 Hello everybody. Welcome to Brain Club. I'm Mel Hauser. I use Shibae pronouns. I'm the Executive Director here at All Brains Belong. And let me share screen and get us started. So we are doing our first book chat of 2024, the reason I jumped by Naoki Higashita. And I know that since for some folks who are new to Brain Club, I just orient you to what we do here. I want to begin today with a quote that I read over the weekend that like so, so called to me. You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. And I think that's what we try to do here at All Brains Belong. You know, as we try to make life better for people with all types of brains, what we often say is that to do anything, we must do everything as we collectively come together and unlearn and reimagine what's possible. And so Brain Club is part of that. Brain Club is our public facing education space for the collective ABB community with a purpose of providing education about neurodiversity and related topics of inclusion. But more than that, it is a forum to bring people together based on a shared vision of what's possible and to contribute to systems changed by shifting social norms. Here at Brain Club, what we often talk about is developing language to describe our experiences, shared vocabulary, and like often the opportunity to reframe past experiences within now having language to describe it. That's really what Brain Club has always been about. And whether that's through, you know, through books like today or community panelists, it's that language that then allows the shifting of social norms that contributes to systems change. This is a place where people can come together to collectively learn and unlearn to feel safe, to experience for many something that's quite different from the outside world. And in so doing to then be able to promote new ways of thinking and being in order to collectively change the world. What this is not, though all brains belong does have other types of programs that provide medical and mental health advice and support spaces. This is not one of those programs. This is about the collective. This is not a place for discussing and solving individual specific problems or processing individual trauma. We encourage you to reach out to helping professionals for that. All forms of participation are okay and welcome here at Brain Club. You can have your video on or off. And even if it's on, I mean, yeah, right, if it's on, we don't expect anything of you. We certainly don't need you to sit still or look at the camera or like any of that. So feel free to walk or move or fidget or stem or eat and you know, whatever needs doing. All forms of communication are okay. You can unmute and use mouth words. You can type in the chat box. You're also welcome to send questions or comments using the private messages to me and I won't read your name out if you do that. And in addition to affirming all aspects of identity, it's important that we choose safety to the collective. And one of the things that that we talk about is when it does come to discussion time after the prerecorded video here tonight. It's really important to be discussing the impact of experiences, not specific events. Close captioning is enabled. You just have to toggle it on if you'd like to use it. So depending on your version of Zoom, you might see the live transcript closed captioning icon. But if not, look for the more dot dot dot and choose show subtitles. You can do the same and choose hide subtitles if you'd like to turn them off. And that's my visual support to open the chat box. Okay, there we go. Now I'm seeing it. All right. So last thing before we get started in our topic, I just wanted to name that next next week kicks off our new month, our new theme. And our theme for February is that connection is the path to health. So we'll be discussing various, various topics there within. And I look forward to you joining us. So Lizzie, if you can put the registration link for grab a drink up perfect. And that's also the QR code if folks want to access it that way. And one of those topics is we're gonna try to do a community panel on redefining the release relationship to work and love love to invite new panelists or particularly here interested in learning from intersectional experiences of work. And please reach out if you'd like to be a panelist. Thanks, Sarah for dropping your email and chat. Okay, so the reason I jump by Naoki Egashita. We are going to watch a pre recorded video of the last time we did a book chat. And you are welcome while the video plays to ask questions or comment in the chat. We did get feedback last week that some some devices actually don't let people see chat messages that are in the like reply thread like the collapsible thing. So we just we want to try something today to try to type like in the regular chat box to type your messages there as opposed to like the threads. Okay, so with that, David, take it away. The thing I will mention first and foremost is that there is my jump written by Naoki Egashita. So 13 year old autistic child, who was a non speaking