When Matt Haig was 14, a history teacher at his new school in Newark, Nottinghamshire, took him aside and suggested he join a special needs class. The year was 1989, and in Haig’s state comprehensive, the label “special needs” carried a stigma as heavy as a leprosy bell. “I think it would be a good idea for you to join a special needs class,” said Mr Philips. Haig’s art teacher had come to the same conclusion. That single comment, Haig now believes, set in motion a decades-long battle with self-stigma, a desperate need to prove himself, and eventually a late diagnosis that explained everything.
The special needs label
Haig had trouble concentrating, stared out of windows and clowned around. He admits he was probably hard to like from a teacher’s perspective. But the shock of being told he belonged in a remedial class, in a binary system where you were either “normal” or “special needs”, was profound. He resisted, and his parents thought the idea ridiculous. He never attended the class. But the damage was done. “I stigmatised myself. I felt I was a reject,” he writes. That feeling was confirmed when, on a school trip to the Peak District, he experienced sleep psychosis and smashed a window in his sleep.
For years Haig lived with a sense of unexplained difference. He mumbled to himself, found it easier to talk to his dog than to people, stared at clouds, walked on tiptoes for no reason, flicked his fingers repeatedly, and would go into a trance when overstimulated. He masked well, and most people saw only a shy or sensitive boy, or as his nan put it, “poetic”. It was not until his mid‑40s, during the pandemic, that Haig received a dual diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder – a discovery partly prompted by his son’s autism diagnosis. “I sometimes think it would have been easier if I had known earlier, but also highly unlikely,” he says. Autism was not well diagnosed in the 1980s and 1990s; criteria were narrower, stigma higher.
Being labelled, however, gave Haig something to prove. History became his focus; he needed to become good at it to show Mr Philips – and the world – that he was not someone to be left on the wayside of learning. He earned an A in history A‑level and went on to study the subject at university. “For years, I thought Mr Philips was the problem. But, really, it was me. I don’t mean neurodivergence, I mean self‑stigma.” He was terrified of being different, without realising that difference would later help him. The hyperfocus that once made him seem detached now helps him write novels, and his ability to talk openly about his oddities has connected him with readers. “Neurodivergence is only a divergence because there are more neurotypicals out there. To us it feels the natural way to be. Life is a freak experience. Why ruin it by being normal?” Haig, born in Sheffield in 1975 and raised in Newark, is now a bestselling author of works including Reasons to Stay Alive, The Midnight Library and the forthcoming The Midnight Train, published on 21 May by Canongate. He is a vocal mental health advocate, and his non‑fiction books such as Notes on a Nervous Planet and The Comfort Book have helped millions.
The work ethic mantra
Nikesh Shukla grew up hearing his mother drill into him: “As immigrants, we have to work twice as hard to have half the opportunities.” It was a phrase common among parents of colour, and it was true. Yet Shukla resented his mother for it – not the society that made things twice as hard. The mantra changed him: he worked obsessively, but never felt good enough. “It has fed into many of my relationships. I’ve felt inadequate my entire life, desperate to please, obsessed with validation.” He prioritised hard work over smart work, put in endless hours, and when people called him a hard worker, part of him felt validated while another part resented having to work twice as hard simply because he was a non‑white child of immigrants. He held that anger towards his parents for years, believing they had robbed him of a childhood. Then a friend shared a therapist’s insight: “The problem is that when your parents told you that you would have to work twice as hard, they were right. So now you have to get rid of the negative connotations, but also know they were correct.” Shukla, born in Harrow in 1980, is the editor of the bestselling essay collection The Good Immigrant, author of novels including Coconut Unlimited and the memoir Brown Baby, and a co‑founder of the Good Literary Agency. He now says: “Sorry, Mum and Dad. You gave me what you thought was the best advice and I held it against you. Now we know our parents were right, we should direct our anger towards the correct source.”
The weight jab
Bella Mackie was eight or nine years old, sporting a bowl cut and what was then euphemistically called puppy fat, when she accompanied her mother to a local hardware shop. The shopkeeper’s wife, a woman she had met countless times before, poked her in the stomach and said loudly: “You eat too much.” Mackie was instantly crushed. Her mother rushed her out and called the woman an idiot, but the insult had already soaked through her skin. That night, undressing for bed, she poked her own stomach, counting the rolls as she sat on the edge of the bed. “I saw my body for what it was: I was fat.” Growing up in the heroin‑chic 1990s, Mackie says the shopkeeper’s wife was the first person to tell her to her face that she was the wrong size. “I’ve never forgotten it, mainly because the moment before we walked into that hardware shop was the last time I felt comfortable about my body.” Since then she has veered from a size 8 to a size 16 but never been happy with her weight, instinctively covering her stomach in photographs and spending a lifetime breathing in. “My stomach is still my biggest physical insecurity and I don’t see that changing as I settle into middle age.” Mackie, daughter of former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, is an author and journalist whose books include the bestselling How to Kill Your Family and the memoir Jog On, about how running helped her manage anxiety and OCD. She writes a bi‑monthly column for Vogue.
The health comment
Megan Nolan was 15, in the school secretary’s office, because she had fainted from not eating for two days. The previous year she had lost a quarter of her body weight, having learned the trick that stopping eating altogether made things simpler than planning protein and supplements. She was dangerously depressed and unhealthily thin, furious at her mother and teachers for their concern – yet equally furious that they had not noticed her suffering earlier. The secretary appraised her after the fall and said: “You’re still healthy. For now. You won’t be for long if you keep this up.” Nolan, mortally offended, fixed on the phrase “You’re still healthy” as an insult. To a teenage girl obsessed with being small, being called healthy felt monstrous. It was only a year later, at her great‑grandmother’s funeral, that she began to understand. Her father gave a eulogy for the woman, who had died in her 90s, and Nolan thought of the nursing home she had visited, with its sights and smells of decline and loss of control. “You’re still healthy,” she repeated to herself, resolving that she would no longer live or eat in such a way that this could be a negative.
The authenticity remark
Yomi Adegoke was at a boozy industry event about five years ago when a young woman, after introducing herself as an aspiring writer, rested both arms on Adegoke’s shoulders and said: “I just love that you’re a proper journalist but you’re also all over the place. You know, I didn’t think you could be yourself and be taken seriously in this industry!” Adegoke, mid‑slutdrop with a drink in each hand, hugged her without thinking. The next morning the comment stuck. As a black woman often working in predominantly white workplaces, Adegoke had been hyper‑aware of how she might be underestimated. In her book Slay in Your Lane, co‑authored with Elizabeth Uviebinené, she wrote about walking the tightrope between being real and respected, often cosplaying as older women in blazers and low heels. Two years before the encounter she had argued in Vogue that for many black women, restraint is reality and authenticity a luxury. “And here was someone who had seen right through my veneer, essentially telling me to my face I was a silly goose.” But she later came to cherish the remark, realising that she herself had once thought you had to shave off parts of your personality to get somewhere. “Little did I realise that, for someone else, I was proof you don’t.” Adegoke, born in 1991 and raised in Croydon, is a journalist for the Guardian and author of the Sunday Times bestselling novel The List, now being adapted for television by HBO Max, the BBC and A24. She was named one of the Evening Standard’s Most Influential People in London.
“Life is a freak experience. Why ruin it by being normal?”
