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Episode 14 - Guest Michael AKA Autisticlyme Talks Community and More
66 Plays2 years ago
Paul and Martin (co-Mayors of ADHDville) chat with Tik Tok's most excellent Michael (@autisticlyme) about how many spoons does a podcast use, his meeting with the ADHDvilles librarian, and why he champions Tik Tok's Neurodivergent community.
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Put quill to paper and send us an email at: ADHDville@gmail.com
Theme music was written by Freddie Philips and played by Martin West. All other music by Martin West.
Please remember:
This is an entertainment podcast about ADHD and does not substitute for individualized advice from qualified health professionals.
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Transcript
Introduction and Meet Michael
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh, straight in. There we go. Absolutely looking great with the headphones and the beanie. I'm feeling left out again, guys. These are new, just for the occasion. Oh, really? Yeah. No, listen, I don't get to hang out with mayors too often. So I decided just to upgrade a few things. Yeah. We appreciate that. I really appreciate it. Fantastic. All right.
00:00:29
Speaker
Okay, let me just grab hold of my little script here. So as you may have guessed, this is a guest episode. We have Michael here from our TikTok community and we'll jump into speaking to him. But first, I feel like we have to play our little intro music.
00:00:55
Speaker
Of course we do. And then we can jump into the car and then we can go to the coffee place and then we can have a chat. All right, here we go with some music. Welcome to ADHDville.
00:01:28
Speaker
That is, if you didn't know, I know that you're Canadian, right? Yes, accused.
Cultural Background and Entertainment
00:01:40
Speaker
And that's French Canadian, right? You're French Canadian, Michael? Actually, no. I live in the French Canadian part of the country, but I'm actually from the East Coast, so.
00:01:53
Speaker
Oh, OK, OK, nice. So, yeah, our theme music is from a British TV show from when I was a kid called Call the Trump. And I know that you guys had some British TV over there in in Canada, but I'm guessing you didn't have you didn't get Trump to know Campbell with green.
00:02:20
Speaker
No, not, not Trump did. Actually, I spent four, four years in Belgium and, uh, existed off the BBC. So, Oh, really? Yeah. Where in Belgium.
00:02:33
Speaker
Well, I was in the central as in one of those moments your mind goes blank, right? Let's go to the second place. I live near Moles, down near the French border. Really great going as a non-French speaking Canadian.
00:03:00
Speaker
to Belgium. And my ancestry is actually Flemish, but I was living... I thought you might be. I was living in the French part of the country, so it was interesting. Oh, wow. Yeah. Great. Great. All right.
Understanding Adult ADHD
00:03:17
Speaker
Well, let's do a little introduction, shall we?
00:03:21
Speaker
All right, Paul, take it away. Take it away. So we're just two mates who, by coincidence or not, after 39 years of friendship, discover that we're code the HD is okay. So now it's really important to say that this is an entertainment podcast about adult ADHD and does not substitute no, no, no for individualized advice from qualified health professionals. So don't take any advice from us, especially Martin,
00:03:49
Speaker
We're just here as a kind of all inclusive ADHD park bench with room for everyone, including your doppelgangers, your alter egos, your bodied doubles, your chaperones, and even your best buddies.
00:04:04
Speaker
Still here, then grab your jet packs, your pedalos, your space hoppers, or any other transportation methods, and let us take you to ADHDville, an imaginary town that we've created in our minds. In our minds. In our minds. In our minds. We would like to explore different parts of ADHD. And we start off by me saying I'm a multi-westerner, I was diagnosed
00:04:30
Speaker
in 2013 with ADHD so that's quite a while ago now. I've been hacking around with that old fella and we start off as always here at the Town Hall in the Mayor's Office where we the joint mayors of ADHDville
00:04:49
Speaker
take care of business and the theme today. Well, we're doing a guest episode and we've already started to chat to Michael and I think that we're going to kind of get into ADHD being diagnosed in the later life and also the importance of community.
00:05:08
Speaker
So with that, one of the main reasons why we aspire to get Michael on here is because you speak so passionate, Michael, in your TikTok posts about how important the community is, especially if sometimes maybe depending on where you live, you may not get so much support from professionals on the subject.
00:05:36
Speaker
No, and being mayors, you know how important community is. In fact, I was chatting on the way in with one, your librarian, a very lovely lady. Oh, gorgeous. Yeah, she was explaining to me how much your citizens just absolutely love you guys as mayors. I really do.
00:05:54
Speaker
Yeah, just because of how you just your vision of community. I mean, ADHD, Ville. I mean, that I mean, just okay, what you did for the farmer. That was I was I mean, what what mayor is going to go to that extent, put their life on hold the Russia to provide provide a trophy. I mean, that speaks of the quality of your mayor ship. I'm telling you.
00:06:22
Speaker
Only because we've got elections coming up. Usually we're really crap.
00:06:33
Speaker
Yeah, we just don't care what it's like in two years time. We won't care about anyone, you know. We want to be living under the under the bridge. Yeah. All right. Let's let's squeeze in to the mayor's car and we're going to go ahead and head over to the to the coffee place. So we just just all budge up a little bit. Yeah, it's a tight squeeze in here.
00:06:58
Speaker
yeah but uh let's let's let's go to the cafe cafe cafe sounds very continental cafe cafe or should we
00:07:29
Speaker
Well, I'm having a green tea. That's what I'm having. Can I get anyone else a drink while we're here? No, I got my black coffee. All right. I've got ginseng, which is like a very poor substitute. It's a really poor substitute for coffee. Yeah, I quite like ginseng. Can you hear me?
