 Okay, cool, Mike is working, I think, hopefully. Right, welcome to the another Aughty Time stream. I'm just gonna get Instagram fired up. I realized that I haven't scheduled this one, so I know that not many people are gonna show up as last time, but we're gonna give it a go anyway. Just set up my Instagram. Okay, okay. Right, this is gonna be a bit tricky to sort out. Ooh, that's not too good. Sorry, guys, just setting up my camera. Thank you, Doki. Cool, so sorry in advance. I know that usually I put out some like scheduled things for doing these chats. Realized that I haven't done it this time. I was gonna actually do a live stream at 9.30, but I have a podcast that I'm doing with this last called Rachel Barcelona, who's like this. She's like Miss Florida person. She does like Broadway shows and stuff, which is really cool. Hi, Austin. Thanks for joining. Hi, how am I? I'm Good Moonlight. How are you doing? It's been a bit of a busy week, as per usual, but I'm feeling good, not too bad. So usually within these live streams, I will do a Q&A. So it will be very much hijack, my designated interviewer. You're doing well, Moonlight, good, I'm glad. So usually this is kind of a place to, because I know that I'm not too active when it comes to like comments and doing stories and stuff. So this is really an opportunity for you to ask about any of the podcast stuff that I've done, any of the Instagram posts that I've done, any of the reels. And more or less just give you a chance to kind of ask some questions. We're probably gonna be streaming for about an hour. So I'll probably talk about QWAP past nine, as usual. See, we're getting some people in. Hi, Katie. Hi, Axel. Thank you for joining. So yeah, I don't tend to have like a schedule for what I do in these things. I try to keep it quite casual. So I can go through some of the stuff that I've created like during the week and stuff. I know that there's quite a few things that I make during the week, but we can go over that stuff if that would be helpful. Hi, Fin Tam. I am well, thank you. Oh, thank you very much, Christine. I'm trying to get stay consistent, but it's tough. I'm going on like a creating content on like a two-weekly basis. So one week I'll create on my posts and reels and stuff and the other week I'll focus on my business, try and set up my business. Meanlight says, I appreciate you communicating about the ND community. Of course, you know, I had someone, I think ask a question recently asking like, am I going to do anything for like autism awareness week or autism acceptance week or something? And I was like, you know, usually most of the time in the past, I have done. I have done something specifically about autism awareness week or autism acceptance week. But this time, I don't know. I was, I was chatting with my friend, Livia from Live Label 3. And we were talking about things like Christmas and events and holidays and specifically autism awareness week. And it kind of dawned on me that, you know, do I really need to change anything? Because I already produce like loads of autism acceptance and awareness content. So it seems a bit silly for me to like double my workload already just to kind of get more stuff out. But we had a question here. Katie asking about how cool to have an interview with Temple Grandin. Were you nervous? I guess I was. I wasn't as nervous as I thought I'd be. I was kind of, it was a bit of a while ago. I was kind of reusing some of my old podcast and shit. I think she was the first person on the season too. It's the first like video interview that I did, which is really cool. I wasn't nervous, but I think because the way that Temple is, she's great to hear about her experiences. But she's kind of like a, she drives her own car, you know, like she talks what she wants to talk about. So to be honest, it was quite hard to kind of steer the conversation in a way that I wanted to. It was a bit kind of hard to get in a word and edgeways sometimes, but it was good. It was good. It was a really great opportunity for me, obviously, because, you know, I think up until that point, I didn't really take my whole podcasting thing very seriously, because I don't know. I just felt, I don't know. It's kind of hard when you create stuff online. It's like hard to gauge exactly how well you're doing or what point you should be at. So I remember when I had that interview with Temple, it was kind of like, oh, so I'm actually being taken seriously now, which was pretty cool. You will see that I am sporting my Udi today. I'm not really feeling like getting dressed up and stuff. So we're going, we're getting chilled today. I'm feeling quite like a relaxed and laid-back mood. Fintam asks, when you were a child, were you nonverbal? And can you advise when I was diagnosed with autism? I think I was up until a certain age, maybe a bit of a speech delay. Not too much, though. I can't give specifics of it, but I was told about my diagnosis when I was 10 years old. And I remember it being quite impactful for me back then. So it's good that I was kind of told at an early age because it kind of validates a lot of my experiences up until that point, even though I was only 10. I still kind of noticed and I was aware that I was like pretty different to a lot of people. So that was good for me. I would always recommend people try and tell their kids. I know that there's some people, like some parents who are really nervous about it, like all what they're gonna think, they're gonna think that they are, like, if, you know, it depends on the way that you frame it really. If you're framing it as a bad thing and that everything's gonna be terrible from now on, then obviously they're gonna be upset. But if you frame it as this kind of positive to neutral thing, I think it can be quite transformative for a lot of kids. It was for me. Got a question from Austin. What is dissociation for you? Well, I mean, psychologically it's a feeling where you are. There's like two aspects of dissociation. There's de-personalization and there's