 Okay. Well, hello, everybody. Welcome. I'm Mel Hauser. I use she they've grown up some executive director here at all brains belong. Welcome to bring up. They will be talking about access needs at work. But first, by way of introduction brain club, of course, is our education program. It's our very intentionally created education space for the collective over in belong community with the purpose of providing education about neurodiversity and related topics of inclusion. Just a reminder, this is not for medical or mental health advice. This is also not a support group. This is a education space. It's also not a place to debate philosophy or view of the world. I'll tell you more about our view of the world. Our goal here at brain club is to create a space where people can feel safe and experience something different from the outside world, where people can come together to collectively learn and learn. And how do we do that? We do that with an intentional view of the world, and that being that we all have different brains and bodies. There's not one correct type of brain or body. And that safety comes first. And for us, what that means is that we affirm all aspects of identity, neuro types, gender, sexuality, race, disability, ethnicity and all other forms of diversity. And though we presume good intentions, we can't allow a language that has the effect of excluding or harming other participants. So if you feel unsafe, if you feel excluded for any reason, please send a direct message. Let us know because we really take that very seriously. And because the collective collective access needs access needs of the group take priority over that of the individual. All forms of participation are okay here. You can have your video on or off. And even if it's on, we don't expect anything of you. We certainly do not need you to like look at the camera or sit still or anything. So feel free to walk, move, fidget, stim, take breaks, whatever needs doing. And observation is also a completely valid form of participation. But we also do want to create space for everyone to be able to share their ideas, whether that be in the chat or with mouth words, whatever form of communication is comfortable. Given that we all have different brains, we all have different processing speeds. So chat, the chat box is often kind of running in parallel to what's happening on the screen, I may read out selections. But please don't don't feel like you're necessarily like missing the main event. If it's hard to see like how fast the chat moves sometimes I miss most of the chat because I can't keep up with it moving so fast. So just participate in like whatever parallel track works works for you. Okay. And last thing I just want to notice that just note is that, you know, we really try to have our culture here at brain club be very intentional. And so we very intentionally facilitate it. And, you know, we might need to interrupt or redirect if, you know, there's anything that feels unsafe. I seem to have lost my visual support to show you how to turn on closed captions. Let me see if I can find that. I don't know where it went. Oh, it just went out of order. That's all closed captioning is enabled just have to toggle it on if you'd like to use it so depending on your version of zoom, you might have the lab transcript closed captioning icon but if you don't see that try them more dot dot dot. And choose show subtitles or the same and choose types of titles if you want to turn them off. And that's my visual support to actually open up the chat box so that I can see if anybody's using it. So we are wrapping up our October theme about understanding your access needs. Just a reminder, there is no brain club next week. So this will be the last brain club for October. We've been talking about access needs in various settings all throughout the month. In fact, we're always talking about access needs even when it's not necessarily the theme of the month. So today we'll be talking about access needs at work. Next month, our theme will be health and belonging. We will be joined next week, not next week, next spring club so in two weeks from today will be joined by a set of community panelists representing four different community organizations all talking about their vision for inclusion. And we'll continue to explore that theme of health and belonging throughout the month, which is very fitting because next month kicks off our did you know this could be health care campaign. Or thanks to a generous matching donation from an ABB supporter. As soon as we hit 25,000 it becomes 50,000, which is exactly what supports an entire years worth of community programs, free community programs like brain club. We're excited for November. Okay, so as you may know if you've been coming to bring up for a while, all brains belong has programs in all of these different buckets. And so brain club lives in this education space but we have all these different buckets that we are trying to improve the lives of people with all types of work. And employment is an area that our community advisory board asked us to work on because so many people do not have their access needs met at work. And so in addition to helping patients in our employment support program, learn about their employment related access needs, or also on the other side also working with employers to help them better understand how to create workplace environments for people with all types of brains can thrive so really trying to bridge the double empathy program by supporting employment on both sides. And why, because the status quo is unacceptable. So autistic adults have four to eight times higher rates of unemployment. 