 what the other zoo can record. Recording in progress. Oh my goodness. Hello everybody, thank you so much for coming to Brain Club. And happy giving Tuesday to you all. I actually don't know everybody, which is pretty cool. I'm Mel Hauser, I use she, they pronouns and I am executive director here at Albrains Belong Vermont. And let me share screen and I will orient us to Brain Club. I have never done Brain Club with two screens before and I am super disoriented to the motor plan. All right, here we go. Oh, this is so much easier with a big screen. Okay, so today we're gonna talk about building the world we want to see. We titled it something else originally and it just didn't feel quite right to my nervous system. So we re-framed, we're always re-framing because that's what we do here. Before we get started, if you'd like to use closed captioning it is enabled. So to turn it on, you can click depending on what version of Zoom you have if you click live transcript CC or if you don't have that option more dot, dot, dot and she's show subtitles or hide subtitles if you wanna turn it off. And it looks like most of you have figured it out already but you do not need to have your video on, it can be on or off and even if it's on we don't expect anything of you. You don't need to look at the camera, you don't need to sit still, you can walk, move, stand, fidget, eat, leave, come back, all that. And communicate however you're most comfortable on meeting and speaking with mouth words, typing the chat box, gesturing, mix and match. We want you to feel safe and comfortable. And to that end, safety is the most important thing to us. And so in addition to affirming all aspects of identity we are all about respecting and protecting one another's access needs. So just ask that you're welcome to talk about anything you're comfortable talking about and we just ask that if you're talking about something that you yourself experienced as traumatic or distressing, you just ask that you give a content warning first so that others can listen with informed consent versus leaving for a minute or so. We just ask that you keep those comments brief and we will type in the chat when that topic is over so that people can come back. So I'm gonna give some content warnings. We're gonna talk about ableism today as a context for this discussion. And I'm gonna talk about what that means and how like all of the other isms is resulting in a non-inclusive society which has broad ramifications for health and equity, premature death, all kinds of mental and physical health struggles that come from ableism including within the healthcare system. And unfortunately all too commonly results in suicide. That's all I'm actually gonna say about suicide but I just, I felt like giving content warnings for the heaviness of this topic was important. So all year long really, we have been talking about reimagining all of the major systems of society that are not working for neurodivergent people. All of the unlearning of what's not working and how can we do it better? We could have approached advocacy differently. We could have approached advocacy from like a, you're all doing it wrong. But we wanted to try this experiment of maybe we could just imagine the world we wanted to see and try it out. And I think it's worked out to be able to have some, I think pretty meaningful and important conversations because it's entirely predictable that when you call people out on rigid ways of thinking they flip their lids. I do, it's just what happens, it's human nature. So when we think about the brain science of social justice and advocacy, we're gonna get uncomfortable when we advocate for things that are important to us. And it's hard, it's so, so, so hard. And I'm not good at it a lot of the time. Like this week I was advocating at a meeting for a patient and one of the meeting participants made a discriminatory statement related to my patient's disability. I flipped my lid, I had to turn the camera off, that's how I regulated, I turned the camera off and I like paced a little on it, squeezed my putty and I like, okay, but then it got worse. So I felt like I had to say something because what you permit, you promote. So it was really hard to like cordically override my limbic response to be able to like not criticize the person overtly and yet name the thing. So I think that all too often we're in positions where the environments are not safe and without co-regulation with community of people who get it, it's like really hard to give feedback. Yeah, so me as sharing in the chat, I found I needed a lot more support to self-advocate than I got. Right, you need community and going out of the loan like it's painful and it doesn't, yeah. So this year, our first year at Albrightons belong, we've really chose to take the oblique angle. Let's talk about inclusion. Everybody wants inclusion. Just may not know what it means. So when we think about what it means to feel that you belong, you have to feel safe before you're gonna feel like you're belong. It's all this like, you know, hierarchical needs that if you don't feel safe, you're not gonna feel regulated, you're not gonna feel regulated, you can't engage. And if you can engage, you're not going to have meaningful communication, let alone connection. So that safety piece that has to come first. So is Matt Mulligan here? I can't see in my screen. I don't know if Matt Mulligan's here. Matt Mulligan is one of the co-chairs of our board of directors. And he once said to me that when you challenge, someone's identity, that's what makes people feel safe. The idea of people connecting their identity to their ideas and beliefs. So that when someone has a brain rule, like the way of seeing the world, that is not in fact a law of physics rule. It is that person's like cognitive strategy to make their world make sense. It just also may infringe upon someone else's access needs. So I'm gonna play a video. I'm gonna play a video, maybe. Just think about the motor plan. It's not the motor plan. I think I have to, hold on. I gotta stop sharing or share. And that's what has to happen. You're doing awesome, Mel. It's a lot to like have two different devices at the same time. Yes, thank you. All right. Is this it? Re-share. I never did that, the share sound thing. Oh, please. And from this came brain clubs, and trainings, and eras, all right. Plages. But it's still that mentality of we're going to try and fix it to be normal. So do you have a place where I'm not masking and I'm not acting and I'm not spending over half of my mental energy trying to figure out what they expect from me? No, I don't have that anywhere else. And then there's this, and then also, can you believe it? There's also this, and I mean, and I mean, I guess the other thing that I didn't mention quite enough is like, I just really, I mean, ABB is sort of like, there is this kind of social justice, you know, like this isn't a problem. You are not