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Diversity In Autism - The Many Facets Of Neurodiversity w/Holistic Autistic image

Diversity In Autism - The Many Facets Of Neurodiversity w/Holistic Autistic

S1 E29 · Thoughty Auti - The Autism & Mental Health Podcast
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This episode dives into many different popular topics of diversity:- Extroversion/Introversion, co-morbidities, special interests/innate abilities, sensory profiles, and empathy!

In this episode of the Thoughty Auti Podcast, Thomas Henley talks to Jesslyn from the Holistic Autistic YouTube channel - she has a community-focussed website which aids in the education of Neurodiversity, and provides a platform for self-diagnosed and late-diagnosed autistic people to connect together. With the creation of her NEW book 'I Think I'm Autistic' Jess strives to improve the accessibility of autism-related info to teenagers and adults.

In a bid to understand the mainstream confusion around CBD, Thomas and Stacey get things started by talking about the many CBD products available in the UK market. With products ranging (but not limited to)CBD pillowcases, CBD vape pens, CBD energy drinks, CBD capsules, CBD skin cream and CBD oil drops... 

The introversion:extroversion concept is riddled with misconception, and at this time it's difficult to put autistic people into either category. Self-regulation and sensory aspects make most inclined to the introverted existence, but many flourish in social situations in the right mental state.

With little research it's hard to pinpoint the environmental and biological significance in the development of cooccurring conditions. Why do these conditions get diagnosed before autism? The better question is... is there anything that isn't co-morbid with autism?

Special interests, although patronising in classification, differ more greatly in between each individual than most could theorise. In general, innate abilities differ vastly from person to person, and there is massive variety between the God-given skills of people on the spectrum. Autistic people even have a few remarkably interesting social skills of their own.

Sensory profiles and differences, although well documented, prove to boggle even the most experienced Aspie-Nauts. Hypo, hyper, seeking and avoiding. It sounds simple, but there are many nuisances we fail to pinpoint!

Have you ever taken a sociopath test? Theory Of Mind and popular belief has caused many to question whether autistic people feel empathy! Can autistic people be empathetic, and what significance do Cross-Cognitive Differences hold?

If you have an exciting or interesting story and want to appear on the next podcast, please contact me at: aspergersgrowth@gmail.com

Jess' Links:-

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/holisticautistic/

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/HolisticAutistic

Website - https://holisticautistic.weebly.com/#/

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Support via Patreon! - https://www.patreon.com/aspergersgrowth

Social Media ♥

Facebook - Aspergers Growth

Twitter/Instagram - @aspergersgrowth

♫ Track: [Chill Music] Ikson - Reverie [No Copyright Music]

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Transcript

Introduction and Podcast Theme

00:00:07
Speaker
Good day, my lovely listeners. You are listening to The 40 Auti Podcast. Tune in every week to explore inspiring stories and insightful information that dive headfirst into the world of autism and mental health. With all those tantalizing tongue twisters out of the way, let's get into the show.

Sponsor: Teemo App

00:00:42
Speaker
Today's podcast episode is proudly sponsored by Teemo, the award-winning app designed to support neurodivergent people, just like yourself, with routine and scheduling. Head to your app store and type T-I-I-M-O to learn more.

Diversity Beyond Neurodiversity

00:01:00
Speaker
Good day, cool cats. Welcome back to another episode of the 40 Audi podcast, of course, with your host, Mr. Thomas Henley.
00:01:10
Speaker
Today, we're going to be talking about diversity in autistic people. And I'm not talking about neurodiversity, the difference between non-autistic people and autistic people. I'm talking about the differences in that group. Throughout my time on YouTube and social media, diversity among the spectrum has become more and more apparent. I did have a good
00:01:38
Speaker
idea of how different autistic people can be from each other but I'm astounded every time I do talk to an autistic person. Just how different they are in terms of their skills, their mental health, the things that they struggle with, the things that they're good at.

Guest Introduction: Jess

00:01:54
Speaker
Today I'm joined by a YouTuber with a lot of cool specialised videos on autism and the many types of sensory differences. She's author of the online book
00:02:08
Speaker
I think I'm autistic. She also has a community-focused website for connecting autistic people together and strives to educate people on neurodiversity, but also support self-diagnosed and late-diagnosed teens and adults. It's Jess from the Holistic Autistic Account. How are you doing? I am great. Thank you. And this is our second attempt at doing it, doing the podcast.
00:02:38
Speaker
We got quite far into it, well not quite far, we got about... Five minutes, ten minutes. We got about five minutes into it, yeah. But sometimes with this website that I'm using it can be a bit difficult to set it up and get riffing sorted out so you can actually speak on it. But we're here now. How are you doing today?

Jess's Diagnosis Journey

00:02:58
Speaker
I'm really great, yes. I'm super excited.
00:03:02
Speaker
Great. We're just like... I'm stimming already, super excited to do this. So yeah, would you like to give everybody sort of like a brief background to who you are, what you do for a job and what you do online?
00:03:23
Speaker
Yes, so I'm Jess again. I'm 24 years old, and I was diagnosed autistic at 23, about almost a year after self-diagnosing when I was 22.
00:03:39
Speaker
But I grew up in South Carolina, even though I was born in California. I live with my mom and my sister and my dad. And I started thinking that I was autistic when I was 22, started researching more into it. And because of
00:03:54
Speaker
all of the support and encouragement and friends that I made through the online autistic community on Instagram.

Helping Others Identify as Autistic

00:04:02
Speaker
When I first got diagnosed, I felt like I had all this stuff that had helped me get to that point and it wasn't like it was just the beginning of everything. Beginning of the journey.
00:04:16
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And so I wanted to kind of do the same thing for other people who would be questioning that they are autistic because as a late diagnosed person, you've been through a lot of your life wondering what's wrong with you. If there's like other like mental illnesses that you have or identity disorders that you have or whatever. And then when you realize, oh, I'm just autistic, then it really helps to have so much support. And so that's what I wanted to do with holistic autistic.
00:04:45
Speaker
I understand what you mean by just from, from my experience at school and stuff. I think there's a lot of ways that autistic people kind of frame themselves and the world around them when they don't really don't know or don't understand what autism is. So like I used to have quite a big sort of delusion that I was some kind of, some kind of like overworldly being.
00:05:13
Speaker
Um, or an alien or something like that. Yeah. We really identify with aliens a lot. I think that like every autistic I've ever met always like uses that as some kind of, and every time I meet someone who talks about like feeling like an alien, I'm always, it's always in the back of my mind, like, maybe they're autistic too. One question that I did want to ask you was what kind of encouraged you to write your book?
00:05:42
Speaker
Well, I had the idea when I was looking up autistic adult resources and not finding that much for people who are recently diagnosed as adults. Even if you look for books for autistic adults, it's mostly books about autistic teens and adults for the parents. Yes. There's one book that I read.
00:06:09
Speaker
It was written for the parents of these autistic teens and how to deal with stuff that they face, which is great and needed, but I couldn't really find too much for actual autistic people who either were diagnosed as an adult or haven't even been diagnosed yet. And I basically said, what would have helped me
00:06:35
Speaker
when I was 22 like thinking that I was autistic and not being able to find anything other than like the stereotypical stuff and reading like basically just one page from the DSM. Yeah there's definitely not a lot of resources out there for autistic adults. It's even as you said towards the parents but it's also you know kind of towards I guess sort of
00:07:04
Speaker
support workers or counselors or anything like that. It's never from an autistic voice to an autistic person. There are a few examples, I guess, of that kind of stuff. And the majority of it comes from social media, like people posting their own sort of experiences and views and ways of coping with things. There was
00:07:33
Speaker
I think there was a book for teens. It was with Sienna Castellon, who's a neurodiversity advocate. I remember that she wrote a book on living life as a autistic teen at school, which I thought I found quite interesting. I want to get around to reading it at some point. I am notoriously bad at sticking to words on a page or a computer screen. I like to listen to it.
00:08:02
Speaker
But I will definitely check that out when I've got some spare times. So yeah, I think we've talked a little bit about your experience and your job and your experience with autism.

