Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
Gabriella Russo: Embracing Self-Discovery and Advocacy in Autism – Overcoming Challenges and Building a Supportive Community
Wed, 26 Mar 2025
Send us a textWhat if discovering your true self could transform your entire life journey? Join me, Tony Mantor, as I sit down with the insightful Gabriella Russo for a powerful discussion on self-discovery and acceptance within the autistic community. Gabriella shares her personal narrative, revealing how her godchild's involvement with an autism support group prompted her own recognition of being autistic. Through her candid reflections, she recounts overcoming challenges like an abusive marriage and workplace bullying, ultimately embracing her identity and finding solace in self-diagnosis and community support. Gabriella's story is a testament to the profound impact of understanding one's unique identity, especially when faced with a late autism diagnosis.Together, Gabriella and I explore the broader landscape of neurodiversity and the importance of advocacy. We delve into the significance of self-diagnosis, the therapeutic journey to self-acceptance, and the often challenging path autistic individuals face in professional settings.Discover how self-employment can serve as a refuge, harnessing personal strengths while avoiding burnout. Our conversation also highlights the critical need for comprehensive training in safeguarding, mental health, and neurodiversity to genuinely support neurodivergent individuals across their lifespan, addressing both their vulnerabilities and their strengths.Finally, we touch on the complexities surrounding autism diagnoses later in life, particularly for women and people of color. Gabriella underscores the personal empowerment found in connecting with others who share similar experiences and stresses the importance of therapy and self-acceptance. As we wrap up, Gabriella shares how she engages with her audience through various platforms, emphasizing advocacy for the autistic community. We encourage listeners with compelling stories to reach out and perhaps join future episodes, fostering a space for support and continued advocacy.https://tonymantor.comhttps://Facebook.com/tonymantorhttps://instagram.com/tonymantorhttps://twitter.com/tonymantorhttps://youtube.com/tonymantormusicintro/outro music bed written by T. WildWhy Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)
Chapter 1: Who is Gabriella Russo and what is her background?
Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me The World. Today, we are joined by Gabriela Russo, an expert with 25 years of experience in supporting organizations that cater to children, young people, and families in the UK and internationally. Her work has taken her to primary and secondary schools, colleges, and universities, where she helps ensure their safeguarding measures are up to date.
Gabriella is passionate about creating a workplace culture that is inclusive, empathetic and compassionate. We're excited to share her inspiring story. Thanks for coming on.
Oh, I really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you so much.
Oh, it's my pleasure. How did you get involved with the autistic community?
Chapter 2: How did Gabriella discover her autism?
So my godchild is autistic. When she was, when they, I'm sorry, they've just identified as non-binary and I'm still learning the language. When they were much, much smaller, their mum belonged to an autistic support group for families of autistic children.
And she asked me to come along so I could get to know things and kind of learn things that would be useful for my relationship with my godchild. So I started going and then I started being like, hang on, this is feeling a bit like it's describing me and this sounds familiar. And basically through that community came to a recognition of my own autism. That was about nine years ago now.
And so I've stayed in that community since. And that was really where the journey started for me was actually that point. And when I turned around to my friend, I was like, I think this might be me. She was like, no, really? Yeah. I kind of think you might be right. And everyone in the group was like, yeah, you're definitely autistic. Why are you even questioning this?
Did you get a formal diagnosis of autism before?
It's been a long journey for me, actually. So I've got to be honest that initially when I started to recognize it, it really freaked me out. I was just learning about it myself. I've got a good history and some really traumatic things in my history. I was in an abusive marriage in a high control church, things like that.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Gabriella face after recognizing her autism?
And I think when I first started to recognize it, the things that were going through my head were those people, my abusive husband, those people were talking about, oh, there you go. We always thought she was a bit crazy. we were actually right in how we treated her. So it played into that for me. It took me quite a long time to really kind of go through that process of accepting it.
I was also struggling at work. And as I started to work through it, I tried to be honest in my place of work. And basically what happened there was I ended up being bullied out by my manager. They sort of, she came in with with a bit of an agenda to get rid of me anyway.