de-realization. I think there might be a couple more sort of subcategories that people have explored, but those tend to be like the main ones that we think about when we talk about like dissociation and stuff. It feels, I mean, it's very highly linked to like things like anxiety and depression and stuff. So it's kind of this feeling where the de-personalization aspect is you don't really feel like you are you. Like you can have experiences where you kind of look at your hands and you're like, how am I moving my hand? And you just don't feel look at yourself in the mirror and you're like, is this really me? And then you have like the de-realization aspects, which is it's kind of more outward facing towards people where they're like, if you have de-realization, you kind of feel like you're in a dream. And I have quite a lot of experience with that because pretty much all of my teenage life was just constantly in this very dissociated state. So it's difficult. I mean, if no one's ever experienced dissociation before, if they've ever indulged in some ethanol, dodges some alcohol, it produces dissociation. And there's other stuff that produces it as well, but it's, yeah, I hope that explains it. It's a funny one. It happens a lot when I'm in like a meltdown or a shutdown. Like you get it like really intensely. No worries, Finn. Katie Wakes asked, how do you feel about the term aspergers? That's a question and a half. Well, I mean, to be honest, up until a point my name on Instagram was aspergers growth and I kind of changed it because it wasn't, I kind of wanted to reach a bit more of a wider community. And whilst I kind of firmly believe that someone should be able to identify how they want to, and that it doesn't sort of immediately make them this horrible person because they use it. That's my thoughts on it. I don't really feel equipped or like I want to go into like the specifics of why it could be a bad thing why it could be fine for some people to use because it is a very sort of controversial topic for a lot of people, a lot of autistic people. But to be honest, I'm kind of more, I have more of an issue with the sort of the more like recent DSM changes like they're the ASD one, ASD two, ASD three classifications because to me that kind of sounds a little bit like where although we're getting rid of these terms like PDD NOS or other, you know, fragile, fragile acts, you know, other types of diagnoses that kind of come under this autism umbrella. I feel like it's doing more to feed into that like functioning labels kind of thing. It's just like, they're literally giving us like levels of autism, ASD one, two and three. It just kind of feels a bit weird. So I'm not too keen on those recent changes in the terminology either, which is, you know, it's interesting, it's interesting to think about. I don't really tend to bother too much with specifics around language. You know, I feel very strongly that we have so many issues at the moment within, you know, autistic people tend to have a lot of issues in life, not necessarily just because of the way that we are, but the interaction of us with other people. We have a lot of sort of negative life experiences. So I tend to focus on that stuff really. I don't tend to get bogged down too much with the terminology and language use because, you know, I feel like there's more things that we really need to focus on to improve things. You have to excuse me. I'm being very ungraciously sipping out of a pop bowl, but I did not have time. I went to the hairdresser's earlier, so I didn't have time to get a cup. That's a very, very good like rationalization for doing that. I really just can be bothered. Finn asks a recent Irish autism group found that 85% of autistic people are under-employed. What's your take on this? Do you think that companies are doing enough? Yeah, well, it's very apparent. I mean, you can go so far as to look into the links between autism and learning disabilities and workplace, that's like even lower. It's like 5%, it's crazy. And to be honest, the majority of autistic people that I've met and I know, you know, they're more than capable of doing well in the workplace. So I think it's, companies are kind of at this stage where they are trying to improve diversity within the workforce, but they don't so much focus on the actual like practical side of it, like the inclusivity practices. So they want people to work, but they don't want to make those adjustments that keep the autistic person employed long-term. I know that it like specifically in places like America, one of the government's pieces of advice for reasonable adjustments is to find some way to fire the autistic person, which is a bit crazy. Jack says, I spoke to a senior manager in a big organization recently. She seemed to be very clueless about what would be needed to help autistic people into the workplace, very naive. Yeah, and the thing is they like to make it this kind of policy and procedural thing, whereas really it's, you know, the best way that people can make these adjustments is by listening to the person. And I think that could be said for anybody who's going to the workplace, you know, just having an invested interest in the person's work life or mental health or overall wellbeing. And they just don't seem to do that because they're just all, they're like, oh, well, let's check the policies on what we need to do on this. It's like, let your employee work with headphones on. Listen to those. Let them not work in an open space office and perhaps spend more time at home, working at home. It's just all very common sense stuff that I think is just, all of this stuff is held back because there's no like guidance for them. Whereas if they were to just ask the autistic person themselves about what would be helpful and sort of do some work with them, maybe get them like an advocacy person instead of a job coach. So I think a lot of us don't really need those job coaches. We just need like someone to be in our corner and like highlight the importance of getting those