 Okay, we are live once again. I've actually been able to sort out my YouTube stream. Good, good on you, Tom. It's been a week. I wasn't sure if I was actually going to do a live stream this week because I don't know, I've kind of been struggling a bit at the moment with Burnout. My brain's a bit kind of all over the place at the moment. I thought I'd just jump on anyway because I do actually enjoy doing these lives. Also, let me know if the audio is okay because I'm not too sure because I do have it next to my computer and there may be like a little bit of, what's it, sort of humming, humming fan sounds. So just let me know in the chat if you can hear that or not because I don't want that to happen. How are you all doing? It's been, yeah, I mean, this week I haven't really been doing much. I've been trying to kind of relax a little bit more than usual, just try and chill out, recover. Audio is okay, good. I am glad. So, yeah, today it's going to be the same as the last sort of Aughty streams that I've done before. Anything personal, autism related, if you go sort of onto my Instagram page, if you're on YouTube, you can head over to my Instagram page. And if you have any questions about any of the posts that I've made recently, then I'm very happy to kind of, actually, I might pull up on my screen to sort of have got some stuff to talk about because there's been some. Hi, William, thanks for joining. I'm going to pull up some, not going to pull them up onto the camera, but we'll have a look at, I'm not going to have a look at some of the things I've done this week. Hello, men, Sashi. Oh, we got a question already. Cool. Do I consider myself an extrovert or an introvert? It's a bit of a hard one, isn't it? Because like extroversion and introversion, it's basically like how you feel that you can, I don't know, if you feel that you recharge by yourself or if you recharge in the space of others. I think that's what my understanding of like that is. But I'm pretty half and half, you know, I like about both. Whenever I do those, like Myers-Briggs 15 person at least things, I pretty much always get like 50-50 on each of them. But it is interesting, isn't it? Because, you know, with the autism diagnosis, it's kind of, it's kind of, we're more like shifted towards the introverted side of things. So sometimes it's hard to know, like obviously, like in terms of most people, I'd probably be considered to be an introvert, but for an autistic person, I think I'm quite extroverted. It really depends, to be honest, because sometimes with, sometimes with social things, I feel pretty, pretty okay if I've like done it previously, if I've like had some preparation, I've had some like relaxation time beforehand, and then I've gone into a social situation. Or if I've like over the past few weeks, I've been having more and more social interactions. But if I have like times where it's out of context, like this social interaction, when I haven't talked to anyone in person for like, other than like close people for like a month, then it's a bit harder. It's like when I came out of, when we came out of COVID and sort of isolation in the UK, my social skills were absolutely awful. So I hope that answers your question. I'm just going to check the chat again. Hilsa says, hey, Thomas, I've had a good peaceful week, which is nice for a change. I'm glad you've had a peaceful week. I've had a peaceful week too, but I really, really needed it. It's being kind of hectic at the moment. So yeah, just to reiterate you're welcome to ask as many questions as you like. It kind of makes the stream for me. I'll talk about some stuff related to autism if not, but this is really the time because I don't do a lot of interaction in terms of comments and stuff. So it's sometimes, I think these live streams are good because it gives me an opportunity to kind of take the questions and comments and stuff that I don't usually get. By the way, if you're doing that on YouTube, I am doing an Instagram stream at the same time. So that's why I'm getting some of answering questions if you're confused about that. But I'm the same for Instagram. Got one from KattootG, J-E125. Is there a lot of support for autistic people in the UK? Is it accessible? There's a lot of support for autistic children. That tends to be the case for adults. It's a bit different. A lot of the support that you can get out there is stuff that you really have to find out yourself. It's not like sort of handed to you on a silver platter. It's like, here's all the support that you get and stuff. You actually have to research it and find out all the things that you can get and try and get those. But I'd say that UK is probably one of the best places. There is some mental health support and particularly things around benefits and stuff that can be really helpful. But then again, some mental health support tends to be a bit rubbish for resorties. It's actually going to be one of the topics because I've got a speaking event coming up on Monday. I'm going to go into Birmingham and I'm going to be speaking at this charity events like first opening. I'm going to talk all about Alexa Firemere. If you go through my stories, it should still be up. I did show like a few of my slides from that. But I'm really excited for it. I'm a bit of an odd cookie because I do actually really enjoy public speaking. It is anxiety provoking, but I think I've had a lot of experience from it. It's because of my history being an athlete and having to go out in front of crowd and being really noisy and stuff. Public speaking is a bit better. I suppose doing my podcast and doing the live streams and stuff, it does kind of prepare me a little bit for it because it's kind of hard because I've tried to work from the script before. I've tried to write down what I'm going to say. But every time I look at my script or when I tried it out the first two times, look at my script. I read a couple of lines down to where I need to be and I just get confused. So for me, it works better just to kind of go off the cuff, which can be a bit anxiety provoking. But yeah, it's going to be good. I'm quite excited for