00:07:57
Speaker
He had a technical hitch. Oops.
00:08:07
Speaker
we're back in the room. And weirdly, both of your cameras have swapped around. So so now on my screen, I've got, I've got Michael on the left. Okay. So yes, let's dig into you, Michael, what did your diagnosis look like?
00:08:31
Speaker
Actually, I'm, I'm not diagnosed. I'm, I'm self realized. Um, my journey actually started, well, I mean, it started at my birth, but the, the, the ADHD autistic journey started with my grandson seven years ago. And um, strange thing is my kids are like me. So I thought they were okay.
00:08:56
Speaker
A little weird at times, but that's perfectly fine. I don't mind weird kids. It's kind of unique. But when my grandson was diagnosed seven years ago, things started falling into place. It was like, wow, what?
00:09:17
Speaker
Suddenly, for my kids, it was like a domino. It was diagnosis after diagnosis, just like every one of them were getting these diagnoses. After sitting through the process, I think it was the fourth time sitting through the process, things started clicking in my head. As I was doing research and finding out that
00:09:42
Speaker
I don't know so much about ADHD, but I know autism is genetic, and it's usually passed down from the father. Oh, really? And I go, what? Really? What? Yeah. So you go
Family Recognition of Autism and ADHD
00:09:59
Speaker
on that self-journey sort of thing, dig into the more research. I mean, I've really spent a lot of time researching, questioning back and forth, back and forth. Finally, one day I said to,
00:10:10
Speaker
one of my daughters who is ADHD and has really had a tough time of it. I said, you know, I'm starting to think that I'm autistic. And she said, oh, dad, she says, we've known for years. She said, but you just weren't ready to hear it yet. Oh, wow.
00:10:35
Speaker
Yeah. So and then in, you know, in all that self examination you go through, looking at my life and my life guys have been all over the place. I've been involved in so much stuff. And I stick with it for so many years and then move on to another project. Yeah. And as I'm looking at this, my brain never shuts off. There's always plans, always working on stuff. I realize, you know, man, it's not just autism.
00:11:05
Speaker
I think there is, there's a lot of ADHD here. That's really interesting, Michael.
00:11:14
Speaker
Yeah, the ideas, the visions, visionary stuff. And I realized early on that this is before any of this stuff, that, hey, I'm great at the ideas and the projects. I'm not so great at sustaining it. So I had to get a team around me. And usually a team of oddballs. So like calls to like. Oh, yeah, absolutely.
00:11:44
Speaker
That's why we're all here. Yeah. Yeah. Martin and I worked together for a number of years. Yeah. We'll classify each other as oddballs. That's right. Yeah. But in my part of the world, like for me to get a diagnosis is just like, it's incredibly impossible. Right.
00:12:08
Speaker
I mean, you can go the private route where it's going to cost you thousands of dollars, but you're still, it's a huge waiting list. And the psychologist that I work with for my children said, you know,
00:12:21
Speaker
She's actually the one who said, have you really like, she was the first one that like, have you thought of, you know, maybe going through the process yourself? I'm like, why? But she said there's no, there's no advantage. There's nothing like there's like, if you're satisfied in yourself and you recognize this in yourself, she says there's no advantage to getting a diagnosis.
00:12:48
Speaker
But I've discovered since then there is some advantage, especially when you're working with advocacy, when you're working with trying to speak out, represent the community. If you don't have a diagnosis, I mean the community, most of the community embraces self-diagnosis because they know that that's a privilege. That's not available to everybody.
00:13:18
Speaker
But when you're dealing with people outside of the community and you don't have a diagnosis, they don't consider you legitimate.
00:13:28
Speaker
So it gets to be hard. Yeah. But who would do that? Who would actually not be autistic or ADHD and a proclaimed, you know, yeah, it's strange, isn't it? It's strange that that kind of person would exist. Seems almost impossible. I think it will, it's going to become more of a problem because people are looking for community.
00:13:53
Speaker
And so what we're seeing is the neurodivergent community is getting stronger. It's getting closer. I mean, there's a lot of trauma. There's a lot of drama inside the community right now as things are being looked at, but it's still attractive. For somebody who doesn't have a community, they can be drawn to that and want to be part of it.
00:14:18
Speaker
So in the past, yeah, there was absolutely no advantage. But as we're going forward and we're seeing this beautiful thing developing, I think it can become a bigger problem in the future. Right. I mean, we can come on to the kind of wider community. There's an interesting point that you make is that the first community, if you like, is your own family, your own friends. And then from there,
00:14:46
Speaker
my friends were the next step because as you say, you tend to kind of have oddball friends, right? And you start to look around them and kind of go, yeah, he's definitely on the spectrum. She's on the spectrum. And sometimes to your point earlier, it's like,
00:15:07
Speaker
You can't go up to all these people and go, you're on the spectrum. You sometimes just have to wait for them to kind of go, you know what, you know what, Michael, I think these ADHD things, I seem to be ticking a lot of these boxes. And then you kind of like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've known that for years.
00:15:29
Speaker
It was me and Martin, and I've known each other for 39 years, and Martin was very discreet about, which is very unlike Martin. It was really discreet. I just said it for comedic effect. It's difficult to go out to someone and say, look, even though I found, I was diagnosed just
00:15:53
Speaker
for months ago, my radar for ADHD is just like really tuned. I could spot people really quite easily. Yeah, I didn't have the community you see, I didn't have some people, I didn't have people around because I live in in Italy. And it's not ADHD, it's just not on the radar here very much at all at the moment.
