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14. Relationships
115 Plays22 days ago
In this episode of This is Autism, host Kerrie Highcock, Family Development Manager at the North East Autism Society, sits down with Dr Amy Pearson, a late-identified autistic researcher and assistant professor in psychology at Durham University. Amy’s work focuses on the lived experiences of autistic adults, with a particular emphasis on relationships, masking, and victimisation.
Kerrie and Amy explore the findings of Amy’s award-winning research into interpersonal victimisation—specifically the abuse autistic people may face from those closest to them. Amy explains what interpersonal victimisation means, why autistic people may be more vulnerable in relationships, and how societal framing and masking contribute to these risks.
The episode also celebrates Amy’s new book, which has already received glowing feedback. It’s an insightful conversation that sheds light on the challenges autistic people face in forming safe, meaningful connections, and what we can do to support.
💬 Listen in to hear:
- Why autistic people may be more vulnerable in relationships
- The role of masking and societal expectations
- What interpersonal victimisation really means
- How Amy’s research is changing the conversation
Recommended
Transcript
Setting Boundaries and Self-Respect for Young Autistic Individuals
00:00:09
Speaker
How do you as a young person set boundaries and decide what's good for you and what's good for other people? So how do you navigate that? How do you learn to respect other people as well as respect yourself?
00:00:22
Speaker
And I think that's so crucial for autistic young people. Masking has come out as a hugely influential factor in the experience of violence.
00:00:33
Speaker
and They might be quite quiet in the classroom, quite subdued, doing what they're told, and then they come out of school and they either kind of explode and melt down or completely shut down.
00:00:46
Speaker
Most autistic young people mask, most autistic people mask.
Introduction to Key Speakers and Their Research
00:00:53
Speaker
Hello and welcome to This is Autism, the podcast from the Northeast Autism Society. My name is Kerry Heickock and I'm the Family Development Manager at the charity. Today I'm joined by Dr. Amy Pearson, a late identified autistic researcher and assistant professor in psychology at Durham University.
00:01:09
Speaker
Amy has written a lot about the experiences of autistic adults, including personal relationships, victimization and masking. So thanks for coming on the podcast today, Amy. Thank you so much for having me, Kerry. Lovely to have you here again.
00:01:22
Speaker
and So Amy, just before we start, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your work? Yeah, so I, as you said, I'm an assistant professor at Durham University in psychology at the moment, and I'm based in the Centre for Neurodiversity and Development.
00:01:39
Speaker
So I started my career doing a PhD in autism research around 10 years ago now. And I primarily focused on cognitive development. So understanding how autistic children and adults see the world from different points of view.
00:01:53
Speaker
And once I finished my PhD, I started to move into much more experiential work. So I'm really interested in the everyday experiences of autistic people and how we can understand that in order to try and improve society for autistic people and improve access to things like education, healthcare and ensure autistic people have good relationships and good mental health outcomes.
Victimization and Trust Issues in Autistic Individuals
00:02:15
Speaker
Wonderful so it sounds like you do a lot of wonderful stuff well I know that you do a lot of wonderful stuff and and I know that you've recently won an award in science for your research exploring and abuse ah for autistic people at the hands of someone that they know so could you tell us a little bit about that?
00:02:34
Speaker
Yeah, so yeah, it was it was really lovely to to win that. That was the Mary Ann Liebert Rosalind Franklin Award for Women in Science. um And it was for a paper um called This is Just How This Friendship Worked. And it was exploring the experience of something called interpersonal victimization among autistic adults. So that tends to be abuse from people that autistic people know. So people like friends, family members, carers, and but can also include things like teachers and colleagues,
00:03:03
Speaker
So we asked people about their experiences and and we just gave them some really simple questions. We just said, you know, have you ever been victimized by someone that you know and would you like to tell us a bit about it?
00:03:15
Speaker
and And have you ever been taken advantage of by someone that you know and can you tell us a bit about it? And this is building off the back of some work we'd done with a really small group of autistic adult adults asking about their experiences of victimization and mate crime.
00:03:28
Speaker
And compliance came out as a major issue in that. So autistic people feeling like they had to do what other people told them to in order to fit in, in order to make friends, and in order to stay safe.
00:03:39
Speaker
So we really wanted to explore that in more detail with a large group of people. And what we found was that The autistic people that we we interviewed reported having been victimized by multiple people that they knew across the lifespan. So it didn't tend to be a one-off occurrence.