it. It'd be good to kind of get out of my hometown for a bit as well. Men's Sachu says, in your opinion, is masking beneficial to autistic adults in the world? Career relationships, etc. It depends what you classify as masking because everyone seems to have their own idea of what masking is. If you're hiding your autistic, I think it really depends on the environment that you're in and what you really want to get out of it. I think one of the issues that a lot of people come across is they kind of put this mask on, but then it stays on and it keeps staying on and then they get burnt out and then they go all these mental health issues and they just don't feel like they can connect with anybody. And that's a really big issue. I did do a post quite a while ago called Integrated Masking, which was kind of like, because most people throughout their day, neurotypicals, etc., they do masks, so they change their behaviour in certain circumstances, but they don't like do the autistic kind of masking where you sort of suppress your autistic behaviours and stings and sort of preferred way of communicating. So I think there's a few things that can be beneficial and sometimes, but for me I don't really feel at all like I'm masking. It more or less kind of feels like a language for me. If I'm first meeting someone I might perhaps mask a little bit just personally, not saying that you should do, just for the people who don't really understand much about autism and then like as I get to know them I'll kind of let my mask slip a little bit, see what happens. Usually it's fine and people don't really mind, they just don't really understand a lot of the time and they kind of, they have this very neurotypical lens, so anything that kind of seems odd for like most people to do is something that they kind of, they take it in weird ways, like if you don't make eye contact they might say like oh you're a bit shifty or you don't, you're not interested in what I have to say or I'm going to go off and that kind of thing. So there can be some like communication barriers with that stuff, but I think for a lot of people I try to talk about autism because it's something that I feel quite comfortable talking about, so I usually bring it up quite early on when I meet somebody, so I've explained to them you know what are the kind of things that I do that might not be typical for most and what it means, what it doesn't mean and a lot of people are mostly positive about it, they kind of show a bit of interest, they, you know it's not like a negative thing, it's like a source of conversation and intrigue for them which I think is really cool and it can offer some benefits as in them understanding a bit more about you and also I suppose just giving you an opportunity to kind of self-advocate for certain things that they might pick up on. But you know working worldwide, I think some workplaces can be quite harsh and some people can be quite harsh just like with anybody, I think it's just just being aware of who you're around, like if you don't know them very well and you feel like it might be quite risky for you to sort of unmask fully and sort of just be yourself, it can be tough, high woodshed, thanks for dropping down on YouTube, maybe the first chat comment on YouTube appreciated, you know in relationships like you should definitely not mask, it's, yeah we're talking, I do, I do town, I do openly tell people I'm autistic, it's just something that I'm interested in because I do so much sort of work around it and stuff, it's kind of something that I enjoy to talk about, it's like one of my special interests so it's not really an issue for me and as I said people just find it interesting. Relationships, no please do not mask, you want to be able to actually connect with that person, I've heard some stories of like, I think I watched Chris, you know I heard about Chris Packins documentary about the autistic woman who kind of unmasked on camera and then showed her husband and it was kind of like a very sort of touching moment and I think in situations like that especially if it might feel kind of off to unmask and stuff and people can take it a bit, people can take it differently, some people can sort of take it as oh you're becoming more autistic, you're watching all these creators and you're you're getting attention and you're looking at all these different things and hey look you need to chill out, just be yourself like I know you, I was like no you don't, not fully, I need to kind of be myself a lot more. That's important because you won't feel, I just realized that my mic is like not properly on at the moment. Okay, YouTube is that better, sorry about that, oh I'm awful. I'm gonna move on to something else though. PixieNix says the only spot around here is created by autistic people, we get no funding or anything, that really sucks, yeah that's it's tough, it can really sort of vary from person to person I think, place to place rather. Stalin says hello Tom, hello, thank you for the 100% Jetson Zero, hello Kaka and hello George Collier, Jetson Zero says I'd only point my scripts which helps me but I do have to write out the baiting, so you do public speaking as well, that's really interesting. Got an interesting question from Mina, I'm heading to a concert, any tips or tricks that could help? Yeah, stay at the back, stay near the exit, make sure you bring some sensory supports, you want to make sure that you've got some good earbuds that you can use, knowing to kind of think headphones or earbuds can be quite good because if you're finding the crowd a bit too much you can kind of take yourself somewhere else and listen to some more soothing music depending on what you're going to see which can help. I think of other things, make sure that you're comfortable, don't try and get too dressed up, for me the whole dressy up thing, for me dressing up is like putting on jeans and maybe a shirt and that just adds another element of rough textures and sensory issues and I think just trying to manage the stuff that you can is really helpful, you could bring some shades as well if the lights are going to be a bit too too