For eight long, suffocating years—from 2012 until 2020—I wasn't truly living; I was merely surviving. To the outside world, to my colleagues, and even to my friends, I wore the impeccable mask of a buoyant, capable, and driven academic. But behind closed doors, I was being devoured by an unrelenting pressure. I was suffocating under the crushing weight of severe anxiety and a crippling depression that I hid from almost everyone. There were days, stretching into weeks, shrouded in such intense darkness that I desperately wanted it all to end.
Today, however, I am no longer just surviving. I am thriving, and I am helping others do the same.
My journey from a psychological breaking point to becoming a national advocate for neurodivergent learners is a testament to a profound truth: our deepest vulnerabilities, once understood and supported, can become our greatest, most transformative strengths. This is the story of how an educational system that almost broke me eventually became the very landscape I am now helping to rebuild—one where technology, empathy, and systemic accessibility allow everyone to thrive.
The Invisible Friction of Education
To understand how my mental health deteriorated so completely, you have to understand the profound, invisible friction I experienced in higher education.
As an undergraduate ecology student, I possessed a relentless, almost punishing work ethic. Yet, the system relied heavily on summative assessments—timed essays written under incredibly strict exam conditions. I would spend hours on independent revision, approach lectures with fierce assertiveness, and meticulously plan my essay structures. I even shared my revision timetable with a peer who was notorious for leaving assignments until the absolute night before the deadline.
In a module on British flora, my absolute favourite topic, I spent days researching and structuring my coursework. My peer didn't even look at the prompt until the final evening. When the results were released, they scored several grades higher than I did.
It was a devastating blow to my foundational self-esteem. In exams, I would spend the first ten minutes frantically breaking down the question, only to find my working memory failing me. I’d miss vital points, remember them when it was too late, and try to awkwardly cram them in, ruining the structure of my essays. I began to question my own worth, wondering if I was simply unintelligent. I was tragically oblivious to the fact that my performance was being severely impeded by undiagnosed neurodivergence. It’s a depressingly common story; according to the British Dyslexia Association, many adults go undiagnosed for decades, internalising their struggles as personal failings rather than recognising them as a neurological difference.
The Monkey Trap of Perfectionism
This glaring disproportion between my immense effort and mediocre grades bred a toxic, all-consuming level of perfectionism. I approached assignments hoping that sheer force of will and an unforgiving standard of flawlessness could bridge the gap.
Perfectionism is a vicious double-edged sword. On one hand, it motivates us; on the other, it makes us despair, doubt ourselves, and ultimately self-sabotage. In my experience, it didn't yield the academic results I craved—it just eroded my self-esteem and fuelled crippling procrastination.
If you research perfectionism, you’ll often be directed to Robert Pirsig’s brilliant novel, *Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance*, where he describes the "old South Indian Monkey Trap." The trap consists of a hollowed-out coconut chained to a stake, containing a small handful of sweet rice. The monkey reaches its hand in, grabs the rice, and forms a clenched fist—which is then too large to fit back through the hole. Tempted by the prize, the monkey is trapped. It cannot see that its own rigid refusal to let go of the rice is the very thing keeping it imprisoned.
For years, I was that monkey. We rigidly hold on to an impossible standard of performance, failing to realise that our own clenched fist is the sole source of our suffering.
Descending into the Abyss
This volatile combination of undiagnosed specific learning difficulties and relentless perfectionism reached a boiling point in 2012. My life became violently consumed by writing my PhD thesis on Peatland Biogeochemical Cycling. I was constantly chasing looming publication deadlines, and when my scholarship money ran out and a long-term relationship broke down, I spiralled into a black hole.
I didn’t sleep for three whole days, obsessively fixated on work. Every second spent not working filled me with suffocating guilt. Predictably, my productivity plummeted due to sleep deprivation, worsening the anxiety in a terrifying feedback loop. A perceptive friend thankfully intervened, dragging me out for food. With medical help and a three-month extension, I barely scraped through and submitted my thesis.
But a temporary reprieve isn't a cure. Nine months later, having returned from an intensive research trip in Canada, I was given three months to complete a terrifying list of thesis revisions and told to write up my research for Nature—the most demanding journal in the scientific world.
I was paralysed. I felt entirely alone, consumed by suffocating negativity and a hollow feeling of absolute self-worthlessness. In my despair, I lost all rational thought, mixing heavy drinking with sleeping medication despite severe medical warnings. My mind was entirely shrouded in dark, pervasive thoughts of ending myself. It reminds me of reports from mental health charities like Student Minds, which regularly highlight that a staggering number of postgraduate researchers experience profound psychological distress—we are clearly not alone in this, even when it feels like we are.
