Tony Mantor: Why Not Me ? - Haley Graham : A Conversation on Mental Health, Autism, and Finding Your Way

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

Send us a text Psychotherapist Haley Graham shares her journey from pharmacist to mental health advocate after her son's struggle with school led her to found the Bounce Brighter Futures Foundation. Her personal experience with neurodivergence drives her passion for supporting children, parents, and teachers through therapeutic storytelling and compassionate understanding. • Founded Bounce Brighter Futures Foundation in 2019, now supporting 90 families weekly with 12 therapists • Approximately 50% of children seeking support are neurodivergent (autistic or ADHD) • School attendance difficulties often stem from not belonging in the system rather than just peer bullying • Cautions against therapists inadvertently teaching autistic children to mask better • Uses storytelling with woodland animals to help children explore mental health challenges • Created "Shadow Monster" story as metaphor for facing anxiety and OCD • Developing new book based on interviews with late-identified autistic adults • Believes autism itself isn't the problem—fitting into society creates mental health challenges • Emphasizes curiosity about children's experiences rather than trying to fix them • Advocates for thoughtfulness and empathy when supporting neurodivergent individuals Find Haley Graham on LinkedIn, Instagram (hayleygrahauthor), and at Bounce Brighter Futures website.   https://tonymantor.com https://Facebook.com/tonymantor https://instagram.com/tonymantor https://twitter.com/tonymantor https://youtube.com/tonymantormusic intro/outro music bed written by T. Wild Why Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI) The content on Why Not Me: Embracing Autism amd Mental Health Worldwide, including discussions on mental health, autism, and related topics, is provided for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not reflect those of the podcast, its hosts, or affiliates.Why Not Me is not a medical or mental health professional and does not endorse or verify the accuracy, efficacy, safety of any treatments, programs, or advice discussed.Listeners should consult qualified healthcare professionals, such as licensed therapists, psychologists, or physicians, before making decisions about mental health or autism- related care.Reliance on this podcast's contents is at the listener's own risk. Why Not Me is not liable for any outcomes, financial or otherwise, resulting from actions taken based on the information provided. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Why Not Me The World Podcast, hosted by Tony Mayator. Broadcasting from Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will make your laugh, some will make you cry. Real life people who will inspire and show that you are not alone in this world. hopefully you gain more awareness, acceptance, and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me the World. Today we have Haley Graham, a psychotherapist, author, and charity founder of Bounce Brighter Futures Foundation. She is passionate about the transformative power of stories and fostering meaningful connections.

Today, she shares her journey with mental health, therapy, autism, and her lived experiences. Thanks for coming on. Ah, it's my pleasure. Yeah, I feel really honored. If you would, tell us a little bit about what you do. I'm a therapist, so I trained first as an adult psychotherapist, and then I went on to train as a child psychotherapist. In 2019, at January 2019, I founded a mental health charity for children.

children here in Devon. Also, I write. I post stuff on LinkedIn about autism and consider myself sort of to some extent on a very sort of low level to be sort of an advocate for autistic people. Now you have a charity. Can you expand and explain to us a little more about your charity? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, it started off in 2019. Basically, with me providing pro bono work two days a week to local schools. And now today we're sort of a team of 20 people. We've got 12 therapists working and providing support to 90 families a week. So that's sort of one-to-one specialists, psychotherapeutic support for children, young people and their parents.

You know, we also provide some support to sort of teachers in schools and that sort of thing as well. Where you work with the school systems, what are some of the challenges you find yourself facing? In minding the charity, the biggest challenge, 100% is money. It's funding. It's such a hand-to-mouth existence. You know, you're in a position where you've only got three months money. And you're sort of building time castles in here. So, you know, it's because you're sort of trying to sort of plan and grow. and think about the future and at the same time, you know, if the money doesn't come through, you're going to have to fold. And that's what it's like.

I mean, it's such a hand-to-mouth existence. And it's not getting any easier, you know, getting harder to get money. Yeah, I understand that. It's tough all around. Now, do you deal with more autistic people or mental health? So the, our sort of clients, if you like, are service users. I mean, we provide mental health support. And we were having a conversation the other day as a sort of a small, you know, just small group of us in the team.

And I would say probably 50% of the children and young people that come through our door either have a diagnosis of autism or on the pathway or, you know, have a diagnosis of ADHD. So it's just a very, very high proportion of the children and young people that we work with, neurodivergent. Yeah. Okay. Now, with all the people that you do work with, what are some of the issues that you have to work with and how complex does it get for you? Gosh. Yeah, it's a big question. I mean, it's very wide-ranging. I would say, and I think it's probably reflected everywhere, that the complexity of what we're seeing is increasing. So, you know, you know, know, we don't get a lot of kids now just presenting with sort of maybe a little anxiety.

