Christine McGuinness | Extraordinary Life Stories

0:07Christine, thank you for joining me. Finally. I know it's taken a while, but it's been. I'm so looking forward to this. Me too. Tell me, who is Christine McGuinness? Christine McGinnis is a work in progress she's still in development bless you aren't we all yeah yeah it's a journey right and it's definitely been a journey for all of us but in context of of you it's like it's almost i suppose there's a there's a whole i'm going to bring up the whole autism thing straight away because that's something that i really wanted to talk to you about the minute i found out about you watched the documentary started reading about you there's so much you've done there to help other people coming through on a journey that could have been really difficult, which ultimately yours has been, to make it easier for them.

0:53And I think that's been really brave. But I also think a lot of it you probably just lived in the moment, didn't know any different until you found out. So tell me about a young Christine coming through a journey that, dare I say, you were misunderstood into a life that now you're flourishing and thriving in. Obviously, more recently in the last couple of years, I've spoke more and more about my diagnosis and my three children they're all autistic and I didn't realize the impact that it was going to have when I was doing that which I'm I'm happy about I think if I did know the impact it was going to have I might have got scared but I'm so happy that I have shared my story and the children's because it like you said it has helped so many and now being completely honest when I look back to how I was as a child I wish there was somebody like me talking about it there's no role model there was no no one to look at I'd never heard of autism I'd never heard of ADHD um I'd heard of you know children having additional needs and when I was at school I was kind of put in that category of of being difficult or a challenge the teachers didn't really know what to do with me sometimes i was getting into trouble over things that were just be being misunderstood just not me not being able to verbally communicate how i was feeling and why i was acting like in certain ways not not wanting to go into the school canteen being late avoiding classes could come across as being a difficult naughty child when naughty yeah when for me it was quite simply I struggled with the sensory overload with with the smell with the the cues with the busyness the the change in the food and the people every single day and it got to a point where I couldn't cope with it I couldn't deal with it if the if the school teacher would change for the lesson for me it was it was too much so I would not go to the class things like that of course any school teacher is going to go she's just she's skipping class again you're a scriver yeah and I just never I never understood myself why I was doing it and would feel quite awkward about saying anything anyway so I choose to just say nothing but then that would lead to me getting into trouble and yeah sadly I did leave education quite early I left just before I was 14.

3:22I sense you regret that and the reason why I say it is it hasn't affected you in what is now a career you're flourishing in, use that word again, but I've heard you say before that if I'd known I might have done, I could have done, does that play on your mind? And again, there's probably countless people that have not been understood at school, being considered naughty, that have, dare I say, fallen by the wayside, if you know what I mean. Life doesn't support that, you don't fall between those sort of pillars, if you like. I regret maybe not speaking up more, and I regret not being understood and that's not my fault and it's also not the teacher's fault because we're talking about over 20 years ago, don't we?

4:04When you say not speaking out though, to express yourself with autism doesn't actually come naturally, right? What I mean by that is how do you articulate yourself because you are not actually understanding your own behaviour and women girls having autism and adhd wasn't even necessarily a thing there were doctors suggesting that women can that's that's only changed in the last 20 years right yeah yeah so doctors and pediatricians i just thought that it was a male only condition and even thought that it was just young boys that would be hyperactive and you know be making loads of noise and all over the place and obviously we know now that that's not the case and especially for women and girls we tend to hide it more we want to fit in we want to be like everybody else and in some ways I I still mask it's called masking and I still do it even though I'm aware of it and in some ways it's good because it means that I will do things that I'm not really authentically comfortable with like going to events or busy places I know that I can pretend I can pretend for a bit I can I can smile I can do the red carpet I can go to a busy event and I can act fine but it's also not a good thing because it takes its toll on you on your energy I tend to burn out quite a lot when I'm doing too much but it's in me that I do I do want to do what everybody else is doing I do want to feel comfortable in those places and I just know that the more I do it it gets easier and there are times where I will go along and I will enjoy things but because I'm understanding myself more I will put things in place that will help me like I'll tend to use the same people the same team I will try and stay in the same hotel if I can just because I know when I get there I know where it's like it's a known quantity and yeah just keeping things familiar as much as possible and then not feeling rude or like I always feel quite unsocial if I go somewhere like to a dinner and 20 minutes in if I just from finding it all too much I used to just sit and painfully like smile through it whereas now I will just say to everybody I'm just gonna have 10 minutes I need to make a phone call do you mind and and I'll leave I'll have a bit of space and then I'll I'll go back in and that works for me and I'm trying to just not be apologetic about being me.

