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Series 2, Ep12: Vocational visibility, with Andrea Cox

 

EPISODE NOTES

 

 

"I don't think I need some tweaks. I think I need to burn it down."

This week on the Unmasking Unschool podcast, I'm joined by the wonderful Andrea Cox (she/her).

Andrea joined Unmasking Unschool in 2023 after a burnout that coincided with realising her neurodivergence, and led to the decision to review every aspect of her life, from the inside out. 

I talk with Andrea about taking the huge leap of going from full time employment to starting her own business as an Occupational Therapist working exclusively with hypermobile and neurodivergent clients. A decision that was part of a complete reinvention of her life structures.

We also talk about the self doubts that come with working for yourself, and getting comfortable with a new level of visibility. How creating belief in the value of what you offer means your actions and decision are in integrity with how you best live and work so you can offer that value sustainably, and without waiting for permission.

Andrea shares about the impact of Unmasking Unschool,

and having a social context where it is possible to experience multiple examples of what works, as highly relevant context for making new decisions and creating new life and relationship structures;

"There's not a single area of my life, honestly, that hasn't been changed."

Find out more about Andrea's Occupational Therapy practice, access relevant resources, and subscribe to her waiting list here:
https://www.hypermobileot.com/ 

 

TRANSCRIPT:

 

[00:00:00] Hello. Oh, let me get my sound set up here. Okay. No problem. I've been taking like all week being like, I'm not going to script this. I'm not going to script it. I'm not going to do it. Don't do it.

[00:00:23] Hey, sibling, you are listening to the Unmasking Unschool podcast. This is for visionaries, creatives, and change makers who happen to be autistic, who are done with pathology paradigms The masks and misinterpretations of the past and the burnout cycles that come from trying to fit in with what doesn't work.

[00:00:43] You are here to create new aligned life structures, to innovate industries, to design liberatory solutions and create new culture by becoming yourself. My name is Louisa Shaeri. I'm an artist, coach and founder of SOLA Systems. This is all about you getting unstuck, reinventing and elevating your sense of self.

[00:01:03] Having the social context and frameworks to make a life that makes sense for how you make sense so you can finally experience who you're here to be in your fullness. Let's deep dive into it.

[00:01:21] I am so excited because today's episode is with a special guest, a sibling from inside the unmasking unschool who joined last year. And before I invite Andrea Cox onto the podcast with us, I just want to say, people join for all sorts of reasons, and everyone is on a different journey, everyone is at different stages, phases, on those different journeys, and sometimes people join because they're embarking on, or in the midst of, A big leap, a pivot, an identity change, and sometimes that identity change is a vocational one.

[00:02:02] And so today's guest is a brilliant example of many things, including the benefits of taking such a leap. As well as that decision to get support for taking that leap to get coaching to surround yourself with folks who can reflect you back and not just you and who you are, but also who you're becoming so that you can actually start to embody that more and more.

[00:02:29] So I'm so excited to invite you on the podcast. Andrea Cox pronouns. Is she her? Do you want to introduce yourself? Sure. Uh, hi everybody. I'm Andrea. I am a late realized ADHD, with hypermobile Ehlers Danlos syndrome who also just happens to be an occupational therapist. I'm currently specializing, working with hypermobile and or neurodivergent folks, to really help them build a life that actually works for their brains and bodies.

[00:02:57] So for people who don't know, what is an occupational therapist? Yes, most people don't know. So occupational therapy really kind of falls under the big brella of like an allied health or rehabilitation profession. So it's kind of a sibling to physical therapy, which most people are more familiar with.

[00:03:15] but OT, I would say the primary focus of OT is really helping people be able to do the things they need and want to do in their everyday life. So, an example I use a lot, that's kind of simple is, you know, somebody goes into the hospital and they have a hip replacement. And they have pain, and it's hard to walk, and they have all these new rules about not being able to bend over for a certain period of time.

[00:03:37] the physical therapist would work on walking, would work on strengthening leg muscles, using a walker, that sort of thing. and the OT would look more at how are you going to put on your socks if you can't bend over? How are you going to load the dishwasher when you get home? How are you going to play with your grandkid?

