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Neurodiversity and Creativity - Group Special with Neurodivergent Crew
212 Plays2 years ago
How does Neurodiversity impact creativity? What negative life experiences come from DID, ADHD, Autism, and Dyslexia? Why does music have a positive effect on mental health?
TW: Mental illness, Loss, Addiction
The Neurodivergent Crew is a collection of four neurodivergent artists who seek to express their neurodivergence and life stories through music. N00trix is a dark trap artist and producer, 12-Gauge is a rap artist, FMA is a metal vocalist and Dreadn0ught is the man behind their beats.
In this special group episode, Thomas interviews these four guests about their life stories, their music background, and how creativity has brought a positive influence on their lives.
NDC Links - https://linktr.ee/neurodivergentcrew // My Links - https://linktr.ee/thomashenleyUK
Thomas starts off the episode by introducing the guests and diving into their music background: FMA used to perform live metal music on stage, but found that his son 12-Gauge had taken a shine to rap music; they started living together and talk about their first father-son duo experience at 12-Gauges young age of 15. A previous drummer, Dreadn0ught was introduced to the group whilst studying media at University, and N00trix was the final piece in the puzzle. N00trix contacted the triple over Instagram, instantly finding common ground and providing a production role to bring in the group's talents together.
Diving into their personal history, N00trix explains the defining moment where her personality split in two through Dissociative Identity Disorder (commonly termed as multiple personalities). She explains how the stigma of the disorder separated her from her family and previous life, but also ignited her passion to share her more pessimistic and dark outlook on life… through music.
FMA talks about his experience with a very late Autism diagnosis, as well as his experience with addiction and rehabilitation through his 20s and 30s. His son 12-Gauge, explains the impact that undiagnosed Dyslexia and bullying had on his school experience and his own self-confidence. He was fortunate to have FMA as a father figure, allowing him to dodge the addiction traps his father succumbed to in his youth. Thomas bonds with the two on this due to his history of alcoholism and exercise addiction.
Dreadn0ught opens up about his experiences with ADHD, stating that it was important to know for his own understanding, and not necessarily therapy. Plunging into deep mental illness and addiction following his friend's passing at University, he remarks on the existential loneliness he experienced at University.
With all the experiences discussed, they finish by talking about the impacts their individual neurodivergencies had on their music career in the present day. This is undoubtedly a big dive into Neurodiversity, as well as all the many strings that connect them together and what the crew to brought them into the music scene… I hope you enjoy it!
Song Of The Day (Listen Here) - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5UDIyN5TSYN4zMcRoQPrG8?si=9255ed3480d840b5
Interview me, 1:1 Autism coaching, public speaking for events, workplace training - https://www.thomashenley.co.uk
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Neurodivergent Episode
00:00:07
Speaker
Good day, and welcome back to the 4GLT podcast with your host, as always, Mr. Thomas Henley, and I have a very, very special episode for you. And although I say that every single episode is special, because it is in its own unique way,
00:00:22
Speaker
Today, I'm actually interviewing four people as opposed to one person. So as I said to the neurodivergent crew who I'm going to be interviewing today, this is going to be a learning experience for me. And I imagine that there's going to be a lot of editing involved.
Exploring Neurodiversity and Creativity
00:00:38
Speaker
So the topic of today's interview is neurodiversity and creativity. And I have done a episode in the past which was all about autism and creativity, but we're going to go a little bit broader. We're going to talk about different things related to ADHD and autism and other types of neurodiversities.
Meet the Neurodivergent Crew
00:01:00
Speaker
So
00:01:02
Speaker
Today, I'm joined by, again, four people. We have 12Gage. Do you want to say hi? Hello, it's me, 12Gage. FMA. Hello, I'm FMA. And Dreadnought. How diddly doodly. And of course, Notricks. We have been trying to organize this podcast behind the scenes without a few chats, and she's been really great in pulling everyone together. So thank you very much. How are you doing today?
00:01:31
Speaker
Hi, yeah, thank you for having us. It's a great pleasure and a great opportunity to share our stories with you and the rest of the world today.
Formation of the Group: Artistic Contributions
00:01:44
Speaker
Thank you. Brilliant, brilliant. I love the mask. So I guess it would be good for us to go through a little bit about
00:01:52
Speaker
what you guys are what you do i know that you're called the neurodivergent crew and i know that you do a lot of stuff around music um fma would you be able to give us the lowdown on um what you guys are about well
00:02:08
Speaker
I didn't expect you to ask me about Thomas, so I'm a little... Oh, sorry, yeah, I was going to say that. It's cool. Well, we are a group of artists who all have different forms of neurodiversity and we're all like spread out, spread out all over the place. And then as our journeys have progressed, we've all found each other and found that we offer things to the collective
00:02:33
Speaker
that each other
FMA's Journey with Music and Family
00:02:34
Speaker
was missing. So originally it was kind of either just me or Callum to start because Callum's my son, 12 Gage is my son and his dad. And I'd given up on music and I was just focusing on script writing and my son, 12 Gage, when he came to live with me, he was writing and writing and writing and he pulled me into it again. So then me and 12 Gage started performing and doing all sorts of, but then we needed someone to make music for us.
00:02:58
Speaker
and we were really struggling with that which is where dreadnoughts suddenly came in and he appeared and he was like he fit perfectly and he could do everything that we needed him to do and then we kept going we kept going and everything was struggling we still struggled quite a lot but then no tricks appeared out of nowhere and it was like this final piece of a puzzle that suddenly came in because we're all extremely good at different aspects of things but we're all missing
00:03:21
Speaker
Like every everybody without each other we wouldn't be it's like that thing that you say it's like it's The sum of its
Spreading Awareness of Neurodiversity
00:03:30
Speaker
parts. It's like more than what we are individually altogether. We're just something more so that's like the basic idea of how we started working together, but like since starting to work together, it's like I
00:03:41
Speaker
it started to get more cohesive and it's like we actually have a message and we encourage people to create and we want to spread like our message of neurodiversity across the world because it's easy when you're sat in your flat like me to think oh yeah the whole world accepts autistic people and stuff but then you only need to walk out your door to realize it's not quite that and like the same with dreadnought and ADHD and 12 gauge and dyslexia and notrics with the ID it's like
00:04:08
Speaker
the world is not built for people like us, the world is built for a very specific sort of person. And so like, yeah, that's, that's where we're up to with our journey. And it's like, that's our goal.
Thomas on Neurodiversity and Support
00:04:19
Speaker
Well, thank you very much. I think it's it's interesting when when we think about neurodiversity, because in my mind, it's kind of like having like a different specialized human, like we're, we tend to be
00:04:35
Speaker
good in some areas, but we tend to fall down in other areas. And especially for me, I would never be able to.
00:04:44
Speaker
you know, work without the support of like, even my neurotypical supporters, particularly at work, because they're a lot better at kind of managing the executive functioning side of things. And I'm not, I'm like pants and all of
12Gage's Musical Inspiration
00:05:00
Speaker
that. So I think it's really, really, really interesting that you guys have all come together with different kind of different skill sets. And so pulling up each other's deficits and stuff, that's really cool.
00:05:10
Speaker
I guess I want to ask you in 12-gauge, FMA in 12-gauge, about your relationship with music. Learn a bit more about your story, what kind of music you make, what kind of things you've done. Yeah, well it all begins with 12-gauge.
00:05:30
Speaker
Yo, yeah, so it kind of started with music for us. Well for me was when I watched my dad perform with his metal band for my anger when I was like five or six.
00:05:46
Speaker
And they played at the park just near this flat where we're sat right now. And he was on stage. I'm partial to a bit of metal. Oh, yeah. And he was on stage and he was screaming at the crowd and like it was with his band and like this six year old kid who'd like been bullied and like had tons of like horrible influences at that time that like frightened me. Yeah. Seeing this person stood on stage just screaming at the crowd. I instantly knew I wanted to be on that stage. I just didn't know how.
00:06:16
Speaker
And then as time went on, um, kind of, I loved metal and I'd listened to metal and dad would play me like slipknot and onyx and stuff like that. And then I remember I was in the car with him and he played Eminem, um, relapse and he played that for me.
00:06:39
Speaker
and that was like the moment it all like flipped in my head and it just switched on and it was like oh i could do that
00:06:47
Speaker
and then i started writing and i kept writing and then eventually i came and lived with fma and i essentially just kept on annoying him really because he was trying to do his stuff he was doing his screenwriting at uni and all that stuff and i'd come in every day and i'd be like oh dad i've just wrote this dad i found this beat dad i've done this dad dad dad until the point where he we um
00:07:13
Speaker
My mum said she was organizing this anti-racism gig and she said that it would be a really good point for me to perform and develop my confidence and actually perform and it would be really good if I performed with FMA and stuff. And then we did that gig and it went better than I think either of us could have expected it to.
00:07:37
Speaker
because people were coming into the room that we were performing and they were jumping around and there was movement and energy and everything, all this stuff. And then I'm just stood there, this 15-year-old, just like, whoa.
FMA and 12Gage's Stage Confidence
00:07:50
Speaker
You were 15? Yeah, the first gig I did, I was 15. Oh my God. I struggled to even talk in front of one person when I was 15.
00:08:00
Speaker
Oh, I was the same. Yeah, Callum did. Callum had a stutter when we started, which was why his mum asked us to do that. He had real issues with his confidence.
00:08:10
Speaker
Yeah and then since then it kind of one thing that my dad FMA kept doing was he kept saying this is the last thing so we did that first gig when I was 15 and he was like oh yeah okay okay we'll do one more but then I'm done that's it this is over and then I'm like okay cool and then after that next gig he'd be like okay one more one
Dreadnought's Entry into the Group
00:08:31
Speaker
more gig and then
00:08:32
Speaker
that turned into you know oh yeah we should we should record an ep but then it's done but then it's over and then it's turned into two ep's and then an album and now we're working on a second album and we've been going will it be this november but it's been 10 years we've been doing it yeah so 10 years this november yeah yeah
00:08:55
Speaker
And what is it like from your side, like FMA, like seeing your son kind of go out there at 15 years old and performing in front of a crowd like that must inspire some something inside you? Well, I'll give you I'll let you in on a secret. You can have like a like
00:09:17
Speaker
I can't think of a word for it now, but exclusive, you can. I'll give you exclusive information. Go for it. Hit me. I was always like I used to be the metal band that 12 gauge mentioned called for my anger. There was another singer within that who always took the lead and he was always so much better than me at talking to the crowd and like doing everything. And it was just like it was like I was always like taken. I was always at the back. But the second I stepped up on stage with 12 gauge.
00:09:47
Speaker
By my side i had more strength and more confidence on that stage and i ever have before because if there's one thing a parent learns it's like you can't ever be weak in front of your children you have to. You have to be the strong one you have to show them how this world works.
Notrix's Musical Journey and Mental Health
00:10:02
Speaker
And so having Callum like 12 gauge, I keep calling him by his real name, having 12 gauge by my side was like my hack into the thing. And it allowed me to approach the audience in ways that I never would have done before. And now I'm cool without 12 gauge by my side. I'd still have that same confidence, but 12 gauge allowed me to learn to be the best version of me on the stage.
00:10:22
Speaker
because yeah that was just one thing if you get on the stage with someone who you want to impress and you're not going to let down and you want to show them the best you then there's no way that you're gonna fail so that's my little hack for everyone who wants to perform you need to find back one thing that will make you push no matter what
00:10:39
Speaker
Thank you. So, I guess just like following your sort of dialogue about how you picked up the rest of the neurodivergent crew, I guess, Dreadnought, would you like to tell us a little bit more about your story?
00:10:56
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I guess following on from the story from there, picking up, like you said, from the thread, I came in, it was after FMA and 12Gage had done the first two EPs, they basically wanted to redo these songs to a standard which they had like the vision of their own music and everything.
Message of Neurodiversity and Creativity
00:11:14
Speaker
And at the time I was producing, and I was a drummer actually originally, that was kind of my main goal at first music wise, it was drums more than anything else.
