Transcript
Speaker: Oh we're back in the room and so let me get my script back where it should be there it is so let's go to a place where the distractions are landmarks and the detours are on the main road welcome to ADHDville
Speaker: Ah yes, we have a guest, his name is Willie Dubbs, he's in the room with his guitar. If you're watching YouTube, you'll see loads of books behind him. But there's a secret about the books, but I'm not going to tell you what it is.
Speaker: It's beautiful.
Speaker: Hi, my name's Martin West. I was officially diagnosed with the combined ADHD, poopoo bladder in 2013 and strongly suspected autistic. And I am here with Willie Tubbs.
Speaker: Hey, how you doing? Hello, hello. I am well. How about yourself? i am we We did an episode. looked back. Episode 18. Episode 18, yeah. February 2024. Where yelled like a for about an hour and...
Speaker: episode eighteen yeah in february twenty twenty four where i yelled like a madman for what an hour and um this was this was That was pretty early in the um the the discovery of the whole how the mind works. So even just to see the trend the the difference in the short period of time, it will it'll tell you a little bit of something about we're going to talk about today with Mike.
Speaker: Right. So if if if if you haven't caught that episode ah after this one, go back in time, episode 18. And yeah if you're if you're wondering where Paul is, um he's he's taken a summer summer vacation.
Speaker: Aww. so i mean I was hoping i miss I miss Paul. I don't see Paul ever on the on the old TikToks and stuff. No. It's always your mug. It's just me banging away again. Yep.
Speaker: I know. you well That's good. You're the one keeping at it. That's what like and i've I've had. I think I've had three podcasts and they all, I just, i they're all, I'm so proud of you're still going. I mean, for me to even be back on a podcast an ADHD podcast for a second time is incredible.
Speaker: That's what this might be a record for all ADHD podcasts. I know it's, it's, it's, ah it's not always easy to kind of start projects and finish projects, but you have, i you have, you have finished, you a book yeah that is just released. Oh, look, there it is on camera ah with real pages.
Speaker: Look at it. And a photo of you. Oh, you want to see the, you got to show you the author photo because I chose this special. This was a special. i I did. Yes. So if if if if if anyone's ah listening on the on the audio podcast, it is ah it is ah it's Willie Dub's, what is it? 1980 version? Something like that. There's a rat tail prominent in the photo. there's This is a picture of a kid you don't that will light your garage on fire. Yeah.
Speaker: Just to see how fire works and then feel terrible for letting your garage on fire and try to put it out and accidentally make the fire worse trying to put it out. That that was that kid. That was my entire life. I was just like, oh, my God, here's a stupid decision I can make.
Speaker: Let's try it out. Feel terrible for it and try to fix it later. That was me. Right. Yeah, because actually, you know, like personal stories, they they come up.
Speaker: a lot in your, in your book, I think it's like chapter three, I think seems was like kind of, you know, where you kind of go quite deep into your own personal experiences.
Speaker: In the book, I mean, I use the, I use my, um, I tell, it's not like a memoir. I mean, it is some there's ah there's some dark stuff in here, some really deep, um very personal stories. And I, you know, I like to use humor to kind of, you know, make it a little easier to listen to because, I mean, there's childhood sexual abuse talk. There's, you know, I talk about a lot of violence. I lived a very violent life, not not something I'm proud of, but something I don't shy away from.
Speaker: right Because that stuff is is in there, right? And you can't, once it's in there, you can't take it out. And that's kind of the idea of the book. And then when I when i use these these examples of like ah what this trauma did to me,
Speaker: It's more like, see this is this is the code that was put onto my already divergent code. you know And then there's another guy under that who's the real guy. And now you're you've got this trauma on top of divergent hardware, on top of the the the person underneath. Because you're the you know the whole thing is ah is a collage. And you can't...
Speaker: Traditional therapy says, oh, we got to get rid of these things, right? We got to get rid of the trauma thoughts. You got to you know, but right you can't, it's and in in the book I say, it's like you can't your kids's like trying to get the ingredients after you've already baked the cake. You don't know where they start, where they're, you know, you just you just have cake now. Now you can choose what to do with that cake, you you know, and and make that cake better, but you have a cake.
Speaker: You know, stop trying to take this trauma out because, you know, what it what it has created is ah a hypervigilance that is um a recognition, a threat response recognition that is almost supernatural in this in this current environment.
Speaker: Why are we not using these things instead of punishing them? ah but Because if there is anything, if there is anything that... um the system needs more as it's adapting, right? We need to, it needs to adapt. It's brittle, it's stagnant, it's, it's collapsing.
Speaker: And we have these minds like ours. And I'll get into what I mean by neurodivergent and neurotypical, because I don't call it that anymore. I've, I've, I've come up with, I think far better terms. And when you read the book and you read those terms, you realize that it just feels different when you say them. When I say that I'm a recursive thinker,
Speaker: or not a divergent thinker, you know, it it's still telling you that it's that there's a difference in the hardware, but it's not pathologizing it. it's it's i'm When we look at like, okay, so the words neurotypical and neurodivergent, right?
Speaker: Yeah. First off, i if I was a neurotypical person and you called me typical or normal, what what's what is going to happen? I'm going to take offense to that.
Speaker: Right. Right. Because that's not good. But we've we've we've put both of the sides against each other clinging to this version of normal versus divergent.
Speaker: And it's and if and and we if we go back to like if you look at how like hunter gatherer communities would have worked. you You have people, sequential thinkers, the neurotypical, yeah sequential thinkers, A, B, C, done.
Speaker: They maintain the village, keep things going. keep They're very important people. ah And there needs to be more of them because the 20%, let's say, we're saying 80-20 because I think that's where those we stand right now, average. Right.
Speaker: The 20% are the recursive thinkers, right? They debug, they fix this. They look for new threats. They look for weather changes. They look for the new plants to eat. They look for all the using multivariable step analysis that yeah this thinker can't do. And thank God they can't because they would be distracted.
Speaker: They have to have blind spots. We see their blind spots. And yeah in the system we work in right now, it's a sequential system. Everything has been built from school to everything. A school is a factory. There's a book, my chapter, is the The Kid Factory. The school is made like a factory. I mean, we're we're creating a system of sequential systems.
