 The Thoughty Autie podcast. Now obviously there is quite a lot of utility in like understanding like the medical literature around certain things. But I do also find that the people who are the best at doing that job also have another feed-in from lived-experienced people like an ally. Like they may have this these qualifications and stuff, but they also, they have an input, they know someone, they've understood someone's experiences. And so I wouldn't kind of say that, I'm not saying that you're saying it, but I wouldn't say that every single professional is, you know, like didn't know what they're talking about. I think I definitely agree with you. Like even like I've had diagnosticians pretty much just palm people off because they made like a slight bit of eye contact during an assessment. Like stuff like that, you know, like it's people's biases that really I found get in the way because they think they know better, like they know better than these criteria. And so like my professional opinion, even though I don't, there's no reason for me to have this professional opinion, I just think this, this is why you can't have that, this is why you have this. Or like, I think those types of people those kind of, but I wouldn't say self-righteous, but just kind of know it, know all kind of people. They definitely cause a lot of issues. Yeah. And I mean, like, like what you said with professionals, like I definitely think there are some amazing professionals out there. And I think the amazing professionals are the ones that have a very open mind. And they're willing and open to learn from their clients. And they're constantly, you know, saying I'm constantly learning and not pretending to already know everything. Because I think the professionals that say, this is what I studied. And these are my nice diplomas lined up behind me on the wall behind my desk. This is why you should listen to me. But these are the professionals that are very, this is the one size fits all, this is how we do it. Like if you fall without, if you fall out of my like experience with this illness, then you're too complex, then you're hopeless, right? That was for me, I think. Even like, even though we constantly see the flaws in the system, like this knowledge and this, you know, the research and stuff that's got us to this point, it's still it's still not solving anything. Like, like even it's like I could understand if it was a system and everything worked really well, we didn't have all of these issues, perhaps in the autistic community or around eating sodas. But the fact that, you know, the sort of the recovery rates and the sort of outcomes for people are not like really, really consistently good kind of points to the fact that they're missing something there. Like, you know, there's still developments to be made. And I think any good professional and any good scientist knows that just going towards one study and using that as a representation of what they should do is bad. You've got a, you know, science is a progressive thing, which means that things that we accept to the facts now are things that we know are not always things that continue in the future. You know, there's studies that disprove them, there's, you know, and so when someone comes up and says some level of lived experience, which goes against that, or they show certain traits, that it, you know, is worth actually listening to them and like trying to try and understand it a bit more for even just for the sake of making it more person-centered and individualized is, I think it's really, really important. Absolutely. And I think what you just mentioned about having a professional that's maybe seeing something they're not experienced with, I think what will make them a really strong or helpful person is by asking questions and admitting like they don't know everything. Because anyone who ever says like I have all the answers, like is probably the one who has the least answers. Because in the end, like, and this is kind of the approach I take with my clients is like, I'm not here to tell you, I have the answers to your problems, because in fact, I have none of the answers to your problems. But what makes a good coach or a good guide or a good professional is that they know how to ask the right questions, because I believe that every individual already possesses their own answers within them. And they need certain guidance, they need to be asked the right questions to discover those answers within themselves. And that's ultimately how they shave themselves and help themselves and find freedom. Humans are just so complicated anyway. Like, we know very, very little about the nature of like consciousness and like how arbitrary. We know certain bits in like the, in the, in the, in a certain level of scope and single things, but we don't know how everything connects together completely. We don't know how at what point psychology is different to biology or like, you know, there's, there's so many like gray areas, especially when it comes to the human brain, because it's so complicated. When I was told when I was 15, you're too complex, you're just gonna have to accept the fact that you're never gonna get better. That was from a professional who in my opinion, had a very closed mind because she, she believed this is the way we treat people with eating disorders. And because you didn't get better within our realm of approach, like, this is why you're never gonna get better. And I, and I've, I've often for many years, I wondered why would someone say that to, to someone, right? Because obviously you don't go into the eating disorder field if you really don't care about helping people. And for