00:03:56
Speaker
It was something that tended to happen again and again in various relationships. um And that had led to significant difficulties with trusting other people. And trusting their own judgment as well. So feeling like, you know, they might meet someone and like them and then really not be sure of whether their judgment on that person was accurate because they'd had such bad experiences before.
00:04:16
Speaker
um They also highlighted compliance. So feeling like they had to do what other people told them to. For some people, that was because they felt awkward or impolite um when they tried to advocate for themselves and set boundaries.
00:04:31
Speaker
For other people, it was because they they knew they had to do it in order to stay
Compliance and Its Long-Term Effects
00:04:35
Speaker
safe. So some of the people had experienced really harrowing and and really serious events and had talked about knowing that they had to do what the other person told them to in order to try and stay as safe as possible in those situations.
00:04:48
Speaker
So the findings of the research was really bleak, but It helps us to try and unpack our understanding around some of the things that might be leading to autistic people having these increased experiences and get us to think about what we can do about it to try and help people.
00:05:04
Speaker
And when you talked about compliance there, Amy, I think that's... that's very kind of powerful, powerful word, isn't it? and Do you think that links to like earlier work for children, young people around, you know, that lack of autonomy, maybe in education and that, you know, need to mask and not be and Do you think kind of you can see a parallel from growing up into adulthood around compliance?
00:05:31
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. and And this is something we've seen in follow-up work. So we we followed this up with multiple studies, um one with a really large number of autistic adults reflecting on their experiences across the lifespan. And then another looking specifically at intimate partner violence as a form of violence and abuse among autistic adult adults.
00:05:51
Speaker
And the people within those studies talked about how from such a young age in life, regardless of whether they knew they were autistic or not, having to comply with what other people wanted, feeling like they didn't have any bodily autonomy. So even things like not being able to choose when you go to the toilet,
00:06:07
Speaker
At school, for our participants, it reinforced the idea that actually it wasn't them that got to make decisions about their own lives. And so that meant for them that when they entered relationships that that were really quite unhealthy and people were telling them what to do, were being highly controlling, they thought that that was just something that they had to go along with because they'd always been told you need to do what other people tell you to.
00:06:29
Speaker
and They also talked about always feeling like the way that they were was wrong, that they'd constantly been told that other people's interpretations of what was going on or what was happening to them was more correct than what they thought was happening to them. and so That meant that, again, when they started to experience abuse, it really prevented them from from sticking up for themselves and from feeling like there was something wrong about that situation.
00:06:53
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that then links into kind of invalidation for, I mean, my work predominantly, as you know, is more so with with young kind of adolescents and that kind of invalidation, particularly around maybe sensory experiences within, and you know, not just education, but across the kind of ah whole the whole world for that person of, you know, if you're saying, actually, every time I sit in this room, I feel physically sick and somebody's saying, don't be ridiculous, um kind of get on with it.
00:07:19
Speaker
That kind of feeds that in feeling of invalidation, doesn't it? Exactly. Yeah. and And that was one of those things that I think for a lot of people that might seem like such a minor situation, but actually when you're getting that constantly from so many different people, it does lead to this internal sensation that actually anything that you do and anything that you think about your own experience must be wrong.
00:07:42
Speaker
um Which really sets people up to experience a range of different abuses because If you think that everyone is more correct than you, you think that the way that those people treat you must be OK as well.
00:07:54
Speaker
Absolutely. So I think you've kind of touched on this, but why why do you think this type of research is so important, amy You know, what was your driving force behind this? Yeah, so one of the things that really pushed me to do this is knowing that so So statistically, research at the moment is suggesting that between 50 to 90% of autistic people have been victimised by someone that they know.
00:08:20
Speaker
So that's between half to almost all of autistic adults. And in our research, we found that for the majority of people, this started in childhood. So it would begin with peers and teachers, sometimes family members.
00:08:33
Speaker
i'm and that that carried on across the lifespan. and We think that this is obviously feeding into poor mental health outcomes for autistic people, higher levels of things like suicidality, just a ah range of of really incredibly poor outcomes.
00:08:49
Speaker
and so understanding how autistic people make sense of those experiences. It also helps us to figure out where we need to target support um and also what we need to do in order to prevent it.