Life Changes Post-Diagnosis

00:08:16
Speaker
Do you want to go into a bit more detail about certain things that changed in your life after you got diagnosed?
00:08:26
Speaker
Basically, the funniest thing was I was moving away from home to go to Kansas City for a gap year program. And I would be there for nine months. And it was a church-based thing that I was doing for leadership and stuff. But I would be moving away from home. And before I left, apparently, my dad said to my mom, I think Jesse has Asperger's. My dad is an occupational therapist. And he worked with autistic children
00:08:56
Speaker
When he was younger now he works more with older people but like he he he knew like all about what it could have been but didn't realize that I was autistic in until then because I was so like compulsively obsessed with my hair and that was what when I like we got home from a trip and I immediately we had to go into the bathroom and shave my hair because I had a mocock at that point but um
00:09:23
Speaker
And like this had been happening. Yes. And it was like growing too long on the sides and I had to shave it and it was a sensory thing. And that was the thing that tipped my dad off. And so unbeknownst to me, he said that to my mom. I think that Jesse's has Asperger's and like not even a week later, I was watching something and it had an autistic character in it. And I was like, I think that
00:09:47
Speaker
I might be autistic. So I was doing more research on this throughout the time that I was away from home in Kansas City and I didn't tell my parents about this. I was scared that they would not believe me or that they would think that I was trying to identify with something because I've always had a personality
00:10:07
Speaker
crisis going on in my life. And at the end of the gap year program, I'd had a lot of struggles through it. It was a great program though. But when I came back home, I was finally like, I told my sister, she's like, they're going to believe you. So I told my mom, I think I need to get tested for autism. And I explained all about it. And she basically said, this is an answer to prayer.
00:10:29
Speaker
we thought that you were but we didn't want to put that on you before you went to Kansas City and go through all this and so we were like hoping that we could talk to you about this but we didn't know how and blah blah blah blah. So after I got diagnosed it was like everything in my whole life made sense. My mom says now she understands me now better than she has like my entire life. So basically after getting diagnosed I
00:10:57
Speaker
stopped questioning constantly who I was. What is my personal style? How do I describe myself? What do I identify as? All that that had been causing me to identify with things. Like, you know, when you watch a movie and you identify with a main character and you kind of like start dressing like them or something, you know? I do that way too much. It's it's it literally like if I'm if you like if my eyes are glued and I'm kind of in that
00:11:27
Speaker
associated state. I just absorb everything about the character that I like and I'm just, it's hard not to imitate parts of it and also not to follow their kind of life path. So I throw in like an artist or something and I'm like, ooh, to start doing some art. There's actually a name for it. I think it's called
00:11:52
Speaker
something adaptation that Tony Atwood talks about. He wrote a book called Safety Skills, or he wrote it forward for a book called Safety Skills for Asperger Women. It's a great book. That was the original essay that I'd read that made me say, okay, I definitely identify with this.
00:12:11
Speaker
constructive adaptation. That's what it's called. And we're just identifying with a bunch of stuff to try and be accepted. And we're taking all this stuff in to try and form a personality because it seems like everyone else
00:12:27
Speaker
Is just living life and knowing how to do stuff and we like don't innately know how to do these things So we're kind of like a chameleon changing according to the situation And I don't feel like I do that anymore since I got diagnosed because I finally I'm like, okay this is what I am and I can accept like all the parts of myself and Also all the struggles that I went through when I was younger before I didn't know I was autistic
00:12:53
Speaker
that is almost reconciled to me because I'm like, okay, I never was a screw up. I never was like a loser. I never was just a weird person. And I never, I never had like anything wrong with me, you know? And that's such a great feeling. I can imagine.

