 Hello! Welcome to the first Aughty Chat. Yes, so I'm going to be streaming on two different platforms which I haven't done before. Just because I feel like, for me, I don't really get involved in, like, the YouTube world a lot. Like, I'm wanting to set up some sort of regular, regular sort of live stream. So I'm going to try and get one out every, every Friday. So it'd be a place for, for you guys to, to come in, to ask some questions, etc. Hi Alyssa. Thank you for joining. Hi Kieran. Social Wave. Wow. As opposed to me actually being a bit proactive and, like, actually sorting out the, the live stream, like, scheduling thing actually has worked to some degree. So thank you all for joining so quickly. Cool. So, yeah. Basically, the idea around Aughty Chat is, you know, I don't tend to get very involved in terms of, I guess, I guess, like, comments and stuff. Because it's, it's, it's quite hard because my, my schedule at the moment is that I am pretty saying, you know, like a real a day or actually two reels a day and a post. And I'm trying to, trying to stay as active in terms of, like, talking to, to everybody and, and responding to comments and things like that. But it's, it's, it's being very difficult. So perhaps maybe I can have a little bit more engagement with everybody if I do, like, a weekly, weekly sort of live stream and stuff. Hello from Thailand. Hello. I used to be in Thailand for a year in Chiang Mai. I was doing a part of the university thing. Hello. Draw Beauty from San Francisco. Evolving lies. Your page is amazing. Thank you very much. Hello from the US, from Mina. Very cool. Hi says as well and no tricks. Wow. Everyone's here. Beautiful. Hi, see Minky Ladder on YouTube. I am to say I am live streaming on two places because I've been told that that's a good thing to do for small creators and stuff. So I will be responding to each of them. So if you don't see, like, a question going out on one side and I'm answering a question that that's, that's because of the multi thingy. So we already had a question so far, but I just want to put it out in. So put it out in the world, put it out on the stream. If you want to ask questions, this is the best place to do it. And I will be asking questions from, you know, YouTube and Instagram. So please go ahead. Hi, see Minky Ladder. You're a small creator too. Well, good luck. It's hard, especially on YouTube, definitely. Yeah, so this is going to be a bit of an experimental thing because I haven't been live streaming in two places at once before. So we'll see how that goes. I've got a comment from Dan Dee. You're such an impressive guy, really good and interesting content. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Hello from BeautifulLingweeds and ADHD. Oh, yeah. How are you doing? Shenzo, appreciate the content man. Thank you very much. Stalin, hi, Tom. Hi from Ireland as well. So we're going internationally now. See, see, Minky Lad says, got 135 subscribers in 25 days. That's pretty good. Like if you're starting off from bottom. Very, very good. See who else is joining on Instagram. Hello from Finland. Wow. This is literally like an international hub at the moment. Crazy stuff. So yeah, please send in some questions. Whatever you want to talk about. Mostly autism related or personal questions. You're very welcome to ask them or contribute your thoughts as well on certain things. Bally Red says, hi, Tom. You've been so helpful for myself and my 16 year old son. Thank you. You are very welcome. I'm glad. Hey, so we've got a first question here from NoTricks, who's someone that I'm going to be podcasting with very soon on Monday. It's going to be great. What is the hardest part of your day to day life as an influencer, especially from a mental health point of view? Very good question. It's hard. It is. And to be honest, I am sort of balancing sort of full one time job, part time job with my gym goals and with, you know, Instagram and creating content and the podcast. So there is a lot to kind of juggle. And I am not always the best when it comes to organizing things. So it actually it's, you know, for the past two or three months, it's been quite sort of up and down, trying to find my feet, trying to sort out all the legal stuff for my business that I'm trying to do. I think mostly it's, it's, I don't know, you'll probably relate to this like the situation where you, you know, everyone has their preferred methods of communication. And, you know, even for even for someone who doesn't do all the influencer content creation stuff, you have people who are like texting you on Facebook Messenger, and you have someone texting you on Instagram or TikTok or Snapchat if you have it. And you've got some people texting and some people using WhatsApp and using all types of different communication channels. It's so hard to just like manage them all. And, you know, you could you could go and find an app that kind of concentrates them down into like one Apple one stream or something like that. But that is presents its own difficulties, because then you get loads of, you know, your inbox is pretty much just full and blowing. And, you know, if you do do content creation, and it sort of influence you type stuff, that can be an added thing. So you got to manage the personal life, you got to manage the online stuff. So, yeah, it can be quite hard. I think it's really setting yourself time to do each of them and not going over it. I do have a tendency of working late into the night if I'm passionate about something, or if I want to get something done. So, you know, you just you just got to find that balance and sometimes the actual process of finding that balance is really hard. And especially with if you see monkey, it's it's it's hard. And it, you know, especially if you're starting off, if you wanting to be a creator on any platform, particularly YouTube, it's going to be tough, you know, you're going to put in a lot of work and you're not going to get you're not going to see those those kind of big numbers and big results. It's a very cumulative thing. And it's very