Speaker: yeah And we're wondering why these recursive people can't fit, because every time I say something's going to break and they say, you're being negative, you're being negative. Oh, don't do just stop whining about that. You're being negative. You just don't want to work hard. No, no, no. I can see this pattern. It's going to break. And then two weeks later, it breaks just like I said it was ah going to. And I'm still wrong for saying I told you so.
Speaker: Yeah, no, exactly. So I think, you know, like this is, you know, I think um you can tell just from this, like this, you know, a piece of conversation that this is not like an ADHD stroke autism ah book that that focus ah focuses on you know, life hacks, productivity, meds, executive function, all of that stuff. You you you spend much more time no asking what if, as you said, what if we've misunderstood the architecture of thinking itself? It's almost philosophy wrapped up inside an autobiography.
Speaker: as As you say, yo you're kind of saying it feels like the system itself is wrong, you know, that... we are not so about We are not this sort of provoked,
Speaker: weird sideshow characters, um but we are actually you know an essential part of what makes a community...
Speaker: a community, as you as you say. Exactly. We're looking at, we're we're calling something difference in a negative way. Right. and and that And that is like, that is where we've we've we've gone wrong. There's just been, always been, and I know this is oversimplifying.
Speaker: People have given me trouble for, oh, you're oversimplifying things. It's just two categories. My goal here is not to make more categories. I think we have more than enough categories. we What I'm saying is that within this recursive thinker category, there's many different presentations.
Speaker: But it's like it's like computers, you know, like you you can buy 20 different Acer, 20 different Asus, all different Windows computers. And they all they have different functions, different memory, different, you know, camera features. They're just different parts of the computer that works a certain way.
Speaker: you know and then you got your Apple products that are a completely different operating system. But again, there's different levels of operating system with different memory, different features, different strengths of each computer. and I use computers because it did it it fits i have people like who you have talk about like but like, like,
Speaker: And i just want i my whole point of this book was just to is to make people look at this differently. right I didn't want to say the things. I got some trouble. I did, Martin. I've gotten some trouble. from ah from i've I've been called ableist from some of the chapters. umm And in every moment of writing this book, I made sure I kept...
Speaker: all of the other diversities, all of the other disabilities all of the other disabilities in the room with me, you know, when I wrote this and I tried to keep them in mind because this book is not just for me and my the people like me.
Speaker: I think the people like me and like you and the people out there with with this combined ADHD, autism trait, um the combination, because you're creating, you have two different processing systems that are going at each other. And this is what recursion is.
Speaker: Right. I mean, you have more of an observer time in here. That's what is slowing us, slowing us down in the world. We just have more options to go through.
Speaker: Yeah, it's not where it's like when you say ADHD is a deficit of attention, I say, shut up. It's not exactly. it's It's actually more like total awareness.
Speaker: And you have a we have a lot more shit to go through. You just it. I wish that I had some of the sequential thinkers abilities, you know, to to get follow through on things, to do like things like I wish I had that. But as soon as my idea is done,
Speaker: It's done. It's not mine anymore. I'm on to the next idea of making the next thing work. right i don't have I don't want to keep going. ah keep I keep thinking we would be so much better if we had staff.
Speaker: Like, like see c see oh I wouldn't even say staff. Let me just say partners, sequential thinking partners. We do, Martin. where And that was the world, which is what you're kind of saying. It's like, well, this should be the world, right? is that is the Is that you can have a thought, an idea that you've you know looked at the patterns in the world and gone, oh, well, I can see a problem here. I can see a problem down the line. I can see how we can fix it.
Speaker: I can't do that myself. But hey, you guys over there, You do that. Yeah. And both have equal value because one can't exist without the other. Well, this is the one of the my in my in and i um in the misfits. The book is the biggest.
Speaker: One of the hardest parts for me to release these books. One of the hardest things for me is because, you know, I have a I'm a grade eight. I educated person. I, I formally, right. I've, I couldn't, I got kicked out of every school I ever went to. i was one of those kids. I was, i was one of the bad kids. Right. right And, you know, i never, I would never felt like I was allowed to say these things, you know, and,
Speaker: I realized after I quit drinking at 41, eight years ago now, um you know, and and I was stagnant for my entire life. Don't don't I understand apathy and stagnation? I'm not I don't ever criticize people for not thinking we have to start doing it. But we but I get it because I was drunk for 25 years of my life.
Speaker: And that was that was my life. Right. Right. um But at 41, finding out i had ADHD and autism at 43, I realized, whoa. um i realized whoa my brain is not working like this. It's working different. I have to start using it. So I, and I've always been a writer. So I took to every morning kind of, you know, writing my two hours. and I spent two hours with my coffee and just kind of wrote my feelings out and how, what I was dealing with and how my mind was working so for those eight years that I was, you know, sitting there and trying to figure out what the hell's going on. Because when you're diagnosed in your forties,
Speaker: with these things, you realize that you haven't really been yourself. Most of the people, you you probably understand this very well, most of the people in your life have no idea who you are.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, for sure. No idea. I mean, like, if someone, and yeah and it still happens now, if someone says, well, what do you want? I'm like, I have no idea.
Speaker: Like you're asking me like what I want and not what um I can do for you or you or do something. Like I have to sit there and even now I have to sit there and process that simple question.
Speaker: It's, it's, yeah I mean, I, I remember from the very, like very young, very young, like, like five years old, young, you know, like kindergarten young, having to act like somebody else.
Speaker: Because when I was myself, I was in trouble. That was it. You know, what that was me. That was I was not in class anymore. I was sitting in the corner with the dunce cap on, you know, like ah that's what was going to happen.
Speaker: So I had to be someone else. um And you don't realize what all this stuff does to you. And I think like we have so much inherited code. right from our parents from our environment from our ancestors you know the stuff from caveman days that had that hijack board meeting arguments and bedtime you know arguments and stuff this you we are activating things in our body but but like codes that we run automatically i i that's why i go into thinking of this book a lot more and into like what is a thought can you answer that martin what is a thought
Speaker: Nope. That's why I have you here to tell me. so So that you can do the thinking and the thoughts for me. I'll help you with it. Okay, here's my best, my best, because this is not an easy, this is not an easy question because thoughts are are complicated, right? Thoughts are not just a thing you do. Okay, so ah here's my best attempt at explaining what a thought is.
Speaker: A thought is an external stimuli that could be anything, light, sound, blah, blah, anything. Pinging off your past. right? And the past is just firing off the closest recognized pattern it has in there.
