we can get by in the world.
Learning not to come across as rude
Depending on the situation we are in and the people we are with, we are performing a role to fit in. Our fast brains and enthusiasm can be perceived as rudeness. Often, we’ve worked out what you’re getting at before you’ve finished saying it and are keen to move things forward. We have to work really hard not to interrupt people (and don’t always succeed) because we’ve learned that’s considered disrespectful of the person talking. (Put a group of neurodivergent people together on the other hand and we’ll interrupt and bounce off each other all over the shop.)
Playing a role all day is exhausting
All this watching for reactions and keeping yourself in check is exhausting. Often by the time we get home we can’t hold it together anymore. We get to where we feel safe and we crash in a heap. It’s the same situation as when a neurodivergent kid behaves perfectly at school and then is a complete nightmare when they get home. Unfortunately, it’s often the people closest to us who see us at our worst.
But you’re always so competent!
Another drawback to masking is that, when we do it well, we come across as so competent and capable, that when we can’t hold it all in tidily anymore and are forced to admit we are struggling, we aren’t always believed. As we understand more about neurodivergence and more people are getting diagnosed, comments like ‘everyone has ADHD now’ or ‘suddenly they’re autistic when something goes wrong’ build into these fears.
We also don’t ask because we’ve fought hard to get where we are and tried so hard to prove ourselves that we’ve convinced ourselves asking for help is a ‘failure.’ We can literally be our own worst enemies.
So we push through until the mask starts to crack and our symptoms begin to leak through. Which leads to …
Neurodivergent burnout and behaviour changes
When neurodivergent people mask too hard and for too long and there is additional stress in the workplace, it can lead to neurodivergent burnout.
This is different from ‘burnout’ as most of us know it. Burnout for most is when you hit the wall so hard you can’t continue. Your body and mind force you to take time out and stop. It isn’t any less traumatic than neurodivergent burnout, the difference is the stopping.
It’s burnout, but not as we know it
For neurodivergent people, burnout is when we can no longer keep the mask up full time and our symptoms start leaking out. The fear and shame we have around our condition (if we’ve been lucky enough to be able to name it) and that fact that we are still highly capable in some areas even after we’ve hit the wall, means we don’t let ourselves stop. Neurodivergent burnout is working through burnout. It’s running on fumes but still turning up every day to do your job. It’s not asking for help because asking for help is admitting you aren’t handling things and that you’ve been faking it all along.
This is when the symptoms we’ve been holding down start popping up. We talk louder and faster and interrupt more. We make typos and spelling mistakes and transpose numbers. We forget words and names. We drop things and can’t keep on top of our inbox.
Time-blindness
And here we are circling back to why I have this phone next to me. The symptom that gets us in the most trouble is a condition called time-blindness. Many of us literally have no concept of time passing. In fact, it blew my mind when I first found out that other people do.
We have workarounds – multiple alarms and notifications. Outlook calendar reminders are a Godsend! But if someone stops me for a chat as I’m heading off to catch the bus or when I’m about to leave the office, I have zero concept of whether we’ve been talking for five or 15 minutes. This has caused me no end of grief in the past in terms of missing transport or being late to meet people.
When we hit burnout, our systems seem to suddenly stop working. We miss our alarms and forget to look at our planners. We allow ourselves to get waylaid on the way to meetings instead of politely brushing the other person off. The end result – we’re late, we miss deadlines, we become the thing we’ve worked so hard not to be, ‘unreliable’.
How employers can help
These situations are absolutely not easy for managers. I feel like I would be pretty safe in betting that ‘how to work with neurodivergent kaimahi’ (staff) is not a core part of your professional development.
What do you do when your previously competent and capable employee starts falling apart for no reason that’s obvious to you? How do you support someone with a condition they may not know they even have?
Realise it’s worth the effort to keep us
The first part is recognising that it’s worth putting in the effort to support your neurodivergent staff. We will become some of your biggest assets.
When we’re on top of our game we can do things many can’t. We work hard and fast and are fiercely loyal when we feel supported and engaged.
Recognise the symptoms of a neurodivergent person struggling
You may have an employee who was extremely capable - perceptive, solutions-focused, great attention to detail, a fast and accurate worker, perhaps one of your top performers – start to go off the boil.