based on consistency. And sometimes the act of just trying to upkeep that consistency is so hard. But it's so important. It's like the biggest thing when it comes to growing. So that can be really tough. And you just you just got to learn over time, you got to work on yourself, do all that kind of stuff. So I got a question on Instagram from Austin Henshaw. Hello, Austin, you're an Instagram as well. Are you a you do a watching crazy? What are your strength and hypertrophy or size based goals? I'd be willing to help with hypertrophy programming. Um, you know what, to be honest, it's I mean, most of the time, my fitness and exercise and stuff, it's primarily being focused on my mental health. Because, you know, if the doctors say, you know, if you could take a pill that does the same or all the same benefits as exercise, it would be the most like popular pill out there, everyone would be on it. And that's kind of the truth. And, you know, I do have quite a filled routine and filled schedule. Like I'm exercising probably about 12 hours a week, about six days a week. So it kind of feels like a lot to if you haven't got like properly into it and stuff and it can be quite difficult to keep up with everything. But I think I think over time, you kind of get used to it and you kind of you learn to enjoy it, which it just I know for a lot of people when there's been speaking to my family about it, it just seems just completely farfetched. You're like, no, I'm not going to be one of those people who get up and go to the gym and like to go to the gym and feel bad about not going to the gym. You will, it's just it's a habit. You know, you start off and it's tough and it's hard and over time you just like it. So to your question, Austin, I don't really have any particular goal. I just want to get better every day, make tiny increments and the amount of weight that I lifted, whether it's like urge for you or strong focus, I think you can kind of is it's a mix of the two. And I just focus on improving. So thanks for that, Austin. I'm going to scroll down. It says says says, I won't stay long as I have a quiz night, but great questions so far. No worries says I appreciate you joining and enjoy your quiz. I'm terrible at quizzes. Worst person to have on a quiz team. Yeah, absolutely awful. Please save this translation. What do you mean? Hello from Shaft to California. Another new place in US. Question message from Anthony. Hi, bro. Newly autistic guy here. If you just you developed autism. Yeah, I know. And just a joke. I recently lost my fancy. Alright, I feel bad for saying the joke there. Your videos have been really helpful thing for me. So I just wanted to say thank you. You're very welcome. It fills my heart with joy to know that I am helping people. That's my goal with all this kind of stuff. I want to do more of it. So I got to turn it into a business at some point to keep my my life and my food and everything like that. But that is the focus. Social medias. Hey, why definitely says one from CT parks. I'm waiting at the appointment for an autism diagnosis. What can you tell me about the process? Um, depends where you live. If you're living in the UK, it's either free or relatively cheap, but a very long wait time. And if that doesn't go well, you gotta wait longer. You know, if if you don't have a very good diagnostician, they don't really understand that making a small amount of eye contact is normal for an autistic person or making or even just an autistic person making a normal amount of normal amount of eye contact for neurotypical standards. You know, it doesn't mean that an autistic is you know, they can be over factors like masking and things like that. So some professionals, they know about it, they have a good sort of experiential influence, you know, they talk to people, they, they have some involvement in the autistic community, they're an ally. You know, that all of those kind of factors play in so it can be very variable. And it can also vary a lot country to country. Place to place. I hope that answered your question. I know it can be can be quite hard. The actual diagnosis. It's a bit strange. I've done one post post having a diagnosis at 10 was very weird. Still showed extreme signs of work. I still showed strong signs of autism, even though that was like, hey, they're not going to pick it up this time. But yeah, they did. It was obvious. But it's me says says thank you for your work. You're very welcome. Thank you for joining the live. Could you make a live recording please from Moogilove? Yeah, I mean, I'm going to save these ones. I'm not going to go about an edit tool and re upload it and stuff. I'm just going to leave it. So if you wanting to catch up with live streams or you wanted to replay them or you wanted to click them, you are very, very welcome to if you if you want to use it that way. All good. I will I will definitely save them. If I remember, sometimes if you if you click the wrong thing, your finger slips, and you click the X or you click you click done, you cannot save it, which is really, really annoying a lot of the time. Delme from Brazil. Nice, nice to have you here. Very, very and Moldova as well. I have three ac ac you in says Republican Moldova here. I have a three year old daughter of autism. I am stressed regarding her and our future. Very understandable. You know, it can be a hard hard world for us. I say that the most most of the issues that perhaps we face during childhood because of other people. You know, it can be very hard, but I think just just being engaged with the community, learning more about it, supporting them as best you can understanding sort of the aspects around mental health that make them up and sort of being aware of them. I think that's always the best way to go, but it very much depends on the individual, I think. Yes, Cat Lily, thank you for joining her on YouTube. Yeah, I'm streaming on two places. I've been told that that's something that I should do. So we're going with it. I'm trying hard to keep an eye on both both streams. Very strange. And yeah, if