Identity and Character Imitation

00:13:12
Speaker
I mean, I understand. It's very, very relatable in that way. When people talk about autism, it's
00:13:23
Speaker
It's quite interesting. I'm still bewildered that it's actually a thing. So I was just thinking, like, why do I do this? Every time I go to see a movie, somehow have an extremely, extremely strong inkling to just be like this person. And I guess the difference between how that was with me when I was younger and how I am with it now is when I was younger, I kind of clung to that.
00:13:53
Speaker
That was like a rubric, like a step-by-step plan of how to act. And if I just copied what they did, then I would naturally gain all the things that they have. And that was kind of like my idea when I was a bit younger. But obviously, movies aren't a good representation of real life in a lot of cases.
00:14:20
Speaker
Yeah, and that can be that can be the struggle because we're trying to be like other people is the thing. And we're not even for me, it felt like I couldn't help it. Every time I watched a movie, it was almost like it was out of my control. I just immediately started like
00:14:38
Speaker
without even realizing it, mimicking their walk, even, just like weird stuff that I would pick up from that. And a lot of it, my mom thought was because I wasn't confident in who I was. And so I was trying to be somebody else. But the truth was that I didn't know who I was. And I was like, oh, maybe this is kind of who I am because I related to a little bit of this character.
00:15:03
Speaker
And so, especially since we're talking about diversity on the spectrum, then so many autistic people felt like they've been different people throughout their lives because they've done this. And once you start to realize that you've been doing this and picking up all these traits from
00:15:23
Speaker
a bunch of different characters or different things that you've identified with, and you realize, oh, there's a basis for this of why I was attracted to these types of things. Then you reconcile, okay, maybe some of that is similar to me, but that doesn't have to be me. Then hopefully, people start to realize that everything about them and who they are is okay.
00:15:52
Speaker
in adulthood, I've got more control over what I incorporate into me. Like, I feel like it's, it's for me, making myself and my personality in my life is kind of like constantly shopping around and picking up things that I want to be like, or I feel like relates to me. So that it can be anything from like clothing, like I went through a really big sort of emo phase when I was younger.
00:16:21
Speaker
And I know there's a lot of autistic people who have said similar things about branching out and doing something different. And I don't know to what extent that is part of me. I think it was just, it's kind of something that's not considered mainstream or normal for people to do or dress like that. So that felt more relatable for me. It kind of latched onto that.
00:16:46
Speaker
Yeah, because so much of our lives are us being told we're so different from other people. And whether it is like, oh, I love how unique and quirky you are, or it's you need to be more like everybody else. We're very aware of it through our whole life. And so when we can find something to put a name to, maybe why we're so different, then we cling on to that maybe a little harder than we normally would. So I identified a lot with the punk rock movement for
00:17:16
Speaker
a good portion of eight years, maybe, throughout high school and college and a little bit after college. And it was only when I realized I was autistic that I didn't feel compulsively
00:17:29
Speaker
Um, like I needed to dress really different and dye my hair and wear a mohawk, you know, because although like I can't really say it was a phase because it lasted so long and it really, it did feel like me at the time it, what it really was was that I knew I was different somehow.
00:17:49
Speaker
and that was the punk rock movement was a whole movement about subversion from the mainstream and I just needed a way to express that I was feeling that way with a tangible experience like that. It's a very complex world and especially like in early years of for artistic people it's there's a lot lot kind of going on underneath the surface of every
00:18:19
Speaker
with every person. I mean, you could say that about everybody on the earth, just from what I've heard and the conversations that I've had, it just seems, you know, I would never expect you to have a mohawk or be a punk rock or anything like that, which, you know, is cool. I think, like, nowadays, I'd like to wear a lot of sort of dark, black, gothic-y kind of clothing, but it's not like
00:18:49
Speaker
putting on eyeliner and, you know, hanging around in graveyards and putting on black suits and all that kind of jazz. It's more integrated nowadays. It does still take, you know, that kind of gothic-y beauty in the negative kind of thing is something that's still a part of me. Yeah. But it's just a little bit less, less so, a little bit less extreme. Yeah, yeah.
00:19:18
Speaker
So today we're talking about diversity on the spectrum, of course.

Socializing and Environmental Influence

00:19:23
Speaker
I think an important starting point is to talk about socialising. In terms of introversion and extroversion, do you think that many autistic people could be considered extroverted? I think that a lot more autistic people are extroverted than you would normally think.
00:19:46
Speaker
I don't know how much I could say would be like percentage wise, but I know that a lot of people misunderstand introversion and extroversion as like introversion doesn't mean that you're shy or unsociable or you're quiet and extroverted doesn't mean that you're always confident and talkative or you're a party or you know, just where it's where you replenish your mental and emotional energy, whether you're alone or around people.
00:20:15
Speaker
And a lot of autistics are introverts because we have to self-regulate, or if we have a sensory overload to crowds or noise, or we have certain routines that we go through, those are things that we have to do alone.
00:20:31
Speaker
And so those kind of things replenish your energy. But when you're emotionally healthy and you're in a good spot in your life where you've got everything that you need mentally and emotionally, then you might be more prone to extroversion. Because when I was right after college, I was in a job
00:20:52
Speaker
where I went in at the same time every day and left every day. I loved the job. I ate ice cream every day. I loved the people that I was working with. I was working for a family friend who I was comfortable with. It was like the perfect job for me. Low anxiety. I had no sensory issues going on. And so because I was in such a good environment, then I was extroverted.
00:21:16
Speaker
because I got way more energy from being around people. And even after work, I got off work at 9pm. I went in at 9am and got off at 9pm. I was there 12 straight hours and I would immediately go next door to the cafe and hang out with the girls there until like 10 or 11 o'clock at night. And like now I'm like, what was I doing? How could I do that?
00:21:42
Speaker
I can't even work a five hour shift now without wanting to come home and take a nap. I think that sometimes it can completely depend on your situation.
00:21:56
Speaker
But there are people who are just naturally more extroverted and naturally more introverted, just like any other person. Because talking about diversity on the spectrum, it's the same as talking about diversity in people who are not on the spectrum.
00:22:12
Speaker
because there's so much diversity in the world. You can't just say any one thing about autistic people because that's like saying this one thing applies to every single neurotypical person as well. I think it's quite important to highlight what you said about being in a good mental place, not having a lot of sensory difficulties. I think environment plays a lot into the reasons why autistic people
00:22:42
Speaker
tend to lean towards that sort of introversion behavior, not necessarily being introverts themselves, but, you know, liking that sort of set routine. And as you said, self-regulating and doing some things on your own that you do every day that sort of chill you out. I think it's quite important to highlight that because there is an awful lot of comorbidity that happens. So like, if you're anxious, like if anyone's anxious,
00:23:12
Speaker
and depressed, you're going to be less sociable. You're going to want to sort of wallow and be on your own for a large portion of time. And if you've had social experiences, either at school or within adult life, then you're going to naturally kind of lean towards that sort of behavior. Yeah, for sure. It's funny that you said about like, you know, you were working that job and you're very sociable because when I'm in a good place or if it's just
00:23:42
Speaker
You know, like the cards fall in the right places. I do, I have work and I don't have much work to do. I tend to be a lot more sociable and sometimes it can be the case where I can't go a day without talking to somebody or can't do a day without meeting up with somebody and having a long chat. But then that, when compared to me in sort of my life at the moment, it's very much
00:24:11
Speaker
on my own, you know, doing my thing. But it's not necessarily something that I think defines me being on my own and sort of doing my own thing. I definitely enjoy talking to people. I think like the initial part, the initial start of talking to someone is always the most stress inducing, but once you get into it, I mean, like, for example, with this podcast, I'll chat difficult at the start, a bit hard to get into the flow. And then after a while, I feel better and then
00:24:40
Speaker
after the podcast, I'm like, my serotonin has been raised up. I feel a lot better about myself. What's important to know about this, to recognize about diversity, a lot of it is subjective.