much, a lot of them will be sensory things but I think also you know having a bit of an action plan in mind when you go to these kind of things, making sure that you, I guess making sure that the people that you're going with, if you are going with people that they know that you might go around and you know sort of give them some ideas of how they can sort of support you and stuff, because you don't want to be that like in a situation, in a place that you don't know with people around that you don't know and having to melt down or getting very stressed and stuff so I think it's important to do a bit of prep. Pixie Nick says masking is an assesity for safety in certain circumstances especially for POC, I'm not sure about POC, I don't know what that means but I can definitely understand, it would be lovely if we could all mask and just like not really care about showing, you know, masking our artistic traits and stuff but the world can be tough and I think you know a lot of the criticisms that I get sometimes is you know saying people to mask, which I'm not saying that, I think that you should try and mask as much as you can but you know we don't live in a perfect world and especially like in school environments, even in workplace environments so about out in the space and in public, doing those kind of big stems those kind of stereotypical autism stems sometimes can garner a bit of attention and if you kind of worry about that and you get paranoid like me, that can add like another aspect of just not feeling safe and it could probably make you more anxious so but the thing is like even with that you can do like little little stems that you know everyone really does like you know bouncy leg or playing with like a fidget thing or you know there's lots of different options for like managing social overwhelm in public it's just about finding ones that you're comfortable doing finding things that you're comfortable sharing with people I guess. We've got some messages from Woodshed, I find I can't mask when I get gifts I immediately get excited and hold it in yeah um I um I've got funny funny relationship with positive emotions I'm not I don't tend to be like the most um positive emotions aren't something that I can really control sometimes I actually had like a happy mouth down recently which was really weird I don't get them a lot so due to my mental health but it can be it can be um can be an issue sometimes definitely. I always wear earplugs at concerts definitely. People of PRC, people of colour, yeah I can imagine that. I talked to someone about it um who was a sort of like a um she used to work in like a mainstream schools supporting like kids who who were autistic or had or ADHDs and she was saying that a lot of the teachers kind of categorized like you know kids kids of colour um is being like more aggressive when when they do their behaviors or autistic behaviors which it was kind of a bit of an eye-opener for me because uh it's not something that um I don't really you know obviously I don't really talk about it because I don't really feel like it's my place but I think I think it's really interesting to kind of hear about sort of the different social dynamics that can kind of go on um I think thank you I did not know that uh hello from Norway hello Himmel thank you for joining um I'm just thinking of some of the other things that I've created this week I think that there's been a lot of like hot contention around my use of um cognitive and adaptive empathy recently um so I think that could be something to worth talking about it's um I think I think a lot of people when they're when they hear that you know me saying that that autistic people don't have cognitive empathy that you you know I always talk about things in generalities because it's it's hard to um it's hard to speak on an individual basis and sometimes a lot of the like the content I'm putting out I sometimes forget to put like a disclaimer saying that you know obviously everyone's different and you know even for me um my cognitive empathy is really good and it's something that I kind of learn um over time um with age and it is something that really only seems to be an issue sort of in childhood so I can kind of see the the you know the feelings around that um most to me honestly that post that I made the dot autistic people like empathy post and sort of why you know explain why that's not the case I was kind of wanting to to sort of fight against some of the stigma like that autistic people don't have empathy sort of helping people who have that belief really take a look and see that you know we we actually do um that was that was my thoughts around it really and TD TD writes hey Thomas unfortunately I can't stay long just wanted to drop by real quick well thank you for dropping by I really appreciate it so thank you um it's Talia from Canada I'm becoming so inspired by it I'm very glad I'm very glad that I can be somewhat of an inspiration that makes me feel very very good thank you I'm not very good at taking positive criticism positive uh comments it's not it's not one of my strong points um kind of it kind of you know my teenager that kind of came out pretty pretty low self-esteem so I was pretty much always like waiting for some kind of negative criticism like all the time very sort of like paranoid about myself and what people thought about me um so I didn't I mean obviously I got it from my family because my family's been really supportive so during my mental health rules um but I think in general yeah not I don't I don't tend to take them too well every chance is hi there with a WN70 hello what have a person made this week uh oh yeah I was talking about oral motor needs that seems to be something that a lot of people don't know about you know what when I make these posts and I kind of bring different sort of concepts to the table I try and look at like a lot of because a lot of the signs um a lot of the stuff that's kind of more associated with like autistic children I think we kind of forget when we go into adulthood like maybe things things like oral motor needs are kind of quite important um all the