This Voice is Mine: the Unquiet Podcast
Emma Offord 22 episodes Nov 10, 2026
This Voice Is Mine is a podcast hosted by Dr Emma, a clinical psychologist and neurodivergent woman, exploring what happens when neurodivergent minds are pathologised by systems and medical models. Through personal reflections, stories, and conversations with people who were told they were too much or not enough, it looks at masking, misreading, and missed diagnoses. The show aims to reclaim identity and challenge shame rather than promote fixing or fitting in. Episodes focus on remembering who listeners are and unlearning harmful narratives about difference.
Episodes
Believed, Not Labelled: Autism, SEND and Sharing Family Life Publicly with Sophie Cobden
Sophie Cobden didn’t set out to be a voice on autism and SEND. Her Instagram page, which began as a light-hearted project with her sister-in-law, became a place to make sense of family life when her daughter’s autism diagnosis changed the story.In this episode, Sophie and Dr Emma Offord talk about hearing that a child “isn’t autistic” from people who don’t live with them, what private and NHS diag
The Thoughts We Never Named: Postnatal OCD, Hormones and the Shame Nobody Talks About, with Dr Anna Lambert and Jo Gifford
Intrusive thoughts, shame, and being left alone with something terrifying that no one has named. In this episode, Dr Anna Lambert and Jo Gifford join Dr Emma Offord to talk about their own experiences of postnatal OCD, the hormonal shifts that followed, and the silence that surrounded it all. These are the thoughts that never got a name, the baby groups where nobody said it out loud, and the train
Capacity, Curiosity and Kindness: ADHD, Autism and What Truly Nourishes Us with Dr Miguel Toribio-Mateas
Dr Miguel Toribio-Mateas is a clinical neuroscientist, nutrition researcher and applied microbiologist who works on the gut-brain axis, neurodivergence and mental health. Diagnosed ADHD at 47 and later identified as autistic, he brings science, clinical practice and lived experience to one question: what genuinely nourishes us?In this conversation with Dr Emma Offord, Miguel traces a winding path
Watched but Not Understood: Dr Ali Bromley on Big Brother, Masking and Finding Your People
Dr Ali Bromley is a forensic psychologist, ADHD coach and LGBTQ+ affirmative therapist with twenty years' experience across mental health and criminal justice. In 2024 she won Big Brother. In this episode, she talks with Dr Emma Offord about being watched but not understood, the masks we wear to belong, and what it means to recognise your neurodivergence later in life. They discuss burnout, g
Nourishment Not Rules: Food, Gut Health and Neurodivergent Brains, with Lucinda Miller
In this grounded and deeply honest conversation, Lucinda Miller, clinical lead of NatureDoc and bestselling author, joins Dr Emma Offord to explore what nutrition looks like in neurodivergent life. Lucinda is ADHD, alongside two of her three children, which makes this conversation personal as well as professional.Together, Emma and Lucinda look at food, gut health, iron, sleep and histamine. They
Coming Home to the Body: Somatic Safety and the Wisdom of the Nervous System with Jolene Ironside
Jolene Ironside, DL team member, integrative counsellor, ADHD coach and holistic therapist, joins Dr Emma Offord for a conversation about the body's own language, and why so many neurodivergent people were taught to stop listening to it.Jolene explains how children learn to override exhaustion, sensory overwhelm and physical discomfort just to keep pace with environments that were never built
The Myth of the Easy Baby: Fear, Perfectionism and the Truth About Motherhood with Dr Tuesday Watts-Overall
In this honest, funny and deeply human conversation, Dr Tuesday Watts-Overall, psychologist and mother of three, joins Dr Emma Offord to talk about the truth of modern motherhood: the fear, the perfectionism, and the shame around feelings we were never taught to name.Tuesday shares how she left an academic career built on perfectionism behind when motherhood made it impossible to keep performing,
Chosen In Every Lifetime: Sibling Love, Institutionalisation and the Fight for Ewan with Ruby Peace
Ruby describes herself first and foremost as the little sister of her big brother Ewan, who is profoundly autistic, non-speaking, and has a severe learning disability. In this episode of *This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast*, Ruby joins Dr Emma Offord to talk about a devotion that has shaped her whole life, and a system that has repeatedly let her family down.Ruby shares what it meant to lose
