 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. Today's podcast episode is proudly sponsored by Timo, the award-winning app designed to support neurodivergent people just like yourself with routine and scheduling. Head to your app store and type T-W-I-M-O to learn more. Good day, cool cats! Welcome back to another episode of the Forty Autie podcast of course with your host, Mr Thomas Henley. Today we're going to be talking about diversity in autistic people. And I'm not talking about neurodiversity, the difference between non-autistic people and autistic people. I'm talking about the differences in that group. Throughout my time on YouTube and social media, diversity among the spectrum has become more and more apparent. I did have a good idea of how different autistic people can be from each other, but I'm astounded every time I do talk to an autistic person. Just how different they are in terms of their skills, their mental health, the things that they struggle with, the things that they're good at. Today I'm joined by a YouTuber with a lot of cool specialized videos on autism and the many types of sensory differences. She's author of the online book, I Think I'm Autistic. She also has a community-focused website for connecting autistic people together and strives to educate people on neurodiversity but also support self-diagnosed and late-diagnosed teens and adults. It's Jess from the Holistic Autistic Account. How are you doing? I am great. Thank you. And this is our second attempt at doing it, doing the podcast. We got quite far into it. We're not quite far. We got about five minutes into it, yeah. But sometimes with this website that I'm using, it can be a bit difficult to set it up and get everything sorted out so you can actually speak on it. But we're here now. How are you doing today? I'm really great. Yes. I'm super excited. Great. We're just like... I'm stimming already. Super excited to do this. So yeah, would you like to give everybody sort of like a brief background to who you are, what you do for a job, and what you do online? Yes. So I'm Jess, again. I'm 24 years old and I was diagnosed autistic at 23, about almost a year after self-diagnosing when I was 22. But I grew up in South Carolina, even though I was born in California. I live with my mom and my sister and my dad. And I started thinking that I was autistic when I was 22, started researching more into it. And because of all of the support and encouragement and friends that I made through the online autistic community on Instagram, when I first got diagnosed, I felt like I had all this stuff that had helped me get to that point. And it wasn't like it was just the beginning of everything. Beginning of a journey. Yeah. And so I wanted to kind of do the same thing for other people who would be questioning that they are autistic. Because as a late diagnosed person, you've been through a lot of your life wondering what's wrong with you. If there's like other like mental illnesses that you have or identity disorders that you have or whatever. And then when you realize, oh, I'm just autistic, then it really helps to have so much support. And so that's what I wanted to do with holistic autistic. I understand what you mean. Just from my experience at school and stuff, I think there's a lot of ways that autistic people kind of frame themselves and the world around them when they don't really don't know or don't understand what autism is. So like I used to have quite a big sort of delusion that was some kind of some kind of like of a worldly being or an alien or something like that. Yeah, we really identify with aliens a lot. I think that like every autistic I've ever met always like uses that as some kind of every time I meet someone who talks about like feeling like an alien. I'm always it's always in the back of my mind like maybe they're autistic too. Yeah. One question that I did want to ask you was what kind of encourage you to write your book? Well, I had the idea when I was looking up autistic like adult resources and not finding that much for people who are recently diagnosed as adults. Even if you if you look for books for autistic adults, it's mostly books about autistic teens and adults for the parents. Yes. There's one book that I read and it was written for the parents of these like autistic teens and how to deal with stuff that they face, which is great and needed. But I couldn't really find too much for actual autistic people who either were diagnosed as an adult or haven't even been diagnosed yet. And I basically said what would have helped me when I was 22, like thinking that I was autistic and not being able to find anything other than like the stereotypical stuff and reading like basically just one page from the DSM. Yeah, there's there's definitely not a lot of resources out there for autistic adults. It's it's even as you said towards the parents, but it's it's also, you know, kind of towards, I guess, sort of support workers or counsellors or or anything like that. It's it's never from from an autistic voice to an autistic person. There are a few examples, I guess, of that kind of stuff. And the majority of it comes from social media, like people posting their own sort of experiences and views and ways of coping with things. There was, I think, there was a book for teens. It was with Sienna Castellon, who's is like a neurodiversity advocate. I remember that she she wrote a book on so living life as a teen autistic teen at school, which I thought I found quite interesting. I want to get around to reading it at some point. I am notoriously bad at sticking to like words on a page or a computer screen. I like to listen to it. But I will I will definitely check that out when I've got some spare times. So yeah, I think we've talked a little bit about your experience and your job and the experience of autism. Do you want to go into a bit more detail about, you know, certain certain things that changed in your life after you got diagnosed? Basically, the funniest thing was I was moving away from home to go to Kansas City for a gap year program. And that would just be I would be there for nine months. And it was a church based thing that I was doing for leadership and stuff. But I would be moving away from home. And before I left, apparently my dad said to my mom, I think Jesse has Asperger's. My dad is an occupational therapist. And he like worked with autistic children when he was younger. Now he works more with older people. But like he he knew like all about what it could have been, but didn't realize that I was autistic. And until then, because I was so like compulsively obsessed with my hair. And that was what when I like, we got home from a trip. And I immediately we had to go into the bathroom and shave my hair, because I had a mohawk at that point. But and like this has been happening. Yes. And it was like growing too long on the sides. And I had to shave it. And it was a sensory thing. And that was the thing that tipped my dad off. And so unbeknownst to me, he said that to my mom, I think that Jesse has Asperger's. And like, not even a week later, I was watching something and it had an autistic character in it. And I was like, I think that I might be autistic. So I was doing more research on this throughout the time that I was away from home in Kansas City. And I didn't tell my parents about this. I was scared that they would not believe me. Or that they would think that I was trying to identify with something because I've always had like a personality crisis going on in my life. And at the end of the gap year program, I'd had a lot of struggles through it. It was a great program, though. But when I came back home, I was finally like, I told my sister, she's like, they're gonna believe you. So I told my mom, I think I need to get tested for autism. And I explained all about it. And she basically said this is an answer to prayer. We thought