Social Skills Diversity

00:24:55
Speaker
Your sociability co-exists with your neurology and your behaviors at the same time they're all interlinked. Your social skills can differ depending on your
00:25:05
Speaker
Your sensory sensitivities your environment how many people you're with and whether you know those people really well how old you are and used to have longer time practicing social skills or.
00:25:17
Speaker
making adaptations from past experiences and stuff like masking and scripting and the coping skills that you've got. And so to label something like maybe people are innately extroverted and innately innately introverted, but at the same time, there's so much diversity just in how you express yourself in depending on all those factors. Yeah, I think there's a large part from
00:25:44
Speaker
nurture that comes into play, you know, as you said about bad experiences with people, that's going to put you off wanting to open up and connect with others. But at the same time, if you work at it, then you can become more emotionally open and more inclined to chat to randomers and more inclined to sort of connect with your friends a bit more on a deeper level. Yeah. It's kind of like one of those sort of tests online, you know, like
00:26:15
Speaker
Am I introverted or extroverted? People really want to know what they are.
00:26:19
Speaker
Yeah. It's important to know that you don't have to label it and be one or the other because that just constricts you more. If you identify more with introverted, then that's great. If you identify more as extroverted, then that's great. But if you have coexisting symptoms of the same thing, different things, then you don't have to change yourself to fit into that label.
00:26:46
Speaker
I definitely identify as an introvert though, as proven by the quarantine that I went through for a straight month because of COVID-19. From March 16th to April 16th, I stayed at home. I went outside in the yard and stuff, but I basically stayed in my house that entire time, didn't talk with any other people other than texting online or phone calls and stuff.
00:27:11
Speaker
And I was like, I could do this for the rest of my life. I don't ever want to speak to another person again, you know, but that's not every autistic person though. There's a stereotype that it is. I'm actually proud. That's probably a minority that you wouldn't realize is a minority. Um, but yeah, I think it's, I think it's also important to kind of clarify who, who you're comparing yourself to. Like if you are thinking whether you are
00:27:39
Speaker
introverted or extroverted, and you're autistic, and you're just thinking in general, then, you know, like, I think it's probably more likely that you'll identify more with the introvert sort of person, if you are on the spectrum. But maybe if it was somehow we devised a way of knowing the amount of extroverts and introverts in the autistic community, then maybe
00:28:08
Speaker
You know, that sort of label would be more fitting, I suppose. If that makes sense, I'm trying best to explain what I mean. Yeah. The label is supposed to serve you and help you. It shouldn't be stressing you out or confining you in any way. If you're forcing yourself to identify as something, then chances are it's not really you, and you're going to have a lot of problems arise because of that. A lot of constructive adaptation based on what you see.
00:28:38
Speaker
If you're trying to prove that you're autistic to yourself by saying, oh, I'm not diagnosed because I was so extroverted, I need to be more introverted, you're going to get lonely, you're going to get depressed, you're going to get more anxious because of that. There's no wrong way to be autistic.
00:29:00
Speaker
So it's time for a quick mention from our sponsors, Teemo. If you love visual support in your scheduling, Teemo is for you. The app was designed for people with ADHD and autism and helps empower users to schedule visual routines that work.
00:29:22
Speaker
Users say that Teemo can help reduce stress and support executive function, which are both two things that I struggle with myself. Learn more at www.teemoapp.com or just type in T-I-I-M-O into your search bar. Thank you so much to my Patreon supporters. Your support means the world. Anyway, let's get back into the show.
00:29:52
Speaker
So shall we move on to the next diversity? This is a very strange podcast because usually I have a topic that we talk around, but in that diversity, there's a lot of diversity in the diversity topic. So we're talking about lots of different things in bite-sized chunks. But the next one is comorbidities associated with autism.

Comorbidities in Autism

00:30:21
Speaker
anxiety, depression, OCD, ADHD, et cetera, et cetera. What is your experience with comorbidities and how do you think they affect an autistic person's life? Well, for me, a bunch of stuff that I now see as like I have it because autistic people are prone to have these conditions.
00:30:46
Speaker
I had these before I realized being autistic had something to do with it. So when I was in college, I got really, really like, I don't know how to describe it, but I just, I knew something was up and I was frustrated with myself and the school therapist was like, I think you have ADD.
00:31:07
Speaker
And I was like, Oh my gosh, my dad has ADD and he's been talking about it. He got diagnosed when nobody was diagnosed, like back in the eighties and stuff. And he's the stereotype for ADD. And I was like, why did I never like research this and learn about it? Also like depression, a lot of my depression.
00:31:24
Speaker
was because I was trying to be a neurotypical person and failing. And if I'd been treating my depression as an autistic person who had depression, it probably would have been helped. I had a lot of anxiety and I realized it was just because when I got diagnosed, I realized all the anxiety, I didn't have an anxiety disorder.
00:31:43
Speaker
I was autistic and anxiety is a component of that because of the way that I experienced the world and the amount of stress that I get under because society is putting so much on me that I can't handle as an autistic person. And so for me, all the comorbidities that I had been experiencing thinking that they were their own issue
00:32:06
Speaker
has got have all gotten better because i've been treating myself the way that i need to be treated as an autistic person so the the interesting part about that is that i thought they were i had all these like mental issues or personality stuff and really it was just because i wasn't treating myself kindly and giving myself patience knowing like because i didn't know i was autistic and being forced to cope in a neurotypical world
00:32:36
Speaker
My takeaway is once you know that you're autistic, then you can help yourself with all these things. They're just conditions that are common in autistic people. They're not caused by your autism or anything like that. I do think that one of the sort of important talking points is why they happen. Because I did a
00:33:03
Speaker
a literature review as part of my university degree. I did one prior to making my documentary to kind of give evidence to why I was creating a piece and all that. There's not a lot of literature on mental health and comorbidities around autism, but what is out there may suggest that there is some level of biological component to do with
00:33:32
Speaker
cutters or receptors or anything like that, but I think it's also important to highlight that life experience plays a lot into comorbidities. If the world's confusing and people are confusing and you're having lots of trouble and people are bullying you when you're not really sure where you stand, you're going to get a lot of anxiety from that. Long-term anxiety leads to depression, just part of the natural sort of hormone pathway to do with
00:34:01
Speaker
cortisol and some of the other sort of bodily hormones. And then of course, if you, if you're depressed and you're anxious, then you're going to try and find ways of coping with it. And sometimes those things aren't going to be healthy. You may develop some kind of eating disorder, you may self-harm, you may, I know particularly for myself, I struggled a bit with, especially in the last year of university with, with alcohol, you know, there's a large tendency towards kind of those,
00:34:32
Speaker
unhealthy kind of addictive behaviors because, you know, if you don't understand yourself and you don't understand why things are happening and the world is a complex mess of sensory signals, then, you know, you have to cope with it in some way. The funny thing about these conditions is they all interlink in some respects. There was one particular person that I chatted to recently,
00:35:01
Speaker
girl called Anna and she was telling me all about her OCD and you know like with OCD you kind of have compulsions and obsessions and not obsessions obsessions and compulsions and sometimes they can be very unrealistic and unlogical you know like I need to do the door handle up and down five times so that my house doesn't go on fire or something but with her
00:35:30
Speaker
She's describing me as kind of like a logical OCD. Things that she obsesses about are always things that are grounded in reality or science or evidence. And if something doesn't make sense, then she doesn't get an obsession about it. And OCD has a large aspect of anxiety, especially with the obsessions. You've got to do something to quell it. And it's just fascinating just how interlinked
00:35:59
Speaker
everything is and could be. It's quite a complex sort of thing to dissect. For sure.
00:36:08
Speaker
It's not something that we could do in one part of a podcast. Yeah, definitely not. A lot of autistic people, their comorbidities might be like epilepsy or Ehlers-Danlos syndrome or a lot of physical disabilities that I don't have. Most of mine are, a lot of mine are situational, depending on my circumstances.
00:36:34
Speaker
But most of mine are just kind of there because I was autistic, not realizing that I was autistic, and not treating myself. So I don't consider myself disabled, really, because I'm in a situation in my life where I am able to do everything that I am...
00:36:55
Speaker
wanting to do and stuff. But there's a lot of autosuit people who aren't, like all of the things that I guess you would say impair them will do so to make them in a way that makes them not able to function the way that they want to function. So like I definitely have impairments with a lot of things, but it's not something that prohibits me from the way that I'm wanting to live.
00:37:25
Speaker
while back, you know, around the sort of start of COVID, me and my friend Vicky, who's also known as Actually Aspling, we put together like an autism quiz to sort of bring some of the autism creators on Instagram together. And one of the questions that they would come up with was, what is not co-morbid with autism? And literally you can, like everything
00:37:52
Speaker
Everything is comorbid with autism. Not everything, of course. That's hilarious. You literally can't find something that's not comorbid. I think it's just looking at the most likely ones. There's a lot of things that are associated with
00:38:13
Speaker
having an autism diagnosis that aren't considered to be health conditions or anything like that, such as being more inclined to be on the asexual spectrum.

