 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. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to The Forty Autie Podcast. How are you doing? It is, again, a very nice sunny day in the area of North Yorkshire. We've got a different podcast today, and I know I say every podcast is different, but we've got a very special guest on today. I sort of did like a piece on the stories on the spectrum, stories from the spectrum web page, and it's a very self-explanatory, but one of the other people who has one of their stories on that page is a lovely girl or lady called Grace Lou, am I saying it right? Yep, sounds right. How are you doing, Grace? I'm all right, thank you. How are you? Pretty good. We did sort of have a little bit of a chat before we started recording. I've basically just been trying to put up these strip lights in the back of my TV, and it's been stressing me out for the past two hours. Yeah, so my brain might be a little bit scattered for the first part of this, but, Grace, today we are talking about autism and transitions, and we're sort of talking about it in sort of multiple levels, so sort of transitions in daily life that most people with autism experience, but also your emigration from Taiwan to the UK. I think you said you were about four years old at the time? Yep, just turned four. And Grace is a autistic writer, illustrator, musician, and she has two cats. Yes, two cats. And are they going to be pitching in on the podcast today? Hopefully not. I've closed the door and put a wedge on it. But I very much appreciate you coming on to talk to us today. Would you like to give everyone a little bit of a background to who you are and what you do as a job? So hello, I'm Grace, as Thomas just said, and I am a copywriter at an online retailer. I basically upload information about our products to the internet. And I also deal with queries from the customer service department about products. So yeah, that's pretty much what I do. Very cool. And I just wanted to ask you, what was the experience like being interviewed for the stories from the Spectrum page? Was it Hermione that did your interview? Yes, it was. It was a real honour actually, I was really excited to be part of it. My stepdad put me in touch with the National Autistic Society and Hermione specifically. I've been trying to help me get more involved and trying to help me get my writing recognised. And so that was one thing, that was one idea that was that was pitched to me. So yeah, I took part in that. I thought Hermione was a she's a really nice person, isn't she? She's just quite friendly and I think she's also on the autistic spectrum. So it's nice to have someone who is autistic in an organisation such as the National Autistic Society. Yeah, you get so used to having to explain yourself to people all the time. It feels like a real privilege to speak to someone who just understands these things. Definitely. So let's talk a little bit about your experience with autism. When were you diagnosed? So I was officially diagnosed when I was nine, I'm now 27 so it was a fair while ago. I was quite noticeably autistic when I was little but my first primary school kind of refused to accept that and I think a lot of them actually blamed it on my mum being a single parent on benefits. They just thought I was really odd and slow and strange and I'm quoting them here. Did you say you were diagnosed at 27? No, no. When I was nine, I'm now 27. Of course, yeah, sorry. Well, that's good. It's nice to be diagnosed when you're younger. I think one of the sort of things that comes up quite a lot is sort of people getting diagnosed later in life and not really having that support at school. Did you have a lot of support when you're in primary school or secondary school? Once I was diagnosed, yes, I now had a lot of support at my second primary school. That was when I got diagnosed so I just started this school and a lady from Autism Outreach came to help another autistic child and she basically noticed me and it took a long time but basically I got diagnosed within about a year and the school was really helpful, which was a stark contrast to my previous school. That's very good. So do you remember quite vividly the experience of being diagnosed? Not really, but my parents liked telling me the story over and over again of when they told me I was autistic. So they basically told me I was autistic and explained that my brain just works a little bit differently. I need help with certain things, etc. And apparently my first question was, oh, can I have a piece of cheese? I just took a sip of my drink and I almost just sputted it all over the microphone. Yeah, so that's basically the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what a weird child I was. What type of cheese is your favourite? I don't know, it depends on my mood. Yeah, I like a bit of Gouda. Yeah, I don't especially like blue cheese. I think I have a bit of a prejudice against mould on food, but other than that I'm quite fond of cheese. Yeah, I can agree with you on that one, definitely. In terms of your experience at school, were there any sort of difficulties that came up as you were getting older and how did you or the school deal with those problems? Secondary school was a bit more difficult. I remember you discussing this on the podcast about puberty and being a teenager. I think I became more self-aware and I'm also more vulnerable in a lot of ways because kids, you know what kids are like at that age? They kind of just want to be the top of the social hierarchy and they don't have much time for a child whose favourite conversation starter is I know all about cat breeds, for example. So yeah, I wanted to make friends. I wanted to understand people. I was aware I got things wrong. I just didn't know how to deal with it and my secondary school at the time weren't that helpful. Well, some people were, but overall it was difficult. Yeah. I think that the one thing that is quite common in all of my podcasts is the difficulty that autistic people have at secondary school. The sort of, I think when I was around that age, I used to, the way that I used to deal with it was just to sort of view these, you know, like the popular kids and the ones that mostly tend to pick on people. I used to view them as like these sort of mindless monkeys kind of, you know, just not really having much awareness of themselves and their impact on other people and all that. Certainly felt like they were different species. Yeah, it really does. It's like they're in their own little isolated world and they don't feel like any things that they do have any effect on people. It's very hard to do with. I'd say that it's, you know, like the whole thing about autism and the theory of mind about putting yourself in someone else's shoes. I feel like those particular people don't