This Voice is Mine: the Unquiet Podcast

Dr Miguel Toribio-Mateas is a clinical neuroscientist, nutrition researcher and applied microbiologist who works on the gut-brain axis, neurodivergence and mental health. Diagnosed ADHD at 47 and later identified as autistic, he brings science, clinical practice and lived experience to one question: what genuinely nourishes us? In this conversation with Dr Emma Offord, Miguel traces a winding path through business, yoga, Ayurveda and environmental science. He explains why ADHD and autism are ways of experiencing the world rather than diseases, and why nutrition advice that ignores capacity so often falls flat. They talk about peaks and valleys, hyperfocus and burnout, microwave rice on low-energy days, and why niche, complex work is worth doing. This is a conversation about flexibility, respect and understanding what your own brain and body need. Follow Miguel on Instagram: @drmiguelmateas Website: drmiguelmateas.com This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast. For every neurodivergent mind that was masked, misread or missed.

Dr Ali Bromley is a forensic psychologist, ADHD coach and LGBTQ+ affirmative therapist with twenty years' experience across mental health and criminal justice. In 2024 she won Big Brother. In this episode, she talks with Dr Emma Offord about being watched but not understood, the masks we wear to belong, and what it means to recognise your neurodivergence later in life. They discuss burnout, grief, the pressure on clinicians to stay distant, and the quiet power of finding your people. Ali speaks honestly about the cost of public life and what changes when you stop performing ease. It is honest, funny and grounded in lived experience. Ali campaigns for suicide awareness, neuroinclusivity and LGBTQ+ rights. Follow Ali on her Instagram account @_ali.bromley find her website BromleyPsychology.uk

In this grounded and deeply honest conversation, Lucinda Miller, clinical lead of NatureDoc and bestselling author, joins Dr Emma Offord to explore what nutrition looks like in neurodivergent life. Lucinda is ADHD, alongside two of her three children, which makes this conversation personal as well as professional. Together, Emma and Lucinda look at food, gut health, iron, sleep and histamine. They ask how to nourish neurodivergent brains without creating another set of rules that families feel they are failing. Planning, buying and tolerating food all take capacity, and this episode makes room for that. A warm, practical and human conversation for anyone who has ever felt that food was one more thing to get wrong. Follow Lucinda on her Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/naturedockids/

Jolene Ironside, DL team member, integrative counsellor, ADHD coach and holistic therapist, joins Dr Emma Offord for a conversation about the body's own language, and why so many neurodivergent people were taught to stop listening to it. Jolene explains how children learn to override exhaustion, sensory overwhelm and physical discomfort just to keep pace with environments that were never built for them, and what that disconnection costs later in life: anxiety, hypervigilance, and a nervous system stuck in survival mode. Together, Emma and Jolene explore what changes when we come back into the body, including a beautiful centring practice Jolene calls finding your "soft front, strong back." This is a gentle, grounded episode for anyone who has spent years living entirely in their head, and is ready to come home to the body instead. Follow Jolene: @heart_in_mind_uk — https://www.instagram.com/heart_in_mind_uk/ This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast. For every neurodivergent mind that was masked, misread, or missed.

In this honest, funny and deeply human conversation, Dr Tuesday Watts-Overall, psychologist and mother of three, joins Dr Emma Offord to talk about the truth of modern motherhood: the fear, the perfectionism, and the shame around feelings we were never taught to name. Tuesday shares how she left an academic career built on perfectionism behind when motherhood made it impossible to keep performing, and how a single moment on her own driveway became the turning point that changed everything. Together, Emma and Tuesday explore the myth of the easy child, the fear of becoming your child's inner critic, sensory overwhelm, and why connection, not solutions, is what mothers are really looking for. A grounding, validating listen for every mother figuring out who she is underneath the performance. Follow Dr Tuesday on her Instagram account https://www.instagram.com/iamdrtuesday/