You know, there's a lot of trauma there. So we're seeing a lot of complex problems. Within, you know, the kids that are sort of neurodivergent presenting, often with difficulties with school attendance. So we're getting a lot of that as well at the moment. a lot of kids who are just really struggling with school. Do you find that you often deal with kids that may have bullying as an issue because they don't have their social skills the way they might need to be to avoid that?

Yeah, I mean, you know, I suppose it's across the board. I think bullying definitely is part of the picture. often online. I would say, and I guess people might disagree with me, but I would say that bullying is probably secondary. I would say that kids feel like they don't necessarily belong, but I think that they really struggle with the system. And I think it's more about the whole in school environment than simply being bullied by other kids. I mean, that's sort of, that's my feeling. I think it's a whole system thing

and a sense of not belonging in that system and not being able to find a place within it, particularly, you know, spaces where they can feel safe, I suppose. You know, they're very intense environments. Yes, it can get very difficult for the kids, unfortunately. when you deal with the teachers, what do you find that you're addressing in that capacity? Well, I mean, I suppose at the moment, mainly what we're doing is we're providing support for teachers because it's a difficult job for them.

You know, they're now having to deal with a lot of children who are struggling. They're sort of trying to provide mental health support when actually what they want to be doing is they want to be teaching. They want to be educating. And, you know, they're seeing a lot of stuff. They're hearing a lot of stuff. So they need support. And actually what we're often doing is we're often supporting them to think about children

and to think about what the needs of that child might be. But also to support them so they can go back to class and support that child. Because it's a difficult job, you know. I mean, you've got 30 kids in a class. and you've got, you know, five, six kids in that class who are struggling in some way or another. It's a difficult job. Yes, it is absolutely a very difficult job. When you start working with a child or children, you see they are having some struggles.

What are some of the things that you do to give them a pathway for a better mindset and to a better future? Yeah, okay. I think that's really tricky. I think that it's, again, we have these conversations. We talk about these things. I think it depends on the motivation of the child or the young person. And I think if they really want to be in school, then you can help them. You can give them strategies. If they're highly motivated, you know, to help them sort of manage their anxiety, for example. You know, we can do that. We can sort of go through relaxation techniques. We can go through grounding techniques.

We can help them think about situations that arise and how they might frame those situations and think about them in different ways. But I think it really depends on the motivation of the child. And I think that, you know, we also need to be careful. And I suppose the conversation that we were having the other day is something around as therapists, you know, we have to be more. really careful that what we're not doing is we're not just saying to kids that are autistic or ADHD, you know, this is how to mask better. Or if we are, we need to be really clear. That's what we're saying. We're saying to them, if this is what you want to do, you know, you can try this. But we need to be really careful that we're not suggesting that their way of being in the

world is wrong. Right. I agree. The biggest issue I see, is when an autistic person decides that they want to mask it, they can only do that for so long before it will start to affect them mentally and create some issues for them to cope with it. Absolutely, yeah, 100%. Yeah, and, you know, that masking, and we hear this so often. You know, we hear of kids that sort of managing in school, and actually when we talk to the schools, they say,

no, we're not having a problem here. And the kids are going home at the end of the day, and they're just going into complete meltdown. And, you know, because it's been so difficult all day that they've been masking. And so I think, yeah, absolutely, you know, if they're doing that and then they're getting burned out and their mental health is suffering, we do need to be careful.

And I think it's something we need to think about as therapists, really, and how we manage that. Yes, that's true. Now, you reach out to a lot of areas with posts and blogs. I understand you have a magazine. I think it's called Bounce Brighter Future. Is that correct? Oh, yeah, that's our Bounce Magazine.

Have you come across that? Yeah, brilliant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's our inaugural magazine. Yeah, the Bounce magazine. So, yeah, Bounce Brighter Future is the charity. Yeah, that's great. Now, is that still an ongoing thing that you do along with your social media?

I know you have a very good impression out there with your social media along with your magazine. I would say in terms of my LinkedIn, if you like, my social media presence is very much for me about sharing lived experience and hoping that that might help people by hearing about my experiences. they might feel less alone, more understood. So I think very much my social media presence, largely speaking, for me, is about that. That's great. I think anything you can do to help people like that is a good thing. Now, what led you down this path to do what you're doing now? So I started out my career as a pharmacist.