show a very good theory of mind or at least they are, or maybe they're just some sort of, you know, emotionless, uncaring person, I don't know, but... I feel like you have to laugh at the irony sometimes of the lack of empathy that people show autistic people. Yeah, it is quite, you do have to laugh about it because obviously it's a very traumatic thing for a lot of people on the spectrum, right, but you gotta, yeah you do, you gotta laugh about that stuff. I'm just happy that I'm no longer in secondary school, I'm sure. That's something that you share. So today we're here to talk about your experience emigrating from Taiwan to the UK. Would you like to give us an idea of what those events were like for a young autistic person like yourself? Yeah, it was, it's quite hard to describe in detail just because I was so young at the time. So basically my parents divorced and my mum had to leave with me very quickly because things are getting quite nasty. I do remember some of the fighting actually, which is not traumatic for me thinking about it, but it has stayed with me if that makes sense. I think I basically just internalised it a lot and I, I found it hard, I found it scary, but I'm not, I'm not naturally very expressive anyway, so I kind of just learned to keep my head down and be good and let it happen. So we moved from Taiwan, my mum was six months pregnant with my sister at the time and we moved in with my grandparents and then my mum had my sister and then I started school and that's a lot of change to have to deal with. So yeah, it was difficult, it was stressful. What sort of impacts did it have on you, that sort of main change of going to a new place with new people and a new school? How did you cope with that? I'm aware that I'm very easily stressed by conflict and apparently I was anyway even before we left Taiwan, but I've always been particularly panicky about family conflict and I think it does at least partly come from that because that was my first experience of real conflict and suddenly my whole world turned upside down. So I think that's the main thing I can really think of and I also wasn't aware of how final it all was because we've been to the UK for holidays to see my grandparents before. It sort of felt different, but I didn't know how to, I didn't understand. My mum was honest with me, but I was too little to really process it. So it just kind of just felt like things I've experienced before but with more negativity. Do you think that those unfortunate life experiences have any impact on yourself today or is it something that you've come to terms with and processed? It's something I've been thinking about a lot in recent years and I feel like I'm still figuring it out really. I'm still quite, well I'm still very easily stressed when it comes to conflict in the family. I find it really hard not to have a complete meltdown over that. I've become better at dealing with conflicts and arguments in general but any family drama is really hard. Yeah, I can imagine that. I guess that sort of early experience, I know a lot, I don't know a lot, but I've read into sort of the human psyche and how sort of early life experiences can sort of like prime yourself emotionally to similar experiences. So I think what you're saying about sort of being a bit more sensitive to conflict within a family would make sense I guess. Yeah, well I've talked about this with my mum several times because she's a therapist so she knows all these technical terms for things like this and she says your subconscious remembers these things even if your conscious mind doesn't I think. So your reactions will still to some extent be there even if it's not clear in your memory. Yeah, I can see that. It's sort of like the memories below the surface I guess. I know that a lot of the time in my sort of childhood experiences, I don't have a very vivid memory of a lot of the things sort of in my teenagehood because I think one of the ways that I cope with like the bullying and the isolation and river mongering and stuff like that was to shut myself off to it and just be blissfully ignorant to it I guess. Yeah, well my mum says that children have a bit of a knack for that. They kind of just block out the negative stuff and just feel everything in the moment but that doesn't mean that it's not traumatic for them. Yeah, one of the things that I guess is from my research and my reading and stuff things like delusions of grandeur as well seem to be quite common for autistic people to fall upon so I had quite a you know because my life didn't sort of meet the expectations of myself and I felt very sort of low in confidence and sort of riddled with mental health. I sort of designed this fake persona or that is definitely a delusion. I thought I was some kind of different animal or different creature or something like that and that helped me process what was going on around me. Yeah definitely like the child and you know mine definitely has a knack for getting around stuff without actually combating it and facing it I guess. Yeah well apparently I used to keep saying I really miss my dad when I was very little until my granny got annoyed with me for saying it all the time and told me off and apparently I never said it again after that. Yeah I guess it must be quite hard like I mean I can only imagine. How is life nowadays in comparison to how it was in terms of like your family and all that? Is it sort of a little bit more stable? Yeah I mean lockdown notwithstanding. Yes it's good. I've got my mum and my step-dad and my sister although she mainly lives in London and my step-brothers Ditto and one of them lives abroad sometimes but yeah I've got a stable family they kind of scattered all over but certainly no drama like in the first four years of my life. That's good to hear. That's very good to hear. I think people in the spectrum are generally a little bit more sensitive to conflict and all that anyways so it must have been it's good to hear that. Let's talk a little bit about the differences between sort of big and small transitions because I know autism does present some difficulties with changes so whether it's moving to a new school or going into lockdown which suppose is a bit more of a topical point or just just simple stuff like changes to an environment. Would you say that you struggle with any sort of transitions? To some extent yes not so much if I know exactly what's going to happen and what I need to do. I'm just not very good at dealing with change or decisions that are thrown at me and I think that's the same whether it's a big thing or a relatively small thing like for example before the pandemic became a real issue my mum asked me if I would like to go to this event in a few weeks time but she needed to book tickets like in the next couple of days and I just couldn't I just couldn't