Last week I sat through a meeting with my child’s teachers, social worker, school psychologist, and a handful of other people (seven in total) for a meeting that would share the results of testing to determine whether they’d be recommended for an IEP.
If you’re not familiar, an IEP is a personalized plan for kids who need extra support with their learning. What that support looks like varies by child, so we’ll leave it there. It can range from additional time on exams to full specialized programs.
What I’ll say upfront is that I’m genuinely happy with the support my child’s school provides. They preemptively sent the reports, which I was grateful for. I was prepared for what we would discuss.
What I wasn’t prepared for was how I would react to what it brought up for me.
If you’ve been through one of these meetings, you know the feeling. The table. The forms. The professionals explaining your kid to you in language designed for a report, not a conversation. They were kind and gentle, which I appreciated. But they still needed to share the information, and I was still being asked to absorb all of it and sign things and ask good questions while also just trying to hold it together.
If you don’t know, I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety in 2019 after a panic attack led me to call the EAP (employee assistant program) at work. Once on medication, it became clear that something bigger was going on. I advocated hard for more testing, which uncovered a primary diagnosis of ADHD, with anxiety being secondary. To complicate things further, I had previously been diagnosed with dyslexia and C-PTSD due to trauma I experienced as a child.
So, as you can imagine, having a neurodivergent brain and being asked to sit in that room, listening to people describe my child, what they needed, what the environment would have to do differently to meet them where they are... I kept thinking about my own childhood and what I wasn’t afforded. This rocked me. But thanks to some really great support, I gave myself a few days to rest, write, and process.
In the days that followed, I couldn’t shake a feeling. I kept thinking about you.
Not in a clinical way. Not in a “let me diagnose the veterinary profession” kind of way.
But in a “wait, how many of my peers have sat through a leadership lecture and walked out with that panicking feeling? That overwhelm, that dread, that distraction so strong that it feels like you’re everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and when that hour of CE is over nothing stuck and you assumed it was your fault” kind of way.
Here’s what I know, and I want to be careful about how I say this because I am not an ADHD coach, I am by no means a neurodiversity expert, and I am not going to pretend to be. (I have a really great friend who is though, so if you’re looking for someone, please reach out to Ron at syn-apt.me.)
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What I am is a veterinary leader with a neurodivergent brain who has been building leadership content for this profession and only recently started connecting some dots.
The research suggests somewhere between 30 and 50 percent of people in veterinary medicine are some form of neurodivergent. I’ve seen that number across multiple conversations in the last year. I don’t know the exact figure. But I know what I see when I’m in a room full of veterinary professionals. I know what I feel when I’m sitting in a session that was built for a brain that processes differently than mine. I also know that people with C-PTSD tend to notice differences in emotions more.
And I know what it feels like to leave a conference having taken three pages of notes and still go back Monday doing exactly what I was doing Friday.
That’s not a motivation problem. It’s a delivery problem.
After the IEP meeting, I gave myself a day.
Not to spiral. Not to go too far down a research hole or start questioning everything about how I function (only SOME things 🤫). I’ve been in enough of those holes to know they don’t lead anywhere productive on a Thursday afternoon.
I let myself sit with it. Did some laundry. Tried to read a little.
What came up, after a meaningful conversation with a good friend and some real processing, wasn’t about me anymore. It was about the people who show up to my sessions, who read this substack, who are sitting in conference rooms right now being told to “communicate better” and “build trust” and “lead with intention” and “assume good intent” and then walking out unchanged.
Not because they didn’t want to change, but because the room wasn’t built for how they process.
I’ve started thinking differently about how I want to show up and how I build content.
A friend recently asked me how I process information. He actually suggested I ask my AI how I process based on everything it knows about me. Turns out I work bottom-up. I start with a specific moment, a real situation, something you can see and hear and feel before I ever get to the concept. That’s not a style choice. That’s how my brain gets to the idea. And if you’re reading this thinking “that’s also how I get to things,” I suspect your brain works similarly.
Most leadership training is built the opposite way. Framework first. Concept first. Application second, if at all. And if a significant percentage of veterinary medicine is neurodivergent, then for a lot of the people in those rooms, that structure is fighting the way information actually lands.
I’m not saying every conference needs to become a sensory room with fidgets and dim lighting. Though I wouldn’t be particularly mad about that. #teamfidgets
But I am saying we might be building CE for a version of our audience that isn’t the majority.
So here’s what I want you to do this week.
Don’t go down a rabbit hole looking for a diagnosis. Don’t share your story if you don’t want to share it. Just answer one question:
What would have helped?
Think about the last conference you sat through. Virtual or in person. Think about what would have made it easier to stay present, to retain something, to walk out ready to actually use what you heard.
Was it movement breaks? Subtitles? Lower lights? Fewer slides? Less text on the slides? More story? A fidget in your hand? Music? Shorter chunks with application built in?
Whatever it is, I want to hear it.
Leave a comment if you’re comfortable. Or if you’d rather keep it between us, send me an email at [email protected]. I read every one. I’ll respond if you want me to. Feel free to tell me if you don’t.
I’m not collecting this for a report, and I won’t share your story unless you give me explicit permission. I’m collecting it because I’m trying to build something that actually works for the brains that are actually in the rooms I’m standing in.
Your brain included.
And because the next generation of veterinary leaders deserves a table that was built for them. So do you.
Talk soon!
Suzanne
Suzanne Thomas is a credentialed veterinary technologist (LVTg, CVTg), MBA (c), and the founder of Leading Veterinary Teams, LLC (www.LVT.vet), a leadership development platform built specifically for veterinary professionals. She is the author of ‘From Competent to Capable: Redefining Success Through Veterinary Technician Utilization and Team Empowerment’, host of the Leading Veterinary Teams On Air podcast, a speaker and consultant focused on organizational design, team leadership, and operational clarity in veterinary medicine