LET'S hear it !!! Oh BTW we are opening in Harley St. Just saying 😉

@Tia Boulton @Ruth Lilleker @Emma Buttriss @Marcus Ward Session 3 Summary. These sources document a series of professional mentorship meetings between Ruth Lilleker and David Collins focused on neurodiversity advocacy and career development. The discussions detail Ruth’s transition from local government work toward establishing her own Community Interest Company and consultancy. Key themes include the development of a theoretical framework linking ADHD to addiction and the necessity for systemic changes in workplace environments. Ruth is supported through academic partnerships and supervised "Recognised Prior Learning" to achieve formal coaching certification. Ultimately, the records track her journey of transforming lived experience into a professional portfolio focused on neurodiverse recovery.

This started the way a lot of my thoughts do — from something small that then refused to stay small. I have combined ADHD, though I lean more inattentive, and I also live with misophonia, so I know that particular moment when ordinary background noise suddenly stops feeling ordinary. I was out running, my music cut out, and almost instantly everything around me felt far louder than it had any right to — not dramatic, just that immediate internal shift where sound stops being background and starts landing directly inside your nervous system. Which took me straight into something else I keep circling. How often we still talk about ADHD and associated features as though everything sits neatly in separate boxes, when lived experience rarely feels that neat. Because once you really start looking, it is hard not to notice how much seems to gather around the same core wiring over time: sensory overload, masking, rejection sensitivity, intrusive thinking, people pleasing, hyper-awareness, shame responses, all the quieter internal adaptations people often carry for years before they even realise they are there. And then I found myself wondering about things like Tourette’s too — whether some of that leans more toward the hyper side of the same underlying picture, just expressed differently. Some of it may well sit separately. But some of it also makes me wonder how much develops around years of trying to regulate, suppress, decode, compensate, recover, and repeat — especially the parts that stay internal and therefore often get mistaken for personality rather than recognised for what they are. The more I scribble around it, the less it feels like random overthinking and the more it feels like there may be something in it. I don’t know if I’m off track yet — but I’m not fully convinced I am.

This morning was a perfect example of ADHD cognitive function — in real time — something we talk about a lot in theory, but rarely understand in practice. On paper, it’s neat. Attention. Emotional regulation. Executive function. Working memory. Clean. Structured. Measurable. In reality? It looks like: • waking up already tired • my brain running before I’d even found socks • multiple thoughts forming at once, none of them waiting their turn • analysing conversations, tone, and what-ifs simultaneously • trying to locate something I’d definitely put somewhere “safe” (which is code for: I will absolutely not find it when I need it) • deciding to go for a run like that was a calm, well-considered decision Nothing dramatic. Just… ongoing. Because this is the part that rarely gets explained. It’s not that someone can’t think clearly. It’s that they are thinking: • too much • too quickly • in too many directions at once With emotion, memory, pattern recognition and sensory input all competing for priority. Not in sequence. All at once. With ADHD, this level of processing isn’t unusual — it’s just rarely seen or understood in real time. So instead of: “can’t process” It’s more like: • processing everything, simultaneously • noticing patterns before you’ve consciously worked out why they matter • holding multiple threads of thought that don’t politely queue And then you add real life on top: • relationships • responsibilities • pressure • lack of sleep • hormones • the occasional questionable decision the night before Now it’s not just thinking. It’s load. You’re managing: • internal noise • emotional intensity • constant pattern recognition • and still trying to function as if everything is linear and calm And from the outside? It can look like: • distraction • inconsistency • lack of focus But underneath, it’s: high-speed processing high cognitive load with no off switch So the issue isn’t a lack of ability. It’s a lack of space to regulate that level of processing.

TODAY’S FILE Or: How I Quit My Job, Learned Things, and Accidentally Started Suspecting I Might Actually Know What I’m Doing I quit my job today. No dramatic exit. No storming out. No slow-motion walk carrying a mug, a plant and unresolved rage. Just a very ordinary moment where something internally went: Right. That’s enough now. Not because this appeared out of nowhere. Because this has been building for months, and eventually there comes a point where you realise if you do not move now, you will still be having the exact same argument with yourself six months from now. For context: Life recently has looked like this: • work • children • systems • forms • deadlines • emails • repeated attempts to remember why I opened the laptop in the first place • approximately 247 tabs open internally • one definitely playing music I cannot find • several frozen • at least twelve demanding immediate attention for reasons still unknown So outwardly: normal adult functioning. Internally: still largely winging life and occasionally producing evidence of that without warning. Then somewhere in the middle of all that, I started writing properly. Not because I had a plan. Because certain things I had noticed and questioned for a while finally stopped sitting quietly and started needing somewhere to go. Which became writing. Which became a framework. Which then did something I had not fully factored in: A highly respected person whose thinking I genuinely admire is taking it seriously. Meeting with me. Giving it time. Treating my thinking like it deserves proper thought. Which is a shock in itself. Then, not long after, another respected voice — already quietly reading things I had written elsewhere — stepped in too. Which is roughly where my internal response became: I’m sorry, what? No, actually — Wait… what the fuck is going on here? Not that my brain accepted any of this gracefully. Obviously not. It immediately split itself in two: CHANNEL ONE: This might actually be something. CHANNEL TWO: