 Okay, let's get started. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Brain Club. There's even a couple of folks I don't know yet, and that's so cool. So, hello, I'm Mel Hauser. I use she, they pronouns, and I am the executive director here at AllBrain's Belong, Vermont. And welcome to Brain Club. This is our weekly community conversation about everyday life brain things. And thank you, Sarah, for supporting my executive functioning to start the backup recording. Recording in progress. There we go. So, let me share screen, and we will orient you to Brain Club. So, we are continuing with Brain Club Greatest Hits, designing a work life that works for your brain. All month long this December, we have been revisiting some of the, what we think are the most important take home points of the whole year, and some of the really important conversations that we've been having here at Brain Club. And over time our perspective has shifted. So, it's been, I think it's been fun to look back on these like old brain clubs, you know, with a new lens. So, by way of introduction, and we have some new ground rules informed by our community advisory board, this is not new. All forms of participation are okay. As many of you have figured out already, you can have your video 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 move. You can fidget. You can stem. You can smack. You can have anything climbing all over you and anyone. You can communicate however you're most comfortable, either unmuting, typing in a chat box, gesturing, emoticons, mix and match. And in addition to affirming all aspects of identity, we respect and protect one another's access needs. And as Brain Club has gotten to be a larger gathering, our community advisory board has created a new community agreement. So, this is a community education program, not a medical or therapeutic support group. We're providing general education about neurodiversity related topics. And we encourage you to also access support groups and helping professionals. So, because individual traumatic experiences are best processed with a trained therapist, not a brain club. And as the group's gotten larger, we're going to create space and time for everyone to engage, just giving lots of space and lots of everyone to get a turn to communicate. And we're creating a safe environment for people of all ages. So, just having some discretion about the various topics in the language used. Okay, last bit of access. To turn on closed captions, they are already enabled. You just got to toggle them on either if you see a live transcript, closed captioning link. Or if your version of Zoom doesn't have that, you can click more, dot, dot, and choose show subtitles or hide subtitles to turn them off. Okay, before we shift into our topic, I want to put a little plug in for all brains belongs free virtual New Year's Eve celebrations. So next Saturday from five to 7.30 Eastern, please come celebrate with us. We've got a special brain club on learning the brain rules of New Year's, me, myself and family coach Amanda Deepman presenting. And then we'll have a variety of breakout rooms with activities for people of all ages. And then lastly, a musical performance for a concert, a Zoom concert. We're joined by the Misty Bay Ramblers who are a super cool trio playing covers of rock, alt rock, folk, Americana and some originals. So please, please come celebrate with us. And this is also our last day of our reimagining what's possible campaign. And we have really amazing news with 11 days left in the campaign, we are 74% toward our goal. And for those of you who have not heard us mention this before, now through the end of the year, thanks to a generous donor matching $25,000. So as soon as we turn, we reach $25,000, it magically becomes $50,000. So 11 days to go, I am super confident that we're going to make it. All right. So on to our topic. Oh, and I'm going to alert Jen. Next slide, we will start. Okay. Our amazing community partners at Orca Media, in addition to helping us share the messages of neurodiversity affirming education to the greater public, Orca Media is also going to make Brain Club actually work better. Because instead of me and my terrible internet playing my video, Jen is going to play it for us. So anyway, so all, I guess in the past six months, seven months, we've been making sure that every month we're addressing employment. This came by request from our our community advisory board. Unfortunately, 80% of neurodivergent people are unemployed. And even those who are employed, first off, may be very well under employed. And even people who are fully employed are often far from thriving. Because a lot of the default systems of employment are not designed with neurodivergent people in mind. And this tends to be, as a physician, I spend most of my day problem solving. Access needs at work. This is literally how I spend most of my day because work is not working for most people. And so with that, we are going to, for the first part of Brain Club, I made a collection of some of our past Brain Clubs, including we've had multiple community panels of people talking about what their work life has been like. And this will be 25 minutes, we will have the chat box going while the video's in progress. And then we'll have plenty of time for conversation to follow. And so with that, Jim, take it away. So what we've been talking about this whole month at Brain Club is that the idea is by learning your own brain, learning about your own strengths, your own challenges, you can strive for construction, which