They might be forgetting things, missing deadlines, getting flustered easily, or getting sick more often (our immune systems tend to gang up on us too when we hit the wall).
Even if this person has not disclosed they are neurodivergent, it will be pretty obvious this is not their usual behaviour.
Don’t wait for us to come to you if you suspect something might be wrong
As mentioned earlier, many adults who meet the diagnostic criteria for neurodivergent conditions have not been diagnosed.
On the flip side, many of us who have been don’t want to draw attention to ourselves for fear of being judged or seen as a liability (see rejection sensitivity dysphoria). The ones who push through that and do ask for accommodations have fought against their brain to do so and that strength should be appreciated.
Consider what else is going on
Has there been a lot of change in the workplace? Has the workload ramped up significantly? Has the workspace or routine changed? What’s going on in the public discourse? Is negative commentary around people who are ‘different’ getting loud?
If you have a trusting relationship with your employee, do you know if there’s anything going on at home? A house move, a partner losing a job, financial stress, illness or death in the family, a relationship breakdown – any and all of these can tip a neurodivergent person into burnout.
Support us, don’t punish us
(Trust me, we’re doing enough of that to ourselves!)
Depending on your relationship with your employee, find the best way to say ‘hey, I’ve noticed your mind doesn’t seem to be fully on the job lately and that you seem to be struggling. Is there anything we can do to help get you back on track?’
The absolute worst thing you can do when a neurodivergent person is struggling is put them on a performance plan. It’s “stop making excuses”, “you just need to be more careful” all over again.
We know we’re dropping the ball - we’re already beating ourselves up about it. Focusing on what we are doing wrong by telling us to do it right again, when we’re doing it wrong because our nerves are on fire, is not going to help. What it does is feed into years of shame and confusion, which adds to more stress and more mistakes, ad infinitum, until the person completely burns out or leaves.
Often the answers are very simple
Helping people through neurodivergent overwhelm or burnout can be deceptively simple.
Here are a few easy examples:
More time working from home (or a modified work schedule) – this is helpful in many circumstances including:
Workplace overwhelm - maybe there’s change going on, staff are stressed and there are too may intense emotions around for someone whose system is an emotional sponge.
Too much noise and distraction – are the renovations going on? Is there a lot of banging and crashing outside the building? Is the printer shrieking in a tone only dogs and autistic people can hear?
A project that requires concentration without distraction – is your employee in an open plan area where people can easily approach them? Do they get asked for help a lot? Between our need to people-please and genuine wish to help and our time-blindness, this can add a lot of extra stress by taking our focus away from the important task we are doing.
Quiet spaces – giving folk the option to go away to a quiet space like a meeting room or a booth when they need to concentrate is a great compromise if you need folk to be in the office.
Note: this isn’t a panacea because some people need two screens for parts of their mahi and most quiet spots are just set up for people with laptops.
Noise cancelling headphones or earplugs – I genuinely couldn’t make it through a day in the office without my Loop earplugs. They cushion me from all the stimulus that wants to steal my focus.
Anchor desks – routine can be incredibly important for many of us. Not knowing where you are going to be and potentially needing to resettle in a different spot each day, can be very stressful for us.
Having a ‘home base’ makes us more productive too because we can dive straight into our work instead of going through the process of settling in.
Let us fidget! – fidget toys for adults are being normalised for a reason, and this is a really positive step. Fidgets provide just enough stimulus for our overactive brains to help us focus on the task at hand. For us they are the opposite of distracting. Many of us are shy about the fact that we have them and use them, so it’s very rare these will become a distraction to other staff.
Keeping us in the loop – I recognise this is not always possible in the environment we work and live in, but when you can, give us time to prepare. If something big is going to happen, give us notice (even if you can’t tell us exactly what it will be). If a formal meeting is going to be important, give us an agenda beforehand – we are absolutely capable of change if you bring us on the journey with you.
Working together – neurodivergent people (and any people really) will respond best when things are done with us, not to us. The phrase ‘nothing about us, without us’ is definitely relevant here.
We want to make things work as much as you do. If one thing that comes out of me sharing this with you is a recognition that you have some amazing and talented people on board, who operate differently, that is everything.
Neurodivergent people are fiercely loyal. If we feel safe, we’ll stay and you’ll have some real assets.