ND specialist (1)

How I Accidentally Became an ND Specialist 🦄

by My StoryNeurodivergentVirtual AssistantVirtually.Stacey

The client who changed everything

So. You want to know how this became the ND focused thing it is now.

Fine. Let’s do the real version. Not the one where I sat down in early 2023 with a beautifully considered niche strategy and a five year plan for becoming an ND specialist.

That version would be lovely. That version would be wrong.

The general VA days (short but formative)

When I first started my business, I thought I’d found my niche with counsellors.

It just felt right. I’d been on the other side of the room. I’d experienced counselling myself and knew how much those spaces could change someone’s life. I loved the idea of giving something back by taking the admin off therapists’ plates so they could spend more time doing the work that really mattered.

So that’s where I started. Or should I say, thats where I tried to start…..and I failed. Quite massively

I kept telling myself that businesses take time to find their feet. That everyone feels a bit unsure in the beginning. And that’s true.

Just not the whole truth.

Then came July 2023

An associate role came up. ADHD client. Working through another VA agency.

I said yes because I needed the work. Not because I had masses of experience with supporting someone with ADHD. But I DID have experience (and big love) for admin.

The first call, I remember thinking “oh.” That kind of oh. The one where something clicks before your brain has caught up with what clicked.

She seemed shy. A bit reserved. Unsure how this was all going to work…..she wasn’t the only one.

I’d never worked with someone like her before, and I remember thinking, I really hope I get this right.

It wasn’t too much. It was, in a weirdly specific way, the easiest client conversation I’d ever had.

I don’t know how to explain the click except to say this. None of the things she was apologising for felt like problems to me. They felt like how brains work. How this brain works. How a lot of us work when nobody’s watching.

I told her to stop apologising. I told her the voice notes were fine. I told her I’d catch the thread she’d dropped three topics ago and we’d come back to it. We did.

The lightbulb

Here’s the bit that took me a while to articulate.

The things my ND clients find hardest are the things I happen to be quite good at.

Holding fifteen half finished threads and knowing which one to pick back up. Absorbing a chaotic brain dump and finding the actual task inside it. Reading between the lines of “can you just sort of, you know” and turning it into a plan. Sitting with someone while they think, whether that’s out loud or in silence. Not rushing them. Not finishing their sentences. Not making them feel silly for how their thoughts came out.

None of that was on my “VA services” list. It was just how I worked.

Turns out that thing IS the job.

Communication is the job

Something I’ve properly landed on since. For the people I work with, HOW I communicate matters as much as what I get done.

Some clients want voice notes only. Some want bullet lists so they can process at their own speed. Some need me to send the “hey, just checking in, no pressure” message on a Tuesday because otherwise the task will vanish into the shame pile until Friday. Some need me to never mention it again until they bring it up.

None of that is niche extras. That IS the service.

The tasks matter, obviously. Someone’s calendar still needs running. Someone’s inbox still needs taming. But if the way I show up while I’m doing those tasks doesn’t work for their brain, then I’m just another bloody thing they have to manage. Which is the opposite of the job. 💖

Not tied to one industry

The unexpected joy of all this. I’m not locked into one sector.

Me and my team have worked with Therapists, Doctors, Midwifes, Recruiters, Coaches, Systems Specialists, Social Media Executives, Lawyers, Fashion Designers, VAs, Teachers, Consultants, Mediators, AI specialists and even people who just need lifestyle support….. the sky really is the limit. 🌈

What ties each client together isn’t the industry. It’s how their brains work. Which means my day can go from a therapist’s Go High Level system, to a copywriter’s launch calendar, to a recruiter’s inbox chaos, without any of it feeling disconnected. Because underneath, the support is the same.

That’s the version of variety I actually wanted. Not “a bit of everything for everyone.” A specific kind of everything for a specific kind of person. Turns out that’s not narrower. It’s deeper. 🦄

What it taught me about support

Proper support doesn’t start with the task list.

It starts with knowing how someone’s brain is set up. What times of day they’re sharpest. What kind of check in feels supportive versus what feels like pressure. Whether they need me to hold the structure or hand it back to them. Whether they want me visible or want me to just quietly make things happen.

Get that bit right, and the tasks land easily. Get that bit wrong, and it doesn’t matter how tidy your Asana board is. The support won’t feel like support.

That’s the whole difference. From “here’s your finished to-do list” to “here’s your finished to-do list AND you don’t feel like a burden for having needed help with it.”

So that’s how it happened

An associate placement. One client. One “oh.” moment on a call. And a business that quietly re-shaped itself around the people I was always meant to be working with.

I didn’t pick the niche. The niche walked in on a Tuesday afternoon and made itself at home.

If you’re a neurodivergent business owner, freelancer, founder or just a person who’s tired of explaining yourself to people who don’t quite get it. If you’re apologising for voice notes and half finished sentences and the way your brain does its thing. You don’t have to.

That’s what we’re here for.

