 Welcome to Pookie Ponders, the podcast where I explore big questions with brilliant people. I'm Pookie Nightsmith and I'm your host. Today's question is, how can you survive and thrive after a toxic workplace? And I'm in conversation with Lynne McCann. I'm Lynne McCann. I live in the middle of Lancashire, have done most of my life, so hence the hack the sign. But I am an autism specialist teacher. I run a business called Reach Out ASC and we are now a team of specialists and we go mainly into schools to support individual pupils. So we build an individual program around each child and we try to give the teachers all the help that they need including resources and things like that and kind of come alongside and mentor the teachers which is good because we get the chance to see the child develop through you know the whole year and beyond. So yes and we have, we do training as well, mostly me at the moment but I'm working on the others and it's a great job, I love it. And I've only known you in the capacity of this work that you currently do and you're one of those people who creates brilliant things all the time and I'm forever recommending your stuff and when people say oh I need some help with eggs and was like check out Lynne's stuff. But obviously you didn't come here fully formed to this role and what we're talking about today is how you kind of survive and thrive after a toxic workplace and you recently disclosed on Twitter that you'd had difficulty before the current work that you find yourself in now and that kind of really struck a chord with people didn't it and you happy to just explain a little bit about kind of what you said and some of the context behind that. Yes I must confess it was prompted by you because you were talking about feeling imposter syndrome and you know I think gosh yes I have struggled with that quite a lot and I was wondering why and it just you know reflecting on where I'd come from and I thought you know it doesn't help when somebody's told you that they're putting you on incompetent procedures and that's kind of thought do you know it's time to be brave and actually admit that because I know now where I am now it's a long way from that place and I've thrived I've survived and so yeah I thought maybe somebody else might be encouraged by me saying that and being honest and I think the community that we're in in Twitter is really supportive of things like that and you know I had a couple of conversations with people afterwards on message you know whether I was able to encourage them but actually I'd been teaching for oh gosh I'm coming up for 30 years and 52 I went straight through school through college through uni right into school again so I've been to school all my life and I had a brief time I worked in Preston Prison for six months just on admin by the way and yeah generally and so I feel like I've only ever been to school but it's been a great it was my passion so you know it's something I really wanted to do and I always wanted to work in special needs that was prompted by when I was at secondary school myself and we were asked if we would like to go and play with the children in a special school across the park and I was quite a lonely person when I was at secondary school so I thought well nothing else to do so I went and I just fell in love with these children I just had a great time really you know connected with them enjoyed working with them and looking around the special school thought wow this place is amazing and thought that's now that's it that's what I'm going to do so at 14 I made that decision and to get into this work so if I did I pursued that and I did a four-year BED at Edge Hill it was still a college then before it was a university and did all the special needs sort of options that I could but then I was advised to go into mainstream school and get some experience in mainstream which I did I became a primary teacher and for the first 14 years in that time I've actually been bullied twice in my teaching career so once when I was in my 20s and I didn't I didn't do very well afterwards I really struggled and I ended up with six months out of it it was also a time where I'd had young children when I had one child I had some miscarriages in between and I wasn't I wasn't handling that very well so that with all the stuff at work as well you know being um it was so I'm going way back here but it was a time when Ofsted first came into being and so it was the school's first Obsessed Ofsted but the head teacher became really obsessed with it and was going around sort of picking on certain people and telling them that they would fail in Ofsted you know with not really any framework around that for us to work with so I struggled with that but interestingly when Ofsted did come in I did all right out of it but the damage had been done and the chipping away at me so after I kind of survived Ofsted I decided to leave because my mental health was in a really bad place and I went off for six months and looked after my kids and then decided to get back into education part time and that was a nice time building up a confidence again but um when I was um so yeah it was about 2002 something like that I was asked to go back to my old school um a different head now who liked me and he said you've got really good skills will you come and do this job for us so I went back and stayed there for a couple of years and came across my first children I'd ever taught with who had autism diagnosis and they're both really different and we had some great training um from the local child development centre and I really got a bug so after two years there I decided I was going to leave go back on supply and say just send me to any special school that'll have me um because I just thought I needed some experience before I could apply for a job um I went to this autism specialist school for the second job that they gave me and never left oh really I was there eight years wow and I just the first day I walked in I just thought oh I felt like coming home it was just fantastic the children had quite um you know complex needs a lot of them were pre-verbal and um they were just brilliant I loved it and I just got it so um fortunately it was the head teacher there at the time was really good gave us loads of training we did our um qualification supermigam university and sort of distance learning and uh we had loads of things like we did the certs training and he got the the um the office from America to come over and do the training with us and things like that so you know we did I did really well out of the training and stuff that I had then um and then after um what was it after couple two out of three years of being there they said well we need to set up an outreach service you're the only one who's worked in mainstream before you can do it Lynn and just gave me this carte blanche to set up this whole new service that the school was going to provide um there was a great HLTA that I worked with and the two of us just invented it made it up and it was brilliant um but I think what I'd really valued was that the head teacher valued my skills enough to say you know we know you're a good teacher he actually said that to me it's the rare thing isn't it were you able