Julie Legg welcomes Nicola Knobel, a creative strategist, systems thinker and proudly AuDHD, based in New Zealand. Nicola brings deep personal insight into what it means to navigate life with both ADHD and autism, particularly when diagnosed in adulthood.
From academic success to building creative businesses, Nicola shares how she’s made sense of her brain’s unique wiring, including the tension between ADHD spontaneity and autistic structure. She reflects on grief, identity, and the power of building systems that work with your neurotype, not against it.
KEY POINTS FROM THE EPISODE
- Nicola’s late AuDHD diagnosis and how her son’s autism sparked her own discovery
- The emotional processing that followed including grief, self-forgiveness, and clarity
- The interplay between ADHD and autism traits (and how they sometimes conflict)
- How she’s built systems to support energy, creativity, and emotional regulation
- Using external scaffolding (like journaling) to manage cognitive load
- Nicola’s academic journey including six degrees
- Insights into building neuro-inclusive workplaces and adapting leadership styles
- Her experiences as a content creator and co-host of two podcasts
- Strategies for managing rejection sensitivity, hyperfocus, and executive function
- A message of encouragement for those still figuring out how to thrive with AuDHD
LINKS
TRANSCRIPT
JULIE: Welcome to Season 2 of ADHDifference. I’m your host, Julie Legg, ADHD advocate, author of The Missing Piece: A Woman’s Guide to Understanding, Diagnosing, and Living with ADHD, and an unapologetic doer of many things. This season, we’re turning up the volume with a global lineup of brilliant guests bringing their lived experiences, insights, research, strategies, and resources. And of course, along with a healthy dose of humor and humility. Whether you’re neurodivergent yourself or just curious, there’s something here for every curious brain. Let’s dive in. In today’s show, we’ll meet Nicola Knobel, a creative strategist, systems thinker, and proudly a neurodivergent human with AuDHD who spent nearly two decades leading work in health, safety, and organizational strategy. By day, she’s all about building human first systems that actually work for people. And by night, she’s a podcaster, stationery lover, and spreadsheet obsessed creative who never quite fit the mold and finally stopped trying to. Welcome to the show, Nicola.
NICOLA: Kia Ora. So good to be on the show today. I’m glad I have the opportunity to come and chat with you today.
JULIE: Yay. Very good. Well, lovely to have you here. So, we’ll get straight into it. And you describe yourself as someone who never quite fitted into a box, but you tried for a long time, right? So, what did that box look like for you and what helped you realize that it wasn’t yours to fit into?
NICOLA: That’s a really great question because I think when you look at the boxes people put you into, there’s always these social norm boxes, especially for women that you have to fit and you have to be a certain way and socially you have to do these certain things. And there’s all of these unwritten rules that you aren’t really aware of and you’re just going about, you know, your life thinking, “Oh, here’s these five things. Oh, look at these beautiful butterflies. Oh, squirrel.” But then you realize that actually not everybody is looking for those things and the box that you have been put into is actually really constraining and it’s keeping you back or holding you back from being your true and authentic self. And I think the thing that really highlighted that for me was boundary setting, is specific, the kind of key red flag that was a big eye opener for me. My mum always set my boundaries for me with regards to friends, relationships, workplaces. I remember my first job as au pair, my mum kind of quit my job for me because she was like “I don’t like these people” and then quit my job for me and I was like “okay”. So she was very strict and very rules-orientated and put me very much into a “these are the social norms you need to follow box” which was very challenging. And then as I got older, I noticed that actually every time I try and fit into the box or squash myself into the box, it overlaps and spills out and there’s these parts of me that I just actually can’t contain in the box. So, I think it’s taken a very long time to realize that there was a label on the box that I was spilling out of, which was the AuDHD label. But I think the most exciting thing was that it allowed me to change my box into a cylinder or a cone for example, a different shaped carrying implement.
JULIE: Perfect. And when did you get your AuDHD diagnosis? When did you discover that? [This year.] Wow. Congratulations.
NICOLA: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it’s… it was quite a process. I’m really surprised at how long it actually takes, especially in women, in mature women. I think it’s really surprising how under-resourced the whole process is and how misunderstanding and misdiagnosing the whole system is. It’s quite disappointing actually.