the problem. The problem, we have a world that needs changing. And I love that the approach is, instead of like forcing people to change or like getting in people's face about change, the approach is just to show people that it can be done and do it really well. And that, I just think that's just such a beautiful, a beautiful model and a beautiful way of like, you know, just a beautiful way of, it's like creating the world you wanna live in. And I just, anyway, I think that's inspiring. I'm reading in the chat. All right, so content warning for people challenging gender identity. Thank you for the content warning. People telling, saying that people could take steps to be more comfortable, to overcome my issues with my body so I could pass through airport security when we feel unsafe. Of course, how could it not make you feel unsafe? That's a terrible thing to say. Basically, those people suggested I didn't deserve the things everyone else did until or unless I went against my identity. It's so hard, it's right. It's so, people, you know, people say impossibly traumatic things. So, let me just, I wanna open this up for input. What do y'all think about the idea of direct challenge versus the oblique angle? How that plays out? I've been, this is Sierra. I don't know if you guys can hear me. I've been thinking about this a lot today. I had a few conversations today in clinic just about the idea of kind of treating neurodivergence so people can function in a broken system versus treating neurodivergence. And this is in terms of like medication management, like how much is it worth fighting against a broken system to make it work for your brain and how much is it worth sometimes just taking medication and making your brain work better in a broken system? And not that those are kind of exclusive options. You can do both and sometimes people need everything, but yeah, I'd love to hear if anybody has something I've been thinking about. Yeah, those notes, I don't think it's a zero sum game. But just thinking about kind of working in systems that are ableist and systems that aren't made for our brains and how do we work in those? We're also protecting ourselves. We're also protecting our mental energy. We're also protecting our dopamine generation because we have to protect ourselves too and it's a really difficult thing to do sometimes. Mel, we can't hear you. It's because I used the wrong device. Thank you for saying that, Sierra. I think that advocacy, changing the system is exhausting. It's exhausting and I at least I'm finding that the more time I spend in a safe environment, the more unsafe I feel in unsafe environments. I don't think I really noticed how bad the rest of the world was. I mean, I knew it was bad, but it's impossibly bad and I'm noticing it physically. Like I'm noticing that my heart rate's 140 before I start talking to a group of people who are seeing most of the people that I interact with and me in a deficit-based lens. So I think that that's, I think it's a consideration of if you have a finite amount of energy, bandwidth, cognitive resources, where do you spend it? Versus, do you spend those resources trying to surround yourself with people who get it? Zeph's adding, Mel, what you said is the reason why I'm homebound, when I stopped forcing myself to go out there, my chronic pain went away. Isn't the fact, you know, it's fascinating, right? I mean, I think our bodies try to get our attention like all the time, like all the time. And we think about like the neuroimmune, like the, so you know that, yeah, Lizzie's adding, the body is so wise when the limbic system, part of the nervous system and the immune system, right? These are two systems that are designed to keep us safe. And you don't get to pick what is being appraised as safe. It's just unsafe. And the physical consequences of that are hard. Mia, thanks for the content morning. I'm going to modify your statement as a reader out loud, just a little bit and to say that your choices are between a rock and a hard place that often there is no good choice, so hard. I'm going to play another video. This comes from, I guess it'd be more exhausting to figure out how to share this one slide than it would be just to tell you what it says. In March, it was the first time that we took on the concept of brain rules and unlearning brain rules at Brain Club. Now we do it like every month is unlearning brain rules or some type of another, but it was our first one. And so, Laura Bonazinga Buyea present is a speech language pathologist who as a communication specialist gave a presentation on having difficult conversations. And then I added it down to about a 15 minute clip where she models some ideas for giving feedback when the environment doesn't feel regulated. See how I can possibly figure that, how to play that. Let's see, where are you? Speaking of running out of spoons, come on, here we go. Because if this actually works, let's see, play, play. But if we can actually back up and listen to receive, listen to match our thinking to theirs, maybe they're talking about something that is totally unknown to us. Politics is a really great example of this, like something you cannot even fathom being different or being okay. And you make a picture in your mind, because when you make that picture in your mind, you're growing a picture. If you have the capacity to visualize like this, maybe you need to draw it, write it, repeat it verbally to make this big picture. And then suddenly you realize, huh, actually there's a piece that I know about and you might restate or add something. You might validate what they're saying. If you bounce information back to somebody and you say, it sounds like you believe, that doesn't mean that you believe it, I believe it. It means that I'm validating what you're experiencing. And it allows me to slow down and gather information, excuse me, I'm gonna skip to the next one, so that I can be an active participant and listen without sharing right away. I will provide this for you so that if you wanna look back, you can. Because I realize I've just skimmed over that point. I like to actively listen by mirroring, by bouncing it back in my own words. Then I like to ask open and probing questions, like, did I get that right? You, it sounds like you believe that taxes, if they were higher would lead to less potholes in the road. Well, if I'm getting that right, I kinda like that idea. Or sometimes someone says something, you bounce it back and they say, that's not what I meant. Or they say, that's what I meant. And you still think, well, that's kind of BS. Not gonna lie, I think that sometimes, right? And then you say something and you hurt their feelings and you can tell by their nonverbals that this exchange is going down the toilet and you still wanna be connected with them. Because it's just this one point that you don't agree about. And you might have to say something like, that wasn't my intention. Can I