Ruby describes herself first and foremost as the little sister of her big brother Ewan, who is profoundly autistic, non-speaking, and has a severe learning disability. In this episode of *This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast*, Ruby joins Dr Emma Offord to talk about a devotion that has shaped her whole life, and a system that has repeatedly let her family down. Ruby shares what it meant to lose her closest companion to residential school at seven, to learn to be let down, and to live inside a hypervigilance that never really switches off. She speaks with rare honesty about the 454 days Ewan spent in a psychiatric hospital, the fight to bring him home, and finding her own identity beyond being his shadow. This is a conversation about love that carries fear, and fear that never once looks like resentment. A story for anyone who has ever had to hold two things true at once. Follow Ruby on [her Instagram account here](https://www.instagram.com/ewenandme/).Find out more at divergentlife.co.uk. This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast.

James Hunt, founder of the Stories About Autism community and SAA Clothing, and author of Love Needs No Words, joins Dr Emma Offord for a tender conversation about fatherhood, communication and connection. James is dad to Jude, 18, and Tommy, 15, both autistic, non-speaking and living with global developmental delay. He shares how one Facebook post grew into a community of hundreds of thousands, and how his family have found ways to communicate without spoken words, from eyes and body language to AAC devices and, more recently, nightly text messages with Tommy. Together, James and Emma talk about Jude turning 18, the fear and hope of watching him grow more independent, living with the uncertainty of Tommy's tics, and the small sensory rituals that keep James grounded. Honest, warm and full of heart. Follow James on Instagram @storiesaboutautism. Find out more at divergentlife.co.uk. This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast.

In this episode of This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast, Dr Emma Offord sits down with DL Clinical Psychologist Ashlyn Firkins, an HCPC registered assessor with over a decade of experience across NHS and private practice. Ashlyn was diagnosed dyslexic in childhood, an experience that shaped how she sees the world and, later, how she came to understand her son Ted, diagnosed autistic at three. She talks candidly about being a late bloomer, holding two sides of herself (the perfectionist and the playful, spontaneous one), and the long, uncertain wait for a diagnosis. She shares what changed when she stopped searching for answers in a textbook and started following Ted's lead instead, and the values-led practices that help her show up for him on the hardest days. This is a moving, honest conversation about resilience, grief and learning to truly see your child. Follow Ashlyn: @an.autism.care.space Listen and follow: divergentlife.co.uk This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast.

Rachel Clark was seventeen when she wrote her debut book, How to Save Your Own Life. In this episode of This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast, Rachel talks to Dr Emma Offord about growing up as an undiagnosed autistic girl, the years she spent internalising difference as personal failure, and the eating disorder that became the only way she felt she could be heard. Rachel speaks openly about situational mutism, about a treatment system that wasn't built for her brain, and about the nurse who gave her hope when nothing else could. She shares how a late autism identification became a turning point rather than a complication, and why she now believes there is no such thing as too complex, only someone who hasn't yet been properly understood. A conversation about survival, identity and the hope that makes recovery possible. Follow Rachel on Instagram @rachelc1ark This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast, from Divergent Lives.

In this episode of This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast, Dr Emma Offord talks with Linsey Biggs, full-time parent carer to three and the voice behind Unschooling Stanley, about the years that led her to take her eldest son out of school entirely. Linsey describes watching her son's distress build until it became impossible to ignore, and the moment she finally trusted what he was telling her over what the school system kept insisting. She talks about recognising her own ADHD and school trauma through his journey, the judgement that came with choosing a different path, and what eight years of unschooling has taught her about trusting children as whole people, not projects to manage. A raw, grounded conversation about crisis, recovery, and what becomes possible when you stop pushing a child to fit a system that was never built for them. Follow Linsey: @unschoolingstanley (https://www.instagram.com/unschoolingstanley/) Divergent Lives: divergentlife.co.uk This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast

Dr Helen Wall spent years quietly noticing something no one had trained her to see: that hormones shape the brain, and for neurodivergent women, that shift can be seismic. Her own perimenopause took her ability to function before it touched anything else. She was told she was too young. She believed it, for six months, until she couldn't cope and finally sought help. In this episode, Dr Emma Offord and Jolene Ironside talk with Helen, GP, menopause specialist and author of Menopause and ADHD, about medical misogyny, endometriosis diagnosis times that are rising rather than falling, and the pressure to secure a formal diagnosis before you're allowed to trust your own experience. Helen's message throughout is simple and hard won: you don't have to wait for permission to understand yourself. Connect with Helen: @doctorhelenwall | tvhealthdoctor.com This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast is hosted by Dr Emma Offord, clinical psychologist and founder of Divergent Lives.

Lou was diagnosed ADHD in her 30s. By that point, she had already been through secondary school struggling and unidentified, failed college three times, experienced serious mental health crises, and spent years being told to try harder. When she finally sat with a therapist, everything she brought to that room turned out to be ADHD. Not failure, but simply a neurotype the world had never named for her. In this episode, Dr Emma Offord and Lou, founder of ADHD Interrupted, have the kind of conversation that doesn't happen enough: one where the full cost of late diagnosis is named with honesty and without flinching. The shame. The anger at the systems that missed her. The grief for the years lived without language or support. And the slow, extraordinary work of building a life rooted in self-understanding rather than self-blame. Lou's hope, that one day your neurotype is known as simply as your blood type, is a thread that runs through this whole conversation. That kind of world starts with conversations like this one. If you have ever felt like you were trying your hardest and still falling short, like something was always slightly off but no one could tell you why, this episode is for you.

Dr Clare Jacobson has spent over 20 years holding people's most intimate inner worlds. As a specialist clinical psychologist in teenage and young adult cancer care, she knows what it means to sit with invisible experience - the kind that doesn't show up on a blood test, but is completely real. Over the past year, Clare has been on her own journey of neurodivergent identification. And in this conversation with Emma, she brings both lenses: the clinician who has learned to approach people's inner lives with curiosity rather than certainty, and the late-identified person who spent decades being told - by the world and eventually by herself - that the parts of her that didn't fit were somehow wrong. They talk about the hunter-farmer analogy, the card game metaphor, hypermobility and proprioception, receiving extra sensory data, and what Clare calls the original Internet - the idea that neurodivergent people might be evolved to tap into collective consciousness in ways that neurotypical people simply can't access. It's a conversation about bodies, belonging, and learning to trust what you've always known. If you've ever felt like the call was coming from inside the house, this episode is for you. It probably isn't. This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast is hosted by Dr Emma Offord, clinical psychologist and founder of Divergent Lives. For every neurodivergent mind that was masked, misread, or missed.

What happens when perimenopause and neurodivergent identification arrive at the same moment? When hormones shift, the mask starts to slip, and nobody in the medical system has any idea what is actually going on? In this episode, Dr Emma Offord speaks with Sophie Cartledge, founder of Hormones on the Blink, a training platform working at the intersection of hormone health, menopause, and neurodivergence. Sophie is late-identified autistic and ADHD, discovered both through her own perimenopause journey, and has since dedicated her work to helping women, clinicians, and workplaces join the dots. This conversation covers identity whiplash, the oestrogen-dopamine connection, rage as information, burnout versus unmasking, and what it actually takes to get through the darkest moments of midlife. It also covers what becomes possible on the other side. If your nervous system is shifting and nobody is naming it properly, this one is for you. Connect with Sophie: @hormonesontheblink This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast is hosted by Dr Emma Offord, clinical psychologist and founder of Divergent Lives. For every neurodivergent mind that was masked, misread, or missed.