00:09:02
Speaker
So one of the things that we've seen is that it can't just be explained by one single feature um of an autistic person. There are lots of really complicated things going on that increase risk.
00:09:13
Speaker
And what we need to do is we need to address all of those different things from different sides in order to try and not just support people who have experienced it, but try and prevent from happening in the first place.
Teaching Healthy Relationships and Autonomy to Autistic Children
00:09:27
Speaker
Absolutely. would you, I know, again, you're talking a lot about adults, Amy, but if you kind of had a magic wand, which I don't have, but if you had, if you're looking at kind of children, young people growing up, you know, and talking about that kind of early support,
00:09:41
Speaker
What kind of things do you feel would be useful early on for an autistic child ah you or neurodivergent child? Yeah, so this is something we're really hoping to to do some work on soon. But my if I had a magic wand and I could wave it, I mean, obviously, I would just prevent the abuse from happening in the first place. But I think what I would do is really make sure that we have good work early on in autistic children's lives on recognizing what we call red flags and green flags in relationships. So what are the signs of an unhealthy relationship?
00:10:17
Speaker
How do we assert autonomy over our own bodies? How do we understand consent? You know, there are there are situations that I think a lot of people don't really understand and can have quite a negative impact on a young person. So For instance, requesting a hug from a child and if they don't want to being like, no, go on, just give me one, you know, pushing people to give physical contact when they don't want to can really reinforce to a young person that actually they're not in control of their own body.
00:10:44
Speaker
So then if someone else touches them inappropriately and they think you have to just acquiesce to that to give in, that's obviously a major problem. but also talking about what good relationships look like. So, you know, what are the signs of a healthy relationship?
00:10:58
Speaker
How do you as a young person set boundaries and decide what's good for you and what's good for other people? And I think really focusing on that as a mutual thing. So you can set your own boundaries, you can understand consent for yourself and and assert your own autonomy, but other people are going to have different needs to you and they're going to have different boundaries.
00:11:17
Speaker
So how do you navigate that? How do you learn to respect other people as well as respect yourself? And I think that's so crucial for autistic young people. It's it's crucial for all young people.
00:11:28
Speaker
um But for autistic young people who frequently get left out of things like relationship and sex education, um we don't necessarily have tools that are currently aimed at autistic young people to really address some of the nuance around that, some the complexity.
00:11:44
Speaker
i think there there's a big kind of gap there that we really need to fill. Yeah, and quite the opposite. We need quite the opposite, don't we, of traditional social skills training, which isn't helpful for many of our people.
00:11:58
Speaker
Also feeds into that narrative, doesn't of masking. So, OK, well, we'll take a little break there, Amy, and then we will come back and we'll talk a little bit more about your and research around autistic masking, that's OK.
00:12:11
Speaker
Hi, while we're on a quick break, thought I'd tell you a little bit more about the Family Development Service here at the North East Autism Society. The Family Development Services provides support for families pre, during and after diagnosis and includes a variety of services, including our parent and toddler groups, autism hubs, workshops for families, a dedicated enquiry line and our resource site as well, which can be found at the Family Resource site on the North East Autism Society website.
00:12:36
Speaker
So if you go to ne-as.org.uk and go along to the Family Development site, you can find all the information there. Welcome back to This Is Autism. We're here with Dr Amy Pearson talking about her wonderful research.
00:12:51
Speaker
So Amy, just to jump straight back in on what we were talking about, a big question here for you. But is it society that frames autistic people as more vulnerable in relationships or is this actually a thing?
00:13:05
Speaker
Well, that's a really great question. the answer is that it's really complicated. So effectively, a lot of of previous research has said that autistic people might experience things like bullying, like victimization, because we're not great at recognizing social signals and that that makes us inherently more vulnerable than other people.
00:13:24
Speaker
And That puts all of the onus and all of the blame really onto the autistic person for having those experiences. It says, you aren't very good at spotting social manipulation and this is why these bad things happen to you.
00:13:37
Speaker
And I think it's important to recognize that we can all be more vulnerable, like all humans, not just autistic people, at different parts of the lifespan, depending on things like our circumstances. So children are more vulnerable because they're physically smaller.