try that again? Or that was my feelings talking? Sometimes it's a reset. And then other times I actually just have to remind myself, I'd like to learn more about this. I use this one for my mother. My mother and I have opposite political views. It's tricky, it's challenging. I love my mother. I love being with her. But until I learned how to have tricky conversations with my mother, we weren't enjoying it. We were arguing and fighting. And so I had to balance my listening with sharing and balancing the moment that I'm listening to add versus I'm listening to gain information. And it does require that I do some really deep breaths. I squeeze my hands together and I do a chair pushup while she's sharing that political view that I'm like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, here she goes. And then I say, I prefer to think about it this way. I feel most comfortable when you share your opinion and you don't forward me an article or a meme. So we need to actively listen and engage in conversation to have these hard conversations. They might be transactional in nature. I'm listening to give you information, you're giving me information. Other conversations are to persuade an influence. We're all hanging out on a Friday night. Actually, I don't do that that much anymore. Maybe this is with my family and my mom brings up something and I'm in there and I'm gonna influence her because you know what my mother does? To learn a little bit about ableist language. My goodness. And I'm here because I do think there's change that can happen in the world. So if I actively listen and I continue to connect with her and I temper my emotional response, I might be able to persuade and influence her. We might even be able to get into one of those co-creating conversations where we transform and shape reality. Where suddenly my mother is like, oh, I understand ableism now and she does not use the words that she just used. They were really just coming from her bias, her implicit bias, something that's been buried so deep and done over and over again and thought over and over again so much that it's dug a trench in her mind and I'm a little worried that if we don't challenge it, that if she doesn't challenge it, it might never change. But it requires me challenging a little bit too. So we have to open our eyes for new ideas and challenge our biases actually by putting on the brakes. It's called creating friction in my field where basically I think something, I know it for sure because of course I know all about what I'm interested in. And I have to actually in that moment pause, think and ask myself, what is my intention? Or am I actually communicating based on my reactions? Sometimes when we describe and specify our message, it slows us down. Also, sometimes just asking what if or what specific support this reaction, create friction so that I can challenge my bias. A good example of this, I'm just going to say as someone who identifies as she, her and when I find myself in a dark alley with someone who looks large and I'm just going to admit this really implicit bias who's of the opposite gender as me, I suddenly find myself, my first thought is they're going to hurt me. They've entered into my safe space. This is a primitive response. And I think to myself, they're definitely going to hurt me. And in this split second, I realized, what information do you have besides that you're in a dark alley by yourself that would lead to believe that this person is going to hurt you? Actually, they are looking down at their own device and they're walking right by you. Yes, they've actually already walked by you and they don't even really know, they aren't even giving you the time of day like they have any plans or any intentions. I'm creating friction. I'm challenging my own implicit bias, my own reaction that actually does serve a primitive response or purpose, which is, am I going to be okay? Will this person want to fight me or do they want to connect? So to get into these hard conversations, we have to be present. We have to figure out what our purpose is, what we hope we will achieve, maybe our expectations. And I like to just state that. Mom, we're chatting at dinner. I know you're going to share with me what you watched on the news today that you watched over and over and over again. And I know that you really want to share it with me and see if you can change my thoughts and opinions. And I think if we could do it, if we can both actively listen. And I think we can do it if we have some breaks. And I'm just, I'm actually really tired for my long weekend. I'm wondering if you could just share your piece. I could share my piece. And then we could actually play a board game because I'd prefer that. Or maybe on another night, I might say, I'd like to get curious and I'd like to learn more about how you think your opinion will lead to betterment of our world, something like that. So we do this by getting curious. We do this by beginning to look inward and managing our own emotions as we exchange information. I'm noticing the time and I want to be respectful of all of your time. Be helpful to have these kinds of scripts because in the moment when you throw in the sensory processing, executive functioning, like ideational motor planning, there's like so many cognitive tasks just to like figure out how to give the feedback. In when there's a setting where there's like, like you don't even have the spoons to like shower, like this is why a lot of times for really difficult conversations, the feedback's not given. It's not given because it's just too complicated. So it's almost like having the script, it's like a scaffolder, it's basically like an accommodation to at least be able to remove the ideational components of giving. So in the chat just, you got feedback that great presentation that leads to, just the perpetuation of discrimination. And it's like very, very complicated. I really appreciate your scripts because they are neutral, they are powerful, they are flexible and can be, you know, adapted to a variety of settings. But it's, I think it's often very tempting to be like, I'll give feedback later. Yeah. I didn't even know I could give feedback until recently. I'm just gonna like label that as a social communication specialist. There are certain people I'm afraid to give feedback to. There are certain people where my capacity for giving feedback is still emerging and I'm saying that from the perspective of a social communication specialist who chats all day, studies communication all day long and it's maddening and saddening, saddening, that's not a word, sad to me, that there are so many neurodivergent beings in this world who feel that they can't give feedback or they've given feedback and it's been squashed and not heard and not listened to. Or there's so much sensory information happening all around that they couldn't possibly be thinking about the exchange yet because they can't yet. And so