I Felt Unemployable Because Of My Adhd – I Haven’t Had An Office Job For 24 Years

A new report, published on Tuesday, has claimed that 100,000 young people are claiming benefits for ADHD – a surge of 40 per cent under the Labour government, as ministers face ever-growing pressure to reform the welfare system. Previously Alan Milburn suggested that young people with ADHD should be prescribed work coaches by their GPs to help them get into employment or education.

Yasmin Shaheen-Zaffar, 50, is a self-taught web developer and trauma relationship counsellor based in North Yorkshire. She has ADHD and has found herself unable to work in traditional employment since 26 (when she quit her job with no plan). She has had periods of unemployment but also taken on several different careers and says having a coach would have helped her when she was younger.

I’ve always said I’m unemployable. I went to uni when I was 19 to study biochemistry and I flunked my first year twice. I just thought I was thick, and no one really noticed I was struggling. I was going to get into a lot of trouble from my family, so I ended up getting a job in pharmaceuticals in research and development. While I was there, I went on day release and did my Higher National Course and Higher National Diploma and started a biochemistry degree again – but dropped out of that, too.

I only got that job because the shame of failing was too much – I’d been brought up to be a very good girl and I’d never failed at anything before.

I managed to stay in that job for five years but I always struggled. I was exhausted by that dread in my body constantly that I’d done something wrong, and was always getting into trouble for not filing paperwork properly. It was really demoralising. I’m really sensitive to sound and the constant distraction and noise of being in a lab with other people was too much. I was feeling increasingly like I was trapped in something I didn’t want to do.

I now know with ADHD that you are very driven by passion and dopamine hits and I was not passionate at all. I was so bored and I actively didn’t want to be there. There was so much paperwork and so many stats that I had to get through and record. Now I realise that I’m an ideas person. Recording data and looking at data – I don’t have the capacity for that.

I took voluntary redundancy when I was 26. I’d been working there for five years. It was easier, rather than wait to be sacked, to do my own thing. But ADHD wasn’t a “thing” then. I felt so much shame. I was brought up to be “the good girl” so I hid my struggles. I never returned to a salaried job again.

I then tried to get any job I could, trying to do whatever I could to pay my rent – I didn’t really get on with my mum so I didn’t have a place I could fall back on. All the jobs were all on short contracts, things like being a cleaner.

I’ve always had different enterprises and I had to make it work somehow. When I have a special interest I can teach myself, learn quickly and do shorter courses or programmes. I learn very much through doing. I’m a self-taught developer. I have been building platforms and databases now for 30 years and making money through website development – more for friends than as a business.

I knew I couldn’t work in an office. I would have to work basically in isolation. I trained as a mortgage adviser when I was 27. I really hated it but I was self-employed and it gave me that space. Within two or three months, I was earning. I stayed doing that for about four or five years, then I changed companies where they wanted us to encourage people to remortgage. It didn’t sit right with me ethically, but because I was self-employed and I was out and about, that worked for me. It was always the paperwork and filling in forms that got to me, though.

I had my daughter when I was 33 and spent the next decade or so taking care of her. I also made some money with my website development.

In my early forties, I went to do a counselling degree. I realised that I always wanted to help people. If you’ve had adverse childhood experiences like I have, you want to make the world a better place. But once again, I struggled and kept failing all my essays.

For personal and professional development, delivering in a room and writing something creative, I was getting 100 per cent but it wasn’t put into the final mark. I managed to scrape through with retakes, getting a 40 per cent pass mark. I also had my first ADHD assessment but my mum died three weeks after that and I never went back. When my daughter was being diagnosed for dyslexia 2.5 years later, it prompted me to go back to that assessment and explore further. I was diagnosed at 44.

When I qualified as a counsellor and was applying for jobs, I still struggled with the forms. It was handled so poorly that even though I’d been applying for salaried positions, at first I just decided I’d do it all myself rather than fight that uphill battle. I label myself as a social entrepreneur. I want to make a change to society. I just didn’t know how I was going to do that. I’m still working that out but I’m getting closer.

It was only when working with other neurodivergent people through the process of becoming a counsellor that I began to recognise their struggles in myself. The diagnosis was a relief but it also made me sad. I’d spent so much of my life thinking I was a write-off and not worth anything.

If I’d been diagnosed earlier and had a work coach, they could have helped me navigate these barriers rather than trying to forge different paths on my own. I went on a journey of building my own businesses but at the same time I lacked direction and I lacked the confidence. If you flunked your first year twice, you are going to think you’re stupid. I’m so glad things are changing for younger people now. You just think you’re stupid and any creativity you have is stifled. You’re not going to believe in your own ideas.

I saw it work even since I was diagnosed – when I did my extended CBT qualification, I had support from the disability department, which helped me find techniques to better study – my grades went from 40 per cent to between 70 and 80 per cent.

I’m very creative and very personable but I do talk a lot and I do overwhelm people with my ideas. I often end up feeling “too much” for people. I almost feel like “the crazy one” with all these weird and wonderful ideas while everyone else is a bit more stiff. It still happens to me now. I’ve been going to a growth hub to learn how to build my business, but the same trainer has twice called me a “nutter” because we were talking about AI and I mentioned that I’d built my own. I’d let it slide the first time but I find that really upsetting and dismissive in a business environment, especially in front of a load of other men. If that had happened years ago it would have really upset me and I would have stopped entirely.

Mentoring [work coaching] would be fantastic for young people transitioning from school or university. It can help build confidence and communication skills for the workplace, and help people work out how to best do what they enjoy and what they’re good at. It’s so important at that age to give people the tools to thrive.