The Impact of Noise on Neurodivergent Individuals

Julien (nonoise.club): Noise makes you uncomfortable. Imagine it hurts you, just like someone slaps you or kicks you. At your workplace, for instance. You would complain, I guess. At your workplace, statistically, you will find many people maybe extra sensitive, for good reasons, in fact, being hurt by noise. These colleagues maybe neurodivergent Nothing special, just a gift. But you know the word gift in German actually means poison. It's double-sided. Today... I discuss about noise and neurodiversity with a former HRC level to a consultant for neuro inclusion Sarah Tancell Hello Sarah, so lovely to have you on the show.

Sarah: Hi, thanks for inviting me. I'm really happy to be here.

Julien (nonoise.club): I'm really, really happy to have that discussion, but let's start easily. Sarah, what's the definition by the book of neurodiversity?

Sarah: So by the book, neurodiversity actually means all of us. So just like biodiversity, you have neurodiversity. And in reality, no two brains are the same. So neuro means brain, diversity means everybody. So within neurodiversity, there are different...

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Sarah: I would describe it as categories for the purpose of this conversation. And you have neurotypical thinkers. So people that will think in a very linear way. And those individuals have a thinking style that most workplaces, most social structures are built for. Then you also have neurodivergent individuals.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Sarah: and their brain thinks very differently in terms of how they process information. And quite often those individuals are also identified as having autism, ADHD, dyslexia, or a combination of. There are many of other conditions, but those are just examples. So we're all neurodiverse, but for the purpose of this conversation to really help you, neurodivergent is somebody who

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Sarah: has one of those traits that I've talked about, one of those conditions, And neurotypical is somebody that doesn't. I hope that makes sense.

Julien (nonoise.club): Okay, that's nice. It totally makes sense and vocabulary will be very important in that discussion. That's why I wanted to start that way, but I don't want to be rude. Sarah, please, I'll let you introduce yourself, explain who you are and maybe a bit of your journey.

Sarah: Yeah, sure. So I started out in HR, so human resources, and I've been in human resources for about just over 20 years now. And I started as a set up running my own HR consultancy. And then as my career developed, I got some senior roles on an employed basis. So during my time at university, I was identified as having dyslexia. So we already knew that I was different. So you remember, this is my perspective of what it looked like 20 years ago, which is very different to where we are today. So I always knew I was different and nobody really knew what that meant or what to do with me. They just knew that every time I did an exam at university, I needed an extra 15 minutes. It's much deeper than that. We know that now, but as I said, back then.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's good to have the definition of that time and I think still today for a lot of people. it's, yeah.

Sarah: it Yes, yes, absolutely. Fast forward 20 years, my career had a steep career trajectory and I was working in the gaming sector and I was an international HR director. At that time, I was really, really struggling. So I felt like I had burnout. I didn't know why. I was exhausted. I was emotional. I was ill all of the time. couldn't articulate what the problem was, but I knew that I was really struggling and I'd quite often in the workplace walk away from a conversation feeling like I'd spoke a different, completely different language to the person, despite you're supposed to in English. Or quite often it was an international role, so I did a lot of traveling. I would be on a plane and...

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Sarah: I was very lucky if the plane landed in the same country that I had the meeting scheduled that I was supposed to be going to. So it was extreme. And I was asking for support from my line managers and nobody really knew what to do with me. I didn't know what to do with me. And nobody really wanted to help me. It felt like I was becoming a problem and I was really sensitive to

Julien (nonoise.club): Eh.

Sarah: So many things with noise, different smells, a change in a time table. And it was only when I was rolling out a neurodiversity program globally, and I was studying, of course, I wanted to train myself on what I was going to do and what I was educating the employees on. I was going through the traits of ADHD and thinking, hang on a minute, this is really familiar.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Sarah: This is a odd. So I was fortunate enough to know that it wasn't my age. Actually, it was I identified and diagnosed with ADHD. And of course, I couldn't just have a little bit of ADHD. I had raging ADHD. But also to my surprise, I was identified having autism. So I penned the title triple neurodivergent.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sarah: and, at that time, the gaming interest, sorry, the gaming industry was imploding and I got made redundant. So I used the time to recover from my neurodivergent burnout because I identified as that was the problem. And with my 20 years plus experience in HR and understanding how workplaces worked, but also. Realizing that there were so many other people in the workplace that were struggling in the same way that I was and nobody knew what to do with them either. I decided to set up my neurodiversity consultancy called NeuroD. So I now work with workplaces to build a framework to support all of their neurodivergent employees on their journey through their career, whatever that might be that will support them.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Sarah: and remove those barriers to work. It's a very long-winded answer.