I wish for us as a world, as conscious communicators, that we could actually slow it down and even say, do you have any feedback, right? Yeah, and even sometimes I ask for feedback with declarative language, you know, I wonder what you think about that. Yes, yes. Yeah, what you said just brought something to mind. So not only are neurodivergent people having to finagle all of the things about accessing the world while this is all going on, but there's also sometimes a lot of internalized ableism that interferes with even being able to name the thing because there's, you know, the tendency to, you know, there's like, there's no feedback to give because it's my problem, not the ableist person's problem or the ableist, you know, the speaker of the ableist sentences problem. You know, so like, so there's that. And I wonder if you've talked about that and then my part two about this is that as someone who's been working really hard for many years on giving feedback, I actually find that it is easier for me to, for like really difficult conversations, I actually do better now using neurotypical communication strategies, like those are the ones I've studied. Often when you have two dysregulated people with conflicting access needs, that is those become some of the most challenging conversations. So I wonder if you long-winded question, do you have any, what thoughts do you have about navigating conflicting access needs between two neurodivergent communicators? Yeah, what an important question. Because it's like, what goes on in families all day long? Yes, yes, totally. I'm gonna liken it to when I'm stressed out and need to get out of the house, I have a meeting to go to, I feel like I have to pack everybody's stuff and like no one's ready to go and I'm in fight, flight, freeze, flock, but I'm really just ready to fight because I'm like, gosh, I got a house somewhere and I get into that space. And so it's not working because then my son yells back at me and we're yelling at each other. So it won't work, won't work. I love to come from a place of how can we be more effective and priming myself in that situation, priming my son, I'm going to share with you the three things that we have to do before you leave. You are going to share with me how I can give you that information. Do you want me to make a visual? Do you want me to yell it? Do you want me to say it once and make sure that you and I are both meeting minds which he does like he wants to know that we are both for he and I, we got to be like we are thinking about each other. And so I would think for both individuals to be able to work on what's effective and what isn't and identify, oh, verbal, oh, great. No, for me, nonverbal is more effective. Oh, wait a minute, text is an option. And so you're literally identifying the ground rules first. How will we communicate? And maybe this is for any time a hard conversation comes up and then you can develop some scripts. Now, we don't want to honestly drown people in scripts because that's overwhelming. However, we all find little things, little sentence starter scripts that we like and we glom onto them. And so I also would expectations ahead of time. Are we trying to create change? Is this purely transactional in the morning where if you only give information and get information if you are fit something to do for the day or are we gonna have a co-creating conversation where we're trying to create change and I really want my opinion to be heard. Person A does, person B does. And so both of you that, ooh, that's gonna be super fiery. What do you have in place for co-regulating? Okay. So what did y'all think of that in the chat box or just unmute and shout it out? I thought that was really great. I had a brain injury years ago and the concussion was pretty bad and I had speech therapy and I still have a little aphasia. And it was interesting to like, that was not the best experience. And it's right now, honestly, my brain was very little spoons and I also have COVID. So it was just cool to see somebody in that field talking about like that kind of nuance. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that, you know, like any time, I mean, what I can say is that in my medical practice, like most people I meet are coming from a place of having really traumatic, really like unhelpful at best. But worse than unhelpful, like traumatic, harmful, healthcare interactions, like that's what goes on. And I think there's, I think it's the system. It's not necessarily the individuals within the system, but like the defaults of the system, that like you got to do the thing and you do the thing like that. And just like, you know, so it's a broken system. So I'm sorry, I'm sorry that you had that experience. And I think it's about like energetically, you can kind of, you know, for, for, for, for, for, you know, I have a kind of nervous system that like, I can detect, detects like the, like the really subtle vibe where the human is like thrown off there. And that, that relates to my system. And that, that relates to my safety. And so, yeah. And Jose is adding, I hear you River, thanks for sharing the subtleties raised or profound, right? It's like a subtle, just like, and I think it even begins with the way that someone abused the world is ultimately going to determine, like not only what they say, what they like explicitly communicate, but like that vibe thing, I think, starts from how they see the world. Hi, I originally went to, to uni for special education and the way that people like myself were talked about in these classes made it so that I needed to change the program that I was in. I couldn't, I'm a strong person, but I think it's very hard to be that strong. And that's when I really realized how deep this went and how teachers who are extremely well-meaning and wouldn't get into that profession unless they really wanted to do things right weren't getting information and tools that they needed to actually support the way that people like me needed them to support me back then and people like me need support now. Oh, how beautifully said, thank you, Kelly. You know, I think it's also, it's like the system. Like, so if the, I don't know, I'm just imagining, just, you know, if there's two people talking at a time, like I flip my lid, it just feels like it's just too much. Like I can't even imagine what it feels like to like be in a classroom of 30 dysregulated kids. So you have like, you know, energy clashes, like conflicting access needs all day long, but I think the difference is like, and this is why I think that like, everyone being aware of their access needs is really important. Like, hey, Sarah, can I tell the story of the pink pen? You know I want to. Yeah, I was waiting for it. It's time, it's time for the story of the pink pen. Yeah. So I went to the meeting that I superficially referenced shortly ago was a school meeting. And a participant in the meeting says that they didn't like my