00:11:23
Speaker
You must have very good cardio then. Well, debatable. But yeah, it was that for a while. But I'd always come to Callum because we both went to the same college and showing beats and things I made. In my spare time, just when I go on my break, if I was on breaks and nobody else was on, I'd just go down and be a little hermit in the studio.
00:11:47
Speaker
and they were never like mind-blowing but Callum always kind of like poked me to go a bit further away and he was like you think you could see the potential and then I'd show him like these lyrics that I'd written for these beats being like yeah if you want them you can have them and of course like me not really understanding the pride of a rapper being like I get those lyrics but he was very much like you should give it a go
00:12:12
Speaker
me but I hit things like I hit things really fast and loud I don't know if I can do that but he kept he kept at me he kept me motivated and then some time passed him before I knew it yeah yeah yeah I did that was at college that though but I did go to uni for a bit after I did media at uni and then still spent most of the time in the music studio instead so I think it was that was the true call in there the whole time
00:12:38
Speaker
But yeah, next thing I know, me and Callum had started a band as well. We were both wearing masks on stage, shouting at people, thinking we were the hardest band since something really, really heavy, insert metaphor here. And we weren't, but we had the passion and the belief and that's what really carried it, I think.
00:12:59
Speaker
Um, yeah, yeah, yeah. Then I, uh, then I met FMA. He brought me, he was like, uh, you're going to meet my dad. And I was like, I'm going to meet your dad. Yeah, you're going to meet my dad. Okay. So I had like some prep for that. Um, and I knew it was about like music and stuff. I didn't know what specifically it was originally going to produce like one or two tracks for them before we know it as an album later. And here we are in the second album. So yeah, it was, it was a one heck of a journey.
00:13:25
Speaker
I really, on a separate note, I really like your hat. Thank you. It's very much my aesthetic. Yeah, I respect that. It seems like, have you ever heard of a band called Giant Bird?
00:13:39
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's very like, um, the whole like Zeph's, the whole people, but, but yeah, I love it. I love that kind of style. It had like some little rooms on it and stuff, but they were a bit too big. So I was like, that's
Notrix on DID and Dual Identity
00:13:54
Speaker
probably going a bit too far. Yeah. Jangling about. Yeah.
00:13:59
Speaker
Well, I guess it's a good opportunity to move on to Notrix. Would you like to give us a little bit of a lowdown on how you met the guys and what kind of music you make?
00:14:13
Speaker
Well, I don't even know where to start. I am a very fresh person in this whole music world because of my DAD, which made me basically live two lives in a short span of time, which is my life.
00:14:32
Speaker
And two years ago, I started making music as a producer and decided that I just cannot live any other way. And one year ago, I started the Notrix project, which was from the very start about not only
00:14:59
Speaker
music but also about mental health because that's the very reason that I'm here. If it weren't for my mental health I might have been one person instead of two and then maybe I wouldn't be doing music but because of the split in my mind
00:15:24
Speaker
this personality only does music and so I started one year ago and straight away I started sharing my story and everything that I could share about my mental health to make sure that I can
00:15:48
Speaker
motivate people to learn about things, to learn about themselves and not to make mistakes that I made in the past. And while I was expanding, I somehow ran into FMA and FMA plus 12 gauge Instagram account. And we kind of understood each other very well and started speaking about mental health and
00:16:18
Speaker
music and here we are. I'm their mix and mastering engineer and we are already
00:16:30
Speaker
doing lots of projects together, not only music, but also the visuals and everything. And then gradually with time, we realized that all four of us actually stand for something, not only music-wise, but also ideas-wise, we share the same ethics, we share the same idea,
00:16:54
Speaker
All of us believe that an artist's responsibility is not to just use the talents they have just to make money and hang out, but there's additional responsibility.
00:17:14
Speaker
to pass on something to the world, to speak up and to share something that matters. So all of us actually believe in that. And then we also realize that it's such a wild mix that all four of us have four absolutely different diagnoses, which makes us like a
00:17:40
Speaker
truly unique mix, really suitable for a superhero movie. So basically, when it started forming and we realized that together, we already
00:17:56
Speaker
doing more together. But like if we actually go on with our projects as a collective, that would mean a lot more and it will also help us build on onto our agenda and our mission. So here we are.
00:18:18
Speaker
Brilliant, thank you very much for that. So, I guess what I want to ask about, because we've kind of alluded that, you know, you guys are the neurodivergent crew, so you have different neurodiversities. I guess I want to know a bit more about each of your neurodiversities, and considering that we talked to Notrix,
00:18:40
Speaker
Last, I think it would be really interesting to pick up on the stuff around DID because it's not something that a lot of people are aware of. And I think that, you know, there's also a lot of stigma
Thomas Relates to DID
00:18:52
Speaker
around it. So it would be really good to sort of understand a little bit more about it.
00:18:59
Speaker
Well, where do I start? Well, basically, it all started in my adolescent age when I had a traumatic experience. My father died and I couldn't cope with it at all because my family did not really
00:19:29
Speaker
appreciate me displaying any motions. And I basically wasn't allowed to live through the things that I was experiencing. Anytime when I would mention that I might be depressed, I might need some assistance with that. And I was just, it was all brushed off and I was told that I'm making things up.
00:19:57
Speaker
And I couldn't understand what's going on, but I was gradually shoving all my emotions more and more into a separate place of my brain where I wouldn't have to live through them, I would just get rid of them.
00:20:15
Speaker
But that's not how it works. You cannot just throw stuff away out of your brain. It just doesn't work that way. Basically, it was then already where I already understood that something wrong is going on. And I started feeling that I'm not alone here. There's something going on all the time. Like, I would just...
00:20:37
Speaker
sometimes go from one part of brain into another, if that makes sense. And I could feel that there is absolutely two... I actually thought there was more, but at that point I felt that there's two people inside of me that don't share anything for like
00:21:02
Speaker
During the day, let's say, with the people I don't trust, I would be one person and I would be basically like they expected me to be and what they wanted me to be. But at night I would be another person and absolutely different. And because I was not allowed to be that person, that person was always there in the closet.
00:21:29
Speaker
And with time, at first it was possible to organize it in a way where the person in the closet was just hiding there, just coming back sometimes whenever it was allowed to.
00:21:47
Speaker
But then, two years ago, what happened, and it is where my music story began, this person just sprung up and couldn't be handled anymore. It's actually me. My other self is still there and now it's the reversal. Now she's trying to get back into the picture and
00:22:15
Speaker
What happened there is basically, well, I got diagnosed a year ago and this is when finally things started making sense because what happened two years ago was that when things started unraveling and at very fast speed and they couldn't be controlled anymore.
Societal Challenges with DID
00:22:39
Speaker
There were so many things that like really tragic things that happened where
00:22:51
Speaker
Relationships were broken. Lives were broken. So many things happened. I don't really share much about that because it's not my life. It's delightful. You don't need to. Thank you. No, it's the life of my other self. There were people involved who lost her.
00:23:13
Speaker
as a person, some of them actually admitted that that person died, even though she's still here, but I cannot allow her to get back into the picture because she lived her life for 10 years, not allowing me in. So now, we've agreed that this is my time, but
00:23:41
Speaker
Yeah, basically, there are there are two lives being lived within this body. And if, if years ago, this was this, the situation were handled the right way, if there were therapy, if I, my emotions were not disregarded, this wouldn't have happened. And
00:24:10
Speaker
Again, I cannot really open up on everything that happened because it's my other personality's life. As you can see, I'm wearing a mask and I don't disclose my name purely because I don't want anyone to know because she had a stellar career, a family, lots of friends, everyone who knew her.
00:24:41
Speaker
And all those people don't need to know what's happening to me right now. So basically, all this could have been prevented with therapy and which is why I feel the absolute need to share my story, to make sure that people know what that is like and to make sure that that doesn't happen to someone they know and they love.
00:25:11
Speaker
Well, thank you for being so open and sharing that with me and us. I have to admit, I had a period of my life, actually, where I was contemplating whether I had DID. I was going through this very crazy time when you reach adolescence as an autistic person.
00:25:38
Speaker
or as anyone really, it can be quite a hectic time, you don't really know what you feel about certain things, you don't know where to place yourself, you don't know who you are as an individual and you're trying to assert yourself as a new person. And one of the things that I always really struggled with is emotions and
00:25:59
Speaker
I found it very disassociating and almost existential, just how different I felt in different emotional states. Now that I'm an adult, I know that the things that I experienced were more along the lines of Alexia, the fact that I just couldn't actually put my finger on exactly how I was feeling, I just felt
00:26:23
Speaker
differently. So I was like, oh, I must be a different person. And so I did a little bit of research into it, but I know that there has been a lot of sort of stigma around it. And I can't imagine how that must feel for people such as yourself. I really appreciate you being open about this. And
00:26:46
Speaker
I mean, because the topic that we're talking about today is around neurodiversity and creativity, I don't know whether it's my place to ask how
00:27:01
Speaker
the ideas sort of influence your creativity or is that something that you feel
Creativity as a Coping Mechanism
00:27:05
Speaker
able to talk about? Oh, easy. It's actually, it's the very reason of my creativity. Because people ask me a lot, like, how do you find so much inspiration? Because I am just bursting with inspiration. I create things nonstop, like, all the time. I don't even have to look for anything.
00:27:25
Speaker
Why? Because all those years where I was stuck in that closet and I was just collecting all the negative material, the funny thing is that
00:27:39
Speaker
literally us too, exactly because of how the split happened and because of the particularities of why it happened. I was the one receiving all the negativity and I am the
00:27:57
Speaker
pessimistic one. She is optimistic. The change when there was a switch between us, the most recent one, everyone who knew her were astonished how
00:28:13
Speaker
Everything changed in an instant. There's an absolutely different person because I got all the dark and negative stuff Into me but that is the reason why I Could create so much and everything but everything I create comes from darkness I tried many times to create something positive because well, you know is just
00:28:39
Speaker
I actually want to be nice to the world. I want to do good things. So I thought, well, why don't I create some nice tunes for people to chill to? It doesn't work. I can only create from all the dark experience that I had over the whole of my life.
00:28:59
Speaker
And all of this baggage has been within me and now it's bursting. So also I kind of feel that we have assigned parts of the brain that are assigned only to us because that personality didn't even listen to music.
00:29:19
Speaker
She couldn't create anything at all. She didn't draw, she didn't take pictures, she didn't do like music, not even close to that. Whereas I think I'm, we also are ambidextrous, which means that, I'm sorry, that's my phone, I hope it doesn't bother you.
Thomas on Dark Trap Music
00:29:43
Speaker
Sounds like an ice cream truck. Yeah, that's a sound for my speech. It's basically that we're ambidextrous. I can ride with both hands. So she was a right handed person. I am like, I'm not left handed, but I can use
00:30:09
Speaker
both hands freely, probably because my part of the brain is the right side of it. So basically, I think this is also one of the things that apply to my creativity, but also the mental condition. Thank you very much. And I know that when we had our pre-chat, as I said,
00:30:38
Speaker
me and NoTricks had our pre-chat for the New Age of Urgent Crew together. And she sort of helped me get in contact and set things up and schedule things and get the questions out. Very much appreciated for that. But I know that the type of music that you create is dark trap. And dark trap is pretty much my number one listen to genre of music alongside light metal and rap, of course.
00:31:08
Speaker
So I was very pleasantly surprised about that and I definitely, you know, it's kind of crazy for me as a person because the way that I present through my personality and the things that I say, I come across as quite a sort of harmless kind of person, but I really love that kind of dark music and dark humor. And even when it comes to like combat spots and stuff,
00:31:38
Speaker
I find that I can get myself into a different zone. Whenever I went to a competition to do some Taekwondo, I was always very, very aggressive and very, very front foot and always pushing and pressure fighting and stuff. And it was very contrary to, I guess, how I am and what I put out there in the world.
00:32:06
Speaker
So I very much like that aspect of music, that sort of dark stuff. We really cannot wait for you to hear our track because that's exactly in that genre and all four of us participated in it and it's dropping on January 26th.