JULIE: Did you go through a series of misdiagnoses?
NICOLA: Yes. Absolutely. Always around anxiety. I unfortunately do have post-traumatic stress, but a lot of my kind of ADHD elements were always chalked up to post-traumatic stress, which I thought was really interesting when I found out because I was like, actually, if we read the research, ma’am, here’s all these things that don’t line up. So, it’s yeah, it’s been really interesting.
JULIE: So, what led you to seeking an assessment?
NICOLA: Yeah, my son. So, my son was diagnosed with autism about… I want to say maybe about 5 years ago and the process was great for him. Like I love that for him and he can just… he has just started off with living his authentic self which I love. You know, he can just be whoever he wants to be and he can be like, “I don’t do that because that’s not how my brain works”. Love that for him. And I started noticing things with myself. And when I approached a psychologist, I was like, I actually think it’s not just this one thing. I don’t think I just have autism. I actually think I’ve got the one where we’ve got them together. And he was like, we’ll have a look. And it was very much both of them. There was absolutely no doubt about it at the end of the process.
JULIE: Did this come as a surprise to you? [Yes. Yes.] Would you care to share how you felt growing up? And you’ve achieved a lot in your career over the last few decades. You’ve achieved plenty which we will talk about as well. I am proud of you of achieving so much under the circumstances. Indeed, under the circumstances, you know, there must have been many struggles along the way and challenges, finally having a name now to look back and go, “Wow.”
NICOLA: Yeah. It’s when I look back on like the last couple of decades, I look back and I’m like, “Wow, there are things that if only I had known, if only I had known, I would have been okay at doing this thing over here.” I, you know, and It’s almost like a grief. It’s almost like a loss where you’re just like, “Oh, you did okay for what was happening, girlfriend.” Like, “You go girl but like, ooh, if only you had known” it would have been so much easier and it would have been so much more accepting. And the amount… like the amount of relationships I have destroyed because of my rejection sensitivity where I’m just like, “Oh, I will just break up with this person” or “I don’t want to be friends with this person anymore because they’re just going to reject me anyway because like what kind of person am I? Eww yuck.” You know, and like thinking about those situations where I’m like, I could have responded better to that if I had known that my brain was working differently to everybody else. If I had known that this wasn’t the way that everybody is and I just assumed this whole way through that everybody thought the same way I did, but no, they don’t. So, yeah, it has been… it has been really challenging. The… when I look at my diagnosis specifically, my autism very much heavily outweighs my organizational skills or making sure that things are structured or making sure that things are in place, at the same place at the same time, etc. And I can get very overwhelmed when things are not where they’re supposed to be. But then the after effects of that are is that my brain never stops. And I always thought that that was just everybody. Like it just is like a beehive all the time. And I’m like, why are people not just catching the bees and doing things with the bees? But I don’t know. It’s so interesting. It’s such an interesting… It’s such an interesting kind of evolution of yourself when you discover that actually there’s a reason that this is all happening.
JULIE: Yes. Also with autism and ADHD as separate differences, some of them almost contradict each other in many ways. And you talked about organizing. Now you’re the… you’re the creative organizer queen here, right? So, one lives and loves very much structure and the other likes the dynamics of change and, potentially impulsivity and fresh new approaches. How do you handle that?
NICOLA: I don’t know. I probably like five times a week I’m starting a new business or a new idea or something new is happening and I’m like, “Oh my god, I’ve had this idea. Like, let’s do these like seven different things.” Actually, I’m going to use a terrible example. We’re about to go overseas and my autism wants the entire trip planned from start to finish in minutia. But my… it’s almost embarrassing, my ADHD side is like “and we need to see the otters, and we need to see the capybaras, and we need to go eat this food here, or over here. And I’ve got like 37 different things on Instagram that I’ve saved pictures to that I’m never going to look at again. Let’s be honest. I’m never looking at them again. I saw them one time and now I need to find that, where we’re going. I need to find all the things and I am so excited. And then my autism’s like, “No, ma’am. Don’t you do that.” It’s crazy.