75% of ADHD years have employment related challenges. And what we know is that unemployment increases the probability of developing a chronic health condition by 83%. That's why to us employment is part of health. When we think about the social model of disability, where it's not a set of deficits of the person, it's about the inaccessibility of the world, how much disability someone experiences is relative so not to erase the struggle, but just to name that the problem is worse, when the world is more access more inaccessible. And so when we think about access needs access needs being anything that's required to meaningfully or fully participate in one's environment or community, everybody has access needs. It's just that neuro divergent people, less likely to have our access needs met by the defaults of society, including in the workplace. It's about some of the different types of access need considerations at work. I mean, it's so many different things from the environment to communication or executive functioning to technology to movement to how we get instructions to how we're supervised and managed to how we receive feedback to how much or how little structure we have or how much or how little autonomy we have. It's just a lot of different things that are needs. They're not optional. They are access needs. And so it's really about how do we better understand our own access needs as individuals and how can we self advocate what we need. Because the goal would be what Dr. Thomas Armstrong would refer to as niche construction, the idea of you learn about your brain and you design a life that works for your brain. And we don't have that a lot of the time. In fact, we have this more of the time. This is this image shows the square peg being hammered to fit into the round hole. We don't want that. Many of you have heard me quote one of our community members before, but I don't know what my access needs are. I just know they're not being met. Yup. It's about right. So it's really how do we begin to take on this lens of access to understand that when something's not going well, it may be because it's not met access need. So it begins for many people with starting like what's not working. You may not be able to say like my access need is X, but you can probably figure out. On a met access needs by working backwards. So asking yourself like when do you feel terrible. And this may in fact relate to an arm that access need. And then you might move forward to say, well, what's working. This might indicate that your access needs are being met. And step three, what could be working better. And are there changes I can make on my own without even needing to involve other people. And then if, if, if that's that met, of course, there's legally protected protections, right. But are there changes you can make even short of that changes can make on your own without even a bother. So anyway, I'm going to stop right here. Oops. Here we go. So, with that, David's going to play a video, a recording, a pre-recorded panel from conversations with several of our community members from a few months ago, talking about the connection of their access needs at work and how that connects to health. Before David. And the shot box will go in this video. This video will run about 35 minutes. What have you seen in your workplace or in workplaces that you've worked in about how working conditions impact health. I work food service jobs. I'm a baker. So I've all of my jobs have been in kitchens. The things that I've found that impact health conditions. The most are the practices in food service around scheduling. I don't know if you've ever heard the phrase in school. The bell doesn't release you. I release you in, you know, early education or the pandemic hit or struggling. It was a field that was already really kind of hemorrhaging people. It was really suffering. Here we were open 10 and a half hours every day for children. And so teachers were required to be here on either end of that too. So like for an administrator, I would be here for at least 12 hours a day. But so we had, we kind of walked into that scenario and then worked to even just maintain it, you know, just to keep it, keep the machine going. A mentality where it's like, I know it's said nine on your sheet, but you're here until it's done. And because food service tends to pay less than a lot of fields, it can be very, very dangerous to try and set boundaries and situations like that. Because we needed, I mean, these are human lives that we're taking care of. So we need to be here. We need people covering, we need the proper legal ratios of adults to child. So we could we were less flexible with people schedules, longer hours we had more kids we really kind of when we came in, we filled the rooms because that's like the business model of course like more kids equals more money coming in. So we had more kids in rooms larger group sizes and fewer teachers. I mean, it ended up being sort of we're just doing everything we can to survive. What have you seen in your workplace about how working conditions impact health. I mean, I think it in terms it impacts health in terms of stressors and I think there's like, in a lot of ways there's a ton of them. There's like social stressors conflict conflict with co workers supervisors, there's performance stressors understanding tasks and executing them. There's productivity stress. Can I meet the output and production expectations in the time that's allotted with the with energy that I can sustainably access. There's logistical stressors I'm working during preset hours with a schedule that's often set by somebody else at varying locations for varying durations, varying activities varying obligations so if I'm a person that has effect emotional or executive functioning or motor pattern, motor patterning or attention or energy challenges or unson predictable sleep patterns. All of that can make keeping track of schedules, having the energy to follow schedules, being able to get to the right place at the right time with the right supplies. And, and perform consistently during the hours of obligation. Really difficult if my body clock and my energy very widely, along with my ability to plan and anticipate needs and concentrate and pay attention. And that means that I really, really need to know what's going to happen before I go and do something. And it becomes extremely dysregulating for me and for a lot of other people who I've worked with, when we can't have like even a ballpark of like how many hours we're going to be working what that shift is going to look like how many people are going to be there whether everyone else is going to show up, because those are all common concerns in the field that I work in. And the uncertainty of that makes me dysregulated to an extent that it's like, okay, I said I could do these things and I could be responsible for these tasks. But you know, I am not fully present anymore so it's a lot less physically safe for me to be, you know, lifting the 50 pound bags of flour or operating the heavy machine. I'm not going