00:16:18
Speaker
Most people don't even know what it is. You say to me, oh, you've got, I've been diagnosed with ADHD and they just look at you blankly. So what is that? It's bizarre. So I had to work it out pretty much for myself other than, you know, meeting up with Martin occasionally on FaceTime or whatever.
00:16:39
Speaker
Well, you know what? The problem is, I think, Paul, is ADHD doesn't end in a vowel. Anything that exists in Italy has a vowel at the end. Yeah. And ADHD doesn't. Yeah, you have to put like an extra A on the end. Yeah. That's why I teach my students. I've been teaching them to pronounce, because I've just started last week conversation English in schools, at high school.
00:17:09
Speaker
I've got 300 students now. And I teach, that's what I tell people. That's what I tell my students. There are no vowels on the end. Stop pronouncing vowels that aren't there. What do you mean? What do you mean? What the hell do you mean?
00:17:28
Speaker
But we have to recognize the privilege that we have. I mean, we're three guys sitting around talking about this. And whether diagnosed or undiagnosed, it's still a privileged position.
Challenges for ADHD Families
00:17:41
Speaker
I talk with a lot of single moms.
00:17:44
Speaker
who are either late diagnosed or late realized, who are dealing with children who are being diagnosed, whose exes are actually virile towards them. Because there's, you know, there's, they're accusing, there's nothing wrong with my kids, you know, really. And usually, usually their parents are against them too.
00:18:08
Speaker
Because they consider these kids are broken or defective. No, no, that can't be happening. And so not only don't they have a community, but they have this ugliness and this opposition that they're facing. Stigmatized. That we don't face.
00:18:26
Speaker
I don't face that. And most of my male autistic friends, although they went through some things with school and stuff, their family was usually with them. A single mom and everybody turns against you, who do you have left? That's crap. Yeah, that's really crap. It is. That is tough. Wow.
00:18:50
Speaker
I didn't realise because I've not come across. I mean, if you guys, if you come across like people have reacted badly to you so far, you know, other than Martin in the swimming pool, Martin had a funny experience in the swimming pool. Oh yeah. I've not had it yet. I've had people not understand it and decide to try to ignore it.
00:19:14
Speaker
Like, you know, uh, or downplay it or no, no, you look okay. Oh, you don't look autistic, you know? Um, but you're handling things well, you're handling things, but they don't understand what's going on inside of us. That's, that's the problem. Like what we put on the outside isn't what's happening on the inside and what's going on in the outside is for their comfort.
00:19:40
Speaker
And I've actually had somebody say, oh, you know, you can just be yourself. I said, no, I can't. I said, you wouldn't be able to handle me. You wouldn't be able to handle me as myself. And this group that we're in. Sounds like Jack Nicholson. You can't handle the truth.
00:20:03
Speaker
I mean, these are the things that I come up against is, again, people who weren't up to date, you know, what ADHD actually looks like, or it's been turned into a joke. ADHD actually has been turned into a joke.
00:20:19
Speaker
Well, if the damn name doesn't help, not if the
Daily ADHD Struggles and Realizations
00:20:23
Speaker
name helps. The name doesn't help, does it? Well, it's good. People, you know, reduce it down to, oh, I keep forgetting my keys. You guys know there is so much more. There are so many handicaps and disabilities that are involved with this.
00:20:45
Speaker
Right. It's not just, I can't remember where I put my stuff all the time. It's so much more than that. Yeah. I mean, for me, early diagnosis, for me, the stuff that comes up every day, new stuff. Actually, it's at least once a day, sometimes three or four times a day is like something new pops up. Oh, that's why I can't do this. And that's why I can't do that.
00:21:12
Speaker
Yeah, right. Or I just struggle at things, you know, like, wow, there's a reason. God damn it, there's a reason. It's also I mean, for me, you know, on the bigger picture, when I look back, look out, it's all the failed failed relationships.
00:21:29
Speaker
the, you know, the hurt and the pain that you kind of cause throughout your entire life, it's the kind of harm that, you know, because you've got time blindness, you don't necessarily think about your pension. So what's going to happen there? You've got the ADHD tax, which is, you know, the money and the time and the effort and the mental oodles of cash, anxiety that you pay
00:21:57
Speaker
because you forget things, you don't look after your health so well, so you have health issues. Oh, God, no. I mean, it is the least cute mental
00:22:11
Speaker
issue. It's not cute, that's all. Yeah, go on, Michael. I was just gonna throw in there that my wife is ADHD. And one of the biggest things that I see her dealing with is trying to manage her own emotions.
00:22:32
Speaker
trying to keep those in place while dealing with the children. And it's really hard as an ADHD mom trying to mother neurodivergent children. And especially our seven-year-old is ADHD, but I mean, she's really ADHD. As children are, and this is what people don't understand, children can't regulate things normally.
00:23:01
Speaker
But when you have an ADHD child, that's like a squirrel on coffee kind of type of thing. They don't have the maturity. And so when you have the seven-year-old who's going ballistic, because her brother happened to smile at her, and she's all wound up because of the day, and then mom is trying to deal with it, but it's setting things off.
00:23:31
Speaker
And there's a lot of dynamics in this. When people reduce it to something that's just a joke, it's sad. Especially when the women generally take on the role.
00:23:47
Speaker
whether they consciously do it or not, take on the role of being the carers in life. That's why, just as an example, during the COVID crisis, when a lot of women tend to have more problems with depression than men because they felt so hopeless.