So I graduated from a university as a pharmacist. It was back, I guess, in would have been about 2005, something like that. I have two sons, and my youngest at that time would have been seven, and he was really struggling. He was really struggling with school. We could not get him to go. He was very unhappy. You know, he would be hanging onto the door frames in the morning, and we would be sort of unpealing his fingers on the door frames and carrying him, you know, to the car, putting him in the car, and then sort of taking him to school

and trying to get him out at the other side, I mean, it was, it was a nightmare. It was a nightmare. And we had absolutely no idea what was going on. You know, I looked. I looked for help. I tried to get help. I sort of went to the GP and, you know, see if I could sort of get a referral to CAMS,

which is, you know, a statutory service over here, CAMS. And, you know, they were interested, to be perfectly honest, and, you know, I was looking for private help, and I couldn't, I just couldn't find any help. And we couldn't make any sense of it. Ultimately, we decided to withdraw him from school because I could see, I mean, anybody could have seen it. I mean, my son became very anxious, very withdrawn, quite low, I would say. And we took him out of school. There was just no, nothing else to do.

I mean, there was no other answer. and I gave up work to home educate him. And it was at that point, really, I thought, okay, I just need to try and make sense of this. So I started doing a relatively local psychotherapy training, but that was an adult training. And that was over a period of four years. And then I did that. And at the end of it, then I decided to go on and do a child training. And that was driven entirely by my need, my desire to sort of,

make sense of things and also to help ourselves as a family. When you was going through all this, how did you approach it? Did you take any steps with doctors? Did you find out that it was autistic? What were your findings on this? So, I mean, we just sort of carried on the best we could. My son then, as an adult, he's now 27, decided that he would put himself forward for an ADHD Diagnosis, which he has now, I think he would self-identify as autistic too. And I think that was, you know, that's been the change for us, really, I guess, and particularly, you know, the change for me is looking back at all those years and all my life, really, for myself personally, and how much sense that has made our life together as a family.

And I guess is the reason why I put these things out there, because I know how much difference that made to me to have that understanding and it's made to us as a family to have that understanding. That totally makes so much sense and I'm glad that actually did help your family. After that, did you find yourself going back to school, back to college? What were the next steps of your journey? Yeah, so I did my first training, as I said, quite locally and then I did another four-year training sort of going up and down to London and did a child. health psychotherapy training in that. I suppose I had a desire to do something to help.

I think when I hadn't been able to get any help, when my son was young, I'd sort of made that decision then that one day I wanted to try and set up a charity that would provide support for those parents that were struggling to find help. And even though there's more understanding out there now, help is still very hard to come by

because thresholds for statutory services are very high. And, you know, private therapy is very expensive. So there's a huge number of people that just don't know where to go. Their children are struggling and they don't know where to go for help. Yes, that is a huge thing that I hear from so many different people. When they find their child as autistic, ADHD, or whatever the case may be, there's a huge black cloud hovering around them because they just don't know what to do. So in your travels, have you seen where you've been able to be that,

bridge between the known and the unknown for these people where you have lived it so you're able to help them navigate through some things that give them a better understanding so that way they can move forward with more knowledge of what they're dealing with. I hope so, yeah. I mean, I feel that we were making up as we went along for so long. And I suppose in my experience, the things that work for autistic kids works for a lot of kids. So, you know, it's, I think that we have to, I guess, help parents be more confident. I think that parents are worried they're not doing the right thing.

And I think it's really important. We help them to feel that they have the skills, the tools, to feel confident to help their children. And yeah, I mean, I think certainly as a therapist in sort of my own private practice, I'm able to sort of help parents think about autism and also think about ways of helping their children. But there's nothing, what's the word? There's nothing complex about it. Maybe that's not quite the right word. You know, it's not rocket science then what I'm suggesting. It's still things like just being curious, you know, being curious about their experience, what's going on for them? I think that sort of curiosity is so important because I think for me personally, and I think I can say,

you know, for my family, what I see in the people that I work with, whether they're adults or kids, you know, is this sort of negation of experience. We're told it can't be that way. It can't be like that. So actually, for somebody to be curious about your experience, you know, is this sort of negation of experience. We're told, it's, it's not. It's experience and be open and an accepting and empathic about that experience, you know, it can be absolutely life-changing. That then helps to support the mental health, the mental health difficulties that arise as a result of autism. That's a great help. That's a great way to look at it. From where I stand, you know, autism in itself is not a problem. It's fitting into society that makes it a problem. And mental health problems result from that. So actually, we're helping these

children with their mental health. Absolutely. I could not agree more. Now, I understand that you've written a book or two. Well, I've written one. I've written two, but the second one hasn't been published yet. Can you give us a little information about the book? The first one is about mental health. So it uses stories about woodland animals to explore trauma, anxiety, OCD, loss, shame, attachment. The idea is that it helps educate, but helps sort of improve understanding and I think through understanding, then we find compassion and empathy. Also to help big people, adults have conversations with children and young people because that's so important, Being able to talk about our mental health is so important.