6:36But that allows other people to do that as well. And it's something that doesn't come naturally to me. I feel quite selfish sometimes if I say that I need a little bit of time out or if I need to just eat on my own when I'm at work. Sometimes I'll be working with a big group of people and it's really social to all eat and make friends and chat over dinner and people seem to just do that like with no effort whatsoever for me it it takes quite a lot and yeah i feel i feel more comfortable now and just saying if it's too much it's okay you've built a habit to do that and it's taken you probably a few years to build that habit but by building that habit you've also built confidence and if you know if you want me to tell you now from sitting here with you now you're radiating it.

7:22It's a real nice contentment without any ego. How did you do that? When did you start putting those steps in place where I'm going to do this for me, I'm going to be selfish, which actually isn't necessarily selfish, it's what I need to do for my own mental health. When did you consciously start doing that? It was seeing my children, seeing my children at school. It was a couple of years ago, I'd just been diagnosed and I hadn't spoke about it publicly, I'd kept it to myself for a while and I'd agreed to do a TV show, The Real Full Monty, and I was doing it for my mum. My mum had just been diagnosed with breast cancer and I really wanted to do it but I knew that at the end of the show I had to perform in front of a lot of people and it was going to be filmed and it's going to be shown on telly.

8:10I'm not a performer, I'm not a singer, I'm not an actress, I'm a mum. I've done bits of telly but I'm just me and I was so scared I had the biggest meltdown I was I was absolutely petrified and it wasn't about even the the performance side of things it was it was the audience and the nerves and the anxiety and thinking I'm going to let everybody down I'm not going to remember the steps and what if I mess it up and it's quite difficult for autistic ADHD females in particular to really be quite hard on themselves and overthink and it stopped me it stopped me from doing things that I wanted to do and during that time when we were filming it was a week before we had to film the final dance my children had their nativity and I went to watch them and um

9:03I'm very proud of them um for three years before that nativity they could not sit in the assembly they would come in the room they'd last a couple of minutes and they'd leave they'd be fidgeting they'd be upset and this one time they got up on stage and they said all of the words and they performed and they remembered everything and they smiled and and I just thought wow you know they they're doing it they they can do it so I need to do it and they're always my biggest inspiration but it was just that feeling of I need to lead by example these children are watching me every day They see a mummy and what mummy's doing.

9:44And I want them to look at mummy and see that mummy goes to work. And mummy has friends and mummy drives and mummy's independent. And I want them to not be scared of anything. And it was them who taught me to not be scared. I love that. And I want to keep doing everything I'm doing for them because of them. Yeah, I love that. I didn't mean to make you in any way emotional, but there's an authenticity about you. there's a raw realness to you that clearly came out then. And that, I think, is what has drawn me to you and drawn so many people to you. And you've got this huge following now as well, where people, dare I say, may have changed their behaviors.