to cut this thing super fast because my understanding of my body has gone from like 30% to 0% because it doesn't feel like I can. It doesn't feel my needs don't feel relevant to my safety and my environment anymore. So I am not going to think about whether I'm too warm I'm not going to think about whether I'm thirsty I'm not going to think about whether I need to sit down for five minutes and eat something. I don't know until it's done and I can be done being here like supervisory stress. And so, how to be a person in an who highly values autonomy, like, like a lot of us are, you know, that the PDA stuff persistent desire for autonomy so how do I, how do I be in a workplace, like a person who consistently values autonomy and needs to understand why someone else's way is better in order to really get myself to do it in an environment where basically unquestioning or minimally questioning compliance is expected. So something that I really struggle with is like, there's social cues and then there's the social cues of capitalism. And those are like, you can't find out like once you find out like the motivation behind what someone is telling you. It's like, you have to do the like what is the hardest thing in the world to me and just accept that the answer is just because I'm like I need to know why something is happening why something does something and it's very very hard for me to be like, it just is that way and you need to And part of that motivation that like drives all business is like not wanting people to know that they have to ask certain questions or have to advocate for themselves in certain ways, and certain jobs making it much much more risky to have like try and enter into those negotiations. So I've been in situations where I'm being like dramatically underpaid. Because I did not know that everyone else around me was getting like the salaries that they were getting from a place of like, I've been doing this that and the other that is beyond the job description I signed on for it is time for you to pay me more money because I am doing more labor for you. There's been times in that where like, you know, it's my turn to talk or relate something or engage in the conversation. And I, I want to make a point I have a point to make. I want to start getting the sense from the facilitator that like, you know, that person here she will cut me off or kind of like, you know, I get the sense moving along, and which I think, because I also suffer from some low self esteem I think which is an outcome of me, you know, my ADHD. And then I'm suddenly like in this loop where I'm like, well, you know, maybe what I have to say is not a bit just, you know, and it's really just I think that I in that kind of environment. You know, there's a lot of pressure on getting to the point and letting the rest of the group engage and I certainly want to, to fit into that. I'm trying to, I guess, you know, sort of navigate within that framework that is the framework that is mostly dictated by neuro typical people, right. Right. And so there's, there's also this element of, you know, the neuro inclusive space would would involve a facilitator that like lays out ground rules about. There's no right way to participate. There's no right way to communicate and like explicitly naming that, you know, that's not what most groups do with kitchens have. But also, like, I'm transgender and part of that was that I recently had I like I experience or experience chest dysphoria and so for a long time. I had a chest and that meant that like not only is it super dysregulating to work in more than eight hour a day, but doing that results in like stabbing rib pains that may or may not you after surgery. So part of it was like I had to have surgery. And that was a medical necessity for me, like regardless of how it impacted my mental health. Like accessing other forms of gender affirming healthcare were really, really imperative to me and that's not going to be the case for every trans person but like, I think that's definitely like a consideration as kitchens tend to attract trans people because I've been in a lot of kitchens with other trans folks with other neurodivergent folks where it's like, okay, so these expectations are built around cis bodies and a one neuro type. And my body actually can't be here for 12 hours. So, and then, and then you add on top of that the personal life stressors that that can come up. And any of those things, one can have difficulty I can have difficulty managing become dysregulated. The hyper focus means that I tend to get and stay distracted from work. Those are all stressors. And then, once I get like any of those stressors, you know that that can start to lead that that it goes unresolved. It can lead to, it really gets me into a vicious cycle of a dysregulation spiral. So I get, I get stressed out. I get anxious. That which leads to mental and physical tension. I go into defensive behaviors worry self protective avoidance distraction. There's this regulation, including sleep, which leads to less capacity for attention less capacity for motor skills and motor planning less executive functioning, which then can lead to more and bigger mistakes. Hyper focus getting stuck on the wrong details self justification and externalizing blame attacking perceived sources of threat, all of which go over really well in a work environment, leading to more fit more negative feedback, possible discipline job loss, bad reviews that limit my potential to advance and my potential for access to organizational power and privilege that could actually help me fix the problems that are affecting me. And then all of that leads to more dysregulation less resilience greater vulnerability to that tendency to hyper focus, which is consistent for a lot of us with ADHD and autism. And it's a superpower when it comes to focusing on job related tasks, but it's a liability if there's a stressor. And that's, that's troubling because then it becomes difficult to think about anything or do anything else until that stressor is resolved. And so, unless there's an ability to resolve to resolve issues of concern. The hyper focus tends to tends to really get in the way of the, the things that that employers are looking for. So, when my needs aren't met, but me asking to have my needs met is going to be penalized. I remember when I was working at a childcare