yeah they have been for me and um you know I mentioned sort of within the post that sort of picking my teeth was like a really big sort of um oral motor stem um and also snacking like just just just just eating things for the sake of eating things um and that that was you know it's not good um and I've started trying to integrate different things like I've I've got this really hard chewing gum that I use that uh it's like 15 times stronger it's supposed to be for like working out your jaw like improving your jawline and stuff but I know that you can get some issues with that uh tda says uh sorry I would always think people are out to get me or criticize me when indeed they were doing the opposite I also have work to do and having a more positive mindset yeah definitely it's um it's hard though isn't it because we we tend to have a lot of negative bias with people like just from secondary school you know we have all these terrible experiences with people and professionals and teachers and perhaps even parents and um we kind of had this sort of negative skewed bias somewhat most people are like because of that so we're very as humans we're very focused on the negatives and the issues and um that's like a survive a survival thing it's it's important um I can't I can't add you geord at the at the moment but um maybe maybe later Katie Katie asks um are you on tiktok um I want my son to watch you but he's not on instagram your sensory issues are the same as my son's um you know I have been doing stuff on tiktok but to be honest like I really want to but it's it's quite hard sort of managing instagram as it is because I'm doing instagram and I'm doing youtube and like whenever I do a reel like I have to like upload it to um I have to upload it to youtube and then I need to youtube shorts and then you sort of do instagram and then you need to change it and edit the text and put it on tiktok and I just don't see enough growth on tiktok I think I'm not very I'm not very good about that like short snappy kind of content like a lot of my stuff I I have to spend like a lot of time editing it down from like two minutes to like a minute um and quite a lot of like the context and the information gets cut out of it which I don't really like um it's not something that I enjoy doing um you know I I've tried before like cutting up like my videos that I do you know I do it in my podcast but I used to sort of do it in my videos and those didn't really perform very well as well I think it's like you've got to create stuff like native leads to the platform in order for it to get picked up a lot more and I just don't want to be doing that um I might do it in the future though when I've got perhaps a bit more capacity because I am working a job alongside doing all this stuff so it's um kind of me tough kind of keeping up keeping up with it usually uh Haruto Haruto soon I asked a question I've been diagnosed at seven well very early I've never heard the term masking I have no clue however autistic people put it on the mask I don't think you know not everyone does it um it's there are like there's like three different categories of like social social camouflage basically you have like assimilation um you have masking and you have what is your one it's going to check on my instagram I made a post about it I don't know when my my brain's a bit burnt out to you this week so that'll be why what was that I swear it was a bit further up my page come on oh yeah here we go compensation masking and assimilation so like autistic compensation I've tried my best to kind of understand it because it's as you said it's something that really tends to vary from person to person um and like what do you think masking is and what what do you think is just kind of you know social skills or like you know so everyone has like their own opinions of what it can be but for me I think compensation um that would be things like mirroring body language and facial expressions these are of compensating for perhaps not using them as much um also you know there's this concept called movie mimicry which I find really interesting where you copy fictional characters because you want to be like them and you want to kind of have the social circle and the life that that person has um masking can be things like hiding autistic traits or signs from others um so that can be things like stimming eye contact things like that uh can also be on like your actual focus when you're having a conversation with somebody so if you are focusing constantly on changing your body language and your face to appear a certain way then it kind of it kind of detracts a lot from the conversation it can make it really difficult to like keep focused on what the person's saying and keep the conversation going and it also can cause a lot of like overload and stress um just because you're just thinking about it all the time you get like paranoid about it um and then the last thing you've got the assimilation aspect of social camouflage which is like copying other people's interests uh conforming to social norms even if you've even if you don't sort of identify with them or you don't believe in them you're just doing it because it's just the best way to kind of assimilate yourself into a social group um it can also feel like you're performing in social situations or you just allow avoid them to stop stop people from sort of seeing that you have some social differences um um i hope that clears it up yeah it can be very difficult sometimes it's um i think it would be nice if we had like a list of specific things but it does tend to vary a lot person to person i think um okay it says i get that it's rubbish yeah teedy says that i've masked for many years due to fear of ruining my reputation don't worry about the typos um yeah i think that's another aspect of paranoia though because you you know i think the issue with that that kind of stands on is i mean there's there's two sides to it isn't there there's like one side you might struggle with social situations you want to keep their connections that you have to avoid like loneliness and isolation and things like that which