that you were but we didn't want to put that on you before you went to Kansas City and go through all this. And so we were like, hoping that we could talk to you about this, but we didn't know how and blah, blah, blah, blah. So after I got diagnosed, it was like everything in my whole life made sense. My mom says now she understands me now better than she has like my entire life. So basically, after getting diagnosed, I stopped questioning constantly who I was, what is my personal style? How do I describe myself? What do I identify as all that that had been causing me to identify with things? Like, you know, when you watch a movie and you identify with a main character, and you kind of like start dressing like them or something, you know, I do that way too much. It's it's literally like if I'm, if you like, if my eyes are glued and I'm kind of in that dissociated state, I just absorb everything about the character that I like. And I'm just, it's hard not to not to imitate parts of it and also not to follow their kind of life path. So yeah, yeah, an artist or something. And I'm like, oh, to start doing some awesome. There's, there's actually a name for it. I think it's called adapt something adaptation that Tony Atwood talks about. He wrote a book called Safety Skills, or he wrote it forward for a book called Safety Skills for Asperger Women. It was it's a great book. That was the original essay that I'd read that made me say, Okay, I definitely identify with this constructive adaptation. That's what it's called. And we're just identifying with a bunch of stuff to try and be accepted. And we're taking all this stuff in to try and form a personality because it seems like everyone else is just living life and knowing how to do stuff. And we like don't innately know how to do these things. So we're kind of like a chameleon changing according to the situation. And I don't feel like I do that anymore, since I got diagnosed, because I finally I'm like, Okay, this is what I am. And I can accept like all the parts of myself. And also, all the struggles that I went through when I was younger before I didn't know I was autistic. That is almost reconciled to me because I'm like, Okay, I never was a screw up. I never was like a loser. I never was just a weird person. And I never I never had, like, anything wrong with me, you know, and that's such a great feeling. I can imagine. I mean, I understand. It's um, it's very, very relatable in that way. When people talk about autism. It's, it's quite it's quite interesting. Like I'm still bewildered that that that is actually a thing. So I was just thinking, like, why, why do I do this? Like every time I go to see a movie, somehow have a extremely, extremely strong inkling should just be like this person. And I guess the difference between how that was with me when I was younger and how I am with it now is when I was younger, I kind of clung to that. That was, that was like a rubric, like a step by step plan of how to act. And if I just copied what they did, then I would naturally gain all the things that they have. And that was that was kind of like my my idea when I was when I was a bit younger. But obviously, movies aren't a good representation of real life. Yeah, in a lot of cases. Yeah. And that can be that can be the struggle because we're trying to be like other people is the thing. And we're not even, for me, it felt like I couldn't help it. Every time I watched a movie, it was almost like it was out of my control. I just immediately started like, without even realizing it, mimicking their walk even just like weird stuff that I would pick up from that. And a lot of it, my mom thought was because I wasn't confident in who I was. And so I was trying to be somebody else. But the truth was that I didn't know who I was. And I was like, Oh, maybe this is kind of who I am, because I related to a little bit of this character. And so, especially since we're talking about like diversity on the spectrum, then so many autistic people felt like they've been different people throughout their lives, because they've done this. And, you know, once you kind of start to realize that you've been doing this and picking up all these traits from a bunch of different characters or different like things that you've identified with, and you realize, Oh, there's a basis for this of why I was attracted to these types of things. And then you kind of reconcile, okay, maybe some of that is similar to me, but that doesn't have to be me. And then hopefully, people start to realize that everything about them and who they are is okay. I definitely think like, in adulthood, I've got more control over why incorporate into me. Like, I feel like it's, it's for me, making my self and my personality in my life is kind of like, constantly shopping around and picking up things that I want to be like, or I feel like relates to me. So that it can be anything from my clothing, like I went through a really big sort of emo phase when I was younger. And I know there's a lot of autistic people who have said, said similar things about branching out and do, you know, doing something different. And I don't know to what extent that is part of me. I think it was just, it's kind of something that's not considered mainstream or normal for people to do or dress like that. So that that felt that felt more relatable for me. You kind of latch onto that. Yeah, because so much of our lives are us being told we're so different from other people. And whether it is like, oh, I love how unique and quirky you are, or it's you need to be more like everybody else. We're very aware of it through our whole life. And so when we can find something to put a name to maybe why we're so different, then we cling on to that, maybe a little harder than we normally would. So like, I identified a lot with the punk rock movement for a good portion of eight years, maybe throughout high school and college and a little bit after college. And it was only when I realized I was autistic that I didn't feel compulsively, like I needed to dress really different and dye my hair and wear a mohawk, you know, because, although like, I can't really say it was a phase because it lasted so long. And it really it did feel like me at the time. It what it really was, was that I knew I was different somehow. And that was the punk rock movement was a whole movement about subversion from the mainstream. And I just needed a way to express that I was feeling that way with a tangible experience like that. It's a very complex world. And especially like, in early years of for autistic people, it's, there's a lot, a lot kind of going on underneath the surface of every, of every person. I mean, you could say that about everybody in on the earth, just from what from what I've heard in the conversations that I've had, it just seems, you know, I would never expect you to have a mohawk or be a punk rock or anything like that. Yeah. Yeah. Which, you know, is cool. I think like nowadays, I like to wear a lot of sort of dark, black, gothic-y kind of clothing. But it's not like I'm putting on eyeliner and, you know, hanging around the graveyards and putting on black suits and all that kind of jazz. It's more integrated nowadays. Yeah, it does still take, you know, that kind of gothic-y beauty in the negative kind of thing is something that still, still a part of me. Yeah. But it's just a little bit less, less so, a little bit less extreme. Yeah. Yeah. So today we're talking about diversity on the spectrum, of course. I think an important starting point is to talk about socialising. In terms of introversion and extroversion, do you think that many autistic people could be considered extroverted? I think that a lot more people, a lot more autistic people are extroverted than you would normally think. I don't know how much I could say would be like percentage-wise. But I know that a lot of people misunderstand