 Good day, my lovely listeners! You are listening to The Forty Autie Podcast. Tune in every week to explore inspiring stories and insightful information that dive headfirst into the world of autism and mental health. With all those tantalising tongue twisters out of the way, let's get into the show. Today's podcast episode is proudly sponsored by Timo, the award-winning app designed to support neurodivergent people just like yourself with routine and scheduling. Head to your app store and type T-W-I-M-O to learn more. This podcast has been put out to support World Anti-Bullying Week. And if you want to get in on the action, you can join the Autie Power movement. This is a way to get everybody together to share their experiences with bullying, but also to empower the autistic community. All you have to do is post a picture on your social media, preferably Instagram, striking your best power pose, or doing something that you love. Use the Autie Power hashtag, tag five friends, and we can get this ball rolling. Hopefully this will give you an opportunity to share your story, but also for us all to come together to try and enter that mainstream media and get autistic problems heard. Thank you so much for the support, and let's get back into the show. Good day, my lovely guests, and welcome back to my podcast house. You are being joined by the very lovely and also intelligent and attractive Mr. Tom Sandley. How are you doing today? It's currently fairly late, but we've got a nice new podcast for you. It's probably not going to be late when this comes out, but it may be late while you're listening. Today we're going to be talking about autism, bullying, and isolation. It's not the most fun and positive topics, but it's definitely one of those things that many, many, many autistic people can empathise with, and it's something that I think we should do this. We need to talk about this stuff. It's one of the main issues. Hopefully this episode will go out on bullying week. Well, bullying week, that doesn't mean go out and bully people. It just means raising awareness of bullying at school or in the workplace, and what better way to do that than to do a podcast. Today I'm joined by Charlotte from the Spectrum Girl Instagram account. She's a graphics designer, and she is from Norwegian. Norwegian. Norway. Norway. How are you doing? I'm great. Is this my cue? Yes. Now, OK, so now I, all right. Yeah, well, hello. Yes, I am currently known as the Spectrum Girl on Instagram. And yes, I'm on there and I'm advocating for autism, physical and mental health issues, I would say. But like you said, my actual name is Charlotte, and I am from Norway, the north of Norway. The north of Norway. Yeah, so I'm from Tromsø, and that is the Arctic, actually. Geez, really? Yeah, from above the Arctic Circle. Oh, my God. So it's very far north that I'm from, but I live in Oslo, and I've lived here for many years, and I've studied art and music production, and then graphic design. And I started working as a graphic designer in some of the biggest design agencies in the world, actually in London. And that was easy, you know, it was easy for me to know, but I mean, like, if it wasn't for the neurotypical society that was slowly and steadily tearing me down as a person, I would probably have gone quite far with it. Because I mean, like, how far I got by being who I am, autistic and all that, I'm just sometimes I wonder how far would have actually have gone if it wasn't for being constantly picked on and torn down and all that. It just supposes a good, you know, a good kind of lead into our podcast together. Because obviously you've had experience. And I know that the working world is not always built, like it's not always a hierarchy of competence. A lot of it is who you know, and who likes you and who doesn't like you. And it's it's a complex world. Yeah, and I haven't been liked very much when well, actually, I was the thing is that people love me at the job interviews and all that. But after a while when I've worked for a while and people actually get to see all my quirks and weird stuff, no, weird behavior or NASA or whatever, then they start like going from high to really low. It seems like though, because looking back at how all my jobs have gone and everything is gone to hell. And and yeah, so now I am on sick leave after having a huge autistic burnout. It peaked and it almost killed me. And that was brought on by going undiagnosed as autistic and with multiple comorbid conditions that I'm still being assessed for. So it's kind of something that you've battled with and it had to deal with and cope with for a lot of you, a lot of life up until this point. Could you tell us a little bit about your your Instagram work? Like, why did you start it up? Yeah, so I started my Instagram account, the spectrum girl after found some other autistic people's content on Instagram by chance. And then I was like, what is there? There's actually autistic people out there like me. And I was like, oh, man. And I was in the beginning of 2020. I started like noticing lots of autistic content. And then in May, I think it was the third of May 2020 this year. I set up my own Instagram account. And I had the one thought in my head. And I was like, I want to help people who are struggling with the things that I am struggling with or have struggled with. And I want to try and help as many people I can, if possible, just by sharing everything that I've been through. So people know they're not alone. I always think and sort of, you know, say to myself, now a lot of the sort of the trauma that I received when I was younger, you know, it was horrible, but it allowed me to experience it and understand it and understand the emotions. And sometimes that can be a very useful thing in someone who advocates and someone who, you know, does desires to raise awareness or lead in any way. Like being able to empathize with people who are going through similar circumstances is quite an important thing. Yeah, it has, of course, also after a while, it has become about raising awareness as well. So because here in Norway, for example, nobody seems to be aware that there is something called autism in adults and that we're walking around among everyone just trying to fit in and they don't know that autism is a spectrum and that there's this thing called masking and all that. So raising awareness is something that I'm definitely doing and I hopefully can turn inwards to my own country after a while. I'm currently only reaching out to everyone except for in my own country, actually. So it's quite ironic, isn't it? Well, I suppose you kind of, if you've had those struggles within your own country, I guess there is, you know, some sort of anxiety around it. Definitely. That is a good point because, yeah, I made a completely new email, no Instagram account completely separated from my old neurotypical existence in life and I didn't tell anyone and I still haven't told anyone in my old life, I would say, about my new neurodiverse universe on the spectrum girl. You know, I haven't told anyone because it feels like I will ruin the magic and then I will go back to losing confidence in myself and... People can be critical. People can be critical, yes. And also they're not ready yet, I feel, and I'm not ready yet. It is the goal, ultimately, to finally get to tell all the Norwegians as well one day. That's a good goal to go for, I mean, when people set up Instagram accounts or any sort of social media or YouTube and stuff like that, we all have, you know, that kind of similar goal to raise awareness, but I suppose it's a lot more, you have more of kind of a niche target in mind that you want to improve, which I think is always a good thing, you know, being able to narrow down what your goal is and how you're going to get there. And for me, it's actually a lot to do with mental health and comorbidities and in particular bullying that happens in the workplace and schools, which is why I really wanted to get you on to talk about this stuff. It's something that I've had quite a bit of experience with myself. I'm sorry to hear that. It's always hard to hear that from other people, but it's like... It's the truth, isn't it? It happens a lot, especially for autistic people. Yeah, it sucks. And it's like, I feel like it's a form of torture being bullied or harassed. It's just awful. I mean, going through it, I mean, it's life-threatening. Before we sort of go into the bullying and stuff, could you explain to us what kind of journey you went on, post-diagnosis, what things in your life changed? What mindsets did you acquire? What different ways of helping yourself and others did you get from that diagnosis? So, first of all, I just found out about being autistic when I saw this woman on Norwegian Breakfast TV talking about being late diagnosed with Asperger's, as they say here in Norway, still. We don't say A-S-D. So everything that she explained was just hitting hard home here with me. And I was like, oh my God, that is me. And I think that's like almost four years ago. And I went to the doctor and I said, in a by-sentence or something, I think maybe I have Asperger's or something and it just didn't look at me. It was like just shrugged it like, huh, what? And then we just talked about something else. It was taking that little seriously. That's a doctor. Yeah, the doctor, my GP. Then again, a couple of years later, my suspicions just became stronger and I took an online test and I went to my GP again and my psychologist. And then my psychologist referred me to a neuropsychologist for an assessment for Asperger's. And there I had such a high score that I didn't even have to finish the questionnaire. That he was like, oh yeah, no, you don't have to finish the last two questions or three or four or 10 questions. I don't remember how many it was. So what does this question mean? And I said, don't worry about that. Your score is already so high that you don't have to, oh really? It's been