is designing a life based on your own brain's needs and strengths. And so all through the month of June, we've talked about this concept, we've talked about access needs, we've talked about communication, communicating these access needs, we've talked about supports and services that that that that can facilitate are creating our best lives. And now tonight, we will apply this concept to employment. The concept is that by getting to know your own brain, you can then reflect on your current situation, what's working well, what's not working, what would work better. So if, for example, you have the kind of brain that is constantly thinking and talking about brains, well, you might quit your job and start a nonprofit where you get to think and talk about brains all day. That's an example of niche construction. But short of that, we are going to hear from panelists today to talk about what this process has been like in their own lives. Oh, screenshot it. Oh, yeah, it gets recorded. Oh, for sure, totally. So what goes into designing a neuro inclusive workplace and all brains belong, one of our community projects is a neuro inclusive employment break spotting program where we are, it's still open looking for nominations from community members to nominate remote employers that are using concepts of inclusive design to create environments where all brains can thrive and what this what we've and then we contact them study them and interview them and learn from their experience. And so what we have found thus far, which it's the concepts that come out in the research too, which is that what goes into a neuro inclusive workplace, the physical environment, getting sensory processing and motor related access, communication style, the culture, having meaningful work. Those of us with dopamine bound brains where we have interest dependent learning and engagement and motor coordination and executive functioning. So meaning is a common source of dopamine. I think flexibility and choices, autonomy, and flexibility in workflows and routines. All too often there is a default workflow, a default routine that everyone is expected to follow, you know, because there's one right brain. No, no, there's not. And so if you have one default pathway, and someone has the kind of brain for whom that does not come naturally, that is not neuro inclusive. So when I do trainings for for organizations trying to improve their neuro inclusivity, we talk about like the simplest when is to view this is are there defaults? Are there defaults in recruitment, interviewing, the whole hiring process? Are there defaults in the way that people are supervised, the way feedbacks are provided, the way meetings are? Anytime there is a default, everyone else is altered. I'm Tracy. I started my own neurodivergence journey, I guess, like probably two years ago. I've been in my current job as an assistive technology specialist for seven years. And I didn't know much about neurodivergence. All I've heard, all I had heard was of, you know, autism and ADHD and they were in their own little silos. And I didn't see myself reflected in the definitions in that community, because they weren't really shown there. But I got connected with one of my clients, I think, who I was just talking with, and there's so much in common, which threw me down a rabbit hole. And I did a lot of research on it and realized that I had a lot of internalized ableism around my own life. And here I was working in the disability community, not realizing that, you know, I was trying slowly to solve all of my own quirks. And that's how I ended up in my job. Luckily, this job fell in my lap, it's a great job for me. I get tons of dopamine from my job, I get to solve problems on the daily, and they're short sometimes. But they're so interesting. I love working with people in this capacity. And luckily, that's been part of my niche construction is this job that I just kind of fell into. And I found no pushback. I mean, I work in the disability community. So obviously, my supervisors are welcoming. When I say I need this or this works better for me or the more confidence I brought to that, the more explicit I was about the tools, the accommodations that I needed, the less pushback I got. I didn't present myself as a person with a disability and then expected someone else to solve the problem for me. I brought my accommodations to the table and said, here's what I need. And I think that for an employer, that's easy to handle. This person says I need XYZ. Okay, I don't have to think about it. And that works pretty nicely. But yeah, I've been working on curbing my own internalized ableism, working with my executive functioning instead of against it, because every article that you read about time management and to do lists, they don't really work for my brain. So just turning that around and not going into the shame spiral that Mill described where why can't you just do this brain? Why can't you just be that way? And being like, oh, no, it's because you just need to be this way. And it's fine. It's like solved a lot of problems and a lot of relationships at work and otherwise. So that's me. Don't really know what else to say. I'm curious, Tracy, in your professional life, do you come across lots of folks who are not achieving these construction in their work? Yeah. And I mean, before I had this job, I worked, I've had lots of jobs, but when I used to have a management position, and I would find myself hiring people who now I can see were neurodivergent. And it was a horrible fit. And I would be like, you need to do something more interesting, because what you're doing now is making you miserable, which is making me miserable. So you should go do something else. I'm not firing you, but you should go somewhere else. And that happens with my clients too, where they come in and, you know, their accommodation list is 900 pages long, like their dream accommodation list for this job. And I'm like, but do you want this job? Do you like this job? Like question number one. So yeah, I think with folks with dopamine bound brains, like finding something that's interesting and that you like, especially in this employment market is ideal. Yes. All right. I am going to queue up a video. Oops. No, don't start playing the video yet. I always say that part of my own niche construction should be that, because we really do have a culture of interdependence here, like it is totally normal and ideal to be connected with other people and rely on one another. So I have, that was a brain rule I had to unlearn because of how independence is glorified, like autonomy is essential, but independence is a brain rule. Okay. And with my experiences, now just for example, a childcare workforce sector, I'm actually an early education teacher, I'm actually a teacher. But the way that workforce looks at me as they look at me very, very strange. They look at me as why is there a man in an early education childcare workforce, which usually that's predominantly held by women. But for me, it's the reason why I joined that workforce is the love and compassion I have for all students of Vermont. Clearly, I love that work, that type of work. And being discriminated against within that field is a problem. It really is. It's not only a society problem, it's a Vermont problem. As you can see, it's ingrained everywhere where we work in our workforce. For me, it's very, very disturbing that the workforce of Vermont as a whole is starting to see a lot more declines and turnovers than actually having people hired that want to be welcome into the workforce. And with me, it's probably because the reason why I can't get hired or there's a lot of barriers to that. One is you're on SSI and SSDI programs. There's already barriers to that. And they will let you know that if you proceed or go toward the foreign planet, we will cut your benefits off. They do not care if it's even a part-time job no more. They update that if you get a job, they'll cut it off. It's just on people that really want to be self-independent. And they can't get that if the workforce or the society of these programs or services are going to work for them. That's an accessibility problem too as well. I'm just here because I am autistic and I did not know this until a few years ago, about three, two years ago. And so I've been navigating most of this, not realizing I was autistic, kind of knowing I had. I guess I knew I was neuro, not neuro-conforming or I was neuro-divergent. But I mean, I will get into the whole long story of my misdiagnosis and everything else. But basically, you know, I've, as an ecologist, I've worked lots of different jobs to some extent, just from being autistic and bouncing around for various reasons or things not being good fits. But they're also just because that's kind of how a lot of ecology, especially early career ecology jobs are designed. And of course, you know, I want to caveat that I've got all kinds of like luck and privilege and everything else. And it's a hard field. And I got into it in a time that was easier. And a lot of people who are, I'm sure better at it than me aren't here, you know, so I want to recognize that. But just also, you know, I just wanted to be here to kind of be thinking about the different, you know, since I've had all these different jobs, my current one is like amazing. And it was the job I was at when I found out I was autistic. And I've talked about it with my supervisor and my coworkers. And it's been this really affirming and amazing experience, which is so different from what I hear about from others. And you know, it might be because I'm a white man, you know, I'm basically a gender, but I'm male looking. And I am obsessed with weather and plant. I'm kind of a walking autistic stereotype, which is why it's kind of funny. I wasn't diagnosed. But that being said, you know, it's been really affirming. And I think at other jobs, it would not have gone that way. And I know it wouldn't hasn't for a lot of other people. Yeah, it's, I think I'm really lucky. And I have started talking about it with other people around the state of Vermont. And I have been really surprised. I, you know, when I kind of came out of the autism closet or whatever you want to call it, I had no idea that there was really a stigma, like, and I just was high autistic. And you know, so I'm running around. And then I find out no one else at I'm the agency and natural resources. I don't know of any other person who is open that I know there are people who are neurodivergent, but I don't know of anyone else who is openly autistic. And there are not very many everyone it is very white and there are not I know there are people who are LGBT and oftentimes aren't disclosing it. I had several people tell me they were ADHD after I did a little brown bag talk with people I did a little talk with people about being autistic. And that was kind of how I told everyone and people came up to me and told me they had ADHD or other things. But yeah, it's just this kind of I'm a little scared, but so far it's been great. But also I'm just interested in other people's experiences. I remember when I was working at a childcare center, my position was as a floater, which meant that I didn't know what was needed of me or expected of me or what my day was going to look like until I was there. And I remember having a big conversation with my boss and being like, okay, this next year around, I can't handle this. And I feel that my, my showing up here, my attendance and being good employees being impacted when I don't know what's expected of me. We had this big wrong talk. And then she like reformatted it that floaters would be assigned to specific rooms. So you would have at least know where you were going to be who you were going to be working with and everything. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, that's so amazing. And then I remember having, oh, and it like, Oh, man, it puts a little ache in my chest. I remember feeling so like proud of that and everything. And then walking by and hearing someone be like, you mean, I have to do the same thing every day. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, I just ruined that person's life. Like, now that person is going to have to do the same thing every day. And it's all my fault. Because, you know, I have a control over all of their feelings. But yeah, so the idea of being able to have more freedom of what is expected of you in the day, be it someone who needs something different or someone who needs to be able to replay it over and over again on the way there, what they're going to do is that would be incredible. Yeah, I have a question. So I'm, I'm a nursing professor. So I teach nursing students and a lot of them have accommodations. It's a growing number of people that have accommodations for things like quiet testing environment and extra time on tests and things like that. And a common conversation among faculty is, you know, there aren't these accommodations in, in the real world of nursing. So how do we prepare our students to be in this environment? Are we doing it? The conversation is always that we're doing them a disservice by, which is ridiculous. But the question still stands that how do we prepare people and prepare like that environment seems to be making very little change in any sort of fast direction. And I guess it's, you know, how do we help set people up? Like Matthew, you're talking about all the things that floaters do and the things that teachers do. Like what can we tangibly do to help with that transition from school to workplace in ways that are going to set people up for success and enjoyment and fulfillment in their careers? I can, I can, Laura, I can just chime in from like a healthcare provider standpoints and, you know, just because I think this really relates to brain rules versus world rules pretty much because everything does like it is a brain rule that you get thrown to the wolves and that that's the end goal for your professional life. Like that makes no sense. So if you are, you know, I actually have two, two things I would say to your, to your question. By the way, there's a, yeah, thank you, thank you. Yes, we agree your daughter is adorable, Charlie. Anyway, so, so, you know, in when we think about accommodations, we are not giving extra advantage over other people. What we are doing is we are taking a barrier to access and we are making that barrier less. So we are not saying, okay, nursing student, you are getting extra time on a test, which gives you an advantage over other people. We are saying that because of the way your brain attends, reads, writes, whatever it is, we are giving you a workaround for your brain to be able to do the thing. So when we, as a person with disability, when we have a job, we also need to have those things. We need to look at any barriers to access and meaningful participation and accommodations need to be specific for that. They're not random. So it's not like a thing you get just because you're a student and do the thing. If you still need the thing, you get the thing. That's disability inclusion. That's how that goes. The other thing I would say, and then I, and then, then, then it looks like Mel's got their hand up. So this idea that you will be in a healthcare environment that has a default, that's not going to end well, right? So if, so like, you know, in medicine and I imagine in nursing, there's different choices of your environment. When the environment is a mismatch for your brain, you are not going to have a good life. So, you know, it is probably very important for someone to know when an environment, when a culture, when a sensory experience is not a good fit for their life. And I work in the construction world, and I'm actually a consultant to a lot of construction companies. And so through learning more about my son, I started to realize how prevalent neurodiversity is amongst my clients and their, and their employees, like many, if not most of them. And a lot of the work we do is about supporting business owners to have more successful companies, you know, and a better work environment, better work cultures. And so one of the things I've really grappled with is, in particular, there's often a transition that happens where people work in the trades like on the job site. And if they, if they show any signs of leadership or good communication or leadership organizational skills, then they're often promoted into a leadership position. And something I've seen happen frequently, and I'm not sure how to, how to address it in our work, is there's this very specific definition of what like a lead carpenter or site super or