JobsWorth

Me, a GP and ADHD

• John Hawker • Season 1 • Episode 5

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Meet Dr. Zoe Watson, who with her candor and intelligence, draws us into a frank and enlightening conversation about her personal journey with Adult ADHD and how it's influenced her work-life balance. Zoe goes beyond the surface, addressing the paradox of 'weaponised wellness' - companies that proclaim they prioritize employee mental health but fail to live up to their promises.

Dive deeper into Zoe's unique viewpoints as she discusses the challenges businesses face in creating inclusive environments for neurodiverse individuals. Zoe's knack for humorous, emotionally intelligent, and honest exchanges brings a refreshing perspective to the conversation. Listen to her as she shares valuable insights from her initiatives in the mental health space, showcasing her innovative online wellbeing platform and her creative company that embraces art as a tool for mental health progression.

Towards the end, the spotlight shifts to the importance of understanding and addressing the unique needs of employees. Zoe strongly emphasizes the role of employers in making workplaces more inclusive for neurodiverse individuals. This conversation is not just invigorating but also serves as an eye-opener for anyone looking to understand the relationship between mental health and workplace wellness better. So, buckle up for an episode that will certainly challenge your perspectives and leave you with food for thought.

Zoe's WellGood Wellbeing website: https://www.wellgoodwellbeing.com

Follow Wellgood Wellbeing on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/wellgood_wellbeing/

Free download link for The Realistic Guide To ADHD Self Care: https://mailchi.mp/wellgoodwellbeing/adhdselfcare

The JobsWorth website is here www.jobs-worth.com

Follow me on LinkedIn; https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnhawker/

Follow me on Instagram; https://www.instagram.com/jobsworthpodcast/

Follow me on TikTok; https://www.tiktok.com/@globaltechcollective

Subscribe to my newsletter 'The Job Journal from GTC'; https://tinyurl.com/TheJobJournalFromGTC

Learn more about my proper job; https://www.globaltechcollective.com/

Contact me using hello@jobs-worth.com

John Hawker:

Jobs Worth, season 1, episode 5 Me a GP and ADHD. Welcome to Episode 5 of Jobs Worth. You're about to hear a conversation I had with the nation's swariest GP, dr Zoe Watson. It's an unsubstantiated claim, but I'm looking into it. Zoe has over 17 years experience working in the NHS and is the founder of WellGood WellBeing, an online wellbeing membership designed for busy people with busy brains. She's also the founder of Make and Create, a creative company focusing on mental health, which launched in 2018.

John Hawker:

Zoe has experienced anxiety, depression and, in more recent years, burnout, and we have an honest and very real discussion about the tools she uses to look after her own mental health, to explore how being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult has influenced her relationship with work and the mission of WellGood WellBeing, as well as the challenges businesses face when it comes to building more inclusive and supportive environments for neurodiverse individuals in the workplace. We also tackle a phenomenon that Zoe calls weaponised wellness, a term she's coined to describe businesses who use wellness as a law to attract employees, but have simply implemented tick box strategies to make themselves look good. Zoe pulls no punches. This is a conversation that will resonate with well everyone, and her honest, no bullshit approach is incredibly refreshing. Her answer to my question about companies measuring the ROI on wellbeing is a perfect example. So, without further ado, let me introduce you to the force of nature that is Dr Zoe Watson. So, zoe, thank you so much for coming on and investing your time in having this conversation with me. I really appreciate it.

Dr Zoe Watson:

No worries, very welcome.

John Hawker:

Cool. Okay, so we do have an opening tradition on this podcast and we're kind of like six, seven episodes in now, so it's something that I like to try and keep going in every episode. So I'm going to ask you a question, if that's okay. So, when you were at school, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Dr Zoe Watson:

Depends which part of school you asked me about. At primary school I wanted to be a dentist during the day and a ballerina at night, and I thought that that was a viable career.

John Hawker:

Yeah.

Dr Zoe Watson:

Perfect.

John Hawker:

Okay.

Dr Zoe Watson:

And then, I think for a large part of my older years, I wanted to be a vet Right and then, for a long time, and then, I think probably around about the age of 14, 15, I settled on medicine, and the reason that I decided against vet and medicine was because I love animals too much and I didn't think I could ever put an animal down. Oh, wow. But humans, yeah, fine with that.

John Hawker:

The moral question around that is not an issue at all. Yeah, that's really interesting because I guess before going into this I didn't think about how much of a vocation that going into medicine feels for a lot of people as well, and what drivers are the motivation to send you down that path. Did you have any inspiration around you to send you down that route or any pressure, did I say, from people around you to go into medicine?

Dr Zoe Watson:

Really not actually Like. Neither of my parents are medical Well, not, not. They're not doctors. They both are sort of a mix of science and art, like my dad, who's now retired, was a lecturer in pharmacy at Strathclyde his whole life Strathclyde University in Glasgow, yeah, but also as a very creative man. He sings, he plays various instruments oh, wow, he's a massive hippie. Both of my parents are massive hippies and my mum has a degree in biology and wrote abstract medical journals for many years but also has always been an artist and now she's a full-time printmaker in Glasgow and has been for like the last 30 years. I think Amazing, so, yeah, so I grew up with that around me and probably not a surprise that I've kind of adopted that in my own life with my various businesses and doing medicine.

John Hawker:

Yeah, amazing Because there is that hybridisation around. I guess what you do with obviously being a GP, so there's. I can imagine being around science and going into medicine isn't too much of a stretch. So you've got at least those conversations and that world you already. And then the creative side. So, talking about making create that you launched as well and how that's being used as a tool to help people with mental health and wellbeing as well, do you have a particular art or creative style that you're into? Is there anything that you fall into within a niche, or do you just like creation as a method of expression and mindfulness?

Dr Zoe Watson:

I don't probably the latter, to be honest, like I find it really interesting when I talk to people. I also talk about this recently, a talk that I did for Sick in the City, about this concept that people either identify as being creative or not, and my motto with making create is that creativity is a verb, it's not a natural born talent. It's simply something that you do and I think as adult humans, we get very anxious about what the end product will be. So often we choose not to create if we don't identify as being creative, and the whole idea of making create is actually trying to get adults to kind of put that idea to the side and just simply, you know, pick up whatever it is they're drawn to.

Dr Zoe Watson:

I personally will just dabble in everything and anything that I'm drawn to. I mean, as part of making create, all of the workshops that I run, which is everything from mindful essential oil blending, candle making, working with Jesmyne and I, mccrammy and you know, and all of those things are self taught. I didn't. I didn't go anywhere to learn them, I just learnt them through reading and watching YouTube videos, and falling down the rabbit hole is a lovely thing that my ADHD brain likes to do. So yeah, I'm entirely self taught and then so I wanted to sort of show people that you know it's something that you, if you want to do it, there's nothing stopping you but yourself, like if there's something that you want to learn, or indeed if, even if you're not that good at it, it doesn't matter. I mean, the point is that the act of creating is soothing in itself.

John Hawker:

It's the process. Yeah, I mean, I definitely fall into the mindset of someone that says you either are wrong, creative and innately and it's only because of my the situation. My family, so my brother and my mum are artists by trade. Oh really.

John Hawker:

So my brother's been an artist and is incredibly successful. My mum's been an artist for 30 plus years now. That has been her full time occupation and I don't seem to have inherited any of that gene, so that I've always seen it as a more innate thing. But I do also buy into the act of creating, and creativity is incredibly powerful. And just because you don't feel like you are a quote creative person doesn't mean you're still not going to get something from doing.