a revelation like for many others who get diagnosed late in life. It's like having a second life, like being born all over again and just discovering myself for the first time. Like all the pieces are just, well, nobody likes the puzzle piece reference. But I don't know what else to say. It's like all the pieces are falling into place and things that I didn't understand about myself before, like why I, for example, always felt a need to be so honest and direct to people. I used to hate myself for that before and I got so much criticism from friends and colleagues and family members and random people like all my life. So now I do not punish myself so much anymore. So that's a huge relief. That's really good. Yeah, on this journey and that's one of the things that I really just want to tell everyone not to hate, don't hate yourself. Because I think objectively people, teachers and advocates and basically everybody talks about getting to the heart of the problem and cutting through all the silly wishy-washy difficulties, being direct and being honest with people. But as soon as someone asks you how you are and you say, I'm really not doing very good and they ask why and you tell them, then it doesn't leave a good taste in the mouth. Like, they're not appreciative that you've given them an almost answer. Yeah, they just look oddly at you like... And then I become awkward and I'm like, didn't you just ask me how I was? It's so confusing and they say we are the weird ones and all of that. So I don't get it. Deviating from the social norms which seem to kind of overrun any sort of logic to communication, which we kind of need, we need to do that because that's like, it's our lifeline to communicate with people by understanding it and being logical about it. I used to kind of beat myself up about it and people would say, you're not a very nice person. Oh my God, yeah, I've heard that so many times. You know, if someone says, do you like this? And I say, no, then they get upset with me. And I'm like, I'm just telling you the honest, like other people wouldn't be honest and open and say that. They just say what you want to hear and then talk about it behind your back. I really just see myself in that so much. Oh my God. So my mom, for example, poor my mom, she's like, so I just bought this new jacket. What do you think? Oh, what an awful color I would just say, like straight out. Like, or she was like, I just cut my hair and I would say, well, it just looks like the same short haircut that you always have. And I don't understand why you just keep cutting it. And I would say, and I don't, so I used to go around hating myself because I thought that I was, I even thought I was a psychopath at one point. Oh, that happens a lot. Yes, because I was like, I must be evil. Why do I keep saying these things so straight out? I don't understand why, why do I, why am I the only one and why am I so compelled to? It's not just insecurity as well because you may feel that. From other people, but also people react badly towards you. So it kind of reinforces that you're not a good person. And then it's, it's a whole difficulty. And if you don't know that you're autistic, then you don't know about those traits and you can't be like, okay, I'm actually a good person. I just work and behave a bit differently. Yeah. And also if you go around saying like, so I'm actually a very good person. That just sounds like strange. Just to, just to reassure them that, you know, you're not a bad person. That just makes you sound more suspicious too. Yeah. Thank you for, thank you for sharing that. We all go on our own specific and different journeys when we get diagnosed. Some people kind of brush it under the carpet. Some people pursue research like myself and sort of look into the literature and. Yeah, I did that a lot. Oh, I sat on YouTube and listening to all the different psychologists and specialists like Tony Atwood. He was good. He's good. Yeah, it's really good. He's probably one of the only people that I can listen to and not receive the same information that I've heard over and over again. Yeah. He brings up new stuff and he's quite, he's quite integral to the public awareness of autism and stuff. And he is, he's good in the way he's talking about. He's like, he's not making, making autism sound like a disease. He's making it sound like it's actually, it could be an asset. And that's how we should. Just like being a superhero, isn't it? You've, you're really good at some things, but you've got weaknesses. Have your kryptonite. Everyone else is a kryptonite. Everything but work. That's my kryptonite. Oh, yeah. So yeah, just walking outside this my kryptonite. Oh, I understand. Well, talking to the shopkeepers and the general public. Yeah, because, you know, I come out and I go to the, go to the shop and then I start talking lots and lots and lots about all this weird stuff to, to the shop clerk or whatever. I will just start, start talking like, and they would be thinking I'm crazy what was wrong with her. Why she's talking so much. What, why is she talking in details about this scarf? Why? And I'm like, well, oh shoot, I should not have gone outside today. Yeah, I, yeah, I like talking to the person next to me on the bus stop. Like, wow, look at that dead bird on the sidewalk. Oh, poor bird. Let's go and bury it. But of course, if I'm in a really, really bad place, I will just put on sunglasses and a cap and a scarf up to my nose. Now we have face masks because of COVID. So that's good. If I, if I don't want to see people, I can't get looked upon. I have, it's, it's two completely contrasting sides. It's nothing in between. It's like either I'm completely outgoing or I'm completely shut in. Today, as, as we said, we are talking about isolation and bullying. We are going to be kind of looking at different stages and kind of building a good kind of full picture. How, how bullying and isolation can affect our mental health, our social life or mentality or mindset towards the world and course our behavior. And I think we should definitely start at the beginning. What is your most early experience of bullying or isolation in kind of your, your young years? Yeah. First of all, I have blocked out so much of my earlier life. As many other people on the spectrum do, I have found out. So I did not know that, but I also do the same. Yeah. Yeah, I just don't remember. I'm like, yeah, what is my earliest memory or anything really? So, but I do, of course, have memories and a few. And, well, the earliest memory of isolation and bullying would probably be like in when I was just starting school, first grade and like one of the first days of school. I was being chased around the block by some other boy was shouting fatty after me. But I wasn't even fat. I don't understand thinking that's not, that's not logical. Anyway, so we run around, run around the block, like round and round and round. And then suddenly I passed around the corner of the school building and my head just smacked into some taller or bigger, not that tall because my head had to reach to smack into the other head. And I smacked the head and I kind of fainted and I got a concussion. So I just laid there on the school grounds and your first day of school. Yeah. Well, one of the first days, couple of weeks of school, I don't remember. And I was just, I laid there and the school bell rang and teachers and the students, everybody just disappeared. And I remember just waking up, laying out there on the school ground. And I was all alone. The teachers had not noticed that I was missing and I was six or seven years old and I couldn't find anyone. And they had gone down to another school building that I still had not visited because it was like in the early days of school. So I remember some kids in a kindergarten inside a fence next to the grounds where I got up. They were shouting at me like, hey, hey, you. And I'm like, hey, where is everyone? They're like, we don't know. And I'm just remember walking home and going to bed. And you should never do that when you have a concussion. But anyway, so that's my first kind of memory of quite serious situation where not even the teachers could notice that I was missing and I had just been bullied into a concussion and forgotten laying on the school ground. It's not a great sort of first daily memory to have. No, but I didn't understand it at the time that it was quite serious. I didn't really think about it until I was an adult. But that's also part of like my learning curve to understand the social situations that are not so good. No, it has taken me a lot of time to understand that so many things that has happened to me were actually so bad. And I'm kind of glad that I did not understand it when I was younger because may have had a much more severe impact at the time for me. I was kind of grateful that I was so oblivious. I'm such a late bloomer. You know, it takes time to pick up on all of the little social cues and all of the rules and everything. So, yeah, I didn't understand that I was being bullied. Yeah, I do understand what you mean. I think when I was at school, it was it was less about sort of physical targeted bullying and it was more about how the other people, other kids my age, like treated me because I didn't really understand about like the social things. You know, if there was there was this one time where I went to a party and we're sort of sat in lines and stuff and we were playing a game. Some of the other kids told me to sort of blurt out swear words towards the girls in the group. So I just started doing it and obviously the adults jumped in and were like, oh my God, we need to get this kid out of here. He's not a good kid. He's a bad kid and I got quite heavily punished for it. Oh man, that really actually reminds me of a so similar situation but I'm not just go ahead you. It was just like little things like that, you know, just on a more frequent basis, you know, maybe it took a lot of effort for me to join in