Speaker: Yeah. It goes through your meat computer into the projected future, right? Right. Who you want to be. Uh-huh. Right. And then swings back to the present and then it activates that you.
Speaker: Right. And then this is the weird part, right? Okay. About 400 milliseconds later, The conscious you, the one you call you, labels that and tells you the story behind why you did it.
Speaker: Right. But that's already happened. Yeah. Your conscious self is just telling the story of your loop, your identity, the loop the loop you practice most.
Speaker: Yeah. It's just telling that story over and over again. So when you look at free will, free will doesn't happen like we think it does. It doesn't happen here because it's too late here.
Speaker: Yes. the You have to keep adding use to the front line. Right. And that happens in reflection. when Because catching yourself when you're fired up and your chemicals are firing and in your in your body, and especially with ADHD and autism, those you know those they run hot. They blow. You're not going to catch yourself there. Stop trying to.
Speaker: Instead of catching yourself there, just look at it after and say, why did I do that? And, i and you know, this ah This book came out. I wrote this book first, The Misfits, right? And then I and then i put out first, I put out Thinking About Thinking of Thoughts Out Loud.
Speaker: Right. Because in this book, I have i had something called um recursive, ah recurs at recursion iteration therapy. And I took that out because I, again, didn't feel like I was allowed to call something a therapy.
Speaker: Right. Right. But I, I'm going, again, i don't, I'm not a doctor. This is what I've done to help myself. And it has worked for me.
Speaker: I want people to understand that. And I am when I say therapy, I am not saying in place of therapy. ah You the the first thing you this book will not help you.
Speaker: If you are not in the place for it to help you, you need, if you, the the strongest thing you could do is reach out for help. The anything, you cannot do this alone. This is not something you do alone. If you are too fragile, if, if, if looking at your patterns, it causes too much stress. It's, it's, that's okay. You need help.
Speaker: Reach out for it. Come back to the book later. I don't want you to think this book is going to help you. This is not a self-help book. This is a help self book. Exactly. You know, yeah this is this is meant for you to learn how you work, right? And then you do with that what what you want. And when I when i talk about recursion recursive iterate iteration therapy, humans, what makes humans the apex animal on the planet planet is our ability to, one, look at ourselves and imagine we can live a thing before we actually live it and learn from it.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. So ah re recursive iteration therapy is basically that. And I say in the book, it's only three steps and you're like, come on, three steps, fuck off.
Speaker: It's gotta be harder than that. You can't just, this is going to work. or thing You think you think I can write on a napkin? Yes. Cause it just means see it, feel it, and then rerun it. I know that sounds so simple, but it's not because to imagine properly,
Speaker: To lay down actual track that your story buys, that your body buys, right is very difficult. You have to know yourself. You have to look at all that shit, all that stuff that you're ashamed of.
Speaker: And you have to look at that and say, that's not...
Speaker: Shame and guilt are not the same thing. You know, shame says you're bad. You're bad. Guilt says you've done something bad that is against your moral code. Right. Which tells you right there that you are not bad.
Speaker: You are it's against your code. So when you start looking back at your past as things that you did. to survive, you're not looking at bad versions of you. You're looking at bad pro processes you ran in the past. Just, these are just, we are process, man. We are not nouns. We are verbs.
Speaker: You know, we, we, our bodies, the scar in my hand, it keeps, it keeps being remade by my body. It makes new skin, brand new skin all the time.
Speaker: Right. But why does it keep making this scar? Right. No, exactly. i think you know like what one of my things is... one a One of the biggest tools for me in the tool shed you of of being a ah in the in the survival toolbox is is is curiosity. And that that plugs into exactly what you're saying, is that you can you can see something, it experience it, go through it, but then...
Speaker: you've got to be curious as to what happened, how it affected you. Was it a good thing? Was it a bad thing? What was that? So that then you can learn something from that and then i'd move on. What you're explaining is metacognition, right? You have to be able to look at yourself.
Speaker: Yeah. And i this, say you know me, I like to get in trouble a lot. um I'm going to say something that is interesting. has gotten me out of into a little bit of trouble on TikTok.
Speaker: All right. But it's not, when I say it, I'm very well, I have written down very well. I'm well worded and it's not against anyone in any group.
Speaker: um We are looking at, I believe, I see I've i've made some videos about these right wing conservative nut jobs that are out there. Right. Yeah. There's a psychology behind it.
Speaker: all Right. And I've read the psychology because, you know, interacting, trying, I'm been legitimately trying to connect with them because I want to try to understand what is happening. I believe we're looking at vulnerable people and not just bad people.
Speaker: Yeah. We have.
Speaker: I think we're looking at a little bit less narrow-minded, angry human and more like terrified chimpanzee.
Speaker: You know what i mean? Because humans are humans are evolving, right? wait this is And animals do that. We're evolving humans. I mean, the Trumpansy. um The Trumpansies. Am I allowed to say that? I don't know, but we we did. But but so and and people like, oh, what are you saying? oh they completely Yeah, I think we just saw sapiens. And you know what i mean i think we we have been going in this direction and and it's going to happen in here, or not out here. Gorillas have us beat here every single time.
Speaker: Right. we're we're We're not going this way. We're going this way. And the the ability to to think ah about your thinking becomes the strongest tool a human has.
Speaker: Right. And if you are mastering this, you are developing. If you are sitting in a small town believing a science religion that has been disproven many times over, not even accepting that science,
Speaker: Well, how are you going what happens, you know, where science is right now, right, Martin? In general, science is, it's at a crazy place. And the next breakthrough in science, any of the sciences, because we're at the, they're at the, what the heck point and now all science.
Speaker: And when that breakthrough happens and it will, it doesn't just give us more information. It gives us access to new physics, right? Right. New reality, because at the point we're at, it changes things completely. And ah where I think it's going to go is in consciousness studies and the study of like um consciousness as the foundation, you know, of and it being the thing that makes material. That's where most scientists are looking right now.
Speaker: And if that becomes true, and and I'm going to tell you, it makes sense because you know those little small communities of wackadoodle hardcore Christians that somehow are succeeding in life? Yes.
Speaker: Somehow? Somehow? Somehow. Well, just think of it as if you have a group of people that are putting that forward with absolute belief, ah whether it's mis misguided belief or not, they are creating...
