Welcome to That AuDHD Teacher

A little about me, my AuDHD journey, and why I started this podcast

If you’ve found your way here from the That AuDHD Teacher podcast, welcome! And if you’ve found this post first, I’m glad you’re here too.

I’m Emily. I’m an early childhood teacher from Aotearoa New Zealand, and I’m autistic and ADHD.

I started That AuDHD Teacher because I wanted to create the kind of space I wish I’d had when I was trying to understand myself.

A space to talk about AuDHD honestly. Not just the textbook definitions. Not just the lists of symptoms. And not just the stereotypes. But what it can actually feel like to live with AuDHD, and what it can look like when you’re also a teacher.

So, who am I?

I’ve worked in early childhood education for years, in a range of different settings and roles.

Teaching has always been something I have cared deeply about. I love working with children, being creative, watching children learn and develop, and all of the little moments that make early childhood education so meaningful.

But teaching can also be incredibly demanding.

There is constant noise, movement, decision making, social interaction, emotional regulation, planning, documentation, interruptions and unexpected changes.

For a long time, I didn’t have an explanation for why some of those things seemed to affect me so strongly. I just thought I needed to cope better. I needed to be more organised. I needed to manage my time better. I needed to stop overthinking. I needed to be less sensitive. I needed to try harder.

Then I discovered I was autistic and ADHD

I was diagnosed autistic and ADHD at 28. And suddenly, a lot of things that had felt disconnected throughout my life started to connect.

It wasn’t that I suddenly became autistic or ADHD when I received those diagnoses. I had always been. I just didn’t have the words to understand myself.

Looking back, there were so many things that made more sense through an AuDHD lens.

The exhaustion. The overwhelm. The difficulty with certain types of tasks. The intense interests. The need to recover after social interaction.

The ways I could become completely absorbed in something I was interested in while struggling enormously to start something that felt mundane.

The perfectionism. The overthinking. The masking. The emotional intensity.

The feeling that I could cope incredibly well one day and then completely fall apart when I had nothing left in the tank.

And perhaps most importantly, the feeling that I was somehow constantly trying to figure out how to be the person everyone else seemed to expect me to be.

The complicated part of late diagnosis

Getting diagnosed was incredibly validating. But it wasn’t just relief. There was grief too.

Because when you finally have an explanation for something you’ve struggled with for years, you naturally start looking backwards.

You think about your childhood. Your school years. Your friendships. Your university years. Your work.

The things you were praised for. The things you were criticised for. The things you thought were personality flaws. The things you thought everyone experienced but just didn’t talk about.

And you start wondering: “How different would things have been if I’d known?”. I don’t think there’s a simple answer to that. And I’m not interested in pretending that discovering you’re AuDHD suddenly explains absolutely everything.

It doesn’t. But for me, it gave me a framework for understanding myself with much more compassion.

Why a podcast?

I started That AuDHD Teacher because I wanted to talk about these things out loud. There are plenty of incredibly valuable resources about autism and ADHD. But sometimes I don’t want a clinical explanation.

Sometimes I want to hear someone say: “This happened to me too.”

I want to hear about the messy bits. The confusing bits. The things that don’t fit neatly into a checklist. The experiences that make you wonder whether you’re “autistic enough” or “ADHD enough.”

The things that make sense only after you’ve spent years looking back at your life through a completely different lens. And I especially wanted to talk about what all of this means when you’re a teacher.

Because being a teacher can require us to spend a huge amount of our day managing our environment, our emotions, our attention and our interactions with other people.

Sometimes we’re incredibly good at it. Sometimes we’re completely exhausted by it. And sometimes we don’t realise how much we’re compensating until we can’t do it anymore.

What will we talk about?

Throughout That AuDHD Teacher, I’ll be exploring topics including:

what AuDHD actually means
the signs and experiences I didn’t recognise in myself
masking
burnout
executive functioning
rejection sensitivity
emotional regulation
sensory overwhelm
late diagnosis
autism and ADHD assessments
and the experience of being an AuDHD person working in education

Some episodes will be more personal. Some will be more educational. And some will probably be a mixture of both.

I’m not here as a clinician or diagnostician. I’m sharing my own experiences and the things I’ve learned along the way.

If you’re listening because you’re wondering whether you might be AuDHD, I hope this podcast can help you understand yourself better, but it isn’t a diagnostic tool. There is a lot of overlap between different experiences, and assessment should always be done by an appropriately qualified professional.

If you’re a teacher…

This part is especially important to me.

You don’t have to be an AuDHD teacher to listen to this podcast.

Maybe you’re a teacher who is neurodivergent yourself. Maybe you’re wondering whether you might be. Maybe you’re working alongside a neurodivergent colleague. Maybe you’re a teacher trying to understand why some environments or aspects of teaching feel particularly difficult for you.

Or perhaps you’re simply interested in learning more. I hope there is something here for you.

Because I think we need to make more room for conversations about neurodivergence in education, including conversations about the adults doing the teaching.

So, welcome

This first episode is really just the beginning.

I’m still figuring things out. I’m still learning. And I’m still discovering new things about myself all the time.

But that’s part of the reason I wanted to start this. I don’t think we need to have everything figured out before we’re allowed to talk about it.

Sometimes sharing the journey is just as valuable as sharing the destination. So if you’re listening to That AuDHD Teacher, reading these posts, or following along somewhere else online… welcome.

I’m really glad you’re here.

And if you’ve ever found yourself wondering: “Why does this seem so much harder for me than it seems to be for everyone else?. You might be in the right place.

🎧 Listen to Episode 1

This post accompanies Episode 1 of the That AuDHD Teacher podcast, where I introduce myself, talk about my journey to discovering I was autistic and ADHD, and explain why I decided to start the podcast.

listen to episode 1 here