on group games and stuff. I wasn't at that age. I didn't really, I wasn't that kind of shy and withdrawn. I was very, I was the class clown. So I used to get in trouble a lot, but I like to make people laugh. That was my thing and the other kids didn't really intimidate me. Well, that's great. Yeah, it was good. It was good in some situations, but I did get into a couple of fights when there was just small things, a similar situation. There was this guy who was walking his dog and he was outside the school grounds and all of the kids went up to the fence, you know, just to see who there's another person out there. And someone told me to tell him to like f off and I did that and then I got in trouble and other kids were like you stop saying that and I was like, well, it's okay. Someone's told me it's okay to say that. Yeah. And then they started on me and we had a fight. Most of my experience with early life things like that would be more to do with isolation. So like parents of my friends not wanting me to go round because I was, you know, I didn't understand things and I was a bit naughty in their eyes. Oh yeah, same here. I think a lot of kind of those early experiences is just not necessarily feeling bad or upset or left out. It's more just feeling confused constantly by everything. That's like the main thing around the end of primary school. So like round about year six, year five, year six, that's when like people that I was very good friends with started to see me as weird and see me as uncool or strange, you know, like things that we play together like games or something that perhaps weren't for people our age. So they just blunt me into this category and just not want to associate with me because I was weird. I don't know if it's a coincidence or if this is normal for that age when I was 12, the same thing happened to me. The exact same thing like what you're saying. And that person was like my best friends. Like they were like my uncle. Yeah, they just just told me to get lost. Yeah, exactly the same thing. Yeah, you like all these things that you shouldn't like and yeah, that was that was difficult. But that was our early experiences. Irreally similar. Yeah, it was just it's just very, very, very similar to me what I went through. Well girls are can be really, really mean though. Okay, so a little bit back in like in third and fourth grade a new girl moved into town and my teacher told me to or asked me if I could go to her house and wish her welcome to the neighborhood and when this new girl came she was half American half Egyptian who had moved to North Norway the Arctic and so so exotic. So I went up to her house and she did in a big nice house and we were kind of lower middle class like almost to the border of poor and in Norway. That says a lot because Norway is a rich country. So I was like, wow, look at this house and I went up there knocked her door and like, hey, her name was Noor. Yeah, N-O-O-R and Noor. It's Egyptian, I think. And I knocked on her door and like, hey, and she's like, hello, like in those movies from, you know, those teen movies, like look at me with these eye rolls and like, hello. And like, and I think we were like 10 years old actually, yeah, and shouldn't be rolling eyes when you're 10 years old, but this girl, she was, she knew what she was. I don't know where she had learned these things, but no one in our class was this advanced yet, but she came into and she was advanced. And I'm like, well, I'm Charlotte and I'm, I'm in your class and the teacher told me to wish you welcome and show you the school. And so, yeah, you want to come with me on the bike and I'll show you the school. And she's like, I don't know, whatever. So she was like, she was so cool and treating me it's so cold and weird. And so that was my first kind of experience with one of those kind of personality types that was like out of, it was like out of a movie that the way she behaved like from clueless kind of those girls with those cranky voices like, ow, what do you want? I don't think I really want to be around you. Yeah. You've got bad fashion sense. Yes. Like that. And I just remember not understanding her way. And like, cause we were just like hillbillies living up there in the north and like, oh, and then whatever. So she started our class and we had a drawing session and I walked around looking at everybody's drawing. So I was the best drawer at school for a very long time. There was like one of my top things to do was art. So I've always been the creative type and went around looked at everybody's drawings and I still felt like I had a bit of responsibility to integrate more. So I went over to her desk and I said, looked at her dinosaur which she had drawn and I said, oh, wow, that is such a nice dinosaur. And then she kind of just looked half way like I roll it up from her desk to me and said, I don't want to talk to you. Why should I talk to you? You're fat. Oh my God. And I was like, I was truly the trope the movie. Yes, I was so taken aback. I did not understand what she said. I had not experienced anything when I was more conscious about people's behaviors because I had grown a few years. So now I understood things like that more, but still I did not understand how that could happen because I had not done anything wrong to her. I had not been mean to her. I had not I had only done her nice like tried helping her and I tried to give her a compliment and I knew that much that I could tell like really bad from really good. So I just remember kind of going into shutdown. I just became really quiet and I went back to my seat and I sat down and I was like just really, really pondering like why what happened like why would someone be so cruel out from kind of out of thin air. So that was like my first so the first class bullying called me fat and ran around the building was kind of like teasing and kind of like it was a lot more childish, but this was really calculated like she was trying to sort out who were the cool people to hang with and who were not the cool people to hang with when you're seven years old. You're not that advanced, but anyway, somebody had heard her and I don't know if it was my teacher or someone, but suddenly she came crying to me after lunch and said the teacher told me to tell you I'm sorry and I'm what so somebody had heard her and yeah, she had gotten a real talking to telling off by the teacher who had not taken lightly to it. So that was like I got defended or whatever that that time, but that was the first and the last time that I would ever be defended in a situation like that. So it's time for a quick mention from our sponsors Teemo. If you love visual support in your scheduling Teemo is for you. The app was designed for people with ADHD and autism and helps empower users to schedule visual routines that work. Users say that Teemo can help reduce stress and support executive function, which are both two things that I struggle with myself. Learn more at www.teemoapp.com or just type in tdubliemo into your search bar. Thank you so much to my Patreon supporters, Shelly Nearing, Julian Marks and Patrick Veddy. Your support means the world. Anyway, let's get back into the show. I suppose that's a good kind of point to say go into the next bit, which I think is definitely the most the time in an autistic person's life that is fraught with trauma and bullying and isolation and all sorts of nasty stuff. The late years, the secondary school or high school years, how was how was that for you? Oh man, not good. One thing that I kind of gathered from the like the podcast and people have talked to and stuff is that there's a point at which everyone just kind of suddenly after one summer, like the social IQ just goes up and everyone just understands the social things and you're kind of just drifting. Not really knowing what's going on. Drifting is very, sounds very relatable. But my mom was a single mom divorced when I was three years old and when I turned 10, we started moving. We started moving around the whole island of Tromsa and I did not have anywhere to settle. So that made things a lot more worse about the whole drifting around thing. I was like literally drifting. So I had to change school district from my elementary school to junior high and so when everyone that I went to elementary school with went to the same district junior high and I had to start all over with someone I hadn't who didn't know me and in another district that were more rich people like or well off people or whatever who lived in houses while I lived in a shared building complex apartment building or whatever and that's where I grew up and my mom she got a boyfriend who lived in a house. So that would be the first time I would live in a house when I was 12 actually started high school and I had a step sister that I lived with who had lots of friends in that junior high. She was very popular and she was the type of girl who would talk about her next door neighbor and she would make me draw the neighbor fat. What is it with girls and bullying fat other girls for being a lot of emotional kind of abuses and other girls. She my step sister asked me to draw a fat girl and then she would say that is my neighbor and I'm like what eight years later that neighbor girl she committed suicide. She wasn't she yeah so I mean like bully people and yeah yeah she committed suicide. I so sad to hear yeah I was really sad and I didn't know at the time that I was drawing her because my step sister wanted to make fun of her I didn't but I still feel bad about that drawing the drawing never went anywhere it went into the trash of course but it was so it's so baffling to me still like why people are mean what is it that compels them to be mean like straight out of the blue it's never I never understood it. I think it's when kids go into teenage had is actually like certain parts of your brain that develop more slowly than others and those bits develop when you get to teenage hood so like self-consciousness