communicator. And Naoki wrote the entire book using what's called a letterboard or a letter grid, pointing to each individual letter to spell out words. And in so doing has produced one of what what what many people describe as one of the like most profound glimpses insight provided into the inner experience of an autistic person. And David, maybe actually we can start by if you want to play we have a quick video clip so folks can see what using a letter grid looks like. We all seek the courage to stand up again after falling down, fall down seven times, get up eight. That's the sequel. I'm not showing actually this book has a sequel fall down seven get up eight. So audio just a question because my audio went out during the middle of it. What's that? Yeah, no, I heard it was audio work. Great. Thank you. Okay. So as as Naoki wrote in that quote, many people describe this is my experience as well, that reading the these the descriptions of what what sensory processing and emotional regulation and motor planning and you know, social misunderstandings and like, so many of these things that that that are so much a part of our daily experiences, that so many people when have have have learned even more about their own experience by reading a particular way in which Naoki describes his experiences. So what we're going to do is we've plucked out staff has plucked out our favorite parts of of this book. And I'd be be interested if, and you know, as as we're going, if folks want to note in the chat, if something really, really resonates with you, and we'll try to get through get through all of them, and then we'll have plenty of time for discussion. Um, it's this is I was I was telling Lizzie earlier, this is probably the only book related to autism that I have read. You know, like probably three times copper to cover but like parts of even more than that. And I learned something new, I learned something about myself new every time I read it. So we've broken these into some some categories. So there's a lot of the way that the book is written is that there are like questions posed, questions posed to himself that he is answering. And what he says at the start of the book, to live my life as a human being, nothing is more important than being able to express myself. It's about getting across to other people what I need, and need them to understand. There's sometimes when I found the sound of my own voice comforting, when I use familiar words and phrases that are easy to say, but the voice I can't control is different. This one blurts out. Not because I want to, it's more like a reflex, a reflex reacting to what what I've seen in some cases or just some old memories. When a when my voice gets triggered, it's almost impossible to hold it back. And if I try, it actually hurts almost as though I'm strangling my own throat. Why do you ask the same questions over and over? I don't repeat my questions because I didn't understand. In fact, even as I'm asking, I know I do understand the reason why. Because I very quickly forget what I've just heard. Inside my head, there isn't really such a big difference between what I was told just now and what I heard a long time ago. My memory is like a pool of dots. I'm always picking up these dots by asking my questions so that I can arrive back at the memory that dots represent. There's another reason for repeated questions. It lets us play with words. As hard as we try, we'll never speak as effortlessly as you do. The big exception is words or phrases we're familiar with. Repeating these is great fun. It's like a game of catch with the ball. Unlike the words we are ordered to say, repeating questions we already know the answers to and be a pleasure. It's playing with sound and rhythm. What we want to say and the words we can say don't match that well. When there's a gap between what I'm thinking and what I'm saying, it's because the words coming out of my mouth are the only ones I can access at that time. These words are either available because I'm always using them or because they left a lasting impression on me at some point in the past. Just because some of us can make sounds or other words, it doesn't follow automatically that what we've said is really what we want to say. So before I move on to talking about processing, I wonder if any of that resonated for folks about language. That says when people misunderstand me and move on, it's a huge trigger. Being understood is important to me too. Yeah, me too. Anybody else have any reflections on language? Annika says the concept of time I've always struggled with. Yes, yes. CV says I don't feel in control of my mouth or it's one on anxious. Yes, yes. So when you think about, you know, there's there's several instances where the author is describing motor planning challenges. So this idea of the motor plan, you have the idea brain tells muscles, whether that be in limbs or the muscles of your mouth and tongue to do the thing you've planned. And then you carry it out, you initiate it, you coordinate it along the way, you stop it. These are all separate tasks of motor