00:32:29
Speaker
Brilliant. Well, we can definitely put that out as part of the song of the day. Usually we do this at the end, but I kind of add different
00:32:39
Speaker
songs that people either identify with or feel something from or really want to share with the world. So that would be the top song that I'm going to put on there. And yeah, thank you very much for that matrix.
Dreadnought's ADHD and Musical Style
00:32:55
Speaker
I guess the next person I want to talk to is Dreadnought. And would you like to tell us a little bit about your neurodiversity and how that sort of influences your creativity?
00:33:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, as we mentioned before, ADHD. To be honest, I mean, I was creative long before I even thought about ADHD, to be honest. It was only a few years ago that I actually got my diagnosis. I mean, there were major obvious signs, which I was completely oblivious to. It tends to be that case. Yeah. I was just like, I didn't really click until later, until I started looking into it and putting everything together. And I was like,
00:33:36
Speaker
It was basically like a tick box when I was looking through symptoms and stuff. I was like, okay, I guess I should get this looked at by a professional. Was there any like ignition to you, to you doing that? Was there any reason why you started to look into it?
00:33:49
Speaker
Yeah. I actually looked into it and got my diagnosis. My mental health in general was kind of deteriorating quite a bit at that point. I was struggling with quite a lot of stuff. I was severely depressed, super anxious. And I wasn't myself, but I also kind of was aware of the person that I used to be. And I strived to be better. And there was that hunger. So I was like, I need to get to the bottom of who I am. And everyone had already
00:34:16
Speaker
I'd already heard years of jokes of ADHD boy. I was like, yeah, maybe, maybe not, who knows? But that was one of the first steps into it and then it was more, I didn't want it treated. I just wanted to kind of be able to understand myself better. Just know where you are in life and know what kind of things that you're going to need perhaps a bit better at and which areas you might need a bit of support with.
00:34:40
Speaker
Mm-hmm, exactly. When you understand, like in this case, when I understood ADHD better, I understood how it worked. I also was more open to speaking to other people with ADHD than like suddenly it was like, okay, I've got this, I can interact with these people and ask these questions, which relate to myself, which I otherwise might not have been able to like understand that I was actually on the same level as them, if that makes sense. So yeah, it was...
00:35:07
Speaker
It was an eye opener and it definitely set me on a much better path. I like to think I'm pretty mentally healthy right now. Everyone has the days where it doesn't feel like that and you feel like you're backtracked, but it's so much easier to get back on top of stuff. And I think having that understanding was a massive thing.
00:35:23
Speaker
And then I look back at all my music and I'm like, oh, yeah, actually, the signs were just right there. These signs are like 150 BPM songs and stuff like that. But then it's just the mad things that I was trying as well. And I just thought I was just just being a bit creative and I'd put it's like I've been trying to do like hard style metal and like just merging like jazz with like reggae. You just like all these mad combinations that I was just putting in. But then there'd be projects that were like a minute long. And I'll come back to that.
00:35:53
Speaker
And my desktop was flooded with hundreds of projects. Most of them were unfinished. The ones that were finished were, they were of different standards, but like they were ever growing. But the signs were always there, but that energy and that spontaneity, I think really, really helped from the production aspect. And it really helped me kind of find my own style along the way and try things that like,
00:36:20
Speaker
you know, I might not otherwise have come to my mind if I didn't have like these sporadic, like give you an example, like it's just a stupid idea. It's like a sampled and a cow in one of FMA and 12 Gage's songs. There was just a sample on the side on the list. I was like, you know what, it'd be really funny if I can work this in somehow. I put it through a thousand different plugins. It would sound like a cow at the end, but like things like that. It was a really cool sound by the end of it. And I was like, yeah,
00:36:47
Speaker
the thought process that maybe I wouldn't have gone down where it went for ADHD. I had a podcast that came out a little bit more recently. I'm always a bit tentative around giving time frame for stuff because the order in which I release things tend to be a bit like all over the place. Oh, do I want to release that one or this one? Or like, so sometimes they're not always like in order and
00:37:17
Speaker
I was talking to an autistic rapper called SD Flame, and he also has ADHD, and he was talking about the benefits and difficulties when it came to doing his rap music. He's very high tempo, and he's very, very quick when he's speaking, and he's very fast verbal.
00:37:42
Speaker
And so like a lot of the people who come up in the rap and then trying to sort of develop their skills, they're actually taught to go faster. Like they're taught to process things quicker and speak faster. Whereas for him, it was more about learning to like breathe and chill out and like, it's very cool. It kind of sounds a little bit like Eminem, which,
00:38:09
Speaker
really really really check him out after that's really funny that you say that though uh like looking back and like the early stuff i was just constantly like and that was like my natural like go-to it was like how many syllables kind of fit into this line to the point where on stage i was like i couldn't breathe through half my songs i'm not gonna lie turning into busta rhymes yeah yeah yeah
00:38:30
Speaker
It was very much the same kind of journey there actually and now I've just finished what I would say is my first official single after trying all sorts of different things. It's the first thing I'm really proud of and it's going to be all over and I tried the exact opposite. I tried some really slow flows and some other stuff and that's something that I wouldn't have been able to do at the start because like you say, it's
00:38:53
Speaker
The speed comes naturally with ADHD. I'm sure I can word from it all over for like hours if I wanted
FMA's Autism Diagnosis and Creativity
00:38:59
Speaker
to. So I have to stop myself now. Fortunately, I'm quite good at this being like, right. Okay. Let's bring it down. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I'm spot on. I never thought about that. It's really interesting that you mentioned that.
00:39:14
Speaker
Thank you very much for that dreadnought. So good. We're going to, I don't know, do you guys, do you, 12gauge and FMA, do you guys want to speak together? Like, do you want to kind of address different things or? Do I want to speak alongside my son? Whoa. Yes, yeah. No, we can talk different. Our stories are very different. So I'm cool doing it separately.
00:39:38
Speaker
Really? Well, do you want to go first? Do you want to tell me a little bit about how you discovered your neurodiversity and what kind of journey you've been on, how it affects your creativity?
00:39:49
Speaker
My journey is very very different to everyone else's because I'm 43 years old now and I wasn't diagnosed until I was 36. So my life was very troubled. So one of the things like with autism is you get obsessed about absolutely everything you find.
00:40:09
Speaker
You find a piece of music and you listen to five seconds of it over and over again, or you hear someone say a word and you use that word in every film that you've ever done. You find a film and then you watch that film until you know every word and you don't understand why no one else wants to watch that film with you, even though that's the only thing you ever talk about. Not knowing that I was autistic,
00:40:28
Speaker
As a kid, I had like a really good imagination, but then as soon as my teenage years hit, it felt like all these walls that were in my head fell down and they like protected me from the world, did these walls, it protected me from sights and sounds and all sorts of things because you got so much energy as a kid.
00:40:44
Speaker
And then you don't sit down in high school and learn and the information was just overwhelming And I didn't realize I was being overwhelmed. I didn't realize I was struggling. I didn't realize I couldn't talk to people And so one day when I found alcohol, I was like wow, this is like the greatest thing in the world Dislike eased everything and I was 14 years old when I found alcohol and then I very quickly
00:41:06
Speaker
almost drank myself to death and by the age of 21 I was in rehab and I was in rehab for a year and a half and I had Calum at the age of 19 so yeah so I was in rehab for a year and a half and then I came out of rehab and they kind of cured the alcoholism kind of I said kind of because I still I had a many relapses but every time I drank I wasn't
00:41:29
Speaker
yeah I wasn't drunk though like my body was drunk but my mind wasn't drunk that drunk feeling never ever came back like it's really really weird how they reprogrammed my brain but like I'm like a sponge for information as well so every day in rehab I was just like absorbing all this information and learning because in rehab you need to learn the rehab that I went to
00:41:51
Speaker
And rather than relying on the 12-step program or stuff like that, what the rehab did that I went to, they taught you how your brain worked. And because when you're an alcoholic or an addict, you tend to have a drink and you blame it on something small. And it's not that that happened. It's something that happened like five days ago that led to this snowball effect. And so in rehab, they teach you to follow the force back and discover where they're all coming from. So I spent a year and a half of like,
00:42:21
Speaker
learning that so I came out of rehab with all this knowledge and all this wisdom but I was a 20 like 23 year old and so all my social skills have been damaged from overdrink then all my social skills have been damaged on top of that from over rehab
00:42:36
Speaker
And I couldn't drink, I couldn't go out and drink. So I started to be very, very insular. And like, I found it really hard to talk to people talking to people would make me anxious. And like someone a girl would maybe say, Oh, it was nice to see you. And then I go home and I'd be like, did you mean it was nice to see me? Or is that what people say? And it was like, so confusing, you get these really simple sentences. And they would be so simple that they would cause you to break down like you don't understand, like,
00:43:02
Speaker
because people talk in such strange ways but like all that kept going on I'd get more addictions so I got addicted to painkillers got addicted to other drugs and all sorts of things it's like no matter what I did I couldn't stop the addictions and then at the age of 32 or something I went to uni to study
00:43:22
Speaker
And at university, I saw this on one of your posts on social media. You had a very similar experience that I had at uni. I tried to fit in. The alcohol is... It's it. Go on. Sorry, go on.
00:43:36
Speaker
Right. Well, at uni, no, I meant what you meant. You said you were very isolated from people at uni. And I had the exact same thing. I tried to fit in. Everyone was going out fresh as week. Everyone was going out drinking. Everyone was invited everywhere. And I wasn't invited any place, any time, ever. And it was like, there were people who spread rumours in class about me and things because I was always honest. And I assumed everyone else was always honest. So I like people. No, I was an alcoholic and I had addiction issues because I thought that's what you should do.
00:44:01
Speaker
but little did i know you're being honest and open you're not lying you you know you're putting stuff out there yeah i think it's it's it's really hard isn't it because if you don't have sort of an awareness of of autism because in a lot of people's mind even when we we hear stuff about autism you kind of always jump to these kind of very extreme stigmas of what you think it is and it's very hard to
00:44:30
Speaker
It's like a wall for you being able to identify yourself with that because it's so out there and you feel like it's a separate thing to you. And I think definitely one of the biggest contributors to me with my issues with alcohol was
00:44:50
Speaker
alexaphobia, you know, not being able to attach my my thoughts and experiences to my emotions. Yeah. And it's really interesting when you said about
00:45:01
Speaker
You know, something happened like five days ago, and then you're trying to manage it now by using the substances to kind of help with that. And that's kind of a lot to do with my experience of like having that separation.
Addiction, Society, and Mental Health
00:45:17
Speaker
It's like, right, I feel stressed. I only know that I feel bad.
00:45:21
Speaker
I don't know why I feel bad, but I just know I feel bad and there's no way to process that in any way because I don't know what the cause is. And I think that's a really, I think I like to find me in general, especially, you know, related to autism. It's very, very, it's not very understood. And I think it's, you know, it definitely has a really big impact on our ability to like regulate ourselves.
00:45:49
Speaker
And I know in general that the statistics around
00:45:54
Speaker
addiction and around alcohol are really, really, really tough. It doesn't help that alcohol is so glorified in the UK. I mean, it's insane. Just, you know, the amount of events that, as you said, during Freshers Week, the amount of events that go on, it's pretty much a haven for binge drinking. And, you know, something that people don't
00:46:20
Speaker
that I didn't see around university, nobody told me, is that there was actually a really hefty amount of deaths associated with binge drinking. And it's very hard hitting for me to come across that information, just be like, jeez.
00:46:40
Speaker
How is this still happening? How is this still a thing? Why is it such a part of our culture that we go out and consume this substance very readily? Our parents are like, hey, do you want some alcohol? Do you want a beer with this meal? Your friends are like, oh, I brought a bottle of vodka. Let's drink this.
00:47:03
Speaker
It's mad. And the effects of it are almost immediate. You have to withdraw all of you. It's the only drug that affects every single part of your body. When I'd gone into rehab, the backs of my legs, my calves, are cramped.
00:47:25
Speaker
Relax, it was really horrible was that. But yeah, alcohol is the only thing that affects like everything. It affects your brain, it affects your liver, your blood vessels, your heart. It is absolutely crazy.