quite process that because I had no idea how the next few weeks were going to be I needed time to think about whether I wanted to do it or not what else would I possibly be doing around then. So I think that's an example of how it manifests itself in me although the lockdown then meant that the event was cancelled anyway. So would you say that time pressure is quite a big sort of factor when it comes to the stress caused by transitions? Yes I'm not naturally very good at dealing with time pressure and spontaneous changes. One thing that I picked up on in my own life in terms of like small transitions into with like plans and stuff with friends I'm okay I can deal with and process quite quickly sort of like a singular change or singular small change I went on this other person's podcast called a guy called John Offord and we talked a little bit about that sort of experience of someone saying what we're going somewhere and then changing the mind and saying we're going somewhere else but then again switching back and saying that we're going to go here again on that sort of second change that's when my brain sort of gets a bit fried. Yes I don't like not knowing I like to be able to prepare and like to know what's expected of me. It's also sort of trusting in people's word of mouth if you when I was younger it might have been a bit more difficult for me to cope with that sort of singular change but as an adult those changes are easier to cope with on the instance and easy to process but definitely when it changes multiple times and it's difficult to sort of deal with that and get it straight in your head what's going to happen I guess. Yeah I think for me the hardest thing about the lockdown was right before it started and everything was changing from day to day and no one knew what was what or which way it was up or anything like that and that was really stressful for me and I think if anything that was more stressful than actually being in the lockdown because once the guidelines were set although it was restricting at least I knew how life was going to be for the foreseeable future. So I guess another fact there would be knowing the ins and outs of the change I guess. Yeah. I think both of them sort of factors are quite significant for myself as well. I definitely felt like a little bit of open water for the first sort of couple of weeks because I still wasn't sure what was going to happen and there wasn't any sort of set guidelines about what was going to happen but I guess it's nice that we have sort of an idea of how things could and couldn't go. Yeah. And that seems to help me a little bit sort of get it straight in my mind. Because right before the lockdown I spontaneously decided that it would be better if I moved back to Lefbro and I packed my room in two hours but that I just found that really stressful I just kind of felt like by the end of the day my brain had just had as much as it could handle because I'm not very good at dealing with big spontaneous changes like that anyway and it was one that I'd felt like I had to make. Yeah. And yeah that was really emotionally challenging. And in fact it would have been at about the same time of year that I left Taiwan as well right after my birthday. So strange coincidence. Yeah a bit of a parallel. With transitions sort of in the day to day things that you know that are going to happen. So do you know when you've sort of sat down after sort of a day of work and in your mind you have it set that you're going to relax and that you're just going to I don't know stay on the sofa or stay on your laptop or stay in bed. Do you find it quite hard to sort of switch that mode of relaxation off and then go and do something and then come back and relax? Do you feel like it sort of destabilizes you a little bit? Sometimes I think it depends on the situation. It's mainly change that comes with any kind of pressure that I find hard to deal with or uncertainty. If there was just like one or two things I needed to do that I'd forgotten about that would be okay. I think if it was just if somebody suddenly wanted me to go out for the evening and do something I would find that more unsettling. I get that. I think in terms of my experience with transitions I find it difficult to switch from different tasks. So I for example with something sort of as basic as cleaning so doing the dishes and stuff. I found it quite hard to get myself to start and often it can be quite can be quite a task to get myself to stop as well. Once I've started it's still sort of in that cleaning mode and that seems to be something that sort of carries on for pretty much everything for me. Yeah I'm naturally like that but when I got my job in Leicester I was commuting from Loughborough so I had to take two buses every day until I moved to Leicester. But while I was commuting I had to be quite self-disciplined for myself about about work time and rest time because you know I'd be getting the bus at 7.30 every morning and then getting back 11 to 12 hours later and then setting my alarm for 6 so I had to really make time to just unwind and then just block out the world for a bit and that was so tiring. Yeah I find it quite hard to switch off my brain. I'm not easily sort of transitioning into trying to shut my brain off and relaxing. Every night is sort of a task to try and get myself to not work or not do anything. Yeah and that sometimes affects my sleep quite a lot. Yeah I'm a I'm a light sleeper. I like sleep I need a lot of sleep but I'm not very good at getting it. There is actually there's something something interesting that I came across which um I think I think it was said that autistic people have less quality sleep so it means that we need to sleep more which is it was nice for me to hear that because there is sort of a running joke in my family that I'm sort of a little bit lazy and I don't like to get out of bed in the morning but I'm planning on sending my dad that research paper just to let him know that I'm not being lazy. See I can't actually stay asleep that late in the morning even though I've really slept badly during the night I think my my brain just relies on routine and predictability so I generally wake up at the same kind of time which is really annoying when you sleep. And how how long have you been in your job because I guess that sort of being in in long-term employment would sort of sync up your routine and with your sleeping. Yeah so I've been in my job two years now I got it in March 2018 and I moved to Leicester in May 2019 which was a huge improvement because it meant living only a 15-minute walk away from work. Yeah so I didn't know what to do with myself I'd wake up at six and think I don't need to be up just yet. Do you do you have the same sort of going to sleep schedule as well do you do you usually find yourself falling asleep quite