00:24:08
Speaker
during COVID, they weren't supposed to weren't able to take care of their family, like, you know, they're there, they're, you know, they've kind of been, you know, society or whatever, but it's told them that they was there was responsible for, you know, that's, that's not me. That's not my opinion. That's something that I've heard come up. But it kind of resonates is understand it.
00:24:31
Speaker
And that's, you mentioned, you know, depression and anxiety is there as well. And that is, that's a side effect of ADHD and autism in trying to handle life and trying to handle being so different in the world and not the system's not really working for you. You know, and it lends itself to that depression, anxiety at a level that neurotypicals don't have to deal with, you know? Yeah.
00:25:00
Speaker
We spoke about this last week, you know, about masking. We're talking about, you know, the system's not set up for us at all. You know, every angle you turn, it's like, okay, that's not, that system's not for me either. Oh, and that one and that one, no, and that one, neither that one. And then it's like, there isn't a system for us. Right. No, I mean, you know, so you end up, as you were saying earlier,
00:25:25
Speaker
Michael is that you put a lot of mental energy into masking to to kind of like to kind of make this world work for you little spoons as we as we as we sometimes call it here. So I was so my
00:25:42
Speaker
I'm leading to how many spoons does it take to be on a podcast, do you feel? Because I know that you have your 100 spoons system, right? So you have like 100 spoons for the day. And if anyone doesn't know what we're talking about, this is
00:26:01
Speaker
Basically, you can think about spoons as units of mental energy. And the more things that you do during the day, it kind of takes up spoons until you don't have any left. And if you don't have any left,
00:26:15
Speaker
Then you go into a bit of a burnout phase. So yeah. Real downer, yeah. So how many spoons will this podcast be for you, do you think? I am not sure. I am measuring.
00:26:35
Speaker
I know what I had going into it. But see, this won't take as many spoons as you may think. First of all, you're not unknown to me. Your podcast is my companion when I'm cooking supper. So I feel like I've really gotten to know you guys. I love that. Plus, you're not here with me.
00:27:05
Speaker
Like you're on my computer screen. It's a completely different thing. It's better. It's probably better because I stink. I stink. Okay. I'll give this to him. Actually, we were watching one of your posts, Michael, on TikTok that you were talking about spoons a lot.
00:27:28
Speaker
And I know, because I was recently diagnosed, why is this guy talking about spoons? What's that all about? Thanks to you, actually, you investigated. Well, see, people don't understand this, that whatever our biggest challenges in our day is managing our energy.
00:27:49
Speaker
And it's probably more so on the autistic side of things. But managing energy is so important because our sleep is so often messed up. And where we gain our energy is in our sleep.
00:28:07
Speaker
You don't gain energy any other way. It's during your sleep. And if you're not getting good sleep, you're not starting off with 100 spoons. You might start off with 30. You might have 30 spoons for the day. And if you don't realize that, and you're filling your day with all these things to do,
00:28:26
Speaker
Oh, you're not going to make it? No, I mean, I went to the dentist yesterday, which you've probably seen on TikTok. That took almost all my spoons, like being in that chair with the things in your mouth. That was a spoon beginning. It was just like, it just wiped out. I think I found about two spoons left at the end of it. It was traumatic.
00:28:49
Speaker
I was teaching for the first time last week, my first time teaching, 300 students. And I got to Thursday night and I'd used up all my spoons, bar one. And I had the impression that I was like stretching out my last spoon just to survive. And at one point, my girlfriend said to me, Paul, are you on drugs? So what do you mean?
00:29:16
Speaker
I literally, I was spaced out. I was so hyper focused last week. Just because everything was just, you know, everything was a big shine. It was like a big shiny toy. It was a shop full of shiny toys. And yeah.
00:29:34
Speaker
What people don't realize is you can actually mistakenly borrow from tomorrow's spoons. And where that plays out is actually in your sleep. So you could go on into the negative on the day, borrowing spoons from tomorrow, you go to sleep, you might have a great night's sleep.
00:29:54
Speaker
But you're not going to come out with 100 spoons because you've already borrowed 10, maybe 20 from tomorrow. So you're only waking up with 80 spoons. And if you don't realize you've done that, then you're just going to keep repeating it until you get to the point you can't replenish your battery.
Community Support and Experience Sharing
00:30:17
Speaker
And that's when you hit burnout.
00:30:18
Speaker
Yeah. See, Bruno takes a period of time. Speaking of dentists, that's probably the worst experience for any of us. It is so draining. I had a root canal and I was in the doctor's chair for, I think, six hours on one occasion. Survival. Survival. That's when I learned how tense my body always is.
00:30:45
Speaker
has always been just tense all the time. Like my shoulders up. I've had people say to me, why are your shoulders up so high? Oh, sorry. Like, because I, all my life I've been carrying around this tension, not knowing what all this stuff is that's been going on. And I came out of that dentist chair and the dentist,
00:31:05
Speaker
Dennis said, you did very well. And I said, there was two times I almost got up from this chair and ran out screaming. And she said, really? I said, you don't understand. This is the worst experience I've had in my life. And she said, and I was just telling everybody you were my best client ever. Wow. I was like, That's marketing, right? Yeah. I am like, I am
00:31:32
Speaker
level one top secret agent, masquer, you know, we're talking about this last week, Michael, you know, um, people say to me, Paul, you're always so calm. I don't know. What are you talking about?
00:31:51
Speaker
It's just bizarre for me, but that's what I put out there. You know, it's funny, isn't it? How much you can put it. You're a mess, Paul. There's the layer of skin and then if you look at the outside, you're like.