00:13:51
Speaker
and less able to defend themselves. Likewise, we might think that older adults are more vulnerable because they tend to be a little bit more physically frail. um We experience vulnerability through things like losing a job, um becoming homeless, things that kind of push us outside to the margins of society a little bit. So mean that we have less access to support, we have fewer resources, and those things tend to to result in being more vulnerable.
00:14:17
Speaker
But what we've seen is that for autistic people, there does seem to be a combination of a variety of different things that feed into increased vulnerability. So so one of those is difficulty recognizing kind of manipulative behavior or ingenuine behavior.
00:14:35
Speaker
And this is something that autistic people have talked about themselves, but Alongside that, we see lots of other things that feed in from childhood. So things like invalidation, like we were saying before, um and difficulty and in a certain agency feeling like you don't have very much choice or control.
00:14:54
Speaker
The way in which people talk about autistic people really sets us up to feel like violence against us is okay because we talk about autistic people in really negative ways. We talk about autistic people as impaired, as deficient, as lacking empathy, and as not understanding.
00:15:11
Speaker
And that leads to autistic people being viewed as less human. And we also start to see ourselves as less human. So when people start treating us in ways that isn't very nice, we think, well, that that's how people like that are treated. This how people like me are treated. This seems quite normal.
00:15:28
Speaker
And that obviously feeds into to some serious issues with recognizing abuse for what it is. So there are lots and lots of really complicated factors that construct that experience of vulnerability. It isn't just difficulty with social signals.
00:15:44
Speaker
And the problem there is that pulling those things apart is really hard, right? Because if you have always experienced being told that you misinterpret social situations, when you're an adult, can you tell whether you really are or not? Like, is it that you're bad at recognizing social signals or is it that you think you're bad at it and therefore you don't trust yourself?
00:16:06
Speaker
It's really hard to disentangle. i'm So yeah, it's it's a little bit both, I think there. But it means that there are lots of areas that we need to target. so we need to help individual people.
00:16:18
Speaker
We need to look at things like peer and family relationships and make sure that those are really strong and healthy. We need to make sure that schools, support systems have a really good understanding of autistic people and work in really validating ways.
00:16:33
Speaker
and We need to make sure, again, that places like, you know, the workplace, um our overall understanding of autism in society shifts where the media talks about autistic people changes.
00:16:44
Speaker
Then all of that feeds into improving the situation for autistic people and reducing vulnerability and reducing violence. The way you said that at the end sounded really simple, but how complex, Amy, is all of that?
00:16:59
Speaker
I know. Yeah, it certainly it's not an easy task. what You're just the person to try it, definitely.
00:17:10
Speaker
and So I think, well, I do know the answer to this question, but just for our listeners, and does this research link with your research around masking?
The Cycle of Masking, Compliance, and Victimization
00:17:20
Speaker
It does, yeah. So masking has come out as a hugely influential factor in the experience of violence. And we find that it both leads to the experience of violence and occurs as a response to the experience of violence.
00:17:37
Speaker
So um the people that we've spoken to have talked about, again from childhood, Experiencing peer victimization, experiencing bullying and feeling like they need to change how they appear to other people in order to stay safe.
00:17:51
Speaker
But then that also leads to further compliance and something we call fawning. So the idea that you have to try and really emphasize how much you agree with the other person, right, and how great they are and how how much you like them.
00:18:05
Speaker
in order for you to feel like they're going to treat you well. And that then feeds into higher risk of victimization, because if you seem like you comply easily, if you seem like the kind of person who can be pushed over, then other people will ah take advantage and and manipulate.
00:18:22
Speaker
And so it it causes a bit of a vicious cycle where people are starting to mask to stay safe. And actually, that's leading to a lack of safety. and then they're continuing to to try and gain that little bit of safety back and it's a really awful situation um so again that that early work thinking about what we can do to help autistic young people stay safe build healthy relationships and to be able to express authenticity when it's safe for them to do so is something that we think might work in a in a protective manner with relation to the experience of victimization and vulnerability
00:18:59
Speaker
So am Amy, ah what what would be um what would you say are some of the main signs, outward signs maybe, because I know some of these are incredibly subtle and internalised, but you know for parent-carers listening in what would be some kind of very potentially obvious signs that a young person is masking?
00:19:19
Speaker
So I think two of the major things that are often signs for parents, teachers, people who are with the young person quite a lot, is the discrepancy between how they are in different situations um and also engaging in particular coping strategies.