Yes, the ability to talk about anything like that is very, very important. Now, tell me about your book. I believe you said that it's a story-driven book. What's one of the favorite stories that you seem to get the most feedback on? One of the sort of favorite stories, it seems, is one called Shadow Monster. And the analogy there is, they don't have names. They're just the names of the animals. So there's a mouse and a badger.

The mouse has a monster in the cellar. And the monster is obviously a metaphor for anxiety. I mean, it's really exploring OCD, actually. You know, it's more than anxiety. But I know that sort of people working with kids have used it to explore anxiety. And I've done some sort of great work with it. So, you know, they're sort of full of those sorts of metaphors. And in the story, the journey of the mouse is actually having to face the fear.

So he has to look the monster in the face. And when he looks the monster in the face, he can finally see that actually it's not a monster at all. It's actually a load of brambles that are sort of down in the cellar that have run through a small window. But he has to face it first and he has to attack it and he has to be very brave. Then it just disappears. I like that. That's really nice.

Now, how's the feedback, man? It's always nice to hear something positive. Have you found that it's helped the kids in the way that you hoped it would? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've had some great feedback from parents, but also from teachers, you know, working in pastoral roles or in send roles within schools doing that work as well. And therapists, some of my own, I'll say that my own therapists,

that don't belong to me, but the therapists that I have working for the charity. They use them too, which is just wonderful. So, yeah, I mean, I think that the distance, you know, having that degree of separation, making it about animals and sort of having those metaphors really can help us to engage with something that otherwise could be too scary, too scary to look at. Yes, I think that's a great idea, just a great way to put things across in a very subtle way. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I hope so. Oh, I'm sure it's working well. You mentioned a second book. What is that one about?

Okay, so the second book is based on a series of interviews I did with late identified autistics. In those interviews, they told me their stories. And out of all the interviews, themes arose related to autism. And the themes that arose were loneliness, masking, vulnerability to abuse, sensory sensitivities, and persistent drive for autonomy, PDA, whatever people want to call it. So actually what I've done is I've used a similar sort of idea. So I've written five stories interwoven into a sixth. And their stories set in a fantasy world aimed at teens.

The fantasy world is called Gallateria. The stories are very much inspired by the lives of the people that I interviewed. and they very much explore the themes that came out of those interviews. And it's sort of, I suppose, the idea is that when people read it, they might see themselves in it, or, you know, they might gain a better understanding of what the felt experiences of being autistic. That's great.

When is it due to be released? October, I'm hoping. All right. Yeah, that's good. really good. Now, how do people find you? They can Google me. I think I'm probably on quite a few websites, but they can find me on LinkedIn particularly, or Instagram. So you could look at our websites, bounce brighter futures. So just search that. I think you said you was on Instagram as well. What's your name on that one? Yeah, Haley Graham author, at Haley Graham author.

That's great. Now, what would you like to tell the listeners, that you think is really important that they know about what you're doing and what you're trying to do. Oh, okay. So I'm going to say what I'm trying to do is trying to encourage people to think. I think the world would be a better place if we were all more thoughtful. And if we are more thoughtful and consider other people's experiences and have empathy and compassion. Yeah, I think that's what I'm aiming for, is to help people just think and be more thoughtful.

That is just a great attitude and philosophy to carry through life. Yeah. I mean, it's sort of distilling it down, I suppose. But I sort of think that, you know, it's easy, isn't it, just to say, this is right, this is wrong, you know, take aside, but it's about taking some time to think and be more more thoughtful. Absolutely. This has been great. Good conversation, good information. I appreciate you taking the time to come on my show. I am very grateful for the offer to come along.

It's been my pleasure. Thanks again. Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today. We hope that you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. If you know anyone that would like to tell us their story, send them to tonymentor.com, contact, then they can give us their information so one day they may be a guest on our show. One more thing we ask, tell everyone everywhere about why not me the world, the conversations we're having and the inspiration our guests give to everyone everywhere. that you are not alone in this world.