Julien (nonoise.club): But it's perfect because I get the audience will perfectly understand why I absolutely want to have you on the show as an expert because you have this capacity, condition, excuse my English, don't know who I was to speak about neurodiversity but you have this triple... characters characteristic to the trip it is a meaning you understand a lot of different people having me just one of them and at same time as a H Specialist as a H a intentional H a director you understand this at intentional level And for a lot of different people and I think you you gave me last time a different statistic in the gaming industry even different than in in all industries across all industries

Sarah: Neurodegesty, yeah.

Julien (nonoise.club): So it's very interesting because your point of view, think you have a big picture of that. But let's start understanding a little bit better about neurodiversity. You said ADHD, autism, dyslexia. We speak about the spectrum. You told me you have the full spectrum. It was a surprise for you. 20 years ago, a neurologist told me I have signs of ADHD as well. And I asked myself, OK, what's... What's the spectrum, what's the range, and how do I understand that? How many people are concerned? Can you explain a little bit more about this spectrum we speak about, which seems to be a very dangerous world, but in fact it's kind of easy? So what is that?

Sarah: Yeah. Yes, so spectrum is normally identified as part of autism. So it's autism spectrum, sort of, but it's also part of the neurodiversity umbrella as well. So it's again, it's that terminology piece that is interchangeable depending who you're speaking to. So I guess the best way to describe it is no neurodivergence travels alone.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Sarah: So it's likely that if you have one type of neurodivergence, it's probably accompanied with something else, case in point. But as I said, at the top of our conversation, no two brains think alike. So there's no rhyme or reason. So somebody might have just autism. Somebody might just have ADHD, but they might also have anxiety, which is something that I struggled with, or depression.

Julien (nonoise.club): Okay.

Sarah: For context here, I am by no means a neurologist and I'm not medically trained. So the context for our discussion is workplace and my lived experience of neurodiversity. So I just want to make that really clear for anyone who's starting to write down some of the terminology that I'm describing, because they'll have their own experience as well. So one of those key things is language. I'm going a bit off piece at the moment, but it's important.

Julien (nonoise.club): You

Sarah: because it's very much individual how you want to describe. So whether that's first person language, so I have autism or I am autistic, it's very much individual. So going back to your question, the spectrum, what you could describe it as, it's not linear. So you're not either this end or this end. There's lots of different bits in between and everybody might have, sorry, some people might have...

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sarah: one challenge, but they may excel in another area. So it's almost like if you draw a circle, there's lots of different components in it, and you might have 10 out of 10 in this component, but you might only have one out of 10 in the other component. So it's certainly not, you're either here, you're in the middle or at the end. And I had to explain that to somebody when I...

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Sarah: I was at the dentist, bizarrely. And she said, have you got any medical conditions? And I said, oh, okay, I have autism. Why am I saying this? Because the noise of the dentist, I really struggle with. So the first thing that she said to me was, where are you on the spectrum? So number one, that's really insulting. And number two, you shouldn't really answer that anyway. I don't know. It depends. It depends, which day the wind's, sorry.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Hello, peace.

Sarah: It depends which way the wind's blowing. But also it depends on how I've identified, how I'm being classified with that particular type of neurodivergence. So the spectrum, we're almost not using the word spectrum anymore because it is so individual. Like our brain is the same as our fingertip or our DNA. They're individual to us. So

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Sarah: I would almost move away from the spectrum part and just see it as it's an individual experience and it's for that own person's brain makeup, if that makes sense.

Julien (nonoise.club): fully understood. I think in terms of communication, internal communication at workplace, having a way to measure it, to score it in a way, make it more understandable for people not being concerned. And that's why I think it's spoken out. But let's end that question and speak about how many people I said in the introduction. for the audience, you definitely have colleagues. you work in a company with 20 or more people or 200 or 2000 people, you definitely have colleagues being neurodivergent. Meaning, and you told me something like one of seven persons, is it in the UK or in Europe, is concerned? Okay.

Sarah: the general population. it's one in, it was one in seven, but because there's been lots of more people being diagnosed, it's probably one in five. So a year ago, I would have said, Hey, one in seven people are neurodivergent. If you're in STEM, so science, technology, engineering, machinery, mathematics, it's probably narrower. So it's more like one in four.

