There was a time, near the start of my career, when I would walk around the office wearing latex gloves, scared to touch anything. But no one ever asked me what was going on or why I was doing what I was doing.
I’m sure they wanted to, but at the time (early 2010s) awareness of neurodiversity in general was so nascent that I think my colleagues didn’t know how to have that conversation and, perhaps for fear of potentially offending me, avoided it.
I’ve lived with OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) and germaphobia since I was a teenager, and for years felt like it was something I had to build up to telling people, especially colleagues, hoping by that point they’d grown to like me enough that my neurodiversity wouldn’t matter.
The best way I can describe OCD, to those fortunate enough to have never experienced compulsive thoughts, is to imagine an unbearable itch inside your brain that you can’t scratch physically but can soothed by doing what your brain tells you to. In my case, that’s washing my hands – a lot.
I did my best to keep my OCD to myself early in my career, mostly because I wasn’t sure how people in a professional environment would react and whether it would affect my career prospects.
Over the years, I got better at talking to people about my mental health. Nowadays, it’s the first thing I mention, and I make a point of not hiding it from anyone, including clients, knowing I have the support of my agency if it’s ever a problem. So far, it hasn’t been.
Maturity helped, as did feeling more content in my professional accomplishments, but society’s awareness and acceptance have also massively evolved.
Neurodiversity is an invisible condition and requires empathy from teams. Unlike a physical ailment where everyone’s experience is pretty similar, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to mental health.
Your neurodiverse colleagues have more on their minds than you might realise, and even two people with the same condition can have wildly different triggers.
One of the biggest things agencies can do to help is identify potential flashpoints and put policies in place to better avoid them. If a colleague is allergic to peanuts it’s easy to make the office a nut-free zone — the approach to mental health should be no different.
No one wants to feel like a burden, and agencies displaying a willingness – even happiness – to make concessions for the benefit of neurodiverse team members should be the norm, not the exception.
I can’t stress enough – whether you’re neurodivergent or not – the importance of speaking up about anything that might affect you in the workplace. I would hate for anyone to join the industry and feel, like I did, that they can’t bring up their true feelings or think they need to hide a part of who they are.
Gen Z has primarily grown up in a world that has encouraged more openness and honesty about mental health, and senior PR leaders need to meet that expectation.
Those of us in these positions are responsible for vocalising our struggles and empowering those at the start of their careers to do the same.
We can’t expect people to bring their whole selves to work if we don’t lead by example.
This article originally appeared on PR Week