center, my position was as a floater, which meant that I didn't know what was needed of me or expected of me or what my day was going to look like until I was there. And I remember having a big conversation with my boss and being like, okay, this next year around, I can't handle this and I feel that my, my showing up here my attendance and being good employees being impacted when I don't know what's expected of me. I had this big wrong talk and then she like reformatted it that floaters would be assigned to specific rooms. So you would have at least know where you were going to be who you're going to be working with and everything and I was like, oh my gosh that's so amazing. And then I remember having, oh, and it like, oh man it puts a little ache in my chest. I remember feeling so like proud of that and everything and then walking by and hearing someone be like you mean I have to do the same thing every day. And I was like, oh my gosh I just ruined that person's life. Like, now that person is going to have to do the same thing every day and it's all my fault. And now I have a control over all of their feelings. So, so a couple of things that are standing out for me, listening to this part of your story. One is it's a story of unmet access needs access needs being anything that someone needs for full meaningful participation. So you needed novelty you needed multiple different things in the day you need multiple locations you needed movement. You know, you need a variety like all of this and so that was unmet. Another thing I heard from your story was it's a story of interdependence like I think independence is so overly glorified. Autonomy is really important. But but but the idea that like you don't need other people interdependence being connected to relying on other people like, like how profoundly human is that. So anyway, that's I'm also that I'm also hearing that from your story, and that you know in the team that you're leading now that you are bringing this lens of whether you're using this term or not, you're thinking about access needs and how to help the people that you're leading have met access needs and like, you know, I think there's a lot of small businesses that struggle with, like hiring good people and keeping people and like all the, all the lost revenue of turnover and all the things during training person. Like when people have their access needs they are less likely to quit their jobs. For sure. Yeah, right exactly. Yeah, it's just not a one size fits all not just because it was in childcare typically at that time I think like a revolving door staffing wise and people were really burning out. It was a recipe for burnout stress fatigue. We couldn't actually do our jobs I mean. I mean it ended up being sort of we're just doing everything we can to survive. What strategies have you found helpful to cope with unhealthy work environments. What I started to write these down it was sort of an off the cuff I started to kind of laugh, but I sort of thought well I just being like, you know kind of off the cuff and sarcastic but actually think these are are actually these are actually the strategies I use, which kind of says something like saving enough money to quit or take extended lease of absence. These care professionals in my court so I can qualify for continued health insurance under the family medical leave absence or temporary permanent permanent disability when I do leave structuring my life simply enough that if I need to quit, I can get government benefits, structuring my income so I can earn just enough to afford rent and still qualify for food stamps heating oil and Medicaid researching ways to house myself if I end up homeless. So that was my payment to get to to get myself maximum freedom and independence. I think there's there's a lot of people who are in work situations that are not working for their brains. How did you come to start your business. I worked in a corporate traditional architecture practice setting for almost 20 years I started working. I went to architecture night school for architecture successful but my own measure. I felt like I wasn't actually doing anything, and I had a really tough time sitting at a desk. So, you know, so I, I, I looked for opportunities to basically get out of the office when I bought a house and I started to do work on it. So I go into the office in the morning, and then say I well I got to go, you know, I can only put in half day today and I'd leave and I had all my equipment set up and I climb out the bedroom window and put shingles up on the side of the house. And that was like super. It was so fulfilling to me. I basically started the construction business. And the reason for that was, people would drive by the house when I was working on it and they'd stop and they'd be like I need somebody to reach, I really shingle my house and, and so that's how I got into doing construction. So, so I'm completely self taught when it comes to like you know estimating and that whole side of I'm trained as an architect so the design part of it is is very manageable but and the practice has been through some ups and downs I changing careers. I mean literally as my, I like in my 30s my mental capacity to really do the grind of law started to massively decrease and I just couldn't cognitively sustain 60 or 80 hour weeks were being mentally on. And so I switched to sort of a mental health and then eventually more peer support which, which drew a lot more on experiential and empathic capacities and I didn't have to be. I didn't have to use my problem solving abilities like, you know, 16 hours a day and that was much and that and that's been a much better path for me. There's a, there's a lot of pressure in a kind of business, you know, environment small business whatever to move things along get to the point, you know, set the table and let your my team delegate so so that's where it sometimes it gets in the way of not that I'm, I don't think that I'm, have learned to be pretty good about delegating, but sometimes it just takes me a long time to get there so I made the decision to myself that I needed a business partner that could sort of ground the business in the things that I didn't have or that I couldn't bring to the table. Kind of worked through to figure out like what I need to prioritize in a job in the hiring process is I if I can, if I can avoid it