 They have internalized misogyny still. They have internalized ableism still. So when someone like me came across their radar, they went out of their way to be mean to me and to alienate me. And they thought that it was- See, here's the thing. It's like, are they being those individuals that the Thought Spot is talking about with the knowledge that none of anybody in this interaction was aware about autism? Are they being ableist? Are they? They're definitely not being nice and they're being pretty discriminatory and horrible, but is their intention to discriminate against an isolate an individual or they're just kind of being arseholes? I don't know. I don't know. There's so many questions in my brain. What do you think about this situation, guys? In this situation, could you retroactively call them ableists for that? It's a difficult one. Right, that's the point. There's so many questions. So many nuances, such subjectiveness. I'm not sure about that one. Not sure about that one. This is ways ableism towards neurodiversity can be missed and how it's just as harmful to being an interesting one. Always like really long titles with the Thought Spot. I kind of like it though. It's like straight to the point. This is what this video is about in its entirety. Take a dive into the world of ableism. Sounds like a fun world. Not much like Planet Henley. Let's talk about if it's possible for someone to become more autistic after they are diagnosed. Is it possible for someone to become more autistic after they get diagnosed? I think that you can definitely express more artistically like in yourself and feel a bit more comfortable in that and not want to mask it, but I'm sure this was a question for introducing the topics of the video. Now, if you guys already can't tell, I'm honestly not looking forward to talking about this because there's just a lot of harmful ideologies that goes with this rhetoric and I'm gonna do my best to break down why it's problematic and harmful, but I am just a human. So I'm sure even though I've written down all of my talking points, I will forget to say certain things or upon editing, I'll probably think about more things that I would want to add, but it's too late. So if I do miss anything, please respectfully leave them in the comment section down below and let's have an open discourse about this very nuanced, complicated topic. I like that. And likewise with this video with any of my personal opinions, I'm not a doctor. I'm not an expert. I'm lived experience advocate, just a man with a plan. Always consult a registered professional, not me. Another reason why I feel wary is because I myself am affected mostly negatively by something like this and a lot of other autistic individuals, especially autistic adults are affected negatively by this as well. So I do feel very passionate about this topic. I'm gonna try my best to not get super emotional and just talk through everything as logistically as I can. Although some may argue that even me trying to do that is a result of years and years of trauma and ableism. Yeah, I hear that a lot as well. Whenever you talk about anything, it's like people are trying to like psych you, not turn you into psych. They're trying to psychologically profile you in your internalized ableism and such in order to disregard what you're saying. That's rampant, but that's just like the society that we live in today. I'm not going to be as peppy as I may be in my other videos, even though I don't really think I'm peppy. But when I talk about topics like this, I tend to really need to connect with my thoughts. And so my masking levels will go lower than it already is at. I just don't have enough spoons to also manage my tone of voice and manage what I look like and how everything comes across. I love like just the genuine openness of the full spot. Like it's extremely admirable. Like it's just like, I mean, to them, it can kind of seem like they're trying to like they're trying to somewhat explain their behavior and to why it's not going to be as good. But I think like it's very relatable, you know, there might be a little bit of hissing because I am indulging, I'm indulging in a carbonated beverage. This whole neurodivergent community is really neat. Yeah, I mean, it is definitely neat. I think it really depends because I mean, I've been recently trying to conceptualize just like what exactly is the autistic community. And it's mostly because I don't, I like to understand things as like part of like systems and like understand like social groupings and you know, things of that nature and ways that like I can help understand how everybody plays into one. But it's so wide. I mean, it's not even just split up into like parents and scientists and autistic people. There's like so many crossovers and so many subgroups and so many splintered off groups where and so many like groups that have merged with other groups. And it's, it's all, it's all thing actually gonna be putting out a video at some point. It's gonna be in the next month or so. I'm gonna talk about my sort of plans and my wants for like the channel and you know, what I think is good behavior and bad behavior for the sort of welfare of people. I've also got a video coming out about my life with autism, which is just kind of a bit of an overview on my background. And one about my opinions on controversial topics because I definitely do have my own opinions on things and they don't always line up with everybody. And in fact, they don't always line up with like particular subsections of different groups either. Like I'm very much like a free thinker person. I don't necessarily like tie myself to any one sort of ideological kind of social dogma. I very much just try and take things as they are and understand them and such. But yeah, I mean, it can be very different depending on where you go basically. And there are definitely negatives to the community as well. If you use the wrong language, if you use further things in a way, if you have a certain belief, people can be very forcefully, very vile. So I wouldn't say it's like sunshine and rainbows, but I know that in my personal experience it has generally been a net positive to me. Net being the keyword, you know. Communities aren't perfect, they're not. Sometimes people's own ideals or way of viewing of things seem to be more important than someone else's, you know, opinion or belief or experience. You get that in all communities though. I've