adjustments. So it's a lot of like, you know, it's the systems in place. It's like the one to funnel you down a certain route. And then if that very specific route doesn't work for you, then it's your fault instead of like actually saying like, hey, it's an individual thing and everyone needs different types of support and different types of help. And really just what you need is someone who's open minded and actually cares about you to make that work. I think that that would be good. I mean, there's lots of things that I could say about, you know, perhaps social isolation and bullying at work is a big issue, you know? Christine says, my good friend just got fired with no explanation other than things with her coworker are getting harder. My friend is autistic with a lower need of fundamental supports, but very communicative. Yeah, that's a tough thing. They don't want to like putting the work and for a lot of us, you know, just speaking as myself, it can take us longer to get into the groove of working, especially if we're joining an organization where we're doing something that we haven't done before and sort of trying to understand where we fit in, what we have to do, understanding the processes, getting in like a routine with things. It's tough. And they don't tend to have a lot, they tend to have a very short fuse on what they deem reasonable. I mean, you could talk about like the idea of like tokenism as well. It's like a lot of companies are like, oh, we hire these disabled people and then you look into the details of it and it's like, well, yeah, they've hired these disabled people, but did they actually make it past the two year mark of being employed or the one year mark or make it past the, what do you call it, that time period where you are employed but you're not like fully there? I can't remember what it's called. But getting past that, you know, you have a lot of talk around like the revolving door syndrome of being autistic and trying to find a workplace to work in. It's like kind of going around and around. You go in one organization, you stay there for a bit, doesn't work, they fire you, or they say, oh, it's not a good fit and you're not working with the team or something and then they get rid of you and then you go into another place and they're like, oh, yes, we're hiring disabled people. There's not enough focus on the inclusivity aspect of it. And I think if organizations can really see the sort of the bigger long-term picture of having a different brain within the workforce, I think it could do a lot for them in terms of actually like improving their business. So I think there needs to be more talk around, you know, exactly. It's not necessarily an act of charity. You know, it doesn't need to be an act of charity. Like all these poor autistic people, let's get them in. They don't have a lot of work. We need to get them in, take care of them. Not really. Maybe some people, possibly, but I think for a lot of people, it could be very beneficial to the business in the long-term. Jack says, I absolutely agree with that. It's also very temporary focused. Okay, you can be autistic at the start, but not too long. Yeah, true. Oh my God. Yeah, simple, not a huge ask real. Yeah, there's very simple things that don't cost any money that they can do very easily, but they just don't do it because it's not part of the process. It's tough. To be honest, I'm kind of transitioning to kind of going self-employed at this point because it's, it is quite tough. And if you want to make a living of, you know, being employed by a business or an organization, you know, you'd want to move at the ranks. And if they view this as this fragile person that can't fit in and can't do the job without supports, they may not be so readily offering you sort of higher positions and stuff, which is, I think is a tough thing. I definitely say that. Finn says, I wonder, has working from home helped. Um, yeah, I mean, I think to a certain extent, I wouldn't be able to find my organization that I work for about time if I wasn't, you know, working from home. They literally like the opposite sides of the country to me. It's like a six, seven hour train journey. So it's, you know, pretty impossible for them to get rid of me as a home worker, unless they want me to make a commute to work for an hour and then commute back. Katie says, absolutely, like most of NASA are autistic. Are they? I did not know that. I can imagine. It's like the real I made about autism in, what is it, Silicon Valley, you know, makes sense. A lot of the sort of the forward thinking, you know, creating ideas, looking into the specifics of things, specifically around like coding and stuff. Can imagine that there's a lot of autistic people who are really good at that. I'm not one of them. I'm not a coder. I'm not good at maths. It's not my thing. Got like a C in statistics. Hated it. I did it as part of my degree in Biomed. This is the worst part of it. I think it's one of the reasons why I really like stayed away from research because there's so much like maths and stats involved and it just absolutely boggles my brain. It's not like the way that I like to work. I'm more like focused on words and language and creating things. I've got a post coming out at some point next in the next week or something. Where I'm talking about like some autism stereotypes. Also another piece of information that you can look forward to is I'm gonna go back to doing more speaky things. I have been kind of leaning on doing the pointing rails where I point to different pieces of text and stuff, but I've transitioned to doing some more speaking videos and it's gonna be more focused on my autistic experience and my thoughts on things. It's one of the reasons why I hate doing the speaky ones is because I don't like scripting things. I don't like, you know, it takes me so long to do stuff if I script things. So really what I'm trying to do is kind of present myself with a question and something, a topic sort of around autism and then I'll just kind of speak on it