I Wasn't Behind. I Just Needed a Different Map.

I got the right answer. They still marked me as having failed.

By Emma Kearns, Founder of Seren Neurodiversity Specialists

I was nine years old. There was a maths test. I worked out the right answer - I checked, it was correct - but I had used my own method to get there, not the one the teacher had taught. I had failed.

The answer was right. The thinking was sound. But the process wasn't the 'proper' one.

That moment has stayed with me for over thirty years. Not because it was the most dramatic thing that ever happened to me, but because it captured something I would spend decades trying to name: why have I got it wrong again?

I grew up feeling like I was almost speaking the language

Growing up in Wales, I felt like I was a step behind everyone else - not in capability, not in intelligence, but in the invisible rules that others seemed to understand instinctively. Social situations, processes, expectations. They all felt like a language I could almost speak, but never quite fluently.

I lost count of the times I was told:

• Stop chatting

• Sit still

• Sit up straight

• Stop daydreaming

• If only you applied yourself

• Let me finish (I would often answer questions before the teacher had finished asking them)

Every report card finished with "Emma has potential but will never amount to anything if she doesn't start working hard."

If only they knew how hard I was working.

So I did what a lot of neurodivergent people do. I became an expert at finding workarounds and equally expert at hiding that I was doing it. I masked. I pushed harder. I beat myself up. As I grew from child to teenager, the anxiety increased, and nobody stopped to think that perhaps there was a reason for how I experienced the world.

I found my calling almost by accident

In 2011, I took a role as an Employment Consultant at the National Autistic Society. I didn't know then that it would become the foundation of a twenty-year career, or that the very way my brain worked, the thing I had spent years fighting against, would turn out to be a profound asset when it came to understanding and supporting others.

Over the next decade, I built something I hadn't anticipated: genuine expertise, grounded in genuine lived experience.

2011	Employment Consultant, National Autistic Society Designed and delivered national employment programmes. Secured over £1 million in funding for diversity hiring initiatives.

2020s

Head of Enterprise & Employment, National Autistic Society Trained thousands of recruiters, managers and HR professionals. Represented the sector at industry summits across the UK.

2022	EMEA Director, Rangam Signed over 30 enterprise clients. Grew a candidate pipeline from zero to over 10,000 people across Europe.

Now	Founder, Seren Neurodiversity Specialists Coaching neurodivergent adults from entry level to senior leadership, built on twenty years of expertise and a lifetime of lived experience.

What I didn't realise, during all of this, was how much of my own story I still hadn't looked at directly.

The moment my coping strategies stopped working

For years, colleagues, friends and professionals had suggested I might have ADHD. I understood it academically - I could explain it, spot it in others, design programmes around it. But understanding something professionally and recognising it in yourself are very different things, especially when you have spent decades building sophisticated strategies to compensate.

At the start of COVID, I had a baby. And almost overnight, the scaffolding I had built around myself came down. The routines that kept me regulated disappeared. The strategies I had developed over decades - the ones I hadn't even consciously acknowledged - stopped working. What had always felt like 'just how I am' became impossible to manage.

"I was focusing on work strategies first and realised that without understanding my life as a whole, nothing was going to stick."

I had to start again - not from scratch, but from a different place. I had to understand myself first, not just my working patterns. And what I discovered in that process is the insight that now sits at the heart of everything Seren does: work strategies only stick when the whole person is understood first.

I am not formally diagnosed, and that is not something I am pursuing. For me, understanding how my brain works is enough. A diagnosis does not define whether support is needed or deserved and that principle runs through every piece of coaching I deliver.

Why I called it Seren

Seren is the Welsh word for star. I chose it deliberately, and personally.

Growing up in Wales, feeling different, struggling silently, there were moments when that sense of who I could be felt very far away. Present, but out of reach. Like a star.

After forty years, I am finally rediscovering my own. And Seren exists to help other people find theirs - whether they have a formal diagnosis or not, whether they are just beginning to understand their neurodivergent identity or have known for years.

What Seren is built on

Twenty years of professional expertise and genuine lived experience of navigating the world as a neurodivergent adult, that combination is at the heart of everything I do at Seren.

I have designed national programmes, secured funding, trained thousands of people, and I have also lived what those people are navigating. That dual perspective means I can meet you wherever you are, without assumptions.

Our support takes a whole-life approach. That means we do not start with your job. We start with you - your history, your identity, your patterns, your strengths, what your life actually is. Work is part of that picture, not the frame around it.

We start with you. And from that foundation, we build strategies for work that genuinely fit, because they are built around who you really are.

If any of this sounds familiar, if you have spent years finding workarounds and wondering why the standard playbook never quite fitted, you are not behind. You are not broken. You might just need a different map.

Your star is within reach.

No diagnosis needed. Book a free call and let's start with you.

www.seren-neurodiversity.co.uk

Coaching may be funded through Access to Work - ask us how.

Emma Kearns

FOUNDER, SEREN NEURODIVERSITY SPECIALISTS  ·  MSC PSYCHOLOGY

With 20+ years in neurodiversity and inclusive hiring, Emma supports neurodivergent individuals from entry level to senior leadership across the UK. Find her at www.seren-neurodiversity.co.uk or emma@seren-neurodiversity.co.uk