at the same time? Roughly yes unless I'm having a bad night in which case it'll take hours but in general yeah I'll typically lie in at weekends but even then I tend to wake up at the same kind of time and then just not get up until I feel like it. Yeah I've been one of my missions recently was I'm trying to improve my executive functioning so in terms of making myself meals and cleaning and doing the drying and washing and getting to sleep at an okay time waking up at an okay time and it is starting to get a little bit easier to to do all of that stuff it's just like the initial thought of right Tom you need to get your act together do all you need to do all of this stuff you need to sort of ease yourself into it that was that was quite difficult so it's nice it's nice to hear that it is something that you can you can adapt to I guess to some extent yeah I guess like you probably have a little a little bit more experience with being in the the world of work so obviously I went to uni but I only finished about a year ago so I've only been I've only been in active employment for about six six to eight months probably so it's it's okay relatively short on that time yeah I haven't had much more I've done a lot of voluntary work and work experience and a year's internship at a bookshop the job I've got at the moment is my first full-time paid job so I've had a lot of work experience but not very much paid work experience is that yeah that makes sense yeah and I think in terms of employment it's it's it's always nice to hear that when I talk to another autistic person who is employed because there is such a big problem with employment with autistic people I think I think there was this crazy statistic that I looked I looked up when I was making this sort of Instagram quiz um for some of the the Instagrammers and it said about 85 percent of autistic university graduates don't have a job or aren't in full-time employment rather yeah I've heard that and it took me ages to get this job it's difficult isn't it it's because it's so so much about making that good first impression in the interview it puts a lot of pressure on you to sort of perform and I hope you don't mind me asking did you sort of go through any of the the disability services um to get the job or is it just something that you turned up and and didn't really tell them about your diagnosis uh I I did tell them about my diagnosis I don't think I've used any particular disability services I just kept looking for job interviews and applying for jobs and then one day I got the interview for the job I had now but but even that was really hard until I got started because I had I really struggled with communication and picking up on things that most people were expected to just instinctively learn yeah and so I need my probation extended which was a really frustrating time but I got there in the end yeah I think um we need a lot more of an explanation and we need to ask a lot more questions in order to fully get a grasp of what we're expected to do I found that I think an issue for me was that people would find it really surprising that I didn't already know such and such or that I that I needed a certain thing explaining to me or they just wouldn't understand why I made certain mistakes and to be honest a lot of time I didn't understand either it it was just it was just the way it was so I had to I had to ask a lot of extra questions I also had to figure out what I didn't know and what was going wrong with communication and find and find ways to work around all that and and also find ways to improve my performance because I really struggled with speed versus accuracy yeah and so I ended up just practicing and practicing and setting myself targets and then setting myself halfway targets within those if that was basically how I got through so you sort of broke it up into into chunks and just just sort of practice the the stuff that you you've you've got a little bit clearer when you when you ask those questions yeah it was it was emotionally exhausting but the work was in the end oh wait are your managers quite sort of helpful and understanding well yeah yeah very easy to talk to that's great yeah I mean there's an autistic person in the workplace it's never completely easy explaining your needs all your struggles and I remember one particular day after work and I was so sure that I I would not be keeping this job I just I was on my own I just broke down and cried for ages and it was a Friday so I had the weekend to think about it I was thinking I'm definitely just not going to quit this job and then by Monday I thought if I don't make it past my probation at least at least I tried so I kept going and my probation got extended and then I passed yeah I'm now I'm now the second most senior person on the team well not counting the manager nice that's a short time well yeah a lot of people don't stay very long it's quite unusual really yeah well it's great to hear that let's let's talk a little bit about um sort of the the school experience because I know we've talked we've talked about autism at school do you think that the combination of of being autistic and sort of being from a different ethnicity um affected how well you socialized and fit in at school yeah I've got a surprising amount of racism at secondary school I wasn't hunted down mercilessly but I I had a lot of boys mainly being really rude about it and um and shouting a lot of a lot of Chinese related insults I think to impress their mates um and and even boys were hitting with me and asked me to go out with them they would also say things like I want to have your Chinese babies and I'm thinking to myself in hindsight I should have just said you know that's not how reproduction works right and the fact that you're not Chinese no well Taiwan's descended from China it was a part of the same country before but it's not at the moment so biologically technically yes I am half Chinese but Taiwan feels quite strongly about being a separate country at the moment so I'll just take their word for that that's that that's really awful there I it is would would you say that it was sort of like popular group of guys that gave you the most hassle I'm generalizing a bit here I think when I was at secondary school guys were generally more crude and looking for things to laugh at and girls were more sly more sly yeah more more superficial and I I did know some really some really nice girls at school who were really patient with me but I also knew a lot who who were really unpredictable and they were less bothered about my race but more bothered about the fact I knew nothing about fashion or how to talk to people or anything like that yeah I feel feel that I was definitely not the most fashionable um kid I didn't really keep on top of my hygiene a lot when I was at school so I