What does it take to build a movement of over a million people when you started secondary school unable to speak a single word? In this episode, Dr Emma Offord speaks with Eve Harrison, founder of Let's Make A Difference, a grassroots campaign raising awareness about communication challenges and the power of small acts of understanding. Eve is autistic, learned BSL during the pandemic when speech was not available to her, and has since used that journey to educate, include, and advocate for others. This conversation moves through selective mutism, the invisibility of quietly struggling neurodivergent young people, diagnosis, the SEND white paper, and the raw truth about what schools do not yet understand. Eve is 18 years old and already changing the conversation. Different, not less. That is the message. And it has always been true. Connect with Eve on Instagram: @lets.make.a_difference1 This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast is hosted by Dr Emma Offord, clinical psychologist and founder of Divergent Lives. For every neurodivergent mind that was masked, misread, or missed.

What does it actually mean to take care of yourself, when every version of self-care you've tried has felt like another thing to fail at? In this episode, Dr Emma Offord speaks with Suzy Reading, Chartered Psychologist and author of How to Be Selfish , about what it takes to heal our relationship with self. Not with a checklist or a spa day, but with the slow, courageous work of coming home to your own needs. Suzy unpacks the gender conditioning that teaches women their worth depends on how much they give, why selflessness is a coping mechanism rather than a virtue, and why the resentment and anger so many women feel when they begin to say no is not the problem, it is the signal. She also guides the group through two simple somatic practices that are more powerful than they look. This is a conversation about permission; permission to receive, to rest, to be one person, and for that to be enough. Connect with Suzy on Instagram: @suzyreading suzyreading.co.uk This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast is hosted by Dr Emma Offord, clinical psychologist and founder of Divergent Lives. For every neurodivergent mind that was masked, misread, or missed.

Ryan Swain was told from childhood that his energy was too much, his focus was wrong, and his way of being didn't fit. Teachers called him a liability. Nobody asked why. In this episode, Dr Emma Offord talks with Ryan, founder of the You, Me & ADHD awareness campaign, about growing up undiagnosed in a system that had no language for who he was. Ryan shares the story of finding skateboarding at eleven and how it gave him something school never could: a space where his neurobiology made sense. He also introduces his tornado analogy for ADHD, one of the most grounded and accessible frameworks for understanding why environment is everything. This is a conversation about survival, self-acceptance, and what becomes possible when you finally find your thing. Connect with Ryan on Instagram: @officialryanswain ryainswain.co.uk This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast is hosted by Dr Emma Offord, clinical psychologist and founder of Divergent Lives. For every neurodivergent mind that was masked, misread, or missed.

What happens inside a child's body when they hold it all together at school, only to fall apart the moment they walk through the front door? And what does that cost the parents who are there to catch them, every single day? In this episode, Dr Emma Offord is joined by health psychologist, CBT therapist, and EMDR practitioner Jo Rodriguez for an honest, warm, and deeply grounding conversation about what it actually means to parent neurodivergent children inside a system that was never built for them. Jo brings more than 20 years of clinical expertise and something equally important: her lived experience as a mum to three neurodivergent boys. She speaks with clarity and compassion about the gap between what professionals are trained to know and what parenting actually feels like on the ground. About the exhaustion of being the family's main regulator. About the invisible grief of watching your child mask all day, then come home and need somewhere safe to fall apart. Together, Emma and Jo explore what is really happening in a child's nervous system when they suppress their needs to fit into environments that were not designed for them. They talk about the long-term cost of unmetabolised stress, the moment a nervous system reaches its limit, and why the post-school meltdown is not a behaviour problem. It is a body trying to return to safety. They also speak honestly about what this does to parents. The burnout that builds quietly. The pressure to know the answers. The loneliness of advocating for your child when the system keeps telling you that you are overreacting. And the small, cumulative ways that parents can begin to resource themselves, even when the big solutions are out of reach. This is a conversation for every parent who has sat in a parents' evening hearing "no bother at all" while knowing something else entirely. Connect with Jo: Instagram: @straightforwardpsychology