to hear that bearing in mind that you'd had your confidence kind of eroded in previous positions yeah I think working in a special school and being where I'd always wanted to be really built me up but in between those times I'd also um had some counselling and um I'm a Christian so I'd had Christian counselling and it really worked on where my sense of self-worth was and what I was grounding it in grounding it in being a teacher or was the more to me than that and that was really helpful and that became like a foundation that protected me for the second time that I was bullied which I am getting to I always feel like I need to explain the context no I wouldn't do do it's fascinating to hear anyway I don't know if everyone's listening but I would like to hear all yeah so after setting up that service we set it up and it was brilliant I really enjoyed it learned so much you know on the job was taking the expertise from the specialist school into mainstream school making or learning how to adapt it and because I had worked in mainstream school I was really able to understand the teachers difficulties you know that they've got this class of 30 children and I still feel that that's the basis of all my training now you know I know what it's like for you so let me help and make it easier for you let me show you the way to put this in place amongst everything else you're doing because everything you do is really practical isn't it it's very quick to kind of I think you do a brilliant job of translating what we know works into kind of relatively simple stuff that someone who might not have had that training or that experience can actually pick up and run with even if they maybe don't know all the complex kind of science or research behind it they can use it and it works right yeah and I do that because I don't feel very clever and I just I'm surrounded by clever people I mean you know you're just amazing and all these people who can talk all this amazing theory which I soak in but then I have to make it into something practical to kind of understand it myself so I realize well if that's my skill I can use that in my job just for what it's worth what you just described is exactly how I feel so we're all just you know anyhow carry on no I know what you mean but that's like that imposter cut I don't know where we have this thing that you know we we need to sound clever to be clever but we don't do we really not really we just need to do the right thing by the kids I think exactly exactly and I love like observing and and getting to know children and just what looking at how it is for them and I think when you've got that sort of insight you can sit in a back of somebody's classroom and watch the child who who's autistic like walking around and seeing what they what they like recoil against so can you say oh there may be a sensory issue there and and the privilege of being able to watch and observe and then pass that information on and talk to the child in a way that they can communicate and find out what it's like for them and work up from that in your programs it's just been fantastic so we did get a lot of good feedback through our outreach services and I learned to deliver courses which I've never done before and and then we got a new head teacher and you know really clever person and I'm going to say a person I don't want to give away any you know sort of specifics because I'm you know I'm not into sort of naming a shaman or anything but um yeah the atmosphere of the school changed and the focus of the school changed and you know there's some good things in that um but also there were some things I started to sort of feel very uncomfortable about so they became a very um sort of very intense focus on curriculum and considering the needs of our children I just felt really uncomfortable about like you know you've got to make so much um impact in geography for example but actually I think well but can I not work more on their communication needs or their you know sensory understanding so at the same time I became a forest schools leader um I just just because I like being outside and just I said would anybody like to train to be a forest schools leader and I'm yeah me me me that took a year but that meant that as well as my outreach work I was doing PPA cover for other teachers and I was able to do forest schools then with all the classes which was fantastic so it was working hunky dory great job wonderful time um and it was one really strange thing where the head teacher said to me once I really wish I was doing your job oh that's a bit strange and I said I'm really sorry but I don't think I'd like to be doing your job thinking you know me and a head teacher no chance I just haven't got the skills to do that job it's a big job you know I said you've obviously got um you know more responsibility this is the job for me sort of thing um and it was just strange but I let it go but after that I kept getting little niggly comments about things like sort of pulling me down and criticizing what I was doing um and and I know this by talking to other people you know that this often happens doesn't it when people are bullied in the workplace um and it's kind of I learned the phrase um since gas lighting and it's like oh my gosh that makes sense you know you're made to feel like you're failing you're the one who's getting things wrong um so it kind of came to head again with another offset coming up um where I was covering um somebody else's class and um I was judged on I had an observation where the children hadn't made enough progress in half an hour now these were children with severe needs and the fact that they were all calm and engaged in the lesson was just amazing we had children who had like two to one staffing because of their needs you know they'd very quickly go into meltdown if we didn't really manage things well um and it was like what do you mean they don't they've not made enough progress in this half an hour and they couldn't ever quantify what it was and and then began just loads and loads of where we're going to give you extra observations and this was just one afternoon in my whole job wow yeah and it was just and then I said well would you prefer the deputy head to to observe you and I thought well yeah actually because you're making me so uncomfortable but he came in and he was saying the same things as she was saying it like a script and no matter what collect evidence I collected no matter what I did it was never good enough um and then when we had offstead um they came in the room I just happened you know be teaching that class that afternoon but it wasn't just the offstead inspector it was the head teacher as well and the offstead inspector was inspecting the head teacher inspecting does that make sense wow yeah that's a bit meta but yeah I think I get that so the head teacher's observing and offstead are observing the head teacher observing kind of yeah and but this is a class again a very very high needs class and they've got two extra adults in there that they don't really see very often one of them was a stranger and one of the children did have a meltdown and we dealt with it in all the ways that we do you're making sure she was safe and looked after and I was