Autism and Asexuality Correlation

00:38:23
Speaker
Yep, that's me. A lot of different variability. You're asexual. Yep.
00:38:29
Speaker
I actually was thinking about doing a YouTube video on it, but I'm not sure about it. I'm still not sure what my stance is on what my focus would be for the video, so I'm still working on it.
00:38:46
Speaker
But yeah, the lifestyle that you make yourself and its relation to your environment will either have a positive impact on your health or a negative impact on your health. And when it does that, then it has a lot to do with your diversity of skills, your just everything about you. And so that's why the spectrum is so like vast, I guess, if that makes sense. Yeah, I think
00:39:13
Speaker
You know, there's a lot of different things that are interlinked. So it's a very interesting topic to kind of discuss, you know, like anxiety and depression and, you know, the things that cause it, like bullying and isolation and all that stuff is quite a big sort of driver for me to do this kind of advocacy kind of stuff while I'm making videos and talking to charities and stuff. It's quite important because we don't know to what extent
00:39:43
Speaker
our environment and the way that society is impacts our comorbidities. I have met a lot of autistic people who don't have comorbidities. You know, like a lot of the struggles that they had when they were younger don't have as much of an effect because they're not constantly tired and flat of energy and overexerted and in an irritable state.
00:40:13
Speaker
you know, things like executive functioning and all over those kind of sort of life skills and dating and friendships and stuff comes a lot easier to them. Definitely an interesting topic. Let's move on to the other one. And this is another hot topic of diversity.

Skills and Interests Diversity

00:40:34
Speaker
It's special interests and innate skills. Now what I mean by innate skills is something that you're
00:40:41
Speaker
you're born with generally. Skills can be built upon, but your innate skills are something that's integral to you and the way that your mind, your brain is wired. There is a little bit of a stereotypical rhetoric around autistic people being amazing at maths and coding, which is just completely not the case. And people do assume that a lot. So what I want to ask is,
00:41:10
Speaker
What variety of skills have you seen among autistic people? Do you think it's quite diverse or it's quite niche? It really is. Yeah, we were talking about like logic versus creativity. And I think every person in the world, whether they're autistic or not, has some degree, either more logic or more creativity side because of left brain and right brain differences.
00:41:35
Speaker
but selectively on the spectrum, like we have a lot of innate abilities that neurotypicals don't have. And then we lack a lot of innate abilities that neurotypicals do have. So like we don't have like a lot of innate social skills and a lot of the rhetoric of like autism as a disorder is you're lacking this, you don't have this, you're bad at this. And so flipping that binary,
00:42:04
Speaker
and saying instead with a strength-based perspective, we have great cognitive skills with pattern recognition and seeing small details and hyper-focusing. We have a lot of
00:42:21
Speaker
social skills that aren't recognized because they're not the norm, but a lot of autistic people that I've met have great skills at acting because they are pretending to be like something they're not. I think a lot of
00:42:37
Speaker
actors and actresses in Hollywood are undiagnosed autistics because they can just completely like immerse themselves in relating to a character that they've been given and you know stuff like that. A lot of autistic people have sensory skills that like people don't even realize are skills. Being able to like smell things from afar away is a way that are really strong because they're sensory sensitive. I think like another one would be music.
00:43:07
Speaker
I think that's something that comes up quite a lot, sort of being able to dissect the different instruments and find the beat easier and sing with better pitch even though I am at lessons. That seems to be quite, you know, something that I've seen quite a bit.
00:43:23
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great example. Another one with like communication language skills. A lot of autistics are like we have to learn how to communicate in a language that we've like grown up and been around almost as if it's our second language.
00:43:40
Speaker
So we know the process of learning a language more than maybe neurotypical people. So a lot of autistics are really great at learning languages. I did not know that. I'm definitely not one of those people.
00:43:55
Speaker
No, I kind of am not either. I was an English major in university, and at the same time as art and poetry and writing being a better alternative for me, because I'm not as... Once I have everything written down, I can verbalize, but...
00:44:16
Speaker
I can't just like talk and have things be coherent. Like all of my stuff is like writing and stuff. But at the same time I make fun of myself sometimes because like I was born in America with the language of English. I don't speak really any other languages, maybe a little Spanish. And I was an English major and I still have trouble with communicating an English language. I don't think he's
00:44:46
Speaker
I mean, it may take a lot more effort, but you're verbalizing and explaining things.
00:44:53
Speaker
a lot better than most people could. Oh, thank you. And that's another part of it is people don't recognize the amount of effort that we have to go into to get to this point,