Love Needs No Words: Fatherhood, Non-Speaking Communication and Finding Connection Beyond Language with James Hunt
James Hunt, founder of the Stories About Autism community and SAA Clothing, and author of Love Needs No Words, joins Dr Emma Offord for a tender conversation about fatherhood, communication and connection. James is dad to Jude, 18, and Tommy, 15, both autistic, non-speaking and living with global developmental delay. He shares how one Facebook post grew into a community of hundreds of thousands, a
The Late Bloomer: Dyslexia, Autism, Motherhood and the Making of a Resilient Family with Ashlyn Firkin
In this episode of This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast, Dr Emma Offord sits down with DL Clinical Psychologist Ashlyn Firkins, an HCPC registered assessor with over a decade of experience across NHS and private practice. Ashlyn was diagnosed dyslexic in childhood, an experience that shaped how she sees the world and, later, how she came to understand her son Ted, diagnosed autistic at three. S
How to Save Your Own Life: Autism, Eating Disorders and the Hope That Saves Us with Rachel Clark
Rachel Clark was seventeen when she wrote her debut book, How to Save Your Own Life. In this episode of This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast, Rachel talks to Dr Emma Offord about growing up as an undiagnosed autistic girl, the years she spent internalising difference as personal failure, and the eating disorder that became the only way she felt she could be heard. Rachel speaks openly about sit
Choosing Him Every Time: Autistic Burnout, School Trauma and a Life Without School, with Linsey Biggs
In this episode of This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast, Dr Emma Offord talks with Linsey Biggs, full-time parent carer to three and the voice behind Unschooling Stanley, about the years that led her to take her eldest son out of school entirely.Linsey describes watching her son's distress build until it became impossible to ignore, and the moment she finally trusted what he was telling he
You Are Always Believed: Menopause, ADHD and the Fight to Be Heard in Women's Health, with Dr Helen Wall
Dr Helen Wall spent years quietly noticing something no one had trained her to see: that hormones shape the brain, and for neurodivergent women, that shift can be seismic. Her own perimenopause took her ability to function before it touched anything else. She was told she was too young. She believed it, for six months, until she couldn't cope and finally sought help.In this episode, Dr Emma O
You Were Never the Problem: Late Diagnosis, Shame, and the Power of Finally Understanding Your Brain
Lou was diagnosed ADHD in her 30s. By that point, she had already been through secondary school struggling and unidentified, failed college three times, experienced serious mental health crises, and spent years being told to try harder. When she finally sat with a therapist, everything she brought to that room turned out to be ADHD. Not failure, but simply a neurotype the world had never named for
Internal Realities: Tuning Into Your Neurodivergent Body with Dr Clare Jacobson
Dr Clare Jacobson has spent over 20 years holding people's most intimate inner worlds. As a specialist clinical psychologist in teenage and young adult cancer care, she knows what it means to sit with invisible experience - the kind that doesn't show up on a blood test, but is completely real.Over the past year, Clare has been on her own journey of neurodivergent identification. And in t
When Everything Shifts at Once: Hormones, Neurodivergence, and the Midlife Unmasking with Sophie Cartledge
What happens when perimenopause and neurodivergent identification arrive at the same moment? When hormones shift, the mask starts to slip, and nobody in the medical system has any idea what is actually going on?In this episode, Dr Emma Offord speaks with Sophie Cartledge, founder of Hormones on the Blink, a training platform working at the intersection of hormone health, menopause, and neurodiverg
Different, Not Less: Communication, Selective Mutism, and Finding Your Voice with Eve Harrison
What does it take to build a movement of over a million people when you started secondary school unable to speak a single word?In this episode, Dr Emma Offord speaks with Eve Harrison, founder of Let's Make A Difference, a grassroots campaign raising awareness about communication challenges and the power of small acts of understanding. Eve is autistic, learned BSL during the pandemic when spe
Be Gentle With Your Giant Heart: Self-Care, Self-Advocacy, and Reclaiming the Right to Receive with Suzy Reading