absolutely at hold over the coals afterwards um well I hadn't because I hadn't taught the children anything right um because you're a bit busy keeping them safe presumably yeah and you know the other children they're actually engaged in the lesson and um and you can only understand this I think fully if you've been worked in a specialist school really um and I was devastated but after that it was a absolute persecution and it was nothing about my actual job my actual job as a outreach teacher it was yeah but if you know if you and I was threatened um I was called into office um after many more sort of meetings and stuff and my fault is I always went in on my own and I really wish I'd taken somebody away from me now because all the threats then were not recorded um or there was you know never anybody there to speak up for me or afterwards but it came to a head just before half term and in the October and um I sat there and said but my job is this outreach teacher why aren't you taking the evidence from that just to look at my skills and what you know this is a job you've given me to do why why aren't you measuring me on that and um she said well if we if you can't um teach properly in the classroom we can't even give you that job we can't trust you to be out and about and we're going to put you on in competency procedures sorry I'm getting emotional now I'm not surprised it was like somebody stabbing me and it was like when the sixth week got six weeks to improve or else um what did they mean by improvement what were they expecting to see did you know I have no idea I have no idea I think I'd kind of in amongst this spring I'd actually got in touch with my union and they had been like no help at all I said well go away and pretend you're a um a newly qualified teacher and go and you know gem up on it and I thought I've been teaching for 20 odd years you know if you give me something I've been learning it all the time in this place I've been doing professional development and you know trying to put it in practice and writing courses on it that sure are really effective with and I couldn't make sense of it really um and I still don't and I just think you know I was being picked on I was being persecuted I was they were making it you know and I might not have got and it might have been some you know and I think what was it my fault what did I not get what did I not see what did I not understand and I spent a lot of time thinking what have I done wrong you know I think all of us teachers do that when we're being bullied when we're being undermined we're so passionate about getting it right aren't we and as soon as somebody says we've got something wrong we go into oh my gosh it's me whatever done wrong and where's the trigger of where I suddenly started going wrong um you know off and out done and um and it's because all the the sort of standards are always changing and the boundaries are always moving um so I remember getting in my car because this was at the end of the day after unfortunately the meeting was at the end of the day I got in my car and halfway home I had to stop at the side of the road and fall my husband up and say I was like you know gulping with like panic and just saying unless you taught me down I'm not going to get home I can't drive and bless him he did um and I got home and he just gave me time to sort of calm down and just encourage me and and um I just needed then to think well what am I going to do about this am I going to go through this what are my options the first option was to go off sick and I'll reveal a little bit more about the school situation in a moment but I wasn't the only person who'd done that um I think well I get six months on pay you know that's an option isn't it I could do that um but I just I felt that was giving in that was defeatist and because I'd had this foundation of my worth is not in my job my worth as a person is is somewhere else it's it's apart from the this is a job that I'm doing I'm passionate about it and I love it but it isn't the whole worth of me so there's something else that's that I don't want to give into that I don't want to be ill again I've had it was horrible and um so what what is my other option but because this have been building up over years this little little voice in my head I'd be saying about my outreach work you know you could do this on your own and in Lancashire they'd made a lot of their specialist teachers redundant a few years ago so they're actually quite a few independent specialist teachers around nobody do autism um and I thought well they're doing it I could I could actually do this couldn't I and that little germ started to grow um that little seed had a little roots and shoots so it was coming up to October half-term and I thought right okay let's let's take a big leap of faith and I gave my notice in and as soon as I handed in that resignation letter I got um well it's okay we don't need to do well but incompetence of procedures now it was like her triumph she'd won but I thought but you haven't because actually I've got a plan I've got an exit plan now and I'd certainly recommend to end up to anybody who's doing this you know sort of an exit plan just gives you more hope you don't have to spiral downwards you've got something else to focus on um so in my last six weeks before Christmas I um pinched every idea I could think of all the things that I'd made I took home in bags you know one night at a time and stuff like that um and I had to be ready so I finished my job in December and I had to be ready to start the new job in January because I couldn't afford not to wow but because they weren't then replacing me so that says a lot doesn't it they weren't going to replace me they wanted to sort of end that see that um that job of mine I um there's some of the schools that I had built really good relationships with over the outreach work said oh we'll we'll still keep you and so I had a little bit of work to start with um it's great so yeah which there's a huge amount did that help to kind of yeah remind you of your faith in self that actually yeah outside of the school itself people did want to work with you it took a long long time to build up the confidence but that was a really good start and I thought well okay let's just and I was so busy feel like finding how to run a business yes because you don't know about tax yes it's hard isn't it insurance and DBS Susan one of my school said oh we'll do your DBS for you and that I thought oh great you know they were so supportive um so yeah I was so busy then I didn't have time to focus on what had happened and so the processing of what I've been through just took time then yeah so going back to what I said earlier there's a bigger picture is actually I wasn't the only person bullied and in the first two years of that head teacher being there and there were four deputy heads and each one left saying they couldn't work with them wow and then I'd say in total there was probably a dozen staff who left or moved on because of this being picked on wow and did you ever talk to each other about it or was it just one of those things that you each dealt with on your own and moved on at first we all kind of dealt with it on its own you kind of knew it was