Flic Manning: 0:13

We acknowledge and pay respects to the traditional custodians of the lands on which we record and especially to those who may also be living with a disability. Welcome to another episode of the Sunflower Conversations, where we will explore a variety of disabilities, the way in which people experience their disabilities and discover the opportunities for society to make access and inclusion improvements for everyone. My name is Flick Manning and I'm your host. Hello everyone, thanks for tuning into this Sunflower Conversation. I'm Flick Manning and, much like some of the guests in this series, I have a collection of hidden disabilities like Crohn's disease, lupus and Renan syndrome, and today I get the pleasure of shining a light on a wonderful human being in our community, Téa Rundback, and I know Tia is going to give us some fantastic insights today on her lived experience of disability. Téa, welcome to the show.

Téa Rundback : 1:17

Thank you, hi. So yes, I'm Téa Rundb ack. I'm autistic and have ADHD. I also have multiple autoimmune syndrome, which basically means I'm collecting autoimmune diseases. My collection so far includes Graves' disease, hashimoto's disease and Addison's disease, just to name a few. I'm really passionate about using my lived experience, education, knowledge and skills to help others with invisible disabilities and neurodivergence. I have a degree in human resource management and am a trained psychosocial recovery coach. There is mainly two sides to what I do for work. The first side, which is more public, is that I'm a disability sector advocate focusing on disability employment. So I've been a speaker, an emcee and an academic writer, with my first piece being published this year. The second side is that I run my own business called Invisible Disability Solutions, so I work with clients who have invisible disabilities and neurodivergence to help find solutions and provide guidance on navigating a world that isn't really built for us.

Flic Manning: 2:34

That's amazing, Téa, so well done on all your accomplishments and on the way in which you have used your lived experience to help other people, and we're definitely going to dive into that a little bit further shortly. I really loved your comment about having a collection of autoimmune diseases. I very much relate to that and I think a lot of people with autoimmune diseases feel like they kind of pack the car filled with them and then they end up with the boot or the trailer also getting full as they go with a collection of diseases and syndromes and symptoms. So I think so many people are going to resonate with that statement. Now, your disabilities, like most people's disabilities, can present very differently. They're so nuanced from person to person. So I'd like to know how do your symptoms present to you?

Téa Rundback : 3:19

Honestly, because I have so many disabilities like, some of which are fluctuating, I find it a bit hard to keep track of everything going on Like sometimes I feel like a rogue detective trying to solve a case on which disability is impacting me the most, but when it comes to the autoimmune side, it's mainly fatigue and energy levels, random things like temperature sensitivity. That's not fun and it can affect also, like irregular periods and menstrual cycles, joint muscle pain, memory, memory problems, and then with my neurodivergence, which also impacts periods and menstrual cycles, which I've just been learning about recently, difficulty paying attention to tasks, some difficulty with social boundaries. The vacuum cleaner is my enemy. Do not like it at all.

Flic Manning: 4:16

Yeah, that's pretty much it. So, Téa, I really resonated and I think a lot of people resonate with what you mentioned about having a fluctuating experience in your symptoms with some of your disabilities, particularly the autoimmune conditions, and I think there's still broadly a perception in the world that your disability is on 100% all the time and that there's no change to that. But those of us living with those conditions know that is not true. It does change from day to day. Can you give me an example from your experience of how your fluctuating symptoms can impact your work, for example, on a given week?

Téa Rundback : 4:54

So an example is, I guess, with my temperature sensitivity being really hot or, which I found out recently, really cold as well. So I just need a very you know level environment to flourish, fatigue levels kicking a bit more, as well as pain levels it's different for each day and you have to balance that and manage it with your energy levels. There's the spoon theory, which really helps managing it all. It does fluctuate and it isn't just black and white. You're either disabled or you're not disabled, which can be difficult to navigate sometimes.

Téa Rundback : 5:39

Sometimes it can even feel like invalidating for yourself, in that you are like, okay, like I'm disabled, this is what's going on, and then something changes and you're like, oh my gosh, what the hell like is happening? Yeah, so sometimes it can be invalidating for yourself as well, as it impacts the views of people around you as well, because if you're feeling great, like one day, like you're having a good day which is so exciting and which is, you know, amazing when you have a good day, but then people around you may start like questioning the validity of your disability, and then they're confused when especially when it invisible, when you're not doing so, like too crash hot the next day because you've used up too much energy or too many spoons that day and you've gone into negative disabilities, it's a pretty common thing to feel invalidated, either by society or sometimes just actually invalidated, because you yourself start thinking but it was really bad yesterday and now it's not so bad today, or now this new symptoms popped up and that's super confusing as well.

Flic Manning: 6:57

So can you take us through, perhaps, what you think the overall perception is of your conditions in the way that society has responded to you living with them from day to day?

