The Divergence Department

Kerri arrives sceptical, Luisa brings receipts. Together they go behind the scenes of coaching sessions and get honest about its limits: it can help you survive a broken system, but it should never be the excuse for not fixing one. Along the way, they find out why you don’t need a tidy goal to begin, why the perfect system doesn’t exist and why a human coach beats an AI that just nods along.

Two major UK reports on neurodivergence came out a week apart this October. Within days, one of them was attached to a BBC headline it doesn’t actually support. Kerri has a question she can’t let go of: how much evidence does it take before something changes? Luisa, coming from Germany, where there’s hardly any data to argue with, is a little jealous anyway.

Then they get to the question most organisations skip: where should neuroinclusion actually live? DEI, HR and business operations each turn it into something different, and each has its own blind spot. Luisa has a firm answer. Kerri has a test that involves all your best managers quitting. And somewhere in there is the reason nobody puts payroll in their values statement.

Also: three wishes, one shameless plug, and a disputed number of tangents.

Kerri and Luisa are celebrating one whole year of friendship, and you're invited to the party.

Some people just feel like home the moment you meet them. In this episode, Kerri and Luisa look back on the year since their friendship clicked into place (spoiler: it took about five minutes) and what it means when someone feels like kin.

Along the way, they laugh about the glorious chaos of editing this podcast (yes, the last episode was an adventure), and talk about how good friends nudge us out of our comfort zones and into community. They also get real about why making friends as an adult is so much harder than it was in school, especially when you've always felt a little on the outside.

Every neurodivergent experience is different, but that feeling of outsidedness is one plenty of us know well. This conversation is a warm celebration of the understanding, acceptance, and belonging that come from finding your people.

Kerri went away and did the reading, and it turns out she'd been calling three different things by one name. Distraction, mind wandering, incubation — one of them comes from outside you, two of them come from inside, and only one of them is what workplaces actually punish you for.

A year to the day since the first message that started all this, we take the tangent that ended the last episode and follow it properly: why offices are built entirely out of interruptions and then blame individuals for not achieving deep work, why lateral thinking only looks illogical from where you're standing, and what it takes to make a room safe enough for someone to say the half-formed thing.

Ever lock into a task for hours without noticing the time, then can't focus for five minutes the next day? In this episode, Luisa and Kerri unpack the differences between flow and focus, and why they so often get confused for one another.

They trace where the idea of flow actually comes from, then get personal about what hyperfocus feels like with ADHD versus flow for an autistic brain, and why one leaves you energised while the other leaves you drained.

They also dig into what workplaces get wrong, from open-plan chaos to rigid schedules that make deep focus nearly impossible, plus practical ways to coax your brain into gear using music, timers, and old habits from childhood.

A curious, down-to-earth conversation that might change how you think about your own focus, and your workspace.

Someone tells you to rest, and your brain goes: rest from what, exactly?

In this episode, Kerri and Luisa pull apart the tangled, oddly loaded idea of "relaxation" and why the version other people mean is so rarely the one that actually works for them. Luisa unpacks why a packed, activity-filled holiday can feel more restorative than doing nothing. Kerri admits her idea of a good time barely resembles "relaxed" at all and that might be exactly the point.

In this episode, we sit down with Andrea Strohmayr, neuroarchitecture expert, to unpack how the spaces we live and work in quietly shape our brains, our moods, and our ability to function like actual humans. Spoiler: modernism has a lot to answer for.

We dig into what "neuroinclusive" design actually means, why your open-plan office might be sabotaging everyone's focus, and how something as simple as a nook, a window, or the right lighting can be the difference between burnout and thriving. We also explore the difference between feeling psychologically safe and neurologically safe — and why most buildings only design for one.

Whether you're an architect, an employer, a teacher, or just someone who's ever hidden in a bathroom stall to escape sensory overload at work — this one's for you.

What does a lanyard have to do with rethinking how we build workplaces? Everything, actually. This episode, Kerri and Luisa dig into what really happens when accessibility gets left to individual goodwill instead of built into the system, sparked by a real incident that reignited debate over the sunflower lanyard. They trace where the scheme came from, why it's so often misunderstood, and how the stigma around visible "asks" for support seeps into workplaces just as much as departure lounges. From there the conversation opens out into bigger questions: what the social model of disability gets right and where it runs out of road, why staff training beats individual heroics every time, and why true inclusion sometimes means the whole community has to accept a bit of inconvenience.

Ever notice how one offhand comment from a boss or an unexpected full stop in a message from a friend can spiral into hours of replaying? That reaction has a name: Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, an intense emotional response to perceived criticism that shows up especially often, though not exclusively, for neurodivergent people. In this episode, Luisa and Kerri dig into what RSD actually is and where it comes from, tracing the roots back to early experiences, certain personality traits, and high-pressure environments that can prime the nervous system to treat ordinary feedback like a threat. We also spend real time on how this plays out at work, exploring why performance conversations can feel disproportionately heavy for neurodivergent employees and what that means for managers trying to give feedback that lands without triggering shutdown or shame. Along the way, we talk through practical ways to manage the spiral in the moment, from reframing negative self-talk to grounding techniques like mindfulness and journaling, plus honest conversation about when and how to lean on a therapist or supportive friend rather than carrying it alone. By the end, you'll have language for something you may have felt your whole life without knowing what to call it.

The other week we got into childhood memory: how we form it, what we hold onto, and what we're genuinely not sure about. This week, we're following the thread into adulthood.

If you never had the chance to just be yourself, to practice knowing what you need, how do you ask for it in a workplace? And what happens when organisations are built on the assumption that people will speak up, when most won't?

Luisa brings her 15 years of recruiting experience to the table, and it turns out good interviewing and neuroinclusion have more in common than you'd think. We talk about competency-based interviewing, why "just ask" isn't an inclusion strategy, the very fine legal tightrope of asking about needs during a hiring process, and why clarity — for everyone in the room — changes everything.

We also get into: road signs and what marrying someone after one meeting has to do with hiring.