New to the journal: ARTICLE.

We’re inviting creative voice users to discuss how their views, influences, and lived identities inform their voice - and what matters most. Told entirely by them.

Starting us off is Rachel Mary director, performer, educator, storyteller and clown with ADHD. Rachel tells us how her ADHD diagnosis allowed her to discover the voice that was truly hers.

Hello, I’m Rachel.

I’m a theatre maker, writer and performer with ADHD.

That list of writing under my face (hi) is from the opening of This Show is in my Head, a new play I’m developing, that invites audiences inside my brain for an hour. It’s a show that jumps from spoken word to clown, excerpts from interviews with experts, to standup to movement and back again. The multiple voices, faces, channels, dances, comedy bits and life-changing ideas that erupt and dissolve on stage every few minutes are a real-time expression of the stuff playing out in my mind.

Finding my voice as an artist was impossible for a long time because I didn’t really have a sense of my voice as a human being. In 1997 I was diagnosed with ADHD, something that I knew to mean I spoke too loud and too often, ran through corridors when I should walk, got food on my jumper and generally irritated everyone. But then, in 1998, I played Toady in the Wind of the Willows and everyone liked me at school. For a week. For a whole week I was someone who did something funny and cool. Then Carla in year 6 broke her leg and came in with a cast and crutches and suddenly everyone liked her and I reverted back to ‘mild irritant.’ I wished really hard that I’d fall out of a tree so I too could break a limb (so unfair, never broke anything) but I also held onto that feeling of being Toady, of roaring on stage, of being allowed to - it carried something more than the promise of ‘popular’, it was this feeling, this distinct awareness of being alive.

An extract from *This Show Is In My Head*

I recently found that feeling again. It happens sometimes when I’m writing. I like writing. Poetry, mostly, but you know, I’ll have a go at an article. Finding poetry was a lightbulb liberation because it didn’t ask me to follow any rules. Though you know, sometimes I find that I need one or two. If I don’t set myself some creative limitations it’s impossible to pick any sense of direction, I’ll stop-start for hours until I’m completely overwhelmed and let the self-doubt render me paralysed.
So I came up with a system.

When I feel like I have a lot clamouring in my head and I need to say something but I'm not quite sure what, how it sounds, what it feels like, I set myself a timer for 7 minutes, and I write. 7 minutes, pen to paper and I don’t stop, don’t edit, don’t shape or judge it, or knock it down before it’s started, I just go with it, I let go.

Let’s try that now.

My brain is very full as I write this. I’m 6 months pregnant and having an identity crisis. There’s a criminally loud critic on a high chair in the corner, calling me a fraud.

I want to tell you who I am today, to write about my voice. To tell you how I work and play and find a healthy balance - that works for me, and my constant companion, ADHD. But the truth is I haven’t found anything, I haven’t landed or made it or pulled through or arrived - and if I tell you that I have then SPOILER, reader, that’s a lie. But what I do have or what I am having that’s sort of new, is a kinder way of being, of living and playing and looking and working, that allows space for the moments (very regular moments) when everything feels arse over tit.
Right now my tits are massive. It’s quite a revelation. 6 months ago they were smaller than average but today they feel like a nation of their own. Is it OK to write this? To put ‘tits’ in the article? Putting ‘tits’ in the article is quite provocative behaviour. Risky, even - dopamine-chasing:
When I’m low (check), feeling slow (check), sleep deprived (check) and struggling to focus (check, check, check), I can give my pre-frontal cortex a cheeky ZING, a lovely boost (of dopamine) by being just a little bit naughty ~

‘Key aspects of the reward system are underactive in ADHD brains, making it difficult to derive reward from ordinary activities. These dopamine-deficient brains experience a surge of motivation after a high-stimulation [or risk-taking] behavior triggers a release of dopamine’*

~ the simple thought that I might shock you (with my tits) is enough of a risk-taking behaviour to motivate my mind-monkey to action in the hope that I’ll write something now that you might actually want to read. So you see, all for the greater good.

And time! How was that?

I digress. Often. A common experience of trying to seek out and express my voice is that I find it nearly impossible to select one. One voice to be heard? Absurd! There are, of course, an infinite number, scrambling over the hills of my subconscious. And so I’ve stopped doing that. Trying to select one, I mean. I’ve sort of evolved an(other) way of speaking, of living and creating that allows space for all the voices (sometimes at once) to make themselves known, to ebb and flow, and exist, without judgement or criticism. It’s a huge relief to just let the chaos happen.

And quite often, when I’m writing in the way I like to do now, something exciting pops out. It’s as if the time pressure somehow prizes open a deeper part of my consciousness and I can hear my own voice more clearly. I read back what I've written and even when it makes no sense at all, it sounds exactly like me. And that’s all I’m searching for really, a form, a way of working that I can trust beyond reasonable doubt, is mine, is me, is my voice.

And it’s not easy. It’s a constant endeavour I keep going at. Sometimes I find myself bending back to fit something that I realise is just a little to the left of what I want to say. I’ve learnt to take greater care to boundary and protect my ideas when I’m making, and to remember that I have a choice in accepting or discounting the suggestions of collaborators. It’s not rude or selfish or naive to say no to something that doesn’t feel right. It’s not wilful or arrogant to trust and champion my voice above all others. My voice is the truest expression of my work, and when it comes to my own story, I ought to let it roam, in all its technicolored glory.

*Ellen Litman, PHD ‘Never Enough? Why ADHD Brains Crave Stimulation’
Medically reviewed by ADDitude’s ADHD Medical Review Panel, July 2025
https://www.additudemag.com/brain-stimulation-and-adhd-cravings-dependency-and-regulation/?srsltid=AfmBOoqIM1n7MAXfllRFts-158Tvmwhkg1P3NdaOjw8zgBKBUzS16yzb

You can keep with with Rachel on socials here and check her work out here.

Want to submit an article? Get in touch here.

Inviting the Audience Into My Brain l Listening to the Voices I Think With by Rachel Mary

Studio Voiceover Masterclasses Are Back for 2026!