Lisa Gills spent 13 years in recruitment, and the last 5 of those were building a business. She shares her story of how had to rebuild her life and business facing mental health challenges.
I spent 13 years in recruitment, and the last 5 of those were building a successful service business, but more than that, I gave my heart and soul to it. That's not hyperbole. I was completely consumed by it. The business became my identity, and I invested everything into making it work: time, energy, emotional labour, my sense of self-worth - I measured my own success against the success of my business.
What made it unsustainable wasn't just the work itself, but what the industry demanded of me, and what it does to people. Recruitment is fundamentally extractive. You're managing candidates as inventory, balancing their wellbeing against commercial margins, and the system is designed so that commercial interest almost always wins. Now bring crumbling self-destructive adland into the equation. I didn’t stand a chance. I watched talented people get placed in roles that weren't right for them because the placement fee mattered more. I saw job seekers treated as problems to be solved rather than people navigating genuine uncertainty. And I was the one making those calls.
For years, I told myself this was just how business works. But I couldn't separate the personal from the professional. Every decision that prioritised the fee over the person's actual fit, every time I pushed a placement because it was profitable rather than right, every corner I cut or pressure I applied, those things accumulated. They eroded me from the inside.
The downturn actually started in 2023. I began to see it coming, the volume of roles had quieted down and I watched the industry respond by becoming more aggressive, more exploitative. By 2024-25, when the economic pressure really hit, it forced a reckoning I could no longer avoid. To keep the business afloat, I would have needed to be more of what I'd become, more ruthless, more willing to exploit people's vulnerabilities.
But what I didn't realise at the time was that this wasn't just about burnout from work. I was also managing undiagnosed ASD and unmanaged ADHD, something I wouldn't understand about myself until much later. That neurodivergence shaped everything: how I worked, how I managed stress, how I regulated myself under pressure. I was trying to run a high-intensity service business using neurotypical frameworks that my brain simply wasn't wired for. I was burning energy constantly just trying to function in a way that felt "normal." The recruitment work was consuming, yes, but I was also fighting my own neurology every single day.
On top of that, there was unresolved childhood trauma I'd never properly addressed. I'd been functioning, building a business, maintaining relationships, but I hadn't done the deep work to process what had happened to me. I think part of me believed that if I just worked hard enough, achieved enough, I could outrun it. I had the money to get help at various points, but I didn't prioritise it. I thought I just needed to push through.
I couldn't push through. The combination of all of it, the values misalignment, the unmanaged neurodivergence, the untreated trauma, that's what led not just to burnout, but to a complete breakdown. The downturn didn't cause it; it just made it impossible to hide anymore.
I saw signs, but I couldn't read them properly. Sleep was terrible, but I attributed that to stress about the business. My anxiety was climbing, but I told myself that's what happens when you're responsible for everything. I had constant low-level dread, I was irritable, I couldn't regulate my emotions well. But without understanding that I was neurodivergent, I just thought I was bad at managing work. I thought other business owners coped better. I thought this was normal.
The neurodivergence also meant I was masking constantly, presenting as functional and capable when internally everything was chaotic. ADHD and undiagnosed ASD mean I struggle with executive function, regulation, and reading social cues. Running a service business requires all of those things, constantly. So I was exhausted not just from the work itself, but from the effort of appearing like I had it together when I actually didn't.
And underneath all of that was trauma I wasn't acknowledging. It shaped how I related to pressure, to authority, to being "successful." It drove some of my need to prove myself through the business. But I wasn't in therapy, I wasn't processing it, I was just carrying it.
I didn't have real support. I had a partner and family who cared, but I didn't talk to them about what was actually happening, partly because I didn't understand it myself. Professionally, I had no peer network, no mentor, no therapist. I was isolated with it all. And when things started to crack, there was nowhere safe to land.
In the business itself, I changed nothing. I kept running it exactly as I always had, pushing harder when things got difficult. I think I was afraid that if I slowed down or acknowledged I was struggling, the whole thing would collapse. Which was true, but not because the business was fragile. Because I was fragile, and I was the entire business.
The breakdown came because all of it reached a breaking point simultaneously. I couldn't manage the neurodivergence, I couldn't carry the trauma anymore, and I couldn't keep pretending the work aligned with my values. Something had to give.
Recovery isn't linear, and it's not something that rapidly stops and starts. I'm still very much in the process. But I've made some deliberate shifts, both professionally and personally.
Professionally, I've moved into work that actually aligns with my values and my lived experience. I'm now an accredited AuDHD coach, working with people on mind management, career development, and executive leadership. That work matters to me. I'm not extracting value from people, I'm helping them understand themselves better and navigate their careers in ways that work for them, not against them.
I'm also using my technical skills to build something I believe in. I'm completing a full-stack coding course through Scrimba and working on Sparkhub, an AI-enhanced app designed specifically for neurodivergent minds. Building something from scratch that addresses a real gap, that's entirely different from managing recruitment placements. I can see the direct impact, and I have complete control over the ethics of how it's built.
What's worked really well is combining those two things: the coaching work provides income and human connection; the coding and app development provides flow, a sense of control, and direct problem-solving. They feed each other. Coding has become a genuine stress-relief tool, it's something my neurodivergent brain finds grounding.
I'm also working with professional support. I have a Recovery Team, psychiatric care, and I'm preparing for EMDR therapy to process the childhood trauma properly. That's non-negotiable now. I'm not trying to outrun my past or manage it alone. I'm addressing it directly.
On a day-to-day level, I've learned to work with my neurodivergence rather than against it. That means structuring my time differently, being intentional about what drains my energy and what restores it, and not pretending I can function like a neurotypical business owner. I have my cats, I have my partner who has been incredibly supportive. I have genuine rest, not just "time away from work," but actual restorative activities. I've set boundaries around what work I'll do and how I'll do it.
The biggest shift has been moving from "how do I fix this?" to "how do I build a life and business where work aligns with who I actually am?" That reframe changed everything. I'm not trying to be someone else anymore.
Self-employment can be genuinely good for mental health, in fact it's a brilliant path for NDers, but only if you're actually protecting your health while you do it, only if you're building community and getting support, and only if the business itself isn't fundamentally at odds with who you are.
Don't wait for a breakdown to make these changes. Start now.
