She Hid a Brilliant Mind the World Had No Room For - Unmasking, Late-Identified Neurodivergence & Burnout | Katja Staeheli EP 28

Ep 35 | What a Neurodivergent Mind Can Do When You Stop Numbing It - Peter John Mather

Listener note: this episode includes open discussion of addiction and a suicide attempt. If that's tender territory for you right now, take care of yourself first. Peter John Mather ran multiple businesses for 20 years on a brain he didn't understand. Fast, visual, endlessly lateral - the kind of mind that could legally convert four firework shops into hardware shops in 15 minutes to survive lockdown, but couldn't explain how it did any of it. For most of those years, he was quieting that mind the way many high performers do: with more intensity, more adrenaline, and eventually with drugs and alcohol. Then he stopped. And the conversation everyone should hear is what happened next: "Since stopping taking drugs, I've become way more intelligent." He wasn't getting smarter - he was meeting neurons he'd been numbing for 18 years. Sobriety didn't just save Peter's life, though it did that too, and he speaks with rare openness about the phone call that stopped him 200 metres from a cliff edge. It introduced him to his own operating system - and understanding how his mind actually works became, in his words, the tool. Peter is an entrepreneur, speaker, professional skydiver, and co-founder of Healthy Mindset Rebels. This is a raw, funny, tangent-rich conversation between two neurodivergent minds about capacity, reinvention, what a £5.2 million lottery win can and cannot buy, and what your wiring becomes when you finally stop dampening it. In this episode: * "Since stopping taking drugs, I've become way more intelligent" - and the reframe that changed everything * Running businesses for 20 years without knowing how - why understanding your own mind is the real tool * Visions, mental workflows, and coaching himself through decisions as "Coach Peter" * The Loophole King: converting four firework shops into hardware shops in 15 minutes * The phone call 200 metres from the cliff edge - and why there's never a rock bottom, only the moment you decide enough's enough * What a £5.2 million lottery win at 21 can and cannot buy * Knowing his capacity: recovery time, non-negotiable rituals, cutting off at 3pm without guilt * Healthy Mindset Rebels and the mission to change 100 million lives About Peter John Mather: Peter John Mather is a UK-born entrepreneur, speaker, and coach now living in Arizona, USA. A professional skydiver of 19 years, he has represented Great Britain multiple times and won gold medals in the sport. After 18 years of drug and alcohol addiction and surviving two suicide attempts, Peter has been clean and sober for over five years. He has starred in a BBC documentary, built businesses across multiple industries, and worked alongside mentors including Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi. Together with his wife Ash - a breath coach - he recently launched Healthy Mindset Rebels, on a mission to help change 100 million lives. Find Peter at healthymindsetrebels.com - or search Peter John Mather. As he'll tell you himself, there's only one. Resources and links: * Healthy Mindset Rebels: healthymindsetrebels.com | Instagram: instagram.com/healthymindsetrebels | Facebook: facebook.com/share/1EPNpv8X8W/ * Peter's BBC documentary: https://youtu.be/bBOikTEYeN8 [https://youtu.be/bBOikTEYeN8] Work with Ania: If something in this conversation landed and you're curious about doing this kind of work with support, the chemistry call is 30 minutes - and there's no mask required. Book yours at aniahulsman.com. Enjoyed this episode? If today sparked something, please pass it on to a founder, creative, or someone quietly tired of pretending - these stories travel far when you share them. And if it feels good to leave a five-star review, it helps more gloriously unboxable humans find the show. Original jingle by Steve Greenwood.