[00:03:54] so we really look at the people's needs and wants in their everyday life and figure out kind of how to tailor their life to fit their particular body. Amazing. So it's so important and you specialize right in particular areas. Yeah. So I've been working for almost a decade in more generalized occupational therapy, but recently have launched a business, focusing specifically on people who are hyper mobile and or neurodivergent.

[00:04:20] That Venn diagram tends to overlap a lot. So a lot of people are both things. My big focus right now is really helping people, figure out a way to craft a life where they're not just surviving their day to day, but they're actually thriving because the standard issue, normal, quote unquote, way of being in the world just really does not work for people who have these different bodies.

[00:04:43] And most people have never really had guidance on how to shape their life around what their actual needs and wants are. So that's, that's my primary focus is. Getting people out of just surviving the day to day and into actually living the life that they want to live. Amazing. And this becomes important, I guess, when we don't necessarily, a lot of people don't have the examples of, okay, what does that look like?

[00:05:08] I have this diagnosis, or I've realized this about myself, or I'm having these experiences. And, okay, now what, what, what am I supposed to do? What does that look like? How do people live this way and thrive? So I love that this is something that you are offering for people. I'd love to now talk about how much your own experiences may also inform not only what you're doing, but why you joined the Unmasking Unschool.

[00:05:36] Maybe we could track back to when you first joined, that moment of deciding. Okay. This is for me. What was going on for you? What was your experience of life? What was your experience of work? What was your experience of your own neurodivergence? Yeah. Tell us where you were at. Yeah. I was at a really pivotal moment.

[00:05:56] when I joined unmasking on school, I had earlier in the year taken a few months off work because I hit. Kind of the classic crash of the push and crash cycle that a lot of us live in, and was determined to go back to my normal quote unquote life, maybe with a few adaptations, but surely I, I could just make a few tweaks and everything would be fine.

[00:06:19] Right? , I could, I could make it work. I've been making it work this whole time, my whole life. Surely I could keep making tweaks. And around that time, I'd also discovered my neurodivergence and was trying to apply some of those lessons and those kind of new knowings to my life. And as I spent a couple of months back at work realized, Oh, okay.

[00:06:40] I don't think I need some tweaks. I think I need to burn it down. I think every single thing needs to change fundamentally, because not only is the way I'm living just, it's not working for my body, I'm constantly crashing. I'm, it's not working in any way. It's not sustainable, it's not fulfilling, it's not the way I want to be in the world.

[00:07:01] So I took a huge leap. Right around the time I joined Unmasking Unschool, and Quit my kind of standard health care job, with some hopes and dreams of what I could form eventually, uh, but really kind of in a place of like I have no choice. This is this is Where my life has come to and my body is saying stop and so I need to stop and so I I joined kind of at a point of One of the really the biggest life shifts that I've ever had, in every, every aspect of my life, really going back to the foundations of what I want my day to day to be, and what I want my relationships to be like, and what I want my work life to be like.

[00:07:41] And I knew I was going to need some help figuring that out, because that's a lot of really big questions all at once. And I still was very, very much, not surrounded by a bunch of neurodivergent people who could help me figure that out and mirror kind of my experiences back to me and help me figure out a path that might actually work.

[00:08:03] so I, I knew that it was really important to get in a community with a bunch of people whose brains worked like mine. If I had any chance of, of kind of steering the ship in the direction that I wanted it to go, I needed examples. That feeling of having no choice of your body's just. Saying stop, right, and knowing that you need to burn it down, which is quite a scary thing to face and then developing the trust, right, the trust to, okay, my body's saying no, but that means I have to.

[00:08:39] Take a different path take some different action and so it's been really satisfying for me and you know life affirming for myself and folks in the program to watch you kind of make those those bold choices as you've been in the program and you joined after you'd already quit, but you hadn't quite launched what was coming next we're going to get into that in a minute, but I'm curious just to.

[00:09:07] Give us the, the, the punchline, give us the, the sort of where you at now, what's the picture that you're experiencing now of what your life is like, your work is like, your relationships, that is different. I mean, everything is still very much in progress and I'm learning every day what, what needs to be shifting because I think there's a lot of work to do there and none of that is immediate.