00:47:39
Speaker
Yeah, but I know we're not talking specifically about alcohol. It's cool. I could talk about alcohol all day if you wanted to, Thomas. But yeah, so I was at uni and it turned really bad and then I had to take a year out to recover because I had the worst year of my life in 2013.
00:47:58
Speaker
And then I spent a whole year preparing and going back. And I just smashed it when I got back. And I got a first. I finished off in my class. I was on the radio, newspaper and everything. But then as soon as I finished uni, I had an IQ test around that time. A friend was studying to be a doctor.
00:48:17
Speaker
and they tested out the proper IQ test, a two-hour one, like the one with all sorts of things. And I enjoyed all of it, but my processing speed on it was really, really bad. And they said, like, when the results came back that I had strong signs of autism. So I went to a guy, a guy door, I went to someone, a doctor, and they diagnosed me with autism. And that moment was
00:48:39
Speaker
craziest moment ever because my processing speeds are so slow. Anyway, I'll get upset by something today, but I won't react to it for like another few days. That's like, but this thing was so big. This was like looking back on my entire life and everything was different. And like the only good example I have is like, it's a twist at the end of the film. Like you've watched this massive film and then suddenly they say, Oh no, but like it was this way and you're like, what?
00:49:05
Speaker
And that's exactly how I thought. And what's crazy is I went through all the stages of grief. There was denial, there was anger, there was sadness, there was like a loss. And like, yeah, but as soon as it like clicked, that's what was going on. And because one thing my autism gives me is this amazing ability to sense patterns and solve puzzles. And like, I see patterns everywhere. It makes songwriting and scriptwriting and anything creative really, really good.
00:49:33
Speaker
i feel the patterns when they're in place and so when i was looking back at my life it allowed me to see this pattern of creativity and every time i'd created something i was getting out the stuff that was in my head and i'd done it all my life and it was only at that point that i was like this is how i keep myself well this is how i stop drinking this is how i keep the addictions under control by keep making things and so from that point on it became like my mission to like
00:49:57
Speaker
Keep creating and tell people how important creativity is because it really does save lives It like keeps you well it allows you to get out all the subconscious thoughts It allows you to get out all the horrible thoughts over nasty things over horrible experiences it allows you to get them out in a really productive and safe manner and put take like literally take them pull them from yourself and put them somewhere else and
00:50:20
Speaker
But where my brain is, it constantly fills up with this stuff, all the sensory input and all the bad thoughts and things. So the creativity is a constant job, so it's like I'm forever grabbing bits of myself. It's like a bucket and you're trying to poke some holes into it to let the water come out. Exactly. When I got my diagnosis, that's what clicked and it was like, this is what my life is and this is what I should be doing in my life.
00:50:46
Speaker
My good friend Brian Bird, he does a lot of public speaking around the country. He's a very late diagnosed individual and he talks a lot about the experience of late diagnosis. It's kind of like
00:51:05
Speaker
You're basically challenging the whole identity that you've had for the majority of your life and the older that you are, the more like hard hitting it is. And it is kind of, in a sense, mourning, but it's also like
00:51:22
Speaker
sort of being born again. Like you've had a, you've had a new, you're having a new adolescence. You kind of looking back for your life and picking things out and going, you know, the stuff that you gave yourself a hard time, you pick it out and you're like, look a bit more closely in the lens of, in the lens of autism. I felt very sorry for myself. Suddenly the picture changed a little bit and it's, it's kind of like you see that event from a whole different new angle.
00:51:51
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, like I felt very sorry for the younger me for one who didn't have a clue what was going on because it was I just I don't wish but if there was someone there to just Help and just say oh, this is how things should be Which is kind of like what happened with me and 12 gauge like when Callum came to live with me It was like that's what I did it. I was like I
00:52:12
Speaker
I did what should have been done with me with 12 cage because I just needed someone to pick me up and hold me tight and say right that's not how things work this is how you should do it and this is why you should do it and that's what happens when you don't do it like that because people just give instructions don't be like I don't drink too much you'll die and like okay I'm not
00:52:33
Speaker
I'm doing what I want and you'll drink as much as you want. They don't give you the detail, do they? They don't say, right, this is what happens in your brain and these chemicals go up. It's like what the doctors do. It's like when they tell
00:52:49
Speaker
You know people who are becoming very very overweight and obese they tell them like you need to lose weight It's like why? Yeah, well, what's that gonna do? How am I supposed to do it? They just kind of give you this list of things that you're supposed to do when you They're all very very complex things and they have lots of different aspects to them that you kind of have to work through and try out and
00:53:13
Speaker
Um, they just don't communicate that in a way that, that, that people take it seriously. Cause it's like, Oh yeah. The doctors. Yeah. Exercise. Yeah. Eat well, sleep well. Like, of course. Um, yeah, I know it's yeah. No, it's just mad. It's just a mad world that we're living in.
00:53:32
Speaker
just a mad society as well but yeah that's that's basically my story and that's why I create it's like it keeps me well and it keeps me it's important and it keeps me happy more than anything else
00:53:46
Speaker
Thank you very much for
12Gage's Dyslexia and Self-Identity
00:53:47
Speaker
that. And 12 gauges have been sitting very quietly in the background waiting for the time to... Yeah, best till last and all that. Go for it, mate. Tell us about your story. Yeah, so kind of...
00:54:05
Speaker
I wasn't really diagnosed like I'm dyslexic. And I found that out after the first year of college. So I'd gone through exams, I've gone through all that stress. And then after that, you do like, what is it? It's like a standardized
00:54:27
Speaker
um, learning difficulty test or something like that. It's like just a standardized test. You do it every beginning of the year to see if you've got learning difficulties. And they were like, I finished it and probably around five minutes, it was meant to take like 15. And I was just like, yeah, that, that this one, this one done. And, um, then the, the, the teacher comes around and then they're like, all right, Callum, um, you're going to have to take that again.
00:54:57
Speaker
And I'm like, all right, why? And then they stay with me the entire time. And this time I proper go through it. And then they're like, I'm like, all right, yeah, so I scored like an 80. Is that good? And then they're like, no, it means that you probably have some learning difficulties. And then I went into college and they gave me a proper thing and I found out I was dyslexic. And
00:55:23
Speaker
weirdly it was like how I see it is like a very micro miniature version of how FMA said because I hated school I always hated school and education all that stuff I just despised it and when I look it's very visual isn't oh yeah especially like a school with the blackboards and the blackboards and stuff
00:55:46
Speaker
Oh yeah, well it's like when I look back on it because what this lecture has done to me is that if you give me a set of instructions right now
00:55:55
Speaker
my brain will manage to flip them by the time you've I'd like it comes for me to do it so if you gave me like the instructions to get to the shop and I was like okay so it's it's a left then a right I will go right and then left and then get completely lost and um that's it's like like having a mirror yeah a mirror in your brain like yeah pretty much and that
00:56:20
Speaker
Kind of was my experience of school so I was in like bomb set for everything with all like the bad kids and you know the people with undiagnosed learning difficulties and the diagnosed learning difficulties and People just thought I was stupid to be honest and like I said before I had like major confidence issues. So that didn't help Pretty much I was in it. He can be very destructive kind because oh, yeah, I
00:56:48
Speaker
It is, you know, school, as you said, the sets, they kind of divide you into different learning groups and you automatically, you know, assign people as smarter when they're higher up in the sets. But when you have a learning difficulty, it kind of puts a little bit of a block between you and the information that comes in. One of my family members,
00:57:18
Speaker
very very very smart individual has a lot potential was really really crushed by their experience with being dyslexic they took it like as a very very personal thing it's like i don't have dyslexia it's not it's not something that
00:57:36
Speaker
It requires a lot of attention. It's just that I'm stupid and I can't do this and I can't do that. And the thing is, is that they are actually very, very intelligent, very, very good at socializing, very, very talented, I would say.
00:57:51
Speaker
And it's kind of that experience of them at school really, really made sort of the confidence levels very, very, very low. Oh, yeah. It ends up like for me, it became.
00:58:07
Speaker
because alongside that I was bullied and I had like a really abusive step-parent when I was a kid and it just kept mounting was like all of this stuff where it was literally beating me down at an incredibly formative point in my life, I'd say. And it led to me viewing the world in an extremely dangerous way.
00:58:34
Speaker
So I became, because the nuts fingers is like, I completely, well, FMA is my dad, so I relate to him.
00:58:45
Speaker
in a weird way. Not even in a weird way, it's my dad, what am I saying? Of course, of course, he's my relation. But when I first on TV, when I saw people have relationships, like having a girlfriend and having alcohol and having these things that instantly made those characters happy, just instant,
00:59:15
Speaker
like there was no sort of build-up, there wasn't any self-improvement, there wasn't looking into yourself. It was, I have a beer, I'm good now. And I became incredibly obsessed with a ton of things at an age that I shouldn't have been obsessed with them.
00:59:32
Speaker
at all. So it's like, I have vivid memories of being like really young and putting my mum's wine in like a Ribena bottle and going into primary school with that and stuff like that. Not enough that I'd be drunk, but in my head it was like, that's the thing that makes me feel good. And these things kept developing and I kept like,
00:59:56
Speaker
through the way that school kind of isolates you when you have learning difficulties of just keeping you kind of in the bottom set and just keeping you away from like all these other kids and you're in probably the class with a lot of people who have issues.
01:00:12
Speaker
and who maybe aren't the nicest people through no fault of their own. But you're in those classes and it just kept reinforcing this behavior until the point when I had to literally my mum said that I couldn't live with her anymore.
01:00:28
Speaker
and I needed to go and live with FMA and that was where music started but the only thing that was the connective throughout all of that was rap and writing lyrics and that was like the only thing I became like hyper obsessed with that like listening to like... Why do you think you gravitated towards rap music? Like why not sort of mainstream puff? Why not metal? Why not reggae?
01:00:58
Speaker
I think what it genuinely was looking back on it was metal was angry and I've always liked metal but rap there were like two major things one there was the confidence of it and the confidence that they were talking about all of these like systemic racist
01:01:20
Speaker
Messed up lives that they had lived and they were now In a position where they were telling you that they are the best thing on the planet They are that confident and they've gone through. Yeah so much crap and Pretty much the next thing that I just really liked about it was I think it a point in my life where I felt extremely lonely and
01:01:46
Speaker
and isolated in school and by a supposed friend group that I had at that time where I was the punching bag of that friend group. I relate. It's also weird, isn't it? Because you don't clock onto it until you look back at it. When you're a kid, it's like, oh yeah, these are my friends. These are who I go and hang around at lunch.
01:02:13
Speaker
And then when you look... It's like you don't have the ability to be serious about anything. Like, to take anything personally, because you're just like, oh, well, this must be what life is like. And, you know, there's nothing wrong with this because this is all I know. Yeah, yeah. And you just kind of eventually, like, looking back, I think you just clock on to the fact of, no,
01:02:35
Speaker
those weren't jokes you were all pointedly joking at me you weren't making jokes with me they were at me and yeah so that was like the friend group and stuff so when i listened to rap
01:02:50
Speaker
and it were these people just being hyperconfident and then I'd hear a punchline. And I'd understand that punchline. I felt like the cleverest person on the planet. And while I was at school and they were like, bottom set, you can't do division or long form multiplication or any of this stuff. And then I was like, yeah, but I understood the line that DMX just said.
01:03:16
Speaker
Did you? It turned into this whole thing where I genuinely saw when I look back on it, I genuinely think that those were my friends. I had rappers who would tell me about their lives and would give me these stories and these positive stories of why not to go to jail and what to do in these situations and stuff.
01:03:43
Speaker
I just loved it and it became, as a kid, it became almost a thing because that same friendship group, when I mentioned I wanted to rap or be a rapper, they were immediately like, oh, you can't do that. You just can't. One thing that they liked to do was in classes, they would give me random words to rhyme until I couldn't rhyme a word.