for a minute, which is taking a bit of time to get used to doing that kind of thing. I did some recordings last week because I am not, if you know me and you know my podcast, I'm not a short form content person. I find that just so difficult. So I'm really trying to like improve my verbal speed. That's something that I've been trying to work on recently. Speaking faster, getting out there and not scripting because scripting doesn't work for me. I get, even at the point where I'm like, if I'm shooting a video and there's like a script there, I find it really hard to like keep track of where I am on the script. And I've done it in like public speaking events as well. It just really hasn't worked. You know, I love people come up to me and like, oh my God, you're a good public speaker. You don't use a script and you're like using them as using like the PowerPoint as reference. I'm like, well, actually I just can't script. So I just like practiced it a few times on my own in my room, listening to the same music that I would do when I'm speaking and just kind of go from there. Works a bit better for me. And I think it comes across as a bit more authentic. So, you know, I'm running with that. We'll see. We'll see what you think. Let me know. If those, these new reels are gonna be good. They're probably gonna come out next week. Funny thing is I actually, I actually filmed like 50 of them. I didn't realize how many I did. I basically just scripted off like a bunch of different topics on like a notes page and just went through and just like spoke a minute on each of them. Didn't realize I was doing it for about two hours. I've got about 50 videos done, which is massive. And I was like, oh my God, it's like, you know, I was thinking with the pointing reels that it was gonna take a bit more pressure off me, like creating stuff. But if I can just like knock 50 videos out and just have them like come out over the course of like a couple months or so. This is a lot less effort. So I was like, hey, you know, people like listening to me apparently. So let's go for that. Christine says that we need to be stronger bringing in a diversified income than NTs for stability. Yeah, I have to admit it's not something that, you know, most of the stuff that I do around like the workplaces talking to neurotypicals, people like people who own stuff to help them understand like the value of autistic people and the types of things that actually work just beyond these policies and reasonable adjustments. So I don't do a lot of work like, you know, helping or talking about like how to do interviews and how to apply for things and stuff like that. But it's something that I'm looking at. I think I may do in the future. I'm just very attentive about like offering people advice cause, you know, specifically like around the social things because a lot of people, you know, with concepts like masking, it's kind of a very overarching thing. And a lot of people have their own ideas of what's considered to be masking and not. So I find that like trying to find that line between social skills and masking is quite hard. But I'm trying. Cause I think it is a really important thing. That's an over aspect of the workplace, charisma, social skills, you know, you can find lots of people who really do not have a proficiency in the job that they're doing, but they're good at connecting with people. They're good at communicating. They're gonna tell them people what to do and stuff and so they kind of rise these ranks. And you get quite a few of those people within the working world, especially like with care, like from what people have told me. Like specifically those environments seem to like bring up like the more, what do you say, extroverted charisma type people, which seems really funny to me cause like a lot of the people that I deem as like really caring people tend to be quite introverted. Really interesting thinking about it because I think one thing that I've found is that a lot of like the good teachers, a lot of the good people who work in care, you know, the ones who really get sort of emotionally invested in the people that are looking after our teaching, those tend to be the people who don't necessarily continue in that line of work. They tend to find it quite hard, like in the long run, if they're working sort of with elderly people, if they're working with kids, sometimes we don't really have the temperament to kind of deal with it on a daily basis if we're so like invested in these people and their outcomes and stuff. But I don't know. Obviously I'm not speaking on everybody and there are obviously great teachers who can care people like pretty much everywhere and they're great. But I just kind of saw that as some kind of trend from speaking to people. So my own experiences as well. It's interesting. Shotform is so hard, yep. It is tough, especially if you really liked monologue for long periods of time. Yeah, that's another thing. And to the point a lot quicker, I'm trying to do that instead of, because it's different. Like if you're podcasting, it's kind of, you're kind of trying to set out like a narrative of what you're speaking about. But when you're doing reels, short form content, it's like boom, boom, boom, you just gotta be punchy and you've gotta be like, sure and you just gotta speak really quickly. And I found that really anxiety provoking for a long time. But I think just practicing and practicing and trying it, trying it out, trying different things out. It's become a lot more easy nowadays, definitely. Christine says, I'm just saying we have to find our own sources. I found our source of income from a variety of sources since our employment stability, isn't that? Yeah, I'd probably agree with you on that, you know. It's tough. I know some autistic people who would be very applicable for getting benefits and job seekers and PIP and all of that kind of stuff but they don't because they don't really feel like they deserve it or they don't feel like they have a hard time enough to do that. And I'm