Dr Zoe Watson:

Yeah.

Dr Zoe Watson:

I mean absolutely, and I think creativity takes many forms. You know like I often say that you know the GP consultation itself is an art form, because we're spending so many plates when we're consulting with patients where, you know, we're looking at their body language, we're trying to monitor our own body language, we're picking up on nuances and tone of voice and then also, you know, going through our red flags and working out in investigation and treatment plan and planning for a planning for a work, case scenarios and safety netting, and it is an art form. I think creative thought is a form of creativity and one of the things that has always bugs me is that in school you very much are sort of particularly in high school. Well, when I was at high school back in the 19. It was very much like you either have to do science subjects or art subjects and there wasn't really room in the curriculum to do both and you were very much kind of like. You know, if I was, you know I knew by the point I was doing exams, I wanted to go to medical school.

Dr Zoe Watson:

So there's no room in my curriculum to do art as well and I think even back then you know the art that we were doing at school. It was very structured. There wasn't a lot of kind of freedom of expression. It was like, well, this is how you do shading and this is how you do line drawing, and there was rights and wrongs. And I very much believe that there are no rights and wrongs. It's art, but it's a form of self expression. I mean, if there were rights and wrongs and Picasso wouldn't have got as far as he said.

John Hawker:

I'd argue there's a number of examples where that could be said as well.

Dr Zoe Watson:

Yeah, it's completely subjective. Jamie and her pickling sharp.

John Hawker:

I'm thinking of Tracy Emmins work as well. That just jumped into my mind the unbeknownst bed.

Dr Zoe Watson:

I mean, yeah, conceptual art is very much. You know, if someone does that art class at school, they actually would be like all right, tracy.

John Hawker:

You'd be referred on to someone, wouldn't you? More than all likely? Well, I think. Thank you for that, because I think that was actually turned out to be a much more insightful answer than I thought it was going to be, because it leads so much into what you're doing now and it is, to be fair, part of the reason I ask what you wanted to do and how that leads to what you're doing now as a career. So thank you for sharing that, because because, yeah, it really lends itself well to what it is you're doing now. So can you tell me? I did. I took a look through some of your marketing collateral and your website ahead of the call. On your website and your about section, you said that your time well, you grew up in Glasgow and then moved to London. So your time in Glasgow, in your word, shaped your desire for social equality. So I've got two questions around that when did you move to London? So when did you move away from Glasgow, and how did your experiences growing up shape that desire?

Dr Zoe Watson:

If you can go into that, so I think I actually left Glasgow in 2007 and I didn't come directly to London. I went to Australia first. So I graduated medical from 2005, did my two years of foundation training and then went off to Australia to work for three years, as many junior doctors do, particularly now when the NHS is fucked. So I went and did three years of basically A&E emergency medicine in Australia, which is, which is brilliant, and then I went. When I moved back, I did my GP training down in Brighton and Mid-Fussex and I've got connection, you know, got family there and I just love Brighton by the sea. And then in 2013, I met my husband online, as one does, but I say that we met BTA before the app. We met on an actual online dating website kids.

John Hawker:

Wow, yeah, that was a thing yeah.

Dr Zoe Watson:

We met on a website called mysinglefriendcom, because my reasoning was that if he has at least one friend who has written a bio about him, then he's less likely to be a complete weirdo.

John Hawker:

Yeah, it worked out.

Dr Zoe Watson:

It worked out well. So he was based in London when we met and I was still living in Brighton and completing my GP training, and so when I finished that, we just yeah, we decided to move in together. So I refer to myself as a reluctant Londoner because I don't. I never planned on living here.

John Hawker:

It was a series of unfortunate events or series of unfortunate events.

Dr Zoe Watson:

So I think you look at it. Yeah, exactly, so yeah, I've been here for 10 years now.

John Hawker:

So your experience in Glasgow then because this I thought that was quite an impactful statement that you made, that it shaped your desire for social equality what did you see? What the experiences you had? That kind of drove that or gave you that drive.

Dr Zoe Watson:

I mean, I think Glasgow in itself is a very socialist place to live. It's a very left-wing place to live and there. But also, yeah, I mean, there is a lot of poverty in Glasgow and that social inequality is very, very visible. I mean, the same is true of London, to be honest, like I think a lot of people have this perception that London is a very, very rich city and it is but there are also huge pockets of poverty and their juxtapos with extreme wealth.

Dr Zoe Watson:

But I think, growing up in Glasgow, there is just very much this mentality of helping others and that everyone is equal, and that there's also a bit of tall puppy syndrome, I think, which is, you know, I think, not not the best, because I think they like as much as they embrace people and are very, very friendly. They also kind of like you to stay in your lane a little bit and like if you started getting above your station, they'd like check you out. Do you think you are? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I do think I've absorbed that a little bit. My business coach calls it the glassy gin crab. I don't know if you've ever heard.

Dr Zoe Watson:

I'm not expression because they crab in a bucket analogy, which is the apparently the phenomenon that if you put a bunch of crabs in a bucket, if one of them starts to crawl up the side to escape, the other crabs will pull him back down because this well, if we're in the bucket, you're in the bucket, me. Yeah, would you think you're going get back in the bucket?

John Hawker:

it's a good analogy. Yeah, I can see the imagery around it yeah.

Dr Zoe Watson:

So, like my, I've got a very loud inner critic and when I was building well-good well-being and I was just filled with you know all the self-doubt and this like, do you think you are?

Dr Zoe Watson:

And so we had to give my inner critic a name and we've called it the glassy gin crab because it is rooted in my glassy gin upbringing this sort of sense of like, not not getting above your station, not kind of string from your lane, but so I guess my, my growing up in Glasgow, has both negatively and positively impacted my sort of journey in business, if you like, because it keeps me very grounded. Yes, and I think it keeps me from you know, drinking the kool-aid, swallowing my own bullshit and starting my head up my rectum to continue so long, my own bullshit, like I'm very self-aware. Yes, I'm one of my steepest learning curves in the world of business, because I mean, coming from the world of medicine is the world of business has been very steep learning company and but one of my biggest takeaways is that 98% of what people do in business is bullshit, like you're not supposed to tell everyone that?

Dr Zoe Watson:

it's a very recent realization for me, because I, you know, I'm naturally a very kind of open and honest person. Like I can't, I don't really have the ability to be anything other than who I am. And then this realization that in order to get places in in business, like most people will sprinkle a little bit of bullshit in there to get to where they want to be, and I find it very, it very much poses my values and ethics. So I've been wrestling with this for, you know, for five years I've been in business, just going how are these people making millions of? No, they're not making. Are they making millions of pounds? I don't know, I don't know anymore. I'm like then just going, are they making millions of pounds a week, or is this bullshit?

John Hawker:

I share. I share a lot of that sentiment. I am obviously I work in an industry being recruitment that it that has a lot of. There's a lot of what people would term salesmanship in recruitment and painting a picture. That isn't always the case as well, and I've I've really struggled with that, and I think authenticity is one thing.

John Hawker:

When I read your website and I think I responded to one of your I'd signed up to your newsletter as well and the first thing I thought was I love your style of writing. There's not many websites that are trying to appeal to businesses in the corporate world that you swear words again are you? Are you swearing? I use swear words and a lot of my copy I'm not a verse does swearing at all, but it was just so authentic. So I don't think anyone could accuse you of not putting yourself out there in a really honest and transparent way. But you, there is an element of having to play the game, sometimes in order to get paid from it, because we do this value-adding and give it away for free, but at the same time, it's still your time and your energy that takes you away from other things that could be paying you. So, yeah, how to offset that and how to get the right, I think is key. So you've hit a point.