She was a new manager and started treating me really badly, doing all the things you don't do for someone who's autistic in the workplace, like micromanaging, setting up with difficult tasks, doing the sorts of things that really sort of set a lot of panic in for me. And I started having panic attacks that I now recognise were kind of panic attack stroke meltdown type situations.
And I ended up having to walk away from that job. And so I was then recovering from that And so I am now in the process of getting diagnosed, which takes a long time here in the UK unless you've got the funds to pay for something private. I have a therapist who recognises all of that. I have doing those kinds of things. So whilst I'm not officially medically diagnosed, I'm definitely autistic.
You know, I'm in those communities. I'm surrounded. I've got a coach. I'm with all of those people and we're working it through and I'm waiting for the official diagnosis to happen.
With everything that happened to you, finding that you're autistic, just the way that you did, the way that things seem to make sense with your husband and the people around you, how did that affect you with your family and your interaction on a day-to-day basis? Did that change things for you? What happened after that?
I think it's a really interesting situation with your late diagnosis. When I say diagnosed, I count self-diagnosis because it is quite a difficult thing to get your full diagnosis medically. The later you're diagnosed in lots of respects, the more unpicking of what's happened in your life up till then kind of needs to take place if that's what you want to do. Right.
So I've been doing that and it's helped me to recognize why I felt certain ways in different situations, why I struggled with my friendships at school, why I often just felt like I was somehow different. I was too much. I went very deep, very quickly with friendships. They meant a lot more. I got more hurt more easily. And I struggled with those different things.
It's not to say I didn't have friends, but, you know, things weren't always easy. I was bullied throughout my primary school education, which is four to 11. Secondary school wasn't quite so bad. I did struggle at university. I mean, I got through all of those things. Like my education was fine in one sense, but I definitely struggled at university.
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Chapter 4: How did Gabriella's self-discovery affect her personal and professional life?
And so I am gradually, messily learning and changing how I live my life. what is acceptable to me as well as the things I need to be aware of in terms of how I impact other people as well.
Sure. I've had the opportunity to speak with many people that have been late diagnosed. The greater percentage of those being late diagnosed were females.
Yeah.
The reason they've told me is they tend to mask more to fit in. So once you came to the conclusion that you are autistic, did you get a chance to look at yourself as an outsider looking at you, where you could reflect on things that you did, look at how you handled those things? And once you looked at yourself
did a deeper dive on some of the issues that you was having, did you find that you was masking as well?
Oh, 100%. Absolutely, definitely. And part of the therapeutic journey has been trying to find who I really am rather than who I've built myself to be to fit in. But yeah, completely, I can see that. I mean, I used to, even when I was a teenager and even a little bit younger than that, I used to be aware that I would be different depending on the people I was around. I didn't understand why.
It was more like, I'm afraid to kind of state my preferences in case they get rejected. And now I can see that that's masking. Whereas before it was like, I'm just not confident enough. I need some help with my confidence.
Yeah, that makes sense. By doing this self-diagnosis while you're working with a therapist to get your diagnosis, have you found that this might have put you in a better place, more of your comfort zone, because you can accept what happened, accept what's going on now, so that you can use that to better move forward with your future?
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Chapter 5: Why did Gabriella choose self-employment, and how does it benefit her?
Yeah, I mean, I'm getting there. Some things I'm still working through. But no, absolutely. I think I like myself a lot more. I'm able to recognize that people's opinions of me are their opinions of me rather than the truth of me. I...
was very much people pleasing, trying to keep the peace, trying to fit in, which set me up for some difficult friendships and probably set me up for some of the more traumatic things I've gone through, not in a victim blaming way, but you have to recognize your own stuff as well. And now I'm a little bit kind of less accepting of people wanting me to be what fits them.
Without it being like, I just know who I am and everyone can get lost because I'm wonderful. I'm not saying that, but there's kind of an equality to it that there didn't used to be.
Sure, sure. What are some of the things that you still struggle with? You may be still working on it, trying to fix it so that you can still accept who you are. Yet you may be struggling on some things just because the way the world is in its perception of autistic people.