Ep 34 | From Escaping His Life to Building One He Doesn't Need To - Jake Kastleman

Video games from the age of four. Food. Porn from twelve. Drinking, drugs, a spiral that peaked at seventeen. Jake Kastleman describes every one of them the same way: they were escapes - ways of trying to feel okay in a life that didn't. The turning point wasn't willpower. It was a spiritual experience that opened the door to something different: building a life he no longer needed to escape from. Today Jake is a porn recovery coach and founder of No More Desire, helping men around the world do exactly that - build a recovery mindset and lifestyle where the escape hatch loses its pull. His sister once named what he carries "power wielder" energy: fire in his hands that can warm the people around him or burn everything down. For years, it burned. Now it fuels the work. In this conversation, Jake and Ania explore what it means to be a highly sensitive, deep-feeling, systems-thinking mind in a world that kept telling him to slow down, stay in his lane, and put on the mask - a mask he simply cannot wear. This is a story about unmasking, faith, and redirecting intensity - and about discovering that the sensitivity you were told was a curse might be the very thing that makes your work matter. In This Episode * The "power wielder" - deep feeling as both curse and superpower, and learning to direct the fire instead of burning things down * Jake's turning point at seventeen: the spiritual experience that opened the door to recovery * Fired from a fast food job after two days for being "too slow" - and the false story of being slow and dumb that he carried for years * The sugar and brain fog discovery that transformed his thinking * Why he could never "just put on the mask" at work, and what it cost him until he built a business where the mask isn't needed * Wanting to move faster, seeing the inefficiencies nobody else questioned, and the workplace friction that followed * The layoff that terrified him and turned into the biggest blessing of his life * Hyperfocus, flow state, and the crash that follows - plus the permission to rest he's still learning to give himself * Locking the smartphone in a drawer: the experiment that brought unexpected peace and presence * Redefining success: presence, not time, as our most valuable resource * Morning quiet, breathwork, and prayer as nervous system regulation About Jake Kastleman Jake Kastleman is a porn recovery coach and the founder of No More Desire, where he helps men across the world overcome porn addiction by building a recovery mindset and lifestyle - emotional regulation, daily routines, nervous system care, relationships, and spiritual practice. A self-described highly sensitive, deep-feeling systems thinker, Jake brings his own lived experience of addiction and recovery to his coaching and his podcast, No More Desire. He lives in Utah with his wife and children. Website: nomoredesire.comFree tools and resources: nomoredesire.com/toolsPodcast: No More Desire (Ania's guest episode is out now) Resources Mentioned * Wim Hof breathing method * Four-eight breathwork (4 seconds in through the nose, 8 out through the mouth) * Parts work / Internal Family Systems (IFS) Work With Ania If something in this conversation resonated and you're curious about doing this work with support, Ania's chemistry call is 30 minutes - no mask required. Book at aniahulsman.com Enjoying the show? If this episode landed for you, please leave a review and share it with someone in your world - a founder, a creative, someone quietly tired of pretending. These stories travel far when you share them. Original jingle by Steve Greenwood.