00:32:13
Speaker
cool, calm and collected, but then it's just a skin depth away from like utter chaos inside. Yeah. I am. I am the same. So I know I'm not excluding myself from this. But this is important of community, though, because we're comparing notes.
00:32:33
Speaker
Uh, and this is how we're discovering things off of each other is, uh, Oh yeah. Okay. So we, we all have this in common and see even the professionals are at our level, the, the professionals. I think we, in our community, we could, we each given ourselves permission to unmask, which is a huge leave. We buy backs, but it's effectively.
00:33:01
Speaker
But we've got the DSM is there, the professionals. If you're doing this, then you're autistic. If you're doing this, you're ADHD. If you're doing all of this, and you're both, and they have all this. But they don't have the small
00:33:14
Speaker
things that impact us. And when we're comparing notes, oh, wow, we have that in common. Yeah. And we're building our own kind of DSM kind of library of, okay, so that's how that's working out or okay, so that makes sense here. Oh, you know, and we can support each other in this and encourage each other. We've got neurodivergent therapists on there.
00:33:40
Speaker
You know, we've got people who are coming with our perspective into the community and sharing things. We've got, I've come across a couple psychologists who are, you know, autistic and sharing tons of information. There's just, the community is so important to each other.
00:34:03
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Every age group. This love is great. You know, I personally, I've never felt part of any community in life until now, to be honest, because I think I could. And there's too much danger in thinking I could be part of a community. You know, I was probably for most ADHDs, I felt like a, you know, an alien, you know, just, you know, on the wrong planet.
00:34:29
Speaker
Right. It turns out that was actually quite accurate. I actually had an ADHD moment in the shower the other day and I wrote a book. The Beginner's Handbook for the Neurodivergent Community, I had it all written out
00:34:49
Speaker
wow cool you know gonna bring me people for collaboration on it the whole thing and so i'm saying man that's what people need they just need a starting point you know a beginner's handbook i like it simple there's so many people come on the tiktok who say look i just got diagnosed and i don't know what any of this is about you know yeah yeah well there's a group on facebook of uk
00:35:15
Speaker
ADHD. Okay. And it's just as you said, Michael, there's tons of people said, I've just been diagnosed, or I'm having my diagnosis next week. And then right at the beginning of the journey, right at the beginning,
00:35:30
Speaker
And, um, it's actually quite, be quite hard. This is one of the reasons we've started the podcast. So quite hard to actually filter the good information from the bad. Yeah. Yeah. Right. As you're just going to say, and this is the failing of the medical community, really. Cause they hand you a diagnosis and it's a good luck.
00:35:50
Speaker
I know, right? Yeah, I have a friend. I guess he's 51. Now, he was diagnosed at the age of 35 as autistic and ADHD. And that's all he knew. And he was off on his own. And he's had such a hard time. And when he moved to this part of the world and we struck up friendship, he went through so many different jobs.
00:36:17
Speaker
And he was blaming it on his autism. And I said, my friend, like, no, don't you recognize this? This is an ADHD problem you're facing. And he says, well, I know I'm ADHD, but nobody's really talked to me about ADHD.
00:36:38
Speaker
And so we had lengthy conversations and discussions about it. And he says, Oh man, I see it now. I can see, I see where the problem is. And he could start seeing how come he kept losing these jobs and it wasn't the autism that was ADHD. Yeah, because it's not an element of sometimes we're not ready to see it, do you think? I think it's knowledge. It's a lack of knowledge. Yeah.
TikTok's Role in Neurodivergent Community
00:37:03
Speaker
But he knew he was ADHD, but he had no idea what that meant.
00:37:07
Speaker
Yeah, right. And I think that just brings us to the importance of community. I mean, so we're talking about we have a big community on TikTok. So if you're listening to us on any other platform, go and join TikTok. There is a large and ever-growing neurodivergent community there. And to your point, Michael, the importance of being in a community is, one,
00:37:36
Speaker
You can start info sharing as you're as as you're saying so that so that so that you can kind of work out who you are and how you fit in um and and Secondly, you don't have to feel so alone so alien. So You know, like yeah, there are many people just like you on all parts of the spectrum and
00:37:59
Speaker
And then from there, we're kind of starting to talk about, well, you can actually just bond together and actually make the community stronger and actually start to advocate for ourselves in the wider world. I can see people on TikTok like Penny Smith, who we follow. She's autistic and she's advocating
00:38:30
Speaker
for the neurodivergent community around her. And there's a whole bunch of other people that have started to pop up that really want to start kind of bringing us together and actually
00:38:43
Speaker
I really like the idea. It's like, okay, let's not wait for the professional practitioners to get their act together. Let's just do it for ourselves. And I think that's great. That's great. And a great thing with people like Penny is newly diagnosed.
00:39:05
Speaker
Like she hasn't been at this for long. And this is what I'm finding. Those who are newly diagnosed or newly realized, especially later, they really want to do something. They want to change. They want to contribute. Those who have been raised in it, I don't think they have the same kind of
00:39:26
Speaker
unless unless they hit a catalyst that like like run into a penny and penny kind of like uh it's just that like jolt that they need yeah we need to do something about this but those who have been diagnosed since they were young and growing into it don't
00:39:43
Speaker
I find now I could be totally wrong on this. I find that they don't have the same kind of motivation to want to rally the troops and and let's do something here like like a penny. Yeah. And with so many newly newly diagnosed people that that now seems like a really good time to kind of get in involved and to do do something right. Yeah. Yeah.