basically I basically walked around school with this sort of greasy mop of a head for about uh god knows how long I definitely I agree with you about sort of the differences between some bullying between females and males and it's something that I've looked into quite a lot I definitely found it sounds strange but I find the the sort of more emotional and sort of stuff that's sort of behind the scenes kind of bullying more hard to deal with than like the more sort of aggressive and boisterous kind of characters yeah it's really isolating obviously like the boisterous characters and the ones they sort of pick on you and have more of the sort of physical aspects of bullying are difficult to deal with but at least it's not sort of like a jab at sort of who you are I guess which is something that I found difficult I think when people are just being stupid it's it's easier to just not take them seriously or when people actually hurt you that that stays with you more yeah and I think I think also it's more painful when it comes from people who you you whose opinions you care about or yeah who you're friends with or who you want to be friends with than someone who either you don't know or you didn't like that much to start with yeah I feel that I think in school I did have a tendency of of attaching myself to people quite quickly if I thought that they were friendly and I very much you know sort of had that in the back of my mind saying would you like to be friends obviously I didn't but that was something that happened and yeah I guess that sort of left me open a lot to being emotionally abused by people that I liked and I think yeah I agree with you that aspect of caring about what they think was a a large factor I couldn't sort of just put it down to them being mindless monkeys because it was someone that I actually liked yeah yeah I agree with that because I know a lot with the mainstream in the mainstream my aspergis and AS or ASD1 as it is it's now called is is usually quite often represented by sort of Caucasian male people what are your thoughts on this like do you think that it presents any difficulties with you know giving people a good idea of what autism is? I think it just goes to show that being white and male is seen as the default really and then and because autism is a minority naturally people tend to assume that autistic people are the same the same way and therefore if their gender is portrayed as being white and male then that is how that is how people see autism yeah because I could imagine that because I suppose if you sort of look at it as a in a statistical mindset because autism is a minority I think one one steep cent of people in the UK are autistic I guess it would make more sense that more sort of Caucasian people would be autistic but I think what the thing that I was trying to get across is like do you think that that that wave of viewing autism as you know you know the kid how melt melting down in the supermarket do you think those those ideas in people's head has any weighting about sort of how they interact with you or how they react if you tell them that you're autistic? I think so to some extent yes I've had people suddenly change their tone when I mentioned I'm autistic and they'll have talked to me talking like I'm a child and say oh bless you and they just make a group of my teeth and actually I remember one time when I was working during my internship at the bookshop and I had a customer come in and he was firing off all sorts of complicated instructions to me and I was getting really confused so I just said I'm really sorry I'm autistic I struggle with communication and he told me that I could get healing from God for that and I'm saying no no I'm not ill I don't need to be healed there's nothing wrong with me I just communicated a little bit differently but he was like no no you can get healing for that you can be cured and this just went on for ages until eventually I got the point across and he left and my colleagues who were with me afforded me I suppose it's difficult in that situation because obviously in in sort of a normal setting if sort of a stranger comes up to you or a friend of a friend and talks to you about it then you can sort of palm them off I guess or at least just show disinterest in what they're saying but do you think it is difficult in that scenario because you sort of have to you know that whole thing about customer service you not not really knowing where the line is I guess I just kind of stood I kind of stood my ground really and said my bit and kept saying it without saying anything antagonistic and I think that was the best I could really do in that situation yeah and I was feeling really small and shaky inside but I just made myself keep talking I can imagine that wasn't a very pleasant experience no but it's one of those stories that I just laugh at now as with many things in life that's good to hear because I had a conversation with sort of a few a couple of people um recently about sort of representation of autism and I think that there are a lot of difficulties when it comes to criticizing shows or media programs when they include autistic people because I think I'm sort of weighing up the ways of viewing it I don't know whether to um make it make a big deal of it and and want want to change things or you know sort of ground it in the head and so I realized that maybe it's just just the case of sort of statistics and likelihood I guess it can be sort of a little bit of a gray area when it comes to representation because obviously not everybody's the same and someone's representation and autism is different to someone else's I guess yeah and I think it's interesting that you mentioned this because I recently blogged about representation and minority categories and why it's important I suppose that the trick is to make the character nuanced and actually do your research instead of just portraying a stereotype but also I suppose trying to educate people as to what it's like being that person as well as creating relatable content for people who are like that person if that makes sense yeah I agree with you with the the sort of nuanced aspect I think we do have a tendency in in all areas of media and TV shows to exaggerate things and I don't think that's just just for just specifically for autistic people it does mean that so those typical traits seem to be very heavily exaggerated and from from the things that I've seen yeah one thing I discussed in my blog post actually was how representation or lack of it can influence your sense of identity and sense of belonging in the world growing up and I think people kind of take it for granted when their neurotype or race or sexuality or whatever is normalized and so when someone doesn't fit that category it kind of installs them with a sense of shame and a sense of