The Diagnostic Dawn
The ultimate turning point occurred purely by chance. After submitting a lengthy written assignment, my tutor noticed unusual grammatical anomalies and recommended a formal educational screening.
In March 2013, at the age of 28, I was officially assessed at the Miles Dyslexia Centre. The results finally named the ghosts that had haunted my academic life. While I possessed high levels of underlying general cognitive ability, I exhibited distinct, severe traits of both dyslexia and dyspraxia.
The concrete data was staggering, yet deeply validating:
* My working memory fell brutally in the 18th percentile.
* My free writing speed was a laboured 18 words per minute (well below the expected average of 25 to 30).
* Under timed pressure, my writing clarity decreased significantly, characterised by word omissions and deteriorating handwriting.
Rather than feeling defeated, receiving that piece of paper was a profound, overwhelming relief. It completely revolutionised my view of academic learning. I was finally able to forgive myself and accept that literacy-based tasks simply required a monumental output of cognitive energy for me.
Reframing the Ecosystem: The Cognitive Marathon
A diagnosis doesn't instantly heal a battered nervous system. It took years of gradual, painful work to break free. Discovering running and parkrun became my lifelines for physically processing stress, and by leaning on a strong network of friends and family, I finally broke free of the depressive cycle in 2020.
I made the life-saving decision to walk away from my prestigious scientific career. I rebuilt my identity, completed my teacher training, and became a teacher at Newfriars College in Stoke-on-Trent, a specialist post-16 SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) setting.
As a neurodivergent teacher, I intimately understand the "cognitive marathon" of education. Across SEND education, there is a recognised tension between delivering deeply human teaching and the heavy administrative demands of evidencing impact. In dynamic environments, pausing to type out detailed observations introduces massive, exhausting barriers—especially for neurodivergent staff.
Humanising Education with Contextualised AI
To tame this "SEND Admin Beast" and prevent the kind of burnout that almost cost me my life, I developed a pioneering workflow known as Contextualised Speech-to-Structured-Text AI (CSST-AI).
* The Process: By combining simple wireless microphones, speech-to-text dictation, and carefully designed AI prompts, our staff capture spoken, in-the-moment feedback in real time.
* The Output: This raw feedback—full of "ums" and tangents—is refined by the AI into clear, structured evidence that aligns perfectly to a learner's specific targets.
* The Impact: Staff workload is drastically reduced, evidence is more accurate, and we protect our precious cognitive energy for meaningful human interaction with our learners.
Crucially, this completely removes the barrier of typing—a transformative shift for dyslexic and dyspraxic professionals. But the true magic happens when we place this technology directly into the hands of our young people.
In my classroom, the heartbreaking phrase "When I can’t write it" has officially been replaced by the triumphant declaration, *"I just published an article!"* We use secure AI workflows to help learners generate functional CVs and job applications verbally, eliminating the dreaded "blank page syndrome." The young man who once sat in a dark room, convinced he was utterly worthless, is now a TechAbility Champion, an ambassador for Dyslexic Mum, and a national voice for inclusive technology.
At the end of March, I contributed to the NatSpec quality times Bridging the gap: how contextualised AI is humanising quality assurance in SEND, of which I received positive feedback. Just last month, in April 2026, I achieved the "Safe and Effective Use of AI in Education" certification from the Chartered College of Teaching. I pursued this because, for our SEND learners, generative AI cannot just be a toy; it must be a fiercely protected, safely implemented bridge to a more equitable world.
The Equilibrium of Independence
I still have difficult days. The shadows of anxiety occasionally return, and the punishing spectre of my perfectionist mindset sometimes tries to rear its head when I am striving to plan the perfect lesson. I still have to actively manage my own energy and executive function.
But I am no longer that monkey trapped by the rice. I have learned to let go. I use the digital tools available to me, and I fiercely teach my students to do the exact same thing, prioritising their independence, digital wellbeing, and resilience over the illusion of flawlessness.
If you are facing an invisible barrier, struggling with the crushing weight of academic pressure, or wrestling with a toxic drive for perfection, please know with absolute certainty that you are not alone. There is a path forward out of the dark, and it does not require you to be flawless.
Strive for progress, not perfection.
“This text was conceived and directed by a human, using Voice-to-Text and AI assistance to overcome a dyslexia induced literacy barrier.”