🦄

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I’m not diagnosed – and I’m done apologising for it 🦄

by NeurodivergentVirtual AssistantVirtually.Stacey

The blog you’ve been asking for. The one about labels.

So. You’ve been asking. For a while now. The question of “are you ND?” and “how do you do this work without a diagnosis?”. So I finally decided to answer.

Here we are.

Not the “I might be a little bit autistic” confession piece. Not the “I’m just a humble ally please don’t yell at me” apology. Just a proper sit down about what it’s like to do this work from where I’m actually standing (or in my case 99% of the time…..sitting). Which is, full disclosure, the messy middle.

“You must be somewhere on the spectrum”

I get this one a hell of a lot.

Sometimes it’s a DM. Sometimes it’s a comment. Sometimes it’s a client saying it warmly, like a recognition. Sometimes it’s a stranger saying it like a diagnosis they’re trying to hand me at the supermarket.

The thing is, I don’t know. Genuinely. Some days the way my brain works feels deeply familiar to the way my clients describe theirs. Some days it doesn’t. I am the world’s least settled question mark on this.

What I do know is the comment lands differently depending on who’s saying it. Said with affection, by someone in the community, it feels like being handed a soft “we see you” that I don’t quite know what to do with. Said as a deflection, by someone trying to undermine the work, it feels like a poke with a stick.

I receive both. I am a question mark with thank you cards and bruises.

Why I haven’t chased a label

People ask why I haven’t just gone and got a diagnosis.

Few reasons. None of them tidy.

Part of it is that I haven’t needed the label to understand myself, and I haven’t needed it to do the work I do. Part of it is that going through the system to be told who you are sounds bloody exhausting. NHS waiting lists are what they are. Private assessment costs what it costs.

The most honest part is this. I’m not sure I need to find out in a clinic. If I am, I am. If I’m not, I’m not. Either way, my brain is going to keep being my brain on Monday morning.

That’s me. That’s not a position on whether you should pursue diagnosis. People I love have, and the label cracked something open for them they desperately needed. Others have chosen not to, and that’s also right. Both are valid. Neither is the gold standard for the rest of us.

What it’s like to work here without the badge

Strange, mostly. Sometimes brilliant. Sometimes uncomfortable. Always a thing I’m thinking about.

I work in ND support because I understand burnout from the inside. Because my own brain has its quirks. Because I’ve spent a working life sat next to people who were drowning in environments that weren’t built for them, and I’ve watched what proper support actually does.

What I’m not in this for: to be a spokesperson. To tell anyone what their experience is. To take up a chair that wasn’t built for me.

The line I try to walk is this. I don’t speak for. I work with. I support, I listen, I show up, I keep the calendar running and the inbox calm. I let my clients be the experts on themselves. I don’t try to be the expert on them.

The imposter syndrome bit

Caring deeply about a community you’re not technically part of comes with a particular flavour of self doubt.

Am I allowed? Am I helping? Am I helping enough? Am I just helping enough to make myself feel like a good person? Am I getting it right? Am I getting it wrong in a way nobody’s told me yet?

I hold all of those questions on a loop. I think anyone doing this work for real does. 💖

What I’ve landed on, for now: the questioning is the point. The day I stop asking those questions is the day I should worry. The people who do this work badly are the ones who never wondered if they were doing it badly.

So I’ll keep wondering. Out loud. Where you can see. 🦄

Diagnosis culture, the careful version

There’s pressure in some online spaces to have a label before you’re allowed to speak.

I get the instinct. It comes from decades of outsiders parroting words that aren’t theirs and getting it horribly wrong. That instinct exists for good reason and I respect it.

But here’s the bit I want to say carefully.

Nobody mentions, in the “no label, no opinion” arguments, what diagnosis actually costs. It costs money. It costs time. It costs the energy of explaining yourself to a stranger with a notepad and a discerning look. For women, for people of colour, for working class people, for people who learned to mask very young, the system was never set up to recognise them on the first try. Or the second. Or sometimes at all.

If we make formal diagnosis the only ticket into the conversation, we shut out a lot of the people the conversation is supposed to be for. 🌈

That doesn’t mean labels don’t matter. They matter enormously. They unlock support, they validate experience, they hand people language for things they’ve felt their whole lives. Labels are precious. Labels are hard won.

It just means that, to me, “no label, no opinion” is a rule that ends up hurting the very people it’s meant to protect.

So where does that leave me?

In the messy middle. Where most of us actually live.

I don’t claim a label I haven’t been given. I don’t pretend I don’t have my own brain to navigate. I don’t speak for anyone. I do show up. I do the work. I keep learning. I get told when I get it wrong. I update. I keep going.

And I love this community fiercely. Whether anyone hands me a badge for it or not.

If you’ve been on the receiving end of “you must be on the spectrum” comments and you don’t know what to do with them either, we see you. If you’re undiagnosed and unsure and tired of being asked, we see you. If you’ve got a diagnosis and you’ve fought hard for it and you’re protective of it, we see you too.

We’re all just doing our best with the brains we’ve got.🦄