planning. And then feedback, you like feed forward that it becomes easier to do it the next time. And 86.9% of autistic people have some degree of dyspraxia difficulty with planning and sequencing. And it's it's in many ways people people this many people describe autism as a motor coordination lens to understand a lot of the things that are challenging. And so that this this, this, I think is describing this that gap between ideation and implementation, which has a huge impact on self esteem, self concept, self efficacy. That says last week is the same story as 40 years ago, there's somewhere in the past and I can tell it happened before that and after that. But as far as a date, what? Yeah. And I think that I when when I read this book, my child was was four. And I read excerpts to her. And there were so many things that at four years old, she's like, that's what happens in my brain. So it's just, yeah. So processing. So this is back to talking about asking questions repeatedly. Firing the question back is a way of sifting through memories to pick up on clues about what the question is asking. And especially for for those of you for whom it resonated to say that like, what happened, you know, five minutes ago, and, you know, years ago, it's all same. It's some like, you know, gobbledygook of sometime before right now, can see how these these connect. And he went on to say we understand the question okay, but we can't answer a question until we fish out the right memory picture in our heads. It's quite a complicated process. First, I scan my memory to find an experience closest to what's happening for me. When I find a good close match, my next step is to try to recall what I said at that time. If I'm lucky, I hit upon a usable experience and all as well. If I'm not lucky, I get clothered by the same sinking feeling I had originally, and I am unable to answer the question on being asked, I get more flustered and discouraged. So it gets harder and harder to say anything. As he says, when I read this quote, it blew me away. Sifting through memories is what I do, but I never realized I do this. Yeah, social penetration theory, the idea that people become familiar with their own experience when someone else says it or writes it, take ages to answer questions. It takes age to respond to what the other person has just said. The reason we need so much time isn't necessarily because we haven't understood. But because by the time it's our turn to speak, the reply we wanted to make has often vanished from our heads. Once our replies disappeared, we can never get it back again. What did he say again? And all the while we're bombarded with yet more questions. I end up thinking this is just hopeless. It says though I'm drowning in a flood of words. And it says I describe my thoughts as a rolodex to my psychiatrist. Yeah. See, he says, wow, I do this too. It's like a visual matching memory game, sorting, sorting my brain. Yes. Steve says, I have to write things down and meeting so I can remember what I wanted to say and still attempt to attend to what others are saying. Yes. That says that's what I do when I'm conversing with other autistics. How does this relate? Am I really understanding you? If I can find something that matched, sorry, just popped around, it resonates a joy. Right. And you think about the neuro-normative line of like, you know, you're not supposed to share what happened in your own life when someone's telling you a story. It's like, well, that's how so many people establish connection. Because I think exactly what this is of listening, flipping through the rolodex, matching connection. Nothing wrong with that. Socialization. Why don't you make eye contact when you're talking? What we're and sorry, where exactly am I looking? You might as well suppose that we're just looking down or at the general background, but you'd be wrong. What we're actually looking at is the other person's voice. Voices may not be visible things, but we're trying to listen to the other person with all of our sense organs when we're fully focused on working out what the heck it is you're saying our sense of sight sort of zones out. If you can't make out what you're seeing, it's not the same as not seeing anything at all. Whoa. I will often describe to people who don't, you know, like don't identify as being autistic, don't, you know, endorse necessarily understanding this. And I'll describe that like I have the kind of brain that listens better when I'm looking somewhere else, but it was not until I read this, looking at the other person's voice. Yeah, that is absolutely. I wonder for anyone else, is this resonate? As he says, yes, it's the voice. You know, you know, Mel, that's the same kind of thing that soldiers report in battle. Steve says a couple of things. She says definitely easier to listen when not looking at the other person, looking at them erases my brain. Yeah. Do you prefer to be on your own? Sorry. Oh, don't worry about him. He'd rather be on his own. How many times have we heard this? I can't believe that anyone born as a human being really wants to be left