INTERVIEW

Alice Gee | 27/12/2024
Why am I like this? This is a question I’ve asked myself more times than I care to admit. It’s taken an era or what feels like two to find myself in a position where I am 87% sure about who that is and why I do what I do. When I think back to my younger self, I often found comfort in others’ experiences, which Gemma tells me has sometimes been all too important. When it comes to collective voices, I usually think there’s beauty in those glimmering moments when you hear or read something that vocalises something you’ve been searching for, whether it’s the feeling of validation or simply being able to feel at home. But within the era of social media, I wonder how Gemma managed the noise when navigating her own journey.
“I think when talking about that collective, in terms of sharing, I think, quite naturally, you go to social media quite quickly because that’s so much of where we find these voices. When it comes to social media, there’s so much of the negative that is very easy to focus on, which some of it is very justified, especially when you talk about mental health and neurodiversity.” There can be times when questions arise on social media, but I wonder if all of this content is actually beneficial. “I guess you find yourself asking if all of these conversations are helpful? But I think when you are someone who has experienced something that can make you feel quite alone, whether that is a mental health condition or medical condition. There is a bit of a gap in people talking about it, or if there aren’t loads of people in your family or your close friendship group who have the same experiences as you do, those collective voices can be extremely helpful.”
Interestingly, as a serial Googler, I tell Gemma the moment of relief that I'm not alone when I find some form of understanding. “I think it’s one of those things. The first thing people tell you is, don’t google it.” I guess it’s not always practical to leave it be. “Especially in this day and age”, Gemma emphasises. “It’s not always that easy to get a doctor’s appointment with particular speed. So if you can access that information rather than sitting there worrying about things, it’s beneficial. I would do the same as you do. I am checking; is that normal? And if it says, you know, this happens in X amount of cases, you go, all right, okay, I can deal with that. Like, there’s nothing absolutely off the wall happening to me. To me, I can acknowledge, okay, that’s why that’s happening; that way, it doesn’t send me off into deep anxiety.
Over the years, I’ve found the balance and relationship between modern-day life, its pace and pressures, and recognising said limits to be a difficult learning curve to adapt to. But when you find yourself with newly recognised needs that, let’s be honest, have often been there the whole time, it feels like a bit of a minefield to manoeuvre.”
“It’s one of the things I struggle with the most, to be quite honest. It’s not something that I feel like I’ve nailed. I think the speed and the pace, especially when so much of my job now, I suppose, and a lot of our jobs, is all about having that online presence and being present. I can find it quite pressurising, to the point where my brain goes, nope. I shut down to it sometimes, so I end up in a bit of a posting desert. I think when you do use social media as part of your job, in whatever you’re doing, it’s knowing that there’s a beast in the corner or an algorithm to feed, which, let’s be honest, it’s not really something that human brains were built to do. We’re not built to work that way. I think that feels like the pressure in the back of your head.” How do you keep up with it, I ask Gemma? “I felt really burnt out for part of this year, to be quite honest. And I think social media is one of the first things I suffer from. When everything is going on, it can feel quite inauthentic to me to post normally. I think it’s trying to find balance. Especially now that I’m a mum as well, I don’t want to be sat on my phone while I should be playing with my daughter. I’m even more aware of it now. I think keeping up with social media can be very time intensive.”
When discussing such personal topics and our discoveries, we set the tone for similar conversations. Having sat down with conversations with notable names and faces, including experts for her podcast ‘Good Influence’ and her Sunday Times Best Selling book ‘Why Am I Like This?’ I wonder what’s been a personal gift or something she’s come to understand from hearing other people’s experiences?
“From doing that many podcast interviews, maybe something that I didn’t expect to get from that personally, has been a breadth of empathy for people, in terms of it’s not a mental health podcast, but because I’m personally interested and because I think it applies to so many things, so many of the people that I’ve interviewed for the podcast end up talking about mental health. I think for many people if they’re a public figure or a very aspirational figure I think it’s quite easy to struggle to relate to people, or how easy it can be to forget that there’s so much more we have in common with people, and so much of the things that we struggle with are really universal. It’s a good way to connect with one another on a human level.”. It’s a good thing to practice in life. “It’s a sentiment I wanted to put into the book. We’re all very similar. This is how many people’s brains work, and this is what many people struggle with. It’s not just me.”
