The definition of success has alluded me over the years and I’ve often felt the sting of the unsuccessful in a lot of my endeavours. No awards of recognition, no promotions, no big bonus, no big followings or fame and fortune. It has caused a great deal of pain over the years, longing for the success I’ve seen others enjoy. But of late I’ve realised my success doesn’t lie in the big and the glitzy but in the quiet, in the subtle, a place where actually I am most at ease.

When I was five years old, my family and I went to see The Nutcracker Suite ballet. My Mum has told me there was a point in the ballet where a choir began to sing and suddenly, she heard a little voice next to her loudly and confidently begin to join in as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Whilst my memories of this are hazy, I obviously felt moved by the music and compelled to join in. In my rawest form and with the inhibition of early childhood, long before the masking began, it felt natural to sing, regardless of who was around me.

At age seven, I began writing poetry and by my early teens I was putting words to music, which only heightened my creative experience. I’d found myself in creating. It felt wonderful. I spent days in my bedroom writing and recording songs that teased out my inner world. Days would be lost in my bedroom studio set-up and I’d work so hard on perfecting my music, I could literally hear my brain creak. I forgot to eat, I forgot to drink, I was consumed. I had a focus that I couldn’t apply to anything else in my life. I couldn’t start a project and leave it part way through, I had to keep going until it was finished - only then could I disconnect from my creative process and resume the mundane and sometimes traumatic moments of everyday life.

Around this time, I really started to feel different to a lot of my peers. I found it increasingly hard to make sense of the burgeoning social scene that comes with age. The parties, the pubs, the boys. I couldn’t seem to chat to people like my friends could and unfortunately, I discovered the way to be part of the crowd was to drink alcohol, which lessened the unease and made me feel a social butterfly like everyone else, until it didn’t.

But despite my difference, I could communicate through writing and music in a way that I couldn’t seem to with most humans. I had a depth to my feelings that no one understood. I developed crushes on boys that would completely overwhelm me and stop me eating, where others seemed to cope. The intensity of my feelings frightened me as well as others around me and I felt a pressure to rein myself in but I couldn’t let things go. The end result was a beautifully crafted song.

I started to sing some of my music in a band and perform at school concerts. My talent for singing and songwriting was recognised, and people encouraged me to perform. However, when I did perform in front of others, the magic of my creativity seemed to disappear. Anxiety would bubble up in my throat and distort my voice and the natural emotion I emitted in rehearsals was nowhere to be seen, it was somehow lost in my fear of the eyes looking in my direction. Something didn’t align, I had been given this gift of a voice, but I found it so difficult to perform. I was perplexed by the dichotomy of being singer and songwriter but not performer. Despite this, I continued to try and pursue a career in music believing it was the only way to live my creativity.

All I want by Hannah Woodwark…

After school I went to music college for a year, and the plan was to give it my best shot to secure a music career. But my mental health was plummeting further and further and my undiagnosed neurodivergence was causing me to feel a trauma from the world around me.

Whilst music continued to be my way of processing my feelings, I still struggled with the performing, the networking, the promoting aspects that come hand-in-hand with trying to secure a music career. I remember people saying, ‘if I had your voice, I would be famous right now’ or ‘I can’t believe that voice came out of you’. It was like my singing voice didn’t fit my body.

I recorded music and performed my own material to dark dingy smoke-filled pubs that hid the empty seats. I fell into admin jobs, perfunctory roles that paid the bills but offered little opportunity to create. I struggled with the nuances and complex conversations typical of the business world and I found the open plan busy offices draining and would drink my way through the afterwork socialising.

I was lonely, unhappy, at odds with myself. And whilst others collected friendships like stamps, I seemed to lose them. Whilst others progressed in their careers, my creative career stalled, and my mental health took a nose-dive. There were hospital admissions due to drinking too much, Men taking advantage of me in vulnerable states, alcohol support groups and a lot of therapy. I writhed in my utter confusion over why I felt so irrevocably different to everyone else, why I simply couldn’t navigate the world in the same way as others. But no matter how dark life got I always had my music and my words; they were my medicine.