[00:09:32] But now I have a work life that actually can adjust to my body's needs and is built around my body's needs. It's in a special interest area of mine, so cognitively and emotionally it's, It's, it's exciting and it feels engaging in a way that my work has never felt before. I've really shifted my relationships to, to really work on being the unmasked version of myself with as many people as possible, which has led me to actually be able to maintain better and more relationships because I'm not burning all my energy using my mask all the time with everyone I'm interacting with on a daily basis.

[00:10:13] Yeah, so it's, it's just been, there's not a single area of my life, honestly, that hasn't been changed drastically. And there's lots of areas that are still very much evolving and changing as, as I figure things out. But I now have the, I don't have the trust in my own self to know what feels good and what doesn't.

[00:10:31] And it feels like I have a, that I have a roadmap of where to go for the first time. So it all feels, it feels doable, which it did not at the start at all. I remember back in the beginning when you were getting ready to launch this new business, you, uh, finishing the website and there was some resistance that we worked through.

[00:10:53] Yeah, very clearly. I think I, it took me a minute to even notice it myself. I was just, I was experiencing it as. General resistance towards kind of putting myself out in the world, but then kind of dug a little deeper and recognized, Oh, this is, this is actually me publicly proclaiming my neurodivergence on the internet for everyone to see for the first time.

[00:11:16] And at this point in my life, the people close to me knew, and I had had this discussion with several people in my life and, you know, the close circle around me knew, but there was a large n ber of people in my acquaintances and former work colleagues. Just my larger life that didn't know and I was very aware of the stigma that comes when people read that word and they don't have a good understanding of what it means.

[00:11:46] They really, the only understanding they have is cultural stereotypes. And so I was facing knowing that putting that out there for the public would mean that people would misinterpret me. And. Come to incorrect ass ptions about me And I had to take some time to become okay with that And to work through what that would feel like when that happened not if when when that happened Because it probably would and i'm glad I did that before I did.

[00:12:20] I did officially press publish Yeah Yeah, it is such a brave decision to make and I, and I think some of what we coached on was what would, what would the impact of that be on not only yourself and your ability to just do the work that you want to do, but also the example that you would be for the, for the folks who are coming to you because they recognize that in themselves and they specifically want that.

[00:12:45] To work with you for that. And the fact that you, you get it as a lived experience, not just a concept. Right. And I think that was something else that came up in your journey, if I remember correctly, was really about this isn't your first time working as an occupational therapist. This is, this wasn't your first time supporting people being in that type of role.

[00:13:08] But this was the first time that you were doing it As your own business without an institutional framing and that type of, uh, sort of backing and there's a difference, right? When you, when you go out on your own and it's people paying you directly, often with their own money, or they are the one that's choosing to work with you specifically, there's, I think this happens for everyone that starts their own business and is working with people in that way, where Your fears and thoughts that are, are looking for what could go wrong.

[00:13:43] And what could go wrong is that no one recognizes that value. And so this is something that we worked on that had to be not cleared up so much as recognizing that this is part and parcel of the path of running your own business is that your brain is going to do that. You're building evidence for that belief as you go.

[00:14:02] Do you want to talk about your experience with that and what's happening for you since then? Oh yeah, I had a very, very intense period of imposter syndrome that was, it felt crushing, honestly, , I was at that stage of, I had, I felt like I'd built the foundations and I was really starting to roll things out and see clients and, , do the thing that I wanted to do, but I didn't yet have any of the evidence that what I was doing was useful.

[00:14:34] And so in that interim, my brain just kind of easily went down the spiral of, well, there's no, you've never done this before, so there's no proof. That anything you're offering is going to help anybody, , who do you think you are, you know, none of your past experience could possibly matter because that was a different setting and that was a different clientele.

[00:14:54] And just because you have lived experience doesn't mean that translates. I had every, every possible self doubt that you could ever imagine so intensely to the point that it, it became challenging to keep going. Honestly, because my fear of either not providing value or somehow provide, or somehow harming somebody became so outsized.

