 The Thoughty Autie podcast. What aspects of autism do you think make it hard for us to meet our emotional needs? That's a huge question. There are quite a few aspects of autism that makes it hard to meet our emotional needs. Let's go from the top down. Most of the way that human beings meet their emotional needs is by socialising and by having strong social networks. If for whatever reason you find it hard to do what everyone else around you is doing and have strong social connections, then it's going to be difficult to meet those needs because it's hard to have a strong social network if you don't do the same things as the people around you. A great example of this is if you need something in terms of information or maybe I need help moving house or fixing a water system or something or something happens and I don't know how to deal with it. If I have a social network then I'll ask one of my friends or I'll ask my family and they will say, when that happened to me, I did this. I'll put you in touch with the plumber that I used or something and all of a sudden that problem is solved instantly through the passive help of the social network. I didn't have to know where to go to find the help because I had this sort of supportive network around me. I suppose as well, if you have that social network around you, a lot of the ways that just observing other people, a lot of the ways that they seem to process and get free emotions is by talking to people about them, having that outside in view on it. There's not a lot of people that I know that can just kind of sit free and just sort the stuff out on their own without talking to other people. Well, that's how we're designed to sort this stuff out. That's how human beings have coped for a very, very long time is in groups relying on each other. So it's near and impossible to do that by yourself. Now, in terms of what a successful like autistic social network will look like, it's obviously going to look different, but we still need to have some friends, some social network, some way to tap into those resources. Otherwise, it's going to make everything really, really hard. So for, I mean, I hear a lot from people every once in a while, things like making friends is too hard. It's not worth the effort. I'm just going to give up, basically, I'm going to focus my energy on looking after myself because it's too hard to make friends. And that's a really sad story, because it doesn't normally end well. It is very, very difficult to get by without that at all. I think there's a really, you know, obviously, secondary school doesn't tend to be the most pleasant experience for a lot of, or high school doesn't seem to be the most pleasant experience for a lot of autistic people. But I found that, you know, that a lot of the systems that we have in place specifically in the UK are set up and surrounded surrounding these younger people, like, you know, early, early ages up to up until like late teens. The issues that seem to come up quite a lot is that transition from teenagehood to adulthood, you know, because when you go through sort of a school experience, or around your parents, those environments that you put in are sort of to a certain degree controlled, but you know that you're going to be around people during these certain times. But if you go after university, if you move out, you're in a whole different new place. And the responsibility for setting up social events and social times and times to talk to people is on you. And like, you know, for some people, it can be really, really difficult to sort of know where to go to find people to be friends with, but also how to go about it. For me, I used to go up to people and say, hey, do you want to be friends? So like, you know, that very direct way of making friends with people obviously didn't work. It was cringey, but I think that that time, especially for me, was was was a very difficult time. And the stakes are a lot higher too. I mean, if you don't successfully make friends at high school, no one's going to kick you out of home because you didn't make friends at high school. But if you don't do the adequate social things at work and you don't form good relationships and you lose your job and you've got no money, well, maybe if you don't pay your rent for a couple of months, there's going to be serious consequences for that. So these are just a couple of examples of where it might not be immediately obvious to everyone how emotions and emotional intelligence are absolutely crucial for these types of things, things like making friends, things like keeping a job. But it's all to do with managing relationships and managing relationships is the most complex thing that we do as human beings. So it relies on a few other emotional intelligence skills that not everyone has developed because we weren't taught how to how to develop. Good day, viewers and listeners. Apologies for my very rude introduction to our regularly scheduled broadcast. I just want to remind you that if you have enjoyed the podcast thus far, please make sure to rate, subscribe, like, comment and share. All of these actions are pretty much the lifeblood of a small independent creator like myself. And it will help me get most of my work, more of my work to people who really need it. If you want to stay up to date with my life, get behind the scenes content, check out my daily blogs, head over to Instagram at Thomas Henley UK. You'll find a link to that down in the description alongside my range of neurodiversity clothing, just like this strong powerful autistic hoodie that I love so much. And my website, of course, where you can find a contact email to book me for one-to-one autism coaching, interviews, workplace training and speaking. So thank you very much for listening to this very annoying self advert. And I hope you enjoy the rest of the show. Yeah, like I said, the education system, the socialization, it's all geared towards people who are not like us. And especially if you don't get picked up as autistic, I mean, you know, we could talk about the utility of certain types of autism education, but, you know, a lot of people don't get picked up. And they sort of have to go through that experience. And oftentimes learn things the hard way. And, you know, talking to a lot of autistic women, it also seems that that masking can be a really big roadblock, because, you know, people can perhaps mimic, learn and mirror different social skills and fit themselves neatly into a specific social group that they want to be in. But they don't really feel that genuine connection, that ability to share things that they love, that ability to connect to people on a deeper level and share how they really feel inside. That's a really good outside inside example. Again, the mimicking and camouflaging and things like that. You're doing all the things on the outside, but it's not being matched by what those things, how the other people are actually feeling. So I remember figuring out much later in life, probably my late 20s, the reason people dance is because they actually feel good when they're dancing. Who knew? How was I supposed to know that? I just thought people did it because you were, I don't know, I had no idea to be honest. You just put in a situation and you just, yeah, I thought you had to or it was something or I don't know. Turns out people actually feel good in their body while they do that sometimes. It's the same thing with like wearing a suit and tie and having like a formal wedding and things like, why do people do that? Turns out because a lot of people really enjoy that. Oh, that's why they do it. And it turns out that I don't enjoy that. So just naming those things and recognizing that the reason for people's behavior is because it makes them feel good means that, well, when I'm looking for behavior that's going to work for me, it needs to actually make me feel good as well. It's not just copying what everyone else is doing. You're not kind of sort of trying to neatly fit into these social norms of what's, what you're going to enjoy. You know, you go out and you go to a party or you go to like, go to a club because that's what people do for fun on the weekend and everyone tells you that it's fun and you drink alcohol and you do all of these crazy things and that's fun. Not for everybody. And especially when younger, like people don't really tell you that you don't actually have to do that if you don't want to. Like there's such a big culture in the UK. I don't know about Australia, but we have a really big sort of binge drinking culture in the UK. Australia is pretty good at its binge drinking culture. You taught us a little bit similar. Yeah. I think for me, like if, I wouldn't really understand if someone said to me, they do this because it feels good because usually the way that I would approach things is, does it make sense for me to do this alongside the other things that I'm doing and can I actually do this consistently on a regular basis? And then I think another really, really big thing for me, which comes up in a lot of my podcast episodes and the stuff that I do is things around Alexa Fimea.