otherness and that's actually a really lonely thing one of the hardest things for me about fitting more than one minority category is feeling like I'm a bit of a spectacle like I'm always having to explain myself and still having to deal with the occasional racist cap call and trying to explain that no I'm not unemotional just because I have autism and it just it just makes me feel like an eternal outsider even when I was even when I was being born though a nurse is crowding around just because my mum was white and therefore we were different so I've kind of been on the outside all my life really yeah I can sort sort of get a picture in my head of that like I think I think um it's very difficult anyway to be autistic and and try to assign yourself I guess like a group or at least get a clear picture of sort of your identity but I don't reckon that there's there's many sort of people or at least people that people I've seen that are a minority and are and are autistic as well I guess that could feel even more isolating than just being autistic I suppose yeah one thing I've become aware of in recent years is although I resent feeling like an outsider especially when it's real and not just in my head at the same time that's kind of become my comfort zone because I know how to be that person and I expect to be the different one and the one that most people don't really want to interact with so I'm aware that's a bit of an unhealthy pattern but I think that that's how being different has kind of shaped my perception of myself hmm but there was a particular sort of period in my life where it was about three or four years where I did sort of did a lot of reading into psychology and sociology and autism and mental health and I basically just wrote a lot about my experiences and my perceptions of other people um and the interactions and and basically just tried to work on it and one of the sort of positive things that came from doing all of those was that by integrating as much of my sort of inner world or inner personality with um how I represented myself on the outside it actually drew me to people that were similar or at least had that sort of friendliness and non-judgmental attitude together with me and and these these people are quite good friends of mine and I think sort of having that experience of not feeling like people get you and not feeling like you really fit a box and that you sort of like a loose part was something that changed it over the course of you know that sort of free four-year period yeah most of my friends uh pretty similar to me not autistic but similar in other ways in terms of personality and interests so that that's been really good recently but it I do find myself thinking it would be nice if I had more people who I don't have to explain my needs or my experiences too because they experience the same thing I have I have met and I still know a small number of other autistic people but it's not quite the same as when most people are like you yeah yeah I do I do think that that is that is something that you know that that sort of feeling of being different is is quite a large thought in a lot of people's minds yeah well when I was in Taiwan I was I was half English and had the only English woman for miles as my mother and then soon as in it as I was in England I was half Taiwanese and in a single parent family and I I was also undiagnosed autistic so I I didn't know how to interact with other kids and didn't respond to play struggled with instructions and sensory overload and I basically just stood out like a sore thumb wherever I was do you think that you experience I know I know you I appreciate that you might have been quite young but do you have any sort of fleeting memories of any sort any sort of like racism in Taiwan I don't remember I don't think so my mom apparently used to have a lot of people shouting hello or how do you do at her similar to how people shout me how or can each you are at me actually which I think is quite ironic I don't think I personally received any racism I think we were seen as beautiful and exotic really that's good just because you know white or at least mum was white and I was half white that's that that's really really interesting I think because I I lived in Thailand for a year like I did this sort of placement this sandwich year course where I went and researched mosquitoes in Thailand and it is really strange because they have this they have words for foreigners because obviously Thai Thai people Thailand has a lot of tourists especially from the US and UK and Australia and I suppose even China to be honest that seems to be sort of like the bulk of people sort of from the west and then all that and there is sort of it is a little bit racist from my experience because I learnt a little bit of Thai when I was over there and you know when we sort of pass people on the streets or you know when we're doing something outside or you know walking up a mountain or going to a lake or something there are a lot of comments and they they have this term for us called like pharang which is is basically just like alien or foreigner rude I guess they are exposed to a lot of foreign people who are you know sort of going there for the the party experience and possibly causing quite a ruckus and I guess a large portion of them are from England considering how sort of wild British people can get when they're having a drink yeah but they do they have that they things are more expensive for foreigners so it doesn't doesn't matter if you live there or not if you are of any other ethnicity then white then Thai then everything is markedly more expensive an example would be like a Muay Thai fight if you wanted to go see a Muay Thai fight it would be 50p in the UK currency but if you're white then it's 20 quid yeah I used to get quite annoyed about it it's like I was living there at the time but I get I don't know it there must be at some point where you consider sort of the the financial difference between most so people who go traveling to Thailand and the actual sort of Thai currency I guess there's some aspects of that I just thought it was it was quite funny because if the same thing happened in England then you know there'd be hell on about it you know there'd be a little bit of charges of racism within businesses and all that but that's literally my own experience with any sort of racial discrimination I guess obviously I can't imagine what it would be like to sort of grow up in the UK with a different sort of racial background yeah it's uh interesting to to hear your take on it what do you think society could do better to accommodate autistic people moving to the UK um I think public transport could be more autism friendly and I'm not really thinking about my experience of moving to the UK because I was so little my mum was completely