is like the biggest one so everyone feels like they're the center of the tension and the world's revolving around them and so you know people who have a lot of like a big ego want to make sure that they feel superior to other people so that that kind of matches their image of themselves sounds like like the animal jungle or something. Yeah, it's it's a social hierarchy you know the people that are deemed not acceptable a bullied and isolated away from the group and the people that sort of padded to them and join in on this this highly egocentric person get to be with them and get to be one of the crew. That's how I kind of view it's very much like kind of using the the monkey part of your brain you know the emotional oh look at me like I'm better than all of you and it's only it's only in sort of like recently in adulthood that have sort of kind of revisited that you know just to kind of understand. I think a lot of kids around that age literally just think about themselves like it's not a lot about other people. It's very new to be able to view yourself you know you you're very conscious about getting changed around other people and how you look and how you stand in different social groups and yeah I was conscious people don't think about other people but I don't remember I don't remember being conscious about being kind of better or or bossing over people something like being kind of like that I don't remember well you're not you probably just didn't you weren't narcissistic I didn't understand you didn't have an inflated ego well I don't really yeah I don't I did not have an inflated ego I think that is something that I would have had to be taught specifically so but anyway at that time from when I was age 12 to 14 where I lived in that house and went to that junior high with my stepsister things became quite shit as time went by yeah so I started to gain a little bit of weight not too much but a little bit so that's of course never good when you're living with a evil stepsister who likes to bully people who are overweight or not even overweight I was was far from it and so was the neighbor will far from it I remember walking in the corridor of the school and my stepsister was in front of me with some of the other boys she went to class they were like in one year above me so they were the older and cooler kids I was like right behind them and I just got the door slammed right in my nose they didn't hold the door open for me they just actually slammed it in my face on purpose and like little gestures like that and then I would later hear from another very unpopular girl that when we were sharing experiences later about who said what about us because we tried to like find out like okay so we are obviously unpopular both you and I so who talks behind my back I would ask her and she would ask me like yeah so who talks about my behind my back so of course when we were around the people in the class and if she wasn't there I could hear what they would say about her and then the other way around so that way I found out that people would hide when they saw me come walking down the corridor they would be like that's Charlotte is coming let's hide we don't want to have to talk to her so and they would do that to Nina the other girl that I would report back to as well I told her well they do the same thing to you they hide and they even had me hide along with them that's how cruel they were I remember just one time hiding and not really realizing kind of the seriousness of it and then also you kind of joining yeah but I didn't the thing is that I did not mean to do it and when I when we were talking about it it kind of dawned on me as she walked past and when it was kind of too late what was happening I was so slow at realizing and then she and I were kind of exchanging information about who would talk bad about in our bags yeah we were both kind of surprised that oh they she I think she also had had to hide from me with the other girls that's just I mean it's crazy that's absolutely that's insane it is really mean and cruel it is cruel yeah so as the years have passed that's when I have realized how much it's kind of impacted me later on because I there was so many things confusing me when I was a teenager young like when I was a fresh teenager early teens were kind of really cruel and then one time like the thing when I was 16 17 not very long before I moved away from that city I was in a clothing store so that's in not junior high but senior high as that was called yeah so just a bit later before college yeah so I had gained even more weight but this I had gained like 30 kilos very quickly is that kind of like a comfort eating thing no it was kind of more like not understanding what the calorie was being called oblivious nobody had ever taught me about anything so I'm kind of angry with my mom for never teaching me what a calorie was but instead like saying I think you had enough well why I don't know because I don't understand she should have told me because it has calories and this has that that nobody told me like so when I was alone I would be like well nobody knows that I can eat you know candy now so I would just eat that constantly and I gained 30 kilos like 60 pounds for over a couple of years and when I was inside this clothing store I was looking at clothes and I saw in the security mirror that one girl from my high school that I had moved to the new district plus one of the girls that used to be my best friends in elementary school were together so they had become friends somehow I don't know but it's a small town and they pointed at me in the security mirror they didn't see that I could that I was looking straight at them in the security mirror kind of behind you back and they pointed at me and ducked behind clothing rack and like walked out with their backs hunched walked away because they did not want me to see them because nobody wanted to be around me or have anything to do with me and that has quite a bit of a toll on like yourself and your ability to kind of yeah you know if people treat you like on a constant basis you don't feel a part of the school town of the world or yeah so that was quite terrible to experience but still it's far from one of the things that I have taken the hardest in my life bullying wise yeah that comes to my adult life and my work life not too long ago I guess our experiences do differ like a little bit because I know just from reading about bullying and stuff like that girls girls tend to be a lot more emotionally kind of bully whereas dudes tend to be a bit more physical and aggressive and in your face I've experienced both of those because I was in a group with both boys and girls I literally I received bullying throughout my day from many different sources the first being as soon as I got on the bus there was this kid who was a little bit younger than me so just young young enough and small enough that if I was to do something I get in trouble and he harassed me put like bags it's spitting bags and put the bag over my head and constantly taunt me and poke me and cheer at me and I'd make all attempts to try and surround myself with other people sitting on the bus but sometimes I just couldn't it was basically on the stop directly after me and yeah that was constant for like years terrible put bag over your head yeah but that's just the bus like when I got into school sure classes were like my best place I was I was quite intelligent for my age I read it quite a young age and I was very good at science and I could do wasn't the best art but I could I could do all of the subjects quite high level and that was my safe haven breaks would either consist of me in the early stages of secondary school of our high school I would I would be in a group of guys and they were great guys they were lovely and we had lots of fun and so I've ran about and we played football and there wasn't really any problems until these two particularly boys who obviously had a had a few self-esteem issues they were quite they were the typical male bully they would you know come come down and harass my friends and harass me and you know just get like a rubber band and like just you know flick it at us and stuff like that and steal our ball and kick it over the school and it was it was quite quite difficult because it was like from all angles I was getting bullied the only place that I could go to was the library like there's a teacher there I was safe there anyone who made a ruckus that the people who tend to be bullies whether quite loud yeah so they tend to get kicked out and yeah there was a few times where you know people had hit me I was there's one time where I was lining up for class I was like oh it's a good lesson I'm going to do some English and I was excited for it and then this group of the popular guys equitation marks there's sort of ganged up on me one hit me in the balls and I didn't react so I was like if I don't react then you know I'm sure that I'm tough but what I ended up happening was the entire to like he'd gone off to his friends and said hey look he can get punched in the balls so they all came and crowded around me and started levering me in the balls constantly and it was it was awful oh my god I can't believe it yeah that is just I mean Jesus it sounds like unbelievable that was okay like the emotional side of the bullying was the worst like people within my group who thought I was a bit strange and weird would make up names for me in order to talk about me in front of my face I'd have you know a lot of instances where now people would message me in sort of at all friendly and stuff but then in in real life would completely ignore me or or just join in with the other groups you know kind of ridiculing me it was it's just from all angles all the time you know it started self-harming so that's terrible it was like the only place that I could go to was classes the library and then my taekwondo classes that was my life. Me to that with other friends