Talking to Gemma, I relate to the frustration that comes hand in hand with trying to understand how our brains work and the frustrations after those breakthrough moments when adapting to a new way of life. “I think for me, there was a big kind of looming thing that was frustration. How did I not know this sooner when it’s now so obvious, and I tick all these boxes? Especially when I’ve spoken to several doctors and psychiatrists. How did nobody know this? Getting to a place where you get the information and recognition you need tends to be the only way. It rarely seems like an easy process for people. I think then, to get the diagnosis, there is an amount of relief when you know, and then gratitude to have that understanding. I also found it frustrating because it’s a new process. ADHD, especially, is just a whole new avenue of administration that you instantly open up. When I was diagnosed, I started trying some medications where it was a lot of appointments, then keeping track of this, only to realise that it was not working the way it should before I tried something different. After a while, I realised I was done for a while. I’d had enough. I had to keep in mind at that time that I’d lived for 30-odd years without this medication, and yes, plenty of that was difficult, but I knew I’d be okay for a little while. I needed to get off the train for a little bit.”
So much comes down to the idea that a diagnosis will magically fix everything instantaneously when the hard work or discovery has just begun. “It takes so much time and often so much money as well. Like many people lucky enough to have the means, I end up self-referring privately because the waiting lists are years and years long. For me, it was something that I think is worth it. It should be something you can easily receive on NHS, but when you think about that and apply it to how many hundreds of 1000s of people in the country need it, the system isn’t working properly. I’m extremely aware of the number of people who wouldn’t even have the option to go private because it is so expensive, so it’s not a good situation for us now.”
I think it’s important to talk about identity and how it intertwines with diagnosis. I shared with Gemma that I had thought I’d figure it out entirely in my 20s. I’d never considered it as something that could interchange. “It’s one of the biases I discuss in the book. We tend to look back and say, “Oh, I was such a different person then. Or I’ve changed so much. It’s really easy for us to see what we used to be like, but we find it hard to compute that we as we are now is not the final version of us.”. It’s a difficult one, I relay. “In a lot of ways, to step back from it and remove the emotion from it and the actual experience when our identity should be so intertwined with what diagnosis you’ve got, I would go, no, that doesn’t feel right. But actually, in practice, I think that is the case a lot of the time. I was actually thinking about this the other night, if you stuck me in a brain scanner tomorrow and then they said, Oh, no, actually, you don’t have ADHD. I think it would pull the rug out from under me because, at this point, I’d think so much of the explanation and all the boxes it ticks; how could it not be. I still have moments of imposter syndrome. The shortcomings of mine, or should I say the elements of my personality that I really struggle with, there’s a lot of that meshed in the diagnosis. Maybe it’s because I finally have an explanation for them after so long. From the question of why can’t I do things that everybody else seems to find easy? So, I think in terms of identity, I have built it into the way I see myself. If someone took that away from me now, I don’t think I could explain myself.”
This reminds me of how we adjust our mindset when referring to ourselves post-diagnosis and the role it plays in how we identify with others. “I’ve seen more of that conversation even in the disability community where you talk about person-centred language versus whatever the other. I guess it is so individual. You should be able to express how you feel in the way you want to talk about yourself. However, it feels the most natural. Language is critical. When things are so entangled in identity, as you say, it’s when people tend to find out more about themselves. This diagnosis often happens at such formative times of our lives, when we’re forming our own identity. So, I think it is natural that we can get swept up. Only through time and lived experience can you figure out exactly how much of all the different parts of your identity you want to spotlight as your defining characteristics.”