[00:15:19] Because I didn't have evidence yet that what I was doing was useful that my brain was kind of screaming at me to be like, I don't know, is this worth it? You know, we don't, we don't know the results of this. Is it, are you, are you going to be able to support yourself? Is any of this going to be useful? , and so that's when the coaching was really, really helpful to hear from other people who'd been in this specific spot and learned that it was not uniquely me that was having these feelings and having these doubts of myself at the beginning.

[00:15:51] But this was kind of a semi universal experience in this process of starting something new and doing something new that I hadn't done before. Yeah, I needed, I needed that reassurance. That this was not uniquely my problem, that this was just part of the journey of doing something new and kind of creating new pathways in my life of what, what's possible.

[00:16:15] Yes. I love how you've articulated that. And it's, it really doesn't go away, right? It's just you start to recognize that every time that you're expanding or you're trying something new or you're shifting into a different sense of self or identity, that this is what shows up. So having the tools to not have it be in the driving seat, but to, okay, it can ride with us.

[00:16:40] It can be there. The thoughts can be screaming at different times, but they're not the ones that are. In charge of what you're doing i'm curious to ask because some of the work that we do in the unmasking on school is around the sensations is our relationship with what our body is saying what the messages are so when you were having all of these self doubts what was how was that showing up in your experience beyond just your thoughts in your body in what you were doing yeah what did that look like.

[00:17:12] It had showed up for me, I think in a really deep freeze state, I felt like everything in my, in my brain and my body kind of just powered down. And I felt pretty paralyzed, honestly, in even just kind of doing the day to day of the business. I get up and I come sit at my computer and I just stare at the monitor and I'd have my to do list and I physically could not force myself to do the things.

[00:17:39] Even if they were simple and even if they didn't involve a lot of executive function, there was some barrier in my system against moving forward that felt it was very physical. It was very visceral, it was very physical, and it did not feel like something that I could just wish away, or like, simply just decide not to feel anymore.

[00:18:00] It was a very ever present state. Another thing I realized in this phase of kind of being at the start of everything was that I was waiting for someone to give me permission to do this, and that I think, you know, in most of us in our roles in our life, we go to school, we get degrees, we have certifications, we work for a company, and they give us the authority, to do this job.

[00:18:27] And, you know, while I still have my education and my degree and my license and all the things that do give me an authority, you know, to practice occupational therapy, it was very scary to not have. an institution or somebody above me kind of giving me that permission, which was an aspect that I was not anticipating, but turned out to be really challenging.

[00:18:49] realizing that I was going to have to be the one that gave myself the permission. And that was very new. And this, the same has been true if I remember about how you structure your working patterns, right? So, , You know, when you have a job where you're working for an organization, often they are dictating your working hours or your working patterns, how much holiday you have, what type of breaks you have.

[00:19:18] And there's a different type of authority that's also at play when you are the one who's in control of your schedule and your time and how you work. Yeah. It's, it's taken me a minute, I think, to claim that authority for several months. It felt like I was, Still subconsciously operating within the space of like what I was supposed to be doing.

[00:19:38] And what a typical workplace, how they would operate and how this should go. But eventually I did get to the point where I thought, Oh, okay, I am actually in charge and It's my responsibility to take care of myself so that I can continue doing this and to model to all my clients who I'm preaching this exact same message that I'm also preaching to myself to be listening to my body and actually respecting its signals when it's telling me to stop.

[00:20:08] So yeah, recently I was in a big flare and was really not feeling well. And for a minute did not occur to me to the shift. I'm so used to just pushing and pushing and pushing because that's what I've always had to do within kind of a standard work situation. But eventually I had the thought, wait, I'm in charge.

[00:20:29] I can choose to take a break, so I rescheduled all my patients who are also all chronically ill and have flares and everyone was very understanding and. Very kind about it, and I spent a week on the couch and felt a lot better and then just picked back up and nothing broke, nothing caught on fire, nothing was destroyed.

[00:20:53] So it's a very new experience of, I think, finding my agency in all of this, in realizing that I actually do have some say in my work rhythms and in the way my life runs. And then even bigger than that, that like, it's really important for me to do those things visibly so that the people that I'm working with can see that it's possible because I've never had anybody model that for me.

