For most of my life, the way I thought felt like a liability. I didn’t know that at the time as I didn’t even have the language to notice there was a difference, but school made it clear enough. I couldn’t revise, I couldn’t memorise, I couldn’t read and retain anything that wasn’t deeply meaningful. I sat in meetings hearing every word and absorbing nothing. And because there was no way to explain this, I just assumed everyone else was smarter and I never questioned it. I just accepted that I must be limited. But now, decades later, I’ve discovered the truth: the very traits that once made everything difficult are now the ones the world suddenly needs.
For my entire life, until now, the way I thought simply didn’t match the world I was moving through. I didn’t know that, of course as there wasn’t language for ADHD or autism or dyslexic-style processing when I was growing up, especially not for girls, so there was nothing to compare myself to. I just thought everyone else understood things more naturally than I did. I watched people revise, retain facts, read quickly, follow lessons, and participate in discussions as if this was all instinctive.
Looking back, I can see that I wasn’t struggling because I lacked intelligence. I was struggling because I had no concept that my brain processed the world differently. I didn’t question why lessons went straight through me, or why I could read a paragraph ten times and retain nothing, or why meetings left no trace in my mind. I accepted it all as a limitation, as proof that I simply wasn’t academic in the way everyone else seemed to be.
What I couldn’t see then was that the things I found impossible – the memorisation, the surface-level learning, the linear way school expected us to process information – had nothing to do with ability. They were simply incompatible with how my brain works. And the things I was naturally drawn to – the depth, the symbolism, the psychological meaning, the complexity – were signs of strengths I didn’t yet know how to name. They were there the whole time; I just had no framework to recognise them.
The formal diagnoses came recently, at the ripe old age of 52: ADHD (combined type), Aspergers Syndrome/High-Functioning autism, and dyslexic-style processing. The diagnoses themselves were not a surprise. By the time I finally went through the process, I already knew. The confirmation was helpful, of course, but it didn’t change how I see myself; it simply gave language to things I had carried for decades without a name. What did surprise me were the WAIS scores: very high working memory (130), very fast processing speed (123), strong visuospatial reasoning, and comparatively weaker retention from written text. Far more than labels, the numbers felt like pieces clicking into place. As I researched further into what each score actually meant, I could suddenly see myself with a great ‘AHA’ moment. It wasn’t that I lacked intelligence; I excel in some areas more than I ever realised. It was confirmation that I had been measured in the Industrial Age system that was never built for someone with my cognitive architecture. And instead of feeling discouraged, I felt truly excited: reading those scores and seeing how perfectly they align with the work I’m doing in Creative Intelligence felt like discovering a blueprint. They showed me that I wasn’t just able to do this work, I was made for it.
To make sense of it, I had to break down how my brain actually works. This table helped me understand myself more clearly, and I hope it helps others recognise something familiar in their own experience too.
Creative Intelligence Was Emerging in Me Long Before I Named It
The interesting thing is that the moment everything clicked wasn’t when I got the diagnoses. It happened yesterday, when unpacking my WAIS scores and suddenly I could see how perfectly my mind is aligned with the work I’m doing in Creative Intelligence. It felt like an actual aha moment, the kind that makes you stop and realise that life really is so magical. I’ve never doubted the joy of synchronicities, and this felt especially so. It was like seeing the pattern from above: the things I’ve been drawn to, the decisions I’ve made, the way I’ve set up Art-Ed Hub, and the work I’m doing with Creative Intelligence as anything but random. It was guided; my intuition had been steering me the whole time and I was finally catching up to the reason why. I believe in this, and I teach it, but every time it happens to me, I am always blown away.
It makes me think a lot about trust. About following the thing that pulls, even when you can’t explain it, or when you’re not entirely sure you should. And that’s what I’ve been doing for the past five years, moving towards the ideas, the people, the places that have called me. I’ve been so excited by this journey, and so absorbed by it, and now that for the first time in my life I can see the benefit of having a mind that locks onto meaning the moment it recognises itself. My brain actually makes this part easy because I instantly know when something is right for me.
Once I understood my cognitive profile, the 3Ds of my Creative intelligence framework -Disrupt, Discern, Deliver – made total sense too. They fell into place so naturally that it now feels less like building a framework and more like naming something I had always been doing.