introversion and extroversion as like, introversion doesn't mean that you're shy or unsociable or you're quiet. And extroverted doesn't mean that you're always confident and talkative or you're a party or, you know, just where it's where you replenish your mental and emotional energy, whether you're alone or around people. And a lot of autistics are introverts because we have to self-regulate, or if we have a sensory overload to crowds or noise and or we have like certain routines that we go through, those are things that we have to do alone. And so those kind of things replenish your energy. But when you're emotionally healthy and you're in a good spot in your life where, you know, you've got everything that you need mentally and emotionally, then you might be more prone to extroversion. Because like, when I was right after college, I was in a job where I went in at the same time every day and left every day. I love the job. I ate ice cream every day. I loved the people that I was working with. I was working for some a family friend who I was comfortable with. It was like the perfect job for me. Low anxiety. I had no sensory issues going on. And so because I was in such a good environment, then I was extroverted, because I got way more energy from being around people. And even after work, I got off work at 9pm. I went in at 9am and got off at 9pm. I was there 12 straight hours. And I would immediately go next door to the cafe and hang out with the girls there until like 10 or 11 o'clock at night. And like now I'm like, all right, what was I doing? How did I do that? I can't even like work a five hour shift now without wanting to come home and take a nap. I think that sometimes it can completely depend on your situation. But there are people who are just naturally more extroverted and naturally more introverted, just like any other person. Because talking about diversity on the spectrum, it's the same as talking about diversity in people who are not on the spectrum, because there's so much diversity in the world. Yeah. And so like, you can't just say like any one thing about autistic people, because that's like saying it, like everything that this one thing applies to every single neurotypical person as well. I think it's, it's quite important to highlight, you know, what you said about sort of being in a good mental mental place, not having a lot of sensory difficulties. I think environment plays a lot into the reasons why autistic people tend to lean towards that sort of introversion behavior, not necessarily being introverts themselves, but you know, liking that sort of set routine. And as you said, self regulating and doing some things on your own, that you do every day that sort of chill you out. I think it's quite important to highlight that because there is an awful lot of comorbidity that happens. So if you're anxious, like if anyone's anxious and depressed, you're going to be less sociable, you're going to be, you're going to want to sort of wallow and be on your own for a large portion of time. And if you've had social experiences either at school or within adult life, then you're going to naturally kind of lean towards that sort of behavior. Yeah, for sure. It's funny that you said about like, you know, you're working that job and you're very sociable, because when I'm in a good place, or if it's just, you know, like the cards fall in the right places, I do, I have work and I don't have much work to do. I tend to be a lot more sociable. And sometimes it can be the case where I can't go a day without talking to somebody or can't do a day without meeting up with somebody and having a long chat. But then that, when compared to me, in sort of my life at the moment, it's very much on my own, you know, doing my thing. But it's not necessarily something that I think defines me being on my own and sort of doing my own thing. I definitely enjoy talking to people. I think like the initial part, the initial start of talking to someone is always the most stress inducing but once you get into it, I mean, like, freeing up with this podcast, I'll chat. Difficult at the start, bit hard to get into the flow. But then after a while, I feel better. And then after the podcast, I'm like, my serotonin's been raised up, you know, I feel a lot better about myself. Yeah, what's important to know about this, like, to recognize about diversity, a lot of it is subjective. Your sociability co exists with your neurology and your behaviors. At the same time, they're all interlinked, your social skills can differ depending on your sensory sensitivities, your environment, how many people you're with, and whether you know those people really well, how old you are, and just have longer time practicing social skills, or making adaptations from past experiences and stuff like masking and scripting and the coping skills that you've got. And so to label something like maybe people are innately extroverted and innately introverted. But at the same time, there's so much diversity just in how you express yourself in depending on all those factors. Yeah, I think I think there's a large part from nature that comes into play, you know, as we said about bad experiences with people, that's going to put you off wanting to open up and connect with others. But at the same time, if you work at it, then you can become more emotionally open and most inclined to chat to randomers and we're inclined to sort of connect with your friends a bit more on a deeper level. Yeah, it's kind of like one of those sort of tests online, you know, like, am I introverted or extroverted, people really want to know what they are. It's important to know that you don't have to label it and be one or the other, because that just constricts you more. If you identify more with introverted, then that's great. If you identify my as extroverted, then that's great. But if you have like coexisting symptoms of the same thing of different things, then you don't have to change yourself to fit into the label. You know, I definitely identify as an introvert, though, as proven by the quarantine that I went through for a straight month, because of COVID-19, from March 16th to April 16th, I stayed at home. Like I went outside in the yard and stuff, but like I basically stayed in my house that entire time, didn't talk with any other people other than like texting online or phone calls and stuff. And I was like, I could do this for the rest of my life. I don't ever want to speak to another person again, you know, but that's not every autistic person, though, there's a stereotype that it is. I'm actually that's probably a minority that you wouldn't realize is a minority. But yeah, I think it's, I think it's also important to kind of clarify who you compare yourself to. Like if you are thinking whether you are introverted or extroverted, and you're autistic, and you just think in general, then, you know, like, I think it's probably more likely that you'll identify more with the introvert sort of person, if you are on the spectrum. But maybe if it was somehow we devised a way of knowing the amount of extroverts and introverts in the autistic community, then maybe, you know, that sort of label would be more fitting, I suppose. If that makes sense, I'm trying to try my best to explain what I mean. Yeah, the label is supposed to serve you and help you. It shouldn't be stressing you out, or confining you in any way. If you're forcing yourself to identify as something, then chances are it's not really you and you're going to have a lot of problems arise because of that. A lot of constructive adaptation, based on what you see. If you're like, trying to like prove that you're autistic to yourself by saying like, Oh, like, I'm not diagnosed because I was so extroverted, I need to be more introverted. Like, you're going to get lonely, you're going to get depressed, you're going to get more anxious because of that. Yeah, there's no