01:04:10
Speaker
and then they would proceed to then, you know, have a massive thing at me about, see, this is why you can't be a rapper, you need to rhyme words all the time. So it's literally like, you rhyme and rhyme and rhyme, and you do all these, like, you're literally doing what they asked you to do, but as soon as it comes to a point, like, they just keep going and going. And then of course, at some point, you're gonna
01:04:33
Speaker
like anyone's gonna have this like difficulties doing that yeah and it kept repeating but that gave me the kind of chip on my shoulder i think i needed to pursue rap like not all of the other horrible things that like my brain became obsessed with but to pursue rap i think that really helped because it literally made rap my only focus
01:05:00
Speaker
writing was my only focus. I didn't like school. My friends weren't really friends. The only thing I had was listening to rap and writing rap, and that was it. Then with that same energy, when I came to live with Dad, who'd already been in a band, who'd played me rap before, and who I knew had done all these things I wanted to do, it was like having personal access to Eminem. I just went absolutely ballistic. It was like every day.
01:05:30
Speaker
and yeah and like dad said he he managed to get me at a point in my life where he was able to make me view the world in
01:05:43
Speaker
the correct way, because I think when you have an addictive personality and problems with addiction, anything can become obsessive, absolutely anything. And that could be from, you know, drinking to exercise to absolutely anything. And I've become obsessed with... It's interesting that you mentioned exercise, because I was terribly addicted to it.
01:06:13
Speaker
literally every night I would go out in like the freezing cold winter with like a t-shirt on and just run for like hours and hours in the dark like my mum used to get really really worried about me but it was
01:06:28
Speaker
Yeah, it was crazy. Yeah, I I really struggled at that time with like my sleep and stuff I didn't really know how to deal with it. So the way that I Sort of got rid any time I felt any level of anxiety alertness and even like that I would just drop down and do like push-ups until I couldn't do them yeah, and then I'd get up and I do sit-ups and then couldn't do them and then I do squats and It really did get good to a point because
01:06:58
Speaker
I had I had some issues when I started to do Taekwondo because there's a lot of stuff around like weight classes and stuff. Yeah. And there's a big issue because my appetite wasn't very good at the time. So I was constantly exercising, constantly like breaking down my body and not giving it time to recover. And then on top of that, I wasn't eating. So it was like,
01:07:25
Speaker
Yeah, it was definitely definitely looking back on it. Yeah a lot more akin to an exercise addiction than Like pure passion. I was I was kind of I was I was weird back then I was like in my own little headspace about honestly, I'm watching anime and I was like, I'm gonna be a super hero I like you see one punch man doing like a hundred push-ups and I said, yeah, I'm gonna do that honestly, I found it so weird like that you say that cuz I I Would kind of say a slam
01:07:56
Speaker
there are like I think when there's certain times like informative years where you can experience things and it pushes you to focus on something so it's like I had an abusive stepdad dad and was bullied and stuff like that and as a kid that makes you feel powerless
01:08:19
Speaker
And when you look on media and you see like huge guys and they're powerful and you're like, yeah, that's it.
Media's Influence on Self-Perception
01:08:26
Speaker
That's, that's like how I feel agency and how I feel strong. And I genuinely, I'd like the same thing. Like I remember during COVID.
01:08:36
Speaker
was possibly the worst point for that was when I decided during COVID, because there's nothing else to do, I'm going to get ripped, I'm going to get huge, I'm going to come out of COVID and I'm going to be a tank. And like, I'm thin, I'll admit it now, but like I am thin and I probably will not. I used to do the same. People used to take the mic off me because every time that they poked like my arm or something, I'd like tense, but they knew that I was tensing.
01:09:06
Speaker
I was so skinny back then, but looking back I'm like, oh my god. Oh, that was cringe. But yeah, it becomes this thing where to me at that time it was like, yeah, I'm going to get out of COVID. I'm going to be a tank. This new reality. Yeah. And what I remember is that I also understood nothing of nutrition.
01:09:26
Speaker
This was where I first went wrong in the grand scheme of becoming a tank. I knew nothing about how to fuel myself or how to correctly rest or how my body would recover. So it was literally, I think it was five days a week, I would go on a walk in the morning, I would come back and I'd do this like mental pushup, weight lift thing. And I would pretty much eat six eggs.
01:09:53
Speaker
drunk free protein shakes before every meal. And then this inevitably happened where I had a kidney storm that developed into a kidney infection. And that was like the worst wake up call I could have had because instantly in that moment I was like, this is so severe, this pain. It was like the first time I couldn't sleep through pain.
01:10:19
Speaker
and it it was that proper thing but it properly taught me at that point that like everyone is different like my body will not look like someone else's body but it's mine and it functions in its own way and i've got to understand that and yeah it's i just find it mad the amount of things that you can become obsessed and addicted to
01:10:41
Speaker
because it could even become like TV. Well, yeah, everyone's addicted to TV, but like, you know, you can get addicted to media or some form of like, like one really odd thing is that my grandma is addicted to chocolate and only chocolate. That is it. It's not like, you know, binge eating sugar or sugary things. It's just chocolate.
01:11:04
Speaker
And that's what I found like so kind of interesting and mad. And I'm really glad that I came to live with my dad and he taught me how that actually functions because I know that if I didn't have that, the amount of things I would be struggling with now would be immense. I would just be, you know, fixating on anything that would make me feel different. So, yeah. Well, thank you very much for that. It was cool.
01:11:35
Speaker
I wanted to ask one more question because, you know, might be a little bit of the elephant in the room, but autism tends to be very genetic. Do you think that you're autistic as well? Well, I think the whole group is autistic to a point.
01:11:57
Speaker
Definitely on some form of the spectrum as well, I think. That was a good question. I think I am. So it's usually the opposite way around. It's like when I got diagnosed, I was like, hmm.
01:12:16
Speaker
My dad seems a bit similar to me. Seems to have the same sort of issues as me. And then I talk to other people and I'm like, oh yeah, my dad's the same. Oh, he doesn't want to know anything about it. Whereas you guys, it's like, go for it. Sorry, I'm speaking over you. Yeah, well, I don't know. I find it, this is the honest thing with it, is I think I could very well possibly be
01:12:46
Speaker
That was a very roundabout way of saying yes. But yeah, I do hyperfixate. I do become overwhelmed, especially with information. I can get very overwhelmed with that. The thing is, is that I know how my brain works. And that's the thing. I know that in the back of my mind, I know that
01:13:15
Speaker
That diagnosis would explain a lot, but I also know that my brain could use that as an excuse. So if there was something I didn't want to do or I was, you know, feeling too tired to do and like, I could just be like, oh, I'm just, you know, today. And that's kind of the thing, I think.
01:13:38
Speaker
For me, at least. I think everyone, if they feel like they need it, should have a diagnosis and stuff like that. But I also kind of just think it's me as well. Yeah. I completely get that. I think it's...
01:13:58
Speaker
I mean, obviously, it's not always as clear as that. You know, my... It'd probably give me a good tone off if I said this, but I'm pretty sure my dad's autistic and he kind of, over the years, he's sort of warmed up to the idea. But then again, my brother, he's not. So it's not always the case that it kind of passes down and...
01:14:27
Speaker
I would definitely look into it because I know that there was this documentary that I made as part of my final year at university.
Genetic Influence of Autism?
01:14:42
Speaker
I did biomedical sciences and I looked into the link between autism and mental health because there wasn't really much
01:14:49
Speaker
out there at the time although there was the statistics out there but there wasn't actually any media being made about it even though it's just like glaringly horrible and depressing to look at like the stats on it.
01:15:04
Speaker
And I made this documentary and one of the people that I interviewed was a man called Peter Bainbridge, who ran this like... Don't know how to describe it, it was kind of like a mediating service. He's autistic himself, he was late diagnosed.
01:15:21
Speaker
he goes about and he tries to mediate between autistic people and the family members or the law or things related to housing and landlords. And one of the things that he said is that a lot of people, especially for people in their early 20s or mid-20s, you kind of go through life. You're kind of focusing on other things.
01:15:50
Speaker
And at some point, you know, that an issue will come up, which is related to like autism, like, you know, something that you can't fix, you know, you might perhaps gone through your entire life repeating the same kind of routine, just being very happy going about and doing stuff. And then suddenly something just jumps in and you're like, Oh, I don't know how to process this. And he says that that's quite a,
01:16:19
Speaker
It's quite a common thing to happen, and it sometimes ends quite badly for the the individuals who really haven't looked into it. I'm not saying I'm more speaking to the audience, giving my story. I'm not saying to you, like, go and get yourself an autism diagnosis. Yeah, I just think that I'm kind of blessed to have supportive people around me who understand mental health and other. There are a lot of people out there who don't have that.
01:16:49
Speaker
And I know that if I didn't have that, I would definitely be searching out a diagnosis if I like really required it. So I do encourage everyone. I'm sorry if that was at all misconstruited as me talking down to you. I didn't mean to do it like that.
01:17:10
Speaker
Okay. Don't have to apologize. His granddad's definitely autistic though, even though he doesn't have a diagnosis. My dad is unbelievably autistic. And the worst bit is that me, my mum and my little brother have a sneaking suspicion that my granddad on my mum's side of the family is also autistic. He turned around and said like the funniest thing and that this is fine, he hates computers, he will never listen. But he said the funniest thing to me where like,
01:17:38
Speaker
Like, he just walked into the room and just sat on the light sofa and me and my mama sat there and then he's like, he's like, oh, yeah, I've been hearing about this new autism thing. Yeah. And like, you don't like, you don't like loud noises. And like, people keep saying that I might be able, I'm definitely not. But you know, when they play music in Tesco, I hate it. And he just like, I was like, all right. And he just like picked up his paper and just kept reading. Yeah.
01:18:09
Speaker
It's funny, isn't it? It's that whole thing of not being able to identify with the label because of the stigma, the wall of stigma that's in the way. And I find that particularly for my granddad, absolutely no chance in hell that I'm ever going to convince him at all that he might be on the spectrum. And it would probably help him a lot and help him process a lot that's gone on in his life.
01:18:38
Speaker
Yeah, well, thank you for telling me, you all, you all telling me about your stories.
Creativity's Role in Mental Health Management
01:18:47
Speaker
I never aspects that I really want to talk about is, I guess, it gets more related to like mental health, because I know that FMA was talking about sort of how created, how,
01:19:06
Speaker
the creative side of himself was used to sort of process things and to have an outlet for negative emotions and experiences. And I really feel that like it's something for me that, you know, through my work, through my podcasting, through my writing, creativity has always been a really, really big part of me even going back to the times when I was
01:19:34
Speaker
in an early teenage age I'd be writing this really crazy depressive poetry about like all sorts of really dark stuff and I always had that kind of outlet and I think for me definitely I mean there was a point in my life where I mean to be honest Episcence I was about 14 whereas trying to understand myself and I was trying to
01:20:02
Speaker
process what was going on with me. The only real outlet that I had was, you know, the poetry and listening to music and there wasn't really any way that I could verbalize exactly how I was feeling because I didn't understand all of the aspects of autism and, you know, particularly the stuff around Alexophilia. But to stop myself from rambling,
01:20:28
Speaker
No tricks. Would you be able to talk a little bit about some of the benefits that have come from getting involved with music?
01:20:41
Speaker
Well, I can finally say exactly what I feel. And yes, it does involve my mask on. I'm a very open person, but with regards to some really, really dark things within me, like the really bad thoughts, I'm
01:21:10
Speaker
used to not opening up on those things. And with music, I started being much, much more open. And all my songs are basically like every single song that I ever made.
01:21:30
Speaker
was inspired by some event that made me very emotional and very unhappy. And I just wrote a song about it. Basically, the whole music project was around that. I was just like you, writing poetry first. And then I also realized that... My mom was the same. My mom was the same.
