First published on myneurodivergentstory.blog – Part 4 of my ongoing series exploring life, loss, and self-discovery through the lens of neurodiversity.

The Slow Unravelling

For decades, masking kept me safe — or at least that’s what I thought.
I didn’t even realise what I was doing. Until recently, I hadn’t truly understood that I was neurodivergent, or what that even meant. Yes, I learned at university that I was dyslexic and dyspraxic, but beyond being offered extra exam time or the use of a computer, nothing changed. I stopped blaming myself so harshly for spelling and grammar — though society never stopped doing that for me.

To cope, I developed a self-deprecating humour about my mistakes and clumsiness, laughing off what often hurt. Looking back now, I avoided anything that required reading verbatim. I would ask, “Can I use prompt cards?” or “Can I phrase it my own way?” Reading aloud — especially bedtime stories with my niece and nephew — was exhausting. I didn’t realise how emotionally draining it was until much later.

The Pandemic Shift

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the working world changed — and so did I.
While others worked from home, I continued travelling in daily. The public’s anger and anxiety often landed on us. Yet in a strange way, lockdown gave me something I hadn’t realised I was missing: control of my sensory environment.

No more crowded trains or strangers invading my space. No one standing too close or shouting in my ear. At work, physical-distancing rules meant I was allowed to protect my space — something I’d always silently needed.
The work itself was emotionally heavy — supporting bereaved families and people in crisis — but I was grounded in purpose and focus. Only later did I realise how much that balance had kept me stable.

Then the structure changed again. First as people returned to work in the uk, I was given a chance to change my role, which meant I worked from home 4 days a week and one day a week in the office. Then as a whole Hybrid working arrived, offices reopened, and I was told to return more often. I couldn’t make sense of it.
Why spend an hour commuting into anoffice  to sit in an empty office, eating lunch alone, surrounded by bright lights and noisy air-conditioning and then to spend an hour travelling back on a packed noisy train, where I pick up what ever illness was going around this week.

The small, familiar offices where I thrived closed. I was moved repeatedly — new managers, new locations, shifting teams, changing hours. My once-steady rhythm was replaced by rotating shifts: 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., unpredictable days.
My body and brain couldn’t keep up.

The Body Keeps the Score

I started to struggle — physically, emotionally, mentally.
Occupational-health referrals increased. My GP visits multiplied. Each winter brought illness after illness — COVID, flu, infections that wouldn’t clear. My psoriasis flared across my hands and neck. My digestion rebelled.

I’ve since learned that the body often expresses what the mind cannot — a truth echoed in trauma research and in The Compassionate Mind Approach to Recovering from Trauma by Paul Gilbert and Deborah Lee.
My body was waving red flags that I simply couldn’t yet interpret.

Then came guilt.
My dad’s health was deteriorating with Alzheimer’s, and I had helped convince my mum that he needed full-time care. It was the right decision — she later told me it saved her life — but the guilt still lingered. I carried the emotional weight of everyone’s grief and frustration.

I kept functioning — over-functioning — because that’s what I do. I became the calm one, the mediator, the problem-solver.
It’s only now I understand that this was hyper-responsibility, a common trauma and neurodivergent trait: taking on too much because the alternative — letting go — feels like failure.

When the Mask Finally Cracked

By August 2023, the cracks began to show. My personal life had become increasingly difficult, and even before life threw me its biggest curveballs, I had already sought professional help — trying to understand the anger, exhaustion, and overwhelm that kept bubbling up.

At the same time, my body was in pain and exhaustion was constant. My sister faced an emergency hospital admission, my dad’s health rapidly declined, and I was trying to cope with the growing worry and grief that followed. While all of that unfolded, I was also managing my own health — first IBS symptoms catching every illness there was going, being constantly tired.

On a Wednesday afternoon in October 2023, my dad — a clever, quiet, compassionate man, stolen by Alzheimer’s at 74 — passed away. He left behind a legacy of kindness, mentoring, and research in behavioural psychology.
One days later, I received my GP call: the “IBS-type symptoms” and resulting test I had showed I had cancer markers. Within weeks, I was in hospital fror more test, cancer confirmed. Then Christmas plan rapidly atered as the week before chirtsmas The cancer was removed successfully, but I was left hollowed — physically healing, emotionally fractured.

And if that was not enough our house finally sold, and so the new year had as moving a relocating from Oxfordshire to Yorkshire, with a brief gap staying at my husband parents for a couple of weeks in between. (there is nothing more frustrating than recovering from surgery and not being able to anything as your life in upended in chaos of trying to move house)

A Year of Unmasking

By mid-2024, I was in therapy for PTSD, still reeling from grief, illness, and the demands of constant change. Adam was the first to say the words that would change everything:

“What if neurodivergence is part of this mix?”

He couldn’t diagnose, but he pointed me toward understanding — recommending books, including How to ADHD: An Insider’s Guide to Working With Your Brain (Not Against It) by Jessica McCabe, and her insightful YouTube channel.

Then came the turning point: an occupational-health referral and a workplace neurodiversity screening through Lexxic in September 2024. The results showed the extremely high propbabiity of dyslexia, dyspraxia (DCD), and combioned ADHD traits. And the subsequent work place adjustment recommendations. However these recommendations were not fully understood and integrated by myself or my workplace.

I was diagnosed with severe burnout and depression. For the first time in my adult life, I had to stop — to actually rest. I’m still learning how.

Burnout, Breakdown & the Slow Beginning of Recovery

Over the next ten months, I tried to keep going. The organisation changed again. My role widened, my hours shifted, the noise returned.
By June 2025, I broke completely. First of all it was thought to be stress, and I completed some of the stress related risk assessments – what an eye opener that was.