responsible for me yeah but as I think as I grew older and I had to become more dependent independent I found I find airports and larger train stations really overwhelming so the busyness and all the noise and not knowing where to go or what to do so I find that really difficult I think I think stuff that would benefit from knowing how an autistic person might struggle and how they can help yeah in any sort of customer service then arena I think we do need at least one or two staff members who have a sort of brief understanding of autism yeah because it can make it quite difficult if you're in that sort of new place and you're melting down um and then you know you'll go up to someone and in their eyes you'll just be someone who looks I guess a little bit crazy um yeah if they don't understand what's going on well for example a few years ago I think it was quite a while ago I think I was a teenager I tried to go through you know that doorway that that beeps and then things suspicious about you and you walk through it yeah yeah I tried walking through that and for some reason it beeped and my automatic reaction was to step back I didn't know you're supposed to stay where you are and that stepping back looked suspicious and so I was I was immediately surrounded by security staff you thought that I was up to something dodgy and my mom had to explain that I just panicked and it beeped and I had no idea what I was supposed to do yeah I think especially in those sort of highly stressful environments it would be helpful I think I think in terms of like the places that need the most autism awareness I think any situation where a lot of people love autistic people would find themselves in such as like doctor surgeries or university places I think that there are a lot of sort of areas of life where just a tiny bit of autism training would be good like bounces and yeah and all that like there was this particular incident where I had a meltdown in in a pub and I sort of shut myself off in one of the bathrooms because obviously it's it's quite embarrassing for me and there was this this one bouncer who had sort of a relative or a brother or something who was autistic and he was absolutely amazing with me he taught me down he taught me outside he made sure that I got on a taxi just that little bit of sort of empathy and and understanding was nice because I feel like a lot of other bouncers would have just put it down to me taking drugs or drinking too much or something like that you know he sounded really lovely yeah I don't remember much obviously because my brain was obviously wired and hyperactive and frazzled that I can't really remember much of it but I just remember that that that experience was made a lot easier because of that particular person yeah any I think any any situation where you've got people who are interacting with the public you know just having that sort of understanding from at least one of the staff would be immeasurably helpful yeah see with me it's generally not very obvious because I tend to internalize it a lot and I'm not naturally very expressive I tend to kind of just shut down and retreat inwards if I'm feeling overwhelmed I've had panic attacks before but they were kind of the exception rather than the norm generally if I'm in a place like an airport or a London underground station for too long I kind of just I drop all social skills and become unresponsive and just can't quite mentally process anything yeah but to the outside that's not as obvious as if I was crying or running away or whatever yeah I um I used to shut down a lot in situations where I didn't feel comfortable with sort of I guess sort of melding down it's very strange isn't it it's it sort of feels like all of your ties to what's going on around you have just been voluntarily or involuntarily severed it's like yeah I think it's something that um my girlfriend struggled with quite a lot when we were sort of first speaking and first getting into a relationship it's it can be difficult to explain what's going on yeah I usually shut down as sort of an instant response when my brain gets too frazzled but it's it's usually some pressure that causes me to melt down when I'm in those states whether it's like social or anything like that would you would you say that like if if you get pushed to a certain amount when when you are in that sort of shut down but that's when it it starts to get a little bit more sort of tense and difficult I think so yes I'm not always very good at explaining my needs or my struggles at the best of times but especially when I'm doing really badly so it's something I have to really think about and be aware of and just basically be prepared for really not not as I melt down a lot or anything but I find it pays to to know in advance how to explain what I need or why I'm struggling yeah yeah I agree with that with the sort of um moving to a different country obviously you said that your your mother sort of explained to you what was um going to happen and you obviously you said that you don't really remember much about being that age which I guess is it's quite common yeah but do you think that you know for example if someone who was you know like eight or ten or even even a little bit older moving to a different country do you think that having someone available to talk to about sort of the transition and and the experience of being in the airport and um the sort of things that that might typically happen when you move to a different place do you think having that sort of stuff that sort of stuff available to you would be helpful yeah and to and to adults as well I mean when I was moving from Taiwan to the UK it wasn't just the travel that I needed to deal with you know it was leaving leaving my life behind losing touch with my father but um but also the fact that we thought we'd be staying in touch with him and then he just didn't stay in touch and didn't support us I mean he's wrong like every few years or so but that's about it but my mum thought that he was going to still be in in touch so that was one thing that um that wasn't clear to me or or to any of us really so I I think that was partly why I just never fully understood how fine this all was and the implications of what was going on well I think as you as you get older you sort of realise the utility and processing and understanding and coming to terms with um things that happened yeah my friends has been recently having quite a lot of dreams about their father and and all that and he's he's obviously not in contact and he doesn't seem to show any interest in her life but for her especially in her situation it's it's not really going to change yeah I mean my sister never knew our father because um my mum was still pregnant with her when we left Taiwan yeah it really so it really saddens me to hear that that kind