00:19:36
Speaker
So one of the things that people tend to report seeing with young people in particular is the difference between how they act at school and how they act at home. So it might be that at school they seem to be coping quite well and they might be quite quiet in the classroom, quite subdued, doing what they're told and then they come out of school And they either kind of explode and melt down completely shut down and can't really engage with the family.
00:20:04
Speaker
And those two things together, so that difference between the environments and then also the engaging in in the meltdown or the shutdown, tend to be quite important indicators that a child's engaging in masking because they're having to suppress so much at school and engage in so much conscious control of their own behavior and how they're perceived by other people that when they immediately get out of that environment and into a safer environment, so they're around their family,
00:20:30
Speaker
i'm then that's when they can kind of like either relax fully or just kind of tighten right back up and go inside themselves. So I think that can be really helpful for recognizing that.
00:20:42
Speaker
But also seeing a difference in quite subtle things. so If we take something like stimming, for instance, you know, when people are at home, they might stim in much larger ways than they will in other environments or subtle ways, hands in pockets when they're at school, kind of really pulling themselves in to be a smaller version of themselves.
00:21:01
Speaker
And then when they're at home engaging, you know much more comfortable or bigger movements, it being obvious when they're regulating themselves. i'm Again, those things can be quite subtle indicators, but they can be quite important to look out for if you think that your child is masking.
00:21:17
Speaker
And I think the thing to say there is that when we say if your child is masking, it's likely that your child is masking. Most autistic young people mask, most autistic people mask.
00:21:29
Speaker
It might look more obvious in some people, but a lot of the time it it doesn't really matter um whether you know a person uses language to communicate or not, whether they have high support needs or low support needs.
00:21:41
Speaker
Masking is something that autistic people engage in because it's a way to stay safe, particularly in environments which might be really overstimulating. Yeah, and I think that's the first part to understand it, isn't it?
00:21:57
Speaker
The recognition that masking exists is because i obviously do a lot of work where I see children in school and then in home, so I completely get the two pictures.
00:22:08
Speaker
Um, And it's a very, very real thing. There's no question about it. But I think we need to, I mean, you do work around this on a much um more complex level, Amy.
00:22:19
Speaker
But I think just that very simple message that masking masking exists and this is a thing, particularly for educators and other professionals, is really, really important. But parents, carers aren't being dramatic.
00:22:33
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that Actually, it's quite important to emphasize is that I think we have this idea of masking as something that, you know, kids who have a lot of conscious understanding of themselves engage in. And that isn't necessarily the case.
00:22:48
Speaker
So we see masking emerge as a response to things like invalidation, being in really sensorily overwhelming environments. i'm and sometimes that isn't something that that person thinks about but it's more of a sense of that didn't go well that situation was bad and I'm going to have to do something to try and keep me safer or to make that go less bad next time and and so I think often teachers maybe have this expectation that you know it's it's children who were more obviously autistic in one environment and less obviously autistic in another environment and that's
00:23:26
Speaker
It doesn't necessarily capture how complicated masking really is. um But there's a lot, i think there's a lot more work to do there in order to help people recognize when masking might be occurring, in order to talk to young people.
00:23:42
Speaker
about, you know, what makes them feel safe, where they feel safe and that sort of thing. Like, the yeah, there's a lot for us to do. Absolutely. Which leads us into your wonderful book.
00:23:55
Speaker
So I have been reading your wonderful book with the lovely Keelan Rose um and it's it's just wonderful. Lovely, lovely, just, well, it's a it's a really difficult topic, actually.
Insights into Masking: Amy Pearson's Book and Resources
00:24:06
Speaker
It's not wonderfully lovely in that sense, but it's just written in a wonderfully lovely way, that works.
00:24:11
Speaker
that works Tell us little bit about it, Amy. Thank you. Yeah, i I must say that is quite funny. So the book's been really well received, but we did have one negative Amazon review. And it said that the topic that the the book was a bit dreary. And I was like, well, it's not on a very pleasant topic. So I don't think it's going to be particularly cheerful.
00:24:32
Speaker
um It's a bit of a bleak book. But yeah, so what we really wanted to do was give a bit of a touchstone. So at this point in time, what is our understanding of masking?