10:25And this is the key thing, put themselves out of their comfort zone. We talked about it before we started filming, right? And you seem to be doing that in spades now, that influence your kids had on you to then be the best person of yourself that you can. you seem to have not only embraced that there's so many things you're doing let's let's talk about hunted what made you want to do that and how much did you enjoy it so again celebrity hunted is a show for for cancer it's a stand up to cancer and with that being so so prominent sadly in my family with my mom and my aunties i didn't want to say no to her also there's the experience of going doing something fun and something different and something that you you're not going to do in your everyday life but then when I really looked into it I kind of went okay so sounds fun but I'm gonna have no routine I don't know where I'm sleeping I don't know what food I'm eating and it's going to be different every single day my anxiety can get the best of me sometimes but I couldn't possibly say no because I want to keep pushing myself so I said yeah and I went for it and I I went with my very, very best friend, Duncan, and it was there on the run that I really realised how important friendships are because I'd always struggled to make friends and I never had friends at school.

11:44I never had friends in my teenage years or throughout my 20s. That's heartbreaking to hear that. I don't have any friends now other than Duncan's my closest friend. Obviously, he's a work friend and I see him as I'm working and when I'm in London, but for a close friend, somebody to call I've got nobody nobody at all in my life and I just always put it down to me being a loner and it was only when I was diagnosed with autism that I realised that actually that's just something I struggle with that other people don't struggle with nor atypical people just have these skills that I don't have so for me that's okay because I understand why it's not because I'm odd or weird or unsocial or not a good friend it's it's simply just that it's something I I struggle with it's more of a challenge but knowing that makes me want to do more and want to try more and want to learn how to build those kind of relationships and with Duncan it just it just happens so naturally and so easy because he just understands and he's patient and I think if you if you're autistic or ADHD and you've got somebody in your life that is willing to take the time and hold your hand along the way and and just be there for yeah it's amazing what you can achieve it really is a special friendship by the sound of that the best I love that and you've got um it's heartbreaking to hear that but you've obviously been able to build a resilience a really tough personality around yourself because at times you must have felt really lonely really isolated yeah i got that right yeah yeah yeah of course life's been challenging in the last couple of years there's been lots of changes like some of the biggest changes i think any woman can ever experience and that's a lot to deal with when you've got nobody to speak to in some ways it's it's good i suppose because it means you know when i'm making decisions they're on my own because again being autistic I can be quite easily layered out I can be easily influenced and that's something that is hard to accept about myself because I like to think I'm a strong confident woman and you know all of my decisions throughout my life have always been my own but they're not if I'm being completely honest you know I do kind of just want to let somebody else make choices for me because I'm scared of making the wrong choices.

14:13But right now, Christine McGuinness is the most mature, you've got the most perspective you've possibly had. You got married really young. A big chunk of adult life that could have been finding yourself then was then spent becoming a mother, being a wife. You're on the back end of a divorce, and right now, facing forward, it does feel like you're thriving. The only me I've ever known for 15, 16 years from when I was 19 up until now was to be the mum and the wife. And that's changed. And the last time it was just me, just Christine, was when I was a teenager. So obviously I'm completely different now to how I was back then anyway.

14:57And the whole world and life is just different now. so I'm navigating a whole new path and I'm trying to just be excited about it rather than scared you've got a compass now as well right you actually have you know you've got direction you've got purpose and that purpose comes from probably some really hard times you know um not understanding yourself being misunderstood getting into trouble getting yourself into trouble um to now ultimately be able to face forward and I want to ask you without you necessarily need to be specifically open about this to then be able to let someone really important back into your life are you in that place you are you able to know so you're still so you're still working on christine building those layers which i can feel but you're not you're not ready to let anyone else into that into that space i honestly i wish i could i really wish i could and i've been talking about it a lot recently with with duncan about trusting people and letting people in and trying to just bring my walls down.