project manager should look like. And they're often taking people from the trades who may or may not be neurodiverse and trying to move them into this. And it's a lot of my work is supporting people to become project managers or to gain leadership skills. And I guess where I struggle and where I see employers struggle is what, what is part of the job, you know, and the skills required as part of the job and, and when they're being reviewed, like in a performance review, and saying things like, Oh, this person's disorganized or this person's not able to stay on top of these tasks or their communication doesn't look like we want it to look, it becomes very complicated, particularly when there's someone who isn't necessarily diagnosed. And so there can't, there can't be the same kind of conversation around accommodations. One, when you talk about like successful companies or better culture, like being beat like like operationalizing that would be helpful. Like what does success look like and kind of like reframing what success looks like? Because it might be that success doesn't mean you get promoted on this default track. Maybe success means that you, it's the niche construction is your success. Meaning like what are the things in the environment, the culture, the communication that make that individual person feel self-actualized. Right. So there's that, because what ends up happening a lot of times is that, you know, within a given set of demands, the brain can do the thing. And then you keep taxing and taxing and taxing. And then finally, when it is that your capacity becomes outstripped by your demands, then things start getting dropped through the cracks. And so then, and then because we have so many brain rules, meaning things we think are universal truths, but are not, those people get judged and shamed. You're lazy, you're defective, you're not motivated, you're disengaged, you're this, when really you are actual, you've depleted your cognitive resources, because your reserves have been outstripped by your demands. And so when we think about, you know, the myths of what it is to be a good leader, the brain rules of leadership, which is that, yeah, exacerbated by masking, pressure to mask is going to further deplete your reserves. Anyway, so now, and then the brain rules of leadership are such that, well, now I have to do the thing and I have the pressure to do the thing and I'm expected to do the thing independently. But really, we want to think about a culture of interdependence where the person who has the responsibilities, those responsibilities are supported, accommodated, shared, like even me, I like run a nonprofit and like my executive functioning is outstripped on a daily basis. And I have people that help me do most things here, because otherwise I can't, my disability would be completely incompatible of being an independent professional. That, you know, we can come together and support one another in shifting the community culture, and we have the opportunity for like this next generation to not have to unlearn stuff, if they just learn it the right way, the right way, which is that there is no right way. Like, I mean, can you even imagine if like little kids actually learned in preschool, that there's no right way to think, learn and communicate. And it's like the only thing they've ever learned. Right. And in the chat, the amount of suffering this would prevent, absolutely. Because, you know, in 2022, I have six-year-old patients who are already getting the message that they are broken and defective and they're not doing the thing. And so anyway, and that's honestly just like my own story in the setting of autistic burnout, of having an employment situation that was not working for my brain. I was also envisioning like I had a then three-year-old and I really wanted her to grow up in a completely different culture, where like she, we've been talking about brain since she's two. And she knows she's autistic, she's proud of her brain, she walks around, she's just like, I have a kind of brain that needs vestibular input right now. She's amazing. And it's just, yeah, shout out to Luna for being incredible. Absolutely. And like all the little kids, like all the little kids, even typically developing kids who I'm just like, did you know that we all have different brains? And they're like, oh, sweet. And like even a typically developing kid who's like, he picks up a toy and like does a thing with it. I'm like, oh, that's so interesting. But your brain did that with it. My brain did this with it. And like little Johnny this morning, not little Johnny because of HIPAA, but like somebody, somebody else did something else with it. We all have different brains. And they're like, oh, cool. So that's how it could be. With that, there's been, I thank you all for your comments in the chat, but I'll just, I'll open this up. This is hard. This is really hard. Like we know this stuff, but in day to day life, so many people do not have their needs met. And it takes so much privilege to be able to do what I did, which was to leave a toxic workplace culture and start over. Most people don't have that privilege. So I want to open it up to you all. Has anyone found anything else that can make a meaningful difference in shifting their own workplace culture to be less harmful to their health? Carly. Hi. Let's see. So I have, I did a lot of work from home for like 15 years. I was a high school teacher before that. And I love teaching, but having to be at work at 6 30 in the morning. And I have a pretty stubborn