[00:21:22] And I think that's why it's been so challenging for me to understand that it's even a possibility. Yeah, so important. You creating a business where you are doing it because you're redesigning your life to fit you and part of that for you has meant who you're working with and so there's this incredible sort of symmetry between what works for you and what's going to be.

[00:21:50] Beneficial for them to see in you being the example and the kind of choices that you make the business that you are in charge of, right? I love it. So, , obviously, one of the things that we've talked about is, is the coaching. And part of Unmasking Unschool has this social context, it has this group, it's parallel journeys where you're witnessing other people.

[00:22:17] Yeah, I'm curious to hear from you what the impact of that has been, first for yourself, but also being able to then model that for the clients that you work with. I think at first, you know, I, I was very much a observer in the group. It took me a minute to feel safe enough to really be vulnerable and kind of put my story out there.

[00:22:43] But even at the start, just witnessing other people who were living lives, even though they lived in different countries and had different professions and were different ages and had different relationship statuses. Like our lives had so many unbelievably uncanny parallels. Witnessing that was so helpful because I had never, not, not knowing I was neurodivergent for so long and going through my entire childhood and adulthood, I had never had the experience of meeting someone like me, knowingly, like understanding why I was similar to somebody else and why our brains worked in similar ways.

[00:23:23] So to see that played out in other people's struggles and other people's victories and other people's lives. In a way where they were sharing so vulnerably and so openly and really honestly was everything that was, that's what like gave me the roadmap basically for myself, because if you don't, if there's no examples, it's sometimes it's hard to know what you're aiming for or what standard experience what's, what's standard human experience and what's neurodivergent human experience and how to tease those things apart and being able to see my own life mirrored and those people's lives and map my struggles.

[00:24:02] In some ways, almost directly onto other peoples, because we have such similar situations. And people, some people were further ahead of me in this journey, so that gave me a like a picture of what things could look like a vision that I hadn't had before, because I knew I needed to burn it all down, but I wasn't 100 percent sure, like what this new vision was going to be.

[00:24:27] I didn't know where I was going to end up or what I even wanted things to look like, eventually, or where I wanted to end up. So having that model. It was so, so helpful. Yeah. And do you think there's been an impact then on, on how you've been able to reflect and witness those that you work with that, that identify with neurodivergence?

[00:24:50] Definitely. And I think something I've noticed both in the, the coaching space that I've watched other people work through, and then I've worked through myself and then now I'm helping people to work through is this feeling of shame of our lives, not looking like everybody else's. Yeah. , and whether you're chronically ill or neurodivergent or both, there's just a lot of aspects of your life that just aren't going to look like everybody else.

[00:25:21] And I learned through coaching and then now I've been able to, to really help pass this on In my practice, is that really 90 percent of the battle is just unlearning this idea within us that our life needs to be a certain way and look a certain way and function a certain way, and that we should have certain amount of productivity and our relationship should look a certain way.

[00:25:47] And then the shame that comes with feeling like you're constantly failing at that over and over and over again, because if, if you keep that barrier, that shame barrier in place. It's almost impossible to do the practical stuff. We can't, you know, figure out a way for you to wash your dishes, you know, without hurting your hands or schedule your work, you know, your work calendar so that it works with your brain.

[00:26:09] If underneath all of that, you still have really deep shame about the fact that you even have to accommodate yourself at all. So that's a foundational piece that I think I really saw play out and coaching that has been so important. To my journey and now to the people I'm working with is that you can't skip that step.

[00:26:29] It's, it's mandatory. , as challenging as that part is. Uh, nothing else, none of the practical stuff that follows is going to work if you do it all in shame. I'm imagining when people are working with you, how you're able to embody a lack of shame around those, those topics, right? And hold space for someone who may need to go slowly or pace things in a way that this is coming up for me because I've been living or thinking that I should be different.

[00:27:00] And here is someone who's living in a way that works for them. Who isn't now caught into that shame spiral and that sense of, uh, not good enough. What are some of the things that you find particularly satisfying about the work that you're doing now? Sort of in the nuances of it. I mean, I think the, the biggest thing that gives me the most joy is watching, it's watching the moment when people figure out that they actually deserve to be accommodated in their life.