wrong way to be autistic. Definitely. So it's time for a quick mention from our sponsors, Teemo. If you love visual support in your scheduling, Teemo is for you. The app was designed for people with ADHD and autism and helps empower users to schedule visual routines that work. Users say that Teemo can help reduce stress and support executive function, which are both two things that I struggle with myself. Learn more at www.teemoapp.com or just type in T W I M O into your search bar. Thank you so much to my Patreon supporters. Your support means the world. Anyway, let's get back into the show. So shall we move on to the next diversity life? This is this is a very strange podcast because usually I have a topic that we talk around, but that diversity, there's a lot of diversity in the diversity topic. So we're talking about lots of lots of different things in bite sized chunks. But the next one is comorbidities associated with autism, anxiety, depression, OCD, ADHD, etc, etc. What is your experience with comorbidities? And how do you think they affect an autistic person's life? Well, for me, a bunch of stuff that I now see as like, I have it because autistic people are prone to have these conditions. I had these before I realized being autistic had something to do with it. So when I was in college, I got really, really like, I don't know how to describe it, but I just I knew something was up and I was frustrated with myself. And the school therapist was like, I think you have ADD. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, my dad has ADD. And he's been talking about it. He got diagnosed when nobody was diagnosed, like back in the 80s and stuff. And he's the stereotype for ADD. And I was like, Why did I never like, research this and learn about it? Also, like depression, a lot of my depression was because I was trying to be a neurotypical person and failing. And if I've been treating my depression as an autistic person who had depression, it probably would have been helped. I had a lot of anxiety. And I realized it was just because like, when I got diagnosed, I realized all the anxiety, I didn't have an anxiety disorder. I was autistic. And anxiety is a component of that because of the way that I experienced the world and the amount of stress that I get under, because society is putting so much on me that I can't handle as an autistic person. And so for me, all the comorbidities that I had been experiencing thinking that they were their own issue has got have all gotten better because I've been treating myself the way that I need to be treated as an autistic person. So the the interesting part about that is that I thought they were I had all these like mental issues or personality stuff. And really, it was just because I wasn't treating myself kindly and giving myself patience. No, like because I didn't know I was autistic and being forced to cope in a neurotypical world. My takeaway is once you know that you're autistic, then you can help yourself with all these things. They're just conditions that are common in autistic people. They're not caused by your autism or anything like that. I do think that, you know, one of the some important talking points is why they why they happen. Mm hmm. Because I did a literature review as part of my university degree. I did one prior to making my documentary to kind of kind of give evidence to why I was why I was creating a piece and and all that. And there's not a lot of literature on mental health and comorbidities around autism. But what is out there may, you know, may suggest that there is some level of, you know, that biological component, you know, to do with quarters or receptors or or anything like that. But I think it's also important to highlight that life experience plays a lot into comorbidities. Oh, yeah. If the world's confusing and people are confusing and you're having lots of trouble and people are bullying you when you're not really sure where you stand, you're going to get a lot of anxiety from that. Long term anxiety leads to depression, just just part of the natural sort of hormone pathway to do with cortisol and some of the other sort of bodily hormones. And then, of course, if you if you depressed and you're anxious, then you're going to try and find ways of coping with it. And sometimes those things aren't going to be healthy. You may develop some kind of eating disorder, you may self harm, you may, I know, particularly for myself, I struggled a bit with, especially in the last year of university with alcohol, you know, there is a large tendency towards kind of those unhealthy kind of addictive behaviors, because, you know, if you don't understand yourself and you don't understand why things are happening and the world is a complex mess of sensory signals, then, you know, you, you have to cope with it in some way. The funny thing about these, these, these conditions that they all interlink it in some respects, there was one particular person that I chatted to, chatted to recently, a girl called Anna, and she was telling me all about her OCD. And, you know, like with OCD, you kind of have compulsions and obsession and obsessions, obsessions and compulsions. And sometimes they can be very unrealistic and unlogical, you know, like, I need to do the door handle up and down five times so that my house doesn't go on fire or something. But with her, she was describing me as kind of like a logical OCD. Things that, that she obsesses about are always things that are grounded in reality or science or evidence. And if something doesn't make sense, then she doesn't get an obsession about it. And OCD has a large aspect of anxiety. And, you know, especially with the obsessions, you know, you've got to do something to quell it. And it's just, it's just fascinating just how interlinked everything is and could be. It's, it's quite a complex sort of thing to, to dissect. For sure. It's not something that we could do in one part of a podcast. Yeah, definitely not. And like a lot of autistic people, their common morbidities might be like epilepsy or L.O. Standlis syndrome or, you know, a lot of like physical disabilities that I don't have. And so most of mine are a lot of minor situational, depending on my circumstances. But most of mine are just kind of there because I was autistic, not realizing that I was autistic and not treating, not giving my, like not treating myself. So I don't consider myself like disabled really, because I'm in a situation in my life where I am able to do everything that I am like wanting to do and stuff. But there's a lot of autistic people who, who aren't like all of the things that I guess you would say impair them will do so to make them in a way that makes them not able to function the way that they want to function. Yeah. So like I definitely have impairments with a lot of things, but it's not something that prohibits me from the way that I'm wanting to live. Yeah, I feel that. I think a while back, you know, around the start of COVID, me and my friend Vicky is also known as actually Aspling. We put together like an autism quiz to sort of bring bring some of the autism creators on Instagram together. And one of the questions that they would come up with was what is not comorbid with autism? And literally, you can like everything, everything is comorbid with autism, like not not everything, of course, but that's hilarious. Like, yeah, just that you literally can't find something that's not comorbid. I think it's just kind of looking at the the most likely ones, you know, there's a lot of things that are associated with having an autism diagnosis that aren't considered to be health conditions or anything like that, such as being more inclined to be on the asexual spectrum. Yep, that's me. There's a lot of different variability. And you're asexual. Yep. I actually like I was thinking about doing a YouTube video on it, but I'm not sure about it. I'm still