Speaker: a reality that's working for them. Right, right, right. Yeah. that Based on something that's magical to to us, it's nuts. But it's working in most cases. Yeah.
Speaker: So they are kind of accidentally already doing this. But when we develop science that tells us all we need is 20% of the people then to go, oh, I want this to be a better place and start thinking about it that way.
Speaker: And it starts the wave. The wave is coming. It's already happening. And it's, I mean, it's, it's into interesting. Sorry that you're kind of talking about consciousness, you know, being a, a, a front frontier, because obviously, you know, our but but how, how,
Speaker: brain is so poorly understood and it's I find it interesting and I even and I talk about this with Paul he talks about it he believes and I'm kind of with him that this autism and ADHD thing will be dismantled at some point and reconstituted as something else. Yeah, I agree. As we understand our brains, um,
Speaker: better and and how we process and how we work in the world and our ADHD podcast name will have to change and who knows. And so there's all of that. ah Yeah, I agree.
Speaker: um This is ah another place where actually get in trouble, right? Because I say it and I know what you, you know, I'd say it out loud because I do believe that there is something to the combination of the two.
Speaker: I do believe that, you know, if you look at what nature does to genes that are are just defective or not beneficial, they eliminate them. Right. that's how That's how nature works.
Speaker: But the ADHD and autism is becoming more prevalent. It's becoming more. it' it's more seen.
Speaker: So that would mean that there's a definite reason that we're, our human biology is going in that direction. It's not, this is not me saying we're superior. Listen, we are humans. We are animals. We adapt. Humans are evolving too.
Speaker: I'm sorry that ah you, if you don't have ADHD and autism, you didn't win the, the, the card, the race for evolution, but trust me, you don't want it right now. It's not helping anybody.
Speaker: We have to change this world. and And this is where, this is where I could be misheard. And this is why I try to be very clear. Yeah. I don't think we are superior. I think we are missing in the mix. We are needed.
Speaker: It's different, right? It's not saying we're better. It's saying we're running on a world that isn't including us because it's all sequential. It needs recursion to fix this shit because we are the people that see this.
Speaker: Yep, yep, yep. I walk around the streets and I i i don't know how people... look away anymore how do you look away from people dying on the streets yes and i get in trouble and again again i get in trouble for this too oh justice that we all have justice sensitivity oh it's not just you shut up first of all i'm not saying we and everyone doesn't it's our ability to let it go without losing our reserves of energy That's the difference. We have to focus on it because it's broken. We want to fix it.
Speaker: Right. Because, you know, one ah one of your your points in your book is ah certainly around like um when you talk about the the wo water is that is that is that it's not us that's broken. We should look at the environment and the whole package you know And you know this is where this recursive and and um and so systems thinking um kind of comes into plane to place, right? it's it seems It seems like that what you're kind of saying, that it's not an individual problem. Like like we're very good at kind of going, oh, you autistic, you ADHD, but actually it's a you know like when you step back,
Speaker: There is, you know, and once you fix yourself, once you've looked at yourself and you've kind of kind of gone, okay, yeah as as you were saying earlier, like and you've kind of got yourself into a place where you vaguely understand your yourself a lot better, and then you do that step back and go, okay, well, the environment and the things around me and the systems that we have in place and the schools and the...
Speaker: And everything, you get, oh, oh, it's, it's all wrong. Yeah. It's all wrong. Well, look at, like, you look at a school. What is the first thing you have to do is as a little kid?
Speaker: Sit down and be quiet? What? No, I'm a kid. Did you remember, did you forget that I was a kid? That's not how I do things. Yet. You know, bri and look, the there are actual historians that look at our school system and argue that it is built like a factory.
Speaker: You look at what happens. you go to You go to school, you're told what to learn, what how to learn it, when to learn it, what the timeline is. You start your pro your your weird what you're told to do. A bell rings.
Speaker: You're told you have to stop thinking about what you're thinking about. Go out and do a different thing. And then when you're summoned back by the other bell, you come back to your spot and do the thing you were doing, somehow just get back into it magically.
Speaker: right and And then process the process continues. Everybody learns at the same time timeline. No, we don't. We know that. I have many friends, especially especially on the spectrum um that and ADHD obviously as well, that have have learning problems young younger. right And a lot of lot of this
Speaker: is looked at as slow, too slow. But during this process of learning, they're learning anyway. You're learning whether you're getting the grades through grade one or six, whether you're passing, you're still learning.
Speaker: And then all of a sudden, at a certain age, click. All that information comes together. And then that person is no longer slow for some reason.
Speaker: Right. i The story is, every almost every person that has this, I was slow in school story, has this amazing recovery in their teenage years when it all snaps together and they understand it.
Speaker: Right. I mean, it's even like, I mean, I didn't like math. I was bad at math. And I had one teacher, Mr. Mitchell, and he came in and all of a sudden...
Speaker: Because of his teaching method or something, i was like, oh, I get it now. Oh, this is interesting. yeah I'm into this. And then he goes.
Speaker: He gets replaced by some other old... the duffer And it's like, oh, yeah, I'm back to like switched off and I can't I can't I can't do math.
Speaker: I in in in my book and um on my like whatever those sub stacks are, I put a lot of articles up there. more detailed versions of like scale scale is something I created that is like a a replacement for our current school system or education system. Right. And it's learning based on strengths. Right. and And if you had to make just one change in school and this is, this is very easy to do and and it would change everything.
Speaker: Start with what every each kid likes. You need to teach teachers to find their thing. And that's what that kid learns first.
Speaker: I'm not saying he doesn't have to learn the other things. The person has to learn something they they are they are passionate about and care about first so that they learn to succeed first.
Speaker: They learn how to do it, to to get something right. When you push someone to learn something they don't want to learn at the beginning because you have to go with the rest of the curriculum of the class, and it's not something they're interested in they're taught that they fail.
Speaker: And that in a little kid is a big algorithm put on you, a big code that you're a failure right off the bat. You change that one story.
Speaker: And just get kids interested first. Give them something to learn that they actually care about. Teach them to succeed. And that changes the rest of their life in school.
Speaker: But we we are are unwilling to be individual. There are versions of this that rich people can access. you know I say that um you know like just kind of talking people around the world, like um like ah here in in in the States, I have one friend who works in the education system and looks at the – looks at it through a neurodivergent lens. And you can see that some schools at least are kind of like, seem to be like really trying to kind of, within the structure that they're given, they're trying to kind of find ways to kind of make it easier.