happening but basically we're all in survival mode of I'll keep my head down and then it doesn't happen to me because the bully has a lot of power don't they they do they have a lot of power and when they can threaten your livelihood which is what happened to me and I know it happened to other people then you know if you've got a family and children I mean my children were teenagers at the time and I thought I can't afford not to work so you kind of keep your head down and and it's awful because if we rallied together we could have really helped one another but this tale goes on though that after I left there was a few of them all in the same union who did actually get together and with a really good union rep actually challenged this and there was there was actually an accusation a formal accusation of five counts of bullying five other people it went through to the tribunal or whatever it is and was was found to be upheld so the person was that the head teacher went on gardening leave as you do went through this tribunal was found to be guilty I suppose and then lost a job but then appealed so but it took I think two years to go through that process but I was well away from it then I don't know whether I could have cope with that but I have such admiration for those who actually got together and went through that and so hard when you're right down as well like I don't know whenever I've experienced I've never experienced it on the anything like the level that that you're talking about but I have had like bits of discomfort in the workplace let's say and it does it it it challenges everything you think you know about yourself doesn't it and I think you've become very quiet almost and yeah the idea of actually standing up and doing something strong in those moments I yeah I don't think it's something I could have done I could do you know on behalf of someone else having completely stepped out of it and wanting to correct that situation years later but at the time just like you yeah you almost hide really don't you you're in self-preservation mode and you know the people I've talked to since you know I did that little tweet it's the same thing you're kind of in complete self-preservation mode you're worried about your income and your family you're worried about your own like when you're a teacher it's a vocation isn't it yeah and you put a lot of passion into it and a lot of time you know it takes so much time out of your family life you know you're working in the evenings you're working in the weekends and in the time when I was trying to improve and not knowing what I should be doing I worked every single night till you know 10 11 o'clock and and and I worked six hours on a Saturday and a Sunday and just tried to have a little break to actually spend time with my family and I think what kind of job is this and I know that those who are going through this kind of thing end up working more to try and make things right when actually the problem isn't your problem really when you think about it it's that person's problem who actually should be helping and supporting you and not persecuting you if they don't like you tough if they don't like if your if your work isn't up to standard then they should be put in support and help in place to help you get there without all that judgment of you're a crap teacher yeah and I think that's a really important thing to point out isn't it is that yeah some people will underperform in their job and that shouldn't be the cause of kind of dispute and difficulty that should be a moment where as you say we we come together and we think well what can we do to support and guide and and and build you up I think yeah kind of having high expectations of high challenge but also high levels of support is is a really good workplace actually isn't it but that's clearly not at all what was happening for for you and all those others in your school how did you feel when you know it was that little time later and and the the head was taken to tribunal and and yeah almost presumably it would have in some way made you realize that this was not in any way you're imagining because I think sometimes you can question it can't you mean yeah how did that all feel for you how did you feel about it was strange really as again because it was been my second time of going through it I did actually have some self-preservation in in place as I was going through it so I was determined not to be bitter so when that actually happened I actually felt very sorry for that person to think that they had had gone on the wrong track so much in the way they dealt with their staff that he destroyed their career and I felt sorry for them and I can still do and the fear had gone because by then I'd kind of established a little bit of a business that I think when I first started I was afraid that my old head teacher would badmouth me in the county and the you know and I think had this fear behind me but I think once I was out of way that wasn't really bothered although in a way I was in direct competition with the school but yeah it was it was a strange feeling it felt like justice had been done and it felt the right thing but I did feel sorry that somebody couldn't see that the way to manage people is not that way and I know head teachers are under massive massive pressures themselves they're under a lot of you've got to do this you've got to do that and maybe they feel so overwhelmed like that that they just pass that pressure on yeah and it does make you wonder what what was the context there because this is you know the thing I always teach my children when they come across people who are unkind towards them is just to remind them that often hurt people hurt people and we don't know what the story is for those children in this instance who are being unkind but more likely than not there's something going on for them that's that's kind of triggered this and yeah it seems likely there must have been something going on for that head teacher and it doesn't make it in any way okay but um yeah it's it's very complicated isn't it all the different feelings that go with that yeah and you do you feel every feeling going you feel you feel like powerless and you feel oppressed and and yeah depressed at times as well but I think um deciding not to be bitter it's kind of tied up with my faith I'm a Christian and the idea of forgiveness and it was a situation where I kind of had a choice I could put that into practice so forgiveness is not really as much as excusing what somebody's done it's more about protecting yourself when you forgive somebody you kind of let go of the hurt that they have give have put on you and you let it go so actually I was protected by that forgiving her it didn't mean that she didn't do a wrong thing but also it means that I don't have to carry that around with me for the rest of my life that's such a good way of looking at it because I guess that all the time that you held on to it it was doing you harm but she's probably forgotten about it and moved on to the next person who uh was yeah encountering those those challenges from her and did you um kind of revisit counselling or anything in that time or were you able to use what you'd learned previously um when you moved