JULIE: Your creativity. I’d love to talk to you about My Inner Creative. [Yes. Yes.] As far as starting new businesses go, can you tell me about that?
NICOLA: Sure. So, actually, that was a… it’s a really interesting progression of what that was. It was really interesting. So, the… the autistic side of me at this point, let’s keep in mind that I didn’t… I didn’t know my diagnosis and I didn’t know any of the information I know now. If only I did then. Great times, but I was working at a university in in New Zealand. And one of the bonuses of working at universities is you can study for free. And up until that point, I had only ever focused on my career because like laser focus. I was good at this. This is what I was going to do and I love studying and I love being creative. So at the university I decided to do a diploma in creativity. And one of the papers that they offered was a paper on social media. And I was like, “Oh, can’t really get my brain engaged with it.” So I was like, “You know what? I’ve recently been watching a TV show. Please, this is how the brain thinking works, right? Watch this TV show. They talk about narcissism. I wonder if I can use Instagram as a platform to harbour narcissism so that you can grow a platform based on how people think about the way that you’re sharing their information. Please, there was a whole circle and I was like, I’ve got to do it. So, I found a really interesting niche around bullet journaling organization and people wanted their stuff to be shared because, you know, it’s Instagram. People want to have their stuff re-shared. And I started building this account and I think I grew it to about 65,000 followers in like 3 months. And I was like, I’m on to something here. That kind of led, because can’t do one thing at a time, that then led to me working for one of the biggest notebook companies in America, part-time while I did my full-time job in New Zealand. So I was head of e-commerce for this organization while I was working in my regulatory role daytime. Because you’ve got all the energy most of the time and the interest and the dopamine, that’s going to keep you going. Who needs sleep? And then that led to the website which I then sold last year, January, and that was a… like it felt really good to just be like I have made this thing that it’s so big I can now sell it. I was like, oh, this is bit fancy. So yeah, it’s been it was a wild ride, but it was an amazing time with My Inner Creative. I was really grateful for it and I got so many amazing opportunities to do sponsorships for like The Warehouse and, you know, crafting organizations and I got to like release all my pent-up creativity that I had been holding on to. I do now have a hobby graveyard, but you know, we’ll find something else to do with it.
JULIE: Very creative indeed. Yet at the same time, going back to your organizational side of life, you managed to get a master’s… master of laws.
NICOLA: Yeah. Yeah. I blame the autism for that one. [Right. Tell me about that. That’s incredible.] It’s actually I, you know, I look around my room. I’m in like a little closet that I work out of at home and I’ve actually got about six degrees. I collect them like Pokémon cards because I feel like that’s one thing I’m really good at is studying. And I think it’s the autistic side that helps me with that. I always just thought that it was really easy. And then I was like, I wonder what else I could do to add to it. And then I discovered obviously after my diagnosis that actually what was happening was I would get excited about a topic, I get all the dopamine, but then I channel the dopamine into an autistic special interest, which is then a long-standing research paper. It’s just like this is a hot mess, but a really cool superpower that I quite enjoy.
JULIE: Wow. That’s fabulous. So, six degrees. [Six. Yeah.] Wow. [I’m currently doing another one.] You are? Yeah. And what may I ask, what that is?
NICOLA: This one I’m a little petty about because I thought that doing a master of law would be enough to get my professional registration as a health and safety practitioner which I’ve been doing for many many years. I’ve been doing it for decades. And I assumed the coupling of writing published works on safety and neuro inclusivity and like all of these different things, and then also the masters of law would get me the professional certification. But no, you have to do a very particular postgraduate and I was like guys, I’ve literally just finished law. Like honestly and it’s not good enough? Okay. Excellent. Excellent. Thumbs up. So now I’m doing just a short post-graduate on focusing only on safety.
JULIE: You have a very full life at the moment because it’s not just by day, it’s by night. You have some special interests. Which brings me on to my question with regards to where are you at now with your current passions? Given that some may come and they may go and as you said you do have a graveyard of hobbies but what’s currently fizzing in your brain? Whether it’s a work or a new idea or a new hobby or even a new stationery find, as I understand you’re a bit of a collector?