Ep 33 | The Body Doesn't Lie - Charlyn Huss

What does it look like to build your entire life around a kind of intelligence the world didn't have a word for? Charlyn Huss is a Pilates teacher of 35+ years, inventor of CoreSpring, classically trained actress, and Fulbright Scholar in Shakespeare. She discovered she had a reading disability at 25 - after teaching herself French, training at LAMDA, and building a career on a form of intelligence no test had ever measured. She kept a series of quiet, fierce convictions to herself from childhood ("tell no one"), followed the thread her body gave her, and let everything else work itself out. The people around her consistently read deliberate, years-in-the-making decisions as impulsive. This is a conversation about wiring differently, working with your body rather than against it, and learning - sometimes painfully - that the clearest signals come not from other people's opinions, but from inside you. IN THIS EPISODE The reading disability nobody caught - discovered at 25, after Charlyn had already compensated completely: reading aloud, tracking her eye with a piece of paper, colour-coding everything. She wasn't hiding it - she genuinely didn't know it had a name. "Tell no one" - three life-shaping convictions formed between ages 9 and 12: movement, France, Shakespeare. None shared until she'd already done them. Planned, considered decisions that looked impulsive from the outside. The stepmother who changed everything - when a temp job offer made Charlyn feel like she "weighed 10,000 pounds", her stepmother said: "Then you shouldn't do it. This is how you sift and sort what's right for you." Reading bodies - the gift she thought everyone had - diagnosing a clicking knee from the sound of a man's walk before she'd even turned around. The story of how that moment became central to the way she now teaches. Playhouse Pilates, Body Smarts and Performing Arts - opened in 2007 after Charlyn found herself "thoroughly unemployable" by other studios. Thirteen years, 30 teachers, a six-figure sale in negotiation - ended by a text on March 15th, 2020. "I do it for her" - why Charlyn's definition of success has shifted entirely: not what she earns today, but what she's building for the woman she'll be when she can no longer do this work. GUEST Charlyn Huss Danconia, MA, NCPT, is the Founder & CEO of CoreSpring LLC and creator of the patented CoreSpring® Method. After years of unexplained pain — later diagnosed as scoliosis — and a refusal to accept discomfort as just how her body worked, she spent decades studying movement, psychology, and somatics until she invented something that didn't exist yet: a way of working directly with spring resistance, three-dimensionally through the body, to shift posture and pain patterns fast. She holds a master's degree in humanities and is a Nationally Certified Pilates Teacher. Find her at corespring.com 🎁 Listener offer: Purchase the CoreSpring kit and use code ANIA26 for a 45-minute private Zoom with Charlyn. WORK WITH ANIA If something in this conversation resonated - the quiet conviction you've carried that nobody else could see yet, the way your body has always known before your mind caught up, or the cost of performing a version of yourself that doesn't quite fit - Ania works with neurodivergent founders, leaders, and creatives who are ready to stop running on the wrong operating system. Chemistry call: 30 minutes, no mask required. aniahulsman.com LIKED THIS EPISODE? A five-star review helps more gloriously unboxable minds find the show. If someone in your world would love this - a founder, a creative, someone who's quietly tired of pretending - please pass it on. Produced by Ania Hulsman. Original jingle by Steve Greenwood.

Ep 32 | From Shell Engineer to Arctic Filmmaker - Baby Pro on Freedom and Flow

He deleted his corporate career, gave himself three years of deliberate spaciousness, and came out the other side making documentaries in the Arctic and portraits of strangers in Paris. What does freedom actually look like for a neurodivergent creative who spent six years as a production engineer at Shell - the "well doctor," flying between Norway and Australia - before walking away from all of it? Not gradually. All at once. Baby Pro (Ming) spent the next three years in intentional flow: night cycling through Amsterdam at 4am with a drone called Miss Maverick, no plan, no goals, documenting beauty in 14 handmade journals. Now 34 and based wherever the work takes him, he earns a living entirely from his art - Arctic documentaries, TV productions in China, and a portrait project called Humans of Paris. This conversation is for anyone who has felt the narrowing that happens inside a corporate system - the slow reduction from options A through Z down to only option A - and wondered whether there is another way to work that actually fits how their brain works. Baby Pro doesn't offer a blueprint. He offers proof that a different kind of life is possible, and that flow state isn't a productivity hack - it's what happens when a neurodivergent mind finally stops swimming against the current. IN THIS EPISODE The awakening on March 6th, 2021 - a Buddhist scholar on YouTube cracked open a fog Baby Pro hadn't realised he was living inside. He describes it as glasses falling off your face - and suddenly seeing clearly for the first time. What corporate actually costs a neurodivergent mind - the progressive narrowing from options A through Z down to only option A. His word for it: becoming a robot. How he makes decisions - not goals, not five-year plans. He plants seeds, writes them down, and trusts the process. "Look, it's manifesting here. This is in Paris now." The early years - being short, Black, and late to puberty in a world that mocked difference. Finding solace in solitude, gaming, and writing. The roots of a life lived outside the mainstream. The 2024 low point - money running out, depression, the tension between income and originality. How he moved through it: cold emails, a crypto week in Korea, and letting the work sell itself. The Arctic documentary - six days, five strangers, no electricity. One person filming everything. Then watching it on a cinema screen with 150 people. Baby Pro's three practices - wake up early, look up when you walk, and create a mirror so you can see yourself clearly enough to notice the bubble. GUEST Baby Pro (Ming) is an artistic storyteller and documentary filmmaker based across Europe and Asia. His work has appeared in TV documentaries, cinema screenings, and 14 handmade journals he calls his Baby Pro Playbook - a living autobiography. Find him at babypro.art RESOURCES MENTIONED * Samsara (2011 documentary) - Ron Fricke * Humans - documentary series, available on YouTube * Alan Watts - philosopher and writer on Eastern philosophy * Alan Wallace - Buddhist scholar whose YouTube video triggered Baby Pro's 2021 awakening WORK WITH ANIA If something in this conversation landed - the permission to do things differently, or the recognition that you might be running on the wrong operating system - Ania works with neurodivergent founders, leaders, and creatives who are ready to build theirs. Chemistry call: 30 minutes, no mask required. aniahulsman.com ENJOYED THE EPISODE? A five-star review helps more gloriously unboxable humans find the show. If someone in your world would love this - a founder, a creative, someone quietly tired of pretending - pass it on. Produced by Ania Hulsman. Original jingle by Steve Greenwood.