I won't take jobs where I can't wear headphones. And, and just for me, music is my like number one self regulation technique, and it helps to block out the sound of air vents and convection ovens which is super overwhelming to me. Um, so one of the questions that I always ask on like an interview or training days like okay how many other people are going to be in the kitchen with me. Um, will I need to be super alert to people like passing through the kitchen. Can I bring headphones or earbuds in with me. I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't love it. Um, a lot of people get siloed into food service as like a tool of marginalization of like, we're going to shove you back here and underpay you where no one can see you. Um, for 20 years, but um, you know it's, it's cool that I get to like go to work every day and I know that what I'm what I'm doing like what I do is feed people I make food for people to eat that makes them full or makes them happy. Or makes them frustrated and gives them something to complain about the other people that they got breakfast with. Um, but like, I know that the job that I'm doing is necessary for like human beings and that it often adds extra joy to people's lives. And I know that when I leave the building my work is done. I'm not worried about like I missed something I'm not worried about like, is this take home work going to take me like the amount of time that I thought it would I my time once I leave the building is mine. Um, what do you wish other employers knew about creating healthy workplace culture. Exactly. And so the pandemic actually was helpful in the sense for us that we reevaluated like we is this working for us, and we're able to reflect on some observations and say, actually that's not working for us and really be like wait a sec. What are we doing and why, and then, and that change based on what we want to be doing. And one of the things we wanted to be doing was less of a revolving door more retention in our staff because we know that consistency of care will also provide a better foundation for the children if it's the same teachers and those same colleagues working together. And we know people want to be here and so the question is, what do you need to be here, like what what is it that you need in order to be doing this job that you love or that you want to be doing. So before we connected with Mel and all brains belong before you've been knowing about the term access needs we were sort of asking folks what their access needs were to be able to show up and feel good about the words that they were doing because people were kind of showing that it wasn't feeling good, you know, and so to feel good in your work, and to show up was really important and it just was a lot of a lot of conversation individual conversations conversations as a whole as a whole staff to determine sort of what we needed, and really a lot of space for those voices to be heard. And so it wasn't that Vicki and I were saying, this is what people need, you know, as sort of part of the leadership team. It was really asking those people to tell us because we can make tons of assumptions but a lot of those tend to be inaccurate and so that was a really, I just want to emphasize how important that piece was for us in the process. We learned the particular to the pandemic, we learned that a lot of people didn't have a primary care doctor or didn't have health insurance, including some of the admin team and so we became in a sense, especially Cecilia like resource coordinators and we would be on the clock, you know during the work week, we have we still do this we have time with people who need, because you're working Monday through Friday but that's when everything's open and you have to make your phone calls. And so we have time for people to connect with one of us, usually Cecilia to like call Vermont Health Connect and figure out health insurance or to call the health advocates or to call and how the emergency housing find a therapist. Access to food access to food yeah so those kinds of things, we just had to learn more about people's individual struggles and individual situations and also then the collective needs of like what are the barriers to doing the work that we want to do. And we really want to go against the rhetoric that like everything should be done in isolation by yourself and so that's also a way that we open that up to say, let's do this together because you know health insurance for example doesn't make a difference to a lot of us so if we can work together and support each other that feels better for everyone. So I use this, like a to do list app kind of thing, like just, they're not task reminders they're reminders to me, either my brain or my business owner and one of the things is, you know this pops up every morning. When I'm starting work it is good leaders offer opportunity for growth but as importantly they also understand unique needs of the people they are leading. So, you know, for me that's like, that's what I had to, when I recognize that it was because I recognize, like, that was my own situation, you know, so it makes sense that, like, if I can expect myself to be kind of, you know, neuro typical there's a likelihood that all my staff is like nobody's neuro typical right you know so there is no such thing as absolutely agree it's just the, the like the assumptions or the cultural beliefs that people grow up with like you're a little kid and you're basically taught there is one correct default way to be a person, and it's nonsense. I have a lot of trade partners, some contractors, material suppliers and stuff like that and it is so we are so dependent, you know, and, and we, we try to have, we try to have a framework of expectation for certain things because you know it can't be just the total free for but at the same time like there's like our plaster that does almost all the board and plaster on our jobs. He's a single dad. He, he manages, you know, the all the business financial end of his business. He's got a couple of staff. He also stocks like the job sites every his job sites every morning you know. So, so we know, I know just over the years that we're not likely to get a quote, but we've talked and we know enough that we know what his pricing is. So, you know, we make, we make some accommodations there, and then, you know, he's gonna send me