you want to follow my Instagram, it's at Thomas and the UK, you can you can watch on there if you want. Or you can watch on YouTube, which is 40 or D podcast. You guys Instagram. Gary Matanus, Jr. says, I get it, I stretch a few times day every day. It's something I can control and it helps me feel the way it makes me feel as prices. Stretching is really good. It's a proper proprioceptive stim, like definitely for me, when I get stressed, I tend to stretch and move a lot. And I find that that stretching can really help solve with that. I don't know. I don't know if you guys have experienced it like this this sort of feeling of tension that you have in your body, kind of like ants crawling on your bones. I don't know if it's related to anxiety. I don't know if it's related to like depression or related to like, maybe hyposensitivity in terms of autism. I'm not sure, but stretching exercise that that seems to do it for me in terms of that kind of physical ickiness that you can get sometimes. Seamunkeylad. Was he the one that made the next commander video? Yeah, it was me. I made that one. It was a while ago, though. It was very poorly edited. Question from StallionSK. What's about girls on the spectrum? Should they exercise too? Of course. Exercise is not just a man thing. Like, I saw this this amazing sort of collation of like the benefits of strength training. Because I was like, most people, they're very big advocates of like cardio and sort of, you know, that sort of moderate to light intensity kind of cardio work. But I was so, you know, I feel so much better. And I hardly do any cardio. I gym like six days a week, which it's a lot. And it does really make me feel tired. And it does give me more energy afterwards and the day after. And I just feel calmer and I breathe my mood. So I was looking at like the statistics on it and, you know, there are a lot of benefits to it. Like, I think there was some part that was saying that for every one point on this strength scale that you go up, there's like a like it reduces the risk of Alzheimer's disease. There's a guy who runs a podcast. He's called Andrew Huberman, which you might have known about. He's from like Stanford University. He makes a lot of exercise and physiology videos and stuff. And he was saying that, you know, when you exercise, you build up these, you build up a lot of lactate in your muscles. The acid is the actual thing that causes the burn. The lactate's the thing that sort of buffers it and removes it or, you know, makes it less acidic. And that hormone, because it kind of acts outside the body, it actually like influences your brain and your heart and all these other kind of things. So there is some like real benefits to like strength training. And, you know, a lot of people, they say that, oh, I'm too old to do this. And, you know, you know, at a certain age, you're going to have to stop gymming. It's not actually true. You can continue to maintain much more muscle than you think into your later years and sort of, I guess, reduce the risk of falling and maintaining mobility and things like that. So it's really interesting. Yeah, Cat Lily says that they stretch, but they have a hard time exercising because of pots, postural of hypotensive stuff. Yeah, I've heard of that before. I think it's one thing that can be sort of related to waters and pots, as well as like something that's like a Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. Yeah, but to be honest, my balance is not very good when I'm not thinking about it. But I did use to compete in Taekwondo, so I worked on my balance quite a lot. I don't know if that's sort of the same thing that you can actually work on it, but for me definitely, like, practicing coordination, things like that. It really has helped a lot. Were you ever scared to go to the gym? Yes, of course. I get scared a lot of the time, especially on the way there, but it's just one of those sticking points. And sometimes you've just got to push past it, and for beginners you've got to ease yourself into it. Don't do it too much, don't tell yourself that you're going to work for like an hour. Just give yourself like 30 minutes that you just do regularly for like a couple of weeks or a month or something, and then just scale it up as you feel comfortable. Headphones, mobile. Avoid the eye contact with the mobile, avoid the noise of your headphones. That tends to work for me, but I know that it can be very variable person to person. I'm just realising that I'm very far behind on the Instagram questions. Sorry about this. I did experience a speech delay. It's me, so it's only a little one, I think. Not too much of one. To be honest, like, things related to autistic children, it's not really my area of interest or speciality. I mean, I have word to watch autistic children, but it's not. It's not something that I want to or desire to focus on too much, which I know can be a bit annoying, but there are some really great sort of advocates and people out there who you do focus on that. So I would definitely go to them. Everything ought to sound cutty to have you as a guest on our podcast. Hey, me too. It's going to be grand. Let's have a look. Swimming helps a lot, exercise in general. Yep, definitely. Callum, 12 gauge. How are you doing? Thank you very much. Callum and 12 gauge were part of the group special that I did on the podcast, which was the neurodivergent crew podcast. Long one, but if you like the long podcasts and stuff like that, I definitely give it a listen or give it a watch even. I have about four guests on that one. Talked about different aspects of neurodiversity, things like that. So that was really great and I learned a lot about, particularly from Notrix about DID, got to talk with 12 gauge about dyslexia, got to talk with FMA about late diagnosed autism, got to talk with Dreadnought about ADHD and some other things. It was a really great stream. Stream, podcast. Ethan says, hello Thomas, greetings from Mexico City. Nice to see you. I don't think I've met anyone from Mexico yet, so we are picking up and no, I'm