all on their own. Not really. No. We're anxious about causing trouble for the rest of you or even getting on your nerves. This is why it's hard for us to stay around other people. This is why we often end up being left on our own. The truth is we'd love to be around other people, but because things never ever go right, we end up getting used to being alone without even noticing this is happening. Whenever I overhear someone remark how much I prefer being on my own, it makes me feel so desperately lonely. I want to pause here. That says to feel like a burden is devastating. Steve says because things never go right. Right. This is like in I think this concept comes up at Brain Club a lot, right? Where it's the safety thing. And if so many people have never felt safe showing up as their true selves, like he says, yes, exactly. Managing all of things needed to make a social interaction go well. Just not worth it. Doesn't mean we want to be alone. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I'm going to virtually go to this. I'm going to read a couple more couple more quotes in the socialization bucket. Why do you ignore us when we're talking to you? Not noticing is not the same as deliberately ignoring. It's very difficult for us to know someone's there and that they're just talking to us by just by their voice. And I think to me that's really describing the attentional tunnel. And if you're not in the attentional tunnel, you can't be attended to. And when we think about conflicting access needs, in my house, because of another quote was really talking about working memory. By the time it's my turn to talk, I'm going to forget what I was going to say, working memory challenges. So a lot of people in relationships not only have that as a real consideration. If I don't get my thing out right now, it's urgent because I'm going to forget it. And impulsivity of like, you know, I think it, I say it, I blurt it. And then what do you mean you're not attending to me to another neurodivergent person who has their attentional tunnel on something else? And so just to like bring some transparency to that of like, yep, this is how this goes. It's just how our brains work. Sierra says that's my household 24-7, mine too. Yes. Is it true that you hate being touched? I think with any of these, like, you know, I think autism is, you know, not a homogenous, monolithic sort of thing. So anyway, there may be things in here that resonate or don't resonate. But is it true that you hate being touched? Being touched by someone else means that the toucher is exercising control over the person's body, which is not even its owner, which not only, sorry, brain, which not even its owner can control properly. It's therefore as if we lose who we are. It's also the dread that by being touched, our thoughts will become visible. Don't have the kind of brain for whom that resonates, but it helped me understand my child who does a lot better. Kat says, right, it's such a huge question. Some touch is good, some touch is uncomfortable. Right. Yeah. Yeah, it's the same for my child. What are your flashback memories like? The trouble with scattered memories is that they sometimes reflect in somebody illness like fibromyalgia and touch is painful. Yes, exactly. And we know that neurodivergence and fibromyalgia very commonly co-occur as a central nervous system sensitivity, hypersensitivity, where the brain is literally perceiving pain. And this is far more common in autistic people and as part of, and I'll say more about this at the end, there's this big next next next month of brain cold, we're going to be talking about neurodivergent health and we're going to be talking next week about some of the common health challenges that autistic and ADHD people experience. And there is this big cluster of neuroimmune conditions. So Julie, thanks for naming that, so fibromyalgia is part of a much bigger cluster of things that run together. What are your flashback memories like? The trouble with scattered memories is that sometimes they replay themselves in my head as if they had only just taken place. And when this happens, the emotions I felt originally come rushing back to me. It's like a sudden storm. To do what you're told right away. Here's how I have to go about things. Step one, I think about what I'm going to do. Two, I visualize how I'm going to do it. Three, I encourage myself to get going. How smoothly I can do the job depends on how smoothly this process goes. I have never heard a better description of dyspraxia than this quote. It says, if my whole body, except for my soul, feels as if it belongs to somebody else and I have zero control over it. I don't think you could ever imagine what an agonizing sensation it is that we never really feel that our bodies are our own. They're always acting up and going outside our control. Stuck inside them. We're struggling so hard to make them do what we tell them. There's a lot of yeses. Skipper on this. All right, before I get to emotional regulation, I'm going to read a couple of other folks that didn't have a category. Why do people with