patients pink pen because they grade papers in red pen and they have to change their pen in the middle of grading. So what I said was that sounds like conflicting access needs. My patient needs the pink pen because of her vision-related disability. The story of the pink pen is why it's gonna be a long time before I go to another meeting like that because it's not good for my health. It's culture. I feel like that's an interesting example because it's really easy to say, that person was just, yeah, culture, normal culture. But I also like that you said differing access needs because it could be that that person has OCD or is on the spectrum and that changes hard. Yeah, no, I love that you said that because in my mind that was actually fairly likely in my mind and I wanted, because I think what the issue is is that like everything is about conflicting access needs. It's just that sometimes people don't know that. It's like in my house, I have a lot of rigid brain rules that like helped me stay regulated. Like, hey, Luna, I'm my five year old. I'm like, don't drink red juice on the white carpet. We don't do that, but like it's not a world rule. She actually can technically drink the red juice on the white carpet. It's just that that rule is what makes me not have to deal with it because it's like kind of predictable gonna spill. We're all dyspraxic and just what's gonna happen. Anyway, but like it's important for Luna to know that there's nothing actually inherently wrong with drinking her beverage on the white carpet. It is in fact my brain rule. It's not a world rule. So like, I think it's just that frame of access needs. I find helpful and most people don't have it. Sierra. Yeah, I really like, I love the story of the pink pen mouth and I also think that, I think that the example of the red juice on the white carpet is really helpful. I think, I think similar to like talking to kids about like, this is what the world's gonna expect from you and you don't have to do it if you don't want to but this is the expectation that people are gonna have of you. Naming those brain rules. Yeah, naming those brain rules and naming that they are brain rules and for some people, they're brain rules for good reason. Yeah, you don't have to give up your brain rules if they're serving you. Right, right. And telling other people that too when you challenge their brain rules that like, I understand why you have this rule. This is what I need from you or this is what I need from the situation or this is what my family needs in the situation or whatever, naming those. And I see Mia, you have your hand up. Go right ahead. Yeah, yeah, I fell asleep. So forgive me if I might have missed on the, on if I might have not caught up on the, like on the topic. But I was thinking that if I understood what you were talking about access needs and brain rules but what access needs and the one thing I was thinking about is that a lot of people came straight out with me when I spoke about my access needs being met and they'd say, if you don't like it, don't fly. And in other situations like someone was saying about how they don't like shopping malls because they're unpredictable and not autistic friendly and someone said, if you, like somebody said that maybe this person should just not go to shopping malls. So I think a lot of people think if people can't comply or as they put it, people should just sort of, they want people either to fit in or to remove themselves from society. And I think that it really does need to change. I could not agree more. You know, that's where it's this fine line, right? Like, so you can build the world you wish to see. You can surround yourself with like-minded people. You can build your own community of people with whom you feel safe and comfortable. And everybody needs that. Everybody needs that somewhere. Gabe's adding conflicting brain rules and access needs seems like it could be the basis for many types of relationship conflicts. Absolutely. That's the key to the universe right there. It's relationship conflicts where those in conflict may not recognize that this is a conflicting access need thing. Like for example, I interrupt my husband like all the time, like all the time. And it's actually part of my brain. It's, I have no working memory. If I don't say the thing right now, I will forget it. I know that it's like actual rational. I also impulse control is like really hard. Also, the way I stay engaged is to be anticipating what someone's gonna say. Otherwise, if I'm not doing that, I'm probably not really listening. And for all those reasons, I am interrupting him all the time, but he has an access need to be not interrupted. Though, of course, it took 15 years to frame that as an access need. Now that I see it as an access need, I accommodate that access need by literally grabbing a piece of paper and writing down my whims. So, because it's not that my access need to blurt is more important than his access need to not be interrupted. It's that we had to figure out what the ground rules were to negotiate that. Cape says that's relatable. Yeah. I wonder for others, does the idea of conflicting access needs in interpersonal conflict, does that resonate? I think that plays out in your lives. Seeing some nodding. Sorry. Camera, there you go. Go for it. You know, it's one of those nights where I can't figure out how to unmute myself sometimes. I, yeah, I'm curious if, I know that this is my first time coming to the Brain Club and I'm curious, I know that you did one that was around the employment or something like that last week, or last club. I lost like the key word of the question. So, what was the topic? Was it around employment? Yeah, yeah, that was last week. You're totally right, yeah. Yeah, I'm curious if you talked about this at all, because for me, the thing that's been, like I could totally relate to what you're saying about like in your marriage, I have that situation going on in opposite. Um, but what I couldn't figure out was in my job, like my supervisor, I was like, I don't, this isn't a place where I can ask you if you are attached to me doing things a certain way because you have certain needs, but I'm telling you that I have a disability, but like, there are all these, I don't know. Like I didn't explain what my disability, I mean, some I did with like the, but I needed to, I was like, why it's products, like we need to create something. That's what matters, not how I get to it. Like, do I need to get to it the way that you need me to and why do you need me to, but I couldn't have that conversation about what her needs were. And for that and other reasons, I lost my job, but yeah, I'm curious how like, how does one navigate things when you're in more of a hierarchy situation? What an amazing question. When I begin to answer that, I am going to monologue for like a long time. So, and I'm going to answer your question. I have a lot to say about it. So first Judith had