not from London. I'm actually the opposite side of the country to London. My accent's not very typical for the region that I'm in. People tend to be able to have more of a strong Yorkshire accent, whereas I think because I have sort of done YouTube for a while and things like that, I've sort of melded my voice. I don't know. I've practised and sort of, I've done voice coaching and stuff and tried to, you know, get better at speaking of some reason that just pushes me more towards sounding like I'm from London a little bit. But if you're actually from the UK, you'll be able to tell the difference. Harry gets a sort of a bit of a sort of middle-class kind of area as well. It tends to be, tends to be a bit sort of less Yorkshire-y in general than that that I've experienced. Andy, Andy Mama here. Absolutely feel a lot of relief from stretching tension, release cracking knuckles too, yeah. I am the sucker for cracking the old knuckles and everything else. I went, I won't put you through that that awful sound because I know some people don't like it, but yeah. So people talking about the Special Olympics, very cool. Swimming, nice. Advice for Artistics in Third World Countries. You know, that's a hard one because I don't have experience living in a third world country. I don't know what Thailand would be classed to. Is it a late second world country or something? I'm not too sure. I know that particularly the level of autism awareness and acceptance can be a bit lower in those sort of relatively underdeveloped countries and compared to places like the UK and places in Europe and things like that. So I think there's, you know, the advice would probably be try to get involved and talk to people who are not from, who are from those sort of developed countries because you'll typically see advocates and people online from those places and sort of ask advice and learn from them and not particularly looking at sort of the advice that some GPs may give in certain countries because there can be variable sort of stigmas and attitudes that can influence it. But it's very dependent and you can also find some people who do advocacy in those kind of third world countries as well. So you can search people out and I would try and mix and match and try and find some terms on Google. Connect them with autism and just see if you can find anyone who really sort of does work like that, you know, depending on the country that you're in. You'll have to discern a little bit, you have to sort of pick apart and see what their kind of philosophies are and, you know, whether they're neurodiversity inclusive and, you know, whether they have sort of, you know, well thought out strategies or therapies. I mean, to be honest, even in the UK it's hard to find mental health support. So that can be really tough. See you later, says thank you for joining. Okay, I was diagnosed, Samaka says I was diagnosed last summer but I feel like an imposter saying I have autism. I wonder if it's a common thing for autistic adults. Yeah, it's very, very common imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome can be really hard and I was diagnosed when I was 10 and I still get that and I want to gain even even though I create content. It's a lot to do with around sort of individual ideas of autism, the influence from other people, perhaps like things related to the, related to stigma. A lot of people may have ideas about autism that kind of, you know, they have a picture of an autistic person in their mind and they feel somewhat intrusive of putting themselves into that label because they don't know if they're autistic enough or you don't know if you explain display enough of the traits. You know, there can be a whole host of things. It can be stuff to do with, you know, stigmas around people who are women, you know, women particularly not being included within sort of the stereotype of white autistic cis man. It can also be, you know, as I said, related to race as well. There can be some aspects where minorities don't really feel as connected because there's there's sort of difference in maybe their culture or maybe people are putting some stereotypes on them. They're like, well, it's more common in white men or, you know, all that kind of thing and it can feel sometimes that, especially if you haven't met or talked to other autistic people who are also within that process, it can be quite hard to sort of accept, I guess, but if you have been diagnosed, I would go with that. If you haven't and you're looking and you're sort of in the self-diagnosis category, I would talk to as many people as you can. I would follow as many people as you can. I would talk to other people who are self-diagnosed and, you know, quite a lot of the time you don't have to fit in every single box or category. It doesn't need to be the case that you took every single box to be autistic. Everyone's very different. Every autistic person's very different. So, I would always try and be kind to yourself and not try to think so much about perhaps what other people may think of you for calling yourself autistic. It's something for you. It's something a part of your identity. You've got to work through it and learn about it in your own space and time. Some people, they might be a bit negatively reactive towards it but it's just the way things go and I get it as well. Even though I can say it's my diagnosis, some people just don't that really. Yeah, it can be tough. No one from Mariana on Instagram and then I'll have a look at some of the YouTube stuff. Mariana says thank you for the lovely informative reels. You're very welcome. I was transitioning from childhood to adulthood, childhood to teenagehood to adulthood, which was the most challenging period apart. Childhood was great. I love childhood. I was just blissfully unaware of everything. I didn't know that I was different. I didn't feel like I was different. I thought everyone was the same as me and I was just kind of chilling and no real cares or worries in the world. Other than perhaps feeling a bit iffy about big social situations and