on from the second um I didn't go to formal counselling but I had some really good friends who are good counsellers you know what I mean yes we had long walks and lots of chats and um yeah they were really good in sort of resetting my mind um and letting me just talk about it because you need if you hold it inside it just sort of eat away at you doesn't it so I think you know I'd say that to anybody really is if they are going through this it's just to get some good friends around you I neglected my friends because I was just working I was just so engrossed for you know possibly a year or more into trying to get this right um I'm working so I hadn't seen my friends and I thought no I need to reconnect with the things outside my job that actually or probably I mean my family I mean my team you know my teenage children they you think they don't need you and they go off and do their own things but they do um and I was kind of rushing through my tea and rushing off to work and I no stop and just spend time at the dinner table and talk to them and ask them about their day and just get my mind off what's going on in my head um and say I'm just connecting with some really good friends so I could go for a walk with and they just let me ramble on and then just say right Lynn you've rambled on but you know this is important this is the truth um and I love you very much they used to tell me you know and that was just a big boost um and I think counselling can come in lots of different formats can't it so I've had kind of formal counselling which is brilliant but also really good friends can counsel you as well can't they yeah absolutely and I think as you say reconnecting with the things in your life that make you feel whole and and that are the parts of your kind of character and personality did you ever talk to your children about it yeah what did they say um they were I think I think I talked to them more afterwards because I think you know they needed to see me out of it I don't think in the middle they knew what was going on but we've always been quite open and honest with our children about life anyway so when my daughter was at um high school she had a time of being bullied and we'd sit down every night and we'd actually just pray for the bully but would also say you know in the same way let go of the effect they've had on you today at the same time we were in school and we were saying sort this out you know doing all that as well but it was kind of you know she'd seen that we've been through that with her and it and it had resolved itself in the end it had stopped and and I've said right okay I told you to do that now mommy how's to put this but mommy I was there were teenagers mum has to deal with that as well um you know I've got to do the same I've got to practice what I've told you so it was you know we kind of live life together and be quite open about the problems that come up so I'm hoping that they learn some skills that when they come across problems in life yeah and they do you think you were a good role model in how you managed it I don't know you'd have to ask the children um I don't know that's a judgment from somebody else isn't it whether you're a good role model but I guess how would you judge yourself on it if you look back on it you said you you mentioned before that one thing you would have done differently is you wouldn't have gone to those meetings alone so that's I think that's a really important piece of advice for anyone who's listening who might be facing something similar and sadly when you send that tweet it seemed that there are plenty of people out there who are in this and they feel alone so taking someone with you but is there anything else that you think you you did you did right or perhaps that you would do differently on reflection um yeah I think having just give yourself a bit of time even if you take a few days off to just sit there and think about what is it that I am good at and what is my passion because if you look back in your teaching career there are things that you've done well and look there are things that you're really interested in and passionate about and it's kind of I mean I'm a great one for writing things down on big pieces of paper because I can't keep it all in the head and when you're stressed anyway the you know it goes round and round in your head doesn't it so I'll map it out and say well these are the things I do think I'm good at the things I'm proud of things I have achieved these are the things I'm confused about and and also assess whether the people who are bullying you are going to change I think that's often we stay in a place thinking that it's going to change and actually sadly I don't think that's the case unless somebody leaves and I know it's very hard for you as a person being persecuted to actually then change the persecutor it's it's it's you've got to be honest about that and then if that's the case and I've seen this a lot on Twitter people encourage people to give it one more go there was a bit of a campaign about that maybe sometime on Twitter education but it's like okay then if I've got these skills could I use them better in a place where I had a better boss basically if that's what you're asking yourself and and that being able to move on when you're already feeling down yeah and you could you've no headspace to plan ahead of you because it's all encompassing so I you know I would say take a week off and just take that time to think this through and then what I built in was an exit staff strategy I think I heard it on the telly somewhere you know um about retiring having an exit strategy I thought oh I'm not retiring yet but that sounds a good phrase for me to sort of hone in on too so I started planning I started planning my way out on what else I could do and I considered honestly I considered working on the Tills at Morrison's I thought well if nothing else I can do that and I can be friendly and I can enjoy you know meeting people every day um if it takes that that's what I'm prepared to do but actually I love passionately teaching autistic children so maybe there's a way I can find something else to do in that so anybody in that situation it is self-preservation and but it's also finding the hope that you've got for moving on and and if you need to take time to that I would say take it you know they can do without you for a few days one of you sort your head out get some advice if necessary talk to other people um who you trust um and really you've got to ask that question is that person going to change am I going to change them um so maybe it's not the right place to stay and that's hard I think isn't it to walk away absolutely absolutely and particularly if you you know you're you're so often those of us working in education do it because you know we don't do it for the glory or the money do we do we do it because we really really care about the children and it must be hard to walk away from children with whom you've built a good relationship in a place where you've given so much of yourself but um yeah from what from what you said it it sounds like that it does become impossible actually to to be who you need to be and to be able to to to provide the the the children with what they need