and stuff outside of school for the first two years after that pretty much nothing so I instead of learning a lot of the social skills I became very very very withdrawn and I sort of tried to limit who I talked to. Well it's no wonder I mean that's people you know treat me like a like the weird one like as you said kind of hiding from you and but the problem is is that the only place I felt safe was on things like Facebook so I message people and I got made friends with people the same people that I was conversing with every night and talking to a lot they dropped me really badly at school. There's just there's a lot of things which is why I kind of was kind of laughing when I wrote this this one question about secondary school because it's literally like the most hell like and I developed so many mental disorders from I became dissociated because of you know the constant bullying I had to kind of dissociate quite a lot and a lot of anxiety panic attacks throughout school every day not coming into school but then it's like objectively teachers and parents they don't really understand. No they don't see it so strange. I don't want to talk about it you know keep keep going on. What? No talk about it if you or is it too much for you to talk about I understand if you don't have the it's quite hard like you know as you said you blocked a lot of stuff out from your childhood and stuff it's it's the same with me like I've been to psychologists and stuff and if they've asked me about my experiences at school and I like my brain just switches off and I dissociate and I can't do it. It's like my brain is trying to stop me from reliving it. Yeah, it's it really did scar me quite heavily No wonder. It is a survival mechanism. So it's only natural if we don't have any way of coping like like for example that who knows what would have happened and it's a reason for it. So we can hold on until we have found some help or something. That's why we have that mechanism. It's difficult like now in my life. I've worked on my social skills and I'm confident. I know how to protect myself. I've done a lot of different martial arts and boxing and I feel very confident myself. You know, I have a relationship and I have friends that I'm close to it's like it's like where I was six or seven years ago or it's just it's a completely different person to who I am now. I'm so happy for you. That is so good to hear. And I do suffer with the consequences of that time of my life but I'm a lot better nowadays. It's just, you know, we got to try and tackle this. You know, yes, this is not on. Yeah, we have to somehow tackle it. And I mean, a lot of it for me hoping with it is to have kind of this morbid as a humor self irony about it. And sometimes I have I have coped by talking about my traumas very directly and honestly out straight out to almost strangers and they would be gawking at me like so shocked and I would be completely untouched by it. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, I was yeah, that happened and all that. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, like, I'm fine. I'm fine. So it's kind of yeah, I could really get like, yeah, it's so strange. Kind of like some people receive it well. And those are the people that I try and stay in contact with. You know, those people who are like, thank you for telling me. Like it must be, you know, it's hard for people to be honest about this stuff. Okay, so we spent a long time on this one. I apologize for ranting so much about no worries. Secondary school, the absolute worst. I hated it. Yeah, people say you're miss school. My dad said I miss school. I'm like, no, no, no, I'm very happy. Well, the thing is that I wish I could turn back time and do things differently. But of course it's impossible. But but that has bothered me a lot. Those things like thinking, I wish I could go back and I wish I could have done things differently. So I would never have to do experience this and that and this and that. But of course, everybody has those thoughts, but it can really mess with your head thinking like that. And I think autistic people who have had trauma think those thoughts even more because we have such good long term memory. Also trauma just keeps on replaying and happening in so such detail like those things that we do remember. We really do remember it. And terror is completely awful nightmares and flashbacks. And yeah, I mean, it's PTSD, of course. And so it will be flashbacks. But yeah, just to kind of move on to the next question because I know you said that a lot of the the difficulties in the trauma happened, you know, kind of in your in your adult life. Yeah. So I know that you went to university. Mm hmm. What was your experience at university like? So I didn't get to go to university until quite late in my late 20s because I was math. I am math blind and I flunked high school eventually because also my math teacher bullied me. So he would kind of make an example of me in class in junior highs. Brilliant. Well done teacher. Yeah, he would like to say so can anyone. Well done. Yeah, anyone. Let's go through this little math problem except for Charlotte maybe and Daniel and I will be okay. I'm completely stopping going into math class. So I of course give him a poison apple. Yeah. Put it on his desk. Yeah, yeah. So that was when I was 14 and up until I was graduating senior high when I was what 18 I did not attend math and I flunked math and also say this when I moved to Oslo and I was like in my mid 20s I I tried all every year to apply to university on special terms, yeah, special circumstances like because you can there are a few reserved spot for people who are more mature and yeah, if you don't have math or whatever could actually get accepted, but I never got accepted and I wanted to study art and I'm like why do I have to have math to study art and I wanted to study like antique culture and architecture and art and I couldn't because I didn't have a math grade. I'm like, no, why? And so I tried and tried and and the job center in Norway kind of the equivalent to it. They kind of sent me to a school for young adults who are struggling psychologically. So I had I had to take up Norwegian and history and math because I kind of I flunked all three of them but the history in Norwegian I flunked because the teacher was really really mean and I was scared and I didn't go to class. So I did the Norwegian and I did the history very good but still I could not do the math. I couldn't do the math. So my option was to pay my way through university to vocational school that costs a lot of money and then go abroad for my third year of a bachelor. Is that when you came to the UK? Yes. So it's it's been like I was I have been very determined because I have always measured myself like intelligence to have to prove that I'm not stupid or and I had a very strong feeling of having to prove that to everyone that I am something that I'm not stupid despite all of my shortcomings like that I have a strong area. So I fought and I fought for years and years and years to try and get into some sort of education and then that job center in Norway agreed to kind of have subsidized or finance my private school for the two first years but only if they could decide what I was going to study. And so that's why I did graphic design because they decided that this was something that I would be able to do and make money from. So anyway I was so motivated to just go and study and use my brain for something. So I thought I'm going to do this and I'm going to do it really well. I'm going to prove to everyone that I can do something. So I am started university or vocational school. Of course nobody is like high school over all over again except this time I'm in a relationship. I have a boyfriend who I live with like I'm an adult. I have an apartment and a family like like a dog. I have a boyfriend all of that. So things are different in my life. Your social skills were better as well. Yeah, your awareness of people. Yeah, of course I was in my mid 20s. So and everything that I had been through had also taught me so much about kind of life struggles, empathy and all of that. Yeah. So I had I learned so my learning curve was very very steep and like to try and survive and everything was just really dramatic all the time. Like I even forgot to mention like my first job like after I moved to Oslo when I was 20 without any education was in a kindergarten and I sat in the toilet having my lunch and I ate my lunch in the toilet every time because I couldn't stand like sitting in the teacher's lounge. Yeah, the teacher's lounge with all the the day care teachers or whatever. Yeah, so and also my boss there was really awful to me and harassed me and it was terrible. So yeah, that's also kind of why I felt like, okay, so get a degree in something and nobody can ever touch you and yeah. But who was I kidding? Everything despite feeling very very smart. It doesn't help that you feel smart and and experienced in life and all of that because it just shines through that you are different in one way or another. People they notice and they would notice also when I went to vocational their graphic design so the graphic design they did not pick me on their groups yet again and I would end up alone with the leftovers to do the group assignments. I would always kind of take the lead role in every group assignment and did pretty well actually and won a couple of competitions and people would always be quite surprised and set back that I actually did anything that I actually managed to do anything quite successful because when I started I had never even touched a Mac and I did not know what software was or anything. I was just thrown into it by that job center and I had to really really learn the hard way while everyone else who were my classmates they had had Macs for years and were computer whizzes and you know I hadn't I knew nothing. So if it is just just kind of popped into my head it just it