01:21:57
Speaker
She's yet to show me this very depressing poetry, but I'm waiting for it. Yeah, well, depressing poetry, then I realized that I actually want to sing that poetry, then I realized that there is no one really there to help me and make music for it, so I'm going to do it myself. So I went to school to
01:22:18
Speaker
study music production and there
Notrix's DID and Creative Expression
01:22:21
Speaker
we are. But it's always about those verses, it's always about getting those things out there. And I just recently released my first EP which has five songs and all of those five songs are
01:22:39
Speaker
based on five different emotions and events that I went through over the course of last year. And this is also something
01:22:53
Speaker
that brings my audience to me and makes people relate to what I do. But yeah, I think without that, I might have still been struggling with getting the thoughts out of my head and living through that because again, there was this a lot of
01:23:24
Speaker
forbidden feelings, like feelings that I'm not allowed to do those things. And also thanks to the project, I also prove to myself and others that I exist, which is, again, as you mentioned with DAD, one of the things that appears quite often is that people with DAD feel like
01:23:51
Speaker
that thing doesn't even exist because of the society how the society views it but even worse the people with the idea already feel that they don't exist so they don't have to have a society to tell them that because it's always like oh maybe I'm actually that person maybe like everyone wants me to be that person maybe I actually am maybe I'm not myself maybe I'm I'm her
01:24:17
Speaker
And that's where it's the most frustrating. And I actually wrote a song about that too. And it's like one of the most dramatic things I've ever written. It's really painful to struggle to understand who you are and whether you exist. And again, thanks to that, thanks to
01:24:44
Speaker
my music project, I find people who are like me, I can think those things through. So yeah, this is how creativity basically helped me with my mental health issues. I think it's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's quite a good, if I try and make a little bit of a comparison, I mean,
01:25:13
Speaker
In the past, there was a lot of mystery around autism. The basis of what people understood about it was through movies like Rain Man. That was kind of people's perception of what autism is. As the world has sort of progressed and people, autistic adults and advocates and allies have got online to
01:25:39
Speaker
to talk about it and sort of, I guess, address the stigma and sort of give the reality of living on the spectrum. People start to, I guess, take it a bit more seriously. You can definitely see a contrast between
01:26:03
Speaker
people nowadays that you talk to who use like social media and who actively you know go on and search things and watch content on youtube and you know there's a lot more opportunities for them to really be exposed to um neurodiversity i guess things related to autism and even though it is well it's debatable but even though we are a portion
01:26:32
Speaker
a minority of the population because of social media we can all congregate in this massive online circle which is very big you know if you take the world's population to be conservative based on the stats two percent is probably more than that two percent of what is it like seven eight billion there's still quite a lot of people and i guess you know one of the one of the issues that might be
01:27:03
Speaker
A problem for me talking to perhaps the older generation like my grandparents about it is that they just have no idea how to relate at all. They don't have any comprehension. I can imagine that considering the rates of DID and also the stigma around it,
01:27:24
Speaker
it's going to be very, very, very difficult to be able to be open about it, be able to genuinely tell people about it without, I guess, receiving the judgment, I guess. Do you think that would be a good comparison, or is that
01:27:46
Speaker
Well, first thing I did when starting this project was just to actually cut off myself from everyone in my life who was from her life, from the past life, because I know that those people would not understand at all because of how different we are.
01:28:11
Speaker
So all her best friends, all her very close people, they would not understand a thing of what's going on. And I just realized that it's...
01:28:29
Speaker
is just, if it's impossible to explain. Although, again, admittedly, there were people who understood that something has happened, but when I approached them with a diagnosis, some of them, and that was also quite a pain, they were saying that, no, you need to search for another doctor, which I did, by the way, I actually had two doctors diagnose me just, you know, to be sure.
01:28:56
Speaker
And yeah, so I just realized that I need to be around people who actually are willing to understand neurodiversity, at least for the time being before it becomes not mainstream, but like something that the
01:29:18
Speaker
the world understands because right now it is growing. Yeah, it is growing. Exactly. And so, yeah, I don't, I'm not thinking about it yet. I know that for now with my audience as is, I can already see that there are so many people who appreciate what I do and they appreciate what I'm sharing with the world and they actually understand it. I don't know whether it's the
01:29:49
Speaker
like the way I'm explaining it, that is more not relatable, but like people tend to understand what I'm trying to explain. Or is it the people, because my audience is like pretty niche because of the genre, but somehow those things came together. And I don't think like over the year that since I started,
01:30:15
Speaker
I would have only one or two people who wouldn't believe me and even then I provided arguments. I have quite a few things that can make anyone just stop and listen because
01:30:33
Speaker
I can even, like, if I give a picture, there were people, well, I don't share my face too much, but like, if I do it in a safe way, like, there you go. Look, is that the same person? And my other self actually doesn't look like me.
01:30:50
Speaker
which is crazy, but it's been proven by scientists that some people with DID might develop biologically, physically different appearances, which is crazy. But yeah, we don't share
01:31:13
Speaker
too much a side of our history, our parents, our like background, but otherwise we're very different. And so I can easily prove to people who don't trust me, but luckily there's
01:31:29
Speaker
very many people who do trust me who understand that such things can happen in this mad world. And there is a reason why that happens. So somehow, so far, I've been very lucky that I don't have to go out of my own way to
01:31:52
Speaker
um prove myself but still yeah i am i'm getting ready for for those things to happen one day and i don't know maybe two of diagnosis could help yeah i think it's it's it's crazy just like so i was talking about like the rain man film around autism and stuff and
01:32:15
Speaker
You know, there is a lot of movies and a lot of films out there which hinge upon the idea of split personalities and multiple personalities. In my head that sounds very similar to the effects that Rain Man's had on
01:32:34
Speaker
society like i think there was a film what called split about the i can't remember his name the bald-headed dude who goes crazy and is a personality where he like crawls on the walls and stuff like do you think that the bat that kind of sort of sensationalized media is is kind of harmful to i guess i guess individuals like yourself
01:33:02
Speaker
I did think about that. I'm not sure. It depends on how narrow you look at the movie. If you look at the movie and say, oh, if that's how it happens, then it's happening all the way through. Although what I liked about this movie is that it portrays the people with
01:33:21
Speaker
DID as very unique systems. This is what it is. There's very unique systems. If you can have two people inside one head, and it's already something different to what you see,
01:33:38
Speaker
From other people right so how many actually different mixes of different people could there be So it's like okay in one in one system there might be evil Personalities and another system there might be all harmful personalities in my system it
01:33:59
Speaker
The one thing that kind of makes us similar is that there are like two very hard working individuals. This is I think something that we relate on and that's probably genetic so we're very energetic and hard working.
01:34:16
Speaker
Well, I don't know just just that and so which is why we're I think we're pretty adequate and we can actually communicate with each other as opposed to other systems where where there's like absolute chaos and people Those personalities within the one hand cannot agree with each other but yeah, I I
01:34:36
Speaker
I actually did like the concept, like how they explained it, that those changes in one's brain can be very unique and that those changes can actually be even physical, which is true. This is what I have seen in
01:34:57
Speaker
We even have different weight, for instance. My balanced weight, I don't change from my weight now. And she was struggling with her weight, which is 10 kilos more, and she couldn't lose weight ever. I didn't even have to. I didn't do anything. It just disappeared.
01:35:15
Speaker
Um, she, she, uh, was binge eating all the time when she was stressed. When I'm stressed, I don't eat at all. I just, I hate food. Like that's how bad it is. And this is, this is like different, uh, hormonal systems, different, um, uh, physical like biorhythms and, and stuff is, uh,
01:35:41
Speaker
This is how crazy the differences are. Thank you very much for that. It's really interesting to me. I'm always very keen and very interested in learning about different
01:36:00
Speaker
you know, brains and their experiences. And I'm always, you know, I'm always very, I guess I just want to say that I appreciate you sort of telling me about it. Thank you very much for that, NoTricks.
Tragedy, Therapy, and Musical Healing
01:36:19
Speaker
Dreadnought's also been sitting by very quietly, patiently waiting.
01:36:27
Speaker
I guess I want to know a little bit more about your experiences with mental health and how creativity has had a positive influence on your life. Yeah. I mean, when it comes to my mental health, it's
01:36:47
Speaker
There's one particular moment, I wasn't sure if I was going to speak about it or not, to be honest, because it's not really something I've spoken much about, but everyone's been very open and honest, and it has made me comfortable enough to speak about this one particular point. There was an event that happened. Unfortunately, I lost my best friend at the time when I was in, so it's just going to second year of uni. No, it's OK. It's OK. It's the past. It's something I've learned and I've accepted now. It's an unfortunate reality.
01:37:17
Speaker
I went through a lot of therapy through it, and it's something that I've accepted now. When I think back on it, it's still quite painful, but there's a lot of love there. But I remember very much at the time, there was a lot of darkness within me. There was a lot of recklessness as well. It was unfortunately, it was drug-related.
01:37:38
Speaker
And weirdly enough, I went down a spiral not long after that where I was cramming all sorts of things down my throat, up my nose. I was in a very, very unhealthy situation and I had a lot of
01:37:50
Speaker
like toxicity within me, a lot of like hatred for what had happened. And I felt like I wanted to like, I just hated the world. I didn't care for myself or anything around me really. I didn't really have a lot of respect for myself either. And that anger kind of
01:38:09
Speaker
weirdly enough was the formation of when I really started to dig into these darker roots of dread and all these really tough topics. But before that, I was trying all sorts of different things.
01:38:22
Speaker
And these different emotions, they weren't resonating with my music the way I wanted, but this like rage and anger and stuff, like it felt good and it was one of the few things that like made me feel good without having to. I guess it kind of comes similar into like FMA's story as well. It was like one of the few things that felt good.
01:38:44
Speaker
Like, and it felt like I was being productive from it. I wasn't just burning all my money on things that would make me forget the night anyway. I wasn't. Yeah. Yeah. Very much so. Um, and it started with the, I think that.
01:39:01
Speaker
made a real foundation. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all my music is going to be pure venom and anger and pouring it out. I'm always trying different things and trying to work it. But that gave me a real foundation to be like, there's something tapped here that I've tapped into. I can tap into my emotions and use it
01:39:21
Speaker
productively. Fortunately, a lot of therapy along the way really helped with that as well. And it helped, you know, my therapist at the time, she really helped me funnel me into that direction of, okay, this is something that you're doing that is productive and healthy. It's not something that is, you know, extremely destructive. And don't get me wrong, like there were times where I thought I've got over it and I hadn't and, you know, fell back into similar patterns. And
01:39:47
Speaker
But every time one of the major things that pulled me out of that and pulled me back to a reality, back to the wanting to grow and be a better person and wanting to put these emotions out in a healthy manner.
01:40:00
Speaker
It was music. It was always the thing that would pull me back. There would be days where I'd be miserable, I'd be so depressed, but I'd pull myself up to open my laptop. I wouldn't even necessarily tell them to record anything. I'd just play about on the piano and I'd literally sit.
01:40:19
Speaker
bloody Phantom of the Opera, you know, moody in my room, headphones on, just playing like different organ settings and like these massive reverb pianos and just expression, expressing. I couldn't really play that well at time either. I could only really play minor keys. So it was very dark and moody. But from that, you know, it was dirty roots that started growing into something much more, you know,
01:40:46
Speaker
beautiful poetic, I guess, of your world. Not to, not to like flaunt it, like, you know, I don't want to draw the, you know, the stigma there of like, you know, like people think.
01:41:00
Speaker
these really genuinely serious like mental health problems can be romanticized for the sake of you know yeah yeah it's kind of like the gothic angle um yeah yeah it's it's weird you say that because i i definitely did for a long time like yeah yeah same same it's almost like because i i it tends to be with my mental health is
01:41:24
Speaker
I tend to sit anywhere between mild and moderate in terms of anxiety and depression, like most of the time.
Managing Mental Health and Growth
01:41:34
Speaker
But there does tend to be either anywhere between one and three periods throughout the year where my serotonin just absolutely drops and goes. And I think... I do understand that.
01:41:49
Speaker
Yeah, and I think just going through those cycles constantly since the age of about 14, it's been nearly a decade now, which is crazy to say. It was like 11 years. I think my mentality has very much changed because I always wanted to cure myself.
01:42:10
Speaker
I just wanted to get rid of it. And really the mentality was to manage it and to put things in place when I'm in the severe period and to feel okay and doing less and being less productive and doing different things and being like, hey,
01:42:29
Speaker
is actually productive to manage this in the best way possible so I can get back to me again. I don't have to do everything and full steam ahead like I was when my mental health was a bit better.