What does it actually mean to take care of yourself, when every version of self-care you've tried has felt like another thing to fail at?In this episode, Dr Emma Offord speaks with Suzy Reading, Chartered Psychologist and author of How to Be Selfish, about what it takes to heal our relationship with self. Not with a checklist or a spa day, but with the slow, courageous work of coming home to
Riding the Tornado: ADHD, Skateboarding, and the Power of Finding Your Thing with Ryan Swain
Ryan Swain was told from childhood that his energy was too much, his focus was wrong, and his way of being didn't fit. Teachers called him a liability. Nobody asked why.In this episode, Dr Emma Offord talks with Ryan, founder of the You, Me & ADHD awareness campaign, about growing up undiagnosed in a system that had no language for who he was. Ryan shares the story of finding skateboardin
When They Look Fine at School But Fall Apart at Home: Nervous Systems, Masking, and the Invisible Load of SEND Parenting with Jo Rodriguez
What happens inside a child's body when they hold it all together at school, only to fall apart the moment they walk through the front door? And what does that cost the parents who are there to catch them, every single day?In this episode, Dr Emma Offord is joined by health psychologist, CBT therapist, and EMDR practitioner Jo Rodriguez for an honest, warm, and deeply grounding conversation a
Permission to Parent Differently: Burnout, Regulation, and Finding Your Voice with Lisa Galley
Lisa Galley built her career in autism the long way round: studying part time, raising three children, sitting her finals at nine months pregnant, and working in high-pressure NHS autism outreach before burnout took it all away. What followed was years of frightening physical symptoms, a diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome, and a profound loss of identity. What she built on the other side was so
The Voice of Anger: What Maternal Rage Is Really Trying to Tell Us
In this episode of This Voice Is Mine, Dr Emma Offord is joined by clinical psychologist, author, and maternal mental health specialist Dr Caroline Boyd for a deeply honest and necessary conversation about motherhood, anger, and the stories we are taught to silence.Together, they explore the realities that so many parents live but rarely feel able to name: intrusive thoughts, maternal rage, emotio
Permission to Be Seen: Nervous Systems, Shame, and Voice
In this intimate, reflective episode of This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast, Dr Emma Offord and the DL team are joined by Helen Marie, a UK-based registered integrative therapist, author of Choose You, and host of the podcast I Don’t Think We Talk Enough About.Together, Emma and Helen, along with Jolene and Jo, explore what it really means to grow full size: not as a performance of confidence,
Parenting Unplugged: Raising Neuro-affirming Families with Charis Halsall
Parenting a neurodivergent child in a system that was never designed for their brain is hard. Parenting that child while you are still healing your own school trauma is something else entirely.In this episode of This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast, Dr Emma Offord is joined by parenting coach and host of the Parent Unplugged podcast, Charis Halsall. A mum of three and an outspoken advocate for
From Silence to Voice: Charlotte Hunt on School, Survival & Raising Neurodivergent Kids
In this emotionally rich and beautifully honest episode, Charlotte Hunt, the powerhouse behind Twin Tides & Autism Vibes, joins Dr Emma Offord to explore the hidden stories behind advocacy, identity, motherhood, and living a neurodivergent life that was never built for your wiring.Charlotte shares her journey from being a school refuser at 14, to navigating complex family dynamics, to discover
The Gut, the Brain & the Unquiet Body: A Conversation with Will Martin
In this deeply grounding episode of This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast, Dr Emma Offord is joined by Will Martin, Nutritional Therapist, former teacher, and late-identified Dyslexic, Autistic ADHDer who helps children, adults and parents regulate their emotions and attention through holistic, evidence-based neurobiology.Together, Emma and Will explore the unspoken internal world so many neurod
From Missing the Mark to Finding Her Voice: Eliza Fricker on Becoming Unquiet
In this opening episode of This Voice Is Mine: The Unquiet Podcast, Dr Emma Offord sits down with author, illustrator and PDA/autism advocate Eliza Fricker, the creator of Missing the Mark and Sunday Times bestseller Can’t Not Won’t, to talk about what happens when life “goes nuclear” and the mask finally slips.Eliza shares the story of her daughter’s breakdown from school, the loneliness of bein