Dr Zoe Watson:

I think a lot of business and owners and founders would be feeling as well yeah, yeah, I mean, I think I just I think I basically come into the world of business from having worked in the world of medicine and having no business training at all and I think, yeah, that definitely colors how I sort of communicate and and yeah, I bloody love swearing like I, it's part of my culture, like I use it to emphasize what I'm saying. I don't do it in a aggressive way, I do it in a way that, if used correctly, it makes people laugh. I use it with patience and you have to. A very well timed swear word with the patient can literally change the conversation and the relationship that you have with that patient. You have to, you have to judge it, but done correctly, it works it works.

John Hawker:

Wonder that. I mean swear words mixed with a bit of EQ, emotional intelligence, empathy and timing bit of comedy in there as well. You know it can. It can change, as you say that, the whole tone of a conversation, or win people over or or soften the impact of news that you delivering as well, whatever. Whatever it is, you know, I guess that's something you've had to do over your career as well. And, yeah, okay, so that move to London happened and then I'm I could focus a little bit on the sort of chronology, but I feel like we could. We could be talking for hours about that as well, of your, of that time. I'm gonna, I'm just gonna go to paraphrase a segment of your website. If that's okay, I'm gonna read it directly back to you, because I think this embodies why and you can tell me if this is right or not but in bodies, why you've started well, good, well-being. So and this is quoted from your website I meet so many patients every single day who are suffering with enormous amounts of work, stress.

John Hawker:

They feel undervalued, overstretched, they don't feel listened to, they're exhausted, frustrated and having to go on sick leave due to mental illness. I created this place, I've been. I've inserted brackets here well, good, well being, specifically for those people. I read that and it gave me. It gave me goosebumps. It sort of made you tingle because it resonated with me so much. Yeah, people hearing that I think it potentially do the same. I don't think I'm abnormal, so I think it might do the same. So, in a nutshell, that's why you've created well good, well-being, yeah, yeah, what I think that's put so perfectly important, poignantly put as well. Before we go on to talk about, I guess, that mission and how you're enacting that now, can you tell me a bit about your own experience around that, because you mentioned in your about section anxiety, depression and burnout as well in more recent years. Can you tell me a bit more about your experience with that? If you don't mind going into a bit of details are a and?

Dr Zoe Watson:

yeah, yeah, I mean I think, do you know? I think the other aspect of that is that I was diagnosed with ADHD last year. Okay, not medication for it, but for me it has felt like not maybe the final piece of the puzzle, but one of the final pieces of the puzzle, because I think a lot of very, very well known that people with ADHD experience all those things anxiety, depression and burnout and we don't really know if it's because it's similar genetic makeup or sometimes it's because existing in a neurotypical world as someone who's neurodivergent creates those things. So the anxiety of trying to fit yourself into a neurotypical world as someone who is neurodivergent is very anxiety inducing, yes, and can also result in depression. And people who have ADHD are a much, much higher risk of burnout for various different reasons.

Dr Zoe Watson:

And a side note to that, well-good well-being is sort of going as well as doing all the workplace well-being stuff. We're going much more in the direction of kind of like you're diversing the workplace and also coaching for women with ADHD, one on one, peer support, all that sort of stuff. So that's all being added into well-good. Because my diagnosis essentially came after I built well good well-being and then I suddenly realized that I'd actually created the perfect platform for people who have ADHD, because I built it for busy people, which is most of us, but then I realized it's perfect for busy brain people as well.

Dr Zoe Watson:

And but yeah, I mean, I think I first started experiencing mental health difficulties probably around the age of 18 and it's been on and off throughout my life and I think it's funny, when you talk about mental health problems, that maybe people who haven't experienced them I think people have this perception that you know depression is you're just stuck in your room crying all the time and not able to do life, or anxiety is living in this constant state of like. You know constant anxiety, and it very much isn't that.

Dr Zoe Watson:

It waxes and wanes, you have good days and bad days, and so you can be someone who has depression and appear to be quite normal to the external world, which I guess is why you know it's such a hidden disease because so many people have it and love with it, but their loved ones may not know about it, which is why I talk about it, because I think it's important that people know that it's really common, as it's no such thing as like being the correct amount of depression. You know, yeah, mentally. Oh, you're not sad enough today. I thought you were depressed. Why are you laughing? You're?

Dr Zoe Watson:

okay, and I think there is a bit of a kind of like well, she says she's depressed but she seems fine, and I think you know there's an element of well. You just have to, you have to accept that what people are telling you is true and I so, I think, and I definitely think work. I've struggled with work because of mental illness, but I think actually I struggled with work more than anything because of on diagnosed DDHD and what made me realize this was actually the pandemic. So the pandemic I actually was on maternity leave when COVID hit my. My daughter was born in December 2019 and I was only planning on taking six months of maternity leave because I'm self-employed and that's all I had enough money for. Yeah, and then COVID sort of reared its head in March 2020 and I was in this very weird situation of watching all of my friends who were doctors and nurses, you know, be on the front line of this at the time, largely unknown痾m For one of it. We're danger I guess I can say evil, but danger and watching them all get sick and feeling with overwhelming feeling of guilt mixed with like being scared and like wondering whether I should leave my baby at home and go work. So, anyway, I didn't, because my husband was just like, don't be mental, like no, we need you here, please don't go.

Dr Zoe Watson:

So when I eventually did go back to work, the landscape of General Paterson changed. It was largely telephone, remote consultation. So we were still seeing patients face to face, but we were operating on a telephone first basis, which many practices still are. And I suddenly realized I was getting a lot less exhausted. I wasn't coming home feeling completely numb and unable to speak, which was what would usually happen, and I could work for more hours and not feel as completely burnt out. And I realized after my diagnosis it's because for me, seeing patients face to face is much more sensory overwhelming than than telephoning them, because I'm not dealing with lots of different sensory input. So I was just trying to get them to come back to me and I'm just phoning them, and I'm phoning them on my schedule as opposed to waiting for them to turn up.

Dr Zoe Watson:

So one of the things I also really get irritated about was that I always run to time as a GP, believe it or not. So my patients would often turn up really late, usually because they would expect the GP to be running late. So they would turn up late or you know, life chaos, whatever. So I used to get really annoyed when patients turned up late, when I was running to time, and then I would run late because they'd stop late, and there is when I'm contacting patients off my telephone list. I'm in control of that. So I realized that all of all of those things had made my working life as a doctor much less overwhelming, and I think a lot of it was down to the fact that, yeah, I had undiagnosed ADHD and I was just drowning in sensory input every single day, seeing 30, 40 patients a day and constantly changing pace, dealing with phone calls and pop up messages and you know all the rest of it, and I was like drowning in that. But the pandemic sort of fixed a lot of that, yeah.

John Hawker:

Are you still involved in face-to-face consultation now?

Dr Zoe Watson:

No, at the moment I work largely remotely, like I'm probably going to go back to doing a bit of face-to-face work. But if I could keep it as just remote work than I would, because it's so much better for my mental health working in that way, it just allows me to. I think it allows me to be a better GP. I mean, in all honesty, 90% of GP work can be done remotely and I get that. I mean, some patients love it. It's interesting. I think the working population prefer it this way because they don't have to take the morning off work to come and see their GP. I think the people who struggle with it and I completely understand this and I think there needs to be some sort of resolution come to this Because I do think we miss things. It's the elderly population.