i totally understand um and but i suppose on the other side like if you are masking so much with the people around you that that really means something to you and you know you're not really feeling all all that connected you feeling a bit false and fake it can't be very good for like friendships and relationships over the long term because it's just not you it's not like the full you um you know so that it can be really hard sometimes and i'm not gonna lie you know when i started kind of in my own masking process it could be kind of hard and people kind of you know some people they're a bit more accepting of it and they're interested and then we're like yeah hey empowerment all that kind of thing um some people not so much some people kind of think you're being a bit weird think you're being a bit extra if you understand that terminology i heard it from from a guy from the south of england and london he uses that quite a lot so yeah it's you know yeah it can't be it can't be difficult um but i think it's worth it sort of a lot in the long term if you can um mensashi says what factors make it more likely for females to mask their autistic traits um i'm not sure i don't think there's something that i want to speak on because i know that you know i made some posts about like what has it been meant before and it kind of i mean most people respond very positively to it but there's always like a a section of the sort of a viewer base that kind of doesn't like any conversations that kind of distinguish between genders or or sexes even um so maybe maybe i will highlight that i will say that from personal experience tends to be that the women or the autistic girls that i've taught in my time as especially as ta um they tend to be a bit more socially in tune a bit more sort of kind of willing to willing and wanting to engage um and i think sometimes that that willing and wanting to engage can translate into trying to copy other people to fit in maybe but the the thing is it's not it's not necessarily just typical to women although it does tend to happen um i'll highlight from from from what i've seen um stanley says masking to be was because i thought i don't understand that sorry i've got to get going now reach out soon no worries thank you for joining in uh elivia the autie says yes definitely on masking after years of masking can be so hard literally mask most of my life and masking is and masking is a journey not always possible all the time exactly it's very individualized and it's a very slow process and it's not going to be like today i'm removing my mask you've got to do some digging like into yourself and so you know know who you are and know what you want to be like and know what your needs are and feel okay advocating for those needs is there's a lot of different kind of aspects to it i think um yeah i'm i'm i think the whole masking masking thing is really interesting i mean i just kind of put this out there i mean at what point do you think um masking turns into like social social skills like politeness just general social social line skills where i where would you draw that line because for me it's it's been really hard to kind of suppose because because of how sort of gray the whole concept of masking can be um to really know like you know what point are these things not good or what point are these things useful and actually just kind of good um i mean if it ever has to give kind of my take on i'd say like i think for autistic masking behind traits your traits from others you know things that just just part of you um if you're faking understanding or agreements with people i think that's masking if you're copying other people's interests words or expressions constantly and trying to integrate them i think that's masking and i think just conforming to all social norms just just kind of fit in and blend in i think that could also be masking um i think i think in terms of like social skills i think definitely self-advocating for your traits and needs is quite an important aspect to it um because that that is a social skill and i think although it's kind of more autism related i think is really important for us because quite often we can feel quite um i don't know um not so confident in asking for adjustments and not so confident in you know explaining why we need something and kind of pushing for a bit more being more assertive um i think also trying to communicate to understand or connect with people that would also be a social skill if you just kind of know i think that's that's something that that i wouldn't consider to be masking um i think you know trying trying to connect on a deep level and understand another person's perspective on life of things quite important for any kind of socializing um it's also like there's something around emotional expression or explanations because i've touched on that quite a bit so recently and i think i think it's a really important point because um a lot of the autistic people i meet they tend to vocalize how they feel um about things rather than necessarily like expressing it like in the body language and the facial expressions and the tonality and things like that and i think it's i don't think it's um a bad bad thing to to do the explanation part of things and sometimes you should really sort of advocate for for that side of things especially if um you kind of like me like i always say i have i have a bit more of the facial expressions and body language on lives and stuff just because it's kind of like ingrained into me from watching like videos and things but um i do i do i do tend to have quite a flat effect with a lot of things or he just tends to kind of default to smiling all the time or laughing i don't know why i do it it's not it's not like a nervous thing it's just it's i think it was once a nervous thing i just kind of laughed at things but i think now it's just like a part of my personality um i think i think another aspect that i don't want to touch on before kind of moving on to something else would be um having self-awareness and being polite to people and i think that can very much vary from culture to culture person