autism cup their ears? It's more to do with the fear that if we keep listening, we will lose all sense of where we are. At times like these, it feels as if the ground is shaking and the landscape around us starts coming to get us and it's absolutely terrifying. So cupping our ears is a measure we take to protect ourselves and get back our grip on where we are. Like he says, loud sounds physically burnt. I found this passage really interesting because the author is describing something more than the sound. And when I think about how often I have seen many people cupping their ears, I have always associated that with there's loud sound. But it seems like it may be more of that. And when I think about if I have snapshots of memories of being profoundly dysregulated, when there's not loud sound going on, I totally get the idea of anchoring, attempting to ground. How he says the anxiety caused by a din of sound is a way of watching over me. That says even certain tones of voice can physically hurt. Do your senses work differently in some way? It's my own despair that causes me to misread the messages my senses are sending me. If all my attention gets focused on one area of the body, it's as if all my body's energy is concentrated there too, which is when my senses all report that something in that area is going badly wrong. My guess is the despair we're feeling has nowhere to go and fills up our entire bodies, making our senses more and more confused. Somebody in the chat, I like started to read and then the chat moved and I lost it, mentioned monotropism, the idea that fewer things at a time captivate our attention and do so more intensely than for other brains. I think what that quote made me think about that. If you have the kind of brain that's taking in so much more information, you have to develop an attentional tunnel. That says somebody did that today, cupped their ears, so my first thought was that they had an earache. Nope. Sound? Nope. Someone said something upsetting. Yeah. Sarah says yes, I feel everything and hear everything around me. It can be hard to filter out. Steve says in a social gathering, the many conversations merge into a wall of sound coming at me. I sit back and contemplate the wall, but I can't engage in the individual conversations until I recover. Yeah. Do you have a sense of time? For us, time is difficult to graph. As a picture in a country we've never been to, you can't capture the passing of time on a piece of paper. The hands of a clock make sure that some time has passed, but the fact that we can't really feel it makes us nervous. Time can only be fixed in our memories, in the form of visual scenes. For this reason, there's not a lot of difference between one second and 24 hours. Exactly what the next moment has in store for us never stops being a big, big worry. Pause with that. What is the experience of time like for others? Kelly says, time is my nemesis. I'm grateful to live in a place with seasons. Otherwise, a year could pass without my knowledge. Having children rapidly outgrowing me helps me see time pass as well. That says, yeah, I never knew that I couldn't put here in a crowd. I learned to smile, nod, say things like, oh, something to let them know that I heard them, but really I couldn't understand a thing. Yeah, I'm sure processing CV says, I cut my ears when I'm overwhelmed and need squish. Yeah, exactly. So grounding. Like he says, I can't seem to be on time regardless of how important the consequences. Yeah, the executive functioning of like getting everything together out the door and, you know, like it gives the kind of brain that doesn't perceive time. It's very hard to like work backwards and leave enough time because it seems like you are. Sarah's describing hyper-focused losing track of time that way. Yeah. Kat says, how I couldn't move on the time conversation till I finished my thought about hearing. Yes, exactly, which is totally okay. Yes, that resonates with me a lot. And it says, blue light filtering glasses made my mind so much calmer. That's so interesting. That's really cool to know. Since having COVID in the winter, I've really noticed that when I have my lights on, it really just saps my battery a lot. A lot sooner. Anyway, like shutting off the lights can really extend the life cycle of my battery. Kelly says, or if I know I have 10 minutes left, I seem to constantly consistent think I have 10 minutes left like along the entire 10 minutes. Yes, absolutely there resonates. Lizzie says, trying to calculate enough time to get out the door is hard when you can't feel time. Yeah. Do you enjoy your free time? For me, free time is in fact, unfree time. You can do whatever you feel like doing someone might tell us, but actually it's pretty hard for us to find something we do feel like doing, not just like that. If we happen to see some toys or books we're playing with or reading, then sure, we'll pick them up. The thing is, however, that is not so much what we want to do as much as something we can do. Playing with familiar items is comforting because we already know what to do with