Dr Zoe Watson:

They really struggle because they just they miss that contact and they also just, I think, struggle just to communicate more remotely over the phone, and I think there needs to be some sort of halfway point where we're giving more face-to-face appointments straight away to elderly people, because I think they, more than anything, are suffering from telephone-first based consultation.

John Hawker:

I think another example of that, albeit in a very different way, is banks as well. All moving to online banking. Higher streets are losing banks at a rate of knots. There's pop-up banks that come into community centres now to try and do outreach, but that's once a week. And you have to be accepting of the fact that, yeah, there are generational differences between how people engage with things as well, so one of my questions, funnily enough, is around how technology or your views on how technology could support workplace well-being.

John Hawker:

From what you're saying, it's been a huge shift for you in how you can manage your workload. But yeah, you also have to think about patients or people on the other end of that as well. So, yeah, it's not your problem to fix, but it's good that you can highlight that as being a potential issue as well.

Dr Zoe Watson:

Yeah, I mean, I really feel for the older generation, because I just think things have moved so quickly, I think, in the last 10 years, and technology evolved so quickly, and I think also the fact that we've become a largely cashless society. I think they struggle with that as well. It's a big difference, isn't it?

John Hawker:

And it's only been accelerated by the pandemic and the ways of working in this huge shift as well, and it's really interesting actually that your experience of work has improved because of the autonomy and freedom to do it remotely as well. So one of the questions I was going to ask actually is when you were diagnosed with ADHD and when that came in the chronology of setting up well-good well-being as well. Well, you've already answered that question. We came to meet, so to speak, on LinkedIn and there was an article that you shared. I think someone invited you to make a comment on this article from a journalist at the time around ADHD and there was a lot of noise at the time around ADHD being. I've put the quote.

John Hawker:

So the journalist in the article said everyone is a little bit ADHD and I had just at that time I mean, your way of combating that article was so eloquently put and I think at the time I'd read a book by Johann Hari called Stolen Focus and I was just getting involved in the conversation and engaging from the side that maybe there is an over diagnosis.

John Hawker:

Now I'm coming it from a completely ignorant, unspecialised view and I wasn't. I wasn't trying to make it out like I was a specialist, but that was how we engaged and that's how we started having this conversation. Yeah, so I did ask some questions around that as well, and what your view is now on the narrative that seems to have still be going around that ADHD is potentially being diagnosed and that there is more about the societal things that we have going on around us that is probably being labelled as ADHD, and so I know your answer and know your response to this is going to be that's not the case, but why do you think that's getting so much weight behind it at the moment and still so much airtime is being discussed around that?

Dr Zoe Watson:

I think, because it's a shift, it's a change and people don't really understand it. And I think that it is also quite a complex thing to understand because I think with any condition, any disease that we've talked about a lot or that we see rising incident Incidents of, I think, if you're not medically trained you think you know there's a lot of it around because there's a lot more of it happening, but actually that's not always the case. The incidents of things rise because we get better tests or because more people are coming to be diagnosed. So the concept of incidents and prevalence is quite an important thing to understand when you're looking at disease and condition patterns. So with ADHD and I think I do think the patriarchy comes into this a little bit because largely the people that are coming forward to be diagnosed with adult late diagnosis ADHD are women Interesting, and you know the patriarchy doesn't like that because it's a form of empowerment, having that diagnosis, because it helps you understand who you are. And so there is understanding, incidents and prevalence because essentially what happens is that with things like ADHD and autism because autism is also the diagnosis of on the rise, but it's with these conditions you generally don't know you have them until you.

Dr Zoe Watson:

A lot of people have a light bulb moment and I think it's because we don't inherently, as humans, really talk about our internal world. We don't talk about how our brain works. It's just not really something you do. You just assume that everyone's brain kind of works like yours and it's only when people start talking about their internal world and how they experience the world and that they have, you know, got x, y or z diagnosis, the cogs start turning and people have these light bulb moments. They go oh my God, this all makes sense. That's me. I recognize myself and what this person is saying.

Dr Zoe Watson:

Most people, most neurodivergent folk, if you speak to them about how they got their diagnosis, they will say, oh, I watched this presentation, or I spoke to this person, or I met this person. For me, it was another GP who did a presentation that I a CPD day that I went to, and she talked about her own experience of being diagnosed with ADHD and she put up a picture of her, the contents of her handbag, and I went, oh fuck, that's me and everything she said. I was like that's me, that's me, that's me. And I'd been and I'd been out of context. I'd been wondering about ADHD and my son and then I started learning more about it myself and then when she did this presentation, I was like, oh, okay, and then so then I kind of went down that route and, yeah, I got a diagnosis, decided not to go on treatment.

Dr Zoe Watson:

But I think the rise of ADHD as a diagnosis is because it's be it in the press more it's being talked about, more, more people are being exposed to the concept of ADHD, more people are doing their own kind of research on it during their own self assessment and coming forward to have an official diagnosis. So, in summary, it's not that it's like a sudden mass onset of ADHD. The ADHD has always been there. It's just that it's now being recognized and given a label and identified, yeah, yeah.

John Hawker:

So when you had that light bulb moment and then decided and I guess you were a lot more informed than other people would be on how to get a diagnosis what were the steps to actually getting diagnosed? So you go from I. So many of those things on that list in that presentation resonate with me. What do I do from that point?

Dr Zoe Watson:

So at that point it was quite a steep learning curve myself because I didn't really know Right. I didn't know heaps about it and I actually did a really good. I've got pinned post on my Instagram page about exactly how to get an adult ADHD.

John Hawker:

We can share that in the notes as well, on the back of the episode, if that's okay, or I can direct people to your profile. Yeah, that's fine.

Dr Zoe Watson:

Yeah, absolutely, because it isn't straightforward and it does vary from area to area. In England you can either go to your GP and get referred locally, or you can get go to your GP and have to be referred on something called right to choose, which doesn't just apply to ADHD referrals as your applies to any referral. And right to choose essentially is that you have the right to choose who you're referred to so you can be referred to a specific hospital, doesn't even have to be a hospital locally. If you live in London, you can ask to be referred to a hospital in Manchester. That's your right to choose. Right, you can choose a specific consultant as well. That is your right to choose.

Dr Zoe Watson:

So with adult ADHD assessments there are huge years long waiting lists on the NHS. So right to choose. As part of trying to resolve this bottleneck, nhs England have employed a few private providers. They've subcontracted them to do NHS work. So there are places like Psych UK who will do ADHD assessments and the waiting list is, I think, slightly well, quite a bit shorter than if you go on the NHS. The other option is going private. The only issue with that is that if you do end up on medication, your GP can't take over prescribing because it's a private provider and it's a specialist medication, right? And you need a shared care agreement in place, which private providers generally don't do. Okay, so right to choose is usually your best option. I forgot. Oh yeah, it's different in Scotland. Scotland doesn't have right to choose, wales also doesn't have right to choose, and I think in Wales and Scotland I don't know about Northern Ireland it's a bit trickier and I'm actually in the process of trying to write some posts on exactly how you do that in Scotland, northern Ireland and Wales because it's a slightly different process, but generally in those places your GP would be your first port of call.