Julien (nonoise.club): It's more and more.

Sarah: Why? Because the work that's undertaken in those industries leans more towards the skill set of neurodivergent individuals. But with the caveat that I think that's going to change soon, we just need the research to back it to say, it's X. But it's always been when I began one in seven and one in four in STEM.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm. So we understood what's neurodiversity, everyone, that's neurodivergent, one in four, one in five, one in four people are concerned, meaning everyone is concerned directly and indirectly with colleagues. So let's talk about noise because that's what we do in this show. And you're an HES specialist for neuroinclusion. Can you first describe how noise feels? workplace? What noise in the workplace and how neurodiverged people feel the very common noise we can speak about in the workplace, maybe like on a flex with open space, that kind of noise, of discussion noise and so on. What does that feel like?

Sarah: So, first of all, everybody's experience of noise is going to be different. So remember when I talked about brains are going to be individual, but in my experience and a lot of my clients, my one-to-one coaching neurodivergent clients will talk about struggles with overwhelm from too much noise. So the traditional office is now open plan, right? More often than not.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Sarah: So if you're neurodivergent, doesn't mean that you don't hear anything or you only hear certain things. It means you hear everything. So imagine an office at Christmas. If you're a neurodivergent individual, you've got noise, you've got Christmas carols, you've got jingles, you've got jangles, you've got rustling. It can be really, it can cause a lot of problems for somebody that is sensitive to those areas. But that's Christmas. That doesn't happen all year round, sorry, yes. Thank you, pardon. Yeah. So it can be things like somebody can be tapping on a desk. Somebody can be typing really heavily on a keyboard. It can be, I used to get the train to work into the center of London and I was able to walk along the platform.

Julien (nonoise.club): Christmas in the UK, we must say. It may be different in France. Or in Germany.

Sarah: I know all of the noisy eaters and all of the sniffers and all of the loud talkers along that platform. And it was exactly what carriage I was going to get into. And it definitely wasn't with any of them, I can assure you. But it can be things like the clattering from the canteen. So the cutlery, chatting, it can be a certain type of noise. So, and again, everybody's individual. For me, I will get extreme anxiety from a sudden loud noise. And a beautiful example of that would be in the UK by law, you have to have a weekly fire alarm test. happens on a Wednesday in my previous workplace, 10 o'clock on a Wednesday morning, every single week. And every single week at 10 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, I was having a meltdown in the toilet because I'd forgotten again, I don't know how that that happened.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Sarah: because it can cause such a shock to my own system and overwhelm. It makes me feel really anxious and I have to go away and almost decompress from that shock.

Julien (nonoise.club): How do your colleagues react?

Sarah: They didn't know. I remember at this time, I didn't know either that I had ADHD or autism. I just thought that I was just really stressed. to be fair, I spent a long time crying in the toilets anyway. So it wasn't really helpful. But when I look back, I can see what the triggers are and I'm aware of them. But no, they wouldn't have noticed. And that goes...

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Sarah: you know, that's just not my own experience. People spend a lot of time masking in the workplace to try and appear normal and like that they're the same as all of their colleagues, which can, you know, leads to burnout as I've described. It's very common, unfortunately and sadly. But, you know, I've just talked about bad noise. There's good noise as well. It doesn't always have to be negative. So

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Sarah: in my head because it's going so fast and it's so noisy. So I said you hear everything but it's like it gets absorbed into your mind and you're still hearing it. So I will listen to music which is called binaural beats. I don't know if you've heard that term. So it's a different type of tone and it's meant to be for calming and relaxing or for focus work as well. So

Julien (nonoise.club): Nope.

Sarah: I can switch it up if I need to focus, but there's too many things going on in the background, or I can turn it down if I need to go to sleep.

Julien (nonoise.club): The strength of neurodivergent people at workplaces is ability to focus and to dive into very specific topics with another way of thinking through and finding maybe solutions and so on. But this ability to focus is completely disturbed by noise. You say, there a good noise? And you compare it with music. I repeat very often that... Music is not noise and fighting against noise and against noise pollution is on my side absolutely not fighting against music. I love music as you do and you use music to get quieter, to get calm as a lot of people do but noise is unwished noise or unwished sound I would say or unwished or...

Sarah: word you said before.