them. And so then of course people watching us assume, aha, so that's what he likes to do in his free time. That is also a description of dyspraxia. The ideation part of thinking what to do is hard for lots of people. I remember when I became a new parent and I'd be like on my days off from work, I'd be like, I can't think of what to do with my baby. So I would get really overwhelmed by this because I felt like I wanted to do something, but I didn't. Anyway, so I started making lists. These are lists of literally what I could do, including read a book that had to be on the list because I couldn't think of it in the moment. It's praxia. I need to say that that happens to you. Yeah, yeah. And it's like it's not, when I would tell people about this, this is before I knew I was autistic, I would tell people about this and their response would be like, you don't have to plan activities. You can just enjoy your child. I'm like, no, no, no. I need to know what to do. I literally can't tolerate this moment because I don't know what to do in it. Nikki says, I took my kids on lots of car trips and outings when they were little because it's a linear sequence of events. Yes, absolutely. That resonates with me too. What is free time like for others? Sierra, sorry, your hand blended in with our wall. Oh, you're good. I also really like that, Vicki. That was my, mine and my dad's thing was drives because it's linear. I remember when I was, when I first told my therapist that I had trouble on days off deciding what to do and she's like, just, just scale it out with your gut. Just think about all the things you could do and see what feels best with your gut. And I was like, I don't, I didn't realize that other people actually, that was not just a saying that people actually felt something with their gut. So I also make lists of the five different craft projects I have going on and spend 10 minutes on each one and then go back to the one that I want. And that's, that's my sense. That's amazing. And Julie's saying, I both need free time and hate it. There are too many choices, what I should do versus what I want to do. Right. And you combine that with maybe if it's hard to even generate a list of like, what is available to you? Just like, you know, I can't think of a food, like not just like a, like a think, can't think of a vegetable like, I can't think of like what food exists sometimes. And Allison says, scrolling through Netflix for hours, trying to figure out what I want to watch. Yes. Yes. Yes. All that. And it says, I couldn't figure out that I couldn't follow instructions when they were verbal as that I've written for the longest time. Yeah. And so that's why I still, I fill my free time with, with, with TV. Yeah. Great. And so, you know, I'm, it's a lot of prep work. It's like, when you have spoons, the idea of like making your visual support, your visual support of your list like Sierra has or your playlist, you know, of your my list on Netflix or a playlist on like, you know, the podcast queue or something, because like when you're in the moment, it's just too much motor, it's not just, I mean, it's, it's motor planning. It's like all the flicking and sequencing in the particular order, just no. It just says, when I have free time, I'm trying to figure out how to feel comfortable. That's usually less comfortable for me when there's something I, then if there's something I have to do. Yeah. So if he says, I, I open experience so much anxiety, not knowing what I'm supposed to do next, your descriptions of dyspraxia, give me a name for this. Yeah. So, you know, you, what many people find helpful is the idea of like turning time into something visual, like blocking out, let's say if you, you know, on a calendar, you know, blocking out, you know, what's going to happen in the particular order that you're going to do it. And I remember, I remember doing that as a, like a teenager or my young 20s and like people, there'd be so much shame and judgment, like why are you, you know, why can't you be spontaneous as though like spontaneity gets like overly glorified. It's like, I had no idea. I had no language at that time to describe like, this is what I need to pursue, like the, you know, like the passing of time in a linear, predictable way. Why do you keep repeating certain actions again and again? The repetition doesn't come from our own free will. It's more like our brains keep sending out the same order time and time again. Then while repeating the action, we get to feel really good and incredibly comforted. I feel a deep envy of people who can know what their own minds are saying and who have the power to act accordingly. So that's describing inertia, object in motion stays in motion. Dopamine deficiency. You start doing the thing and can't stop doing the thing. So somebody mentioned scrolling on Netflix, scrolling on social media. This is, this is a lot of, a lot of us have motor things that we start doing and can't stop doing. And this is, the management of this is to get dopamine. So in our, in our, in our medical practice, we spend a lot of time on, you