sensory stuff. Teenagehood, definitely the hardest part, mostly due to secondary school. That sort of teenage brain have become more aware of everything and more critical and you know high chances of developing mental health and things like that. So the majority of it was difficulties with bullying things along of that nature. It can be really hard but then I guess the transition to adulthood possibly fairly hard because even in teenagehood I was still given a set plan or a set schedule or set kind of thing to do during the day. I had times where I was around people to socialize. I had times that I didn't. So it's all kind of planned for me whereas when you're going to adulthood you have to form those friendships yourself. You have to build that community around yourself. You have to build those connections and groups around yourself and that's the hard bit. There's aspects of food and care and executive functioning and stuff but I think that's the biggest thing because if you're already predisposed to mental health if you have had mental health in teenagehood can be just the breaking point for a lot of people. So it's good to good to research and it's good to try and find stuff because a lot of people because a lot of people they struggle to find the things. If they know that it's there they'll do it like obviously we're gonna do it if we know that it's there but we just oftentimes we don't know it's there so it requires a lot of self-research and looking into things. Very very annoying it would be great if it was just all part of the program. Everyone just went for it and it was all good but it's you know we're not at a stage in autism awareness acceptance and education where that's possible at the moment but it is changing and particularly with my workplace we do a lot of work with that sort of transition from teenagehood to adulthood and it can be very difficult but it's definitely done. It can be done and I know a lot of people who have successfully done it. So I'm going to go over to YouTube a little bit, ask some questions. Cat Lily's talking about their experience with sort of tilting, being dizzy with pots yeah that makes sense. A lot of oxygen not being received by your brain, chronic fatigue. That sounds really tough I'm sorry to hear that. See Monkey's saying that they are self-diagnosed as well. Good for you, great. That sounded very sarcastic, I'm not being sarcastic. Khalid says, change her life. I went from walking all over the city to spending most of my time in bed. I can be really destructive for your mental health. You know when you have a physical condition and stuff definitely. We've got a question from Kevin which I'm going to address and I'm going to go switch back over to the Instagram. Is being a therapist or a social worker a good career for someone that has aspergers? I want to do this but people say that people with aspergers like skills to be a therapist. I think that autistic people can be exceptional therapists and social workers specifically for other autistic people because we have a more natural inclination to understanding the autistic brain obviously. I think yeah that you do have to do a lot of work on yourself if you're going to be supporting other people particularly around understanding the emotional world. Developing emotional awareness related to like a lexifier and stuff. Perhaps a bit related to cognitive empathy. Being able to notice and pick up on people's needs and emotions. And also the flow of conversation but to be honest a lot of autistic people tell me that in situations where they know the social context or the social boundaries of something and what they're expected to do and how it goes and they've had practice they often find it a lot easier than just general conversations. So I yeah definitely sure like I would encourage it. Please do become a therapist or a social worker if you're autistic. Massive that could really change a lot of people's lives. Definitely. Hey at university I often have to present to my clinical supervisor about my patients although I know what I mention I easily get confused and miss out information. Is this an autistic thing? I hesitate to say it's more something related possibly related to ADHD or something related to that. Perhaps stuff to do with certain learning differences like dyslexia possibly. Not very not very clear on exactly all of that so I'm not going to say one way or another like definitely. By definitely looking to things like like the learning differences possibly learning a bit more about ADHD that could be something to do but it could could be an I think that autistic people experience there's a lot of crossover between autism and ADHD so yeah it could be. But then then that that there's the sort of the perhaps the memory of the the instance and I struggle with the memory on the instance like the short-term memory. Long-term memory is great short-term memory is poor so yeah. Kyle says recently moved to a new province realized they are autistic haven't been diagnosed yet but nearly sure and have been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Yeah I definitely consider if you go to my page and you check out the people that I follow there'll be some really good advocates really good people that you can just have a look through. If you like the look of any of the content that they're doing definitely do it. Go go and follow them and you know good thing about Instagram is that once you start following people who have like certain hashtags and certain post tags you get recommended more people so there is a wealth of experiential and actual scientific information on on this on the Instagram platform. Also perhaps on YouTube as well if you're looking for that sort of scientific informative angle go with Dr. Megan Neff from Neera Divergent Insights. Really really great person to learn from even yeah especially for me as well. Is it necessary to get diagnosed as this might be perceived not in a bad way by society and might affect an individual's employment and personal life. I think for a lot of cases diagnosis you know