Speaker: um and you But still far from ideal, as we know. And then you go to like, you know, Paul lives in Italy. They've... in italy theyve they've not even heard of ADHD. It isn't a thing.
Speaker: So their entire structure and system is is just ignorant of it. you know like They'll say, we don't have ADHD in our school. Yeah, well, there's a bunch of kids failing.
Speaker: yeah yes Yes, we have a bunch of kids who misbehave in class and set fire to... ah We haven't named it yet, though, so it's not real.
Speaker: We haven't named it yet. this is and And when you look at like, even like where where we are, um in in the UK, PDA is recognized, right? The the traits within in PDA. And when i when i wrote when i when I rewrote the Misfits into thinking about thinking, I took out the PDA chapter.
Speaker: um The PDA chapter, i thought, you know, that there wasn't enough information on PDA because it's not accepted everywhere. I mean, doing research for this as someone with PDA, I don't know if you suffer with the.
Speaker: So that's pathetic. pathological divar demand ah avoidance like where someone says, oh, this film is amazing. You'll really love watching this film and you never see the film. Never watch it because you just can't. But I mean, that ah that is one great example of it that every everyone experienced, a lot of people experienced, right?
Speaker: But it goes deeper than that. and and And even the name pathological demand avoidance has sort of been like thrown out the window and it's sort of like persistent drive for autonomy, which is more accurate. right i would say it it's still not exactly right.
Speaker: I do believe it is ah um persistent because it always happens. I do believe it is the target of the attack is autonomy, the thing that you're protecting. But the word drive makes it seem like you know you're you're doing it.
Speaker: Right. And this and this the reason I put PDA back into this book is it's the biggest example of that observer split. Right. Because if you look at as someone with with the experience of PDA on a daily basis, it's so I you you you want to.
Speaker: The you the conscious you really wants to. But you're too late to the microphone because the body is firing off. no No, no, no, no, no. And you can't. You're just trying. You're like, why am I doing this? This doesn't even make sense. I want to do this. You're talking to yourself like that.
Speaker: You know, right it's the experiences like having another you in there. and And it's not a different you. It's a different process running. Right. And and this this process has to be looked at. That's why I disagree with pathological, because there's nothing pathological about this. What this is, is your defenses, your chemicals in your body firing off because your autonomy was always perfect.
Speaker: always taken away from you as a child because every men imagine like you are a baby coming out of of of of your mom's vagina for the first time yeah right yuck ah it's awful out here and the first thing your light sensitive eyes see are these fluorescent lights and and what does that do to the baby's system Because light sensitivity is there.
Speaker: we did it's it's It's in our brains. It's a wiring. Right? So right off the bat, we're screaming, the lights are too bright. Turn the fucking lights off. You're already going, ah!
Speaker: Right. Just right off the bat. And then you go home and all these things. You have no voice because you don't have one yet. You don't. You're picking up all these algorithms, all these these habits, all these things from your parents, your parents. You don't want to be picked up. You're you're an autistic kid that doesn't want to be picked up, who's picked up all the time.
Speaker: Because you can't say no. Oh, why is he screaming? Oh, I'm trying to be loving. Because maybe he doesn't want to be touched right now. But we there's no there's no way to to portray that. So your autonomy is taken away.
Speaker: your Your body is building these defenses. Right. And ah this is this is going to sound this is going to sound ridiculous, but I i have a solution for PDA. Okay. At least works for some people. I'm listening. It works very well for my for me in my in my case.
Speaker: What you need to do is is sit down with your partner or or or your friends or anyone you have around you that you want to know this. ah And you say, listen, I suffer with something. I have a challenge. When you to put a demand on me, i'm my body is going to treat it like a threat.
Speaker: ah I don't agree with my body most of the time. It's just going to do that. and What I need you to do as my loved one And this is going to sound crazy, but I need you to make fun of the PDA trait.
Speaker: I'm not saying I'm not saying to roast your loved one. Partner with your loved one against the trait. it changes everything. What you'll do is laugh with them.
Speaker: Right. And you'll feel like, what a stupid thing I'm doing. There's this thing, is isn't isn't there? like you know Because what happens is that someone suggests that you'll love this film, right? And you go, I'm not going to love it. So it puts you in conflict with the other person now.
Speaker: But... one But one of the best things you can do about that is having a common enemy, right? Yeah. So your PDA, your pathological demondivores, then if you externalize it, as you're saying, that becomes the common yeah enemy because it doesn't serve either of you because one person wants you to see the film so that so so that so so so that you can talk.
Speaker: and you And you're going love it. You're going to enjoy it. you'll probably love it anyway. Because this person probably knows you. Right. So they're telling you you're going to love it, but you can't get yourself to do it because your body is saying no, because that person told you to do it.
Speaker: Right. You know, and that and it's maybe even too late after that's happened to even see the film. but Right. But I'll tell you eventually one day I go like, I'll put it in. decided to just do it oh yeah after yeah after everything's after everyone's forgotten about it then you'd be like okay oh well it's on here let's watch it oh that was a great movie you'll call up there you're right this is because you fucking cry we're very we're very aware most of the time that our response to this is ridiculous
Speaker: We're aware of it. Right. Because I think part of it is like, is the, at some point you realize that, um, that when something comes from yourself, when you're, you know, like whatever it is, like a sort of a way of being or behaving or, ah or any, anything, if you realize that it comes from you or if, well, when it comes from you, it's much more likely to, so to stick.
Speaker: So, I mean, just a simple example. If I go down in the morning and I drink a glass of what of water first first thing, and I found that that kind of works, and it's come from me, it was my idea,
Speaker: It's much more likely to stick and work than if someone says, you know what you should do, Martin? You should have a drink of water first thing in in the morning. And I'm like, oh, fuck, you've ruined it. You've ruined it. Yeah, right. Don't tell me to do it. I'm not going to do it now.
Speaker: Right. So we've kind of learned that actually our when we trust ourselves and we listen to ourselves and what works for us, it works. It works. And ah so, yeah, that's that. I don't know about you, but I'm very deep into meditation.
Speaker: um i am I meditate more than I am in the real world probably now. I just i like i walk for four hours a day and I just meditate. And I've reached places that I have different understanding of things now.
