How to make work more ADHD & Autism Friendly
Those of us with ADHD or autism get burnt out so regularly by our jobs that many of us become or consider becoming self-employed just so we can work in a way that actually works for us. But that doesn’t have to be the only option.
Firstly, this blog today is based on a YouTube video I put out. If you would prefer to watch instead of read, you can find the video here:
Last week I put out a post all about why we keep getting burnt out and the factors that go into modern day working that cause us to get stuck in these cycles of stress and burnout. I’d recommend giving it a read if you haven’t done so already as it can be really validating to understand what is causing your struggles so that you know it’s not your fault and can build towards a little more self-acceptance.
In this post, we used two 2022 papers out of Sweden called “Stress and work-related mental illness among working adults with ADHD: a qualitative study” and “It’s like it is designed to keep me stressed’—Working sustainably with ADHD or autism” to gain an understanding of the factors causing stress in the workplace, and today we will be referring to them again when it comes to suggestions of how we can do things better.
One thing I love about both of these papers is that they are based on interviews with people who are actually ADHD or autistic and so therefore the conclusions come from our lived experiences as well as the latest research in this space. So with that in mind, let’s dive in.
One of the challenges we spoke about last week was workplaces without sufficient structure and organisation. This can be a real challenge for both ADHD and autism as both forms of neurodivergence thrive under structure and routine, even if ADHD seems to fight it at every corner, and so one of the first wins workplaces can implement in creating an environment that is better towards wellbeing is implementing more structure and organisation. This doesn’t just help neurodivergent employees but it helps across the board, so it’s a no brainer for an all round investment into employee wellbeing across the board.
One of the most important workplace relationships is that between the employee and their manager, and in fact in the first study many participants referred to this relationship as important or crucial in their experience of working. The saying that people leave bosses, not companies may or may not be true but for those of us with ADHD or autism, these relationships are super important.
The relationship that we have with our bosses is a hugely important to those of us with ADHD and autism.
In particular, the manager’s overall openness to providing support to their neurodivergent employee makes a huge difference. A manager that is unresponsive to an employee’s request for support can be very discouraging and mean that the employee has to struggle with extra stress due to this negative aspect of the relationship on top of the challenges they are already struggling with.
In contrast, bosses that are supportive can make things significantly easier for employees to manage and even in the case when a boss couldn’t address the employee’s challenges or solve the problem, their understanding and acknowledgement of the difficulties made a difference to the employee in question.
This leads into a wider conversation about whether or not to be open about your diagnosis at work. For employees who did diagnose and their colleagues, employers and administrators were willing to provide support, they found it much easier to manage. Acceptance from others led to a higher sense of belonging in the workplace and a higher self-worth, therefore an overall increase to wellbeing. By disclosing as well, you are also more likely to come across other neurodivergent employees and can find shared support together.
However, if this diagnosis doesn’t go well, the opposite can be true. In fact, the paper “It’s like it’s designed to keep me stressed” even goes as far as to say: “Negative attitudes and lack of supportive relationships in the work environment was the greatest obstacle to employment for adults with ASD”.
This can also be particularly hard to navigate for those of us who are high masking, something that I relate to personally. Often when we are high masking, people can’t see the ADHD or autism in us, they just see us as “normal” people, maybe just a bit quirky, and therefore can’t understand the things that we find difficult. This means that expectations can be set too high or too low because they can’t see and understand what we find challenging. Or they might just dismiss our neurodivergence, claiming that we are making it up and aren’t actually struggling.
Often we’re so used to putting on these masks that we don’t even realise when we’re doing it.
Often people ask me if they should tell their work about their diagnosis and I find this a really difficult question to answer for exactly this reason - if a workplace is supportive and willing to work with you then disclosing your diagnosis (or suspected diagnosis) could be a huge benefit, opening up new avenues for support that before would have been unobtainable.
However, the downsides of a diagnosis in a workplace that is not supportive are costly and so it really comes down to whether you would be safe to disclose or not, which is usually a much easier decision for those with the resources to change jobs or pursue a legal challenge in the event that disclosing the diagnosis has negative consequences.
Regardless of whether or not you disclose, gaining further awareness of your own neurodivergence is always a benefit. The paper “It’s like it’s designed to keep me stressed” refers to how “gaining insight into their own function had helped them master their work to a greater extent” and that “an increased understanding of their own functioning had helped them become less critical of themselves”.
This alludes to the concept of working with your brain that I spoke about in my previous post on burnout - I’ll leave a link up the top and you can check it out if you’re interest in working with your own brain to avoid burnout.
The study participants did however mention some frustration with the fact that their insights and self-awareness did not always translate into strategies for how to manage things better. This is something that we often cover in coaching actually, finding ways that we can convert these insights into something actionable so that we can move forward in our careers.