to person environment to environment um but i think a lot of the time when i was doing great i didn't really have much self-awareness of like how what i say and what i do can impact other people um i think finding that that line between being too much like that and just putting all the focus and the blame on yourself that can be bad but you know you also got a kind of i think sometimes especially from when it's coming from people that you care about and you're really connected with um you know sometimes taking a bit of criticism can be good i'm sort of in small doses um but that's that's what i think i'd be really interested in knowing like where you kind of draw the line in terms of masking in terms of like social skills and things like that um stalin says masking for me i have read that already hello illisa thank you for joining um we've got about 15 minutes left of the stream um turn says everyone masks to a degree like you said it's a social skill yeah i mean everyone masks but not everyone masks autism i think there's a big difference there because masking is kind of like a i think because because it's a thing that everyone does like you put on different masks for different social situations yeah um but i think because because of autism because we're different and we have like different perceptions and behaviors and you know ways of processing and things like that i think sometimes um unmasking in those areas but sort of shifting behavior for appropriate settings i think that's that's the key there um um turn tunnels says uh communications mostly reading body language and tone inflection so if those are flat or blunted leads to rub people the wrong way or a hesitant yeah yeah i get i get that um and that that's a big issue on the neurotypical side of things they don't really they don't really get it um they don't really understand that you know just because we don't it's like it's not the whole thing of you know if you if you go out to someone and you say i'm really really stressed you know just like this so i'm really really stressed and i'm not feeling like i can cope in this situation um you know people don't think you're seriously go oh my god i'm i'm so stressed and you know you you look in all anxious and things like that um i think people need to be more aware of that because especially in like mental health settings and stuff it's quite important to kind of take hold with our direct communication as you know real i'm not necessarily discounting it just because of our indirect communication like there's this as you said the body language and tone and facial expressions um cat Lily says that is my question to what is the difference between social skill i'm asking i've kind of gone over what i think about it i'd be interested to know what you guys think um it's it's yeah i mean it's hard isn't it like because obviously in life everyone no matter who they are can always do with sort of moving in a certain direction then improving improving yourself but at what point are you doing it detrimentally to yourself provide like your your identity like who you are um i can be really difficult kind of can be really difficult sometimes i think um elissa says learning how to unmask after 50 years of masking wow all the time has been a challenge for me i can imagine i mean there's a lot of unpacking to do without stuff i think the most important thing is if you have been masking for such a long time um i don't to be honest when you get an altered diagnosis or you realize that you're autistic i don't think masking should be the first thing i think the first thing that you should do like unmasking be the first thing um you should be looking back on situations that you've experienced with life and trying to process those because a lot of the time we can especially if we don't know that we're different and we haven't advocated for ourselves in those situations and because because we are different and most people are not like us um you know other people side with them and you can have all sorts of negative experiences interactions and you can really put it on yourself as the root cause of that and i think going through your life and kind of picking out moments that have really sort of made a negative negative sort of impact on you so i'm going through and processing it from an autistic lens i think that that's like that is one of the one of the best things that you can do in my opinion um as as like a staff definitely uh lister says again yes code switching is very important there's a difference between masking and masking code switching yeah i mean to be honest even with code switching like that concept um i think people also have different ideas of what that is and whether it's good or it's bad i think some people kind of just feel like it is this ableistic term that's used to like um camouflage encouraging people to mask some people have that opinion i don't have that opinion but um it can it can also be a gray area especially things like that um um yeah i mean it's hard doesn't it there's a lot of gray areas and things and the thing is we're not myself and to be honest a lot of people within the autistic community the people who create content not all of us are researching things and we're not sort of viewing it from that like objective evidence space kind of thing so they can also you know with anything like that i think there can always be like loads of gray areas with with it not saying that it's not good like it's definitely good like it's really really important it's why we have um terms like experts by experiencing the working world it's because it is important and um there can be a lot of stuff that you can draw from autistic people i think some of the best um scientists and best workplaces and best anyone in in any fields they take parts from our experiences and they try to make it a little bit more solidified um which i think is really really important as well because you know it's it's great chatting about it and sort of coming up with theories and doing some thinking and sharing your experiences but it's not always the case for the majority of people and i think that