This would be the point in the story where something changed, some kind of fortune favouring the down and out, but in truth there was no Hollywood style turnaround and for years, I felt that I had failed. I felt a deep sadness that my words and music didn’t take me to the places I’d always dreamed of, they remained small. I longed for a bubble of fame and fortune that would protect me from the world I couldn’t make sense of. People would accept my ‘weirdness’ because I would be great at what I did, my music and success would distract from the fact I didn’t fit in.

But I’m not a bestseller, a Grammy award winning songwriter. I’m not selling out shows or singing with full orchestras in beautiful dresses like I had always dreamed. If this were an article in a national newspaper or magazine this would be the point where the page would tell of the rawness of my childhood talent being propelled into sparkly fame and life changing success but instead, I have stumbled my way to 44 and only now am I beginning to understand myself and how my creative energy and my neurodivergence co-exist.

When you don’t know yourself it’s impossibly hard to find what you need. I often wished that my creativity didn’t lie in music but in quieter, less visible pursuits like art or pottery, selling my wares on a small Etsy page. I’d be able to create without the performance, without the eyes on me. My dreams of noisy fame and fortune have begun to dissipate as I have realised that what I really need is to quietly create.

In this realisation, there is a Hollywood rags to riches kind of vibe. For me, the turning point really was meeting my husband who it turns out is also neurodivergent. We connected in our quiet otherness. The next turning point was going on to have our children. I stopped working when I became a mother and I felt instant relief that I could spent my days quietly mothering rather than trying to navigate busy offices and social whirls. But I still felt that difference, finding the mum groups and school gates uncomfortable places to be and I was definitely feeling the lack of creativity in my life.

And then the moment of real clarity came when my then six-year-old son went into burnout and could no longer attend mainstream school. In my caring for him I discovered both his neurodivergence and also my own. I understood why socialising was so hard and uncomfortable, I understood why I could never progress from the ranks of admin into a more senior role, I understood why I could create but couldn’t perform and network. And this is where my success lies. Not in being onstage, in a boardroom, nor in fame and fortune - my success finally came in the quieter life I’ve always needed, my success, my Oscar winning moment is living without the mask.

Cue rapturous applause and a thank you speech to my mum and dad, my husband and children. The recognition may only lie in my head, but I am proud. My success is in my mothering, in listening to my children’s needs and fiercely protecting them. My success lies in the compassion I have for my husband. My success lies in the awareness of my own needs and a compassion for myself. My success lies in creating in smaller, quieter ways.

Slip Away by Hannah Woodwark…

During my son’s burnout, I hung around the social media pages of other mothers navigating the same rocky road as I was and it was then that I stumbled across the work of . She offered a workshop for mothers who were stuck at home with a child, too traumatised to go out. It was so lovely to be amongst women navigating the same path as me. A frightening one, a lonely one, a very different one to most. I soon realised that Annie was a writer and saw that she offered writing coaching, and I wondered if that might be good for me, that it might provide me with a route to creating again.

I still longed to make music, but words definitely gave me a creative outlet, too. Annie introduced me to Substack and a new world opened up. Writing on Substack allowed me a place to quietly create, there were eyes on my work but not on me. I get the satisfaction of knowing my work is out in the world with minimal pressure to promote, network or perform.

One day I’d like to get back to writing music, I would love to find others to perform it, to take it to places I couldn’t myself. But for now, I like to let the music of others move me, to linger on my lips, to sing into the bubbles of the daily washing up. To put a rhythm into my body when I stomp down a canal-side path listening to my favourite tunes. To occasionally have a jam at my keyboard. Music is a backdrop to my daily living, much like being in a musical.

And my creative story has led me to understand that for me, creativity isn’t just a career, it’s a necessity, it’s oxygen. I need it to survive. It’s a place to direct my intense neurodivergent feelings. It’s a place where I’ve met other neurodivergent souls. When I don’t have the opportunity to create, I now know my mental health suffers. Had I realised all those years ago that to incorporate creativity quietly into my life, much like you would a vitamin, I think my life would have been healthier.