a message on usually, you know, maybe Thursday. Can, can I get a check, you know, and that's really tricky and what I'm hearing from you is this awareness of like the whole of a person, you know, so you mentioned, you know, this person's a single dad and they're doing this and they're doing that and they're doing you're even thinking about them as the character in their own movie of their own business which I mean that's the way that my brain told you took your story and translated it and I'm picturing the, you know, the guy and he's doing all the things and he's deliver this anyway he's got the kids anyway, like you're seeing you but so many people are not giving a character like that the right time of day. Yeah, for sure. I think. And the challenge. It hasn't been easy to stay in business. Because because it takes time. That's not necessarily. And that, that kind of investment is not what our system is set up to reward by, you know, making, making enough money to keep the doors open. Right, especially when you've got, you know, so, see, as you've described you need a team and interdependent team to run the business. And then when you're responsible for the livelihoods of other people minutes. I feel it too it's just a lot of pressure. It is a lot of pressure. Yeah. Yeah. Because you do feel responsible for your, your team and your trade partners and your vendors and their families and their communities and you know it's. Yeah, you that that interdependence is, it's all about community. What do you wish other employers knew about creating a healthy workplace culture. That it's not enough to fix problems as they come up, you have to think about the people who are working for you the people who might work for you the things you might not know about the people who are working for you. And whether or not there's already space for them to work comfortably and healthily in that environment. And I think that like, that is something that's like really under considered and that like a lot of the time that leaves room for people to create ableist and classes practices on and couch them in language of non discrimination. And that if you really think about like, okay, could this kind of person who experiences these kinds of marginalization walk in here and feel like they could commit to this job. Like, would they be able to do it would they be able to account for their safety and their health, would they feel comfortable knowing that they would not be fired for being trans or for being a person of color and have it like couched in some other terminology that I do to make sure that this place is not only safe but like has space built in for people who are not like the normative cishet white man model that we built the 40 hour work week around. And I think that like, if you aren't seeing a group or several groups of people represented in your workplace, that is because you made it a space that they could not show up to you either like are advertising for employment in the wrong and offering enough money you are letting your employees say micro aggressive ignorant stuff that they don't know about you are expecting your employees to be able to do things with their bodies on that they don't necessarily have to do. I really think we need to reimagine work. I mean I just, I think it's bigger than just, I mean I certainly think that there's ways that employers can be sensitive to a variety of stressors and sort of, you know, do this universal design thing, but it still doesn't get away from the power imbalance. So like having employers who are like kind of like preemptively thinking about like, how are my employees, how are my coworkers moving around this space and like having co workers who were like, Okay, I've got a little bit of positional power here how can I use this to make my co workers lives better when I know it would be heard better coming from me. And that's something that like having had people do that for me is like really important to me is like if I see a co worker at my job being treated unfairly or like see something in like the kitchen get like that tends to like get them bent out of shape. And that like as a man oftentimes people are more willing to listen to me than like my fem and woman counterparts being able to be like, Hey, I've noticed that like we could really fix that problem a like a lot of people work in areas that tend toward exploitation and dehumanization. And some of those folks are like, I'm just doing this until like, I make it in a creative field I'm just doing this until I am finished with this certification that's going to let me do this job that I really care about. And some people are like, I've been forced to do this because of racism because of classism and discrimination and hiring practices, so on and so forth. And some of us are there because we want to be and because we think that it's important that people do those jobs and that whether you are working a job that tends towards exploitation and dehumanization, or you and your day to day life are profiting from other people working those jobs whether it's buying your coffee at a coffee shop that a barista makes, or like going to the grocery store where someone is stocking the shelves. Those are jobs that like are inherently like full of dignity, like that work matters on a fundamental level, and is important and is noble and like, even if you want to do it being treated poorly doing those kinds of jobs can really weigh on you and like, it's important that you're doing that work, whether you continue to do it or not. It's, you should be proud of it. Do you have any advice for other employers that might be wanting to be more aware of this kind of thing. Prioritize humans and not profit. Yeah. That's exactly right. It's about respect for humans. I mean, to make it's not, it's not easy, but it's kind of simple. You know, you can't have a healthy workplace environment where we're spending all of these waking hours. If you're not thinking about those workers who are there. And really recognizing that humans deserve to feel belonging and deserve to feel a place where they're part of something and in fact we thrive off of that sort of social collaboration and for a long time, a lot of us have been socialized like I was saying before to sort of silo isolate, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And that's something we really want to