Speaker: I can, and it sounds crazy sometimes when I say things on the book I'm writing now is ah is a big difference. I'm writing a new book about, so I do have a book about consciousness. It's called Becoming What You've Always Been. Right. um And the, my I wrote this book.
Speaker: I wrote, I put all the books together at the, when my mother was dying of pancreatic cancer. um which was honestly, I thought I was going to be terrible at taking care of her. You know, I thought i didn't think I was that person.
Speaker: And this is one of those things where I think autism um truly became a ah superpower for me. um I was able to be there. i was able to be strong. I was i always it be be but able to be there to take care of my mom in a way that I didn't think I was even capable of doing.
Speaker: Right. Right. And this, this all started, the all the books kind of put, came together because I watched my mom, you know, what pancreatic cancer is awful to see.
Speaker: um And I took care of her, my mom for a year and and you are watching the death process at an accelerated rate. And it is, it changes your, but your perspective of death. Right. And it changes what, what you're,
Speaker: how you look at things. And I know this sounds like a consciousness, sounds like a different topic than ADHD and autism, but this is what I don't, I don't think it is. I think we have the space in here for this recursive thought that is what produces this consciousness. And when you meditate and use this, I, I feel energy running through my body. I feel it.
Speaker: It's I've trained my brain to recognize different things. And,
Speaker: sitting with your your loved one and watching them die from this horrible disease and seeing death and fast forward. Um, One of the things that I really saw was my mom's mask come off.
Speaker: the Right. You know, the the mom. um And show her real. My mom wasn't diagnosed autistic, but she certainly was ADHD and autistic. There's no doubt in my mind. um But, and you know, I watched her mask come off and I got to see her for the first time, you know, and I got, I got to spend a few months with the real person.
Speaker: Right. And the amount of me that I saw. Wow. How much of her is what made this person that was capable of caring like this, that was capable of being this strong,
Speaker: I saw those patterns that she gave me before the words came, you know? And that's amazing it made me it made me look at myself differently. And that's when I started writing these books about thinking, right? um And the reason I wrote a book about consciousness is because my mom isn't religious, right? My family has never been a religious family, but my mom was also the kindest, most generous human on the planet. I've never seen her mad at anyone. So, I mean, obviously you don't need religion for that.
Speaker: um So i I asked her and my uncle, my her her brother, my uncle Harold, I said, what do you think happens when you die? And my uncle, like he's been thinking about as all his entire life, definitely also an old autistic guy.
Speaker: he He said, I think we go into our dreams. And I thought, hu I can work with that. My mom liked it. um So I took that idea. and And when you look at what a dream is, it's a substrate of consciousness. Right. I mean, it's not as we call them dreams. But if you look at if you look if you apply science, physics and you know any any available science, quantum physics to it, um biology, all the things that um tell the story of what this is in here.
Speaker: that actually works out very well as an explanation for an afterlife. you don't You don't go to hell or heaven, you become them, right? Because you are, and the idea is like the God paradox, right? Because if God is all knowing, all powerful, has everything, knows everything, then it would have nothing to perceive, right? And that makes, you might as well be nothing.
Speaker: Yeah. So it must disperse into everything. Right. Everything, not us. We are not just God. God is everything. Yeah. but and We have never added anything or taken anything away from this planet. There are atoms in your brain from billions of years ago.
Speaker: Yep. We are a process that's moving through this. Right. And this this meat computer is our barrier to the next step. You know, if you look at what what our brain does at night, when you go into your subconscious dreams, it shuts off.
Speaker: Yep. So that you can't read it. What if you're going in every night to build your afterlife? What you learn that day, you're adding into the code. you're everything why Why would you have to upload every night? How do you hold all this stuff?
Speaker: right it's it's It's because you're uploading it into the consciousness field and you are becoming what God knows about kindness, what God knows about cruelty, what God knows about this, what God knows about this mug.
Speaker: And he is that mug because the only way you can know everything is to be it. I can make it as as a God, the version of God that is doesn't know he's God and so is everybody else. But i the way i would if I was God and I wanted to know about this mug, I would first get God to make it be out of out of God.
Speaker: Yes. And so now I know everything externally about this mug. And because God is this mug, God knows what it's like to be the mug. Right. and go rule And in this version of God, God will know what happens to that mug.
Speaker: down the line and we'll have know what happens to every atom in that mug now until the end time. on and on it goes. And on and on it goes. Everything is written. People hear that and they think, oh, that's that's what is the point then?
Speaker: Well, the point is responsibility, not divinity. We are responsible for a code. You affect everyone around you in every bit of the day. This is this is what I, that when I go, but when I talk about like capitalism and all these all these terrible people out there, right this is This is why i I speak of it the way I do. i i We don't need to defeat these people.
Speaker: We don't need to defeat capitalism. We don't need to defeat these right-wing nuts. These people are defeating themselves, right? ah What we need to do is to build things that are our community. We need to build everything everything out of some a net to catch us all.
Speaker: yeah And the way to do that is by people always think, well, how would you do that? That's impossible. It's impossible. the The system's all connected and it's a big trap. Well, yeah, you can look at it as a trap, but you can also look at it as um you're already in it.
Speaker: You are a part of that node. You're a node in that system anyway. Right. And if you want to change the system, you got to change the node in what is broadcasting. Right.
Speaker: right because the nodes that are near you hear you. And that's how you pass this. It's the seeing we need. We need seeing. We need to we need that we need this to...
Speaker: um We need to be ourselves. We need to be out there. You need to say, when you say what's wrong with the system, you got to name the system so that the person beside you hears you say that and has the words for it. Because the seeing is only like one sentence long.
Speaker: But once you hear, oh, this job is destroying me because it's, and it's not my fault. It's a system that's broken, blah, blah, blah, whatever you say. And somebody hears that, you put words to what they're feeling.
Speaker: And then they're going to say it. Right. Someone hears them. This what we can't change it all at once, but we can get on the wave. No, exactly. I think, you know you know, in an in an entropy based system.
Speaker: You know, being a creative. Building things. looking at yourself, talking about yourself, talking about the systems around us and how we can, you know, it's I mean, just improve things for ourselves. and and And as you say, like, talk to the guy next to you, put out a pod, write a book,
Speaker: and They're all creating something that, you know, and that is an act of rap reb rebellion itself to, you know, against, you know, i just so say all the all the people and the systems that try and pull us down. So, you know, all of these things are just...