My creativity hasn’t taken me where I thought it would take me - and of course, to be paid, to make an income from creating would be the dream. But monetary reward doesn’t define my creativity: the living it, the doing it does.

Doing Life Differently

The journey to authentic living.

By Hannah Woodwark

If you’d like to support We Hyperfocus - the platform by and for neurodivergent creatives, including a magazine, an Instagram account, a monthly directory of courses for neurodivergent creatives and this Substack - we’d be ever so grateful.

You can support We Hyperfocus…

for £3.50/month or £35/year here: wehyperfocus.substack.com/subscribe

for £1.75/month or £17.50/year here: wehyperfocus.substack.com/alittleless

for 88p/month or £8.75/year here: wehyperfocus.substack.com/everypennycounts

Thank you for reading, and supporting.

Annie x

For years, it felt like my brain was working against me. I was detached from it, burdened by it. A constant, exhausting feeling that I was never quite in sync with myself.

My neurodivergence felt like an unwanted plus-one - the sibling your parents insisted on bringing along to your childhood endeavours, if you will - that was somehow turning even the simplest plans into hard work.

There was just too much. Too many thoughts. Too many feelings. There was never enough space for everything that was bursting inside of me.

I didn’t know what to do with it all. Where to put it.

Until I put it all down. I gave it somewhere to be, and I started to see my AuDHD as less of a burden, and more as a blessing. The chaos turned into passion. Emotions turned into writing that people felt seen in.

I saw how powerful my AuDHD was; not something working against me, but something I could work with.

Something that, in its own way, was making me a better writer.

Focus, but make it hyper

As a child, my parents would often be told that I was extremely bright, until I wasn’t. And then I just wanted to daydream or talk. “If we could just get her to focus…” they would say. And then we would get home, and I couldn’t be torn away from writing whatever novel I was writing at the time.

When I’m focused, I’m focused. It’s just that sometimes I don’t have a choice on what it’s on. And, unfortunately for my childhood academic grades, it was never maths.

This laser focus has only strengthened with age. And when given something really juicy to focus on, my AuDHD thrives. Therefore, so does my writing. I simply cannot think of anything else until I’ve put it into words.

2,000-word article done in one sitting? No problem.

Bladder is about to burst from holding it for the past four hours at my desk? Don’t care.

My autism gave me a deadline for this article, and my ADHD is going to get me there.

The words pour out of me, translating parts of myself that I deemed unintelligible. Connecting with people I didn’t think understood. Every project is a passion project. Every article is from the heart. Every word is crafted with the very focus that my childhood teachers could only wish I had.

I had it, more than most. I just didn’t know how to use it.

Thoughts a plenty

There is never quiet in my brain. I don’t know how people aren’t bombarded by their own thoughts every second of every day. I recently found out that some people don’t have internal monologues… I do not relate to this.

My internal monologues have internal monologues. It’s a neurodivergent Zoom call in there, but everyone has awful wifi and no social cues.

However, this means I always have something to write about, because I always have something I’m thinking about. I can’t imagine a time when I will run out of article ideas. Everything is material if you’re AuDHD enough.

It’s almost frustrating that the ideas don’t turn off. A big part of my nighttime routine is finally feeling like I’m about to fall asleep, and then thinking of an idea I have to write down… and the cycle continues a good three or four times.

Sometimes I have so many ideas that they start to overlap. They jump over one another in a scrambling chaos. Sometimes I open my notes app to see lines upon lines of new ones… all without any context or the end of their sentences. I’m sure some of them were extraordinary ideas. We’ll just never know.

They are, without fail, creative. Very outside the box. Sometimes so outside the box they’re borderline unusable. Occasionally outside my abilities entirely. But always creative.

An ocean of emotion

I’ve always felt as though I was too much. That I felt too much. I could never understand how people weren’t cracking under the weight of everything they were feeling.

Turns out some people’s nervous systems don’t react the same way to being held at gunpoint as they do to a change in someone’s tone. Who knew?

I feel everything extremely deeply. This means the burnout, the exhaustion, the overwhelm. But it also means the passion, the drive, the love. It means my writing is a museum of every wave I have managed to ride without drowning, every current that has taken me under. Every moment that my head has come up for air.