to get that sort of legal protection as a protected group can be very useful but for personal growth personal understanding that everybody needs those needs or wants those supports and the medical system is set up so that we you know it's set up so that so that we can get diagnosed when there's an issue when it's a problem so if you're not having a problem there's no issues but you just want to understand yourself quite hard to convince the one to go for a diagnosis so I you know I think there could be good things and bad things and you know it's particularly on the legal workplace kind of front could be very useful but then again I've heard that even in the US one of the reasonable adjustments is that they find some way to let you go which is absurd I don't know if the same in the UK do need to look into that. Mother says I got diagnosed in Pakistan any advocates out there I'm not sure and if anyone's an advocate there please try them up I don't know anyone in particular that's that's from there but um yeah Devrat Devan hi bro how are you I am good I do remember you definitely thank you for joining Kyle um sharing some things uh I don't I don't know if we want to talk about that on on the the the live stream but please feel free to message me um sounds like a really tough time for you and I I empathize cool I think um so yeah uh any more questions because we've got about 15 minutes left 18 minutes left whatever um you guys on youtube please um please send some some some messages uh some questions and stuff really cool that you guys are um connecting and all that and um you guys on the instagram as well like thank you so much for everyone who's joined already and supported and asked questions it's it's been really really helpful um and yeah do you think I should do more of these let me know let me know please the live streams um I'm thinking of making it a regular thing perhaps on a friday because I thought to myself that I would find live streams really hard because you know with videos with podcasts there's always that editing process you know I what I say is just not you know I can chop and edit I can I can put it out and with live streams you don't really get that it just goes out um and actually to be honest I find it quite relaxing just the fact that I just don't need to edit and stuff um so I probably might do a bit more I'm thinking of possibly obviously I'm gonna be trying to stream on on youtube and um stream on instagram a lot more um just for the time being because I am a small creator and perhaps if I was to go to another platform to do stuff it's kind of a bit of a like it's it's a bit hard I mean maybe when I get a bit bigger I might you know want to sort of move over to like perhaps something like twitch I could do some longer live streams like I think one of the other creators that I that I talked to or tnl they are doing twitch live streams of um stardew valley which I was like I'd really love to do something like that I just have like some time in the evening where I can just sit and chill and play and actually play video games and not feel like um somehow undercutting my productivity yeah sounds it sounds really talk to I I have an obsession with work I have to do stuff all the time and be productive and the thing is I've tried not doing that and I've tried being like hey look I'm just gonna do what I want and I just find that every single time I do that I just don't feel satisfied I don't feel um what's the word I don't feel good doing that stuff I like to to to be productive and do things and it makes me feel happy it beats my mood I'm like hey I'll say that I'm gonna do this today um so I'm gonna do it um and then I do it and then I feel great about myself pow great um so yeah uh we've got a comment from cat lily thank you so much for asking some questions and stuff I really appreciate it besides exercise what's one of the main things that have helped you um there's been a lot of things having a good family structure my family's been very supportive it's not something that anyone can really take from but it is something that you know it's it's it's important to me my family's important to me they support me a lot so yeah that's that's that's a big support for me um other things that actually I've done um if I happen to say it I mean it's it's obviously you know it's not a big deal um it's something that I've been on for a while but medication has been great for me um I've been on meds since I was 14 they've helped me through a lot of rough times we've balanced them you know we've tried and find the right ones can't say that that they haven't had a massive impact on my life um talking therapies typically you'd say that those things are going to be great those things are going to be good but actually finding someone who really gets it is really hard and finding therapy even just finding therapists who are autistic super super hard finding therapists who aren't autistic who do autism specialization very very hard still but even even then if they don't really have the knowledge of like the community and they're not like an ally or anything they're not really up to date with kind of what what we talk about what we advocate for still can be really difficult um and if you're just going through perhaps like the UK general general health systems um you're going to be put with people who who can be actually bad for you and if you find a good one who's really open and willing to to grow and learn that's great but you still have to teach them if you go for private therapy that's your money to teach them about you and autism and in general so that's that's tough um so i think i think a lot of it for me is setting goals around the things that i struggle with trying to fill my day with as many things that i'm good at trying to make my work about it trying to make my hobbies about it as much as i can has helped a lot you know playing to my strengths uh and i do that within within my workplace as well positive positive real small adjustments yeah positive reasonable adjustments those have been really