know, identifying someone's manifestations of inertia. Either foot on the break, can't start doing the thing, or foot on the gas can't stop doing the thing. And the management of both is to get more dopamine. So Kat's saying, listen to the recording to write it down to process it, to take notes on it, to, you know, organize it, make it linear. Definitely. Uh, why do you get lost so often? I never feel at ease or ever I am. Because of this, I wander off or run away in search of some location where we do feel at ease. When we're on the search, it doesn't occur to us to consider how or where we're going to end up. We get swallowed up at the illusion that unless we can find a place to belong, we're going to be all alone in this world. Why, why do you wander off from home? Came down to this. If I didn't go outside, then I would cease to exist. Emotional regulation. Do you make a huge fuss over tiny mistakes? So I've made a mistake. The facts of it start rushing toward me like a tsunami. All I know is that I have to get out of the situation as soon as I can so that I don't drown. To get away, I'll do anything. Crying, screaming, throwing things and hitting. Finally, I'll calm down and come back to myself. I see no sign of the tsunami attack only the wreckage I've made. And when I see that, I hate myself. I just hate myself. And it just says there's so many layers to that. Right. So this is a, you know, the first time I read this book, I didn't know that I was autistic yet. And I read this and I, that's so deeply resonated with me of the aftermath of a meltdown. I didn't know that anyone else had that experience. Turns out a lot of people have that experience. How's this fart-randing on folks? It really says it's the tiny mistakes that get you in trouble. Steve says mistakes ruin things. That says who's it to say that it's tiny. Right. So, you know, there's, there's all the like neuronormative, you know, this is a small problem. This is a big problem. You know, your response is disproportionate. Like that's just turns out there's only the person can decide. It's not even a decision. It's a limbic response. Your limbic system is going to react. Stevie says I feel it from head to toe. Very awful words. Yeah, this is, this is my favorite part of the whole book. It's just, you know, so, so everything. Sarah says it helps me to feel empathy for my child as a parent. Yeah. So, Sarah, I quote this, this line to parents of my child patients a lot. Because I mean, not only is there, you know, no fault of any individual parent, but it's like a society thing, you know, where, where downstairs brain is held to the standards of upstairs brain when this is an involuntary automatic reaction to threat. And if, if, if there's also then, you know, the shaming, the invalidation, the, you know, all the things that, you know, happen really commonly in society comes back to, I see the wreckage I've made and when I see that I hate myself and it says all trauma survivors can relate to that limbic system response. Becky says, when you're trying to mask it's hard to know how a mistake is being read by others, what intentions people are assuming about you based on your mistake, everything becomes overwhelming, trying to understand the mistakes and all the consequences to the other people at the same time. Yep. Steve says, the I hate myself business is the part I hate. I hate it when I say that too myself in response to mistakes I made even many years ago. I have a long list. Right. And that's like part of the journey of unpacking internalized ableism. It's a, you know, it's, it's just why we think that, you know, that, that journey is best to be done in community. Because it's the fast track to knowing you're not the only one. We have about 10 minutes. I'd love to hear from maybe, maybe first, I'd love to hear from anyone who hasn't had a chance to share what's standing out for you or anything that's coming to mind. And again, no, no pressure. I just want to make sure we can create space for those who wanted to share, but we're, you know, we benefit for some extra space since I have the kind of brain that doesn't feel time. Hey, Sarah. I just some sort of thinking about this, the meltdown thing and I'm just thinking, you know, from a sort of an evolutionary survival standpoint, because I always like to think about things in those terms. But that, that, like if, like if we're thinking about this stuff in terms of a survival response, and this is all happening in the, and these survival responses are happening in the context of a predatory world. So it makes sense, first of all, that there would be a group of people, like not everybody, but some of us who would be hypersensitive to threat, and who would be hyper responsive to threat. And so on that, sort of on the outliers, that that could be useful to our species. And then it also makes a sense that, that, that it also makes sense that we, that we might also be hypersensitive and hyper responsive to vulnerability. So I've just, so I've just, I've just responded to threat in a certain, in a strong way, in the presence of potential