without it coming at such a huge cost to yourself I think you've hit the nail on the head there your greatest sorrow is letting the children down that was I mean I cried and cried and cried about that really um because you know really cared about the children and I was thinking I was abandoning them and their families and that was really hard but I really had to think well okay there are all the families and children that I could still help um I'm not saying that those children were in any danger you know it was um but you'd invested in them yeah yeah but then think how many people you reach now and I think that's that's why when you first were so honest about this and thank you for that actually I think it was a it was a really important conversation to start and there are you know lots of people out there who I think are feeling a bit less alone in this right now because of of you starting that conversation but when you you started that conversation I think people were just so surprised because but you're Lynn and you've run this amazing consultancy and you've got it really together and you've reached so many people and I think quite a lot of people did say well maybe it was a blessing in disguise because if that hadn't happened then you wouldn't be doing all this incredible work now and I wouldn't be using your resources and you know someone and so forth and how did you feel about that because you had that there was basically there's two kinds of responses wasn't there there was the one which was like oh gosh me too please help and then there was well it's amazing that you're doing this great stuff now so maybe it was good yeah and I can see that now and that's one of the reasons I felt able to talk about it because you know we we all would benefit if we could have hindsight before we meet you know beforehand couldn't it but I think it's what we have a choice don't we to do what we we like with what's happened to us and bad things happen that's life isn't it and the first time this happened to me I didn't handle it very well I struggled to pull myself back into teaching and it took quite a long time but also in that time I dealt with a lot of issues that were not apart were apart from teaching but were just issues about my life so I think I read them and I grew up as a young carer and there was a lot of undelt with issues around that that in that time because I was kind of examining getting counseling and examining where I was in life I actually was able to deal with a lot of things that really helped me kind of I suppose grow up a bit um it's not like you had a lot on because you said you you um experienced miscarriages in that time as well which again is huge and people don't talk about do they but no no you know I'm 52 I've lived a bit you know um but yeah I grew up as a young carer um my mum had mental health difficulties and um my my kind of my parents divorced when I was 19 and now it was a hard my teenage years were awful horrible and I just saw going away to uni as a way out of it really I love my parents very much but it was a hard time I was the eldest of four children so I was the one who was given the caring responsibilities but I kind of as a surrogate mum I sucked I was rubbish at it and um I've kind of apologized to my siblings since and you know it's brought us closer just all talking about that time but they did see me as the person who was you know sorting them out and and guiding them through but you know between the ages of 12 and 16 you're not really prepared to be a mum are you and um and on top of that I was I was quite a studious child at school so um I was very concerned that I had to be good and I had to do all my work so I was kind of looking after my mum and my siblings I'm trying to do my homework and do you know I had a lovely lovely um form tutor at school he was my English teacher which is why I absolutely adore English um and I still keep in contact with him now but he just understood me and he and he kind of like helped me and and like even in my last report uh when I left school he wrote you know how much effort he was the only one who knew I was carer basically wow and I'd recognize that and I really appreciate him for that um because in those days there was no recognition of it there was no help you just got on um I was in a similar situation and I don't think I would have even known that I was a young carer like I don't think the concept even crossed my mind and certainly no one ever talked about it no you just do what you do don't you I mean grew up in 1970s and 80s in a poor area of Preston and it was just life and there were some good bits about it as well my dad worked really hard to sort of keep us going and he took us out in the countryside a lot and we had a park near us and we're in those days you know with kids with feral you just were sent out in the morning and said come back when you're 14 you know um but I appreciate that because it kind of was relaxed and there wasn't a lot of pressure on us so I survived um I didn't cope so well with it in my later teenage years so by the time I'd got around to this um you know miscarriages and stuff like that it kind of brought up a lot of my past that I was struggling with but again I would recommend counselling you know a good counsellor can just really help you work out and leave behind the the things that you've not dealt with and I think dealing with things in life if you we don't have a lot of space and time to do it do it in this world but if we can and sort of park that um it's not that they happen to carry quite a lot of incorrect beliefs can't win because we never avoid them we don't question them and actually having a grown-up who you respect saying let's pick that apart a bit what's the evidence for that can actually be really helpful can't say yeah yeah it did it transform the way I think you know and I'm still quite what's the word you know I think a lot of us are quite humble that ourselves I don't really believe I'm very good at this but I'm trying you know it's kind of that that imposter syndrome comes up again doesn't it but I kind of I can also say the impact I'm having and seeing that as yeah there's evidence that I've done something good for somebody there you know and take it as a sort of case at a time um but yeah it was it was hard time those those years between my children so um we had like two and two miscarriages and then we had all the investigations our kind of doctor fast tractors because apparently you've got to wait till you've had three normally and then they found some sort of something so when I got pregnant again they gave me I was on aspirin every day something to thin my blood and then I had my son which was you know that's it I'm stopping now I'm not going through all that again and so there's four years between our children and so they've grown up now I can't believe it my son's just turned 21 a baby um so yeah it's um it was an interesting time but I grew a lot in myself um so when the bullying happened the second time I was in a better place to think this isn't me this isn't me this isn't me I can't understand what's going on but there's more to me than this and that was the catalyst for getting on and starting up this wonderful um little business