Speaker: we have to do like it's an act of courage for us to look ourselves and be ourselves and then change the systems around us and the person standing next to us you know like it's all it's all it's all effort and requires work but yeah and i mean we we have to we have And we also have to remember that, ah you know, a lot of these right wing nuts right now are not right wing nuts. A lot of them are people that are just not thinking.
Speaker: Some of them are just people being idiots. But you see, when you the seeing thing and i was talking about, when you people know when you start to do this, those people are are on the fence over everything right there. They don't have a stance. They will join whatever is easiest for them, whatever is trendy. We have to remember how many of those people exist right now on the bad side, you know, and Oh, yeah, because because because a lot of these people are, in a way, like us in that we were out we were just little kind of freaky people on the outside.
Speaker: And someone comes up with a flat earth thing, say, and then you kind of like get get into and you dig into it a little bit and you kind of believe it. But you don't have to believe it because if you say you do, then you've got an instant community you're in around you and you're in. And then...
Speaker: And then you have special knowledge that no one else has. And that elevates you and your community. And i'm gonna that's it. Here I go again. i'm going to say something that in trouble again. But there here's here's like, I think we are looking at, okay, so one of the, like, what has happened, obviously, in in just because of capitalism and we've become categories, right? And the way to keep us divided is you take you take the two groups, okay?
Speaker: One of them is the angry white guys. I don't know why it's angry white guys, but it's always white guys. And then you you you take the oppressed people right now. It's like trans people, for instance. Right. right And the right gets ah these group of ah people that don't fit in, the misfits on the right.
Speaker: There are probably a bunch of neurodiverse people who don't know it because it doesn't exist and they don't know why it doesn't work and it's not fair and blah, blah, blah. They hate everything and blah, blah. They're angry and they had and they but they still don't fit in.
Speaker: And then this these this right wing government powerful billionaire group finds a way to manipulate them because and accept and accept them in as a group. Oh, yeah, you're part of us now. Just hate these people.
Speaker: Okay, so now that spotlight of hate is shining down right on the trans community, right? Right. Real trans people. I knew a trans person. i I had a trans friend in 1991 and I met plenty of trans people through her. So they are real. Okay, so...
Speaker: the The trans people will have the spotlight on them now. Okay. Now there's the the same group, the same group as those meatheads, the people that don't fit in, but on the left side of the people that are more misfits that are broken by a system that don't fit in the same way they do. Yep.
Speaker: They go, Oh, that's spotlight. They want attention, right? They want attention. They want community. And what does moving into that spotlight spotlight get them? They get some one because the trans community is a loving community. They get embraced by it. Right. And now they have their community. They always want it. And what else are they getting? Attention.
Speaker: And why would you ever want that to stop? So you're going to feed the fire with the the most extreme trans material, which is going to ignite the right people that don't fit in.
Speaker: yeah And they're going to shine the spotlight more. And that's what watching. We're watching these two groups of people that don't fit in anywhere, just just want to fit in. And they've gotten their little homes. So yes, there are people pretending to be trans, but that doesn't mean there's no trans people. Both things could be true. yeah Because people pretend to be all kinds of things.
Speaker: I used to pretend to be black when I was a kid because I was i hung around all black kids. it would i I wanted to fit in. That's what people do. um So, yes, there are people pretending to be trans. And this goes like we look at like masking, for and instance, like and when we talk about autism and ADHD and what masking is. You know, I i also get in trouble for this, too, believe it or not.
Speaker: I don't look at a mask as a thing I have to get rid of. you know because it's how i navigate the world yeah are are there bad masks yeah yeah but um neurotypical people don't they have bad personality traits they got got to get rid of absolutely i know i now call up and but this is cute people like this too you ready for this martin i call masks i call masks now purposeful personalities Oh, you know what? I i call it i've called it something else, which which is, it was like conscious, it sounds like conscious decoupling. um It was like, yeah, because as you said as you say, these masks, right?
Speaker: Once you know you do it and you have them all, you can go, oh, hang on a second. It takes a lot of effort to kind of like wear these masks all the time. I don't have to. But some of these masks work for me and I can consciously put a mask on and be a certain person and i know that it's gonna you know sap some energy from me but it serves a purpose that i will get something out of the end of it i can then take the mask off and it's a tool in my toolbox which is useful yeah i mean if you look at like if you look at it in the way that um
Speaker: we This goes right back to the recursion idea, right? And if you look at ah how I was talking about how we do things, we do we build our personalities exactly the same way, right? We try them on, adjust, weve we fix.
Speaker: It's the same thing as a personality and a typical person, right? It's just that they build it. Their their code is sequential, so it it fits perfectly. the the the system we're in, so they don't have to put them on, they just are on. But if you look, people talk on the phone, hey, how oh have a wonderful day. Nobody says that in real life, that's a mask. When you go to your family's house, you're a slightly different version of you.
Speaker: People do that no matter who they are. These are just, we are just engineering our personalities. We're putting them on to fit us because that's how we do everything.
Speaker: right look We don't take it as just value. We have to look at it. We have to analyze what it's doing. what Is this right? The smile doesn't look right for me. This this facial expression, isn't it's not me. So I got to adjust it. Oh, that's a little better. I'll do that for my eyes instead. it's right It's still, you can find the natural version of that that doesn't cost you the extra energy. i have ah My version is more like me just slightly turned down.
Speaker: You know what i mean It's not different. I don't hide any of my weirdness anymore. I'm OK with that. It's not because I was masking that. It's because I'm OK with it. You're allowed to see it. I'm allowed people to see how wacky I'm. I don't care. Right. Because but i is it is it because you just put more energy into different facets of yourself and sometimes they just amplify out.
Speaker: and then they die back down again. We develop these things because our natural state is is too much it's too it's turned up too high it's too elevated and that's again not us it's because our surroundings our our our environment is too much for us the stimulation that we're getting from it is making us a little more we're always a little fluorescent lights yeah which was the first thing when we were born god damn it ah you know go that gets into your brain it's uh this is not we're
Speaker: we are We have we have ah an option. We can use this shit or we can continue to a want accommodations.
Speaker: And that's the days of accommodations are over. What we need is to build divergent by design. Right. we We have to make the place for us. Right. And that doesn't mean putting us into a system.