that's that's the kind of gray area there that can be can be an issue for some people um andrew says it's actually quite traumatic looking back at past experiences through this lens it seems more unfair which feeds into my unhealthy victim mindset yeah i can get that and i think you you'd be very right to feel some sense of anger anger um at those situations those people um i think for for me no obviously pitching into something that i you know i don't know your personal experience but um i think for me just get going through as understanding it as i didn't know about this they didn't know about this um i couldn't i i didn't know about it so i couldn't sort of self advocate i couldn't understand where they're coming from and also they couldn't it's like the whole thing with double empathy it's like you know you've got you've got to view it from at some point with anything like that you've got to process it you've got to the funny thing about being the funny thing about anger is an emotion is that it feels like it's like it's impacting and directing on someone it's a very weird emotion for me if you feel like it's doing something to other people whereas a lot of the time it actually no for me um it impacts me the most um of anyone i just get very upset and like like um you know um fuming and and resentful and things like that and it really just it just impacts yourself um and it's it's it's it's a realization that's kind of helped me a lot with processing things so i'm getting to a point where i'm like hey look this you know i'm right to feel anger about this but do i want to feel angry about this for my entire life i don't i don't know um but again it is it's a very long process it's not something that you can just snap and um you know it's changed you got you got to kind of do the processing work around it um but it can be it can be really tough um cat really says i blamed myself for so much getting diagnosed made me feel relieved so far good that is really good um i was also in that categories that camp as well um i you know for me well when i was diagnosed i was like 10 so i i i still you know it was one the first time i cried like tears of joy because it was just so impactful on me but i think as as well sort of in my early 20s learning a bit more about it a bit more about autism um i did get to a point where i was like you know i could kind of process things and you know be a bit easier on myself uh situations that which may be my fault um more situations that were of abuse for all i think it's it's so important just like going through that stuff and forgiving yourself and forgiving others and not necessarily forgiving them and going like being all pally pally with them and that kind of thing uh because i can go the opposite way if you if you if you're so inclined like i am um but just just approaching it i think with a bit of a bit a bit of an understanding that you know autism you know it might have been a lot better if there was more like autism awareness and acceptance work done in schools and workplaces and generally in the media and generally in society so there's you know there's there's a lot to blame that i think um there's not not yourself and it can feel very easy sometimes to blame yourself for those things because if you're very emotional very empathic it's like you don't want to do bad things and you want to you want to make sure that you are representing situations understanding situations in the best way possible um don't know if that that that was just kind of a weird word solid thing but burnout brain i'm gonna i'm gonna blame it all of my rumblings on the burnout brain today i'm elissa says uh me too explains so much getting my diagnosis at 20 years old 28 years old but there weren't proper resources at my time back in the 90s yeah it's like it's like this different sort of you get diagnosed and you sort of learn about like the medical lens and stuff but then you also you dive into the community and then you have like the social experiential lens and it's like that's a whole different ballpark oh yeah it was for me definitely um burnout brain it's um um uh i've been doing too much um lately i've been talking too much to people um i've been doing a lot of things that have kind of there's been a lot of stuff going on and it tends to happen that i get burned out when there's loads of like little things i have to do if i have like big projects to do and it's just one thing it's much easier for me but and there's all these little like variables going about in my life um i tend to tend to experience that burnout i mean it's it's different for autistic people but i think it's it's more about like the causes of that burnout um i'm more i'm more prone to like metal downs and shut downs when i'm when i'm in a burnout um more prone to mental health issues which i think if you could say that for everybody i think the sources are a bit more heightened like the sensory stuff and the social stuff and um you know even at the gym like i think even at the gym like lately just because there's so many people um there seems to be like an influx of like loads of people and there's loads of talking and there's loads of noises everywhere and sometimes i go with my dad so i don't have my headphones on me um that's that's another factor i think um and there's a lot of changes going on in my life at the moment asian girl lost glasses um that's a question how do you cope or manage with rejection sensitive dysphoria as an autistic person um um that's a complex that's very complex one i think it's like it varies i think it varies person to person um i'm being being sensitive to rejection it's you know for me i i kind of i'm very sort of avoidant in my personality type you know if i feel like people pulling away from me i tend to just like dismiss them and avoid them a bit more um and that's that's something that i've learned from from kind of growing up and you know having those negative experiences at school um those negative is experience can kind of give you a bit of a as i said before a negative bias towards people in general and you will sort of build up these like defense