like, damn, I just wish. And I understand the whole process of going and filing for disability benefits and stuff is it's a rocky, rocky thing sometimes. And it requires you to sort of highlight a lot of the things that you struggle with in an interpersonal setting, which I think was the hardest thing for me. I was thankful that, you know, my mom, you know, she's great and she kind of helped me in those situations. Because I tend to underplay things a lot. And I think that's an issue that a lot of people might find when you like going for those disability benefits and stuff. Got a comment from bit0111, as a dyslexic YouTuber, YouTube shorts and text are painful. I can't read fast enough and shorts can't be around, rewound a few seconds. Yeah, but you can sort of do it if you like click on it and then you like do that. I think so, yeah, maybe I'm wrong. But it's, yeah. I don't enjoy reels and shorts very much myself. I am very, I do watch videos that I like and now wear long essays and that's the kind of stuff that I enjoy. So I always sort of gravitate towards that kind of context. It's like, I enjoy listening and enjoy doing it. So it's good. Christine says, no shame in it, in the benefits provides stability, definitely. And we do definitely need support because society is not totally inclusive. And as you mentioned, like the statistics around employment are bad. I think it's perfectly fine to do that if you can. I'd like to go to a point where I don't need to do that kind of thing. But I think for the time being, while I'm young, while I'm kind of establishing myself, I think it's definitely needed. Angela says, I only just found about access to work. Yeah, that's another thing. Finding services out, like, I think a lot of people, they would probably go and get things and actually get the supports in place if they knew exactly what was available for them. Like, if you Google autism supports and stuff, I feel like there should be a page right at the top that gives you an idea of what all the things that you could do. Like, whether they're places in your local organization that could help you or benefits or workplace adjustments and stuff. I think there needs to be a lot more transparency around like, what can you actually get? What support can you actually get? Because the post-18 support systems for autistic adults is very much you have to go and find out yourself. I didn't know about access to work until my job coach mentioned it to me. I was like, oh, they actually have that. And there were also the like, with the internships and stuff like, where can you find it? Crazy. Christine says, vacation or rehab in every state in the US pays state equivalent for college tuition. That's cool. I don't know if we have that kind of thing in the UK. As I said, like, it's hard to find stuff. Like, if I can find it and I know what I can get, then I'll go for it, but no. It's like, I had to do so much research to try and find an organization that will do like, support for like, people who wanted to go self-employed. I had to actually find the organizations out there. There wasn't like this succinct process that I had to go through. You have to like, Google and scroll down like, what five or six pages, try and find something that actually works. And you can actually apply for it and you can actually get. It's so hard. Like, it definitely needs to be a lot more streamlined, I think. We've got some questions in the Instagram button. I see that Marcy's asked a comment on YouTube. Tips for studying as an autistic human being. I love that phrasing. You know, if, well, I think it very much depends on the person. I think having a good schedule is important. I think one of the issues that I had when I went to uni is that I had a very strong schedule for like a year, but I completely burnt myself out because I was just studying so much. I didn't like put blockers on when I'd stop studying. So I think, you know, I think the first steps to having like a good time studying for like university and college and stuff is to have all the aspects of your life kind of down to a T, which is hard. Like, when are you gonna socialize? When are you gonna eat? When are you gonna shop? Like getting that structure around you studying, I think is a really underrated thing, definitely. In terms of focusing, I feel like if you're interested in the topic, it's like you're especially interested. It wouldn't be, it's not gonna be too hard to like focus and study, but I would really put an emphasis on learning or getting adjustments in place around exams because I don't know about everyone else, but I found exams so hard. I had no idea what they were asking me. I did like all the past papers and I read into it. And as soon as they asked this question and it just wasn't like the other questions on the past papers, I was like, what do they actually want from me? What are they wanting me to talk about? And the further that you get on in university, the more obscure the questions are, the more like wide the questions are. And so it's so hard to like think of, course material over the course of like four months to know exactly what topics fall under it. I think that's really tough. That's what I found really hard. I definitely trying, if you have autonomy over choosing what sort of testing or examination style you're going for, I would always try to stick to something like coursework because at least in that sense, you can kind of take your time a bit more and there's less pressure and you know, I found that in cases where I did coursework as part of like a module or some app, it was overall better. I hope that helps. Got some questions on the insta or key. Both my ND kids got it, took a lot of effort, yeah. Katie asks, do you think we are getting anywhere with awareness? Yeah, I mean, I think to a certain extent, I think people are aware of the wrong things though. I think, you know, a lot of the awareness work that we really need to do is more around. Making people aware that just because you're autistic doesn't mean that you essentially