Oscarsson and colleagues (2022) also goes on to talk about our perception on our neurodivergence, ADHD specifically in this case. The study found that the participants tended to be generally negative about their ADHD, something that I’ve observed a lot within our community.
In fact, these participants suggested there weren’t any positive sides of their ADHD, but acknowledged that they did have unique strengths themselves, such as problem solving, creativity and quick-wittedness. Interestingly enough there have been studies linking the first of these two to ADHD already and I always find it an interesting mindset topic that we can be so negative about our ADHD while dismissing the parts of it that are beneficial.
ADHD has been linked to creativity and problem solving, a positive that is often overlooked.
I talk a lot about ADHD strengths for this reason and one of the things I work on with my clients is identifying those strengths because they’re what got us to where we are today and what will build our future. If you’re in need of a pick me up with some ADHD strengths, take a look at my previous post on ADHD strengths.
One important point in the discussion above about gaining workplace support, self-awareness and acceptance is that the onus of doing all of these things tends to fall directly on the employee themself. Many people reported not being seen, and therefore having to spend the time and energy advocating to get the support they need, as well as doing the research to find out exactly what they need. I imagine most of those reading will be neurospicies looking for suggestions for what they could advocate for at work, rather than employers looking to make their workplace better for their neurodivergent employees.
While everyone’s neurodivergence presents differently and it’s important to work with the person being supported instead of assuming what will work for their unique flavour of neurodivergence, putting all the work on the employee themself means that they have extra work to do on top of the work they’re already doing, something they’re already finding challenging!
This is important because this extends beyond just workplaces and into the healthcare systems as well where a multidisciplinary approach is often suggested for managing ADHD, but with very little support available outside of medication. This is something I have experience with first hand as I have difficulties getting medication and despite asking for different kinds of support, it’s been incredibly lacking and I’ve had to find and build my own support systems as a result.
Another issue with support is that it needs to be flexible and respond to our symptoms. Neurodivergence is a lifelong condition. We don’t grow out of it, we don’t recover, we can’t be cured. Not that I want to be cured anyway because those periods of time when I’m between hyperfixations are so painful that it would be torture to never have them at all. But that means that our symptoms are always there, they just fluctuate according to our stages of life and what’s going on in our lives.
Much like the sea, sometimes our neurodivergence is calm and doesn’t impact our lives in very negative ways, other times things are tumultuous. Just because things are calm now, doesn’t mean a storm won’t come again.
This means that sometimes our neurodivergence is going to appear to not be giving us much of a bother. Sometimes we’ll be doing incredibly well and the strengths of our neurodivergence will be shining through. That doesn’t mean that we won’t need support at other times. There can be a tendency for support to be removed when we “appear” to be “getting better”, therefore leaving us without support when things get worse again.
And one thing that I don’t hear enough about when talking about ADHD symptoms, which isn’t even mentioned in these studies despite one being predominantly women, is that our ADHD symptoms can fluctuate with our monthly cycle. There are weeks in our monthly cycle where emotional dysregulation and executive function challenges are turned up to eleven, and we can have weeks where we really struggle when the remainder of our cycle we feel like we’re doing okay.
I think there is a pressure for women and AFAB to be cool and capable month round to avoid discrimination in male dominated workplaces for a natural part of our human biology, and I completely understand why. Though things are much better for women’s rights, there are still men out there who will dismiss a woman’s frustration as being “her time of the month” and a general taboo around talking about the challenges we are having.
But frankly, some weeks I am a worse worker due to my cycle. Some weeks concentrating is so much harder, some weeks any small mishap can upset me at a much much larger magnitude. And some weeks I’m absolutely bossing it and working at a hugely productive level that even surprises me. I’m still learning how to manage my work to allow for me to not beat myself up on those weeks where things are harder - it’s an ongoing part of my acceptance too.
So what is clear from this is that support needs to be flexible, individual and tailored to the whole person. The second paper concludes that we need occupational therapy and other types of support that are flexible and respond to the individual’s unique needs and circumstances. And this is a big part of why I do what I do with coaching; one-on-one flexible sessions where we work on exactly what you need to work on to get you where you need to go. If this is something you’d like to pursue, get in contact and let me know.
And that’s where we’ll leave things for today. This topic of conversation isn’t complete and as more and more of us reach positions of leadership in the workplace, support and acceptance for neurodivergence will evolve and I’m really excited to see how our workplaces shift according to the learning we gain along the way.
References:
If this resonates with you and feel you would be interested in talking to an adhd and autism-friendly coach, feel free to get in touch. If you’re looking for more blog posts, you can find them here.
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