01:42:42
Speaker
And there was also an aspect of, you know, really, you know, from my life, I've had really intense spells of like existential feelings, like there was a period of time at university for about
01:43:01
Speaker
they were from three to four weeks where i didn't go outside and i just stayed in my room and you know the blinds closed and i was having like multiple panic attacks a day and i was watching videos on the nature of time and physics and i literally felt like i was in a different dimension i was like
01:43:21
Speaker
I've seen that in a very, very similar feeling in the past. I've hit them sinks as well. Pretty much exactly like you said, you lock yourself away. You close yourself off from the world and you just kind of...
01:43:35
Speaker
feed into them emotions and then feelings. And like you said, I remember my first panic attack and I was literally just going to the shop to buy a sandwich and I just had that feeling and it terrified me. And I didn't go out for like, I think it must've been like 10 days or something. It's really hard to describe exactly what that kind of, I mean, the only way that I could really translate it into terms that people could understand is it's like, you know, if you're watching a TV show your entire life,
01:44:04
Speaker
watch like these same free seasons over and over again and then suddenly in one of the episodes the character looks at the screen and talks to you that's the kind of feeling that you get when you have that existential fear in it and it really really plunged me into like the the depths of nihilism and I literally dissolved any concept of
01:44:29
Speaker
what anything was into nothing. I was like, I can't even think, I can't even speak, I can't even do things.
01:44:36
Speaker
It's an incredibly dark position to be in. It takes a lot to pull yourself out of it. Ultimately, it comes down to you. It's something that I discovered and I kept waiting, thinking in the back of my mind that maybe someone would be able to pull me out of this. It's always got to be you that does it ultimately.
01:45:00
Speaker
It's like a romanticizing. I don't want to be pulled out of this state of enlightenment. It causes me intense pain and discomfort and emotional distress. But you feel like you know everything. I feel like I see things. I can see what's going on and I understand all the confusion.
01:45:21
Speaker
um very very strange state to be in but being in those states um you know there was at this time you know i went to uh thailand to do like a research placement i was studying mosquitoes and stuff and oh wow
01:45:37
Speaker
That was really cool. That's really cool. Yeah. Yeah. It was a lot of, I had to dissect mesquite. I was using like two needles. It was, I had to take out the reveries and grind them up and look under the microscope and that's heavy. Yeah. It was a, it's not my cup of tea. No, no, that's fair enough. That's completely fair enough. Yeah.
01:46:00
Speaker
And the studying aspect and learning about like nature and biology is cool, but then kind of great things. I completely get that. It's not for me either. I think that there was during that time, during that time in Thailand, because it was such a change in environment, change in atmosphere, really.
01:46:22
Speaker
I kind of had just a moment of realization. I was like, I'm constantly chasing this feeling of being happy and not depressed or not anxious at least. That it really was more of a self-destructive thing. And I was like,
01:46:42
Speaker
Hey, actually, maybe if I focus on something external, if I have some kind of intrinsic meaning that I'm striving to rather than a feeling that's, you know, you can't, you can never make someone feel what you're feeling, you know? So it's hard to ever find peace in that. So for me, it was helping people and through wanting to inform people about my experiences and trying to help them
01:47:13
Speaker
Get through similar situations to myself. It actually made me feel that.
01:47:18
Speaker
Yeah, of course. It's like why share groups are so important. It's just even that simple simplicity of finding out somebody relates to your situation and being able to express that. And I remember even like when I was like struggling horribly with stuff, I would still like speak to other people that were going through stuff and you would feel a little bit better knowing that like the... It does ground you. Yeah. It does ground you. Yeah, definitely.
01:47:45
Speaker
It's like you said, you spend so long striving for happiness, but it's like that's not the way to approach it. It shouldn't be, I'm chasing this feeling as such. It's finding the things that give you that feeling, sure, but that's a part of it.
01:48:01
Speaker
I've kind of lost my trail a bit there, like how to work with that thought. So I guess it's okay with you. It's table turn. If it's okay with you, I'm going to move on to 12 Gage to talk a little bit about, I know FMA, you talked a little bit about mental health and stuff. So, well, I'll talk to 12 Gage, talk a little bit to FMA about mental health and we'll kind of try and wrap things up and sort of end the podcast episode.
01:48:29
Speaker
I guess, yeah, I mean, 12Gage, do you want to talk a little bit about the benefits that, and I know you've talked about it, both you and Ephraim may have talked about it a little bit, but what kind of benefits did you see? Like how did being more creative help you feel better in yourself and manage the difficulties that you've been through? It gave me purpose.
01:48:59
Speaker
that's kind of what I see it as. I'm not going to lie, a lot of the time, creativity infuriates me because I'm doing a master's course and I work with FMA who is
01:49:19
Speaker
Yeah, he's a perfectionist, an obsessive perfectionist. And when it comes to his creativity, he doesn't relent on it whatsoever. You give 100% and he can tell when you're giving 98%. So I do find it infuriating, but I feel like that's what happens when you love something.
01:49:43
Speaker
I said it to FMA, we're walking to band practice ones, and I just said to him, I feel like the difference is when I was a teenager and I was sat there and I was listening to all that rap, and I was writing all those lyrics, that was me first meeting a girl, and those were the first few dates, and now I've been married for two years to creativity, and it's a job to love creativity.
01:50:13
Speaker
But it is the thing that gives me purpose. At the end of the day, there are so many points in my life where I could have just went off the path and just...
01:50:23
Speaker
become a hermit. I struggled with a lot of things that Dreadnought was saying of wanting to isolate myself and never leave the house, never interact with anyone ever again and thinking the world is just a horrible, horrible place and creativity has always been there.
01:50:45
Speaker
it has always been a thing that I can rely on no matter how many friends like we fall out or if I break up with someone or whatever I always have a pen and a paper and I always have me that I can work on and I can do it through creativity and I think it's it's massively beneficial I think it's highly underrated
01:51:09
Speaker
in society in general because in a capitalist society, make money. That's all you have to do. Just make as much money as possible, not do something for the fact that you love it.
01:51:23
Speaker
And I think everyone should be able to have that thing that they just love doing. Like the thing that always annoys me, like always annoys me is when people come up to me after we've done a set or after they've heard a song and they turn around to me and they're like, oh, I could never do that.
01:51:41
Speaker
I could never do that. Oh, you're so talented. And I was there like, this is like nine to 10 years of sitting with a pen and paper and scrapping it and then rewriting it and getting better and learning new words to rhyme and learning what I actually want to sound like and all of that stuff. The difference is that there's that beginning stage
01:52:09
Speaker
where you're just passionate about it and a lot of the time because of how society is set up if it's not making money while you're doing it.
01:52:21
Speaker
And then it gets to the point where it's not making money. So why do you keep doing it? You don't, you just stop. And I think that there are so many people out there.
Critique of Capitalism and Creativity
01:52:30
Speaker
I think there are so many amazing rappers, amazing lyricists, amazing rock bands out there, amazing artists in general who have never become amazing artists because people have said to them, why are you doing this? It isn't making money. And I think that's, I think is that's horrible. I think.
01:52:51
Speaker
because it shouldn't be about the money, it should be about making you feel good. If the money happens, that's just a positive. And I think as well, because we're living in a time where social media and the internet is such a massive part of everyone's life, for a lot of people's lives.
01:53:15
Speaker
you know, with that comes a lot of opportunity. So, you know, what you need is a setup at home and a connection, and you can go anywhere you want in the world. You can talk to anyone that you want to talk to. You don't have to travel, you don't have to get wholesome carriage and go or get a train and a flight just to go chat to somebody. You can actually just, you know, do like what we're doing and just jump on a call, have a chat and stuff. But, you know, the issue comes in there is that
01:53:47
Speaker
there will be a lot of opportunity. And that means there will be a lot of people. And what happens in hierarchies is people, especially in the creative industry, there is a very small amount of the large population of creative people who manage to get to a certain point. And they're kind of the weird dynamicers
01:54:13
Speaker
with the creative industry is that creativity is something that comes to you. And it's something that you develop slowly. And it's something that comes best when you're relaxed or when you feel comfortable. But on the flip side, you've got to get the deadline. You've got to do this. You've got to do this for a certain amount of time. Perhaps in the past, you'd have a painter who'd come home from working his job in the mine shaft or something.
01:54:41
Speaker
whips out his paintbrush and he does as much as he wants to. And that's his creativity. But trying to make it as a creative person, you've got to be creative and you've got to be very fast at doing it. And you've got to do all of this other stuff. And so there's more opportunity to do it. But then there's so much more competition where it just whittles down to this.
01:55:09
Speaker
highly creative very very fast producing yeah individuals that are just it's it's it can make it really really difficult for um a lot of creative people in any in any industries whether it be podcasts or writing or yeah or music it's so hard to to get to that point where it becomes something that you can just do oh yeah so yeah definitely and i feel that
01:55:36
Speaker
I think the one massive reason that like me and FMA like we like go on about this all the time but you know that everyone should create everyone should do that even if it's like you know you're drawing stick men fighting at the back of your workbook or something it's it is expression and the way the social media is the way that everyone is currently
01:56:04
Speaker
is yeah, you're right to express yourself, but you've got to express the best version of yourself. You can't, you can't take a picture of you screaming at a wall because you've woke up 10 minutes late for work and you've missed the bus. You can't do that. But if you write that, if you just write a story, and it doesn't have to be good, but about that same guy missing that bus for work,
01:56:27
Speaker
you've expressed that thought and that feeling rather than bottling it and just keeping it locked in the back of your head to just eat away at you for another week and then something else happens and you bottle it and you bottle it and I think it is that massive con of social media that it has given us the ability to talk to anyone to express ourselves however we want but now there is the perfect way of expressing yourself
01:56:54
Speaker
You should always be as beautiful as possible. You should always be as fit as possible. You should be in the sunny beaches of Barbados, but you can't afford it. So, you know, you can't get there. But, you know, there is the way of showing yourself to the world and creativity to me is the way of expressing who you truly are and not being afraid to do that in whatever form it is. And that's what it does for me, I think.
01:57:24
Speaker
Brilliant. Thank you very much, Torv Gage. Yeah, a round of applause. Yeah, everyone's copy. We don't have our audios on, so imagine it in your heads. I've got standing ovation in your heads, everyone.
01:57:39
Speaker
Yeah. So for me, it's down to you for the last question as well. I know you talked a lot about sort of your experiences for mental health. I mean, if you can kind of like, what does what does creativity do for you? Like, like nowadays, because you talked about sort of your past and how that's been sort of a really great outlet. But
01:58:09
Speaker
Nowadays, what does diving back into that creative world with your son, what does that do for you?
01:58:20
Speaker
I don't know. Cause that's like asking me what breathing does. It's like so natural. It's just, that's what I do. That is my purpose. It's like it, there is no choice in it. Um, even when I'm on a break, so let's say I created like this crazy big thing and I'm like absolutely burnt out and exhausted. How I go and relax is by creating something else in another format. And it's like, it's how it's just.
01:58:43
Speaker
my brain just constant, my brain does not stop. And that's, it gets very exhausting sometimes. And so putting my brain to use is like, it's relaxing, is that if that makes sense? Yeah. So like, I, yeah, it's, it's a bit hard to answer your question. I find with myself, I mean, we have different, there's this concept called the default mode network, which is basically,
01:59:13
Speaker
I mean, it's characterized using ECGs and understanding brainwaves, different brain states, like beta and alpha and stuff like that. It's basically used to characterize the brain when you've got nothing to do. It's the chatter. It's the faults coming in and coming out.
01:59:36
Speaker
some faults coming in and sticking there and you're paying attention to it and then it becomes more stuff and it branches off. That's kind of what the default network is like. And I find that that experience and it's been shown in the literature as well that that can be very, very stressful. And it does burn your energy stalls. And I find that having something particular to focus on
02:00:02
Speaker
You know, like if I was to go through my day, it would be I wake up, I watch a video, I go to work, I focus on work, I finish work, I watch a video, I go to the gym, I come back, I do some work on my social media, I go to sleep. And there's like, there's no space that I give myself in there. It's like, I guess just to do nothing. And,
02:00:28
Speaker
For me, I think it can definitely, if I keep going in those stages, it helps me a lot to push aside how I'm feeling. If I'm very, very depressed and I'm having a lot of depressive thoughts when I don't have anything to do, I will continue to do stuff constantly and fill my diary with different things to do.