Julien (nonoise.club): unwanted sound. Noise is unwanted sound and that has a very very different effect on people and the capacity to focus.

Sarah: wanted. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's about what you can control. you can put your headphones on and zone things out and listen to it. But noise from the train, from the car, from my dog snoring behind. I'm really sorry if that gets picked up on here, everybody. Or it can be someone just talking to you. Again, it's very, very individual. So the focus part is almost different to the noise. situation for a neurodivergent individual, but yes, they go hand in hand, because if I need to focus, then I need to be aware of the environment around me and the type of noise that I've got. With the annoying caveat that some days it's totally fine, and some days it's not. And I couldn't tell you what day that's going to be. And that's why I said earlier and used the analogy, it depends which way the wind's blowing, because it really does. And it's

Julien (nonoise.club): Why and when?

Sarah: That can be really frustrating because you can have all of these strategies in place to overcome some of these challenges. Again, I'm talking about the workplace, but some of them are unexpected. So a fire alarm, okay, it's every week, but what if it goes off by accident? What if there actually is a fire? What if there's a lot of noise? What if you're walking down the road and a car beeps its horn? All of those things.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Sarah: You can't predict they happen and it's really difficult. So you almost have to preempt the noise, deal with the noise and then deescalate from the noise. So you've got those different challenges throughout that whole journey, depending on what it is.

Julien (nonoise.club): Sarah, you're a consultant for neuroinclusion, meaning you help companies dealing with that, dealing with neurodivergent employees. What should a company do against noise or to create an optimal atmosphere of work for all the employees?

Sarah: And think that's a really good point you just made. It's not just for neurodivergent individuals because, you know, once you have these practices in place for your neurodivergent community, they benefit everybody because there might be someone that just doesn't like that noise. Maybe it's the radio station they don't like. Maybe they've got a lot going on in their world. Maybe they're an introvert. So there's all of those things that you've got to taking. to consideration. And I think it really comes down to that. It's about being considerate, but having that level of communication with your employees that if something's a challenge for them or a group of them, they almost have the psychological safety to be able to speak up and say, hey, you know, when we play that music all day when we're trying to focus. that's really difficult for us. And there's really easy cost-effective strategies that workplaces can put in place. It doesn't have to be knocking down walls or putting triple glazed windows up. It can be things like buying AirPods, buying noise-cancelling headphones. You can set up workspaces acoustically. So you need to bring in an expert to do this so that they can create areas where, sorry.

Julien (nonoise.club): No rhyme, repeat your sentence.

Sarah: So it was a noise at the door and I was expecting my dog to bark. There you go, a sudden noise. I'll start again. Where did we go from?

Julien (nonoise.club): So you say you don't need an acoustician, but you can call for experts.

Sarah: Yeah. So you, and you don't need to bring in an expert to do that because there are some really cost effective ways to implement noise canceling strategies or quiet zones. So it's not about knocking down a wall or putting in triple glazed glass. You can do things like have, what are these, not AirPods. AirPods, you can go, I'm showing my age.

Julien (nonoise.club): Airpods. I guess AirPods. No advertising. No advertising. Walkman. think that's the Walkman you made.

Sarah: yeah, other ear pieces are available. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the wolf one, okay. Yeah, or just noise cancelling headphones. Sometimes I have to use both and you can do things like drowning out noise. So having plant foliage that can absorb sound. But one thing that can be really helpful is a quiet zone. So if you have a group of people that are either on a project that needs focus time, you have neurodivergent individuals, or you have, you know, introverts or someone that just wants to work in silence because they're out there. You can either have an area that's a quiet zone, just like you would on the train in the carriages as a quiet zone carriage. Or even if you're a large employer, you can have a different floor. So you can have a

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Sarah: a brainstorming floor, but then on a lower floor, you can have the quiet area and use that flexibly would be my best advice.

Julien (nonoise.club): I ask myself, how should colleagues behave with each other? But listening to you, I ask myself, is it not the behavior everyone should have with everyone, meaning being respectful and just understanding the expectations of anyone, not having to ask, is this person neurodivergent? If yes, I will have respect for the... wish to have a silent room. I mean, it should be the right of anyone working in an office to have a silent room, or maybe not. I think there are people hating silence and they need to have a lot of people around them and we need to respect that as well. So is it just the behavior of normal colleagues? just a very respectful normal one? Or should someone listening to that show say, okay, I need to be more careful with colleagues being neurodivergent? And I mean, mostly you don't even know that. So do you have here good advice?