Dr Zoe Watson:

But also very important to say that self-diagnosis is widely accepted to be a valid form of diagnosis, certainly by me. Other people may disagree, but I think if you're doing self-diagnosis with the right tools, one of which is a questionnaire called the Diva 5, which is what psychiatrists actually use to do your assessment Okay. And I think one of the biggest, biggest things for me coming out of my ADHD diagnosis, one of the biggest things I've found helpful was peer support, connecting with other women, other female doctors, who understood what I was going through. You don't need an official diagnosis for that. The only reason you need an official diagnosis is if you want medication and if you want that validation of a professional telling you that you have ADHD. Also, I think I'm maybe minimizing official diagnosis a bit because it is important to get an official diagnosis because ADHD can masquerade as other things.

Dr Zoe Watson:

There are loads of things that look a little bit like ADHD, but autism is one. Autism mimics ADHD. There's lots of crossover. It often coexists Anxiety, also Having a trained healthcare professional. Have those differentials in their head as important. I think oftentimes when you're doing an ADHD assessment, there is a bit of confirmation bias going on because you're expecting it to be. That's what you're looking for, so that's what you might find. I think, yeah, be careful with self-diagnosis, but it is very much a valid, accepted form of diagnosis if you're wanting to access peer support and all that sort of thing, even coaching.

John Hawker:

The next question, funnily enough, was going to be what's your opinion on self-diagnosis, which you've answered perfectly, Larry. Well, because I think, if that's what gets you started on the journey to self-discovery and learning more about the condition and how you can manage that, the peer support piece is definitely something that WellGood WellBeing I think you mentioned you started to introduce more of, now moving forward, yeah, yeah, I mean.

Dr Zoe Watson:

So essentially, after I built WellGood WellBeing, I think I'd pretty much built the whole thing and I think I got my diagnosis just before I launched and I launched and then I looked at it and I was like I've basically created a WellBeing platform for someone like me, because I really struggle and it's a well-known thing, I really struggle to the craft of my personal well-being. All aspects of it Eating properly, remembering to exercise all of those things are really hard because of the executive dysfunction that comes hand-in-hand with ADG and autism to an extent, because there's a lot of executive dysfunction and autism as well. And I suddenly realized that I'd essentially built a very neurodivergent, friendly well-being platform. So it wasn't just perfect for people who were really busy, it was perfect for people who had very busy brains as well, and so more and more I have sort of wanted to add more aspects of that into the platform and I realized that I probably needed to be quite central to that, because at the moment the WellGood platform is very much.

Dr Zoe Watson:

It's kind of like a well-being library, like a sort of bento box of well-being resources that you can dip in and dip out of. There's articles written by me, but there's also yoga, breast work, pilates, nature videos, funny cat videos, but it's like a you know, watch it for 10 minutes, sprinkle it throughout your day, and there's no at the moment. Like I don't do any kind of regular sessions on there with my members, and I think what is missing for me at the moment is actually me just running group sessions where we do a bit of group coaching about, you know, looking after your well-being when you have ADHD as well as yeah, just that, peer support and connecting people so that they feel less alone, and then also doing expert masterclasses on people who are neurodivergent, folk who run various businesses, because there's so many ADHD business owners I think about. It's thought that about. I think it's like 25% of people entrepreneurs are neurodivergent.

Dr Zoe Watson:

And it's not surprising when you think about the difficulties that we have in structured work, and then one of the things that can. One of the biggest things that causes problems in the workplaces is communication. That causes so many problems, and one of the most stressful things for anyone, but particularly neurodivergent folk, is sort of unilateral change that isn't discussed with people. So one of the things I really struggled with when I was working for a certain digital health care company who shall not be named because they're evil, they've just gone bankrupt and they were actually the inspiration for well-good well-being because I had such an awful experience with them. I was like they implemented what I call weaponized wellness, which is where corporate companies really common in startups. Now they say, oh, we have really big on well-being, flexible working, work-life balance. And they say, oh, you're free gym membership, you get, we've got cereal, granola year round, green smoothies on tap, Fruit bowl.

Dr Zoe Watson:

Yeah, fruit bowls, death yoga, We've got all this stuff and people go, oh, that's great, or sign me up. And then they arrive and realize it's the same bullshit and a different wrapper.

Dr Zoe Watson:

Or worse, it's a company who thinks they're actually doing really well with their company well-being but actually they've created a very sort of non-inclusive type of well-being where they're doing weight loss challenges and step challenges and not realizing how awful that is and just like how bad that can make some employees feel if they can't do the step challenges because they've got arthritis or they struggle with losing weight and it's making them feel really bad about themselves. Like you know, these unilaterally impose these wellness strategies that are just so superficial when they haven't dealt with the toxic workplace culture.

John Hawker:

That was an increase during the pandemic that I started to see. Obviously, a lot of companies were trying. There were companies that had a genuine goal of really supporting their people through that time. There were other businesses that saw it as an exercise to make talent attraction, as they call it, a little easier by having these sort of packaged well-being offerings as part of their benefits as well, and you could tell from a mile off the ones that were serious about it and the ones that weren't. Some people were drinking like a checkbox exercise, while others really wanted to understand and also understand that one size fits all is not something you can apply to something like this Well-being work-life balance. It's always subjective. It all differs for people. I can't remember off the top of my head, zoe, but I saw on your website and I think on some of your posts you've got I call them pillars, but it's not the right thing. Is there five or six things that you focus on?

Dr Zoe Watson:

Yeah, no, I've removed a couple of streamlines, I think, since I launched, but it's mind-body. It started off as mind-body, soul, soil, society savvy. I've kind of removed a couple of them, but the premise is that it's not just about you, so mind-body, soul, important for looking after your brain, your body and your spirituality, whatever form that takes. It's not just about religion. But then soil is about connection to nature and I think it's not something that necessarily is thought about, but actually being outside and even just being in your garden and listening to birds singing, and just that, grounding yourself on Mother Earth and not just living in the world of work and digital technology, I think is a really important thing to remember to do, to go outside and breathe fresh air.

Dr Zoe Watson:

And society is about connection to your fellow humans and also thinking about your fellow humans giving back to society, thinking about your privilege in this world and your place and how you can help others. Because I think one of the things that bugs the shit out of me with the world of wellness is that it is inherently so. It's navel gazing, it's so selfish, it's all about oh, what about me and how do I feel and how do I fit into the world and I'm just like, yeah, but look at all the things you have and I know that feeds into like gratitude and all that fucking bollocks. But it's not just about that. It's about realizing your privilege and your place on this earth. And realizing that it isn't just about how you feel. It's about like looking at the world around you and perceiving what others are going through and how that relates to your life. All of that shit drives me nuts.

John Hawker:

Well, I mean again, a lot of what you're saying resonates with me. The whole aspect of really it's a lot of plate spinning, isn't it as well? And it could be really hard to try and keep a focus on all those areas that you've listed. From my own personal experience and challenges I've been through in life as well, soil for me was one of the biggest things being out and being grounded in nature and just it's that understanding that the world is bigger than you. And I think that depression which my experience of suffering from depression on and off over the years as well, has been that it's one of the most insular, selfish things that can happen. You can be in your own head and actually sometimes being dragged out of that. To understand that it's not all about you is what needs to happen.

Dr Zoe Watson:

Absolutely. It's the thing I say over and, over and over again, and it's not about minimizing your depression and it's not about seeing what you're going through isn't valid. It's about opening up your eyes to the rest of the world. And I often say, one of the best things you can do when you're really struggling with your mental health is actually to go and volunteer and go and give back to your community, because not only do you get to connect with other humans, you also get to see what other humans are going through and it's a very humbling experience, I think, to see that and I mean depression is awful and it's just such a hard disease to live with and when you're in that place where everything feels pointless, it's so hard to pull yourself out of it. But I think, in some ways, what sort of volunteering and giving back to community causes in depression? A lot of people struggle to pull themselves out of it because they think they don't deserve it.