00:24:43
Speaker
What is masking? And what are the kinds of things that underpin it? so how does it relate to things like identity and how our identity changes based on the situation we're in? in How does it relate to things like gender and other intersectional aspects of our id identity? So things like our race or ethnicity or whether we have co-occurring diagnoses, things like learning disabilities as well as autism.
00:25:05
Speaker
And so we go over all of those things and we also talk about the current state of our understanding from the academic literature. So what has research shown us so far about masking? What's missing from the discussions and what do we think we really need to focus on in future?
00:25:22
Speaker
And so towards the end of the book, we talk about things like how we can help autistic people express authenticity in a way that's safe, because it isn't always safe for people to do that. and And to try and introduce a bit of a different way of thinking about masking. so not just thinking of masking as hiding bits of yourself, but also sometimes projecting.
00:25:43
Speaker
bits of yourself so um Kieran calls this projecting acceptability. And it's the idea that sometimes people mask by playing up features of themselves. So these might be kids who are the class clown, for instance, because people think that you know they've got a diagnosis of autism or ADHD that's going to make them naughty.
00:26:01
Speaker
And so they're treated as if they're going to be a problem. And so they become the problem because that's what people expect of them. It's almost safer to be the problem than it is to to try and stay well behaved and then potentially not know how people are going to respond to you.
00:26:17
Speaker
It's all about instilling certainty within your own situation. ah bad response is still a predictable response. And so it makes people feel that little bit safer. um And that's the bit of my team that i think people often don't really think about, the idea that it doesn't always result in you being quiet and well-behaved and unseen.
00:26:36
Speaker
It might result in you being quite visible, but that visibility is very predictable for you. that is That's very interesting. And I did read about that in the book.
00:26:47
Speaker
um And I think that's a completely different way of thinking about Masking Amy, which I imagine a lot of the people listening to this may not have thought about before. So, yeah, interesting.
00:26:57
Speaker
So, Amy, where can people find the book if they want to get a copy? Yeah, so the book is available on the Pavilion website, um who is the publisher, or it's also available through Amazon, which is usually the easiest place, I think, for most people to find it.
00:27:13
Speaker
um You can also find it on Kieran's website. He's got lots of links there to our book and various other books as well, which might be of interest to some of your listeners. Wonderful.
00:27:24
Speaker
So, Amy, before we end, what's the next steps for you? What are you working on at the moment? That's a great question. and At the moment, we're trying to extend the work we're doing around healthy relationships.
00:27:37
Speaker
So we just recently released a healthy relationships resource aimed at autistic adults that is available on the Durham University Center for Neurodiversity and Development website.
00:27:48
Speaker
It's a free resource and we have two versions. So one is pitched at autistic adults and adolescents. So we we have kind of piloted this with teenagers and they tend to understand that. So it seems to be accessible for younger people as well.
00:28:02
Speaker
Talks about red flags, green flags and amber flags in relationships. So sometimes a relationship might be bad, but that doesn't mean that it's abusive. So what do we do when we're in a relationship that is unhealthy, um but maybe not for abusive reasons? And then, you know, we don't have to put up with that either.
00:28:18
Speaker
But we also have a version that we developed in conjunction with Sunderland People First. um And that is a version that is easy read with photo symbols. It's aimed at autistic people with learning disabilities and in order to support them in recognizing healthy relationships too.
00:28:35
Speaker
And so what we're aiming to do next is to extend this work. So we're gonna, hopefully I'm pulling a grant together at the moment to try and get some funding to do some further work with autistic and other neurodivergent young people about healthy relationships, understanding what those look like, what we can do to support them.
00:28:54
Speaker
um And also thinking about how we turn what we've done with our adults into training to help organizations understand how to support autistic people who've experienced forms of violence.
00:29:07
Speaker
Wonderful. And I have seen that resource and it's it's wonderful, Amy. so fantastic. and I am sure you've also got a hundred another what hundred other one things you're doing and alongside that, but that's probably the main thing in your mind at the minute. You know me very well.
00:29:22
Speaker
ah So I think thank you so much, Amy, and for joining us today. And to all our listeners, thank you so much. If you've got any questions or comments about anything you've heard, please get in touch at info at ne-as.org.uk.
00:29:37
Speaker
You can also follow the Northeast Autism Society on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn. The podcast, This Is Autism, comes out each month and you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google, or Spotify so you never miss an episode. So bye for now.