Here's why I'm doing free school talks (even though they terrify me)

When I was at school, I was bullied relentlessly - by other kids, teachers, and myself.

I hated it so much that I'd often put my head over a boiling kettle in the morning to (unsuccessfully) fake a temperature. I couldn't concentrate in classes, but hated break time the most. I didn't know what to talk to other children about and spent a lot of time hiding in bathrooms.

I was an expert at texting underneath tables without looking and would usually have my headphones hidden under my hair. I had no idea what to do with my life and felt bad at everything, with no real interests or hobbies other than trying to figure out how to fit in, smoking cigarettes before school and getting black out drunk clubbing on the weekend. At 13.

One teacher told my best friend not to be friends with me when she started the school. I was a 'bad influence'. Another asked the entire class if I'd cheated in my exams, as it was impossible that I'd managed to get straight A's.

So when I started coaching and was inundated by parents wanting support for their children, I tried to help, because I knew what they'd been through. I explained to one of the first parents I met how yes, I really do understand the messiness linked with ADHD and children, having been burgled and horrified police officers at the state of my bedroom.

I had to explain that the burglars didn't actually touch anything in the bomb site of the floordrobe I existed in, other than rather expertly navigating my organised chaos to take my pocket money hidden in my sock draw.

However, I was quickly overwhelmed by the mountain of children who needed support, and found it much harder to navigate the boundaries between parents and children. More than anything, it was very hard to see the mental health support these children needed but were unable or unwilling to access, and ADHD coaching is not a replacement for this.

So I wrote a book instead, the Reality Manifesto, and stopped coaching children through ADHD Works, training other coaches to do so instead (many of whom are therapists, teachers and parents).

I have largely steered clear of talking in schools, because truthfully, it's terrifying. I'd take Google, Disney, or the Bank of America any day over a room of kids who have to be there.

I don't feel much like a 'role model' - I feel like someone who was very lucky to scrape through school, but I don't really know how I did it. I managed to get straight A's in my exams, but those teachers' comments stay in my head, making me feel like a fraud for being myself.

I wasn't diagnosed with ADHD until age 25, well after my life collapsed after losing the structure of full time education. My 'revision hacks' were intuitively playing to my strengths (doing homework in the car, exam-based subjects, and Wikipedia revision) and hacking my weaknesses (getting someone to change my social media passwords).

In all honesty, I often still feel like the child who was bullied for being ugly and stupid, and who believed these things about herself.

However, I see these children today and know that they deserve better than that. They have had years of their life taken from them with the pandemic, and are still being gaslit by our Government expecting them to go back to school like nothing happened.

They're still being pitted against standardised, outdated education systems that are not preparing them for the world they're entering, one with big problems like war, that they will be expected to solve. They are graduating into a world where the very nature of most jobs is changing due to technology, and a climate emergency. They're being exploited on social media, with algorithms that understand them better than they understand themselves, that are irresistibly addictive and harmful.

This isn't even getting to the neurodivergent children - those who think differently to 'most'. The awareness may exist for them around neurodiversity, but the support does not. Years long waiting lists for assessments and criteria at a threshold of crisis or danger to life. Children should not have to be in crisis to access help - none of us should. Yet these children are trapped - the waiting lists are too long for them to be on as children, but they can't yet go onto the adult lists.

In the meantime, they're being shamed for not conforming as expected. There's national campaigns from our Government criticising them for not going to school, where they need help.

Their parents are stuck, watching on helplessly. They may have the option to pay thousands for an assessment, but even with a formal diagnosis, they still have to navigate EHCPs and adjustments in school. 95% of Local Authority decisions about EHCPs are overturned by the tribunal in favour of parents. This means there is clearly a failing with the system, but only those privileged enough to endure it can access it - and they must pay a very high price to do so.

Schools have traditionally felt too overwhelming to venture into, but if I can help, I would like to.

I don't know that writing books, fashion modelling, or being on TV makes me a 'role model', but I do know that:

If I'd heard someone speak at my school who could explain to me how my brain worked and what this meant for me in the 'real world', it could have saved me a decade of feeling like I didn't want or deserve to exist.

Hearing someone who also felt like an alien at school tell me that things get better and I am worthy of being genuinely liked in relationships with others could have saved me from endless toxic relationships.

Hearing someone who had gone down the 'traditional' career path with a brain like mine that refused to conform could have saved me from forcing myself to try to fit into a 'good' career.

This could have enabled me to do things I actually enjoyed, instead of thinking I had to be a lawyer or a doctor or my life was pointless.

Hearing someone who was a fashion model on the cover of magazines explain how exploitative and fake the industry is, including what we see on social media, with photoshop and girls being forced to lose weight by other adults, may have saved me from that same fate.

Hearing someone who does a job like ADHD Coaching, that I'd never heard of at the time, would have helped me to see that I didn't have to follow the path that was so forcibly laid out for me. Realising that jobs existed where you could help people and do something 'good', and survive financially, would have saved me years of pointlessly applying for jobs I hated.

Hearing someone who can explain ADHD in a way where you're not talking about a 'disorder', but a difference, would have inspired me to stand up for myself a little better when seeking help. Hearing ADHD talked about in a way that is not medical, but relatable, would have helped me to understand that I was not broken. I would have felt less ashamed of who I was.

Hearing how I could adapt my environment to fit me, instead of forcing myself to fit in, would have helped me to feel as though there was hope. It would have helped me to see that the 'creative adjustments' I did as a child weren't cheating - they were my ADHD.

If I had been diagnosed with ADHD as a child, I may still have got the same excellent exam results, but I do think my life would have been very different.

I may have had more people treat me with compassion, instead of shame - and most importantly, I would have treated myself in this way. I may have started to realise that I was okay as I was, and to feel I was deserving of enjoying life as much as everybody else seemed to be.

So, if you want me to come and talk at your child's school, feel free to tell them to get in touch here, and I will make it work.

If you want to become an ADHD Works Coach in April, head here.

Sign the petition against this campaign here.