Effort in Social Communication

00:45:04
Speaker
which is why the spectrum is not recognized as diverse as it is because they don't see how much work you have to put into something. And if I put in the amount of effort that a neurotypical person puts into communicating, then I would not be communicating well because it takes me more effort
00:45:22
Speaker
to come across at the same level. It's like taking a practical exam every time that you talk to someone. You got to analyze and understand the situation. Like how people say life is a test I didn't study for. Talking is a test. I wasn't even aware there was a test. There's so many different variables to it, isn't there?
00:45:46
Speaker
In order to become competent at socializing in any sense, you've got to understand when is your turn to speak and you've got to process things quicker than you usually do when you've got to incorporate different emotions that people are feeling and the environment and what you're supposed to do in a certain environment like a party or a workplace and you've got to understand what the body language is saying and there's just
00:46:14
Speaker
There's a lot of effort that goes into that, but it's possible. Yeah. And my main message for a lot of autistics that I try to cut across is don't worry so much about what you're not going to be able to change. I know that there's certain things about me that I'm never going to get good at. I don't need to worry about that because I have so many things that
00:46:39
Speaker
I am good at that I should stay positive about and develop those skills that I already have, also based in any special interest that I have, all the strengths that I have to work accommodating those, not trying to be something that I'm not, seeing what you're already strong in, what you already are skilled in, that coincides with what you enjoy about life. That's a sweet spot. And it's hard to find, isn't it? You got to
00:47:08
Speaker
But I do a lot of experimenting with jobs and sort of career paths and stuff. I mean, I definitely struggled with knowing what I want to do. I thought I was going to go into science, but then I realized I didn't have the fine motor skills to do lab, to do sort of typical kind of molecular lab work. I can do it. I'm just not as competent as other people. So there's a lot of aspects to sort of, especially when we're talking about innate skills, like
00:47:37
Speaker
I'm not innately good at communicating or socialising, but because it's my special interest, learning about people and how to work and how I can come across in the best way possible, I've become good at that, but that's because it's my special interest and I put a lot of time into it. Things that I'm good at innately, I guess, would be vocabulary, you know, different flamboyant, an array of flamboyant different words that you can use to
00:48:06
Speaker
describe life and the many intricacies of that. That's probably not a good example. No, it's a great one. Stuff like that. Sports come quite easy to me, which I know is not something that most people would associate with autism.
00:48:25
Speaker
Yeah. But then I'm also terrible. That's the problem with all the stereotypes is that people aren't going to recognize that they're autistic if they're only going by the criteria that has been stereotyped that isn't comprehensive enough to show the vast validity of the spectrum. And so any amount of skills and abilities that you have
00:48:50
Speaker
it's okay. You don't have to worry that you're not autistic because you have sports abilities in movies, then the autistic people don't do sports. Screw that. I think a lot of strengths come in either from what we fixate on and things that we enjoy and want to work on. That can be anything from gaming to arts to science abilities to
00:49:20
Speaker
to languages, there's such a large amount of diversity that I've seen. And that's just within a certain social media site, within Instagram. There's likely to be a lot more out there. It's just important to kind of highlight things. I think one of the problems with some people who are autistic is that because they've lacked that innate understanding of
00:49:50
Speaker
of social interactions, they are very deterred from trying to explore that. But actually reading into it and getting interested in socializing and reading the research and the sociology and the psychology and the practical aspects to it actually does a massive amount in the long run to improve on that stuff. And that's the same for any skill. We just differ in RNA abilities. Cool.
00:50:20
Speaker
Let's move on, because I know that we've already got an hour in and we've got a couple of questions to go. I know, right? It's flown by. It definitely does fly by. What's next?

Sensory Processing Variations

00:50:33
Speaker
So sensory difficulties and differences are extremely common in autistic people. What dimensions of sensory differences exist and how do you think autistic people can differ in those sensory profiles?
00:50:50
Speaker
Well, we know the basic hypo-sensitive versus hypersensitive kind of being not as aware of sensory input or way too aware of sensory input. All the sensory signals we're receiving, interpreting, and responding to affect us in different ways.
00:51:09
Speaker
part of our neurology, part of the diversity of our neurology means that you'll process sensory signals differently. And so all of autistic people's sensory processing patterns are unique. And a lot of them are situational, like we talked about with other things. I think that there probably is more hypersensitive autistic people than hypo-sensitive people.
00:51:36
Speaker
I'm normally wary of saying, which is more or less of, because obviously, more outwardly evident things are said to be the predominant thing, even though it might be even with stuff that isn't outwardly noticeable. Yes, I understand. As far as I've seen and experienced and talked about with other autistic people, it seems that more autistic people are hypersensitive. Yeah.
00:52:05
Speaker
Or at least that that's the thing that they kind of kind of focus on. It is something that, you know, as we've talked about, does play into anxiety. And, you know, your ability to go out and socialise with people, it's quite a large sort of barrier. You know, you've got to find ways to get around it, or you're just going to come away from certain situations or places just
00:52:31
Speaker
buzzing. Yeah. A lot of your sensory differences as an autistic person, it doesn't really have to be either hypersensitive or hypo sensitive. I'm doing a YouTube series right now. I'm in the middle of it because I'm hypersensitive in pretty much all my senses. Really? You can have a mix of either depending on sight, smell, taste, balance.
00:52:58
Speaker
But the main thing is to know your own sensory profile and how you respond to sensory input and interpret it in order to understand yourself better and do what you need to do to take care of yourself emotionally. If you get overloaded and learning to recognize what triggers an overload or a shutdown are just like sensory buildup and learning how to like in your own way deal with it. Yeah. I think.
00:53:27
Speaker
A lot of the times when I've been highly anxious, that's usually when I'm very aware of how my sense is into play with how comfortable I am and vice versa. Usually come away from situations more anxious if it is a lot more stimulatory. There definitely is such a thing as the autism household, dim lighting.
00:53:57
Speaker
Lowered volume. Yeah, volume of stuff. Sensory just impacts everything, really. It's your experience of the world, isn't it?
00:54:07
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. When I get out of bed, I have to make sure that my room is clean or else I'll be stressed for the rest of the day. And just looking at a bunch of stuff on my floor stresses me out. And that's a sensory thing that I didn't realize I had for a long time. And so being aware of your own sensory profile, that's the main thing that I can say because everyone's is so different. Just learn what yours is and how you function with it.
00:54:36
Speaker
So if I could give like an overview or a consensus of the most common things that I see, it's usually sight, hearing and touch that tend to be hypersensitive and vestibular stuff, you know, to do with proprioception and your body in space and your balance and stuff seem to be a lot more hypo sensitive. It's important to understand that you can't just be
00:55:05
Speaker
hypersensitive to sight, because sight is a multi-dimensional thing. I don't like bright white lights. It stresses me out. But I absolutely love strobing flashy colored lights. Same. It mesmerized me. We went to Asda this time where we were going to get some... I can't remember what we were getting me and my girlfriend, because obviously they're bringing out the Halloween stuff.
00:55:35
Speaker
And it was this like wand and it just like span round and just flashed. And I was just like, can you, can you please pull that away? Cause I am getting way too fixated on this. I'm going to have to buy it if I, if I spend too much time here. But then you've got other stuff, like for me, I'm extremely overly sensitive to sharp pain. So like needles, scratches, paper cuts, absolute agony, but I'm very,
00:56:04
Speaker
Unsensitive to blunt pain. So like, obviously that helps a lot with my taekwondo or martial arts and stuff because I don't feel as much of that blunt force.
00:56:16
Speaker
Yeah. If I hit my hand lightly against a table, it feels the exact same for me as if I were to like hit my hand super hard. Yeah. And so like my body just doesn't like recognize that the impact has more force and should hurt more. My body's just like, Oh, it's all the same. Yeah. It's kind of like a, uh, a compressor for touch. Uh, what's the word tactile input, you know, just, just raises up all the, the small,
00:56:44
Speaker
sensory stuff and dims down all the hard stuff. It's a lot more complex than what would appear on the surface, I think. You know, although people can be generally more hypersensitive and hypersensitive in certain areas, each aspect of your sensory experience can be affected in different ways. You know, like, I guess sort of a strange and out there example is, I like
00:57:13
Speaker
cold air on my face but i don't like cold air on my body so it's you know you know there's lots of different kind of interactions and differences that that occur in it in each sort of situation so it's definitely not as black and white as i don't feel this as much in this type of sense or i'm too sensitive in this sense shall we go on to the last question which is
00:57:41
Speaker
Something that I think is quite an interesting topic.