sounds like it sounds like just general life for an autistic person in the social world. Everyone's got a Mac. Everyone knows what they're doing. We've got to learn it from scratch. It was really really really intense and hard and I remember I did all my design work and all my assignments mostly analog and I tried to use the printer and take pictures and then draw and so my my design style because of my lack of technical competence in the beginning it kind of developed into a quite distinguished like style and everybody called my design style quirky and standing out from the rest and I was like yeah well tell me something I didn't already know like yeah I am different from the rest and also it's my design style it's like and soon people would start talking behind my back and I actually heard back from later on that one of the people who were my teachers back then had gone on and spread rumors about me when you're teachers yes that should not be I should sue and the person who told me it was I mean this would be like jumping so many stages ahead but it would be my future ex-boyfriend who was friends with the girlfriend of my teacher so that's in the future so he would have tried before he my future ex-boyfriend would date me he was also a designer he would have asked around in the design group whatever in Oslo he would ask around about me like so do you know and then he found out something about me when I was a student from way like years ago from the girlfriend of my old teacher like and he had said yeah Charlotte yes I remember her she was quite intense she had her own way of doing things and I remember the other students had complained about her doing things too different and in her own way she was very intense but she did well and I know this exactly because he showed me the text message so yeah and then jump back years to when I was a student I did things my own way but that's why I ended up when I my third year went to Southampton to finish my three years bachelor's degree before I had finished university I had sent concept work to some international and famous design blocks that if you were published there then you set for life yeah no or you would be seen you would be seen by many in the industry and that's exactly what happened to me I I sent some of my work in and I got published like two of my works got published in a row and I and I didn't even know and when I suddenly started getting lots of emails from publishers that would ask me like can we please use your work and publish it in our design magazine with these and these other designers as examples amazing yeah of creative resumes and so and I got called up by the newspaper in Norway even actually like they're it reached all over the world some of my designs because it was quirky that's what everybody said quirky and standing out from the rest that's a good thing for people who are listening to take home yeah quirkiness in a social setting at school maybe maybe not great for you know in the working life yeah so if you if you have some sort of feeling that okay I can do things differently and do it well my my my advice is that you don't let anyone stop you just keep doing it because it will show people will notice and it's a good thing but the thing is that yeah I got broken down into pieces like systematically by people around me who are jealous who who feared me felt threatened by me I got very severely bullied in the last year by the other Norwegian people in the Norwegian society of the people who also went to Southampton to take the last year something happened with the group of the Norwegian people there who had one time in a Christmas party they pulled me aside and told me Charlotte you can't behave the way you are behaving can't say things that you're saying you're hurting people's feelings don't you see that the way that you are you you're acting and behaving you just you simply can't say things the way you're saying them and I was so surprised because just minutes before this person who told me this said that to me she had told me to just be myself and not don't you care about what anyone else tells you so this was gaslighting at high level I just thought this people just don't understand the the autistic brain do they they say like be yourself and then they don't realize that you know yourself is is so different from what what they expect you to and then I was myself like and then minutes later she takes me aside and like hey hey hey can you just not be yourself yeah yeah yeah just I just I take it back I take it back okay don't be yourself but as I was sitting in that room with my my mouth open out of shock not knowing what to say another girl entered the room and said hey oh what are you guys doing that girl who was just now giving it to me verbally she said oh come in come in I actually want to talk to you you should be here with us and I'm like what what's happening and then she started asking leading questions to this new girl who entered the room and said so tell us how does Charlotte make you feel and I would I was like what and this person is just another member of the group yeah another you're in yeah another Norwegian like a teacher or no no no another student no so weird student party with Norwegian students who had all gone there to take the last year and then she she continued to answer and say yeah well I am I mean Charlotte sometimes you do hurt my feelings and I'm like no come on come on I never even hang out with these people and I just remember feeling like everything started spinning around me and I did not know that I was about to have a huge meltdown in front of these people would witness who would witness me having the worst meltdown I've ever had in public and of course it ended in catastrophe because they cornered me I it was it ended up really really really badly they started then spreading the most horrendous rumors about me being insane and crazy and it followed me all the way back to Oslo after that third year and after I worked in London and I came back to Oslo everybody kind of in the design industry in Oslo knew because of these other people who had went gone back to Oslo to get jobs and they worked in various design engines around the city so I couldn't go anywhere everybody knew rumors about you and the crediting you and stuff yes they totally totally like how can people do that so yeah they that bullying thing is the worst thing that's awful that's when I first started to notice the feeling of suicidal thoughts must be feel very lonely yeah it was not being able to be yourself not being able to have a having to literally put on that mask and hide you true self it was awful because I was alone there in the UK and but anyway after that I kind of started to not care anymore about anything almost because I wanted to die but because I kind of didn't care anymore I accepted someone who asked me out on a date and I just became friends with this whole other group of people who were also Norwegian people but not designers they were shipping students and the weird thing is that they are completely different people than designers designers are weird but so I hung out with these spoiled rich kids studying shipping in Southampton it was so weird and I was dating this this guy and who took me out to dinners and bought me Dom Perignon and steak dinners and stuff and I was like this is completely not my style but you know what rather do this than walking around the streets getting spat at you know because they would they would literally like almost spit on me when I walked past them because it was a small town these Norwegian design students they were awful to me after that meltdown I had at that party but so I and then I started to become friends with the British students and then some suddenly just everything turned out completely wonderful the last the last half year of my year yeah that's so strange that you say that because one of the the running themes in a lot of my life was because I really didn't fit in with British people of the people around me people of different cultures and backgrounds and places I just felt so much more kind of on on their wavelength and like this one time I went on this Japanese exchange and I went from being this isolated shy guy to like like the main man like the main British dude that all these Japanese talk to and it was so strange it was I know but it's a new perspective isn't it new kind of like Japanese culture language thing yeah language but also culture like kind of being a bit more withdrawn and respectable and oh you're so lucky to have been there on like strange I know yeah I did get to do a lot of things when I was younger is still young so young hmm 14 you were 14 when you did it yeah went to Osaka and I stayed in a bamboo hook and went to Tokyo three weeks oh okay I thought this was like when you were in university and was like a whole no no I didn't like move over there it was like they came over and we showed them around was still it's a nice experience in terms of like university experiences for me is because in my my first and second years I was I was deep into the world of taekwondo so my life consisted of going to university again my son my assignments done maybe chatting to my housemates who kind of didn't particularly like me but likes me because I was good at sports and so I did that university then went to taekwondo which took me a long time to get to like three hour round trips two hour round trips just to go train for like an hour or two so that filled up the majority of my life and obviously my girlfriend who went see on the weekend and she was basically my only kind of my only tie to socializing pretty much but when she went to university in my second year she she moved very very far away and moved and then broke up with me I was so alone I was awful I started working on myself this was kind of the the growth period for me my social social journey started reading started learning about dating and friendships and my brain and autism mental