have a lower quality of life because that's the assumption that a lot of people go by. It's like, oh, you've got a disability, you must have a lower quality of life. Well, no, it's not necessarily the fact that you disable that you will have a lower quality of life. It's all the stuff around it. It's like the environments that you're in, it's the experiences that you've had, you know, the links with the mental health and stuff. And I think if people were more cognizant of that fact and they were more aware of it, then it would be a lot better and we'd actually sort of see some actual progress going on. We are making progress. I mean, within my organization, we're working on like supported internships. It's like this big government program, which is really cool for disabled people. But I think that this, you know, we really need to try and break into that mainstream media to make some like strides in it. It needs to be like the next kind of social progression in our society. The whole idea about neurodiversity, acceptance and also awareness, I think is something that's gonna take off at some point. It's just waiting for that. It's really tough. And I know a lot of people within the autistic community have a hard time with life. So I think that's definitely what we need to be sort of highlighting to the mainstream. And I am trying. I've, you know, I've linked up with some people who are like within like Hollywood, linked up with some people in the mainstream media. So it's slowly becoming more of a thing. And I think it's getting people's attention and trust a bit more. But it really, I think we do really need to have a big push in terms of making a lot more of a conversation within the mainstream. Actually getting to that point is a bit tough, but, you know, I think we are making some progress. It's just not as fast as I would want it to be. It's tough, but I think it will come to a point where this stuff kind of blows up a bit more and we will start to see those changes that we really need to clear around the workplace, education, experiences, mental health support. You know, that's the stuff that we need at the moment in my opinion. Peter says, I always liked, I'd say texts, tests because I could explain myself. Yeah, definitely. I think having more time to explain yourself is important. I think I tend to become very hyperspecific when I was doing the exams because it was like, because you don't know exactly what, if you don't know exactly what the wanting out of you, you can get kind of, I suppose you can get, you can go a bit wide with your scope or you can go too narrow. And I never sort of struck that balance right of knowing exactly what to talk about and how much detail to go into things. I think that there needs to be a lot more clarity for autistic people in the education university systems. Miles says, yes, I like to study hard and then drink the material like an orange juice. Then in the exam, they'll ask indirect questions and I have no idea what they want, totally. I relate to that so much. It's hard. I just wish that they could just say, hey, tell us about this, this, and this and why this links to this, rather than, ooh, talk about some, by a med, talk about some mechanisms of inflammation. I'm like, oh my God, that's just such a wide subject and I have to remember that sometimes they're wanting me to talk about the material that's within the lectures and not just generally about inflammation. It's mad. I think there needs to be a lot more work done in that side of things because I know a lot of highly intelligent people who have gone into the university system and come out with something that's just completely not representative of how smart and intelligent and well-knowledge they are. So it's tough. I definitely, if you can, if you are at university, try and seek out the supports that you're allowed to have and definitely get in contact with your student union. Definitely see if there's a disability support service. Try and get Pali up with some of the HR people at the uni because if you have one person at HR that kind of gets you and you can talk to, they can help you out of a lot of things. I definitely highlight that one. There's this one person at uni in the support service that I used to chat to a lot when I was having a breakdown or something. I didn't really know what to do. I didn't know who to talk to and I was like, hey, I need help sewing this out. And there they kind of helped. So I was kind of lucky in that sense, but I think as much as you can, try and be a bit more proactive because it's not going to all be handed to you. On the self-platter, since you go to uni, you say you're autistic and they give you all of these supports and put everything in place. No, it doesn't work like that. You've got to actually go out and ask for it and say go to certain places within the university to ask about it and it's a hard process. It's very exhausting, or it was for me, but you do have to be proactive about it. And again, that's going back to the thing that I was saying before about finding stuff. It's hard to find the stuff. Once you know it, now it's there, you've got the supports. You're like, oh, you'll do everything to get it. But if you don't know about it, you can't find it, you can't find the supports that you need. Which I think is a big issue. So he says multiple choice tests were a disaster. I always wrote in the comments on the side, well, if you mean. So you gave them like two options for, you know what, I find multiple choice a lot easier because at least at some degree, they kind of give you the ballpark of what they're looking to ask you. Whereas if they're just asking you open-ended in questions that could be interpreted in any way, I think that's where they fall down because they assume that you'll be able to understand what they're trying to put across and ask you. But if you're artistic and your brain's different, you're gonna interpret things differently. That was definitely the case for me. William says, hey, hey man, how you doing? Jennifer