um and also what's been great about it is that I've been able to design it full control hey that's nice having control and not not long about a year after I started I took on an ex-colleague who had gone through the same sort of bullying at the school and Emma and she's been working with me for about four years now she's amazing but the two of us just sat down and said well okay we were we were treated like this how do we want to be treated and we kind of formed our sort of working together policy through just like well okay are we going to do appraisals like no way because I'm not going I've never had a good appraisal I just hate them that sitting there and somebody giving you targets so that you know not really what you want to do but they're ticking boxes somewhere no we're not having that but we'll have regular chats about what's going well what's not going well it's the only thing we want to learn about and one of the things that came out of that is each of us every year we choose a project we want to learn more about and it's just increasing our knowledge and we thoroughly investigate it and we send each other you know information about it so we've become kind of more expert in things I hate that word expert because there's always more to learn isn't there we've been specialized because this commitment we have to wanting to learn more and supporting each other to do that what kind of projects have you picked and one of the first ones I did was about puberty and autism and we've done we've done pda we've done a big project on girls and that was really interesting because it led to my my colleagues daughter being diagnosed at the age of 16 and so yeah that was really helpful and her daughter and Olivia does some training for us sometimes she talks about her experience she's amazing I think she'll be a real advocate I might have her working for me one day and so yeah what else have we done I did the birthing on writing and I'm really interested in sort of psychology and brains I think they're amazing yeah anything comes up I've done a project on ADHD and that's so over the years we've had like a different one and thoroughly investigated read loads of research listen to podcasts and I love listening to people's lived experience because that's so important isn't it absolutely I can then put together a course about what we've learned and that's how I built all these courses over the years so how long have you been independent now um or coming up in in January it'll be seven years wow and do you have kind of a roadmap of what the next few years look like or do you take it as you find it no um yeah I like the freedom of kind of responding to need really yeah and I think one of the things I did when I first started I was so terrified I wouldn't have enough work I just said yes to everything yeah and I did some really weird things but actually I also did some really exciting things I mean I wrote three books because I got in touch with LDA and I love the sensory products and I said you know I'm working on my own I can't really afford lots of things how can I get some free stuff from you and so I'll do some product reviews and we'll send you the products I can do that and and then they sent me a book that somebody an outline of a book somebody was writing for them about sporting children in secondary school and I've been quite a lot of work in secondary school at this point and so I sent back my review two weeks later I got this phone call I was in the middle of a supermarket saying oh that person has dropped out would you like to write it I was like well I've never written a book but hey yes because you know um I can say yes it was a really steep learning curve and then I was just kind of finishing the first draft of the second new one I said oh would you do the primary one and um and we won that first so it's like a massive rush right the primary one but then it came out the primary one came out in 2016 in the second one 2017 and then I had loads and loads of social stories on my book on my computer and I just said oh I've got loads of these would they make a book and I went yeah of course they would so I went through editors them all make sure they were tickety boo and um I insisted on there being a cd you know so people could edit them and um yeah did that so that was interesting and then finally I was talking to the editor she came to my office and she said well have you got anything else we can look at you know and I have this pack of what we call a social detective pack so when we when we set up groups within schools we provide all the resources to do like board game based social skills so it's quite structured I suppose the same sort of idea as Lego based therapy but not as structured as that and um so I'd written you know loads of stuff for it but I'd invented this little game years ago for this little boy about the concept of waiting because it's quite an arbitrary thing isn't it yeah and it proved really really successful so I'd used it with quite a few children and it was part of this pack and she said oh that's a great idea we'll have that and so they designed from my a four piece of paper which my game was on they designed this board game which came out so it's like well you know if you say yes everything you come up with some really interesting things that you might never have thought of doing yeah yeah although you do have to learn to say no as well I think don't you I'm working on that I'm struggling a bit yeah and your work has presumably changed entirely during the pandemic as well and you've done loads of online training you've really embraced that haven't you yeah I think I think that was in again in the first place because we were really worried about the children that we support and that we couldn't go and see them so we got in touch with our schools and we offered online stuff without even knowing what we were doing you know I didn't know about zoom or anything and so we managed to keep in touch with some of our families who really needed it and we'd phone them up or we'd do a zoom and we'd send off resources or social stories if that's what was needed and but I also felt I found I had a lot of time on my hands I mean loads and loads of training was just cancelled like that and it's not what else can I do so and it was that time I had that conversation with Ian I also do did quite a lot of work with a charity called the Isabella Trust in Liverpool and Tracy there had said oh we bought zoom webinars would you have a go at them for us so I'll try so we set that and I was doing two a week to start with but that was really good she said at first I was really wooden and then as I got more into it I became a bit more emanated because you're basically sat in this room talking a green light on my screen yeah it's really tough I find actually I prefer doing large meetings than webinars because then you can see other people and although one of the things I like about doing public speaking to bigger audiences is that I don't have to interact because I find that hard but I find having nothing coming back is very difficult when you're filming and you know you're just filming I think that's fine but yeah when you're teaching and you don't know yeah it's I mean it's it's