00:40:10
Speaker
I think it's an element for me is for me is we don't necessarily we don't necessarily have to have all the goddamn answers you know but we could goddamn try
00:40:23
Speaker
you know, but with but with care and empathy and compassion, you know, it's like, this is like obsession that we're supposed to have all the answers at our fingertips. And we don't. And there's no point pretending we do. But we can at least get to that point with compassion, you know, I think that's out of it.
00:40:44
Speaker
I mean, there's a science part of it and then there's the humanity part of it. I mean, you guys are blowing me away with the last podcast, all the science and stuff and big words and stuff you're using and your experiments, like the blinking, like that's just amazing stuff. But then there's the humanity part of it, which is what I think the community brings in. And no, we don't need to have all the answers. We don't necessarily need to know why.
00:41:12
Speaker
Like this, this is this way. We just need to know it is this way. And then we're there to really together to discover how we navigate that other system that doesn't accommodate us. How do we navigate that? And sometimes how do we overwhelm that?
00:41:31
Speaker
So it has to accommodate us. Or even sometimes for me, it's just about at least having starting to maybe think about doing it.
Compassionate Internal Dialogue
00:41:41
Speaker
For me, we talked about in the past and other podcasts and other episodes, it's like sometimes just about just concentrate on starting your internal conversation differently.
00:41:54
Speaker
What if you rip up the contract you wrote about to yourself however many years before you were diagnosed? What if you rip that up and you start a new kind of inner dialogue that comes from a caring place?
00:42:09
Speaker
And it's like, to me, just repeating like I was saying before, you don't have to do the answers. You just need like some suggestions, a little prod in the right direction. It doesn't have to be mind-blowing.
00:42:25
Speaker
Yeah well and in the community there's I mean there's people like yourselves who just bring that the humor you know and give us a good laugh and sometimes we just need that you know we come in from that battle outside flip it on there you guys are and yeah what a laugh you know somebody and we're seeing more like Willy Dubbs I know that you guys yeah Willy Dubbs yeah I mean love that guy yeah he just puts such a
00:42:54
Speaker
a smile on my face and being able to be interactive. I'd be a very big disappointment to Willie Dubs because I'm wearing my outdoor pants, unfortunately. He likes an outdoor pant. Yeah, I've only recently been introduced to indoor pants. I wasn't aware that was a thing.
00:43:16
Speaker
You mentioned that on our TikTok post about, I did a silly Photoshop thing on TikTok. And you mentioned about, I think, guys, you've got the indoor pants on. Yeah, indoor pants. I did a little TikTok on playing off of his about the indoor pants. And I said it to him. And he did another one in response to me.
00:43:45
Speaker
Oh, perfect. Yeah, it's hilarious. I like to go find that. It's the interactive stuff that's so wonderful. Like, you know, and I came back at him and said, Willy Dubs, you know, fashion guru or menace to society, you know, and he played off of that. Oh, that's hilarious. You know what? And Lee, you know, this is going to go back to one of your really early points.
00:44:16
Speaker
Michael, our interactions in a in our community are really important, right? You know, like we can be supportive, we can be helpful. But the other weird thing about our community is because we've got some autistic autistic and ADHD people. They they they're the ones who can struggle a lot with being
00:44:43
Speaker
in a community. I've got some things that are written down. What can happen, as you were saying earlier, is that you can get these little internal fights that flare up around words or use of words or definitions or things like that. I think it's important for us to remember
00:45:12
Speaker
that everyone is different, right? I know that you've made some podcasts, some TikTok posts where we say, look, I don't agree with everyone, but I'll like your post. I might comment, but I'm here to support you, right? We have to kind of feel like we are under one umbrella.
00:45:42
Speaker
There's enough polarizing in the world without it, you know, I'd like to think we could keep polarizing out of the ADHD community at the very least.
00:45:51
Speaker
Yeah, and I think part of the problem is that those of us, especially late diagnosed, late realized, is that we've been trained in the neurotypical way of doing things. And the danger is bringing that in. And part of that training is that polarization.
00:46:13
Speaker
We've got to take that shell off and get into our own skin and understand we do things different in this community. We don't do the polarization. This was my introduction to the community.
00:46:34
Speaker
was this whole idea that, yeah, the majority prefers these terms, but we leave freedom for people to make their own decisions. And we'll recognize that. And that embracing of the self-diagnosed or the self-realized as well. And that just made me think, well, this community is different. This needs to be preserved.
00:47:03
Speaker
And when these other ideas start coming in, we've got to just say, yeah, it's like, you know, in our house, people take the shoes off at the door. Okay. Just leave that stuff outside. Whereas really dubs would say, put on your indoor pants. That's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah, because I think, you know, like, we have to remember when we're commenting and stuff, you know,
00:47:30
Speaker
And even if I look at tiktok and I'm like, oh, I don't agree with this or something about it I have to remind myself like
Managing Disagreements in Neurodivergent Communities
00:47:38
Speaker
of a bunch of things. So I think it's it's important to to Remember yourself, you know, like you can be because of your you know, neurodivergency you can be impulsive you can be direct you can be low on self regular
00:47:55
Speaker
So you might be kind of typing stuff out because you're not really thinking. You can be a little bit on the PDA part of you, which is the kind of like, or I see something and I'm going to take the polar opposite point of view and then argue that.