health reading constantly on it I was in a really bad patch made friends with one of the people who was like a medical student and just two medical students and I hung out with them because they did work all the time so I joined in then we moved the next year but then because my girlfriend makes go from broke up with me I was in a really really bad place and it was the only thing I could think about all the time I had like an existential crisis I properly broke down didn't go out of my house for weeks completely isolated watching YouTube videos on repeat and constant panic attacks throughout the day all the time and then I just decided one day to go to this party and I met who's now to be one of my best friends other awesome but I was I was definitely in a bad place and I made an attempt on my life at that point so sorry and it was it was quite a sort of severe when I took quite strong medication and an alcohol and it was a really really bad bad time but that friend that I made actually was worried about me because I told her that I was feeling really bad and so she got she rang up and she got one of the security to go check on me and it was kind of just in time send me to the hospital and so glad that she did yeah I wasn't happy with her but I understood why she did it and now obviously I'm you know eternally grateful but it was it was it was awful lot the next year I just decided to get away from it went to Thailand to do it to do my placement you know like you went to UK I went to Thailand they didn't understand autism I was quite heavily isolated by the other lab mates they got on really well with the rest of the UK students I went over and they just hated me even my boss my supervisor didn't understand a lot of it was kind of it was difficult because I was trying to do research on my own and I helped them out with their projects and then when it came for mine they didn't help me at all oh no people are cruel so I think very isolated but it was the first time that I actually made a group of friends and I felt a part of a group and I went traveling with one of the guys that I grew quite fond of went around Southeast Asia for about two months that's great lovely came back to finish my fourth year a lot of it was isolation very isolated yeah the bullying was whenever we had group work so I was in a group of girls and because you know as you said I had quite a quirky way of sort of doing projects and stuff and I was good at IT and I knew how to do all of the the editing and stuff and there was one point much I didn't agree with them and they didn't like what I did so they just asked me to go home whoa wow that's cruel yeah that was pretty much the only bullying other than Thailand and most of it was being very isolated but things have improved obviously like massively but isolation is kind of the worst form of bullying though feeling like you're invisible like you it's kind of even worse than having words shouted at you because then you're at least you are like you exist but if people like don't even acknowledge you and you can feel even so much more detrimental what was your experience of work kind of workplace bullying and isolation well I'm glad you asked because I have so much to say on that matter no yeah well the thing is so after university I was headhunted I stand to work at very big name brand agency in London and they discovered me on DNA D new blood exhibition in London where we exhibited our student work from our final year and they walk around there and then they contact people they want to have come work for them so I got the call and I just yeah all right I didn't really understand like how big that is because nobody else got a call from that big agency so I kind of realized as the year went by after university how big of a deal it kind of was but the thing is that they were placements as an internships of course in the beginning when I was like brand new fresh out of university it was really really really hard to get into an office environment in London she wouldn't have had many any of the accommodations and stuff because you haven't been diagnosed now yes so that's also everything up until recently I've gone on diagnosed not understanding anything about why I didn't fit in as well as everyone else and why I had so much difficulties socially so of course my my my first years in the design industry were really really really hard on me so I struggled socially with getting friends with colleagues I struggled with understanding like the social bits that that are so important for forming teamwork and if if I if you don't kind of fit into the social bits so that people want to work on the team with you then you're screwed and kind of then you never get any of the cool projects to work on and therefore never you're able to show your true talent and skill I ended up with all of my talent being headhunted and all that kind of in the paper room cutting paper and it was like so much work that I'd done and I didn't ask for that job I didn't ask for that job but I came all the way from Norway to London and with two suitcases that I had to roll all over London from job to job to cut paper yeah and then not ending up getting kind of the contract to stay on yeah each and every design agency that I applied to I got the job as an intern and every internship when you are a junior designer they only are for one month so I stayed one month at each place and none of the other people that I had graduated with had gotten even one single internship anywhere whilst I kept getting internships and offers from agency after agency and the biggest names but I could not get kind of a contract to stay on because I guess it just shown through that I was like really different so they yeah they didn't sign me on but at the end there was a big company that wanted to keep me on but then by that time I had I had become burned out so I had to quit and move back to Norway yeah that was kind of gutting yeah cause you have you've got so much so much talent and so much expertise and ability to work in that area and you've got you've got the difference and the quirkiness which is important for standing up making stuff and yeah I mean like the design when you're designing the whole point of it is to catch people's attention and I I know how I knew very well how to do that I still know some what how to do that but but nobody would kind of give me the opportunity there are so many horrible bosses out there that's my point if I am boss to a creative team then of course I hire people who are better than me never hire anyone who is not better than you I mean like what's the point of that you're supposed to hire people who are better than you and then you're supposed to help them get even better because that's how you make a big successful work environment and company and product or whatever but I did not understand like how people could like hire me on like the big talent and then just shoved me away in the copy room like what what and I can tell you that so many bosses out there in huge agencies and they are missing out and there's wasting money they're wasting billions just because they have a big ego big superiors superiority complex superiority complex it's not smart mad managing and then when I came back to Norway burnt out and everything I spent half a year resting up and then I started applying to jobs in Oslo and I got a job right away I never had any problems getting a job with my portfolio and then my excellent like work experience from London and the huge name agencies everybody wanted like oh wow you worked there on there wow and so it was not a problem getting a steady job with a contract and much higher salary than I will ever get in London and so I was like really satisfied I was really happy but it did not take more than half a year in my first job in Oslo before I started getting like sick and I had to go on sick leave here and there for a couple of days here and a couple of days there because I was so burnt out my my skills were never lifted up I was always set to do the lousy jobs like I didn't get the jobs that I was supposed to get you know and do you think that's that's a lot to do with you being being autistic you having those those differences in your social communication definitely so there was the daily manager who is not a designer she did not take liking to me after she had hired me she liked me the first couple of weeks or whatever but as it turns out after a little while when people have heard me talking enough they don't like me anymore because I'm too honest I pointed out mistakes that were being made and things that could be done better and I started being very proactive and I came up with many ways to improve existing designs on packaging that they already had with clients and the manager she hated that I did that because she wanted to be the one who came up with all the ideas and to this day I don't understand why on earth she would be feeling threatened by the designer when that's why she hired me I don't know if it's something about my way of being because when I start opening my mouth and I start to talk I am I sound so determined and I sound so confident and everybody says oh you have such good self-esteem and wow you're such a good talker but actually I don't I don't feel that way at all I feel really insecure and I'm confident and all of that and I just wing it all of the time but I am genuinely motivated and I'm honestly trying to do something good that's why I get so disappointed every time when people seem to just knock me down like say no sorry this idea I don't think we can go with it just because it doesn't agree with what they think they just don't like that I'm sounding so confident who do you think you are Charlotte but you've got no reason to I mean it's easy to say you've got no reason to feel insecure but like just just think of what we're doing now you run a podcast talking in a second language you know when you you're autistic kind of a first language first language