NICOLA: I am a bit of a collector. I would probably say my current special interest or my special hyperfixation at the moment is probably understanding new research that comes out about ADHD and autism. I’ve got a Google alert that comes out daily to let me know if there’s any brand new research that’s come out and I find it absolutely fascinating. If there is something I can absorb and understand more, then absolutely I am fully on board with that. And I’m pretty confident I’ve now done, within like the last 3 months, I’m sure I’ve done like a mini PhD on this, but like I’m fascinated in the genetics. I’m fascinated in the comorbidities. I’m fascinated in what happens psychologically for people when they are struggling with something. I’m so curious to understand others and myself so much better. You know, a lot of my close friends are diagnosed ADHD as well. So, understanding them better as well has been so great. And being able to communicate with people better as well. And you know, as a leader at work, I’ve got a team member with ADHD and making sure that when we design work for her, it’s giving her the dopamine hit she needs, even if it’s admin-y and boring, like we’ve got like a whole reward system and there’s things going on and it’s so important. So that’s my that’s my big kind of hyperfocus at the moment is around just learning as much as I can and absorbing it in.
JULIE: Mmm and you’re reading so much and you are also able to put it into practice which is brilliant in the workplace and I’m sure from an ADHD perspective it would just be amazing to have someone who really understands what’s going on and to make some of the boring tasks a little bit more fun. Let’s face it. [I hope.] Yeah, we can struggle with that. We can struggle. Now you also are a podcaster. So tell me all about that.
NICOLA: Okay. So, the business, that creative business in the USA that I ended up working for, was actually quite a toxic workplace. I didn’t realize that at the time. It was only once I’d left that I realized how toxic it actually was because the dopamine was just keeping me glassy-eyed. And that’s really sad like in hindsight. Again, I you know, I wish I knew what I know now because I would have been able to put in better boundaries and kind of notice things maybe before they got bad. But one of my like co-workers, we ended up doing a podcast together around toxic workplaces from all around the world, which was really cool. And we actually just hit a huge milestone. So, we haven’t published anything on that particular podcast for about a year and a half now and we still hit the top, I think, 15% of podcasts this last year. Fabulous. Which is amazing. I’m really happy with that. And then just as something fun and engaging, I run another podcast with a friend of mine who does exactly the same job as me, but at a bank. And we talk to women in leadership and we talk to women around, you know, uplifting the occupational health and safety industry because it can feel very male-dominated. Often there’s pay inequities there as well, especially in New Zealand and Australia. So, making sure that we’re uplifting everybody, I think, is so important.
JULIE: Absolutely. And can you please let me know the name of those podcasts and then we’ll provide a link in the show notes so our listeners know.
NICOLA: I sure can. The one is Let’s Break Up: Toxic Workplace Stories and then the other one is SafeTea, as in like drinking tea because SafeTea because we thought hey having a chat about safety.
JULIE: Brilliant. That sounds great. I will… I’ll be tuning in myself and having a good old listen. ADHD, often the environment can trigger us and everybody is different and we… different things trigger different people and even the time of day or whatever it may be, can be quite fluid as to how we feel. But often having little strategies or approaches that help us in certain situations is a really good start. And so I am asking my guests if there’s one practice or a mindset that helps tackle some of the traits that you experience as challenging and what it is and when you practice it.