very difficult actually at first isn't it yeah I'm a researcher though so if I looked up on YouTube how to present online you know it came up with all these YouTube videos and how to do video editing on my iMovie and there were videos for that so I kind of just copied what other people did but also yeah it is hard and it's been a learning experience but there's been some enjoyable things I've been able to kind of stay at home and sit in my slippers and you know just worry about what top you're wearing yeah it's a wardrobe of smart tops and then I'll be sat there in like jeans and slippers yeah it's it's been a big curve but I also think it's changed the direction I might go in after lockdown as well oh really so I've been training like I've done training schools down south and I'd never travel that far but on a zoom where and you can use breakout rooms and stuff so you can actually run it where people are really interacting and doing activities and so it gives me a wider reach really and that's nice without having to do it the traveling can be really tiring content absolutely interesting there sorry go on I was gonna say interesting what you said about them being in front of an audience and Hillary is one of the new teachers who's going to be working with is autistic and she wrote me a blog a couple years ago about the sort of the different amounts of she's a mathematician and she talked about how many different interactions you can have in different groups of people and I think by the time you get seven people in a room there's like over five thousand different interactions there's some mathematical formula for it she's amazing but she also said that when she's presenting she just feels like that's one person in front of her it's just one body and so she can find she can do that really well whereas if like she was teaching in a six one college and when she went into the staff room it was completely overwhelming experience because of all those interactions and I just loved how she explained that and if you think about our kids in school you know that we're often asking them to work in groups and it's just I mean most of the children I know in say it's torture you know so yeah it's difficult it's really and that's the thing I think it's it's it's difficult and I don't necessarily I've never necessarily always stopped to analyze what's going on there for me but I find one of the most interesting things that will often happen is that people say to me at a conference over coffee you know oh gosh I don't know how you stand up on stage and do that and because whatever's in my head usually just comes out of my mouth I'll normally respond with oh that's fine I have no problem doing that this is really hard and I don't mean it in any horrible way it's just I do find it much harder interacting one to one or in a small group or in a noisy environment standing on stage is fine is that why you go around with your camera yeah yeah no it is and and I found that since I started vlogging again I go around and I've got a structure for that conversation and people avoid you so either people have a more structured conversation or they walk away oh it's a great strategy yeah and I hide a lot as well I take my car everywhere and I hide in my car or I go hide in the toilets if I need time out um it's better now that I'm open about being autistic now I know um and people do give you space if you ask for it but um it's it's challenging what we do is quite hard work so yeah yeah but you're enjoying it you're enjoying the online yeah it's just different I'm be glad to get back to schools I miss the pupils that we support and you know even having a few online conversations with them you know I think it's been really interesting because some children have really thrived at home you know away from all that pressure I mean school is the pressure isn't it and the environment and all the challenges and demands on them and the sensory overload you know and so they've actually done really well at home um others are you know they've not done anything they've really struggled to engage with anything at home so the actual transition going back to school is going to need a lot of support I think we're going to be quite busy in September um but you know that's what we do we love coming along I was going to say yeah and that's it and it must be really reassuring for all those different schools and families that you work with knowing that you are there you are being wholly responsive and you have kept you know you've been creating the weather throughout the the whole pandemic in terms of how do we manage it what are the stories that we tell and how do we prepare ourselves for these new new ways of interacting and I would imagine that your work will be used more widely as we return because I've been certainly teaching lots of schools that well the transition that you'd normally do with your autistic children we probably need that with all of them right now because interaction you know social safety suddenly gone out the window because we don't know how to interact safely and it looks different and we need to learn again and um yeah I imagine that'll be huge cool for your work but you I hope that you do feel a deep sense of of pride um I feel like yeah that imposter syndrome comes in for you but you you do remarkable work then you're one of the people who you know your name comes up every time really quickly anytime anyone's looking for work in your in your niche and and what you do really empowers people so yeah that's really lovely and I really I do struggle I think one of the things I've always had is a struggle to take a compliment but I will say I've learned to say thank you and then I'll go away and I reflect to it and then I just love the little fluttering in my heart comes it oh that was so nice so thank you no well it's meant really genuinely you know I have huge huge respect for what you do which you can tell from the fact that whenever I'm struggling with the answer to something I go Lynn well it's this mutual honestly because the work you do has just informed me a lot and just helped me learn more and more so thank you and you know and I think that the network of people that I've got to know who all kind of have you know a different bit of information and working together has been a joy for me we do get to by collaborating always I think don't we that's the thing yeah and what what thought would you like to to leave people with I'm thinking particularly if there's anyone out there who perhaps has tuned into this because they're struggling at work at the moment what what do you think they need to hear I think I think probably a summary of what I said earlier was to kind of find yourself you feel out of control so find something you can control and just to kind of give yourself a foundation take some time to reflect on where you are what you are good at and if what that might look like if you didn't have that person persecuting you you know and then that opens up your possibility of maybe you know can I change something here or can I change by going somewhere else and don't give up really get some support around you you're not in it on your own and have hope you can keep going that's the main thing I think