It’s in there, in my words and in the way way they leave me and resonate with whoever needs it.

Of course my AuDHD comes with its challenges to my writing. The hyperfocus can leave me neglecting myself entirely, the endless ideas can leave me overwhelmed, the emotions can paralyse me so that I can’t write at all.

Yes, my AuDHD is great for writing. But it’s also great for burnout. And exhaustion. And screaming into a pillow.

Sometimes I need to practise mindfulness (keyword practise, not perfect), and distract myself by doing something else. Sometimes I need to take regular breaks and set timers for meal times. Sometimes I need to not write at all, so I can make sure I leave time to feel.

Whatever I do, I no longer think of my AuDHD as a burden. I utilise it and, equally, care for it when things get too much.

For a long time, I saw my AuDHD as something that held me back. Now, I see it as the reason my writing feels the way it does. Passionate, honest. Real.

It’s not always easy. But it’s mine. And it’s powerful.

If you’ve been learning how to work alongside your AuDHD instead of against it, know you aren’t alone.

I’ll be here,

- Ella

Ella Thompson

Giving life another go, but this time: No eating disorder. No masking the AUDHD. No self destructive and harming behaviours. And, above all, not a single clue.

If you’d like to support We Hyperfocus - the platform by and for neurodivergent creatives, including a magazine, an Instagram account, a monthly directory of courses for neurodivergent creatives and this Substack - we’d be ever so grateful.

You can support We Hyperfocus…

for £3.50/month or £35/year here: wehyperfocus.substack.com/subscribe

for £1.75/month or £17.50/year here: wehyperfocus.substack.com/alittleless

for 88p/month or £8.75/year here: wehyperfocus.substack.com/everypennycounts

Thank you for reading, and supporting.

Annie x

A month ago, I took a flamethrower to the life I’d been building over the last twelve years. As an undiagnosed autistic girl who grew up thinking that being anything other than a Grade A student was tantamount to abject failure, climbing the corporate ladder had been the natural endgame after I graduated in 2014. So, what made me climb off?

Frenzied millennial ‘girl boss’ energy used to course through my veins. It did this for around eighteen months every time I got a new job, until I suddenly couldn’t cope with the stresses of office life. The go-getter persona that I’d so carefully crafted fell apart at the seams, and I would end up crawling immediately into bed after work, exhausted. After fighting tooth and nail against myself, I’d eventually quit after having something of a nervous breakdown. There would be a couple of weeks of guilt-ridden ‘rest’ whilst looking for another job, then the cycle would begin again.

As the neurotypical police residing in my head screamed, “Why can’t you just be normal?”, I doubled down on projects and put myself forward for presentation opportunities. I was masochistic for praise. The work itself was never the problem. It was the having to be constantly switched-on, with my face contorted into a painted-on smile; far from the flat effect and resting bitch face that appear when I’m alone.

This cycle of chaos is now known to me as autistic burnout. I was pushing my brain and body to exist in environments that they just weren’t meant for. Something as benign as going to the coffee corner felt like scoping out my surroundings lest a lion bite my head off. It was only Sarah from Marketing. A well-meaning boss once wryly quipped as we rounded off my performance review, “You’re nothing like you were in your interview, are you?”

It’s quite a kick in the teeth to know that I am capable of doing the work itself, but am frankly incompatible with the nightmare human safari that is the modern-day office. Companies have a long way to go when it comes to accommodating their neurodivergent employees, and it’s hardly a secret that those who can shout the loudest will be the most successful in those structures.

I moved to the Netherlands in 2022 to be with my then-partner. Within a week of being there, I secured a well-paid job in fashion e-commerce, which offered me a ‘highly skilled migrant’ visa. At first, despite this being a role in which I travelled across eleven European countries as part of my day-to-day, I flourished. Buoyed by the manic desire to be the Most Normal Woman Who Has It All, plates were juggled, and work dinners were navigated with relative prowess.