Sarah: There are about 100 different ways to answer that. So first of all, the irony is if I want to do creative work, I need to be around people. So I need that level of activity to be able to get me into the zone. it's not one size fits all. And then I would also say, I'm sorry, I've forgotten what the question was.

Julien (nonoise.club): The question was maybe too complicated, but how should colleagues behave with each other in a normal way or in a specific way?

Sarah: Thank You know, I think we're all adults. I say that in jest because I've been in HR for a long time and no, that's not always the case. But I think you're right. It's down to respect. But what we certainly shouldn't be doing is labeling somebody. So if someone is a bit quiet or they're focused, that doesn't mean they're neurodivergent. They might just be quiet and focused. So we've just got to be really, really careful about

Julien (nonoise.club): You

Sarah: labeling and I think that's a really important thing to take away from that. But it also goes down to the culture of the business and giving employees a voice and what the boundaries are for that particular workplace, but also what the expectations are of behaviors. So, and I think that's really key. And of course, in some workplaces, you're going to have more of a

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Sarah: a jovial atmosphere because of the nature of the work that they do. Whereas some you might not, they might need to be more serious and concentrated. So I think it's case by case, but it's down to the culture of the business and leadership to really set the standards. But also just be respectful. How would you want to be treated? And that's, I would almost put that under the umbrella of wellbeing rather than just neurodiversities. I just want to be respectful. treated with respect and I will do the same to you. And I think that's really important.

Julien (nonoise.club): Let's go out from the workplace and think about remote work. We are in April now, 2025. A lot of companies call the employees back at work because they are not efficient enough, I guess, or I don't know why, working from home. And I think it's just a trend. Still, many companies offer hybrid work. or remote work as well. What the effect of remote working for neurodivergent employees or people? Is it a good thing? Is it bad thing? Because at the same time, there's a kind of loneliness working from home and it's a quiet space. So what's your point of view on that if companies ask you about the remote policy?

Sarah: I, so my personal experiences, I would probably die now if I went back to a full time working in the office, I wouldn't be able to do it because I have experienced what happens and how I described how I was feeling at the beginning of this conversation was because I didn't have those boundaries or rest periods in place to deescalate from a day navigating a neurotypical workplace. So for me, it's, it's,

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Sarah: a beautiful balance, particularly as I don't sleep. And I know we've had this conversation before. So for example, last night I had three hours sleep, but because I am working from home, I'm fortunate that if I have three hours sleep, I can get up and work at 4am and do a couple of hours work and then go back to sleep if I can. You don't have that luxury in the workplace. But Added to that, there's no commute. So I'm self-employed, it's okay for me, but somebody that has to commute to the office, before you've even landed in the office, you've got to navigate all of those noises from the moment you leave your front door to the time that you get to your desk. And that can be anything, traffic pollution, it can be people's talking, it can be all of the things. And that can be really exhausting. as well. And it's an interesting point about the return to office, because I've worked with a number of clients recently who have mandated the return to office. So during COVID, they were home working, they built the structures for that, but then the workplace wants them to come back in or tranche back to a model where there's more days in the office and less from home.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Sarah: So I've been supporting them with that transition. So basically designing your day that's gonna work for you. And that goes as far as understanding what triggers are. So not just noise, it could be anything, but predominantly it's Identifying what those triggers are and putting your own self-advocacy strategies in place to support you throughout the day.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Sarah: We've talked about this isn't just for neurodivergent individuals, it's for everybody. But in doing those strategies, you don't need to disclose that you're neurodivergent. So they're for everybody. So whether that's, okay, I need to wear headphones today, or I might need to change workplace dependent the hours that I travel so that I'm not in rush hour. And that's something that is really helpful, certainly for me and for others. And it can be the quiet zone, which is really specific as well. But workplaces need to support that. So if you're to bring people back into the office, first of all, personally, I'd argue why, what's the why? Is it because they're difficult, because you're finding it difficult to manage people, then you need to get better managers, what make people come back into the office? Right, right.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm. You It's better to have better managers than bringing back 90 % of the people back to the office. it's not... Yeah, I know, but they can do... You can have better managers just writing an email to everyone. I think that's why a lot of companies just make the wrong choice, calling employees back before taking their hard decision.