When writing ‘Why Am I Like This?’ I imagine there were triggering moments when looking at the before, the during, and, of course, after. “When revisiting things to talk about how I felt at different times, it was pretty emotional at points. From the start, I was very keen that it wasn’t a memoir because I don’t think I would have been ready for it, to be honest with you. Many things can be uncomfortable, which I don’t always find most natural. Don’t get me wrong, there are many personal things in there. But I guess I had an element of fear of what people would say and think. You never really know how people will relate to your experience, or whether they will relate to your experience. But at the same time, I’m also very aware that talking about depression or anxiety, for example, they’re prevalent conditions that people struggle with, so there would be people who will find it relatable. Weirdly, I think that almost made me want to talk about the details of it a little bit less as I don’t think there’s anything particularly special about my experience of depression, which I know it seems like an odd thing to say, because I don’t think it should have to be noteworthy. Still, I think they do need to be talked about. I didn’t think that people reading the book would get the most value out of me indulging in how I have felt at certain points. If that makes sense.”



The book is a comfort in its consideration, but when it comes to Gemma’s personal experiences, I’m curious how her support network has helped her feel ready to talk so openly. “My family, partner, and friends have been a good support system over the years. It can be quite different for people you’ve known for different lengths of time or who’ve been there for different seasons of your life. I’m lucky; I’m close to my family. It’s been so valuable that I can talk to them about this. And they’ve known me for my whole life. But equally, my family weren’t always the people who I would talk to when my depression was at its worst.” I empathise with Gemma, relating to the worry I felt so profoundly that I would upset those I love. Still, I mainly explain this because it was almost easier to detach and hide from those who weren’t directly around me to see my behaviour. “When I moved away from home, and I was at uni, or living in London, that was when I’d probably say my mental health and undiagnosed ADHD had some of biggest negative impacts on my life and my behaviour. I wasn’t taking care of myself, and I was deeply, deeply unhappy. That’s the kind of thing that can be really hard to communicate with family, even when you are close. There are certain friends who I knew at that time, who I was really close to when I was at my most depressed, and the fact that they saw me at the worst moments of it and can see how much better is wonderful. I find that really important because sometimes your view of yourself changes quite a lot daily, depending on what you’re going through. When you’re going through a tough patch, sometimes it’s comforting to talk to people I was close to when I was at my worst because I know that they understand why I’m concerned, or they understand the patterns.”
Often, with understanding comes relief, something we know all too well that little moments of joy can usually provide. As a HATC tradition, I ask Gemma about those little glimmers of hope that joy provides her personally. “An obvious one now for me would be my daughter. Classic new parent. Seeing my kid learn to do something new is unspeakably brilliant and the best thing ever. But I guess, in terms of other things I enjoy, I guess the small things, daily mindfulness, friends and family, and just noticing glimmers of life. I think we’re told so often what we should do and what’s supposed to work, especially with mental health. I think that, over the years, being so sad for so many years, I have enjoyed the moments when something makes you laugh or giggle, and you wouldn’t normally notice it. Those moments are when somebody says something, and it’s not even funny. It’s the stupidest thing, and you can’t stop laughing at it. I feel like those are the best moments ever because they are once in a blue moon, and it has to be the perfect conditions.
Gemma wears Beabond
Creative Alice Gee & Chloe Maylor
Photography Chloe Maylor
Styling Chloe Oldridge (Flofashion Creative)
Styling Assistant Amelia Connolly
HMUA Styling Kristina Pavlov
Shoot Assistant Sophie Bassett
Look 1, Jewellery, Beabond. Co-ord, Daily sleeper x My Wardrobe HQ. Shoes, Terry de Havilland.
Cover outfit:
Look 2, Jewellery, Beabond. Jacket, Bibiy. Jeans, Gucci. Shoes, Terry de Havilland.
Long blue coat look
Look 3, Jewellery, Beabond. Coat, Bibiy.
Sat down shots:
Look 4, Jewellery, Beabond. Skirt, Bibiy. Waistcoat, Bibiy.