circadian rhythm wasn't working. And while structure does provide me with, you know, some advantages in life, it's not really the way I operate most efficiently. So I did leave teaching in the classroom and I got into construction and ran a construction business building natural, non toxic, high performance homes. And Mel, who spoke on this reel today, is a very good friend of mine. And I was there when Mel began this incredible business that they run. So, and we were one of their first clients. But I've gotten back into education and it's, I'm just sort of learning about like PDA and, you know, I've always known that my brain was very different. I have met a lot of neurologists and they've said so, but I just didn't, you know, really consider myself potentially on the spectrum PDA or any of that. And I've worked with a lot of like really top notch psychologists and brain doctors and no one has ever even remotely and I've worked in special at no one suggested it to me. So now I'm sort of like fell into the situation where there's a school that's a progressive school and they're all about democratic classrooms and really everything right up my alley, all the things I tried to implement in private public schools and during my homeschooling career, which I've done all along, and they have asked me to teach at I've been subbing in their lower in their early childhood ed. And now they need someone to cover maybe like a K through five or something like that. And it's just perfect for me, we'll be outside all the time and and, you know, kids can write their own curriculum. But I'm just the thing is that they're amazing, like they let me show up at nine, because that's what time I can get here after dropping my kid off and him doing his thing and me getting here, I can get here at nine. So they the students that need me to work here get here at nine. And they're just kind of willing to probably do anything that I need. But I need some input, because I don't have really the language I've been out of special ed for 15 years. And I, you know, I hear some things like I feel like I'm going to need some, you know, my schedule is going to probably need to be accommodated for my circadian rhythm and things like that. So I just want to say like being here is great. And I feel very lucky to have fell into this situation where I think I'm going to be accommodated. And therefore, a ton of kids who need my services and my background in special ed are also going to be able to be accommodated. Just appreciate anyone's support. Thank you, Carlina. You brought up so much. I forget where I was. Maybe it was Brain Club, but it may not have been. I got into a conversation recently about how, no, it was Brain Club. Sierra talked about it, about how the default of even expecting that most humans are going to thrive with a 40 hour work week. Like that's a myth. So to be able to and, you know, also when we think about how we're not robots either, you know, regardless of neuro type, like no one's a robot. So the idea that you don't have the flexibility to, to, to work more at some times and work less at other times, depending on your nervous system needs is really hard. The chat is moving so quickly. I can't read and keep up and facilitate. Anyway, but like, so, so I think I would also just throw this out there that the approach that I think is generalizable, even if you don't work for yourself is that of when it's safe, like when your limbic system assesses that it's safe and, you know, sometimes it's truly not safe to be authentic. Sometimes, and often, you know, the mask or various types of masks are a survival strategy. And when it is safe to be authentic. A lot of times people respond by, by like being authentic back at you. And that that can shift culture. Kelly. So I fly over all over the world. And an experience I had coming back from Belize this summer was I got one of the hidden disability lanyards. And I did this a little bit more to see how what the shift was going to look like. Because I wanted to bring the program into my school. And I mean, I've, I've flown, I've traveled so much. And this was the first time I didn't need to sleep for 12 hours when I got back. Just the little things that the airlines and the airports did to accommodate me because of seeing that lanyard. And I think that that was the moment that I said, it's not worth being quiet, just because I can get through it. If I have to pay dearly for it. And I think sometimes we forget that. And as employees, like, we burn ourselves out. And then we're not great employees. And it's like toxic both ways around. We've got to be good to ourselves. Yeah. And so much of that, like, so if you're, if your culture, even as a, you know, like, as the institution, like, like, if, if, if, if, if a person in a position of leadership is immersed in a culture of everyone just like perpetuating the brain rules, like, everybody suffers, you're totally right. I'm reading in the chat, I'm sorry for missing literally everything before this, but I'll work backwards and catch up. Jennifer writes, I have an 18 year old daughter who is autistic, PDA and gifted. However, she worries she won't be able to keep a job, find a career, support her stuff. She's here beside me and knows I'm writing this. Oh my gosh, came out with us. So your daughter just came out with us. I think it's just about so so I'm not so we haven't met yet. Hi, I'm Mel. I'm autistic with a PDA profile. I'm a doctor. So you can, the thing about PDA is that it, it, it, it, it's a major social disability for me. Yeah, it is. It's