of stuff like it's it's awful when you know I think sorry go on to be honest it just because it happened at such an early age it's just kind of part of my history it's not something that that is a constant struggle in my life every single day I mean it's not good but it's it's just always been that way hmm I suppose you've had a lot of time to adapt and yeah live life I guess yeah yeah thank thank you very much for for being honest and opening up a lot your your experiences and hopefully some of the things that we have mentioned around sort of accommodation for for people moving over between countries would make make some some sort of impacts like I hope so well I'll probably write a blog post about it one of these days to be honest I mean I've been I've been blogging since 2013 so not going to stop soon would you like to sort of give us three main things to take away from the podcast sort of three points that are really you really want to emphasise um I suppose one thing would be that if you're in a minority or more than one minority you're more than a spectacle or a stereotype and I really wish people understood that better I'd like to say there's nothing to be ashamed of about it and I also want people who haven't had much experience of that to understand how lonely it can be and how hard it is always having to explain yourself to people and people always assuming we're going to be a certain way I mean very often it's just little things but they build up and it really it's it's kind of hard in ways that people don't expect shapes your perception of of life yeah brilliant well that's uh that's a good I always find that this sort of reflection on on on the podcast is quite difficult to do because you sort of get into that that zone of talking and then you suddenly have to sort of step back and think about what you've talked about yeah but yeah I think I think those are some some good points to sort of end on getting an idea or at least trying to sort of picture what it can be like to to be in a sort of minority group is useful just just for an understanding of sort of the emotional implications of its um during childhood and as someone grows up I guess well let's finish on the the wonderful little question that I ask everybody um who is autistic okay I'm prepared you are good very good yeah what does autism mean to you grace uh I'm just going to answer it fairly literally um it means I think differently I don't read people well at least not naturally and I have some dyspraxic tendencies but it also means I have good senses when it comes to things like music and and cooking and other creative pursuits and I I don't romanticize or sugarcoat autism I don't say it's my superpower or anything like that but I'm also trying to steer away from seeing is it seeing to something to be ashamed of because I spent most of my secondary school years afraid to talk about autism because I was so embarrassed about being different and it was a it was a real taboo subject for me and I've sort of gone the other way now and I'm I'm about as out and proud about it as I'm going to get so yeah it's nothing it's nothing that I romanticize but I'm not ashamed of it anymore or I try not to be but thank you very much for that would you like to give everybody some links uh to things like your blog or your social media or or anything that you want people to be able to to see and follow upon so I have a facebook page it's called unwritten grace autism and writing and that's where I share my blog which is unwritten grace or one word dot wordpress.com you can also follow me on twitter at unwritten grace l i'm hesitating because I only very recently changed my twitter name but I think that's it and on instagram which I'm still very new to unwritten grace blogs very good thank you very much for that and as always I will put those down in the description for you guys to check out I definitely recommend you go and check out the the blog because as I as you said grace like you've been doing it for quite a long time so yeah I haven't missed a month so how many articles do you think you have there I'm just I'm looking for like the archive section I just I just can't really count because when I first started doing it I was just doing it as and when as long as I managed at least one a month yeah um oh actually I've just remembered I did look at the statistics once and I think I've I think I'm in the 160s now for a number of posts I've ever done yeah it took me a while to remember that sorry no don't worry about it but yeah there is there is a lot of content on there and you you write about sort of food and different um aspects like university and um a lot of a lot of cool stuff I try and alternate between um an autism themed post and a non autism themed post and I've created categories for different sorts of blog posts so like you say food my time at university people thoughts on life etc let me give out a little bit of um a few links of my own obviously you can find the 40 other podcasts on Spotify and Apple podcasts very easy very easy to find you can also check out my youtube channel um which is asperger's growth where I make videos on autism and you can follow me on social medias like facebook twitter and instagram at asperger's growth manage to get those taglines and then obviously so the big one which is more of a recent thing I have a website that I've made for my documentary and it's aspergersinsociety.com you want to go check that out there's a few blog posts a few behind the scenes videos and of course the main film so if you want to go check that out I'll be very much appreciative have you enjoyed your experience on the 40 odd podcast grace stumbling over my legs at the risk of saying all cliches it's been a it's been a real been a real honor to be involved in this same with storing on the spectrum it you know out of all this uncertainty and change it's actually been really good to feel like I'm I'm achieving something brilliant even if it has been through other people putting me in touch with more other people well that's how the that's how the media stuff goes like yeah very much um about who you know when look I guess to some extent well my stepdad got me in touch with Hermione and then Hermione got me in touch with you so I literally have just been getting by on people talking to other people about me it's been it's been fun though really enjoyed it I'm glad I'm very glad about that and on that note if you like grace want to come on to the 40 odd podcast you can always get in contact with me at my email address aspergersgrowth at gmail.com I hope everybody is having a good day we're still in the midst of lockdown but we're going through strong hope you've got that routine sorted out hope you're staying a hashtag hydrated and I will see you in the next episode of the 40 ot podcast see you later guys