not sure what my like stance is on like what my focus would be for the video. So I'm still working on it. But yeah, the lifestyle that you make yourself and its relation to your environment will either have a positive impact on your health or a negative impact on your health. And when it does that, then it has a lot to do with your diversity of skills, you're just everything about you. And so that's why the spectrum is so like vast, I guess, if that makes sense. Yeah, I think there are, you know, there's a lot of different things that are interlinked. And so it's a very interesting topic to kind of discuss, you know, like anxiety and depression and, you know, things that cause it like bullying and isolation and all that stuff is quite a big sort of driver for me to do this kind of advocacy and stuff like making videos and talking to charities and stuff. It's quite it's quite important because we don't know to what extent our environment and the way that society is impacts our comorbidities. Yeah, I have met a lot of autistic people who don't have comorbidities, you know, like a lot of the struggles that they had when they were younger, don't have as much of an effect because they're always they're not constantly tired and flat of energy and over exerted and in an irritable state, you know, things like executive functioning and although there's those kind of sort of life skills and dating and friendships and stuff comes a lot easier to them. Definitely an interesting topic. Let's move on to the other one. And this is another hot topic of diversity. It's special interests and innate skills. Now what I mean by innate skills is something that you're you're born with generally skills can be built upon, but your innate skills are something that's integral to to you in the way that you mind your brain is wired. There is a little bit of a stereotypical rhetoric around autistic people being amazing at maths and coding which is just completely not the case. And people people do assume that a lot. So what I want to ask is what variety of skills have you seen among autistic people? Do you think it's quite diverse or think it's quite niche? It really is. Yeah, we were talking about like logic versus creativity. And I think every person in the world, whether they're autistic or not, has some degree, either more logic or more creativity side because of left brain and right brain differences. But selectively on the spectrum, like we have a lot of innate abilities that neurotypicals don't have and then we lack a lot of innate abilities that neurotypicals do have. So like we don't have like a lot of innate social skills and a lot of the rhetoric of like autism as a disorder is you're lacking this, you don't have this, you're bad at this. And so flipping that binary and saying instead with a strength based perspective, like we have great cognitive skills with pattern recognition and like seeing small details and hyper focusing. We have a lot of social skills that aren't recognized because they're not the norm. But a lot of autistic people that I've met have great skills at acting because they are pretending to be like something they're not. I think a lot of actors and actresses in Hollywood are undiagnosed autistics because they can just completely like immerse themselves in relating to a character that they've been given. And you know, stuff like that. A lot of autistic people have sensory skills that like people don't even realize their skills. Being able to like smell things from a far away as a way that are really strong because they're sensory sensitive. I think like another one would be music. If it allows something that comes out quite a lot, sort of being able to dissect the different instruments and find the beat easier and sing with better pitch, even though you have lessons that seems to be quite something that I've seen quite a bit. Yeah, that's a great example. Another one with like communication language skills. A lot of autistics are like we have to learn how to communicate in a language that we've grown up and been around almost as if it's our second language. We're so we know the process of learning a language for more than maybe neurotypical people. So a lot of autistics are really great at learning languages. I did not know that. I'm definitely not one of those people. No, I kind of am not either. I was an English major in university and at the same time as like art and poetry and writing being a better like alternative for me because I'm not I'm not as I once I have everything written down, I can verbalize, but I can't just like talk and have things be coherent. Like all of my stuff is like writing and stuff. But at the same time, I make fun of myself sometimes because like I was born in America with the language of English. I don't speak really any other languages, maybe a little Spanish. And I was an English major and I still have trouble with communicating in English language. But I don't think I don't think he's I mean, it may take a lot more effort, but you're verbalizing and explaining things a lot better than most people could. Oh, thank you. And that's that's another part of it is people don't recognize the amount of effort that we have to go into to get to this point, which is why like they the spectrum is not recognized as diverse as it is because they don't see how much work you have to put into something. And like if I put in the amount of effort that a neurotypical person puts into like communicating, then I would not be communicating well because it takes me more effort to come across it at the same level. It's it's it's like taking a practical exam every time that you talk to someone, you gotta analyze and understand that the situation like life is a test I didn't study for. And it's like talking as a test. Yeah, like, I wasn't even aware there was a test. There's so many different variables to it, isn't there? It's just, in order to become competent socializing in any sense, you've got to understand when is your turn to speak and you've got to process things quicker than usually do when you've got to incorporate different emotions that people are feeling and the environment and what you're supposed to do in a certain environment like a party or a workplace and you've got to understand what the body language is saying and others just there's a lot of effort that goes into it. But it's possible. Yeah. And my main message for a lot of autistics that I try to cut across is don't worry so much about what you're not going to be able to change. Like, I know that there's certain things about me that I'm never going to get good at. I don't need to worry about that because I have so many things that I am good at that I should stay positive about and develop those skills that I already have also based in any special interest that I have any all the strengths that I have to work accommodating those not trying to be something that I'm not seeing what I'm what you're already strong in what you already are skilled in that coincides with what you enjoy about life. That's a sweet spot. And it's hard to find isn't that you got to do a lot of experimenting with jobs and career paths and stuff. I mean, I definitely struggled with knowing what I want to do. I thought I was going to go into science, but then I realised I didn't have the fine motor skills to do lab to do sort of typical kind of molecular lab work. I can do it. I'm just not as competent as other people. So there's a lot of aspects to sort of especially when we're talking about innate skills like I'm not innately good at communicating or socialising, but because it's my special interest learning about people and how the work and how I can come across in the best way possible. I become good at that, but that's because it's my special interest and I put a lot of time into it. Things that I'm good at innately, I guess, would be vocabulary, you know, different flamboyant an array