In episode 324 of The Just Checking In Podcast we checked in with Dan Ascough.
Dan works a firefighter for the London Fire Brigade. As part of his role, he is also chair of the employee support group on Neurodiversity, and runs the London section of the fire brigades union forum for disabled and neurodivergent members.
Dan originally wanted to go into music as a kid, playing in bands and having a desire to go into music production.
He studied for a music production degree but walked away from that career path, dropping out with just six weeks to go. Dan cites burnout from his undiagnosed ADHD at the time, his fear of failure and little lesson structure for the reasons why.
He then worked for a short time doing various jobs, including manual labour before taking stock of what he wanted his life to look like.
His dad was in the fire brigade, so he set his sights on that goal as a natural aim. He loved helping people and the idea of public service, so he went through the application process and succeeded in it.
Dan was also diagnosed with autism and ADHD around 5/6 years ago, first with ADHD and then autism afterwards.
Initially, he fought against the ADHD diagnosis and was in denial but over time, Dan has accepted and owned it, as well as his autism too.
In this episode we discuss his journey into firefighting and how his ADHD and autism diagnoses led him to doing the work he does within the London Fire Brigade in recent years for men and women like him.
We also discuss the conversations he has with ‘normies’ about firefighting and why some of them are problematic, the build-up of repetitive traumatic incidents you have to deal with as a firefighter and how he dealt with them himself.
For Dan’s mental health journey, we discuss the ADHD and autism diagnosis in-depth, fatherhood and the grief of losing his mother from cancer in 2019 after a 14-month illness from cancer.
As always, #itsokaytovent
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