DISRUPT: ADHD
I’ve always thought in alternatives. I see possibilities before they’re fully formed, and I instinctively question systems that feel restrictive or outdated. What teachers once read as distraction was really the part of me that refuses to sit inside old structures simply because they exist. This is the engine behind my creativity, the impulse to ask better questions about how we teach, how we learn, and how we think.
DISCERN: Autism
My need for depth and clarity is not a quirk; it is my foundation. I anchor meaning through structure, symbolism, and pattern, which is why I connect so naturally with Jung, with psychology, with perception, and with anything that asks us to look beneath the surface. Discernment isn’t a skill for me. It’s the way my mind interprets reality.
DELIVER: High Working Memory + Fast Processing
This combination allows me to hold multiple layers at the same time – ideas, student journeys, conceptual frameworks, workshop structures – and bring them together into something coherent. Deliver, for me, is not about efficiency. It’s the ability to integrate complex ideas intuitively and build systems that make sense to others.
Dyslexic-Style Processing: Meaning Over Memory
And then there is the final layer. This is why novels feel heavy and tiring, but Jungian theory feels alive. I don’t absorb stories in a linear way. I absorb the emotional logic, the symbolic structure, the meaning beneath the words. I pull things in through depth, not detail, which is exactly why Creative Intelligence feels like the most natural language I’ve ever worked with.
What I Wish My Younger Self Had Known
When I think back, I don’t picture a “girl.” That word has never felt like it belonged to me. I just see a younger version of myself moving through the world without any of the language or understanding that I have now. And because I genuinely don’t believe that time works in a straight line, it feels possible to send this understanding backwards, like giving that earlier version of me access to information that didn’t exist then.
What I wish they had known is that my brain was different; not flawed but completely different from what school was built for. At the time, I didn’t know that I wasn’t absorbing information when I revised, or that drifting out of lessons or forgetting things immediately was neurological. I didn’t question any of it, assuming that other people got things and I didn’t.
That’s the part that’s difficult to explain to people who haven’t lived it. I didn’t sit there thinking, why can’t I do this? It didn’t cross my mind. It was just how life was. I had no reason to think there was an alternative because there was no language for ADHD, autism or dyslexic processing, especially not for someone who looked like me or behaved like me. Without a framework, you don’t recognise a struggle as a struggle; you just assume that you’re limited.
If I could hand something back to that earlier self, it wouldn’t be “comfort,” because I don’t think that would have resonated. It would simply be the information:
- your brain isn’t built for linear intake
- you won’t learn from passive reading
- your strengths sit in depth, pattern, meaning, connection
- the things you struggle with say nothing about intelligence
- you’re not lazy; you’re misaligned with the system
- the way you process information is valid
I can see now that the confusion wasn’t mine; it belonged to a system that didn’t know how to read me, and I think a lot of people can’t see the depth because they don’t know where to look. Surface behaviour tells you nothing about a person’s cognitive architecture.
Why This Is My Time (and Why Understanding Yourself Matters)
The irony in all of this is amazing to me. The traits that caused me the most friction whilst growing up – the need for depth, the refusal to skim, the instinct to question everything, the constant search for structure and meaning, the non-linear way I move through ideas – were treated as signs that something was wrong with me. School wanted tidy processors of information: straight lines, predictable sequences, neatness. People like me, who couldn’t process that way, were simply labelled “difficult,” “distracted,” or “not academic.”
And yet these exact traits are the ones AI cannot replicate. They are the last remaining parts of human intelligence that machines can’t touch: intuition, depth, symbolic reasoning, emotional insight, pattern recognition that isn’t statistical but lived. The things I struggled with were never the problem. The problem was that I was being trained to think like a robot, and the people who could think like robots were rewarded. Now AI exists to do the straight-line thinking, the repetition, the recall, the sequencing. It reveals just how backwards the old system really was.
What has become so clear to me – especially after looking at my WAIS profile – is that the parts of my mind that were once labelled inconvenient are the exact parts that give my work its strength. The way I see patterns instantly. The way I understand the emotional logic of an idea before I have language for it. The way I hold multiple layers in my mind at once. The way I move between intuition and structure so naturally. None of this is accidental. This is the architecture that Creative Intelligence came out of. The frameworks didn’t arrive from nowhere; they came straight out of the way I’ve always processed the world.
And now, with AI carrying the tasks that have always drained me, I finally get to use the parts of my mind that were hidden underneath friction. If that makes my brain “fashionable,” then fine, I’ll take it. I waited long enough.