also what makes me me and everything that I've ever been able to accomplish for myself and as an advocate for other people comes from being a PDA or you're going to do great things. PDA has changed the world. That's what I have to say about that. Readings scrolling back up. When challenged with this pleasure or discomfort at work, my mantra is accept, change, create something new or leave. Yup. For years, I tried everything except leave until I did leave four months ago while creating something new that resonates hard. I'm scrolling up. Hold on, scrolling down, scrolling up and down. It's all happening. Jessica, sorry, I see your hand up. I missed it. It wasn't my periphery. No, no, that's okay. There's lots of buttons and lots of things going on here. Let me lower my hand about there's me when I keep my hand up. First of all, I just want to thank you for sharing that video. It was a great sort of fluid conversation and what I really liked about it was the variety in people that you assembled, different jobs. Yeah, it's just different personal characteristics and profiles. We can see that being neurodivergent in different ways is not like a stereotype. My husband who may be on the spectrum, we have lots of inside jokes because people think that being on the spectrum or being ADHD is one thing or the other. So I love that variety and just sharing. I think that shows people, I mean us all, I think, but also people like maybe Jennifer's daughter, like here's what is possible. Here are people doing different things. For example, I work in the design industry and I don't know, yeah, that I thought I would be doing this. So anyway, thank you for all of that. I feel like I probably had a specific question, but it slipped my mind. So I just want to say I love the community here. I think just part of the richness is also just in the side conversation and just feeling the scene. I think that's so valuable. So thank you. Thank you for saying that. We try to create this balance of multiple different ways to be seen and including to still feel connected and be part of the action even if you never turn your video on, if you never on mute, if you never type in the chat box, you're still part of this. And it's kind of like so I have a, many of you have heard me say I have a five-year-old Luna who is my guru of all things. And when we were first, Luna has the kind of brain that benefits from having the umbrella, the structure. She has to know something is a thing before she can integrate it into her framework of the world. And so when she was three, we talked about how there's no right way to play with friends. You can observe, you can play side by side, you can take turns, you can play together, all four of those ways are valid. And that is valid at all stages of development. And so there's something about being a healthcare professional or an education professional where you're taught that as soon as you're two years old, you stop parallel playing. But parallel plays, what happens when adults go to a concert? It's what happens to one professional is to go to a continuing professional development thing and you're sitting next to somebody at a conference. Not that I go to in-person conferences because that's like a great way to get COVID. But anyway, it's just that there is no right way to participate here and there shouldn't be a right way to participate anywhere. And often when I say that to people, they're like, oh yeah, yeah. It's just that so many people are not naming the thing. And so I just think it's really important that I think the more that we practice coming together as a broader AVB village to just like when it's safe, name the thing wherever you go. And then I think people will start naming the thing wherever you go. That sounded a little bit more profound than I intended it. I can't even begin to scroll up. I don't even know where I left off. I think that I'll keep scrolling down. So many brain rates, many brain rules are just unconscious. People don't realize they have them until they stop to examine them. Yeah. And I'll also add to that, but it's like no one else can tell me that I have a brain rule. Like my husband calls me on my brain rules all the time. And I'm like, no, it's a world rule. But like it is a brain rule, but I had to come to that on my own. And so anyway, that's, that's I think, part of this. So it's about you, you're exposed to something, you know, you, you might process it a little bit and then it stays with you and you think about it and process it some more. And then you may be like, oh yeah, I'm like a little bit curious about my own thoughts there. And maybe I, maybe, maybe, maybe it doesn't have to be that way. And like internally, our, our culture here amongst our staff is we, we, we are constantly like part of our culture of interdependence is actually like discerning our brain rules from world rules. Like I'll say to Sarah, he said this thing that I think it's a brain rule. She's like, it might be a brain rule. It might be a brain rule, but I'm keeping it. And that's okay. Because, and if you missed last week on the recap of brain rules and world rules, I'll repost the link in the chat to last week's brain club where we talked about like, because again, like, you can't like Google these for definitions, we made up these terms, they're not real things. So anyway, but, but just the idea is that when you, you know, unlike the, you know, like the traditional cognitive behavioral approach to say like, is your thought rational, brain rules are never rational, they're not supposed to