Dr Zoe Watson:

And it feels like a selfish act to even bother looking after themselves. But often when we have very loud inner critics, if you flip it and say, actually, why don't you go and look after somebody else for a bit, and then it has a similar effect, that sort of pulls us out because what we're doing isn't for us, it's for other people.

John Hawker:

Yes.

Dr Zoe Watson:

And it's just this very interesting mind shift. That happens, yeah, particularly if you're someone who really struggles with self-worth and loud inner critics, so flipping the switch and just saying okay, well, okay, let's, you know, forget about you for a minute, let's go and see maybe go to a soup kitchen or a community garden, and I guess that is what social prescribing is about.

Dr Zoe Watson:

You know social prescribing has come up, you know, through the ranks a lot in recent years. In general practice we did quite a lot of social prescribing now With variable results, because I think you know some people's depression is so severe that they just can't, they just can't even comprehend leaving the house. So it has to be judged right and it has to be done in a way that doesn't feel patronizing. I think that's what's important is that you don't talk down to people and jump like, no, why have you tried doing some gardening? Because a lot of GPs like they'll try, they'll try and sort of suggest things that that's a patient, but it often just comes back as really patronizing or condescending, or yeah really condescending.

Dr Zoe Watson:

It's like you've got a picture right, you've got a. You've got a caveat that you've got to say to people look, this is not going to solve everything. It's not going to suddenly make you go oh, my depression is cured, I've taken up gardening and you skip to work every day. You've got to caveat it and say, look, this is a thing I'm not saying it's going to fix everything. Try it. If it doesn't work, we'll try this. We'll try that.

John Hawker:

Like, never promise the world when you're, when you're telling people to go out walk walk in nature Because it kind of minimizes what they're going through to a degree as well. I mean, I use my mum as an example when I was first diagnosed with depression and it's something that's been sort of like a roller coaster, like it is for most people for the years. My mum is one of the most positive people I know and like a huge cheerleader, and one of the first things she said was wait, have you tried to come for a walk? And I remember her saying it and I thought and in the time the headspace I was in was like are you serious?

Dr Zoe Watson:

Honestly, I think most people with depression have had that exact same experience and it comes. It comes from a place of love, but it comes from someone who doesn't understand mental health. And yeah, I've had various people say that to me over the years and it does, it feels minimizing, it feels patronizing and you just want to. You just want to slap people when they hear that.

John Hawker:

There is a degree, it's from the right place, but it's ultimately just shows okay, maybe there's not the sensitivity to it or just the understanding and that's more conversations that can be had around it. I think just just improve the understanding and hopefully make the conversations a bit deeper and compassionate as well sometimes as well and okay.

John Hawker:

So I'll touch upon just very quickly around that connection to something bigger than you as well, from a work context Because I think I do a lot of advisory work now with businesses that are building their employee value proposition and the fourth pillar. So I've got four pillars to that, the fourth one being meaningful work and that's sometimes shifted out from other things, but for me it's meaningful work. So that is a connection or at least an awareness of the impact you're making. Not only that can be on the business and the broader business I understand the value you're adding to that company how is that actually identified and recognized and celebrated? But also that the work you're doing is having an impact on society more broadly as well, and I think businesses that are putting things like that together need to understand that people are driven in different ways and actually doing something like giving volunteer days out, which seems to be happening more on benefits list now a day volunteering each year.

John Hawker:

I'd say that's kind of like dipping your toe in, like part of your toe, into into the water. But I think it's really important to maybe be offering that opportunity to your people to get out there in the community and make an impact beyond your day to day work as well. So, yeah, I completely agree.

Dr Zoe Watson:

I mean, I did a talk last month called all for coat and nail knickers, just like in the city.

Dr Zoe Watson:

Yeah, and it was about that, about, you know, basically about superficial wellness strategies being like a hay duggy sticking plaster on a gating abdominal wind, and I talked about how I was. Like you know, employee well being I think has been over complicated and it really isn't. It's not complicated. It's because essentially, I, what I call employees, it's humans who happen to work for you and employees are human beings. So employee well being is human well being and that's what the whole concept of well, good well being is. That it's that.

Dr Zoe Watson:

I am an expert in human well being and humans are my bread and butter. I spend, I spent years looking after humans. I understand what humans need. So if you put me in charge of looking after the humans who happen to work for you, then I can help them be happier and you don't really have to be involved, because I feel like a lot of companies like they overthink it and they'll go. They'll take sort of you know concepts that they've seen, like you desk yoga, and you go. They will put all that into the well being package that the employees will love that and it's like well, humans are very individual people, like not everyone's going to love that.

Dr Zoe Watson:

Why don't you ask them what they want, First of all, but also just remember that they, you know, come to that hierarchy of needs pyramid, doesn't it? And the basics of looking after the humans who happen to work for you is decent pay, paid holiday, paid sick leave and making sure that they are supported mentally and physically to do the work that you've given them to do. And then, you know, another layer to that is connection to what their work connects to the humans around them, connection to nature. Like you know, all of those things are important, but I just, I just think we've overcomplicated employee well being and we've forgotten about the human aspects of it, because employees are humans. Like it's really not that bloody hard.

John Hawker:

No well, I think you explained that brilliantly on your website as well and what I really liked about it and there's two questions I'll ask on the back of this after making this point but what I loved about your website is talking about you know, if you're a business looking to look after your people, sign them up because we can and again on the back of this, we'll talk about your offering as well in a bit more detail but sign them up to the platform and then, and essentially, just bugger off and let me do the work. Exactly Because, if you really care, it's not an exercise that you can use for your marketing, it's not. This is genuinely. You are appealing to companies that genuinely give a shit about their people. So, leaving with me Well, you know, I think, platforms God knows what the following for this podcast will be.

John Hawker:

Like Zoe, I'm hoping it's going to get ears on it and I think anyone that can bang the drum to really do that in a very genuine way, it should be applauded, because I just thought that was really refreshing to say because, yeah, the employee, the employers, don't have to be there on that journey. They could just just leave it to someone. That's like yeah, yeah.

Dr Zoe Watson:

I think, what I mean. One of the things that I really don't like about other employee welding platforms is they just feel very intrusive, very invasive, and I, you know, I likened it to being followed around by a curious but slightly aggressive three year olds who keeps asking very, very personal questions in the name of wellness, like have you been for a poo today? When did you last stand up? How many steps have you done today? When did you last drink water? What's your resting heart rate? What's that thing on your face? Like how is that helpful? Is that, I mean, is that is that wellness? Or is that just adding to the mental loads, the mental chaos, adding to the, you know, the virtual to do list that we all have expanding in the back of our brains?

John Hawker:

Like really good point.

Dr Zoe Watson:

You know, I just feel like we need to go back to basics. And that's just how do you want to look after your well being as a human? It doesn't really matter that you're in work, like you know, what do you need as human being and what are your needs? And I just think more, like, more than anything, employers they need to be asking their employees what they want, like, rather than just making a decision for them. They need to be saying, oh, what do you need? Like I mean, you know, if you've got the basics on play, in place, that's what you need to be asking them. If you haven't got the basics in place, put the bloody basics in place. And then I said what they want.