mechanisms that you use to kind of stop yourself from feeling that hurt and feeling rejected um i think the first the first thing is is you know i think we put a lot of weight on what other people think of us so i you could take the example of social media it's like you know if you if you get a bunch a hundred comments um chances are probably like five percent of those comments are going to be really negative um just for the just for the sake of it like i had someone someone coming out to one of my podcast clips and saying that i look like a glazed donut because um i just come back from the gym and i had like my tag top on them oh you're trying to show a few muscles and like no i just got straight in from the gym to have a computer on i was late for the for the podcast it was with autism from the inside so he's a busy guy so i jumped on but people don't know that people don't know like the behind the scenes stuff they just kind of make these snap kind of decisions and make comments and stuff and to be honest like you could you could take that to the gym as well like you go to the gym and you think everyone's kind of looking at you and judging you and stuff but most of them they're feeling that just the same thing they're like oh are they looking at me are they judging me you know so i think it's just just appreciating that really most people's opinions don't really matter about you and the people who do matter like you um and they will be your friend and they will talk to you and they will do all these things i think the complexity comes in with sort of the whole thing about maintaining social relationships and that's why it becomes an issue for me because i don't really care about like like negativity from like strangers like people i don't know but if it's from someone that i do know and that i care about that's so much more hard for me like it impacts me so much more so if i mean a lot a lot of it for me is kind of those sort of interpersonal relationships that mean a lot to me those those can be really really tough sometimes um kind of navigate and understand and kind of um get past that that sort of rejection sensitivity i hope that answers it um what does burnout brain look like and feel like um and it depends person to person i think it's just you know sometimes productivity goes down you can't really think um you can't function um little you're very sensitive to a lot of things sensory things social things pretty much everything you're very sensitive to and um you need a lot of rest it's like this week i had a day where i slept 13 hours which is demonstrably like a lot of time um obviously needed it didn't realize i needed it up until the point that i was like hey hold on am i okay do i need this do i need to to chill out a bit more to have some downtime i think that's that's kind of what it that's what it looks like for me um but it i think is dependent on and each person cataly says that anger is a double-edged sword to me sometimes it protects me when i stop hanging out with people who aren't good for me but often it only harms myself yeah anger anger is a tough one um yeah it can make you sort of more ready to kind of fight your case and a bit more like a bit more vigor around it but um definitely for me i i i hate feeling angry i try to avoid it as much as possible most of the time i just kind of like push it to the side go do something else or remove myself from the situation even if it's not like the best thing for my social reputation i think just just feeling okay with just existing the spaces that's being quite important um steffi says uh with you on the burnout off work finding days difficult it's also hard to stop feeling guilty because i didn't stop when i should but it's been a catch-22 keeping busy is sometimes the only solution yeah that's that's an issue like for me i need to be like constantly stimulated and doing stuff and a lot of the stuff that i enjoy doing productive things so it can be like it's like another transition sometimes to transitioning into like rest mode post but sort of when you when you realize you're having a burnout and it's not always possible especially if you have a lot of commitments and responsibilities so i think i think it's you know as soon as you can catch it um i think the ideal would be to take rest breaks when you when you catch it and just kind of give you that time to kind of re-establish yourself instead of waiting and prolonging it over a long period of time and just burning yourself out even more and then taking like a really long hiatus from everything um i think that can be a difficulty especially sort of in in the workplace um but yeah i mean i realize we're gonna we're going up to about an hour now i think it's probably good to kind of wrap things up but i appreciate everyone who's come on to the stream wherever you're on youtube wherever you're on instagram really appreciate you engaging and such and asking questions really does make the stream and i i'm actually feeling i very much enjoy doing these live streams now so it's yeah it's nice it's lovely um it's a good kind of end to the working week for me although i know that time zones kind of differ from place to place um but yeah uh thank you for for joining in um if you if you have joined in you do sort of watch my stuff and read my stuff and so think of that please if you're on youtube you know like and share and subscribe and do all that stuff because it it does help a lot um as annoying as as every single content creator says it does actually help a lot and the same with instagram um if you like what i do or you like my podcast clips you know you can even add a bit Spotify and just give it like a quick rating on the podcast that would help absolutely massively um if you can work it along especially if you already have an account but it actually it does like make an impact on how how far i can kind of get my content out to people so i'd really appreciate that and yeah i've got the the public speaking event on monday excited for that and um yeah thank you thank you for watching and um we'll see you soon gonna end the youtube stream see you later guys and uh