Judith's hand up and then Sarah had their hand up. So Judith, are you still around? Yes. Or I couldn't figure out how to unmute either. Well, you know, it's interesting my daughter, the other day said, and essentially I'm going to use these words. She didn't use them like, she feels like she has an access need to me not having any grounding rights. If she breaks rules, if I cannot influence, if she does, it's like I will give her a time count and she's frequently late and ignores. If she doesn't like an activity or she doesn't want to do it, she's going to make it real hard to go there. And, you know, if I said to her, we're going to go for pizza, she would jump and be ready. But if it's something that we've agreed to do and then she's just going to drag and drag. And so what happened? That happened Saturday night, it happened Sunday night and we had a talk and it wasn't like, I wasn't like, I was upset, but I didn't ground or anything. There was no consequence. We just had a good understanding. And then on Monday, one more thing happened. I said, well, you don't get to talk with your partner tonight. And she said she wanted me not to have any power in her relationship. And she's a minor or she could not enjoy the relationship and her mind will drive her crazy. And then she will be tortured thinking, I can separate them at any moment, which is not something I would do. And so it's like, okay, here I have a teenager who says she needs access to her relationship without me having any parental authority. So it's another authority question. Right. And I remember now I'm matching your name with like previous memories and stories. Now I've got a story woven. And this I think has so much in common with what you shared a couple of brain clubs ago. And this is about autonomy. And I think that for many people, when autonomy, it's not like rational. It's not like, you know, does it make sense? Do I have enough evidence for the fact that my autonomy is being violated that it should upset me? Like it's involuntary, automatic trigger. And like zooming out, like what a strategy that we use in my house a lot is like, do you have access to my cortex? Because if you don't, like the thinking part of my brain, right? Like if you don't have access to my cortex, I cannot reliably make statements that are not going to, you know, like offend you and trigger you and all the things. So it's really like, you know, two people have to have a cortex to cortex thinking brain to thinking brain conversation. If you're having an explosive part of your brain conversation with an explosive part of your brain or anyway, you both have to have your cortex. And so it might be like, like Ross Green's plan C, like we're going to table this. And when we both have access to our cortex, we're going to come back to this and like figure out what is the effective way forward? Cause like probably nobody wants to be having these explosions. Sarah, go for it. And then I'm going to talk about employment conflicting access needs. Just, yeah. I mean, one of the things I, I mean, I just, I love the conversation and one of the things that I find really helpful is thinking about what it's, if I'm trying to get away from the thing I don't want, it's a very different experience than if I'm trying to participate in the thing I do want. And the conversations that I have with people, like when I'm, when I'm like, have, when like somebody's doing something, I don't predict or stating a view of the world that I don't want to live in. It's particularly, it's not, it's probably really helpful for me to have a viewpoint before I get into that conversation of the world that I do want to live in. And also to try to make the conversation not about what we both don't want more about what we both do want. And so those are, those are just things, like just Sarah was sort of talking about early on about the medication, like the medication issue of how to cope with a, you know, how to cope with a world that's like, basically insensitive and crappy. And, and I, and I, and just, and I think that's like, like light years beyond how people mostly think about it. And for me, I think I, like what I would like, like I would consider taking medication not necessarily to cope with a world that's insensitive and crappy, cause that just doesn't inspire me, but I would consider taking medication to actually have the energy in a world that's insensitive and crappy to create the community or the relationships or the, the, the imaginings that I actually do want to be a part of the world and think would be a good thing to have as part of the world. So anyway, that's my, anyway, for whatever that's worth, thanks. I love so much of what you said, so much. So I guess, so Carolyn's agreeing, Sarah, you are so on point, as always. So, so it's really about like when, I mean, we can have a whole like million hour conversation about medicines and the role of brain chemistry and all the things, but like really what we're really talking about is that having a vision of like what makes you feel safe and good is important. And like we all need that. And when we've never had that, we don't even really know what's possible. So that's, that's what's really hard. So you think that you have to like suck it up or you think you have to like, you know, anyway, because you've never seen anything else. And I think that the more you like, the more you have experiences where you feel safe and comfortable showing up as your true self. And you're like, oh, oh, that's what I'm looking for. That's my benchmark. And if I don't have that, I leave. Yeah. And so speaking of which, work. So, and by the way, River, we do employment related brain club. We do it once a month because so many people want to talk about it. So we've been doing it once a month since May because like, there's a lot of people who have like really on fulfilling unsatisfying traumatic terrible work situations. So that's why we have it so often at brain club and different like nuances. But essentially the conflicting access need thing at work is it requires that both parties, even in a hierarchical dynamic, both parties have awareness that they have access needs. Like when that's not true, when one person's access needs becomes like policy and they're not aware that it's like just the way they happen to do it, the person whose nervous system is like, that's arbitrary. So it's like an arbitrary thing and it violates my access needs. So, and that's what goes on, that's what goes on. So like, and it doesn't, it really, I don't think there is a way out other than self-awareness of access needs. So that's why I mean, at all brains belong, we have a community advisory council that basically informs all of our programs. And at this spring, when I asked the community advisory council how will we know that our community is more neuroinclusive? And like one of the, or the most common theme of what people responded was that people would be