me, I've come to the conclusion that this is said to people because I mean, almost all of my clients who have come to me, they've been told the exact same thing, unfortunately. And, and my conclusion that I've drawn from why they've been told this is because when a professional says that to their client or to their patient and basically says, like, I'm done with you by good luck, they no longer have to deal with the guilt of not have been able to help that person, right? Because they, then they don't have to admit to the fact that that maybe they missed something or they were incapable of helping. They're putting the blame on to you rather than themselves. It lets them off the hook. Because in the end, we don't, we don't want to be held responsible. We don't like to have problems that we don't know how to solve. So by saying it's your problem, I no longer have to solve this. Oh, yay, I'm free. I don't, right? So again, you're not amenable to the process. You know, you're not, you're not agreeing with them that this is an eating soda trait rather than an autistic trait. Yeah. So I think that would be the main one is really having an open mind and being willing to listen to people with lived experience and also listen to them and their needs and also providing a sense of trust. Because again, for me personally, like one of the biggest reasons why I manipulated the system and didn't listen and didn't do what the professionals told me to do was because there was no sense of trust. Our entire relationship was built on this like hierarchical, like I'm the professional, you're the patient, I know what's best, you're the sick one, right? But like if that's how you're approaching the treatment, like you're creating this huge tension gap and and distrust and especially for autistic people that are waiting for people to tell you off or like say no or like correct you or like, right? And it's about subjective things. Yeah. And especially for autistic people that already have so much distrust in the world. I mean, that's why we're so anxious because we don't trust the circumstances like that's why we have our routines because we don't trust or doing something else. If you're going to take this approach of like this is how we do it, like there's no way you can help this person because I'm masked and I lied to my therapist and I lied to my nutritionist and told them just what I thought they wanted to hear and I would start my sentence to send into it. I'm just being honest, but this is a huge few food of mine just so that they'd be proud of me and let me get out of treatment early, right? Like and I'm like now thinking back like that was so so problematic. Like if they would have just allowed me to express my reality and actually had believed me and actually have been open to the fact that oh maybe this is actually a real thing and maybe she is really different than I know typical clients. I think I I think my eating disorder never would have gone as bad as it would have because I would have felt validated and I would have felt seen. So you kind of felt like you had to lie to them in order to get on that good side. Yeah and looking back, it was masking. I admit that the process is not working. Right, yeah and looking back all that lying all that manipulation it was all masking honestly. I mean I definitely relate quite a bit on that through my experience, through mental health. I talked about it in the last podcast with or the one before last with Megan and it is really really hard to find a therapist that gets you and it's really hard to find one that you trust and all throughout my teenagehood I did not trust my therapist. I was just all the time paranoid what are they going to tell my mom? I know it's confidential but you know I'll say to them hey look this isn't working and then they just kind of reword it and rejig it and give me the exact same thing. I'm like I don't need these things in place that help regulate me. I know them, I can remember, I know what to do. There's aspects to me that I don't understand and I just feel depressed because I feel depressed and I feel anxious because I'm anxious. That was the kind of mentality that I had with it for quite a while and so you know I started off being very open. I didn't feel like they took me seriously because you know with the elexifamia and lack of indirect communication they didn't really take it that seriously even though I was saying some really like heavy stuff and so I just kind of tape it off and because I was already in that system and I was a risk to myself they kept me in the system so it was just kind of like oh every week I've got to go there and just kind of talk to them and just listen to what they have to say and not really import much and that's how it went for a lot of the time during teenage art. It wasn't a very like you know as Megan would say that I co-regulating like I didn't really feel like they were on my level like they understood me. Yeah like the hierarchy right like I'm the professional you're the client I know what's best you don't know anything like if that's like the approach like you're ready build you're creating a foundation built on distrust and if you don't have trust in a relationship in the world in anything you you really don't have anything like trust I believe is the basis for life for freedom of any kind for positivity of any kind that's why it's it's that whole stereo type of like what you don't trust me in relationships like that's the red flag right so yeah I thank you so much for sharing that I mean I love you you're a steward too because I feel like we talked about so much today and we could talk for hours and hours but but yeah