NICOLA: The one that I probably practice the most is kind of that external scaffolding for my brain, is I will write a lot of stuff down. And I will make sure that I’ve got my notebook with me probably 90% of the time it just travels with me like my phone. And I find that when you kind of use that external kind of scaffolding for your brain, you’re able to kind of park some of that cognitive load and look at kind of other things that you’re dealing with as well. And I think that’s really important to do as a practice. And yeah, sometimes, look, sometimes it’s not great. Sometimes it goes horribly pear-shaped, and sometimes it’s just like scribbles that I then have to kind of really think about what I’ve written down because I can’t even read my own writing. But there is, you know, science behind using, you know, journaling as a tool in ADHD, especially when you have those slumps and you can’t do the kind of cognitive load that you would expect, you know you could usually do on a good day or at a different time. The other one I’ve noticed recently is I spend a lot of time monitoring the data on my watch. I think the obsessive nature of that is a little bit more autism. But what I have noticed is I get more stressed when I am hyperfocused and I forget to do basic things. So things like going for a wee or eating something. When I forget to do those things because I’m so hyperfocused on something, that’s in turn what ends up stressing me out. So now I’ve set reminders on my watch so that I purposefully leave so that I can actually do that or else I can’t even concentrate and I’ll just get like incandescent rage from not being able to concentrate because I can’t focus because I’m either hungry and I’ve forgotten that I’m hungry, or I haven’t gone to the bathroom because I’ve forgotten that I needed to go to the bathroom. So, for me, those two I’ve noticed have had a real impact on the way that I can kind of disseminate a little bit my cognitive load, which has been really impactful. And also kind of being a little bit gentler with myself. I’m not kind to myself at all, which I understand is a thing. That’s okay. But I am trying a lot harder to be kinder to myself and really labelling when I see rejection sensitivity come up. Really just like calling it out then and there where I’m like, “Oh!”. I had a situation just recently where I was not excluded from something. I really wasn’t, but in my mind, I was excluded. And I was like, “Well, these are the… this is the end of all these people, never speaking to these people again.” And no, it was like actually I’m feeling like this because of this behaviour. Did I get that right? Did I get the behaviour right or is it just, am I just thinking that maybe these people hate me? And just checking in with others as well as like a sense-check. So, I’d say that those were probably the three key strategies I’ve really implemented lately and consistently as well.
JULIE: They are brilliant and they are again, just to summarize them, it would be the journaling, it’s timely reminders on watch or otherwise just to do some basic things, and also naming the emotion. Again, I love them because what we’re actually doing is we’re identifying our triggers and rather than shaking our fists going, “Ah, it’s… you know, why does this happen to me?” We can build our own strategies. And I think adapting strategies are really good because it’s not like there’s a book of strategies and if you follow them, they’re all going to work. It doesn’t actually work that way. You got to work what, you know, what suits individuals. So really happy with that. And I noticed that you have a stress ball. Our listeners won’t be able to see that, but yeah. [Actually, I have two.] You have two.
NICOLA: I do. Yeah. Got two. It just depends on which one I like the feeling of more on the day. [So as sensory and also as a fidget tool?] Yes. Yes. So, I’ve noticed that if I don’t have it on my desk, I recently ended up filing my nails to a nub because that was my kind of fidget. And then I only realized once I had no nails left and I was like, “Oh, that’s not what I needed.” So I’ve gone back to it and I thought I’d lost them because I thought the kids had stolen them. And then I was like, “Oh dear, this is… Oops.”
JULIE: Well, it’s good to have two as, you know, one as a backup at hand. I think that’s brilliant. Very, very good. Now, the last thing I wanted to ask you, Nicola, and that was with regards to what would you say to someone who’s really only just starting their journey, whether it’s ADHD or AuDHD, and they’re feeling a little bit jagged, maybe overwhelmed or misunderstood. What words of wisdom or parting insight could you share for those listeners?
NICOLA: I think if you’re just coming into your diagnosis or you are in the process of kind of exploring a diagnosis and you are kind of touching on your identity and you’re feeling overwhelmed, nothing is wrong with you. There’s nothing wrong. It’s okay. You’re just thinking differently. And once you find out about this stuff, it becomes almost a little bit easier because you can acknowledge and accept it. And I think that’s the most important thing is, you know, getting your diagnosis is like being handed like a taonga (treasure). It’s a beautiful gift and it’s like, wow, okay, I’m part of a community that not a lot of people are actually part of. It might feel like they are, but there are not actually that many people that are part of this beautiful community. And it’s important to really know that you’re loved and part of this group of people that care about your ways of thinking and your differences and how they add to the community because that amazing thinking is what makes the world brighter and happier. And we absolutely want you in the fold.
JULIE: Beautiful. And on that note, Nicola, thank you so much for joining us today.
NICOLA: Thank you for having me. I really, really appreciate it.