John Hawker:

It has to be done at the foundational level, doesn't it as well? And that's that's where I I enjoy working with startup and scaling businesses, because they're at that stage where it's not okay, we've got reverse and everything's in hindsight. We've got a kind of reverse engineer, where we are now to put those foundations in as you're building, get them in place, offer people even if you haven't got many people at that stage, get your offering right and then it will just build this foundation that is less likely to crumble because everyone's there going, you don't give a shit and you're not listening to us, yeah, so I think that's completely, you know.

Dr Zoe Watson:

I think like new, new, real inclusivity massively sees into that and that's like a lot of the work that I'm doing now is about helping businesses, you know, build neuro inquisitive policies into their workplace. Because I would wager that if you took a cross section of employees who have had difficulty at work, a large, large, high percentage of them would be neurodivergent. And that's because neurodivergent people really struggle in the workplace for many, many reasons sensory overload, communication difficulties. But it doesn't have to be like that. There are simple things you can do as an employer to make your neurodivergent employees working life much easier. And, honestly, neurodivergent employees are such an asset to your company Because we are particularly I mean, you know all types of neurodivergencies.

Dr Zoe Watson:

We are the out of the box thinkers, we are the, we are the true ideas people. You know, you meet these wankers like oh, I'm an ideas man, I don't do the thing, I'm just an ideas man, we are your ideas people. You know, put a penny in the slot, press the button, I'll give you 100 ideas, like in 10 minutes. Like we're not great at executing them, but you need the spark.

John Hawker:

You need the spark, you need the motivation, and that's what comes as well. Yeah, I think I think you've hit on a really good point as well, and I think that's where so much of the value you're offering now to companies that are, with so much more of a spotlight being shone on neurodiversity in the workplace and what companies are needing to put in place to support people as well, and beyond just the tick box of diversity and inclusion as well, which it's a huge conversation point at the moment and again, you can tell the companies that are taking it seriously from a mile off. Have you got I mean, I don't want you to give any way too much free advice away, but you know just, can you give me a couple of examples what businesses can be doing to make their workplaces more inclusive for people, neurodivergent people?

Dr Zoe Watson:

So I would say the first thing, and probably the biggest thing, is awareness, because, like coming back to the point I was saying about a lot of neurodivergent people not realizing they're neurodivergent until they have their light bulb moment. And so awareness and opening the conversation allows those neurodivergent people to actually recognize that they're neurodivergent, because they may have been struggling in their workplace and not really understanding why. And if you, you know, run like a neurodiversity awareness day which I do, believe me, if you run that, then you are creating an environment in which more neurodivergent people might be like, oh, maybe that's me, and they might go off and do their own assessments and then they might come back and be like oh, actually I think I might have autism or I think I might have ADHD. It also that what that also does is help your current neurodivergent employees realize that you are, you're trying to be more neuroinquisitive.

Dr Zoe Watson:

So if they haven't disclosed to you that they're neurodivergent which is common because there's a lot of shame still around being neurodivergent it will help them come forward and then communicate that with you so you can then act on it, because you cannot act if you do not know. So that's the number one thing I would say is awareness days and just opening that conversation, making sure you know the right language, that you're using inclusive language around neurodiversity. So that's the biggest thing, I think. Once you have that information, act on it and ask them what their needs are. I think there's lots of things now about how you can create sensory rooms for people to kind of retreat to if they're feeling, if they're struggling because, like lots of like, open plan offices are a fucking nightmare.

John Hawker:

I've read this. I've read this, yeah.

Dr Zoe Watson:

And they're so common. But I mean it just so when I say that my brain is like having 50 tabs open, with music coming from eight of them and the pop up ad for crypto currency coming up every 30 seconds. I'm not exaggerating, wow, but that's just my internal brain. And then also, if I'm talking to you, for instance, in a, in a cafe, and there's lots of people around me, I'm not just listening to our conversation, I'm also picking up on about five or six different conversations, and holding that focus when I'm talking to you is exhausting. So when that's your work environment and you've got people, someone behind you making a really loud sales call and you're trying to focus on building a website, absolutely nightmare, yeah.

John Hawker:

Yeah, well, that's it. I think it's the actual physical environment as well, isn't it working in? And that's even more important, where there's this apparent drive now from businesses that are calling people back to the work, to the workplace in, yeah, in droves, in the hope that I don't know for me. All the the figures are skewed around this, around Productivity and and a drop in productivity because remote working. But see what happens when you bring people back to the office in those environments when they're not thriving in as well. Yeah, I think that's a super important point to make for businesses that are approaching these kind of exercises around well-being and then wondering what's the return on investment? I Knew this might go on at its reaction from you, zoe, because so many businesses and in in loads of different avenues, they want to spend money and want to say, okay, we're spending this money, what's gonna be the return?

Dr Zoe Watson:

I'll tell you what your return on your fucking investment is. Your return on investment is healthy employees who enjoy working for you and who won't fucking leave because they're stressed up to their eyeballs because you've created a toxic workplace Environment. That's your return on investment. Your return on investment is happy, healthy, retained employees.

John Hawker:

That is going to be the sound bite, I think, for this episode. Honestly, I know I had a feeling it might go on that reaction, because I agree completely, there are. There are things that in business you have to have a return on, you have to be able to monitor it, you have to be able to quantify it, your employee well-being, or human well-being of people that work for you. It's just not not one.

Dr Zoe Watson:

You know, I would not want and I mean thing is it is a return on investment, because I well, I can't remember what the figures of, like you know, retaining an employee versus recruiting an employee. Yes, yeah it's much more expensive to find an employee. He wants to work for you rather than just looking after the ones you already have, and that that in itself is a return on Investment, because you're not spending thousands of pounds trying to find some other mug he wants to come and work for fucking.

John Hawker:

Not another money laundering NFG company like yeah, it's a really good point, and it's often only when you've realized how you've, how you fucked up by not supporting your people, that you're then like I've got another bill to pay. Someone like me that comes in and finds the Backfill and the replacement to go in as well.

Dr Zoe Watson:

I mean one of my like one of my favorite pastimes is. One of my favorite pastimes was and this awful digital healthcare company that I worked with I technically can't talk about, okay, take them to a tribe, you know, and but this Shadden Freud I used to get from going on glass door code at UK and just reading all of the awful reviews about these employees and realizing that After I left nothing had changed and they were still an extremely, extremely toxic workplace. I was like that. You know those reviews, they speak volumes and they have such a high staff turnover and any company that has that high of a staff turnover there is something going, seriously, seriously wrong. Yeah, you know you're hemorrhaging money, you're hemorrhaging employees. You need to fix it or you're gonna drown.

John Hawker:

Yeah you know. Yeah, that's a really good point, and I think you've touched upon so many of the points that I wanted to discuss with you. Really, zoe, and For me, I'd like to give you a bit of a platform now to talk about what you've got coming up in the future and what you're offering people as well as part of your service, because I know it's evolving and it will evolve, as as I think the spotlight being shone on a number of issues that people are going through Evolved as well. That all fall under the well-being banner. So, talk to me about what you've got in the pipeline and what's happening in the business. Yeah, too broad a question to ask.

Dr Zoe Watson:

Yeah, yeah, I mean I think yeah, well, good Well being has definitely evolved from when we launched In October. In all honesty, I basically launched completely burned out because it had taken so much of my energy to actually get it across the finish line. So I sort of launched it and they didn't really talk about it that much on social Um. So so the platform is the core, the platform being very much like a sort of library of well-being resources Everything from, you know, videos like yoga classes to written articles by me and that's a sort of core dip in tip out content. But on top of that and I'm now working one-to-one Doing some a blend of sort of mentoring and coaching and calling it because it's for women, primarily women and non-binary folk who have ADHD and who are struggling with overwhelm, burn out and just struggling with Knowing how to kind of put themselves first and look after the well-being, which is a huge problem. The reason it's focused mainly on women and non-binary focus are because those are the ones who seem to struggle the most.