[00:27:35] This is not these things that they're asking for from people around them, from their environment, from their workplaces. they're not a burden for asking those things. we are not a burden to the people around us because we have different needs. We live in a world that inherently does not accommodate us.

[00:27:55] And most of us have spent our lives, especially if we've been chronically ill for a long time or had undiagnosed neurodivergence, We've gotten reinforced over and over again from the environment, from our parents, from our family members, from our friends, people around us that we don't deserve to be accommodated.

[00:28:12] , and so of course we internalize that. That's what we've heard is that these things we're asking for too much. So I think the moment I could like, I can, I can feel it in somebody when it shifts to them recognizing that this is actually something as it just as a human being that they deserve, they deserve to live a life.

[00:28:32] That it's not constantly past their thresholds and pushing past their limits and making them accommodate for the world around them all the time that they act, they truly actually deserve simply because they're a human being to live in a way that works. And once somebody has that shift, then I know, like, we're off to the races.

[00:28:55] So, how does someone know if they're in a position, or that it's a good moment for them to start working with an occupational therapist? What might be the point at which someone starts to work with you? Yeah, a lot of times people do come to me because they do have a new diagnosis, or a new realization, because, They walk out of the doctor's office with this piece of paper that has this word on it, and they're just let loose into the world with no instructions on what this means for them, what this means for their life.

[00:29:24] so I do have a lot of people that come to see me after a new diagnosis, but I also have a lot of people that come to see me after they've had these diagnoses for years and years, and have, have usually hit some sort of point. Where in some aspect of their life, they just have this like really deep feeling of like, this isn't working even just around simple things of like managing food.

[00:29:48] You know, if this is taking you all of your energy to, Executive function and plan the grocery shop and go to the grocery store and then figure out what we're eating what night and who likes what food in your family. And my hands really hurt chopping all the vegetables. And it's this thing I dread every single day, because I can't, it just feels so difficult.

[00:30:07] Even if something, if that's the only issue somebody has, they can come to me and we can problem solve that, you know, from a million different angles, all the way as big as. Oh my gosh, I realized my job isn't working for me anymore. I can't continue doing this job at this level without accommodations. How on earth do I ask for accommodations?

[00:30:27] What accommodations do I even ask for? If I need to find a new job, what should I be looking for to make sure it fits me? Basically, if there's any, if there's any part kind of of your day to day that you have this like really deep knowing that it isn't working, Even if you don't know why, if it isn't working for you, that means there's room to make some adjustments so that it feels lighter and it feels easier and it feels less like a burden.

[00:30:53] Amazing. And how does it work? Do, do people need to be in person with you? I work totally remotely, for a lot of reasons, both for access and, just for safety. We're still in a pandemic, and so I really, a lot of people I work with are immunocompromised. I try to keep everybody safe. at the moment, I am only working with residents of Colorado, and the United States.

[00:31:18] However, I am very soon going to be expanding my practice. outside of Colorado. So if anybody is outside of the state and listening to this and is wanting to work with me, I have a wait list on my website that you can go, put your name on and I will notify everybody on there. when my practice area expands.

[00:31:35] Amazing. And if people are looking to work with an occupational therapist, they're interested to work with you or to access some of the resources that you have, where can they find your website or information? Yeah, the easiest way to find me is my website. Hypermobileot.com. I have lots of resources on there.

[00:31:53] and more information about what OT is, more information about hypermobility and neurodivergence information about what I offer resources. If some of these symptoms sound familiar to you, but you're, you don't have a diagnosis and you're looking to explore, I have resources for you there, but yeah, website is the easiest way to find me.

[00:32:11] So we'll put the link to the website in the show notes. Thank you so much for. First of all, being such an amazing sibling inside of the Unmasking Unschool, it's been such a pleasure to witness you, coach you, and see your growth. And thank you also for, yeah, sharing the wisdoms from your journey on the podcast.

[00:32:33] Thank you so much, Louisa, for having me.

 

 

 

 

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