02:00:52
Speaker
It does sort of help me. But after a while, maybe if I was to do that for two or three weeks, they'll come to a point where my brain just starts slowly winding down and shutting down. And I find that those periods of time, I have burnouts. I struggle to do anything. It's like my brain just decides that it wants to run a full computer reset
02:01:22
Speaker
on me. And I think, you know, one of the things that's been really helpful for me is, you know, when I'm at the gym, I try to think about nothing. I don't go on my phone. I don't watch social media. I just put on my music and I just kind of be in the moment and do that and not try to do stuff. But I'm still doing something, but I'm not thinking I'm not using the energy.
02:01:51
Speaker
And also things like meditation. Meditation basically teaches you how to do nothing. Think about nothing. Avoid that default mode network, but also be able to do that. Ignore that default mode. It teaches you to do nothing without defaulting to that.
02:02:18
Speaker
that state of force constantly going around in your heads and stuff, without you having to latch on to a task or to focus on something. And I find that really useful, because I do definitely, like yourself, have a tendency to really hone in and focus on something. And that becomes my life, these focuses that I have that's like my life up until a point that I can't do it anymore.
02:02:51
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely think like things like meditation and also, you know. Yeah. Sorry. Go on, go for it. I interrupted you. I can't help that. Do you ever get that, Thomas, where like your brain's got a fork? Oh, it's a common... Say it, say it, Matthew. Say it. It doesn't matter if there's a million people studying missionary and being silent. Say that fork, Matthew. That's what I get. I would like to also add, I feel that. Yeah. Conversational tempo. It tends to be with autism.
02:03:19
Speaker
you find it hard to find natural breaks in conversation. So you're like, you kind of, I learned to just blur stuff out. It's like, oh, sorry. And then then it's reset and then you can talk. It's like, yeah, it kind of hurts to keep it in. So I was really lucky at university, but I had a tutor who let me ask questions all the time because my hand was just going up all the time. He didn't mind it. It would have been an issue. But yeah, right. Okay. I came up with some responses and some things to say while you were talking.
02:03:48
Speaker
My brain kind of works on two separate levels. It's really really weird and It's always been there like there's this level above my level. So Matthew's here This is Matthew and then there's something above and it's always been there I remember being a child and this part was thinking like an adult and it was going like oh look at that Look at that look at that while I was just playing around and stuff and people would talk to me and I'd be like Oh, is that what you mean? But then this part up here would be going no, that's not what they mean There's this going on and this going on and this going on
02:04:15
Speaker
And as the years progressed, this thing above was always going on, no matter what. I could never, ever shut it up. Alcohol, drugs and things, that was the only way of shutting it up.
02:04:26
Speaker
But when I got my diagnosis and everything started to coalesce and I started to understand things, I gave it a name and I called it Zach and I've made him a home to live in and he lives in an attic in my head and it's dark up there and it's massive, it's unbelievably massive and there's books on every single shelf, it's just a huge library of knowledge and things and he's a spindly giant creature with these evil eyes and he marches around and bangs and stuff.
02:04:52
Speaker
And the metaphor that I've come up with, how my brain works is, there's a trap door in the attic that leads down, but it doesn't lead up. And so if Zach's in a good mood, he might give me inspiration all day. He might go, oh, this idea is awesome. This idea is awesome. This idea is awesome. This idea is awesome. Or he might give me memories that I don't even remember having. Or he might tell me what people actually mean when they speak, not the words that they say, the words behind the words that they're saying, if that makes sense.
02:05:20
Speaker
manifestation of your unconscious really really worried about someone stealing something often you know what that means Matthew that means that they steal lots of things from other people because that's what they're scared of like it does all this psychology drops it all down on me like so much information
02:05:36
Speaker
but then there are days when Zach's bad and the only things he drops down are like images that I've seen from the past or horrible thoughts or like he whispers like oh you're ugly today Matthew and just like stuff like that just crazy stuff and many might invent these horrific scenes and be like here you are Matthew deal with this
02:05:52
Speaker
But that's how my head works, and all this stuff that's been dropped through the trap door, it's my job to keep getting out, because when I don't, that's when I get poorly, if that makes sense. So it's like, there's only one time when it ever went quiet, and during Covid, when me and Callum spent a year writing our second album, because that's how long it takes us, we don't spend a week writing on something, we spent a year.
02:06:16
Speaker
And at the end of it, I genuinely, it was the most exhausting thing that I've ever done. But for the first time in my life, that thing above me shut up and it wasn't there. It disappeared for the first time ever. And it was like, I was trying to find this joy in creating things. I was trying to find this joy in life. I was trying to find this joy in anything. And it's just like everything had just disappeared. And then no tricks appeared on the scene and she'd like triggered it all coming back, which is really weird. Like how she came in.
02:06:46
Speaker
At that moment, but yeah, so that's how my my head works. It kind of like was too less to it I don't know if you identify with that Thomas or not, but that's always been like I don't have control I Mean for me is I mean I made a YouTube video like two or three years ago or like a post titled my split brain and it was basically a
02:07:13
Speaker
it was kind of you know in my life like i was always growing up i kind of split myself into my logical brain and my emotional brain like i think it was something to do with alexithymia because i just it's it's it's like when you're alexithymic it's kind of like
02:07:34
Speaker
your thoughts and your emotions can be completely different constantly and the connection between the two is very, very muddied and it takes a lot of work to find the connection between the two and I definitely found that when you were talking about sort of thinking about this kind of
02:07:58
Speaker
uh unconscious entity that's like feeding you different thoughts and feeding you different emotions and and memories and stuff it reminds me very much of like the the sports psychology book the uh the monkey mind or something like oh yeah we heard about you yeah yeah yeah
02:08:15
Speaker
I think for us, that kind of experience, because our brains are so different and we have such different experiences of perceiving and thinking and feeling, it can be very, very useful sometimes to have analogies like that. I definitely, as I've sort of got older and I've sort of understood for myself, like Alex Feimier,
02:08:45
Speaker
I found more ways to kind of find links between the two. I feel a lot more now, like myself, because I've integrated that emotional part of me. I used to be the force. I didn't identify the emotions at all. It was like, I have these thoughts, but my emotions are doing this. And I used to always think that.
02:09:12
Speaker
I think it did come to a point where I really wanted to explore the more emotional side of me because I was one of those autistic people. I was like, I don't need friends. I don't need emotions. Emotions are illogical. I'm a logical creature. I can do everything. And I'm better for not having these emotions. And I was just pushing this emotional side of myself out.
02:09:36
Speaker
It did kind of in the long run, you know, harm me. Like it was good for me to actually understand a bit more about how I felt and why I felt things. And I think, you know, that feeling of having that split between my emotions and my thinking,
02:10:00
Speaker
It helped me sort of, to a certain extent, understand what was going on at the time. You know, now that I came across things like Alex if I'm here, it's helped me feel a little bit more whole. Like, it's just, you know, sometimes you feel stuff. And you know that you shouldn't feel stuff like, like, it doesn't make any sense to you. And it's like,
02:10:22
Speaker
Sometimes you're right. It doesn't make any sense. It's completely logical, but sometimes they're actually, you know, you're feeling that for a reason. So it's like navigating that crazy, crazy, crazy thing took me years and years to try and come to that conclusion. But I think writing about it, learning about philosophy and psychology and my brain trying to explain it to other people really helped.
02:10:52
Speaker
with that kind of weird feeling. Yeah, I get you. I understand. But yeah, it comes down to just creating things and getting it out and just exploring and learning. Definitely that was writing. Definitely. That's cool. Well, we have just nearly hit the two hours and the 15 minutes mark.
02:11:17
Speaker
We've got through two questions that are free. But I think we've had a good chat about different aspects of creativity. We've talked about our different neurodiversities, how that's shaped our perception of the world, how creativity has been an outlook for
02:11:39
Speaker
I guess, you know, providing as an outlet when there's nowhere else to go. I think, you know, creativity is an incredible thing. You know, it's something that I used to make fun of, like, artists and stuff. I was like, oh, it's just art. Like, we need cold logic and stuff.
02:12:00
Speaker
You know, really, it's pretty much one of the best mediums for communicating human experience and emotions. I mean, I'm not really sure how to round this up because we've been chatting for so long and we've had a lot of different sort of inputs from different... But we do the neurodivergent crew pause and then we'll shoot off into the air. That's what we do. Yeah.
02:12:28
Speaker
Goodbye. No, it's been awesome. Thank you very much for having us on, Thomas. It's been really, really amazing. And I'm proud of every single one of the crew for how they've spoken today. Oh, yeah, you've all been incredibly open and vulnerable. And it's been really great to hear the experience of life from different perspectives. I mean,
02:12:52
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you so much. And I'm sure the people who are listening in, they'll really appreciate you guys being so open about this, talking about mental health, talking about passions, talking about negative experiences in life. There's not enough platforms like this where people can actually just feel comfortable in just talking about stuff that, you know,
02:13:21
Speaker
It's important to talk about, but sensationalist media, everyone's going to get stuff in 60 seconds and it's like, no one sits through and, well, people do sit through, might not listen to sit through, but. Just the more we talk about it, the more people learn, the more people accept, and that's our job. We just need to keep talking and talking and talking. Not now, but because we've gone to two hours, 16 minutes in real life.
02:13:47
Speaker
Well, I guess what I want to say is thank you. And as far as the Song of the Day, of course, we're going to stick that down in the Song of the Day playlist. The new, what is the name of the song? Look, go on, no tricks. Which is D-A-D, autism, ADHD, dyslexia. It's like Dadi for short.
02:14:17
Speaker
So if you guys out there want to listen to the song, I highly recommend you do. You can find music suggestions from pretty much every single
02:14:30
Speaker
um guest on season two so go over to the spotify link in the description and while you're there please do give my podcast a rating if you are on anything spotify apple podcast google podcast please give me a rating five star variety would be very appreciated but
02:14:51
Speaker
understands. Thank you very much for tuning in. And if you want to catch the podcast on YouTube, you'll be able to find the video version of this where you get to see all of our lovely faces talking.
New Business Announcement: Autism Coaching
02:15:08
Speaker
And yeah, make sure to go over to my Instagram at Thomas Henley to get updates on how the podcast is going, get updates on my life, the kind of work that I'm doing.
02:15:20
Speaker
I am starting, at the moment, a new business, starting my own business as a sole trader. I'm going to be doing autism coaching for autistic adults. So that's something that you're interested in. Go over to my website, thomashenley.co.uk.
02:15:38
Speaker
And I do realize that I'm shouting a lot of links, everybody. And yeah, I will definitely put down, if you guys can
02:15:52
Speaker
Create like a group link tree Like of everybody's links on it. Yeah, that would be absolutely amazing. Oh, okay cool. Yes, um, so that link tree Along with my own be down in the description very very very close to the top and you'll be able to find all the music and all the social media sites and the websites and all of that stuff from our very lovely guests and uh, yeah, I really hope
02:16:19
Speaker
You have enjoyed this episode of the 40 Autie podcast. Please let me know down in the comments what you think of having more than one guest on. Did you like it? Do you feel like it's a lot to process and to digest maybe something along those lines? Yeah. Guys, have you have you enjoyed your experience of the 40 Autie podcast?
02:16:47
Speaker
Yes, it's been amazing. Thank you so much, Thomas. Yeah, it's been awesome. It's been really cool. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you for having us and for such a safe atmosphere to share our thoughts in. Yeah, you made us all feel very comfortable, clearly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you, thank you.
02:17:07
Speaker
Well, with that, I hope you all have a very, very lovely day. And I'll see you on the next episode of the 4080 podcast. See you later, guys. Thank you. Bye-bye. You can say bye in a group. Bye.