15:56It just feels like every time I do, something bad or negative will happen. Is that in your head or is that actually happening? Or a bit of both? Yeah, it's very, very rare that I will let somebody close to me anyway. In friendship, in work, in personal life, I'm very protective of myself and my children and my home and my personal life. it just feels like maybe I just haven't been around the right people yet and it's going to take me a while to completely be myself with anybody but I'm not in no rush I'm still figuring out me I've like I said I've never really just been me outside of being mummy and wife I'm still figuring out who Christine is but you're doing a lot as well like Celebrity Hunted um you know tv shows before that it's it feels like you've kept yourself busy in a good way there's things you could have done that that weren't putting you out there meeting new people putting yourself out your comfort zone so that for me feels like it's a transition of time and universe works in a way where that will be that's what happened when it needs to but putting time into yourself you clearly keep super fit and we know that keeping physically fit helps here how much of what you do to keep physically fit is to be strong and look good and how much of it is for your kind of mental state at zero percent of it is to do with the outside it's all the body is it has always been and i think always will be for me time out and just headspace and time to switch off and not think about what what day it is this week and where and where i need to go okay the kids need p kits and what's next you leave all of that out and you go fully present going off a bit of time what do you do what what works for you there's been times i will go to the gym and just sit and not do anything and there's times that i will go and burn off any bit of energy that i've got because it goes over and over in my head it every day is different and I just try and make sure whatever I'm doing whether it's to benefit me physically on the inside the outside as a bonus or if it's just to still benefit me on the inside by just having some calm and some quiet it's just making sure that I do have a bit of time out for myself because I fall into the very bad habit of saying yes to everything I'm a people pleaser and I don't want to let people down and sometimes I over book and double book things and don't give myself a minute and then my stuff falls behind so I'm trying to just get better at doing that but one thing I always make sure I've got time for is just to either do some yoga do some weights do slow and steady just just do something for me and my body mentally and you have a routine because routine is really important from an autistic point of view right so do you do stuff in the morning before the kids are up or do you kind of plan it in after they've gone to school and make sure that that time is made available because you are busy right and you are juggling yeah three kids yeah so when do you do it and are you are you in a position where you you try and do the same thing every day or you deliberately kind of vary it it's really interesting the more i'm learning myself about autism and adhd they're both completely different so for my autism routine would be absolutely beautiful it would be perfect i would have a stress-free life if i had a routine but my adhd would get bored and adhd wants to go and try something new and why don't we do a different time a different class and it's a constant contradictory in my head when i can stick to a routine it's lovely i'll try and go to the gym or do some yoga after i've done the school run so we focus in the morning of course is the children getting them to school happily and if i can try and put an hour in for myself before i start work and phone calls and everything else that's lovely it just really depends if I'm having one of those days where I'll drop the kids off it might be that the sun's shining a bit brighter and me ADHD I'll go oh why don't you just go for a hike up that hill let's just go and get your music and do that and then I'll do that and I'm completely off track and all of my work falls behind and it's just it's me it's how I am and I just I accept it I accept the way I am it's maybe not great for other people.

20:19No, I get that. If there's one thing you really enjoy doing, if there's one thing, though, I say you swear by, would it be yoga, Pilates, the gym, the specific kind of workout? Is there one thing you just really like doing? It's purely as in exercise terms? Yeah, yeah. To get the exercise out of it, but also you feel good after it, which could be the endorphins. It could be running up that hill, getting fresh air, getting amongst nature. So is there one thing that makes you feel good? For me, I'd say the weight training, slow and steady, just slow and steady. I can have the music calmer with that.