In 2024, the wheels started falling off. The relationship I’d moved for was long gone, and consequently, I’d been priced out of the Amsterdam rental market. I moved to a smaller city nearby, decided to stop drinking, and proceeded to isolate myself until I started going a bit mad. With my already scarce pool of expat friends all being in Amsterdam, and my will to socialise without alcohol at an all-time low, it was easy to fall into unhealthy patterns. I slept all day, doomscrolled all night. Soon, I was sitting in front of a GP, bawling my eyes out.

I started again on anti-depressants and floated the potential of an autism assessment. Having read up on it in my doom-scrolling days, and my younger sister getting diagnosed the year prior, it seemed a plausible fit. I wondered if it was normal to feel like people were shooting lasers in your eyes as you tried to talk them through the latest sales figures. It turned out that it wasn’t. I developed an interesting relationship with the concept of ‘normal’.

As the Dutch healthcare system is Disneyland compared to the poor NHS, the whole process took less than six months. I sat on a Zoom call with two psychiatrists as they confirmed that there was a concrete reason why I’d found everything so damn confounding. I surprised myself by bursting into tears. I wasn’t broken. It wasn’t that I wasn’t trying hard enough. If anything, I was trying too hard to crush myself into a box that was never designed for me.

With this revelation under my belt, I tried to navigate things differently. Working from home as much as possible; caring less about padding every meeting with pleasantries; trying to send the word “sorry” less in emails. But things just got worse. The closer I got to understanding myself, the more I couldn’t summon the drive to push myself back towards an even worse burnout. Sick days started racking up.

Because I am incapable of taking it easy, I had signed up for a part-time coaching and counselling certification in Amsterdam, quite soon after my diagnosis. It began as a hobby, something to get me out of my shell a little; a booze-free activity where I could try out gradually unmasking my true self. Within a couple of study days, I realised that I was actually good at it. Donning the metaphorical jacket of ‘coach/counsellor’ didn’t feel weird at all. My classmates consistently offered the feedback that I was a “calm presence”. Me? Wow.

Eventually, I made the very difficult decision to move back to the UK. As I’d been on the same visa for almost four years and needed a new company to take on my sponsorship, it became quickly apparent that I wasn’t going to get a part-time contract on that basis. The earning threshold was too high, and I couldn’t handle the idea of going full-time again. I’d had to cut my hours down to 32 in the previous job, which had only been kindly granted because it was a good place to work.

Now that the ground has settled, I’ve made the rather terrifying decision to use the next six months (and consequently most of my savings) to pursue a self-employed, multi-hyphenated living that’s actually designed for my autistic ass. Leveraging the creative talents and skills that fell by the wayside due to the constraints of corporate work, I have already got a growing client base for my coaching/counselling practice. Paid Substack subscribers are on the ascent. I’m pulling together a showreel to book singing gigs in the near future. I’ve started designing my own neurodivergent merch. I’m even trying my hand at content creation on social media, despite my Gen Z sister referring to me as “Unc”.

Whether it works out or not, I will know that I tried to do something on my own terms. Until getting diagnosed, I lived my life by shoulds. We should climb the corporate ladder. We should have 2.5 children and be married by 28. We should have a mortgage and a fat savings account. We should achieve all of these things, even if doing so comes to our detriment. No thanks. Not anymore.

For neurodivergent readers: try coaching out with a free 50-minute session - no obligation - register your interest by emailing me at hello@ebonynash.com.

Meticulously Organised Chaos

Trying to make sense of a late autism diagnosis as a woman; one post at a time.

By Ebony L

Links:

My website (coaching enquiries and writing opportunities):

Etsy (mugs, tote bags)

Instagram: @ebonylaurenn

YouTube: @ebonylaurenn/shorts

If you’d like to support We Hyperfocus - the platform by and for neurodivergent creatives, including a magazine, an Instagram account, a monthly directory of courses for neurodivergent creatives and this Substack - we’d be ever so grateful.

You can support We Hyperfocus…

for £3.50/month or £35/year here: wehyperfocus.substack.com/subscribe

for £1.75/month or £17.50/year here: wehyperfocus.substack.com/alittleless

for 88p/month or £8.75/year here: wehyperfocus.substack.com/everypennycounts

Thank you for reading, and supporting.