I finally began coaching with Genius Within, who helped me explore practical strategies and strengths, I began to understand what these recommendations were for, why I needed them. With my coaches support I found the screening for a colour filter for my dyslexia, finally understood pomodor timing. Sadly this was all alittle to late as I already had another 4 referals and “stress” had signed me of work.

Now I had language for what I’d been living. My “coping mechanisms” weren’t failings — they were survival strategies in a world not built for brains like mine.

My body had enough the brain fog, the exhaustion and then the frozen shoulder made me stop. I did try to return to work after 5 weeks, but work would not let me return to work. Though the three weeks in a limbo of waiting for this decision were awful, I cannot say that they were wrong that I could not return to what it was before, and they were saying given the how my job had changed and its current expectations that they did not consider the occupational health teams recommendations to be reasonable for my job.

Therapy continues. I’ve been referred for formal ADHD and Autism assessments (likely to take years, as is common on NHS waiting lists). But I’m no longer searching for permission to exist as I am.

I sought out help from the NHS not just the private healthcare support I been realying on. With this I found a GP who took the time and listened. And two members of the taling therapist team, who also wanted to support me (which is so amazing, given how much the NHS is stretched) with one of the therapsits I discussed the work of Dr Jessica Eccles, whose research links neurodivergence and connective-tissue conditions — explored in interviews on the Bendy Bodies Podcast and ADHD Women’s Wellbeing. I began to see how sensory processing, trauma, and physical health intertwine.

Patterns We Missed

Looking back, I can see the patterns we all overlooked.

• Sensory overload disguised as “stress.”
• Hyperfocus mistaken for dedication.
• RSD (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria) dismissed as over-reaction.
• Emotional flooding called moodiness.
• Somatic exhaustion written off as “just stress.”

Even my shift patterns — late nights followed by early starts — disrupted my body’s ability to recover. My inability to read aloud without exhaustion, my constant need to fidget, my uneven productivity: they all make sense now.

Rediscovering Myself

For me, Unmasking Through Burnout and Neurodiversity means finally embracing the way my brain and body connect: imperfect, but uniquely mine. It’s learning that my so-called mistakes aren’t failures — they’re part of how I think, feel, and create.

My quirks are teachers. They push me to problem-solve differently, to adapt creatively, to notice what others overlook. They’ve deepened my empathy — because I understand what it means to struggle silently while appearing “fine.”

Independence, I’ve learned, doesn’t mean doing everything alone. Sometimes it means asking for the stand, the rail, or simply an extra minute — and recognising that it doesn’t make me less capable, just differently designed.

A Visual Full Circle

In a strange symmetry, my GCSE art project from 1995 — a figure surrounded by masks in a decayed corridor of surreal landscapes, trees with leaves that turned to crying eyes — feels like a visual prelude to this chapter of my life.
I didn’t yet have the language for neurodivergence, but through art, I was already mapping the inside of my mind.

Timeline So Far

2019 – The Early Signs

first began Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) in 2019 after realising how much my daily commute was affecting me. I’d spend the whole journey overthinking, criticising myself, and bracing for the day ahead — a cycle that fed severe anxiety. It was my first glimpse into how sensory and mental overload could shape my wellbeing.

2020–2022 – A Quieter World

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the world slowed down. I worked in a quieter, socially distanced office and no longer faced the crush of trains or crowds. For a while, I thrived — fewer sensory triggers, less pressure to mask. I also spent a lot of time caring for my niece and nephew, realising just how draining reading aloud and structured routines could be.

2023 – Cracks Begin to Show

Hybrid working brought back unpredictability and sensory chaos. I was constantly ill — flu, COVID, fevers — and struggling to recover. By summer, I knew something was wrong.
In August, I started therapy again, and in September, my GP informally diagnosed me with IBS, linking it to stress.
That autumn became a cascade of losses and upheaval: my dad’s death in October, a cancer marker found in my own tests, and by November, a confirmed diagnosis of bowel cancer.
Therapy became more about surviving than healing.

Late 2023 – Surgery and Change

In December, I had bowel cancer surgery just before Christmas. A month later, I was cancer-free — and moving. We sold our Oxfordshire home, stayed with family, and prepared for a fresh start in Yorkshire.

Early 2024 – Starting Again, Still Fragile

In February, we moved into our new house, and I returned to work — new manager, new team, new expectations. It was too much, too soon. That spring and summer, I began PTSD therapy with Adam Draper, where I first heard the words “neurodivergence in the mix.” It changed everything.

Mid–Late 2024 – Naming What Was Always There

By September 2024, I had my Lexxic workplace screening, which confirmed Dyspraxia (DCD), Dyslexia, and probable ADHD traits. I finally had language for things I’d spent a lifetime blaming myself for.
Despite this, work became harder. Occupational Health referrals increased. I was placed on a Performance Improvement Plan. I reduced to four days a week, but the environment still overwhelmed me.

Early–Mid 2025 – The Breaking Point

In April 2025, I told my GP I couldn’t cope anymore. I was added to the NHS ADHD waitlist.
In May, I received written warnings for being “too emotional.” Two more Occupational Health referrals followed, but their recommendations were ignored.
By June, I broke completely — physically and emotionally.

Summer–Autumn 2025 – The Unmasking

In August, I tried to return to work. Two days before my 47th birthday, I was told I could not return — my employer stated the OH recommendations were “not reasonable” and insisted I remain off work.
In September, I began neurodiversity coaching with Genius Within, and for the first time, I began to understand what had happened: burnout, depression, and years of masking finally colliding.
In October, I was added to the NHS Autism assessment list, to run alongside my ADHD referral.

✨ From CBT in 2019 to diagnosis and burnout in 2025, this journey has been about learning that the mind, body, and environment are deeply connected — and that healing begins when we stop trying to fit into spaces never designed for us.