asks, what would you tell a youngster who wants you to help them? But you're neurotypical and don't know how. You know, I've encountered a lot of like autism specialists and people who are like within the field of autism. But the people who have been the most helpful in my life in terms of supports and things is the open-minded, caring people who are willing and wanting to understand you. So I think if you can offer that to someone, it doesn't matter if you know much about autism at all. If you're asking them questions and you're trying to understand and trying, I guess, understand what the issues are and the things that they want and you just generally invested in supporting them, I don't think it matters if you know much about autism. As long as you, you know, it is obviously good to know about it, especially from like the lived experience perspectives, but you know, it's not the be all and end all and some of the most beautiful, most helpful, wonderful human beings that I've come across. So they're nothing about it. They just wanted to like help me and understand and wouldn't treat me like I'm some kind of special creature that has to be like guard railed all the time. And yeah, I mean, it's definitely, I think it's something that a lot of people can offer autistic people, but you know, it's the whole thing about like, oh, you've got to have a system, you've got to understand like the science behind it. No, well, no, just because every person's individual just ask them like what issues they have and what they want and go from there. It's not that complicated. The reason why the specialists that I've seen and the people that I've talked to didn't help is because they denied my experience and they said, this is what autistic people need. This is what autistic people experience. This is why, and they just pretty much just shut you down when you try to explain to them about your experience, which is the most important thing in the situation and what you think and what you've tried and what's worked and what hasn't worked. And it generally just provides more of a barrier in a lot of cases that I found. It's really about the people, the person, I think. So, you know, if you want to support to a youngster, you know, just be open, mind it, listen to them and treat them like someone that you care about. And I think if you do that, I don't think you can do much wrong, you know? Just make sure that they feel able to express things to you and they feel comfortable. Be fresh as I'm autistic, cool, same. Jennifer says, tie so much, really appreciate that. I'm really trying and it's super frustrating because we both want me to help but they can't really share super well. Yeah, that's the thing. We don't often feel or sort of, especially around like asking someone for support or speaking up for yourself or highlighting negatives. Like, especially for me when I was a young guy, I was just so far away from doing that. I was like, nope, not gonna do that. That's because of my negative experiences. So it's, you know, just take things slow and just, as I said, just have that mentality about it. I don't know any of a way that they could help them, you know, more. So yeah, we've got about 10 minutes left of this stream. So if you've got any burning questions that you wanna ask, maybe use my recent posts as ignition for asking questions if you want. But yeah, this is an opportunity. As I said, I don't have a lot of interaction with stories and stuff. So this is the place if you wanna ask questions or, you know, don't feel hesitant about asking questions. You know, no wrong questions. If I don't wanna answer something, I won't, but I'm not gonna like get upset if people ask some question and they don't really know much about autism. I'm not that kind of person. I understand that everyone has like their own levels of experience with it, understanding of the language, things like that. So, you know, this is a safe place. I'm gonna have a sip out of my Pepsi bowl. I know it's not good for you. I just, I think sometimes like the reason why I actually go for like drinking pop and stuff is more because I just have the executive functioning to like pour myself a drink and get cordial and put a cordial in. Sounds silly, but sometimes it's like if you're on sort of a lower, if you're in low energy saving mode, stuff like that, it just seems to happen. Okay, it says love what you said there. My lad just needs to know I have his back. Exactly. That's what we do need. And that's like the, I think the most important thing with inclusivities, including the person, not like shuttling them down this designated predetermined path that all autistic people should take. You don't need to be an expert. You can learn from them. It's a two way street. Jennifer says, I'm just super grateful for your platform. I'm very glad. I'm glad that I can be a place to talk about things. I haven't, I haven't had my tea yet. So I'm, I'm again, I think, I think that was the same as last time I hadn't eaten. I tend to eat very late because the meds that I'm on are like very appetite stimulant. So I tend to get really hungry at night time, but for the other day, like my hunger is pretty much like non-existent, bar like maybe having a snack here and there or a piece of fruit. I know it's more related to like interception, but I think it's more just, I just get very much like caught up in the day in my schedules and stuff. And I'm just like, you know, just forget about nutrition, eating. Love the podcast a lot too. I'm glad, Jennifer. It's, yeah, it's kind of crazy. The podcast does seem to be taking off quite a lot. I started doing video podcasts on Spotify so I know that's like a new feature that they brought out. I'm not totally happy with like the way that Spotify does their business, but, you know, which, which, which major organization does like do everything ethically. I don't know. So yeah, five minutes left. Go ahead with the questions. I'm probably gonna have a look at my recent posts. What was it talking about? Sensory