of flamboyant different words that you can use to describe life and the many intricacies of that. That's probably not a good example, but it's a great one. But stuff like that and sports, sports come quite easy to me, which I know is not something that most people would associate with autism. Yeah. But then I'm also terrible. That's the problem with all the stereotypes is that people aren't going to recognize like people aren't going to recognize that they're autistic if they're only going by like the criteria that has been stereotyped that isn't comprehensive enough to show the vast validity of the spectrum. And so like any amount of skills and abilities that you have, it's OK. Like you don't have to worry that you're not autistic because you have like sports abilities, you know, and in movies, then the autistic people don't do sports. Like screw that. I think a lot of strengths come in either from what we fixate on and things that we enjoy and want to work on. That can be anything from gaming to art to science abilities to to languages. There's there's such a large amount of diversity that I've I've seen. And that's just within a certain social media site within Instagram, you know, there's there's likely to be a lot more out there. It's just important to kind of highlight things, you know, I think one of the problems with some people who are autistic is that because they lack that innate understanding of social interactions, they are very deterred from trying to explore that. But actually like reading into it and getting interested in socialising and reading the research and the sociology and the psychology and the practical aspects to it actually does a massive amount in the long run to kind of kind of improve on that stuff. And that's the same for any skill. We just differ in our innate abilities. Cool. Let's move on because I know that we've already got an hour in and we've got a couple of questions to go. And all right, it's flown by. It definitely does fly by. What's next? So sensory difficulties and differences are extremely common in autistic people. What dimensions of sensory differences exist and how do you think autistic people can differ in those sensory profiles? Well, we know the basic hyposensitive versus hypersensitive kind of being not as aware of sensory input or way too aware of sensory input. All the sensory signals were receiving, interpreting and responding to affect us in different ways. Part of our neurology, part of the diversity of our neurology means that you'll process sensory signals differently. And so all of autistic people's sensory processing patterns are unique. And a lot of them are situational like we talked about with other things. I think that there probably is more hypersensitive autistic people than hyposensitive people. I'm a normally wary of saying which is more or less of because obviously more outwardly evident things are said to be like the predominant thing, even though it might be even with stuff that isn't outwardly like noticeable. Yes, I understand. Like as far as I've like seen and experienced and talked about with other autistic people, it seems that more autistic people are hypersensitive. Yeah. Well, at least that's the thing that they kind of kind of focus on is that it is something that, you know, as we've talked about, does play into anxiety and, you know, your ability to to go out and socialize with people is quite a large sort of barrier. You know, you've got to find ways to get around it or you're just going to come away from certain situations or places just buzzing, you know. Yeah, a lot of like your sensory differences as an autistic person. It doesn't really have to be either hypersensitive or hyposensitive. I'm doing a YouTube series right now, I'm in the middle of it because I'm hyposensitive in pretty much all my senses. Really? You can have a mix of either of either depending on like sight, smell, taste, balance, you know. But the main thing is to know your own sensory profile and how you respond to sensory input and interpret it in order to understand yourself better and do what you need to do to take care of yourself emotionally if you get overloaded and learning to recognize what triggers and overload or a shutdown are just like sensory buildup and learning how to like in your own way deal with it. Yeah, I think a lot of the times when I've been highly anxious that's usually when I'm very aware of how my senses into play with with how comfortable I am and sort of vice versa. You know, like usually come away from from situations more anxious if it is a lot more stimulatory and there definitely is such thing as like the autism household, like dim lighting, lowered volume. Yeah, volume of stuff. I know it just like sensory just impacts everything really. It's your experience of the world, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, like when I get out of bed I have to make sure that my room is clean or else I'll be stressed for the rest of the day and just like looking at like a bunch of stuff on my floor stresses me out and that's a sensory thing that I didn't realize I had for a long time. And so being aware of your own sensory profile, that's the main thing that I can say because it's everyone's is so different. Just learn what yours is and how you function with it. So if I could give like an overview or a consensus of the most common things that I see it's it's usually sight, hearing and touch that tend to be hypersensitive and vestibular stuff, you know to do it to do with proprioception and your body in space and your balance and stuff seem to be a lot more hypersensitive. It's important to understand that you can't just be hypersensitive to sight because sight is a multi-dimensional thing. You know, I don't like bright white light it stresses me out but I absolutely love strobing flashy colored lights. Same. It mesmerized me. So we went to Asda this time we were going to get some I can't remember what we were getting me and my girlfriend because obviously they're like they're bringing out the Halloween stuff and it was just like wand and it just like span round and just flashed and I was just like could you please pull that away because I am getting way too fixated on this. I'm gonna have to buy it if I spend too much time here. But then you've got other stuff like for me I'm extremely overly sensitive to sharp pain. So like needles, scratches, paper cuts absolutely agony but I'm very unsensitive to blunt pain. So like obviously that helps a lot in my taekwondo or martial arts and stuff because I don't feel as much of that blunt force. Yeah. If I hit my hand lightly against a table it feels the exact same for me as if I were to like hit my hand super hard. And so like my body just doesn't like recognize that the impact has more force and should hurt more. My body's just like, oh, it's all the same. Yeah. It's kind of like a compressor for touch, what's the word, tactile inputs. You know, just raises up all the small sensory stuff and dims down all the hard stuff. It's a lot more complex than what would appear on the surface, I think. Although people can be generally more hypersensitive and hyposensitive in certain areas each aspect of your sensory experience can be affected in different ways. Like I guess sort of a strange and out there example is I like cold air on my face but I don't like cold air on my body. So you know, there's lots of different kind of interactions and differences that occur in each sort of situation. So it's definitely not as black and white as I don't feel this as much in this type of sense or I'm too sensitive in this sense. Shall we go on to the last question which is something that I think is quite an interesting topic. Let's talk about empathy. All right. Now, Lorna Wing was, I believe was the person to popularise the belief that autistic children lack empathy. I think it was something linked in with like the theory