talking about access needs. So I've really, I try to talk about accidents with literally everybody that I interact with all day because I think it's the key to the universe. Everybody has them, whether you have a disability or not, it's just that the greater the gap between how your brain needs a thing to be done and how the default of society is delivered, you're going to have more disability. Yeah, Nia. Yeah, I was going to say with access needs. I guess it often feels like those in position of power almost don't have access. Well, what it is is that they can access anything they want often. So it's like, I suppose they don't need to have access needs if that makes sense. Cause like if they have power, they can access whatever they want. Whereas people in positions of, like whereas people without those positions where they don't have any power even over their own agency often wear at the mercy of those in power to get our access needs met. Yes, yes, so well said. And that's how we talk about like, it's power. Like power, like in my house, we talk about this with my five year old, even. I'm like, power over is gross. Like you can have the power of connection, the power of knowledge, there's like different kinds of power but almost always it's the power over other people that is, I mean, it's just so unsafe. River. I really like, well, first Mia that made a lot of sense. And I think it's very true. And I think that when like A, when, sorry, I'm just gonna have a lot of pauses and forget a lot tonight. Yeah, people in power not recognizing they have, or people in power having access, that makes sense. But I also, and I also like resonate with like sometimes like in all the disabilities that I've gone through. Like the long COVID now, like being at the mercy of others. And so not always getting to speak for my own needs or speaking for them and not having them respected. I relate to that, but I also now felt like what you said is a game changer for me to like be able to talk about like to be, if I could have named to her that like, well, it's okay, here it is. I think it's coming together. Like even if you don't know that you have a disability, then you are in a position of power. You may have a disability, but not know it, but that makes you think that you are normal and other people have issues. And I think that if I had been able to name to her, like it doesn't matter if you have a disability or not, we all have access needs and let's talk about what yours are and let's like try to figure out if you have them or something. Like just that little bit of language could have changed how I communicated with her to figure something out instead of being like, oh my God, we both have to name our disabilities. Like I need to know if she has one. She might not know, right? Like if I could have said, you might not have disabilities, but we all have access needs. Like that could have leveled that. And I just, I also wanna apologize. Like I know that I'm, because I'm male presenting, I think a lot about how much space I take up in groups. And I feel like I'm taking up a lot of visual and verbal space, but I also, I can't type, I can't join the chat. And I may not be able to even raise my hands or like hold onto my thoughts right now. So I just kind of have to say things. So thanks. I am so glad you're here. And I think that the more, I appreciate your, your, yeah, I lost that thought too. So, but anyway, I think the more that you hang out at Prane Club, I think you, I mean, really, we are, and Lizzie brought this up in the chat, like we are trying to create a space that we figure out how to negotiate conflicting access needs. Like I have the kind of brain that has literally no perception of time. I have no idea how much time has been passing while I'm talking. And so that makes up that I take up a lot of verbal space. I also cannot motor plan the raising of hands. So when I'm in other spaces, like I'm always like just interrupting and all this. You know, we're trying to create a space for like, yeah, people are gonna interrupt. And the trade-off of creating a space where you don't have to raise your Zoom hand is that we end up like talking over each other. And we like note that it's well-intended and we'll figure it out. Like it's just, anyway, when most people have never been in a space that like, is that like, that's kind of the norm of like just being. Anyway, Matthew, sorry. You were, so the other thing is that when someone's in my corner of my screen, I never see them because my peripheral vision doesn't really process information. Thank you for waiting, Matthew. Yes, yes. Having access need is also, we gotta find a way to put acceptance in there too as well of the individual or, you know, individuals that are neurodiverse need because acceptance has not yet been, you know, up on a forefront of things. We accept the individual with access needs, but how about the need in general of what we say it's supposed to be acceptance of individuals of all, you know, backgrounds and the ones that are in power, like, you know, the workforce, we'll bring that up. The workforce itself is very, is not, it's like I said, it's still ableism because it's still standardized by the standardized system by standardized people that understand that, oh, it's just, it's normal, but we see it differently. It's not normal. This standardized system is what's hurting us even more because it's not, you know, fulfillment of your access needs. Yours or others' access needs, so it's just gonna come back to be a bigger problem in the end and we gotta try to, you know, advocate, not only advocate, but also step up on ways to look outside a box, like you said, back up and zoom out, but also look outside of the box and try to, you know, realize that this is a thing, but a thing that we can actually work on together. Thank you. So well said and Kelly, go for it. Thank you. So I was wondering if anyone had any advice on how to maintain momentum when you are advocating and when you are trying to create a better world? I've had some wonderful things happen. I got to present about neurodiversity to English language teachers throughout the Northeast. My school is considering doing a neurodiversities course and letting me, you know, help design it and teach it, but then every single day I hear things or every single day people say things in my life, in my situation as being also a graduate student, my situation of my work. I also, and I mean, the people I work with are very well-meaning, but my job is not working with people like me, like us, but I'm in the same building. So I'm around it and I hear things and I feel things and I want to do everything I can, but it's so tiring sometimes and I almost have no energy left and you do so much, so many of you do so much and I just was wondering if maybe you had some advice on how to replenish yourself and how to keep hopeful when good things happen, but there's so many little tiny things