20:52It's not fast-paced. My heart's not beating. I'm not out of breath, sweating. I do it. It feels, I think I quite like the pull, the pain a little bit. It kind of feels nice for me. And, yeah, I think that's definitely what I would say I feel the best after. I'm just into it because there's so many different people that will say different things work for them and there's especially people that are achieving a lot packing a lot in which you are and successful and I think you know this from watching other externalized stories but I always want to ask someone I want to ask you what your definition of success is and how different that might be to a young Christine success to me is just just having a happy home a happy warm home with with water and food happy children with noise but not too much noise that's tricky that that to me is successful all i ever wanted was to be a mom so in some ways that hasn't changed i've got what i wanted to achieve in that sense i always just i wanted to be a mom i couldn't wait to be a mom so yeah i've got what i wanted in that way but now lovely knowing my children and knowing myself there's there's a hell of a lot more that i want to do not that i need to do but that i want to like show my children what a successful independent single mum is that is is working and that is keeping busy and is juggling the school runs and looking after the children kids learn by what they see right exactly and i want them to know that you know it's okay if if mommy wants to go away for a couple of days on on a on a girl's trip and and just have a little bit of time out that's okay i don't need to feel guilty or apologize they have time with either my mum or with their daddy while I go to work and that's that's fine and I think in some ways that that's successful just passing on that message to my children to grow up and know that you're inspiring and actually you know I've used that sort of that term like role model as well of course as their mum that's that's exactly who you are to them but for countless children now at school coming through the the diagnosis of your children to then understanding yourself to then understand how broken the system is have you seen any fundamental changes in the schooling system to help neurodiverse children adhd autistic children that have suffered for years and being misunderstood are you seeing that changing now because i know that's so important to you yeah and you're raising that awareness you're campaigning but is it changing it is that's great i think there's a lot more that could be done but i'm just grateful that things are changing i've seen a massive difference from when I very very first spoke about it years ago to how it is now just just people even hearing about autism and ADHD compared to a few years ago there's definitely a lot more the understanding needs working on but I think you can't truly understand it unless you either have it or live with someone who's neurodiverse I'm seeing big differences in hospitals just with visual signs around and even going to service stations when I'm driving from Cheshire to London I'll stop off and I'll see the sunflower lanyard in the window which represents hidden disabilities so there definitely is is a lot more but I think there's a long way to go there's a lot of children's places for example businesses that will offer autism hour like you you know, play centres, swimming lessons, things like that.

24:32And that's lovely that they are being inclusive. But I think there needs to be a lot more. Autism hour is not enough and it's not fair. What would you do if you were the health minister? We could have a meeting with the health minister now, not the health minister, the education minister and the health minister as well, potentially, and make those changes. What would you do? Because you've got that insight. You know, you're a mum of three children. You've been through that whole journey yourself of being misunderstood. I want to know what you put in place. I think school especially needs a lot more support, which I know is down to a lack of funding.

25:08But there are ways around it. We're not just crying out for special needs schools. There are thousands of schools across the country that could just have an additional unit or a class or somewhere that's for time out. I don't think it's the right thing to completely separate one child from another it's just maybe blending mixing a little bit more but having the option for those with additional needs to have time out as and when they need it if they do need extra support in classroom that needs to be more available there is help there there just isn't enough no i'm interested because it's that whole if you look at sort of what's being shown as broken how quickly can change be made in a bit of a static government and and kind of legislative changes that take ages when actually it's crying out for help it could potentially reduce the amount of people in prison where there's there's a direct correlation of people that don't conform to society that are misunderstood that then commit crimes that are actually they don't know how to control their own behaviors you could get a massive reduction in the outlay on the prison systems that filters back to actually saving money in the long term if you solve the crisis at the outset because so many of those neuro patterns are formed in children between sort of two three four five and seven eight nine years old crucial ages yeah that's frustrating to me just looking in let alone to you having been through it and going through with your own children yeah i think it's 70 percent of autistic adults are out of work and that's such a shame because i i know i completely get why and it's so easy to change and it's not expensive the system is broken so autistic adults there will be the majority of them will go for a job that they will probably be overqualified for and then other people neurotypical people will go for the same job the neurotypical ones will get the job before the neurodivis and it's not because we are not capable of doing it it will be because we probably won't even go to the interview because we'll be too scared we'll be too scared to meet somebody and speak and then talk about ourselves and how good we are at something because that's just not natural to us.