of mind kind of example. But contrary to that, there has been absolutely tons of examples and numerous testimonials from autistic adults and parents of autistic children too. And it actually shows that a lot of autistic people can be more than often a very, very empathetic. Would you consider all autistic people to be empathetic? I know that's a bit of an extreme. And in what ways might we not be? Well, there's different types of empathy. And so where we might not be strong with certain like situations or types of empathy then we do have strengths and other types of empathy. Personally for me, if I don't experience something like everybody else, if you don't experience something then you can't know how someone else will feel about it. But you have situations in your life where like it might be similar circumstances. So you can understand how they are feeling or at least why they are feeling the way they say that they're feeling. Estimating their feelings. Yeah, yeah. And when you say like all autistic people then it's always something that I don't, I don't want to speak over someone. I want to speak for people who aren't able to speak for themselves who like maybe they don't have an online platform that they can use to explain about autism and I do. And so I take that very seriously and I don't ever want to imply that the way I am as an autistic person is the same as everyone else. But I do believe that all autistic people do have a degree of empathy because really that's what makes you human. And autistic people are not subhuman. Unless you have a comorbidity of psychopathy. Yes, maybe if you're also a sociopath. It's not an autistic trait to lack empathy and people will think that too much because our differences of theory of mind and how we understand the world is so different from how other people understand the world that they think that we don't understand the things that we actually do. Yeah. I think I told you earlier when I was younger than every so often I would Google criteria for a sociopath because I was like, I don't know, there's something that I just don't connect. Yeah, I was like something just doesn't connect with me with people. Like I didn't identify with the criteria enough. And then I realized, oh, I'm just autistic. I just empathize with people in a different way. Yeah. I'm okay with it now. It's kind of like that strange crossover between what is manipulating people and what is masking, you know? Yeah, exactly. To what aspects of me learning about the human mind is in any way malicious. But it's kind of like something that I've come upon because I, yeah, like yourself, I have constantly throughout my life, especially if people have said that I've done something wrong or something to hurt someone, I'll Google and do a test about psychopathy or sociopathy. But that process of doing that and trying to make sure that I'm not to kind of contradicts how is the sociopath and the psychopath would. Yeah, exactly. They wouldn't care if they were or not because they're just interested in how they can use it and stuff. It's just because autistic people have cognitive differences. We have different cognitive awareness. We have differences in perception and reasoning and judgment. And just basically the way that we think is very different from neurotypical people. And we don't have to try and justify that we are empathetic or that we do care about people. It's old rhetoric that has been constantly repeated. We've settled this. It's not a question anymore. It shouldn't be a question anymore because enough autistic people have explained themselves. I think a lot of the misunderstanding comes in from, as you said, our differences in the way that we behave and we process things. If I was to kind of put my finger on something, I don't think that we have much kind of situational empathy. We're very much the kind of people to experience something and listen to something about someone's experience and go away and think about it and sort of put ourselves in their shoes actively and put a lot of effort into trying to understand their emotional state. And then we come back and then we show a lot of empathy and we try and kind of help them out and stuff. But I also think that another aspect would be not understanding the body language, that there's subtle cues that people give. There's one kid that I've worked with who is a lovely kid, is great, is an absolute gem, is a beautiful soul, but he does hit and sometimes he uses a lot more force than is needed to, especially when you're playing or something. And a lot of cases, he'll hurt another kid or hurt myself, but he won't understand. At that age, it's very difficult for him to put himself in somebody else's shoes and there's a lot of aspects to how that interplays in a child's life around. This is mine, snatching and all those kind of behaviors. But one time, it kind of kicked me but he didn't do it in a malicious way, he wasn't angry. And I pulled the most exaggerated sad face and dropped my tone in my voice and I was like, who hurt me? And he was like, oh, I'm sorry, there's so many barriers to it and I understand why that misconception goes around. Yeah, and a lot of it is like if we don't experience it, then we kind of like doubt that it's real I guess. So I have a funny story about that. I've always washed my laundry and I just dump everything in the washer. So I did that yesterday with some new clothes that some people had given us, me and my sister and they all got ruined and my mom had to like help me fix them because I didn't separate the darks and lights in the laundry. My sister was frustrated at me, my mom was like, I've taught you to wash your clothes separately and stuff. Why did she do that? I don't know. I always thought that people were just exaggerating when they like separate their clothes and stuff and I thought they were just picky because I've washed my clothes since I was like 15, all the same pile of the exact same way every single time. It works for me every single time. Nothing bad has ever happened. And so like even something like ridiculous like that, it's because a lack of that type of thing that I don't have in my life. A lack of that type of empathy where I realized that people don't have the same experiences as me. And so I need to be aware of things that could happen even though I don't, like if I have assumed that they just won't happen to me, you know, stuff like that. Yeah. So that was a mess, but the clothes turned out sort of okay for the most part. Okay, there's a little bit of uncertainty about that statement. I just think it's important for everyone to recognize that autistic people and neurotypical people all have different levels of empathy and no one can read other people's minds and that's okay. Yeah, I think there is also a large part from other people as well, my neurotypicals. If a neurotypical doesn't understand the way that you work and you process things and you understand situations, then they're not gonna have as much empathy for it and that happens a lot. It's kind of that crosswise between brains and communicating. Neurotypical person's not gonna understand why you've got to move away from the radiator because it's too hot in class, so why are you so stressed out because you're surrounded by white lights and lots of people talking all the time. They're not gonna have much empathy for that. And I think that's important to highlight because that doesn't just span to the kind of superficial things like that. It's integral parts to the way that we process and understand our environment and situations that play a large role in our ability to empathize with somebody. Yeah, yeah. I think it's called cross-cognitive difficulties when autistic people have difficulty understanding neurotypicals and then neurotypicals have difficulty understanding autistic people just because our cognition is different, just because I'm saying one thing and