be. Just because you, your thoughts not rational doesn't mean you have to get rid of it. If the brain rules protecting you and serving you well, you keep it, but you still know that it's not a law of physics. Just reading in the, in the chat, Laura says, I think part of the nature of brain rules is that they feel like world rules. Yes, that is what makes them brain rules. You know, like if, if, if, if, if there were obvious that they were brain rules, they wouldn't have so much power. Yeah, brain rules are becoming real things right now. That's awesome. I look forward to the day when random people that I've never met start using the terminology of brain rules and world rules. All right, so you've got about five minutes left. Is there anything that we've not addressed about employment or the big picture of, of designing a life, a work life that works for your brain? Jessica? So I, I'm sure that you, I think, I haven't fully explored the ABB website, but are maybe just from the community here, are there any resources you've found in your own journey that have been helpful either for just sort of like helping a small thing or helping a bigger thing? Or on a third level, if this isn't too many like subsections of a question is something for educating other people. That's something that I'm slowly working with peers and colleagues and a manager about. But either I don't know where to look or I don't know good enough resources. Yeah, I would love for either you or other folks here to share some of their, their favorite. I think part of me is that I don't have a diagnosis yet. So I I know sometimes that's not necessarily required, depending on the environment you're in. But yeah, I'd appreciate any shares. Totally. So thanks for the question. I put a couple of links in the chat. So there is the job accommodation network AskJan.org. I really like that resource. And it has like a totally searchable database for like suggestions for accommodations. And it's not based on diagnosis. It's based on like what's hard, like, you know, executive functioning or time management or like whatever it is. So AskJan.org. Yeah. The other thing I put in there is that all brains belong. One of the things that we do like we have a whole education program here, and specifically a neuro inclusive employment education program. So we do on that link, there's a button that you can get like a bunch of free recordings on neuro inclusive employment. It's it's it's mostly all old brain clubs on neuro inclusive employment that are more lecture style. They're this this some if you're new to brain club, this the way we've been doing things in December has been different than the whole year. This is like brain club greatest hits where we are watching like synthesized clips from the whole year past, but they're mostly more of like a lecture discussion series. So anyway, there's a button that has all the free neuro inclusive employment program trainings. And then we also do consultations for employers about like neuro DEI, you know, because many employers who are like wise to the the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion. They just like often leave out neuro diversity and access from those conversations. And so we do we do trainings about that. Reading the chat, everyone has to make compromises. How do we know if we are compromising too much in the workplace, like compromising to the point of detriment to ourselves? Yeah, I mean, so so you're really talking about how do I know if I'm dysregulated? That was and I'll post links to our January and February brain clubs, where we and in fact, I think maybe the first the first week of December, we did a recap of a lot of those things about nervous system regulation, because like the subtle signs are are so individual. And so if you are dysregulated, it is it is likely because your environment is dysregulating you. And since many adults spend most waking hours in a workplace environment, it is often a workplace environment responsible for many people's dysregulation. Oh, yeah. Yeah, the first week of December was everyone flips her lid. Yeah, that's exactly what that was. So I'll pull that up. I'll pull that up. Sometimes I don't feel dysregulated in the moment, but later on I'm exhausted and didn't realize in the moment I pushed you far. Yeah, and that relates to we talked about that in the first week of December, that often relates to interoception differences. So interoception is the processing of internal body signals. And so many of us don't feel our signals until they're big. So like I don't feel hungry until I'm explosively hangry. And like no longer have the spoons to actually access food. So yeah, that sucks. That's not convenient. So like emotions are like that too for a lot of people. And so part of it is like slowing down. And so I think Kelly, it was you who asked earlier like what's an example of a healthy goal about being more authentic? Like that's one of mine about like, can I slow it down enough to kind of recognize, oh, this thing I feel is because my environment's unsafe and I need to leave it. Because when you can shift from blaming yourself for something to blaming the environment, like that's a game changer. That's that's like a healthy development, I think. All right. Well, thank you, everyone. Thank you so much for coming. And I hope to see you next week as we finish off our December Bring Club greatest hits. We're going to be it's it's it's really building on this conversation, talking about access needs, which is, you know, the key to the universe. Bye, everybody.