Speaker: It means creating a co-system. that operates alongside this system. it's not You can't put it in here. It doesn't work in here. It's like putting socialism and capitalism. It doesn't work. They're different. You need one that is here running. like Let's look at ah what a pilot project of this. ah I call it NBADT, a Neurodivergent Business Adaptation and Development Team. um If you look at what small businesses right now are dying from,
Speaker: Right. and And if you look at and if you look at ah everyone is struggling, it's not good out there. It's terrible. The the economy is crashing. It's very bad. They are suffering. These businesses are suffering from the exact thing that our minds are made for to adapt. They need to adapt and they can't.
Speaker: We have streets full of people. homeless people, people in people in bars with addiction problems, all thrown to the side with that exact skill in their head.
Speaker: yep And they've been sitting on the street their whole lives and they have to live. They've had to learn how to adapt to every situation every single day. All that we I was there. I was I was a homeless alcoholic and I lived this. I understand that people think you're crazy when you say pattern recognition is real.
Speaker: but it's not. I just have hyperactive threat detection. I have the ability to to see more processes because I've had more options. I've used more options to get out of trouble, to get to adapt, to get my next fix, whatever it is every day.
Speaker: We have people trained in this already on the street. What we need, we we have no problem cleaning them up. We can get them out of the... That's easy. But what we do after we clean them up, we throw them back into the hole. Right, right, right.
Speaker: That's not going to help. If we clean them up and then give them purpose... They work outside of the system. They can work with small business without being underneath them. We are we are a privately hierarchy free workspace. We're full of just five or six neurodivergence that operate in different communities. And we find we go into businesses we work within them, not with them, ah but as a collaborator. And and we tell them, like we give them reports to say, because you your hyper hypersensitive eyes, your hypersensitive ears,
Speaker: Those make you a customer customer customer experience expert. yeah We don't think of it that way, but you you know how beautiful if you gave me a way a way to put it set up your lighting in ah in a grocery store, I would make that grocery store so comfortable, so calm. People would want to be in there.
Speaker: um of all all kinds of people, not just neurodivergent. You build for the one, look at like curb cuts. They were for disabled people. Delivery drivers use them, you know, strollers, bikes, everybody uses them.
Speaker: yeah If you build for the the the most sensitive ah person in the room, The room fits everyone better. Right. Yeah. and And it's that thing. So, you know, like looking at, at, at the, at the, at everyone, at the community as a whole, and then adapting the in environment has benefits for everyone. and And I think that that's, you know, like if I'm going to kind of wrap up, I think that that's where, that's what your book is really about. It it it feels to me like it,
Speaker: it, it points to all of these things and how we think and, and, uh, how we look at our, the, the, the society that we're in, um, and asks a load of load, a lot of questions and kind of starts to talk about ways of thinking. Um, so it yeah, this was, I mean, the but if there's anything, uh, I wrote this book for people who want to think,
Speaker: ah about themselves. And and and that process of is healing. right you know and that And I've given this book to um a number of friends of mine who went through a lot of the same struggles ah that I did in my life. And you know i the the feedback has been that it's helped them incredibly. And they I never went sought out to make a self-help book because I'm not that kind of person.
Speaker: But um I instead made a help yourself book. And ah that and that's and that's what that's what it's meant to do. it's not I'm not going to ever tell anyone how to think. I'm going to please beg you to think.
Speaker: So where where can we get this book and indeed your other books? um All of my books are available on Amazon. um I had to go with the monster because I'm poor. but it But it gets my words out and that's what's important to me. They're available on Amazon. You can. i also i also have free um EPUB digital copies available in the link of my bio and any of my and in my socials because I don't believe there should be barriers to books. I think we should. I don't. And if you don't have to pay what you can link, if you don't have any money, i don't want your money. That's that's not who I am. I i want you to read this. I want you to I want you to get something from it. I want you to spread love and I want you to spread this message of like unity and how we how we can fix this. Because my my goal is to save the world, Martin. I mean, it always has go.
Speaker: It's tiny. But I mean, maybe I can't, but I think we could. Right. right So, yeah yeah, if you send me the link, I will make sure that it's in the show notes so um people can click on.
Speaker: Thank you. That was that was ah a very, very interesting conversation. I really enjoyed it. um I have the book. I did read... i I didn't read all of it, but i kind of like, yeah, I ADHD.
Speaker: Sped Reddit. i have I have a question for you because of the format I did. I designed it ah for our type of minds, right? Because I'm not a reader. I don't read physical books. I can't. But I put, you know, this is blocked in space. There's a lot of white space on the space on the page, right? Right. And that's not it's not ah that's not something to fill in. that's a that's a That's just somewhere for you to stop.
Speaker: And it's point, point, point, point. So you mean you remember it. You remember what you're reading, right? Yes. no No, no. I think, you know, like, I think, ah yeah, no, i i really in in enjoyed um ah going through that and, you know, and that, you know, and how you kind of like ah start to talk about systems and, you know, your personal story. so So kind of like really just adding some so it's some um emotional weight to it, some personal,
Speaker: um storytelling you know I thought it was uh yeah it was really powerful and I and uh anyone who is who has got beyond the whole here's five hacks for ADHD and have and have graduated yeah awesome I think a lot of us have to be honest we are we are past that And we want some some meat to the bone, some let's let's let's think more deeply. was my goal. Let's let's let's let's call it what Let's just start at least start calling it what it is. Because if we we got to label it correctly before we can learn about it, right?
Speaker: Exactly. if you really If people really like their labels, I mean, we got to label it correctly at least, the very least. All right, exactly. Well, thank you for for being here. um it's It's a shame that Paul wasn't was i here. he he um I will tell him to make sure he yeah checks it out. But...
Speaker: That'll be it from me. So I just leave me to say that ADHD Will is delivered fresh every Tuesday to all providers of fine podcasts. Please subscribe to the pod and rate us most yeah most intellectually stimulating. Why not? And feel free to correspond our Will in the comments. But wait, there's more if you wish to see our beautiful, beautiful faces and Will's beautiful, beautiful face.
Speaker: um feel Feel free to Sally Forth to the YouTubes and the TikToks. Willie Dubs is definitely on the TikToks. And you can also pick up a quill and email us at adhdwill at gmail.com. But in the meantime, be fucking kind yourself. And once again, thank you for being on the Pod Pod Pod.
Speaker: My pleasure. My pleasure, Martin. Always fun. There, says the mayor. That's that.
