Neurodiversity in Mortgages - Sheena Campbell Speaks at Women in Mortgages

On Monday 12 October 2026, Campbell Financial founder and mortgage adviser Sheena Campbell travelled from Northern Ireland to London to speak at Women in Mortgages Live, hosted at Legal & General's headquarters.

Her topic was Neurodiversity in Mortgages, but rather than delivering a presentation about ADHD in general, Sheena shared something she has been coming to understand about herself, her career and the way she runs her business.

There's a difference between working well under pressure and needing pressure in order to work well.

And when pressure consistently gets you the results you want, it can take a long time to recognise what it's costing you.

The difference between working well under pressure and needing it

Sheena has worked in mortgage advice since her early twenties, becoming self-employed at 24, opening a mortgage franchise at 27 and establishing Campbell Financial at 30.

From the outside, it's a fairly straightforward story of ambition, hard work and career progression.

But Sheena, who was diagnosed with combined-type ADHD at 31, has spent much of her career relying on a particular combination of personality traits to get things done.

"I've always described myself as someone who works really well under pressure. And I do. But what I've started to understand is that there's a difference between being able to perform under pressure and actually needing that pressure to perform."

For Sheena, that distinction became the central theme of her talk.

It's not that she lacks the ability to do something when the pressure isn't there. It's that accessing that ability consistently can be much more difficult without the urgency that comes with a deadline, a problem to solve or something that needs an immediate result.

Impatience, resourcefulness, impulsivity and pressure

During her presentation, Sheena described a cycle that has influenced many of her decisions, both personally and professionally.

"My impatience makes me want things quickly. My resourcefulness helps me find a way. My impulsivity makes me willing to take the leap. My ability to perform under pressure helps me get the result."

It's a combination that can be remarkably effective.

When Sheena wants to achieve something, her impatience makes waiting difficult. Her resourcefulness helps her identify a route forward, even when the obvious options aren't particularly promising. Her impulsivity can make her willing to act before she's had much time to reconsider.

And once she's committed, the pressure of making it work becomes its own source of motivation.

The result? Quite often, she gets exactly what she set out to achieve.

But there's another side to that cycle.

"When you keep getting the outcome you want, you don't necessarily question how you're getting there. You think, well, it worked, didn't it?"

It's only more recently that Sheena has started to question whether getting the result is enough to justify the process.

Getting the result doesn't mean there wasn't a cost

One of the most important messages Sheena wanted to communicate was that being successful at something doesn't necessarily mean the way you're doing it is sustainable.

For years, being able to work intensely, respond quickly and perform when things became urgent felt like an advantage.

And in many circumstances, it was.

But the same intensity that helped her achieve things could also make it difficult to stop, rest or recognise when she was pushing herself too far.

The problem wasn't a lack of capability. It was the inconsistency of being able to access that capability without creating the conditions that made everything feel urgent.

"My abilities aren't the problem. My access to them consistently is."

It's a distinction that can be difficult to recognise, particularly when the results look good from the outside.

Because if you're achieving what you set out to achieve, building a business and meeting your responsibilities, it's easy to assume that whatever you're doing must be working.

But achieving something and achieving it in a healthy, sustainable way aren't necessarily the same thing.

Changing how Campbell Financial operates

That understanding has also influenced how Sheena runs Campbell Financial.

Previously, her working week could involve as many as eight client appointments per day, alongside evening and weekend availability.

Over time, she's made some fairly significant changes.

Evening and weekend appointments have been removed, along with Fridays, creating a four-day client-facing week. This has helped her introduce firmer boundaries around her availability and provide a much better service.

Perhaps surprisingly, these changes haven't meant sacrificing the income she was previously generating.

But making them hasn't always been comfortable.

When you're accustomed to working at full capacity and responding to everything immediately, creating space can feel counterproductive, even when you know it's necessary.

For Sheena, part of the challenge has been learning to treat Campbell Financial as a business that needs to operate sustainably, rather than something that depends entirely on how much of herself she's willing to give it.

That doesn't mean she's found a perfect balance.

She continues to work through the challenges of ADHD, including impulsivity, impatience and periods of intense focus that can make stepping away from work particularly difficult.

The difference is that she's becoming more conscious of the cost of relying on those traits without boundaries.

Why conversations about neurodiversity matter in the mortgage industry

While Sheena's presentation was based on her own experience, the wider conversation is relevant to an industry where deadlines, compliance, regulatory pressures, market volatility, demanding workloads, problem-solving and client expectations are part of everyday life.

Mortgage advice requires technical knowledge, attention to detail, communication skills and the ability to respond when circumstances change.

But the way people manage those demands can look very different.

Someone can be excellent at solving complex problems while struggling with routine administration. They can communicate confidently with clients while finding other parts of their working day disproportionately difficult.

And someone who appears to be coping exceptionally well may be putting considerably more effort into maintaining that performance than anyone around them realises.

Understanding neurodiversity isn't about assuming every neurodivergent person has the same strengths or difficulties.

It's about recognising that capability doesn't always look the same from one person to the next, and that the support or working environment someone needs isn't necessarily a reflection of their competence.

For Sheena, that understanding also extends to the way Campbell Financial supports its clients.

The business has taken steps to make mortgage advice more accessible, including becoming JAM Card Friendly and recognising that different clients may need different approaches to communication, information and appointments.

A conversation worth continuing

Speaking at Women in Mortgages gave Sheena an opportunity to discuss something that has become increasingly important to her, both as a business owner and as someone learning to understand her own ADHD.

Not as an expert on neurodiversity, but as someone sharing her lived experience.

Her message wasn't that impatience, impulsivity or working under pressure are inherently good or bad.

It was that the same traits can be helpful in one situation and difficult in another. Understanding how they interact, and recognising the cost of relying on them, matters just as much as recognising what they help you achieve.

And perhaps the most important question isn't whether you work well under pressure.

It's whether you've become so accustomed to needing pressure that you've stopped questioning what it's costing you.

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