break down and try to rebuild in a different way where we're utilizing one another as supports. And this is all really important for us to be transparent about because we're teaching the children they're watching our every move. And it's important to us at Turtle Island that children are going into the world, you know with ideas about respect and kindness for humans and understanding that other human has a place and has feelings and emotions you know and perspective. And if we're asking kids to do that then we better be doing it ourselves. So much wisdom there. So circling back. There's a topic that came up in the chat about professionalism. And I think to me that that message of there's not one right way to be a person there's not one right way to be an employee and yet so many times. The expectations of professionalism are based on the notion that there's one more way to be a person. I know I'd like to get some context to that because I was the one who post that I have been facing some. I don't know if you would say like big D discrimination but definitely at least little D discrimination on professionalism on on my own actions and behaviors. I have been called out by someone who has just become my own supervisor after one got swapped to a different department without me even knowing I didn't even know that the supervisor situation was changing unless until I actually asked if it was so that was fun. But also this particular person who I've already interacted with got so upset at me just trying to clarify such a situation. She was giving me really strong staring vibes that were giving me a lot of anxiety and stress and I needed to clarify her intent on those and she was so upset at me just clarifying that and said that was an unprofessional of me. And then a friend of mine who has been transferred long while and is male to female she just she's been going through hormones for a very long time and pretty strictly in the feminine realm now but she's trying to get into social work because of her own understanding of her recent discovery of her own neurodiversity and she has been told that she was unprofessional because of behaviors and experiences she's dealing with in school that are inherent neurodivergent traits and behaviors and this place doesn't understand those and instead of understanding her is ruling her out for being unprofessional and putting reprimands on her. I'm really sorry to hear all that I'm really sorry to hear all that I'm sorry you're going through that and that your friend is going through that and like just to just first just validate like how how awful this this this is. You know I'd also say how not. Not uncommon. This is Sierra. You're muted. Thank you. Get to the button. Nice. Sorry, you're both Sierra. I'm so sorry. Sierra Miller go for it. Who is going to respond to other Sierra's comment. That's funny. Perfect timing. Yeah I just really I think that really resonates with me I think the idea of professionalism I. As a first generation college student I was very lucky to be in a program in college that like taught us professionalism and we did etiquette classes and professional dress classes and you know it was great because we were able to like get those things that we wouldn't otherwise have but In a group of mostly other neurodivergent college kids and it was so much more comforting being in a group of people who are like yeah we have no idea why this clothing is considered professional and this one isn't or why I can't have blue hair in a professional setting but I can have brown hair. Overload issues with clothing. Sorry I just had to put that in there. No exactly it really it really is and I think it was it was surprisingly how much more comforting it was being in a group of other people who were like yeah this is ridiculous. And I think that that like co regulation and that being able to voice in a workplace or whatever like. Hey we know these rules are ridiculous just like take so much of that pressure off even if you still have to whatever do that dress or change your hairstyle or whatever that looks like. Yeah, and I think that there is something about on the character judgment that comes from being told you're unprofessional. Like there as though you know it's one thing to say you know recently recently I had to, I gave some advice around a dress code situation that came up. You know, anyway, we don't we don't have a dress code it all brains belong and like a lot of the other like stuff that's in like a neuro normative employee handbook like we don't have those things here but anyway I had to give advice to their outside world about dress code. And it became you know I think framing this around conflicting access needs is really important. So if you have, if you're serving it like depending on what type of job you have but if like you have some sort of like client facing work, and your, your client has an access need for like, you know, feeling secure or like, you know, they have like, you know, you know, their brain rules assumptions, their brain rules not world rules but like they're still their brain rules. So like you know your workplace may need to figure out how to negotiate that where it's not your unprofessional. It's, we have to queue safety to a client base for XY reason that doesn't mean that you're unprofessional. It means that how do we queue safety to this client base and how do we get you what you want to do and also how do we negotiate that. Laura. I put my hand down because you went exactly where I was going to ask you mal as a nursing instructor we're constantly being challenged by our students to look again at our professionalism definition for really good reason, but we're always trying to balance that with what patients expect to see in a nurse and queuing safety to our patients and I think that push and pull you just addressed so beautifully, like I'm like how do I need to write that down and bring that to our department to say like, this is how we need to present this issue, and, and expand our definition of professionalism to be more inclusive. Right and so that your students know that there's nothing unprofessional about having blue hair or having a tattoo. It's really about some brains they have some nervous systems have this limbic response to blue hair or tattoo or whatever that doesn't mean that yours is wrong, or unprofessional it's just that