Misconceptions About Empathy

00:57:45
Speaker
Let's talk about empathy. Now, Laura Wing was, I believe was the person to popularize the belief that autistic children lack empathy. I think it was something linked in with like the theory of mind kind of example. But contrary to that, there has been absolutely tons of examples and numerous testimonials from autistic adults and
00:58:12
Speaker
parents of autistic children to. And it actually shows that a lot of autistic people can be, more than often, very, very, very empathetic. Would you consider all autistic people to be empathetic? I know that's a bit of an extreme. And in what ways might we not be?
00:58:32
Speaker
Well, there's different types of empathy. And so where we might not be strong with certain situations or types of empathy, then we do have strengths and other types of empathy. Personally, for me, if I don't experience something like everybody else, if you don't experience something, then you can't know how someone else will feel about it. But you have situations in your life where it might be similar circumstances. So you can understand
00:59:02
Speaker
how they are feeling or at least why they are feeling the way they say that they're feeling. Estimating their feelings.
00:59:11
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And when you say like all autistic people, then it's always something that I don't want to speak over someone. I want to speak for people who aren't able to speak for themselves, who like maybe they don't have an online platform that they can use to explain about autism.
00:59:38
Speaker
And I do, and so I take that very seriously and I don't ever want to imply that the way I am as an autistic person is the same as everyone else. But I do believe that all autistic people do have a degree of empathy because really that's what makes you human and autistic people are not subhuman. Unless you have a co-morbidity of psychopathy.
01:00:04
Speaker
Yes, exactly. Maybe if you're also a sociopath, it's not an autistic trait to lack empathy, and people will think that too much because our differences of theory of mind and how we understand the world is so different from how other people understand the world that they think that we don't understand the things that we actually do. Yeah.
01:00:32
Speaker
when I think I told you earlier, when I was younger than every so often, I would Google criteria for a sociopath because I was like, I just don't connect. Yeah. I was like, something just doesn't connect with me with people. Like I didn't identify with the criteria enough. And then I realized, oh, I'm just autistic. I just empathize with people in a different way. Yeah. It's kind of like that strange crossover between what is manipulating people
01:01:02
Speaker
and what is masking, you know? Like, to what aspects of me learning about the human mind is in any way malicious, but it's kind of like something that I've come up on because I, yeah, like yourself, I have, you know, constantly throughout my life, especially if I've, people have, you know, said that I've done something wrong or something to hurt someone. I'll Google and do a test about
01:01:30
Speaker
psychopathy or sociography. But that process of doing that and trying to make sure that I'm not, kind of contradicts how a sociopath and a psychopath would. Yeah, exactly. They wouldn't care if they were or not because they're just interested in how they can use it and stuff. It's just because autistic people have cognitive differences. We have different cognitive awareness. We have
01:01:56
Speaker
like differences in perception and reasoning and judgment, and just basically the way that we think is very different from neurotypical people. We don't have to try and justify that we are empathetic or that we do care about people. It's old rhetoric that has been constantly repeated. We've settled this. It's not a question anymore. It shouldn't be a question anymore.
01:02:24
Speaker
because enough autistic people have explained themselves. I think a lot of the misunderstanding comes in from, as you said, our differences in the way that we behave and we process things. If I was to put my finger on something, I don't think that we have much situational empathy. We're very much the people to
01:02:53
Speaker
experience something and listen to something about someone's experience and go away, you know, and think about it and sort of put ourselves in their shoes actively and put a lot of effort into trying to understand their emotional state. And then we come back and then we show a lot of empathy and we try and sort of kind of help them out and stuff. Yeah. And also, oh, go ahead. I also think that
01:03:23
Speaker
another aspect would be not understanding the body language, that there's subtle cues that people give. There's one kid that I've worked with who, he's a lovely kid, he's great, he's an absolute gem, he's a beautiful soul, but he does hit. And sometimes he uses a lot more force than is needed to, especially like when you're playing or something. And a lot of cases he'll
01:03:53
Speaker
I hurt another kid or I hurt myself, but he won't understand. At that age, it's very difficult for him to put himself in somebody else's shoes. And, you know, there's a lot of aspects to kind of how that interplays in a child's sort of life, you know, around this is mine, you know, snatching and all those those kind of behaviors. But one time he kind of kicked me, but he didn't do it in a malicious way. He wasn't angry.
01:04:22
Speaker
And I pulled the most exaggerated sad face and dropped my tone in my voice and was like, you hurt me. And he was like, oh, I'm sorry. There's so many barriers to it. And I understand why that misconception goes around.
01:04:39
Speaker
Yeah. And a lot of it is like if we don't experience it, then we kind of like doubt that it's real, I guess. So I have a funny story about that. I've always washed my laundry and I just dump everything in the washer. So I did that yesterday with some new clothes that some people had given us, me and my sister, and they all got ruined. And my mom had to like help me fix them because I didn't separate the darks and lights in the laundry.
01:05:05
Speaker
my sister's frustrated at me my mom was like I've taught you to wash your clothes separately and stuff why did she do that and I was like it's never that's never happened to me I always thought that people were just exaggerating when they like separate their clothes and stuff and I thought they were just picky because I've washed my clothes since I was like 15 all it
01:05:26
Speaker
the same pile the exact same way every single time. It works for me every single time. Nothing bad has ever happened. And so even something ridiculous like that, it's because a lack of that type of empathy where I realize that people don't have the same experiences as me. And so I need to be aware of
01:05:49
Speaker
things that could happen, even though I have assumed that they just won't happen to me, stuff like that. So that was a mess, but the clothes turned out sort of okay for the most part.
01:06:06
Speaker
uncertainty about that statement. I just think it's important for everyone to recognize that autistic people and neurotypical people all have different levels of empathy and no one can read other people's minds and that's okay. Yeah. I think there is also a large part from other people as well, neurotypicals, if
01:06:33
Speaker
A neurotypical doesn't understand the way that you work and you process things and you understand situations, then they're not going to have as much empathy for it. And that happens a lot. It's kind of that cross-wise between brains and communicating. A neurotypical person's not going to understand why you've got to move away from the radiator because it's too hot in class, or why you're so stressed out because you're surrounded by white lights and lots of people talking all the time.
01:07:03
Speaker
They're not going to have much empathy for that. And I think that's important to highlight because that doesn't just span so that kind of superficial things like that. It's integral parts to the way that we process and understand our environment and situations that play a large role in our ability to empathize with somebody.
01:07:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's called cross-cognitive difficulties when autistic people have difficulty understanding neurotypicals and then neurotypicals have difficulty understanding autistic people just because our cognition is different. Just because I'm saying one thing and you're saying another doesn't mean that we're contradicting each other. That has a lot of interplay in the dating scene and the relationships.
01:07:47
Speaker
stuff like that that's there's quite a common difficulty with autistic people dating neurotypical people that kind of cross wires that not having much empathy for each from both sides you know like because it's hard isn't it if you just can't understand why someone's doing something or saying something i think that's true for everybody just in some respects it's just large majority of people are neurotypical
01:08:16
Speaker
So we have to pull up the slack in a lot of cases. OK, so we have talked through all of the areas of diversity that I wanted to chat to you about.