Ep. 31 | The Boogeyman Under the Bed: Charlie Winton on OCD, ADHD, and Building a Business From Lived Experience

A startup founder who used to mask his OCD as IBS now runs a mental health company - and has spent six years learning to slow down without losing himself. This week Ania talks with Charlie Winton, founder and CEO of OK Positive, a Scotland-based startup using technology to support preventative mental health. Charlie built the business out of his own experience with severe OCD and panic attacks - and he's refreshingly honest about what that's actually like to live with, day to day. The conversation moves through Charlie's ADHD and OCD profile (the "A to B" rushing, the overwhelm of too many choices, the three-question test his wife taught him for sorting intrusive thoughts from real ones), how he learned to read his own warning signs before they become a spiral, and why he thinks "success" is mostly a moving goalpost that's better replaced with small, weekly wins. He also gets into the cost of masking, what it taught him to "helicopter out" of his own life and check in with his values, and why slowing down - something that used to feel like wasted time - turned out to be where most of his actual enjoyment lives. Expect candid talk about mental health stigma, founder culture, the surprising upside of an OCD-trained nervous system, and at least two terrible-but-accurate analogies (cheat meals, mountains made of moles). In this episode: * 02:00 — Introducing Charlie and OK Positive * 03:00 — Why he stopped trying to separate himself from his business * 06:00 — The two moments that shaped him: a mental health crisis at work, and meeting his wife * 08:00 — Realising he had OCD, and what 21-year-old Charlie didn't understand yet * 13:00 — The three questions his wife taught him for intrusive thoughts * 17:00 — Spheres of control and influence - and why energy spent outside them is energy wasted * 20:00 — Personality profiling, masking with friends and family, and pretending OCD was IBS * 28:00 — Being misunderstood as "bossy" or "demanding" when it's really an ADHD attention pattern * 37:00 — Learning to slow down without losing his edge * 45:00 — Redefining success as small wins instead of moving goalposts * 51:00 — The ongoing, non-linear work of feeling okay with who you are * 59:00 — His daily practice: logging how he feels every morning, like a resting heart rate for his mental health * 1:02:00 — Quick-fire round: food quirks, recovery time, Lord of the Rings, and the one thing he'd change in the world A few lines that stuck with us: "Mental health is like the boogeyman. When you're a kid and there's a boogeyman under the bed, and your parents explain it's a leaky pipe making a noise - it's not scary anymore." "It's not a weakness to do it differently to me." "The stress that you put on yourself is far worse than the actual stress." More about Charlie: Charlie Winton is the  Founder of OK Positive (OK+), a digital mental health platform built on evidence-based practices such as ACT, CBT, and resilience training. After years spent in recruitment and financial technology and drawing on his own lived experience of mental health challenges like OCD Charlie realised the need for a more accessible, preventative approach to emotional wellbeing. Since its inception, OK+ has grown to serve thousands across corporate, education, and charitable sectors, embodying Charlie’s deeply held belief that openness and vulnerability help dismantle mental health stigma. He has been running the organisation for six years and been involved in all aspects of starting and growing a business from investment, sales, operations, recruitment and networking. LinkedIn (search Charlie Winton) | charlie@okpositive.co.uk [charlie@okpositive.co.uk] | okpositive.co.uk Connect with Ania: aniahulsman.com - book a 30-minute unmasked chemistry call if this episode sparked something