00:48:16
Speaker
If you you know, you can have black and white thinking right? You know, that's one of the things so so you have to remind think you have to Remind yourself of whatever cocktail You are so that if you see something you don't like
00:48:34
Speaker
I always like kind of go, well, you know, maybe I haven't had enough sleep. Maybe I'll just leave this one alone. Maybe I'll just, you know, I'll just scroll on. Yeah, because if you have RSD, Rejection Sensitivity Disorder, if you do start getting into a bit of an argument with someone, it can like, you know, that RSD could just blow the whole thing up till it becomes much bigger than it.
00:49:03
Speaker
Yeah, then it should. I love that what you said, the thing you said, Michael. You guys, you play your game. Okay. Do what you want over there. We're going to play our games. That's great. Love that. And that's where the spoons come in as well, because when you get into these discussions, you can get to a point of realizing, I don't have the energy for this.
00:49:29
Speaker
There's so many that it was going deeper and deeper and deeper. And somebody who really wanted to convince me that their point of view was right. And I was already recognizing their point of view, that they had a right for that point of view. But I didn't have the energy to sit there and have somebody try to convince me to think like them.
00:49:51
Speaker
And I had to bow out because I just didn't have it in me. And I try to listen to the end of all discussions and stuff, but there are times I have to reserve some time for my wife, some energy for my kids, and I just don't have... Use your battles.
00:50:09
Speaker
Choose your battles. If you're in the middle of it, and this is the thing, there's a lot that we need to learn in our community. It's just what you're saying, Martin, exactly that. We have to remember where we are, what we've experienced, and put that on the other person. If we don't have what it takes for that discussion, even in the middle of it, excuse ourselves.
00:50:38
Speaker
Don't take yourself to exhaustion and say things that you're going to regret later on because we regret most of the good things we say in the bad things that keep us awake at night. It's also so damned inviting as well. It's like a moth to a light bulb. Negativity. Let's go down that tunnel.
00:51:02
Speaker
Yeah, especially especially a guy like me because I I love to try to convince everybody I'm right. So it's Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I have that problem with this the problem I've had at the school is is I I just tried I forget that it's about actually conversing and stimulating students go into a monologue
00:51:27
Speaker
And after I remember my, I did that start to remind myself, Oh yeah, I suppose such a stimulating conversation. I mean, and us, we get to bring our life experience into this.
00:51:41
Speaker
like um and and i think our life experience helps us understand that there's just some battles that just aren't winnable they're just not worth what's engaging with and but on that subject michael what about you know
00:51:56
Speaker
Sometimes a thing that comes up for me is some of the advantages of actually being diagnosed later in life, or not diagnosed, dealing with ADHD in later life, is that you get to a point maybe you've actually started shedding a bit of shame from your life, giving up.
00:52:19
Speaker
um, stupid, uh, ideas that you've, uh, you've kind of set it in concrete or stone or the puzzle. You realize you actually, none of it is actually true. Um, and then it gets a point also for me is also shedding any kind of shame around kind of making mistakes, you know, yeah.
00:52:43
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's hard, especially when you come from a background of people pleaser, like a high masker is usually a people pleaser. And making mistakes is death. Like that's the last thing you want to do. I'm great when I'm in control. And that's the thing about autism, is if you're in control, you can handle it. It's like,
00:53:07
Speaker
How come the noisiest kid in the room is the one who has sensitivity to noise? And it's because if it's a noise that he can't control, that's what overwhelms him. But if he's in control of the noise, he can handle that. And I find the same thing. If I'm in the leadership role, I can handle. But if I'm part of the group,
00:53:34
Speaker
I tend to disappear into the shadows. Because I'm not in control anymore. And you start getting overwhelmed with that sort of stuff. And I have no idea where I was going with this point.
00:53:50
Speaker
We were talking about shame, Michael, about shame to make mistakes and making mistakes. I have to feel like I'm in control. I'm talking of control. I've always had problems throughout my life if I'm sharing a house with someone.
00:54:05
Speaker
I need to have control about what's going on in that house and any potential outside influences that come in. It drives me insane. So yeah, controlled. Probably a big thing in generally. Well, I'm going to take control of this podcast and get it moving along.
The Broken Spine: A Virtual Bookstore
00:54:30
Speaker
So there's one so Let's head in get back into the car Right, and then we're gonna go and okay, and we're gonna go and head over to the post office and while we're over there You can have a little bit of a think market because now that you're a citizen of ADHD ville you can you can open up a
00:54:55
Speaker
a shop or a store or have a property here or a house. So we invite you to stake your claim as it were.
00:55:11
Speaker
So let's find out what that could be. We'll just jump in the car. I'm going to head over to the post office with a squeeze in. I don't want the middle seat. Thank you. Oh, come on, Marty. Don't be shy. Don't be shy. Who wants the middle seat? No one wants the middle seat. All right. Oh, there's some librarian again.
00:55:41
Speaker
It says here that your feedback is really important to us and we read all of your comments. We will maybe feature your comments on this little featurette within our podcast.
00:55:59
Speaker
He says, come mumbling and mumbling along. So we've got a comment here from someone called Autistic Lime. I think that's you, Michael, isn't it? But he says, you made a comment. You said, love it. I listened to you guys while I'm preparing supper. Keeps the stress away. It's actually artistically me.
00:56:22
Speaker
If you read it quickly, it looks Artistic Mummy. Well, that was Artistic Me reading Artistic Lime. I thought it was like a fruit, Artistic Fruit. Fantastic. All right. So we've had, I think, our blast guest opened up a taco and tequila joint.