predators and enemies who have now seen my vulnerability. And now I'm hypersent, now my hypersensitivity is, is now my hypersensitivity to vulnerability is showing. And so it can explain, for me, it makes, helps to make sense of perhaps some of the extreme responses, but also the, the in general, in some ways the social usefulness of those responses, or the potential social usefulness of those responses. So anyway, so, so other Sarah just said so well, but Sarah, I could not agree more. Yes, amen to that. To others think, can open this to anybody who wants to hear, I'm just going to catch up. Cat says, maybe it's the hate myself part that settles into trauma, maybe to hear that no one hates you for what it, for for what just happened, it helps to prevent it from settling. Yeah, I, I think there's, there's also, you know, the element of, of agency. And so if you're going to combine, you know, lack of agency, lack of autonomy, you know, not being able to do during threat, that also contributes to trauma. Hi, Amy. You know, I'm just feeling so appreciative of what everyone's sharing. I think I just feel so seen and I've just noticed towards the end, like, I just feel like my stomach is a knot in a way. And I think it's something that like Steve said about like the idea of like hating yourself. Like it was the part that Steve said about like the years ago. And because of the way my memory starts, right, like we talked about this in the beginning, because our memory starts in a certain way, there's always that like kind of personalized threat of like, oh, I remember I did this. I remember I did that, you know, and I don't want to do it again. And I think that like the sadness that comes up for me tonight, partly just from like being feeling so, so seen is like that I just want to belong so badly. Like it's the thing that I've wanted for so long. It's why I'm asked the way I did, you know, and that the there's still this continuation of like being in a group where I feel like I belong and I'm told that I belong, but the feeling inside of like when will I feel like I can belong as myself to myself so that I can just show up. And I think that's the thing that's hitting me the most tonight isn't like I feel so cared for by this community. And I feel like I'm more and more myself. And like, you know, I notice like I'll start cracking jokes a little bit more like other parts of my personality. But I think it's still that part of myself allowing myself to belong. And yeah, so I just wanted to come on and just like show my face and just say how just so incredibly forever grateful I am for this community. Sarah, I was going to say there was a quote that we didn't get to when we did this the first time and it was that the truth is that we'd love to be with other people but because things never ever go right, we end up getting used to being alone without even noticing that this is happening. And I think that we talk about this social isolation a lot at all brains belong and we talk about how, you know, the neurodivergent population is more likely to experience social isolation and offering everything with a menu of choices so that people can participate in social interaction in a way that feels good to them and not making it a special accommodation but just a menu of options and allowing it to happen organically in lots of different ways. And so I think about that with like our kid connections program and how there's just children out there who like are so isolated and alone and they're finding a friend sometimes for the first time, you know, and and so I see it at all levels and I see it at brain club every Tuesday, you know, and coming together and just having people share their story and having people feel, you know, less alone. And and so, yeah, just just viewing that stepping out of that neuro normative way of like what does friendship look like or what does, you know, a social program look like and and really allowing it to happen in a way that feels good to each individual person. Thanks, Sarah. Sarah, did I see your hand up before? Yes, it was. And then I got lost away in Sarah's beautiful talking about social isolation and how amazing an experience it is when that when that barrier comes down. Well, there we have it. I appreciate you being here tonight, all of you being part of this community and being being part of creating something different, creating something new. And, you know, because I think I think those authentic connections, you know, can you can even, you know, for for all of the pain, the painful sentiments of what was shared tonight and like the things that really stood out for me at least like what would it have been like to have authentic connection where these things were talked about decades ago, to have a to have a language for understanding those things and all of those like hard wired neural pathways that now we are having to unlearn and shift. So with that, I really, I look forward to seeing you all next week as we shift to our new theme of connection is the path to health, the perfect transition. Thanks everybody. Have a good night.