27:24It's quite simple if autistic adults can feel comfortable enough to be able to say to a potential boss, I'm autistic or I'm ADHD and I would love to work for you these are my skills if you could do it over email or over phone call and just feel comfortable enough to say I'm going to be overly anxious in an interview and I don't want to downplay how amazing I could be for your company. If that was just okay to be able to explain like that, they would more than likely get the job. But yeah, sadly, the majority of them will do what I used to do, pull off, get there and not get out of the car. Do you know what's really interesting about this as well is the amount of people I've met in my professional life and through external life stories that have got ADHD, that have excelled.

28:13They have ultimately not been understood and not understood themselves to then ultimately i don't want to refer to as a superpower because it's a little bit um yeah but they have harnessed it they've harnessed their strength they found it but they've had to find it through adult life they haven't found it in school but they've harnessed a strength let's use that terminology to then absolutely fly and be incredibly successful in something that they've got that hyper focus in so actually if someone was brave enough yeah to um and authentic enough to be able to put forward that this is my scenario and that was understood well actually now that i understand that you understand a lot more and then this person could be exceptional yeah absolutely it's just they need to be given the chance i honestly believe for autistic and adhds if you follow your passion and your strengths and what you love you are going to absolutely fly because i know how much i can hyper focus on something if I absolutely love it.

29:12When I'm trying to do stuff that I'm kind of half-hearted in, it's going to get lost. I'm going to keep going back to it and eventually it'll be in the bottom of a pile and I'll never look at it again. But stuff that I really, really love and I enjoy, I will be the best in the room at that. Love that. You'll make it happen and you'll absolutely excel. Yeah. So for people who are going for a job, they need to be able to say to the potential boss that I'm fully qualified for this role. I could be an asset to your company. I might just need to have lunch somewhere else, you know, or I might just need a little bit of time out now and again.

29:48Is that okay? It's a lot of strength in it as well, isn't it? Yeah, it would be more beneficial to the companies to hire the person who is more than capable of doing the job and is passionate about it and allow them a little bit of time out now and again and help them stick to a routine, maybe shift patterns that are not consistent, wouldn't work for somebody it really really could help a lot of people what have you not done yet that you'd really like to do i want to feel more comfortable being more raw and more open and i mean that not just with my work and my social media content but just with myself i think i'm getting there and i'm very comfortable talking about like what we've spoke about autism adhd my love for my children there's a bit holding back right always that's a protection mechanism though i can identify with that i'm as real and authentic as i can be and want to be right now but there's just something that holds back and it's a you know it's it's it's a hard thing to break through but i think you're doing it i think you're doing you know you're putting yourself in uncomfortable situations where you're kind of being forced to have to be someone you haven't been before and that creates really good behavior i've done a show called pilgrimage with bbc and that was absolutely incredible and I remember talking to a previous cast member and saying to her what do you think shall I do this I'm not sure and she was like do it but you're going to be bored you're just going to walk all day you'll be really really bored so it's like okay well it's easy enough it's exercise it's walking it's outdoors I'll do it and honestly it was one of the most life-changing and most incredible experiences that I've ever had because I've never just had time to switch off and really think about who I am and what I want.

31:38And pilgrimage is all about going on a journey and kind of getting to the end of it and figuring out what life means to you and what you think about the afterlife. And what I learnt along the way for me and my experience was that our souls are energy and it's what we leave when we go and my one of my main goals now is just to make sure that the energy i leave in this room around my children one day when i leave this earth that it's good positive energy and it's helpful in some way to someone and that that's that's what i want sitting here you're i can feel your energy your positive energy and that's what so many people i think would agree with through watching everything you're doing through following you on social media you're putting out positive energy that's a brilliant legacy to leave thank you you've been awesome to talk to christine thank you i know how busy you are and you you got your whole organizing thing together at work because you messaged me just before christmas and here we are so thank you so much that i want to do yeah i want to organize to make sure i can do everything that i want to do yeah well i really appreciate you making this happen i know how busy you are so thank you.

32:50No problem, thank you. Thank you very much.