like, same way that like when I, when I, when I interact with my in laws from rural North Carolina, I speak a lot more slowly than I do when I'm around my New Yorker parents because talking quickly does not queue safety and like, kind of like at the beginning of brain club we talk about like queuing safety comes first. And so, you know, it's not because I'm going to try to infringe upon your access needs to have blue hair. I would like to follow that example. But it's really just about like, it's, it's all a collective responsibility to queue safety to one another, what is that going to look like, and the component of that is going to my unique component of that is also going to be, you know, writing some education to the people who, about their brain rules, right so it's it's it's all of the above. And I think that like when you try to address just a component of that it doesn't work. Same way that like I have to go give feedback to my six year old we got some feedback that that they've been. Like verbally stimming like vocally stimming in school. When I go give feedback now it's not going to be like don't do that that's wrong it's going to be like it's going to be in the context of conflicting access needs of like hey what do you need. Okay how else can we meet that okay so there might be some brains that have conflicting access needs here, where they need quiet in order to like the teacher needs quiet in order to talk and think and stuff so how do you get what you need. And I think that the same goes in the workplace. I love that yeah with my specific example was, I guess, for me, my psychological psychological safety was being kind of stepped on by this colleague and also service provider because I'm in that weird brackish waters of pure support coordinator so I am both coordinator and client for this company is a weird spot to be in but anyway, she was staring at me like, and I'm like, Lady, what's going on like, is there something on my face is like no this is just my face I'm like, Okay, I don't know what's going on. I'm having a really intense reaction in interest anxiety reaction and I am a neurodivergent empath and autistic and I am. I'm really picking up on some vibes, I can't focus on what we're doing until we clear the air I just needed to say something about it. I didn't expect anything for her. I just, I needed an idea of what was going on or what was contributing to that expression and what was what was it, what it meant, you know, whether it meant anything or nothing. Right, it's about, it's about clarity as an access needs so I think again, bringing bringing bringing this around around access needs I think it think is the way for Jay. Thank you so much. I'm really enjoying this discussion about what access needs are and conflicting access needs but I also want to bring up the idea which is something unfortunately I'm bringing my work in here because I work in a diversity equity and justice kind of focus field. But one thing that we talk about sometimes is the difference between, and I'm bringing this in to talk about like the difference between letting your interpersonal buy it because what I thought, let me start over. What I'm concerned about is that someone with biases that they haven't unpacked yet, meaning like they haven't thought about why they have those feelings or biases could use that as a an excuse to, well, to say like well I need to I need a white doctor instead of a black doctor because I have access need that I have because I'm uncomfortable around having a black doctor take care of me. And like, there have been cases of people showing up in emergency rooms and saying I won't, I won't be seen by, you know, a black doctor instead of a white doctor. So, I would encourage people to think about is this an access need based on my nerve diversity. Is this a product of some kind of trained implicit bias that I have as a result of how I grew up or how experienced or you know, messages that I've got from the media about who fits the mold of like, what does a doctor look like, or, you know, what is a whatever. So, I'm a little at the end of my, I'm just, it's like a yes and it's like, yes, I love this whole dialogue that's going around on around that access needs, and let's not let our internal biases turn into access needs. Does that make sense, like, amen, say like, Oh, well, I can't use they them pronouns for people, because I can't adjust my language that way and it's like, Well, is that really an access now to use my pronouns or is that it's not an access. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so Jay, I think in the way I would like wrap us all up and as I wrap us up tonight I think it's like, when we talk about conflicting access needs, we all that we do that within neuro inclusive space or within inclusive space. We all have that's why like we, I don't, I hope this is effective but like we start brain club with a community agreement. And so like if we are going to assume we're going to have conflicting access needs here, even within this space, because we all have different access needs so we're going to have to negotiate that. But like we are all operating from within a community agreement that is, we are trying to cue safety and signal inclusion for all people like that is the premise. And so any, I think to your point, Jay, like if someone is coming at this and being like I have an access need for like something that's exclusive and harmful. Like, that's not, that's not, you didn't meet the first step which was that we have a community agreement to be an inclusive community together. With that, I think it's a perfect transition to not next week but the following week will be joined by our community panel. We've got four community organizations representatives coming to talk about their vision for inclusion and I think it'll be a great conversation. But thanks everyone. And, and again, Lizzie Lizzie put in the chat. Lizzie can you do it one more time. The link to November brain club registration so if you registered for any of the October brain clubs you will get that by email. But after that you it's the same link like if you keep your link it's fine like just keep using the same zoom link. But if you do want the recording sent to you if you can't make it live, we do recommend registering and it's, you know, it's Anyway, all that things everybody have a good two weeks.