okay your first language kind of no it's not it's the second language of course we talk English so much in Norway yeah but still yeah still like it's a hard thing to do now typical people struggle to do it to be honest before this podcast before every time we are going to we tried to have this podcast I was really really really nervous and so tight in my stomach and I felt like I was going to get sick and so nobody can ever tell and what why because I am so freaking good at masking I think like after this I will keep kind of like a long longer version because I think like we've talked about a lot of important stuff it's hard because I'm trying to like cut my podcast down but the main reason why I get into do these podcasts is to kind of explore topics and yeah relate to other people and listen about their experiences and their thoughts and stuff but it's like people don't want to click on something that's that's longer than an hour or longer than 15 minutes even yeah of course which is I know it is you have to short it down you just have to like have no breaks in between and then you just hear saying like yeah and then and then click and then I didn't even get to the worst part so the bullying or whatever sorry it's alright it's don't worry about it it's you get into sound it's just like like a monologuing zone I do that yeah I'm oh I'm sorry you have to just cut me off is this you telling me that we are finished talking now no no no it's not no oh okay okay see I just have to hide I don't even know remember I'm autistic as well I'll tell you oh yeah yes that's good that's great there's a few questions that on that that we didn't cover but I think like the main like way that to kind of round up the podcast is to talk about how we can deal with all this stuff how can we make it better for other kids who are possibly going through similar experiences or of our adults who are you know kind of lonely and bullied and isolated how do we ever come well that's a good question we need to spread awareness and yeah I I think this thing that we are doing is helpful not too long ago I didn't have anything like this that I could find and and find any support and relate to stories like this so I think that is something that helps us overcome these difficulties like that people can find and support and help relatability and the things that we watch and listen to and engage in on on our little worlds and our phones yeah what in our little words like in a bubble you know just kind of learning about autism and and oh yeah relating to autistic people and yeah I think I do agree with you think I think a lot of the work needs to be done by autistic people and kind of the more stuff that we can make on it the more likely it is to become popular and the more you know more people are going to watch it and listen to it and then it's going to hopefully which is my main goal is to bring all of us to the mainstream media and yes you know really push for changes and it's really unacceptable that autistic people so often have to deal with so much negativity and trauma and horrible life experiences is really just not and for what for just for being slightly different in the way to communicate so you know that girl nor that I told you about and when I was 10 when she was 13 or something I remember she was crying about a boy in in we were in the in the city I don't know I was hanging out with her and some other girls and she was crying and I tried to comfort her and my way of trying to comfort her was to lick tears of her face so that was my way of communicating comfort for a girl who had already seen me as the weirdo I wasn't less weird in her eyes now she said what are you doing and I was I don't know I had seen animals licking each other's face and the lion king trying to lick the learning from movies that's another autism thing yes yes and so I licked tears of my only space one time even that's different way of communicating I love that now yeah it's great yes I have been nothing but kind and all I've gotten what did I get in return it's like like the way that we translate our inner self and in a world is just so different that it comes across in the complete opposite way so yes how we are yeah so if somebody calls you stupid you feel like the urges I'm not stupid I'm actually very smart it just sounds oh are you now you're a egotistical now I'm just correcting you got measured IQ of 240 oh do you not really no that was my attempt at a joke yeah so just to kind of round up the podcast I usually ask for kind of free main things that you want people to remember or you want people to take away it doesn't have to be like a recall of the things that we talked about so now we've talked quite bit it's gonna sound so cheesy I would say to anyone who may be listening to this and if they feel like there is no hope there is hope definitely there is hope that is number one don't hate yourself for being different don't blame yourself I would say that we blame ourselves to we punish ourselves too much so we need to stop punishing ourselves and and just know that yeah it's natural to be different it's nothing wrong with it and number three is just continue being nice to people even though other people are cruel and mean I love that one because if you if you give into it and you you start to become that kind of mean and bitter person then you know you'll have reason inside yourself as well as the outside and that's like the I think one of the the traps of being autistic the falling into that very bitter negative horrible mindset towards yes and it will eat you alive and it destroys destroys you from inside and also to just try to be cruel back to someone who was cruel to you it won't make you feel better it will just manifest and eat you up just pay it back with kindness as even though it hurts it will feel better later on when you think back thank you very much you're welcome got the last the last question the very last one which is an open question what does autism mean to you Charlotte well that was that came abruptly what do you think about when you think of autism I think about freedom freedom and that may sound strange but the truth shall set you free kind of thing it's kind of liberating if people could just start to accept people being different neurodiversity that we have different neuro types and all that I just think we could go so far everybody here in this society on the planet and that is it feels that thought just feels liberating there's so much goodness in autism and there would be like no bad things on the planet it would be just good things and nobody would suffer or anything I know that sounds really rosy but I honestly like somebody asked me how would the world look like if it was only clones of you I am like only clones of me well that would look like I would definitely be very good well oh it wouldn't be advertising but but I mean like then the whole world would be autistic of course if it was just clones of me it would be a bit boring with just the same person but I can tell you that it would be environmentally friendly it would be animals walking in the streets train lines on magnetic fields in the air so but they wouldn't be they wouldn't be so high that they would hurt the birds nobody would be rude to each other everybody would just be so kind that's how things would be in my cloned world it would be like unicorns and rainbows literally without all of the the hate for genetically engineer some unicorns it will be cotton candy clouds and there will be machines yes everything will be so much fun aqua parks and water and steaming stations everywhere it will be so much fun this comes to the end of our long discussion the life of an autistic person the the trauma the bullying the isolation the negativity but we still managed to end on a positive yeah you know oh wait a bit of fun that is that is the tragic thing about all of this no matter how hard we are all stricken we still manage somehow to keep this joyous undertone that just keeps on coming up brilliant yeah where can people find you Charlotte currently only on Instagram on the spectrum girl and I hopefully I have I want to start YouTube being vlogging oh yeah we'll see but one thing at a time yeah so if you want to find the 40-odd podcast on any other place you can always find it on Spotify Apple podcasts and YouTube under Asperger's growth or under the 40-odd podcast on the others if you want to stay up to date with my social media see what I'm doing behind the scenes see all the advocacy work that I'm doing out in the the dangerous world for the mainstream media then you can follow my accounts all at Asperger's growth Facebook Twitter and Instagram and if you have your own story and you want to come on share your experience and knowledge on a particular to us on a particular subject around autism and mental health you can always contact me on my email asperger's growth at gmail.com and that's pretty much all the places you can find me Charlotte thank you so much for coming on and sharing being so open and honest with your experiences yes thank you thank you for having me it was my pleasure thank you so much I really enjoyed talking to you you're a great conversationalist and yeah like please anybody out there go and check out Charlotte's page she's amazing at putting out images I know you only started in 2020 but like you've got so many followers I'm going to quit if I don't reach 10,000 followers by okay everybody follow follow the spectrum girl account just joking I'm joking I'm not going to do it anyway yeah do it and do it thank you well I hope you've got something from this podcast everybody out there listening to us monologuing about autism hopefully I'll be able to get it out for anti-bullying week I think it'd be a really good episode to put out good to raise awareness so share it with anyone that you come across any family members friends people within your communities always helps out and yeah I'll see you in the next podcast that's awesome cool