Sarah: You still could have managed them there. Then, so. It's really difficult. I joined my previous role as an international HR director at a time when it was mid COVID. So I had to bring everybody in some sort of combination back to the office, which caused so much anxiety. Because there's a level of understanding that you need to go back to the office. But what does that mean? What does it look like? It was a new office. The workplace I was at at the time was fortunate enough to have the funds available to throw anything acoustic at it. But not every workplace is that fortunate.

Julien (nonoise.club): Sarah, I think it was a very nice question and answer and we would love to have a normal discussion with you, not just question and answers. So let's close the Q &A part. Sarah Tancell from Neuro-D. that's your consultancy company you develop in the UK. I will put all the links in the chat or in the description of the episode. on the different platforms. But let's just close that part and open the distribution part. Sarah, thanks a lot for this first part. You know, I connect a lot of the picks we discussed together, a lot of your answers with everything I hear, things I do care much more about noise, or I speak about noise kind of all of the day, all of the week. And lot of people ask me, Julien what's your why? Why do you care about noise? And I'm like, you know, I mean, everyone cares about noise. It's just disturbing from anyone. And I feel like a lot of people ask me, is there any autistic side or, you know, is there any ADHD? And it's not just a thought. They ask me really concretely after that. They ask, is there a direct link between caring about noise and having any neurodivergent sign? And we don't care about which one. And I'm a bit shocked when I listen to that because we need to keep in mind that noise is harming, I think, something like 100,000, 100 millions of Europeans. So if you count, that's more than the number of people being neurodivergent, meaning noise is harming everyone and not only neurodivergent people. So there is not really a question about that. But what do we think of, it's not the queer name part anymore, the discussion, so what do we think about it? Do we think it's normal that people think we should care about noise only for people being extra sensitive, as I said in the introduction? What do we feel is that?

Sarah: No, I've said throughout our Q &A session that think neurodiversity just is for everybody because that's the title of it. I just know that neurodivergent individuals can be more sensitive to noise, but I think if we stop and think, most of our days are run by noise. We wake up, how do we wake up? It's an alarm clock, right?

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Sarah: if you're asleep, it's an alarm clock that wakes you up. It's noise. So the minute we open our eyes, we're hearing something. So no, it's not just relevant to neurodivergent individuals. I think, know, expectant mothers, when the baby start hearing in the womb, what's your last sense to go when you're going to pass away? Apparently, again, not a medical practitioner, but

Julien (nonoise.club): Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah: It's your hearing, it's noise. So, no, it's for everybody, I think, as we live and breathe.

Julien (nonoise.club): It's really difficult to explain. I think, do we have people or do we... if there people out there loving noise. I'm not sure about that. I think people just... and we spoke about unwanted sound and that's exactly the difference. And I think a lot of people think that... being allergic against noise is a bit of allergic against music and everything else. But let's stop that. A lot of people harmed by noise are even auditory... issues, not being able to hear perfectly in the industry. We spoke about workplace and workplace as the office life, but a lot of workplaces are, for instance, at school for teachers, playing and working with a lot of children at daycare, or in the manufacturing place, I think you work in the industry as well. people are working with a kind of white noise, machine noise, which can be very loud as well. How is it possible to make it happen if you have any other agents to work at a daycare, children's daycare or in a factory?

Sarah: Working with children, regardless of noise, I don't know how they do it. I have two teenagers and they're loud. So 30 of them, I don't know. My experience of working in manufacturing, I found that noise quite soothing. It was expected noise. It was a low level noise. I knew what was going to happen.

Julien (nonoise.club): Okay.

Sarah: and everybody's again individual. But if it's a noise that somebody is really struggling with and they're sensitive to it, then I would put in those noise canceling strategies. like we talked about earlier. the, you know, and there's health and again in the UK, there's health and safety legislation in place that workplaces can't be above a certain noise level. So they have to put.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sarah: protective equipment in place for workers to ensure that their ears are protected. So by law, depending on the level of noise, you have to have those things in place. But there's nothing stopping employees having an accommodation to say, look, I'm struggling and I find this noise really challenging. Can I have noise cancelling headphones? And again, in the UK, there's legislation in place that says that they have to do that.

Julien (nonoise.club): You say in the UK, did you compare already with other European markets? Because fighting against noise regulation is a very important play. It's a very important condition to raise funding for innovation as well, for instance. So I think UK is a bit more advanced than the other countries in Europe.