that are really big things all day long every day. I just adore you. Like seriously, that is what goes on. So like the thing is, I mean, I can only speak for myself is that all the little things, they impact my health. They make me less able to do the thing, like where the thing is building a world. And so I can only speak for myself. That's why I had to quit my job. So it's really about you have a finite amount of bandwidth and advocacy is important and you're gonna spend your spoons in environments. Like so, I think that the oblique angle, so you're an educator, you have this like really nuanced information that is like cutting edge and new. It's not new, it's been the same nervous system since the dawn of time. But like, so maybe you like reinvent what your advocacy looks like. You know, the system loves consultants. The system, like you use the default of the system while protecting your health and you find a way to like the revenue streams of the system that support not the system, like not the system. And Aaron's adding, I feel you about the drain. One thing I try to remember to do is to celebrate the little victories in advocacy, like really in my body. Yeah, I'll go to a back room with a friend I trust and I'll do a little joyful dance. Yeah, yeah. And I think spending time with people who get it, because then when the people make the comments, like there's not a part, like I don't know, maybe you're there already, but it took me like a long time. I mean, like I'm not even perfectly there. Like someone makes a comment and like sometimes, like for a split second, I like think it's a real thing as opposed to like, it's the pink pen, you know? So that, that like reality checking of like this happened and there's a whole bunch of people in the ADB Village regularly do that, like, you know, I just got to name a thing, this happened and then like the community rallies and there's like, no, that's gross, that's ridiculous. And that I think that helps because the self doubt like those over rehearsal neural pathways from childhood that like you were, you know, you get default to, you know, when you're dysregulated, they're really hard to break. And so co-regulating, you know, with community who's like, no, Sierra. Yeah, I think just adding on to that, Mel, I think having, sometimes it's really hard to think of those safe people or those things that like refill your battery in the moment and having those written out or thinking of them when you're in a calm space can be really helpful. I know I worked in hospice for a long time and I had a list on my phone where if I had a difficult patient or I had a, anything that I knew was really difficult, I had a list on my phone of people and their phone numbers to text. And I had a list of these are the things that I can do in five minutes that'll make me feel better. These are things that I can do that'll take 10 or 20 minutes to make me feel better and these are the things that I can do if I have a day off to make me feel better and just having those. So when my executive functioning isn't able to come up with those things on their own or to look for the person's phone number, the person I wanna call or text, having those written out, I think can be a really helpful thing sometimes. Taking as many spoons out of the equation as possible. Thank you so much, Sierra, that does, I think that that would help. I'm really fortunate that most of the people around me really care and they wanna learn, but I'm also one human being and there's so much internalized, like I see it with the kids, there's so much that they, it's gonna take so long for them to understand they're not the problem. And even people who really are trying, it's so built into our society that they don't see it. There's only, as the parent of a five-year-old, I think about this a lot and there's only so much that I, people are always like, well, you know, how you're gonna keep her in a bubble forever and you're gonna like, yeah. I'm actually gonna teach her that the normal thing is to be in environments that are safe and when you're unsafe, we leave. So it's so hard to look around and be like, how do you do this? Like, what are you doing this? Wellness Recovery Action Planning, Sarah's bringing up. Right, right, yeah, a path for it. So just as a model of like, what are you going to do in a structured way? Thanks, Sarah, thanks for that idea. I think just it's a total, it's like a radical re-imagining of what you're gonna accept. And there's all these intersectional areas of privilege that go into this. It's a total, like this organization's only able to exist really because part of what we do is medical care, medical care that bills health insurance. That's like a system, like a revenue sustainable system that kind of got things started. So like you can't be like, I'm gonna live, I mean, you can be like, I'm gonna live off the grid and do my own thing, but like that is one option, that is a valid option. But there's like, that's not the only option. So like it's about kind of figuring out how do I preserve myself? How do I not further deplete myself by being in unsafe environments? Like, and we need all day long, people are like, well, you know, I have this physical symptom and it's terrible and I need it to be gone. And it's like, how could you not be feeling terrible? Your environment's unsafe. Like it's not you, it's your environment, almost always as Nappy says, we're not the problem, we're the solutions. Those thinking suggestion recommendations to those problems, right? But you can't even access your cortex to ideate solutions while you're dysregulated. When you're in unsafe environments, you don't have full access to your cortex. So you are limiting, you know, like not only are you like limited from achieving like self actualization, like you're not even like doing the thing that you're thinking you're doing in the moment, it's not even bigger than you, it's just like you're spending your spoons just trying to not explode. Like I just, I want so much more than that for all of you. So with that, I'll wrap up this amazing conversation. Thank you, thank you all so much for being here. And so for December, our 12th month of Brain Club, we're gonna do a Brain Club Greatest Hits. We went through the entire year and we plucked out what we think are like the take-home points and I'll be sending out. If you got this link, because I sent it or someone sent it, but you weren't registered, if you want, you can put your email address in the chat box so that you can be on my list when I send out the topic schedule and whatever. It's gonna be the same link. It's always Tuesdays at 6 p.m. Eastern, but if you want to be on the list to get the schedule for next month, just stick your email address in the chat either as a, as a to everyone or a private message chain would be farmed. Awesome. Nia, I got you on my list. Amazing. Hi, Whitney. I was so excited when I saw you log on. Bye, everybody.