Téa Rundback : 7:09

What my disability means for me in general is that I experience more barriers than most, but it also means that I have a unique lens to look at life through. And since my disabilities are invisible, it can be personally challenging because people can't see the impacts that they have on me. And it also affects my relationship with other people because they may not know how to support me or what's going on, and it may be a bit hard for them to put themselves in my shoes when on the outside everything is looking fine.

Flic Manning: 7:47

What are some of the other barriers do you believe exist in the world for people with your conditions when it comes to work, for example?

Téa Rundback : 7:54

Well, when it comes to work, people who are autistic experience like a seven times more likely to be unemployed or underemployed, so that's not great. Ideally that would change and we'd work on that. It comes with a lot of difficulty because employers are not exactly disability confident and there's a lot of misinformation about what it is like to hire someone with a disability, and because most disabilities are invisible, like a lot of people go along and work, not raising their needs or accommodations to make sure they fly under the radar and not experience discrimination as well and unconscious bias of what they can and cannot do. That shouldn't be judged by someone else.

Flic Manning: 8:53

So Téa, obviously you've had experiences with your disabilities in workplace settings and now you obviously have your own business that you mentioned earlier in our episode. Can you take us through how your hidden disabilities have informed your business?

Téa Rundback : 9:09

That is a good question. I basically started my business because I wasn't the same. Opportunities weren't available to myself as my peers, like I really wanted to do graduate programs but they were very full on and I also graduated during COVID, which did not help. So I did start my business because basically my experience lived experience has really helped me and as well as my mother's lived experience she has multiple sclerosis and helped guide me through the healthcare system and stood up for me when I had doctors telling me it was all in my head.

Téa Rundback : 9:52

So I want to provide that service having someone who knows how to navigate the healthcare system like having someone who knows how to stand up for what you need and not invalidate your feelings. And I want to be able to provide that service to people and help them. Because disability having a disability is like having a second full-time job in and of itself, with all the disability admin that you have to do, like going to appointments, calling doctors back, organizing results, finding specialists, travel. You're having to navigate new places and making sure that it's accessible for yourself and having to make those plans like ahead of time. So I really just wanted to be a part of helping other people navigate their life.

Flic Manning: 10:44

So, Téa, you've been able to describe some of the barriers and the ways that they present across different industries, the medical system, the workplace and society in general, even personal relationships. If you could take away two barriers to help make it easier for people like yourself to navigate the world, what would those two barriers be?

Téa Rundback : 11:04

The fact that you have to navigate the medical system and also navigating the workplace. So taking away navigating the medical system, um, it would save everybody a whole bunch of time, um, and you would be able to do that with that time what everybody else does, because, like I said, it's like having a second full-time job, having to keep up with everything going on and then navigating the workplace. If it was more accessible, like having accessible recruitment practices, things being communicated clearly, coming from a neurodivergent perspective, that's really helpful and important. Direct communication is ideal because, you know, clarity is kindness, so and obviously accessible parking spots would be great if they were everywhere yeah, brilliant answers.

Flic Manning: 12:07

so, given that you've identified those two barriers to be removed and also the effect that that would actually have, you know, your ability to just have that freedom back to make the decisions of what you want to do with that time and energy that you would have at your disposal, for example, out of that, is there something that you know? If someone's listening today and they think, wow, that's really important and I'm in a workplace, what can I do as a person without that lived experience to make that process easier for someone like yourself?

Téa Rundback : 12:38

I think first educating yourself, learning more about what others go through, put yourselves in people's shoes and also, like, if there's disability awareness training available at your workplace, like, do it. It would be very helpful if everyone could have the opportunity to participate in that. And just believing people when they tell you what's going on is very important. And also you could just start including accessible practices in what you do already, because a lot of people may still be undiagnosed, like I wasn't diagnosed with autism and ADHD until later in life, and if I had things that were accessible to me, like clear communication, clear timelines, it would have made everything a lot easier.

Flic Manning: 13:39

So providing that opportunity to access for people who may not even be diagnosed- that's such a great point, tia, because I think a lot of us still focus on the idea that it's from the date of our diagnosis that something is occurring. But for very many, many people in our community, there's a significant number of years that are in the process of coming to a diagnosis and that period of time you still might be working or studying or doing other activities and find the world really inaccessible during those periods. So thank you very much for highlighting that.

Téa Rundback : 14:16

Absolutely, and diagnosis is expensive as well, like it's not accessible for everyone, so it's important to treat everyone with equity, I guess.

Flic Manning: 14:28

Yeah, brilliant point and a perfect point for us to end our time on today. Tia, thank you so much for bringing your hidden disabilities into the light today and sharing with us on the show, thank you. Thank you for joining us for another Sunflower Conversation. Please keep the conversation going via our website, hdsunflowercom. Forward slash au on facebook at hidden disabilities anz or on instagram hidden disabilities underscore anz.