00:56:44
Speaker
on the main street which is a fine very fine place it's a queue outside almost every day so that's that's all a welcome right it is the only tequila and taco place in all of adhdville so he's he's so he kind of cornered the market i would say yes it's got a goddamn monopoly yeah yeah if you want anything it's beginning with tea
00:57:09
Speaker
Right, so what would you like to do?
00:57:15
Speaker
I'd have to go with my first love and my coping mechanism, which is books. So I'm going to open a used bookstore and it's going to be called The Broken Spine. The Broken Spine bookstore. Lovely. It's going to smell. You can open the door. It's going to smell like an old bookstore. Full of treasures. Can I have a loyalty card, please? Sure.
00:57:43
Speaker
Oh, great. That sounds great. Are you going to be like behind the counter, like, you know, with your with your with your glasses and just piles of books around you? I mean, that's how I'm. Oh, yeah.
00:57:55
Speaker
I know. Yeah. And there'll be more conversations going on in there than probably books. So it's, Oh yeah. Amazing. It'd be like the local, it'd be, it'd be like the, the, um, the, uh, Oh God. What do you have in Catholic churches? The, Oh, confessional. Yeah. It'd be like the confessional broken, broken spine, confessional.
00:58:21
Speaker
All right. So do you have any books on recommendation? Any books that you've currently enjoyed recently? Well, the genre that I'm going through right now is actually the
00:58:42
Speaker
young people, young adults, young adults fiction. Because I'm actually trying to come out of a stressful period. And I find with those books, they're not intense with ideas, they're just pure storytelling. And it's nothing that you have to really rack your brain, you just sit back and receive the story type of thing. So that's where I am right now.
00:59:10
Speaker
Oh, nice. Okay. That's great. That's a hack. This is like a hack. Again, talking about energy. I've tried all kinds of different ways to stop the stress in my day.
00:59:28
Speaker
Yeah, because I have a watch that measures that. And I've tried the breathing, I've tried all kinds of video games, everything else, and it lowers the stress, but it doesn't allow the body to enter into rest.
00:59:43
Speaker
But when I went to reading, the body immediately went into rest. Because reading actually regulates the whole body, it's your mind, it regulates your breathing, everything. And, and that was that was a shock to me because I've run these little experiments to try to
01:00:01
Speaker
figure what works in the day and stuff and it was a shock to me, but it couldn't be any book.
Stress Management through Young Adult Fiction
01:00:06
Speaker
It couldn't just be any book because I read a lot of instructional books or informational books. It was fiction and young adult fiction that caused my body to go right into that rest. It was like, wow, okay. So yeah, life hack. So on your watch, because you have like a
01:00:27
Speaker
Garmin watch, right? That measures stress. Does your watch say anything about your stress levels over the past hour, over this podcast? I will check it right now.
01:00:44
Speaker
There we go. It'll be low stress. It will be stress. I mean, we need stress. We'd be dead without stress. So low level stress is normal. So let me just check. I always call it happy stress and bad. It's good and bad stress.
01:01:01
Speaker
Yeah, because there's a stress that your body experiences. There's the mental stress. There is the good stress like exercise is a good stress conversation can be a good stress. And let's see. So yeah, low level stress. Yeah. Perfect. But that's, that's good. That's good. That's a, that's a healthiest stress. Yeah.
01:01:26
Speaker
Okay, and battery wise, I can tell you battery here. Let me see. Actually, not too bad. It's only cost me three spoons. Hey, wow. Wow. And I'll tell you an hour long conversation normally would cost me about 12. So there you go. Wow. I love that. I love that. Right? Well, we're gonna have to have to have you back on now.
01:01:56
Speaker
We are almost healthy. We're healthy. There you go. That's why I listen to you during supper. Kitchen is my most stressful place in the house. I ran a cafe.
01:02:11
Speaker
And for seven years and it almost did me in it just, it was not a good situation. And so kitchen for me is, is a place of trauma. So, but I have to cook for the family. And so being in there is very stressful. And I listened to you guys and it's, I'm telling you, it does. It keeps the stress away. It keeps me laughing.
01:02:33
Speaker
Well, thanks a lot. You've got to make me emotional. You've got to make me emotional. Especially when you go and visit farmers, you know, on the other side of the ocean. I mean, that's like, I know, right? Well, thanks a lot, Michael, for being here. It's been an absolute pleasure.
01:02:52
Speaker
It's been a joy and absolutely fabulous. Thank you, Michael. It's been fun. Yeah, it's been fun. Thank you. And I look forward to opening up the bookstore. Absolutely. I'm looking forward to going in and getting out a paperback or two. All right. So this is a point where I can say ADHDville is delivered fresh every Tuesday to all purveyors of fine podcasts.
01:03:20
Speaker
Please subscribe to our pod. I'm not a begging man. I am a pleading man. There's a big difference. Feel free to write in our comments. But if you want to see our beautiful, beautiful faces, you can sally forth to YouTube. If you want to write an email, we are at ADHDville.
01:03:48
Speaker
at gmail.com. Send us a pigeon. Send us a pigeon. Right. Send us a pigeon. We are also on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram. Yes, yes. So thanks again for Michael for being on the show. And it just remains for me to say just be fucking kind to yourself.
01:04:12
Speaker
And I beseech you, fellow ADHDs. Know thy selves, sons of the house, come hither and get fledged. Alright. I don't know why, I'll go to a slightly deeper voice if I'm not saying that. It's fucking weird. I'm going to try it next week, I'm going to try it with the high voice. Okay. Know thy selves, son of a bitch, come hither and get fledged. There, says the mayor. That's that.