Annie x

I’m sitting on my bed, propped up by pillows, watching a drama on Netflix and my daughter comes in. She asks to sit with me.

I want to have something like B does, she says.

She’s talking about her brother’s new project. He’s designing a computer game. He’s named it, planned out the structure and rules of play, and he’s designing the flow.

This project has become a hot topic in our house, as B tells us his new ideas and together, we type out notes on the laptop. He hopes it might make him a millionaire.

Though, that’s not why he’s doing it. He’s doing it because he can’t not do it. The idea has landed. He is in the zone.

Maybe I could start a business, she says, but I don’t know what to sell. Is it candles, or those strawberry pots I make from clay?

Well, we can have a think about it, can’t we? I say, and I go to un-pause the drama. Is it ok to keep watching, or would you like to talk more, I ask.

She says she’d like to talk more. So we do.

She tells me that people never buy anything from stalls at markets. I’m not sure that’s entirely true but I do think online is a good place to start with selling products.

If you make something, you could think about selling it on Etsy, I suggest.

We look up the most popular types of products on Etsy. We talk through ideas that fit within the categories. We agree to each think more about what could work.

Soon, she’s ready for me to un-pause the drama so that we can watch it together.

My daughter is a budding entrepreneur, like her brother, but I suspect this isn’t really about making money. It’s about hyperfocus.

She can see that he’s in it and she wants to be, as well.

She’s in it, often. Recently, she spent several days dedicated to a self-initiated project about owls: drawing them, writing out facts about them in beautiful handwriting.

But now, that project is complete and she wants the next one.

I know this feeling.

I have often found the fallow space between writing books or launching courses quite unbearable. Yes, we’re meant to rest blah blah blah but I like being busy and focused.

This is why I’ve set up the freelance career and business I have now, where I can create something new whenever I fancy and launch it, while waiting for a commission.

I struggled during the years I was depending on publishers to commission me to write my own books, ghostwrite or write articles, as I had no power over the timing.

I’d be sitting there, twiddling my thumbs, ready to go (like my daughter is now) but not knowing what to focus on. That’s when Substack swooped in and saved me.

And then, once I’d got the hang of Substack, and was comfortable writing weekly essays, I wanted something to do alongside that. Something I could obsess over.

So, I launched We Hyperfocus.

It’s not about continuously adding more in but it is about always learning and evolving, online. And following newer interests, like neurodivergence and creativity.

I feel like I’m building up my online career again.

I have:

• My personal Substack where I share work-life essays.

• We Hyperfocus - this Substack - for notes on neurodiversity and creativity.

• And my new website: wehyperfocus.com (where I host workshops).

It has taken several attempts and iterations to feel my way into running We Hyperfocus.

I’d been dipping in a toe and leaving it there a while before quickly pulling it back out, because something felt off.

But now, this time, I am wading right in. Not in an intense way (I’ll come back to that word in another essay) but in a calm and curious way.

I’ve noticed that launching Transformation, my new course, has felt floaty and creative. I’m not grinding my teeth, like I usually would be.

However, I have also been deep in hyperfocus. In terms of building the website, designing the course (in one sitting) and marketing it. The current is strong.

If you are ready to wade into something new - or old, and paused - Transformation will help you to work out how to do it in the time - and capacity - you have available.

The modules:

1. What am I doing?

2. What do I have coming up?

3. What I want to do.

4. Wild card.

5. Future you.

There are a bunch of creative coaching exercises to work on in your own time, and I’ll be there for the first two weeks of the course for you to share ideas, by email.

It’s a low-pressure course, easy-to-follow (an inclusive font, bigger than normal, black writing on white, no funny business) and it will help you to dream.

Maybe you want to start a new business. Become a full-time artist. Move to another part of the country. Or explore various ideas to see what lands.

Whatever it is: this will be your space to dream it up and map it all out.

I’ve set the price of the course at £30 but you can delete that price and put in whatever you like. £10, £2, £50, £1,000,000. Or just keep it at £30.

Whatever you pay, the support I offer will be the same.

If you have any questions, let me know.

Stay (hyper)focused.

Annie x