Lisa Galley built her career in autism the long way round: studying part time, raising three children, sitting her finals at nine months pregnant, and working in high-pressure NHS autism outreach before burnout took it all away. What followed was years of frightening physical symptoms, a diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome, and a profound loss of identity. What she built on the other side was something she never planned: a community, a business, and now a book. In this episode, Dr Emma Offord and Lisa explore what parental burnout really looks like when it is severe, somatic, and relentlessly minimised by the medical system. They talk about regulation-first parenting, why beige food and unlimited screens are not lazy choices but genuine nervous system tools, and why the instincts parents already have are so often buried under shame and social pressure. Lisa also shares the story of her daughter, identified as autistic only in adulthood, and what that taught her about quiet masking and the cost of being told you are the good one. This is also a conversation about bravery. The courage to advocate differently when colleagues, critics, and old professional identities are watching. Lisa's debut book, Parenting Your Autistic Child: Permission to Do It Differently (Penguin Random House, August 2026), is exactly what the title promises: not a manual, but a permission slip. If you have ever felt judged for parenting your way, dismissed when you knew something was wrong, or like burnout had taken everything you worked for, this episode is for you. Connect with Lisa: Instagram: @schoolrunmumautism Find the Autism Parenting Revolution membership at Lisa's website. Pre-order Parenting Your Autistic Child: Permission to Do It Differently (Penguin Random House, 27 August 2026). Connect with Divergent Lives: Instagram: @divergentlives Website: divergentlife.co.uk Free 15-minute consultation: hello@divergentlife.co.uk

In this episode of This Voice Is Mine , Dr Emma Offord is joined by clinical psychologist, author, and maternal mental health specialist Dr Caroline Boyd for a deeply honest and necessary conversation about motherhood, anger, and the stories we are taught to silence. Together, they explore the realities that so many parents live but rarely feel able to name: intrusive thoughts, maternal rage, emotional overload, and the crushing weight of expectation placed on mothers, particularly within a culture that still clings to myths of calm, self-sacrificing, endlessly patient ‘good’ motherhood. Caroline brings her clinical expertise, research, and lived experience to unpack why anger is not a failure, but a meaningful signal. They discuss how suppressed anger can manifest as anxiety, shame, burnout, and even physical illness, and why learning to listen to anger, rather than fear it, can be a powerful act of repair and self-compassion. This episode also names the wider systems at play: patriarchy, unsupported caregiving structures, isolation, and the lack of societal scaffolding for parents. Rather than pathologising mothers, Emma and Caroline invite us to see anger as both a protector and a messenger, one that deserves attention, not punishment. This is a conversation about reclaiming voice, dignity, and humanity in parenthood. Not about fixing mothers, but about finally listening to them. Clinical psychologist Dr Caroline Boyd has over 10 years experience working in the NHS and mental health settings, and she supports parents from pregnancy to childbirth and beyond. Caroline offers anger courses, workshops and 1:1 therapy in her independent psychology practice, Parent Therapy Hub. Caroline is the author of Mindful New Mum, and her published research explores mothers experiences of intrusive thoughts about their babies. Her work has been featured in You magazine, Elle, Grazia, the Telegraph and Womans Hour on BBC Radio 4, and she is an Ambassador for UK perinatal mental health charity, PANDAS. Caroline shares psychology ideas on Instagram and in the media to help parents feel less alone and more connected - to themselves and their children. You can reach Caroline at drcarolineboyd.com or via Instagram @_drboyd Caroline offers a self-paced anger course for mothers (USE THE CODE “PODCAST” TO CLAIM YOUR £100 DISCOUNT): Download Caroline’s FREE GUIDE on how to handle anger in HOT moments: For an overview of Caroline’s work, including her book, Mindful New Mum, click here. If you’re struggling with difficult thoughts and feelings or if this episode raises any concerns for you, please talk to a trusted health professional such as your GP. You can also reach out to the services below: UK: PANDAS offer a free, bookable call service Samaritans – 116 123 US: Postpartum Support International - 1-800-944-4773 (4PPD) For emergency help - call 999 or visit your local A&E department.