Conclusion and Key Takeaways

01:08:31
Speaker
There are a few that I think we could talk about. I know when we first had our little pre-chat, we thought up of lots of different, a lot of different topics and areas of diversity that
01:08:46
Speaker
we could go into. It's already quite a long podcast, so we're going to have to go to here. So let's try and round up this podcast. What three main things do you want people to take away?
01:09:01
Speaker
Well, I think the main thing that maybe neurotypical people more could take away from this is just the more you understand about autistic diversity, the more that we will be accepted and the more that you can accept that kind of difference. And so learning about it and autistics as well, like learning
01:09:22
Speaker
about why diversity within the spectrum is okay, it's okay. You can have any combination of autistic traits because they all interconnect. Your identity as an autistic person is still valid. I guess the third thing for everyone is just that when you accept autistic diversity as part of human diversity, then you start to learn to accept all parts of diversity.
01:09:49
Speaker
because diversity makes the world better. We'll have more education, we'll make more discoveries, and we'll have more solutions to problems and have more freedom when diversity is truly accepted and appreciated in the world. Brilliant. Thank you very much for those. Thank you for having me. This is so great. One thing that I would like to add is as well, I know that there's a lot of memes and a lot of conversations that happen in autism-related groups.
01:10:18
Speaker
about, you know, like, save the neurotypicals. Neurotypicals are bad in these areas and stuff. One of the best ways that I've improved my life is understanding the neurotypical mind. And it might sound crazy for any neurotypicals listening, but there are some things that, you know, are common and some things that are kind of notable differences between, and I guess for autistic people out there, learning that
01:10:46
Speaker
Neurotypicals also play a large role in society and their inherent innate understanding of social situations in the past. And then, you know, in those days when we don't have all this this modern infrastructure, we're a large driver for, you know, our species. And, you know, that's the reason you could say the same for autistic people is it's very much about knowing that neurotypicals are not they're not they're not worse or better.
01:11:16
Speaker
and autistic people are not worse or better. It's all intermingled and we all interplay and chip in what we can to society. Exactly. I am very happy with this podcast. Me too. I've got one last question for you and it's a question that I ask all autistic people and you can reply in any which way you like. What does autism mean to you?
01:11:44
Speaker
It means the natural variations in, I guess, human diversity. It means that those are essential to our life. And so autism as a type of brain, different from the majority of the population
01:12:02
Speaker
is important to recognize in yourself and in other people in order to see the beauty of the world. People call it a neurological difference because the human brain is so different in each and every person and that it's supposed to be that way. And so there's nothing wrong with being autistic.
01:12:26
Speaker
To me, it means that I can appreciate life in my own way and see the world, a perspective that is unique to me that I can also share with other people and connect with other people through. Brilliant. Yeah. That's brilliant. Thank you very much. Thank you. Right. It's been a long podcast, but I've very much enjoyed. I know we spoke a little bit at the beginning and I said,
01:12:56
Speaker
I do get a little bit of a serotonin rush and I definitely feel that right now. Just for anybody out there listening, would you like to give out some links to your social media and your website and stuff? Obviously I'll put all that stuff in the description and sort of give links to them. But yeah, where can people find you?
01:13:18
Speaker
Well, my Instagram is holisticautistic. My YouTube channel is called holisticautistic as well. My website is holisticautistic.weebly.com and my online book can be found on that website too if you'd like to buy it. Very concise, much more concise than mine.
01:13:39
Speaker
Yeah. If you go on my Instagram, Holistic Autistic, then I have a link that takes you to all the different links that I have. Is it like an Instabio? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, it also has my Patreon, and that's also Holistic. Pretty much everything is just Holistic Autistic. That's good. Very easy to find. All under one. Yep, exactly. And of course, if you want to follow the 4080 podcast in its many forms,
01:14:07
Speaker
You can always find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube under Asperger's Growth. I've also got some other videos, videos designed for autistic people, videos designed for the people around autistic people. A lot of stuff on mental health and a lot of my own personal experiences with different topics. If you want to stay up to date with my life, what's happening, the wider things that I'm doing around advocacy
01:14:36
Speaker
such as working with charities, working with different sites, working with different podcasts and radio shows, updates and all of that information on my social medias. All at Asperger's Grove, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Very easy to find. And if you have a topic or an experience or something that you want to talk to, please direct that to my email, asperger'sgroveatjumu.com. Always nice to hear from people.
01:15:04
Speaker
even if you just want to drop in and say hi. Thank you very much, Jess, for coming on to this podcast. I always massively appreciate the time that people take to talk to me while being recorded. Very strange concept. That was great. Thank you so much. And it's been lovely speaking to you, and I hope that we can stay in contact and do some more collaborative things together. Oh, definitely. Go check out Jess's stuff. Hopefully.
01:15:34
Speaker
When this goes out, we'll have a little bit of a clarity on the whole COVID thing. When I was doing my last period of time actually doing the podcasts, I was expecting at some point that when my last podcast went out that this whole thing would be over with and done, but obviously that's not the case. I hope everyone's dealing with it all right. I hope you're managing to get
01:16:03
Speaker
what you need from life, you're able to go to work and you're able to go to places and enjoy yourself. It's a very tough time for everybody in different multifaceted ways. But we can all come together, of course, for a chat on this podcast. Not literally, that would be absolutely chaos. That would be chaos. We're not doing that. Although it might be quite funny comedy thing to do in the future.
01:16:33
Speaker
It's very dark where I am, so I'm going to go get some shut-eye. What's your plan for the rest of the day, Jess? I am packing my dad's car and we were driving after he gets off work for five hours. Brilliant. What I wouldn't give for a nice five hour drive at the end of the day. Hope you enjoy that. And of course, I hope that you enjoy your time away. I hate rounding up podcasts. It's awful. How do I do it?
01:17:03
Speaker
Bye, cool cats. Bye, cool cats. Stay cool, stay fresh. And of course, make sure that you are, in fact, a human and you're not part of a feline. And make sure that you drink some water and sleep and do a little bit of exercise. See you later, cool cats.