beneficial you know building a workload around the things that help me um and i'm good at and i can do really well and it doesn't take all of my energy that's brilliant um yeah i mean other other things that i could test is the community massive resource of experiences knowledge absolutely brilliant and free and you can just a lot of people that you know the smaller smaller sort of creators they're very happy to talk to you and a lot of the the bigger creators they offer coaching and the other things like that and i would all heartedly say yes go for it not because i'm trying to be a coach because i'm not a coach yet but if you want to you can email me no just okay uh you can but there are there are people out there who who do some really great work um i know i know that the neurodivergent insights megan nath they do psychotherapy and things like that they are you know if i was to look for a psychotherapist i would go for that go for go for megan nath uh someone someone lie megan nath uh definitely um uh yeah i think i think for the negative side of things making small improvements over time on the things that you struggle with first highlighting them first visualizing what your life what you want your life to look like and going for that and and and learning about different things related to autism finding that some things are apparent in you learning about it finding ways to you know overcome things like alexa thymia finding ways to better communicate with neurotypicals um all of those things there's there's so many things that you can do and it can be very overwhelming so i i would just follow a lot of people and if you see something that interests you um just go for that um go for that research think about your life make notes about your experiences and and learn from them and and grow using them that's that's how i did it and it took me a long time i'm not gonna lie used to be very introverted very shy very um i mean i i've not got the best confidence in the world but i used to be very very not very confident at all outside and inside now it's just a little bit inside outside i'm pretty confident um so i hope that helps i know it's obviously i can't give a total recount of everything that's helped me in my life um it would be be very very long um but uh on that i am actually i'm trying to develop a a course on emotional social development stuff which won't be out anytime soon so yeah i mean follow me to keep updated with that kind of thing but i am working on something um definitely uh selana marie says great great role model thank you can i ask how and when is the best time to discuss with a nine-year-old who is autistic and help him understand and see that he's valued um i think it depends you know um i would tell i would tell them i would sit them down in a place after they feel comfortable and you know take them out to do the things that they enjoy make make sure that they're in a good headspace they feel well and i guess just just frame it frame it in a way that it's not necessarily a good or a bad thing they're just different and there's different ways that they see the world and perceive the world and behave and you know that could be classified as as as being autistic or you know you don't necessarily have to say autistic you could just say that they're a bit different they're a bit neurodiverse you know there's a lot of ways that you can frame it i think that one of the pivotal points in my life in terms of me feeling validated and me feeling understood was around when i was diagnosed and my parents told me which was about 10 years old and i still remember it very vividly and it was it was a great experience i cried but i i didn't cry because i was sad i cried because i was happy because i'd noticed things that were different i'd noticed that i was kind of on a different level different wavelength over people so you know that that can be incredibly incredibly important i'm just gonna plug my i know we've only got like seven minutes left but i'm running very low on battery so we're gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna uh i've got my little skull shaped thing that that my partner got me i'm gonna we're gonna put that in put that in there use it as a stand here we go oh yeah that's not that's not that's not working too well okay there we go sorted i think yeah it's a it's a bit lopsided but i'm sure i'm sure it'll be okay right seeing a lot of content you've created you've changed my life for the better thanks dude i'm so happy very very happy about that i'm glad that i can help you um and thank you for coming to support me and and everything like that it really means a lot do you feel like you have to do that to validate yourself um i'm assuming you're talking about the productivity aspect of things you know um i think it can be can be related to validation going to be very productive the thing is is that i will always have had extremely high standards for myself and so i'm always trying to meet those standards and you know it's at some point you can say that oh it might not be too good and i might might sort of be seeking validation and being productive and stuff but it makes me feel good um and it doesn't affect my mental health poorly usually things like this uh talking in videos podcasts they usually meant my mental health better um and and and quite often it's i enjoy those sort of interactions and content and stuff so it really depends everyone's got their own limit and everyone's got their own likes and dislikes and just like i said it's you feel your day you feel your life with the things that you like the things that you're good at you know if you're good at something and you like something that's related to work brilliant do that if it's not equally so do that um definitely you know i understand what you mean though okay it can be but we're in a time where it's like hussle culture you know you've got it we've got to be on the grind like we got to succeed and outperform your opponents so yeah i get what you mean um but to be honest it's more for me it's not it's not for other