you're saying another doesn't mean that we're contradicting each other. That has a lot of interplay in the dating scene and the relationships, stuff like that. That's quite a common difficulty with autistic people dating neurotypical people that kind of crosswise that not having much empathy for each from both sides, you know, like, because it's hard, isn't it? If you just can't understand why someone's doing something or saying something, I think that's true for everybody in some respects. It's just a large majority of people are neurotypical. So we have to pull up the slack in a lot of cases. Okay, so we have talked through all of the areas of diversity that I wanted to chat to you about. There are a few that, you know, I think we could talk about, I know when we first had our little pre-chat, we thought up of lots of different, a lot of different topics and areas of diversity that we could go into. It's already quite a long podcast, so we're gonna have to cut it here. So let's try and round up this podcast. What free main things do you want people to take away? Well, I think the main thing that maybe neurotypical people more could take away from this is just that the more you understand about autistic diversity, the more that we will be accepted and the more that you can accept that kind of difference. And so learning about it and autistics as well, like learning about like why diversity within the spectrum is okay. It's okay, you know? You can have any combination of autistic traits because they all interconnect. Your identity as an autistic person is still valid. And I guess the third thing for everyone is just that, like when you accept autistic diversity as part of human diversity, then you start to learn to accept all parts of diversity because diversity makes the world better. We'll have more education, we'll make more discoveries and we'll have more solutions to problems and have more freedom when diversity is truly accepted and appreciated in the world. Brilliant, thank you very much for those. Thank you for having me. This is so great. One thing that I would like to add is as well, I know that there's a lot of memes and a lot of conversations that happen in autism related groups about, you know, like save the neurotypicals, neurotypicals are bad in these areas and stuff. One of the best ways that I've improved my life is understanding the neurotypical mind. And it might sound crazy for any neurotypicals listening, but there are some things that are common and some things that are kind of notable differences between, I guess, for autistic people like that, learning that neurotypicals also play a large role in society and their inherent innate understanding of social situations in the past. And, you know, in those days when we don't have all this modern infrastructure, we're a large driver for our species and that's the reason you could say the same for autistic people is it's very much about knowing that neurotypicals are not worse or better. And autistic people are not worse or better. It's all intermingled and we all interplay and trip in what we can to society. Exactly. I am very happy with this podcast. Me too. I've got one last question for you and it's a question that I ask all autistic people and you can reply in any which way you like. What does autism mean to you? It means that natural variations in, I guess, human diversity. It means that those are essential to our life. And so autism as a type of brain different from the majority of the population is important to recognize in yourself and in other people in order to see the beauty of the world. People call it a neurological difference because the human brain is so different in each and every person and that it's supposed to be that way. And so there's nothing wrong with being autistic. To me it means that I can appreciate life in my own way and see the world a perspective that is unique to me that I can also share with other people and connect with other people through. Brilliant. Yeah. That's brilliant. Thank you very much. Thank you. Right. It's been a very, it's been a long podcast but I've very much enjoyed. I know we spoke a little bit at the beginning and I said, I do got a little bit of a serotonin rush and I definitely feel that right now. Just for anybody out there listening would you like to give out some links to your social media and your website and stuff? Obviously I'll put all that stuff in the description and sort of get links to them. But yeah, where can people find you? Well, my Instagram is Holistic Autistic. My YouTube channel is called Holistic Autistic as well. My website is holisticautistic.weebly.com and my online book can be found on that website too if you'd like to buy it. Very concise, much more concise than mine. Yeah. If you go on my Instagram, Holistic Autistic then I have a link that takes you to all the different links that I have. It's like an Instabio. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, it also has my Patreon but then that's also, pretty much everything is just Holistic Autistic. That's good. Very easy to find. All under one. Yep, exactly. And of course, if you want to follow the 40 Auti Podcast in its many forms, you can always find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube under Asperger's Growth. I've also got some other videos, videos designed for autistic people, videos designed for the people around autistic people, a lot of stuff on mental health and a lot of my own personal experiences with different topics. If you want to stay up to date with my life, what's happening, the wider things that I'm doing around advocacy, such as working with charities, working with different sites, working with different podcasts and radio shows, updates and all of that information on my social medias, all at Asperger's Growth, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, very easy to find. And if you have a topic or an experience or something that you want to talk to, please direct that to my email, Asperger's Growth at joomot.com. Always nice to hear from people, even if you just want to drop in and say hi. Thank you very much, Jess, for coming onto this podcast. I always massively appreciate the time that people take to talk to me while being recorded. Very strange concept. That was great. Thank you so much. And it's been lovely speaking to you and I hope that we can stay in contact and do some more collaborative things together. Oh, definitely. Go check out Jess's stuff. Hopefully, when this goes out, we'll have a little bit of a clarity on the whole COVID thing. Oh, yeah. I was doing my last period of time actually doing the podcasts. I was expecting at some point that when my last podcast went out, this whole thing would be over with and done. But obviously, that's not the case. I hope everyone's dealing with it all right. I hope you're managing to get what you need from life. You're able to go to work and you're able to go to places and enjoy yourself. It's a very tough time for everybody in different multi-faceted ways. But we can all come together, of course, for a chat on this podcast. Not literally. That would be absolutely chaos. That would be chaos. We're not doing that, although it might be quite funny comedy thing to do in the future. It's very dark where I am, so I'm going to go get some shut-eye. What's your plan for the rest of the day, Jess? I am packing my dad's car and we were driving after he gets off work for five hours. Brilliant. What I wouldn't give for a nice five-hour drive at the end of the day. Hope you enjoy that and, of course, I hope that you enjoy your time away. I hate rounding up podcasts. It's awful. How do I do it? Buy cool cats. Buy cool cats. Stay cool. Stay fresh. And, of course, make sure that you are, in fact, a human and you're not part of V-Line. And make sure that you drink some water and sleep and do a little bit of exercise. See you later, cool cats.