Dr Zoe Watson:

Um, I think women carry a lot of mothers in particular carry a lot of the mental load in the household. So when you're a Mother with ADHD, particularly if you also have ADHD or neurodivergent children, there's a. It's a very, very, very difficult thing to prioritize your own Well-being. So I'm working one-to-one um with women are helping them to kind of Put boundaries in place and how to kind of prioritize their well-being. So that's one really exciting thing that I've just recently started doing and it's brilliant and so.

Dr Zoe Watson:

So there's that on phase two of well-good well-being um is evolving. It's Probably gonna launch autumn, when time being particularly vague I don't want to put pressure on myself, uh, burn out while I'm doing it, but um, what that will entail is essentially much more of my face on the platform, so much more engagement with me um In a group basis and on a one-to-one basis um. So I'm going to be doing running Peer sub adhd, peer support groups within the platform um, adhd group well-being coaching within the platform um and also having a monthly expert masterclass from everything from sort of adhd nutrition, uh, parenting when you have adhd. Um being an entrepreneur when you have adhd. So various people from various industries talking about um.

Dr Zoe Watson:

Yeah, their expertise with adhd. And the fourth thing that I'm going to be adding in, which was always part of the plan um, is creative workshops. So very much a merging of making creating Well Good, to kind of be more one thing rather than two separate things. Yeah, the reason for that is that um, creativity for for neurodivergent brains and for anyone really, but particularly neurodivergent brains, is incredibly useful. I call my workshops, my creative workshops, meditation for the hand, because A wonderful thing happens that when you are creating, it's about the only time that my brain just sort of goes quiet, particularly if I'm doing like micrame or watercolors, like the repetitive soothing motion, all of the kind of music from all of the tabs just sort of turns down. And if I sit and try and meditate without being creative, it's very loud and chaotic and it's not that pleasant. Um, so it's it's. I think it's an integral part of neurodivergent well-being is actually being creative. So I'm going to be running virtual creative workshops as part of phase two. Yeah, well, good well-being On top of that.

John Hawker:

No, I love it.

Dr Zoe Watson:

I'm. I'm also doing um In terms of workplace well-being stuff. I'm doing a lot more like I'm doing kind of you know talks within Workplaces about everything from just general workplace well-being stuff to neuro inclusivity in the workplace and also Running Peer support groups like employee visa worse groups for businesses. You want to set them up for the neurodivergent employees, which I think is a brilliant thing that people are doing.

Dr Zoe Watson:

I think sometimes, particularly with uh, neurodivergent peer support groups, it's useful to have an expert who can help train up an employee in running those erg's For peers for neurodivergent employees, so they know exactly what they're doing, and also offering a um, a sort of monthly Check-in with them to make sure that all the far, because I think, as much as you know, being the head of an erg's is a great thing for someone to do. It can also take up a lot of the time and they don't get any extra Benefits really for it. It's just sort of part of what they do. So I think, um, it's important to give them that support um, and I mean there's a whole heap of stuff I've got actually. Do you know what I should do?

Dr Zoe Watson:

I should give you my business brochure and you can attach it to the podcast because there's a whole heap of Stuff that I do, from, yeah, neurodiversity awareness days to talks and events and, uh, yeah, one-on-one training with each or reps and things.

John Hawker:

Yeah, no, that's brilliant. What we'll do, we'll include all of that in the, in the, in the notes and the On the back of this and put some collateral out for you. I think from my side you've just Gone through your kind of service in a holistic level, but it sounds. If people can't see the value they could potentially get from working with you, they're mad in my opinion. But If a business, if a business, a leader, someone in a function that has um capacity to work with you, is listening to this, what do they have to do on the back of listening to this episode, to reach out and and start speaking with you?

Dr Zoe Watson:

I'd say email me, it's probably the easiest thing to do. hello@ well good well being. com. That's the best thing to do. I'm very good at answering emails. Um, I I'm Invariably on linkedin depending on how overwhelmed I'm feeling, and the email I will always check. So yeah, that's the simplest, most straightforward thing to do.

John Hawker:

Fantastic so I I've absolutely loved that conversation. There are so many sound bites and nuggets that I'm I'm going to use in the marketing for it as well. I do. I do have a closing tradition on this podcast. If it's okay, I'm conscious of your time. But, um, if you ever, if you've listened to a quite a famous podcast, the diary of a ceo podcast of steve of I know I know you like that one as well. He has a closing tradition of someone asking a question. I've I've stolen that to a degree, but it's actually my mum asking a question at the end of these episodes. If that's okay.

John Hawker:

I've got a voice note of my mum. Yeah, I don't listen to the question before, so she could be asking me she knows a high level who about you and the discussion that we've Roughly had, but I'm just going to play it down the phone, all right.

Lisa Hawker:

Hi dr Zoe. Um, I wonder if you could tell me if there's any small thing that we could do each day that would really make a big difference to how we feel at work. Um, or if if there's any um Benefit in how we position even the chair that we sit on. Thank you very much.

John Hawker:

I can only apologize. So it's. You know, it's one of these things you. You just roll the dice and see what you get, but that's so that's.

Dr Zoe Watson:

At least you didn't ask me a personal medical question. I mean, that would be very awkward.

John Hawker:

She sent me a picture as well. Can you just no? So one one. Let's focus on the first bit. Maybe not the positioning of a chair I think I feel like it was a bit left field but we're just one thing that we can be doing each day for our, for our well-being at work. Thanks, mum, appreciate that.

Dr Zoe Watson:

All right, because that's an interesting question. I think I would probably just say get outside, at least, you know, on a coffee break or a lunch break. Get outside and and Breathe and and just get yourself out of that work environment. And I, uh, I wrote about this on LinkedIn actually a while back about uh, I think it's I don't know if it's a me thing or if it's an adc thing but I really hate eating my lunch with colleagues. I really hate it.

Dr Zoe Watson:

I hate listening to people chewing, I hate the smell of other people's food and I very much need 30 minutes myself to completely decompress, watch silly cat videos and, you know, forget about work. So so if we're talking about things I could do for my well-being and work, it would be I would go outside and eat my lunch outside with nobody around me, maybe go and sit in the park and and just enjoy Not having any other human beings around. But if you're not like me and you do enjoy having your lunch with colleagues, then Rather than sitting in the staff room, I would say go, maybe go outside. I mean, it's tricky because sometimes the weather is horrible, but, like you know, as billy connelly says this no such thing as bad weather, just the rank was so.

John Hawker:

Get outside. It's a really good point. Yeah, just exit that environment and have a change of scenery. I think is is really important. Yeah, thank you for that, and thank you for entertaining my my mum's question. I appreciate it, zoe. It's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. Thank you so much for your time. I know you're incredibly busy as well with everything that you've got going on. All the services you've listed there must be taking up God knows how much of your time at the moment, so I really appreciate that and I'll let you get on. Thank you so much.

Dr Zoe Watson:

Thank you.

John Hawker:

Thanks, john. Thanks for listening to jobs worth. If you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to like and subscribe. You can stay connected by following me on linkedin for more insights on the world of work behind the scenes, content and updates on upcoming episodes. We're really thinking about guests for season two, so if there is a particular topic you'd like us to discuss, then please send in your suggestions to hello at jobsworthcom.

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