I certainly think that the workplace is an incredibly difficult place to be. I'm self-employed now, so that's it. It wasn't a decision that was initially made just because I struggled with my job. At that point, I was still like, these things are happening. I was treated really badly. The organization I was working with, a lot of other people were
treated badly there as well you discover that when you leave but in the process of coming out of that job I was headhunted essentially to deliver training and now I'm a full-time consultant trainer it kind of happened organically in a way as I've done that I've begun to recognize that I operate much better in those spaces rather than the confines of nine to five you've got to be in the office you've got to
I mean, I've never really had jobs that are absolutely like nine to five in the office. I've done youth work and some of those kinds of jobs. I worked in anti-human trafficking for a while. So I was delivering training, working with victims. So quite a varied kind of job, which I'm now discovering my ADHD as well. And that kind of plays into that a little bit too.
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Chapter 6: What advocacy work does Gabriella engage in for the autistic community?
But regardless, I still find that self-employment, whilst it has its real difficulties, allows me to work with my energy better. So I'm not going into another cycle of autistic burnout, which I now realize that's what that has been over my life. I can work in the areas that light me up and make the best of my gifts and talents.
And I'm actually bringing more of the best of me to something rather than being pigeonholed and kind of just not fitting in, in terms of the work.
Yeah, I mean, that makes total sense. So with all this happening, everything that you went through, this has really turned you to an advocate and really helped your overall business prospects in what you're doing.
Yeah. So I started off because my whole background is in sort of safeguarding and working with special educational needs children, done a whole bunch of that stuff, working with children and young people, working with children and young people going through abuse, going through various traumas. And then I moved into anti-human trafficking. So I was dealing with that side of things as well.
And then working more directly in schools, running anti-abuse programs was the job that I was in when I left that job. I pulled all that together and started delivering safeguarding training consultancy. And as I've learned more about my neurodiversity, I've expanded that to neurodiversity training.
What I'm now working on is the kind of the crossover between safeguarding and neurodiversity, because what I've seen happen so much in my own career and, you know, working with children, young people and so on,
is when we get safeguarding training, say if you're a teacher, somebody who works with children and young people or vulnerable adults or all those things, you get your safeguarding training. And these are the extra vulnerabilities that special educational needs children have, right? So you're more aware of those things.
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Chapter 7: What are the ongoing challenges for neurodivergent individuals in society?
And then they turn 18 and it seems like people assume that they've grown out of it.
Yeah, yeah, right.
And we carry, we have to, well, I own, I'm not saying anyone else has to, but it's helpful to own that alongside our neurodiversity, there are gifts, there are talents, there are things that make me who I am, that make me brilliant at the work that I do, but I do have vulnerabilities that might be different to a neurotypical person. And those things aren't always recognized.
But when you look at stats and things like that, the percentage of autistic women who experience sexual abuse is way higher than neurotypical. There's kind of falling into abusive relationships because you're trying to people please, you're masking, you're all of those things. And so there is a huge intersection.
And so what it's now doing for me is bringing those two things together is helping me to kind of maybe work in a slightly different way, a slightly different space to people who work in sort of the neurodivergent space or people who work in safeguarding. And it ties in with mental health. And it's like, you need to have all three together. So I'm now working in that space.
What are some of the challenges that you face? One of the things that I find in talking with people for the last year and a half to two years is autistic people, those with mental health, ADHD, bipolar, schizophrenia, etc. The biggest issue I've found is trying to get the neurotypical world to understand what they are going through.
As much as it's needed for people to understand, there has to be those that are willing to teach them so they can understand, and hopefully that will make it better for everyone. What are some of the things that you've run into trying to do this?
I think there are a lot of assumptions made about neurodiversity. There's an awful lot now of, oh my gosh, everyone's got autism or everyone's got ADHD nowadays. It's a trend. And it's like, no, just the same as any other research. We've learned more. You know, we discover, and I'm not comparing neurodiversity to illnesses, but we know a lot more about illnesses.
You know, people used to die of illnesses and we didn't know what they were at all. And now there's cures. Now there's all sorts of things. Now, I'm definitely not saying there's cures for autism. I'm not talking about that at all. What I'm saying is there is scientific and psychological growth that means we're recognizing things more. That plays alongside the fact that the world is changing.
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