profiles. Yeah. I mean, have you read the sensory profiles posts that I made? The thing is with these things, even with Instagram. So I was talking about short form content and stuff. I feel like even like the long 10 page Instagram posts that I do, which is like, it's fairly long for most people, but it's not for me. I have to cut down so much of what I'm saying and like, it takes more time. It doesn't take me at all a long time to actually write about the subjects, but when it comes to like chopping things down and putting it into like a format, that's where it takes like the most of my time. I'm wanting to do a lot more of an in-depth thing on sensory profiles, but I really just couldn't fit stuff in. Like I already had quite a lot of text on that one. Jennifer says, you're watching YouTube. Cool. I'm glad. YouTube seems to be picking up a little bit more. It's very slow growth, but we're chucking along. Grace says, thank you so much for your platform. It helps me so much being seen and understood. I'm glad that I can provide that. There were a lot of amazing other sort of autism advocates out there that I'd definitely recommend checking out. You can always go on my profile, look at the people that I follow. You'll probably be able to find a lot of really good Instagram accounts or some Instagram accounts. The space is a bit smaller than like the ADHD side of things. The ADHD side of things is like massive from what I've seen. Autism stuff is taking a bit to kind of build our community up, but it's going strong at the moment, which I'm really happy about. Katie says, trying to get my son's school to understand his sensory profile. That's a tough one. Oh man. There's a lot of teachers out there who have very strong opinions about things that they should just not be concerned about at all. Like wearing ear defenders or earplugs, having jewelry necklaces, like just the bog standard sensory support stuff. Some of them are just so radically against that kind of thing. So like, oh, well, what if the other kids ask about it and put it in and then you just tell them they can have it because it was going to help them, then why not? I don't understand it. It's funny. Schools, I think it was like an originally, an industry that was created to make more factory workers, which is why you can see a lot of parallels with that. And like, early days like factory working, like you have like the bell and stuff and you have classes and you've got to focus and you're not allowed to speak. And it's very like military, isn't it? It's like, it's crazy. Primary school teachers tend to be a bit more understanding about that stuff, but once you get into like secondary school, it can be really hard to like advocate for your sensory needs. I remember having this really big deal with this teacher during the lessons, because at that time I had like heliophobia and I really struggled with the sensation of having like sunlight on my skin. But you can imagine like the amount of bullying that I got for that, but I struggled with that. And I remember having a really big deal with the teacher because I was like, he sat me near the window. I was like, I don't want to be near the window. And then I put my coat on and I put my hood up and I was like, oh, why are you doing that? You can't do that unless and I'm like, man, just why do you have to make a big deal out of stuff? Like they got this like power trip control complex, some of them, crazy. I love that all the people are showing up on platforms, especially for the younger ones and parents too. Yeah, there's a lot more like late diagnosed individuals starting within the autistic community, which is really cool. I think there's going to be more of that kind of stuff because I think it will come to a point if we do sort of break into that like mainstream media area of life, then there might be a lot more people coming in saying, oh, am I autistic? And, you know, so there could be more, some more people sort of showing up on social media. Now there's Taylor Heaton, like mom on the spectrum. She's really cool. There's also the podcast that I did recently with, gosh, what was the name? Terrible names. Natasha from I Want to Tell You Books. She's amazing. She's like a, she's autistic herself and she has two autistic kids. And she's doing a lot like to bring like neurodiversity, inclusive teaching and parenting into like the autism mom and dad spaces, which it was amazing. We had like a podcast where we're talking about sensory adjustments and supports for autistic people. I was talking like on the adult side of things and she was talking on like the child stuff. Yeah, CTV says BS stuff. The teachers were always behavior hyper. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, that was a really interesting podcast. If you are looking to explore your sensory side, stimming, unmasking, stuff like that, it's a really useful podcast to check out. Quite a long one, I have some clips over on my YouTube channel. If you want to just go straight to like the recommendations and the things that you can try, it's kind of sectioned off into like different clips of the podcast on my YouTube channel. Should be good. So yeah, I mean, I'm probably going to wrap up now, but I appreciate everyone coming on to join the live, even though I didn't plan it. Hopefully at some point I will, I think I'm going to schedule for next week, probably try and get shoot for about 9.30, but we'll see. The numbers haven't been too different from when I did my live at 5.30, but maybe it's because I didn't schedule it this time, but we'll see. Probably go for 9.30 PM BST time next week. You're very welcome guys, thank you for joining and I hope you have a nice weekend. Hope you have a nice day. Hope you managed to climb back some energy, get started with getting involved in your special interests, all that lovely stuff. I'm going to say bye to you guys on YouTube. Thank you for joining. I really appreciate the likes and the comments and stuff and it's really lovely to have you. So thank you. See you later guys.