Sarah: And object. Quite possibly, that's an area that I'm not aware of. But if we were going to talk about spectrums and legislation, here's the spectrum. You've got the US over here in terms of their workers legislation. You've got the UK somewhere in the middle, and then you've got some of Europe over here, which is really... So Germany, for example, has really strict employer legislation. So I think it rather depends on that.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm. Yep.

Sarah: that goes a little bit outside of my areas of expertise because it comes down to more health and safety than employment legislation.

Julien (nonoise.club): But we speak about health and not just about legislation. you say that it's very important. What can our audience do listening to you today? Maybe do for you, I don't know. Or do for them, for the environment. What would be the advice they should listen to that if they go to listen to us for the full episode? Maybe we need a gift for them and a giveaway for them to have done that.

Sarah: I was the gift.

Julien (nonoise.club): You were the gift. And I hope you don't listen to that episode on the different platforms, but you watch the episode on YouTube to see Sarah smile on YouTube. I hope for you. And if you don't, please just change the platform and just have look on the video. No, but joke aside what should people do? Because it's a very difficult

Sarah: Ugh. Okay.

Julien (nonoise.club): difficult topic and even the both of us and We have met already we speak about that and we are very careful in the way we we use words We try to be very careful. Okay, you you're you're brit and french It's it's we I need I need to do it in a different language So i'm very careful with the word anyway, but still we are very careful and I know it's a topic which is really hard to mention hard to to speak about so What should we do? How can we make it better to speak about it and to make things better around in terms of communication? Because you say that neurodiversity is for everyone. So do you have good advice?

Sarah: Okay, so I think I have a couple of answers to that and I think one is personal so I'd love it if those people that were listening or watching this could think of noise as good and bad. It doesn't always need to be something that's triggering or challenging. So from a well-being lens I would be saying go back to your senses, go out into nature and hear nice noise. hear good noise, trees, birds, animals, whatever that is, whatever you find soothing, I'd be really, really important to say and share, go and find the good noise. If you're reflecting on your day again as an individual and there are days that you find triggering, I would walk back through that day and find out what is causing that. And then I would try and

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Sarah: find strategies that you can put in place that can overcome that. So whether that's the noise cancelling headphones, whether it's moving to, if you're in the office, a quiet space, if you're commuting, don't sit next to the noisy eaters. Just whatever you do, just don't. And I, if it's okay, I have a self study workbook that might be helpful for individuals who are near under-virgin listening to this. can, I'm really happy to share. But if you're in the workplace and we're talking about communication, again, just be aware, just look, come out of being in it and be on it and just look around and observe and get curious about what's that noise? How do I feel about that noise? Is that something that's causing me anxiety? Is it something that might be causing somebody else anxiety? Can I support them with that? What does that look like? We talked earlier about being respectful in the workplace. That's such a great way to help somebody if they're feeling challenged by a noise or they've heard something and, you know, I said it's either preempting it, you're in the noise or it's post noise. Work out how you can support that individual or yourself through that noise.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm. So it's very nice. I will keep that at the conclusion. Be aware, be respectful of your colleagues, of your surroundings. And I think if we all do that, maybe we need a bit less of innovation. Still, we will need some because we still have machines producing noise by effect. But for everything else, just having a respectful behavior, being aware of your...

Sarah: Thank

Julien (nonoise.club): of your neighbors colleagues and so on would be a very nice nice advice Sarah Tancell the founder of Neuro D I will put everything is description of the episode to be able to contact you But it was really lovely to have this this discussion with you today Do you want to do you want a word I let I leave the floor and let you you conclude that that episode and then we cut so

Sarah: get curious. I don't really understand what you mean. I'm really sorry.

Julien (nonoise.club): No, So if you want, I leave you the last word. And do you want to conclude that episode with the last sentence, the last word?

Sarah: Oh, I see. Thank you. I think you summed it up, be aware, but I would just say get curious, get curious with noise, good and bad. And remember that neurodiversity is for everybody, not just for neurodivergent individuals. And thank you so much for having me. I've really thoroughly enjoyed our chat. It's been great fun.

Julien (nonoise.club): Thanks a lot, Sarah. And see you soon, everyone. If you like that episode, please think about liking it, sharing it, comment, subscribe, do everything you can on the platform to support. No noise to support that podcast fasting noise and to support that kind of very positive action as Sarah does on her side. Thanks, everyone, and see you soon.

Sarah: Thank you. Thank you.