people um as in like i'm not doing productive things for other people it's well i am in a sense but going on going off topic going on a bit of a train for that um kyle again uh i feel like i have to do that to validate myself and i'm with you there my mom always said always do more than expected now well i would i would hesitate to base your goals and your actions in life based on whatever people want you to do or expect of you because that can lead you down some really bad paths especially if you have um expectations that are imposed on you that are not realistic for an autistic person in the short term or the long term um everyone's different you know um you want you it's got to be an internal thing you've got to want to do it if you don't want to do it it's just going to be a choice going to be hard it's going to be boring it's going to be stressful and you're not going to feel good after it so now to a certain extent taking in information from people learning from people that's brill that's great um but at a certain point you really got to think about what you want you know thanks kyle um see monkey like oh i'm sorry i i did not see your message i hope it is it hope it is in sync um it says that there is a warning that my stream's current bit rate is lower than recommended um i will try and adjust that for next time definitely we're gonna um maybe i'll go for a higher it's not codec um a different but bit rate maybe i'll try it hopefully a bit more fixed is it fixed now he's letting me know um autistic lotty how you doing i had that i went a good job and have a great life until i unmasked and like to work one to one or in small groups um i don't have that high standard anymore except it has given me energy and joy brilliant so that's another thing you know you like the small groups you like the one to one that gives you joy that does well for you you don't need to go out in big groups of people and go out on on the town and do all that kind of stuff um if you don't want to so yeah i think we've got two minutes now and um you know i really want to highlight to anybody who hasn't checked out my podcast to to go over there i i am really struggling at the moment um oh i haven't been for a long time asking for like ratings and stuff so if if you've got some spare time you know head ahead over to there you know maybe listen to an episode listen to part of an episode or just you know give me a rating that would be really appreciated no need for like long comments or anything like that just a star rating would be brill um Spotify apple right kind of place whichever one you prefer would much appreciate um hi robin thank you for for um commenting what is the iridescent thing in the background that's something new that's uh it's it's pretty cool but we're gonna we're gonna wrap up um soon uh but i'll show you my my cool new lights um it's basically just a metal pole with i don't know if instagram can see it you guys can't see it can you this is like a metal pole with leds strips on the inside uh looks very sort of basic but you know when you assemble it and stuff it that's pretty good i got it from this place called met mankind also met uh went to to leads at one point or york i can't remember which one and i got one of them and it's pretty cool and i love it it's it's not for me actually because i don't see it it's behind me it's for it's for people watching it i just think it adds a bit of color to my background um you know perhaps making it a bit a bit more pleasing to the own eyes um i've got i've also got a a new thing which it's a wall light it's it's one of those cheap neon wall lights on air and shoot no it's okay good um so i'm gonna have that up at some point which should be cool so i'm trying i'm trying to spruce it up a little bit i i realize it's a very plain white background so we're doing some work uh cool so um yeah i mean thank you for everybody who has uh podcasts is on youtube or Spotify uh youtube and Spotify if you want um so you can follow on youtube if you're on instagram uh it's the 4080 podcast or slash thomas henley on youtube um you can find the video versions over on youtube and if you if you prefer to listen to podcasts you can find the um podcasts on Spotify or on apple or google and all of those places definitely uh the places to go uh you can find all that in my bio in my link tree um you've got my link tree the link in my bio it'll come up with like this sort of branch of different places that you can look at and you can find some of my merch on there as well which i did in um sort of collaboration with this place called born anxious uh which is really great sort of uh label-less sensory friendly clothing brilliant stuff you can see it on there it's about like a strong powerful autistic one very divergent squad got some joggers got some hoodies got some t-shirts so if you fancy a go head over i i wear them pretty much all the time the joggers um very cool so yeah um not really sure how to win this but thank you all for listening and for anybody who has stayed through the entire thing please send a heart in the chat let me know let me know so i can i can praise thine thyself um just to start of interest it'd be cool let's have a look but if not it's okay it's an hour it's it's friday when the children relax i hope you guys are doing well um and i will be doing another live stream next week around the same time um if you've got any questions got anything like that head over to my dms give me a dm if you want obviously the best place to contact me is by my email thank you mariana uh you've been here since the start thank you um really appreciate it um what was i saying so here we go this is this is me trying to end up things and i've already gone like three minutes over my time i said i do yes next next week five five thirty bst there will be a story about it where you can remind yourself again if you want and um yeah thank you for watching i'm going to end the streams multiple streams and um yeah thank you thank you for tuning in youtube and for tuning in instagram see you guys later take care