LinkedIn Presents.

I'm Maura Aaron's Mealy, and this is the Anxious Achiever, the show that looks at the intersection of mental health and work and how we can all do both better.

Finding the right fit at work when your neurodivergent can be difficult.

You probably need to work differently than other people, and it might take some time to figure out how you work best.

Finding the right community can be hard too. And that's why for all the negative stuff that social

media and our online world could put out there, a lot of which we talk about on the show,

there are some pretty wonderful things. Like the fact that me, a socially anxious introvert, has managed to

find a whole wonderful community out there. And today's guest is someone I've only met in person

a couple times, but I really feel like I know her because of our similar

experiences, some of our shared challenges, and the communities online that we've been part of

for a long time. It's something I'm super grateful for. Amanda Morin is a speaker and author

who focuses on issues of neurodiversity. She recently began working at the Jed Foundation,

a nonprofit organization that focuses on mental health and suicide prevention for kids and teens.

But when we spoke, she was in the midst of an entrepreneurial journey, an in-between space

after working at an organization for a while. And that's where I begin our conversation.

You left steady employment to start your own thing. And I want to hear about how you decided to do that.

And, you know, if your anxiety had a role in that and how it's manifesting. So anxiety played a part in

both making the decision and now how I'm coping with the change too. So part of it was I loved what I was doing,

but I was also feeling kind of burned out on doing it constantly.

And for so many years, right?

I was part of an organization for from the ground up for almost a decade.

And I realized that I had climbed this kind of ladder,

...