been dodging a coveted beverage, I'll use that for now on. Yes, you want to be a distinguished gentleman using fancy, fancy terms. Erica says this live has been my favorite since starting the journey. Really enjoying the open discussion. Yeah, it's great, I'm like, and it's all you guys, like it's not being, like it's very much like, it's very lovely. I enjoy your company. Seems like the lore is deep then. Yeah, that is a way, that is how you can put it, I suppose. Weird, worldwide for weirdness. No, it's even like small things, like saying, you know, like I'm weird. You know, some people might say, okay, that's not a nice thing to say about yourself and about autism. But in my head, I'm like, I don't want to be normal. It's not an attractive thing to me. I quite like the term weird because it implies somewhat of a difference, which I like. I'm all for differences, I love differences so one person might say, oh, hey, that's a ableist sentiment that you put across that autistic people are weird. We shouldn't judge them based on all the people in the society. And I'm like, I like the word weird and I like feeling and being weird. I'm very happy and comfortable in my weirdness. There's a small miscommunication, small like mindsets and assumptions of intentions can really like escalate, I think. I love the controversial topics. I love shamelessly sharing mine too. Yeah, I mean, it's good to talk about 100%. That's how you get through issues. It's just anytime that you express any sentiment around these issues, it's somewhat like ridiculously overblown to the point where people start making wild assumptions about you as a person. It's crazy. Rigid beliefs are in any communities. Any community can turn into a cult if you let it. Yeah. That is why I look and sound like this, but yeah. I posted a few days ago asking you guys to give some video suggestions on things you want to hear me talk about. One of the suggestions that I got was from Celeste and they said, I'm not sure if you have spoken about this topic before, but I would love to know if after you were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, you noticed your behaviors and traits seemed more autistic. In other words, did you find yourself behaving more stereotypically autistic? I only asked this question because I've been thinking a lot about masking and have been trying to evaluate which masks I want to continue presenting. I hope this made sense. You've been such an amazing autism resource for me over the past few months. Thank you so much, Celeste, for your comment and for anyone who leaves comments like this. Thank you guys for giving your suggestions. Keep them coming. So I think it would- You see, I absolutely love that and I love the approach that the false bots take and where they are like generally taking the question for the question. Some people might say, how dare you ask if you're behaving more autistic? You can't say that. You can't say more autistic. Like, that's terrible. How dare you? How dare you? And they're just asking a question, you know, about their experience. I mean, personally, like the whole thing about acting more autistic, I think sometimes with, you know, there is an effect where you do, when you read up about something, you do tend to like, sort of unconsciously display certain things, but I think that the best part of call is to like, assess it in the long term. And I like the question about which masks I want to put on and which ones I want to get rid of. I think, you know, having a discussion about when you mask and what you mask and, you know, making that decision yourself on how you want to present to the world, I think it's all really important discussions to be had. I think it would be helpful for me to start this whole conversation off by giving examples of what it could look like for someone to look more autistic after their diagnosis, just because I think sometimes when we hear things like ableism, when we hear things like, this person seems more autistic out of nowhere, we take it so literally and we don't know how to dissect that concept, abstract it, understand it philosophically and understand how that applies in our own personal life with how we carry ourselves in all these different types of situations. And so examples of what it could look like is, let's say someone is diagnosed later on in their life with autism and all of a sudden they're going through this process of unmasking for the first time in their life. You start to see that they're wearing headphones a lot more, for example, and in inappropriate situation. So let's say your autistic family member is all of a sudden going to the grocery store with you and they have their headphones on or they're going to family events and they have their headphones on or they're going to any sort of public space and they have their headphones on and you're thinking to yourself, why are they all of a sudden wearing headphones everywhere? They didn't used to do that. It didn't used to be an issue. So why is it all of a sudden something that they're picking up after they're diagnosed? Oh, they're just wanting to see more autistic than they are or they're just putting on an act, things like that, right? I guess in a certain sense, if you view it from an outsider's perspective, I suppose when you are unmasking, you are pretty much stripping away all of the things that would indicate, like that would stop you indicating towards that you were different. Like you are somewhat more being yourself and as a result, being more autistic because you are autistic and you're not trying to hide it, you know? So it tends to be like little things like that, like little things, like why are you wearing earplugs? Why are you doing this and that? You didn't used to do that. You don't need to do that. Why are you doing it just because everyone else is doing it kind of thing? Which, you know, it's a pretty standard, like sensory support item that I use pretty much daily, much as possible to be honest. And there's a good reason for that and people would say like, oh, okay, well, you don't need to put the headphones on because you just, you know, you'll start not to get used to sort of environmental sounds and stuff. And I think it's a fair point, but I think it neglects the fact that autistic people don't necessarily habituate so we don't get used to things like environmental noises as much and so like wearing some headphones for us in busy places. It's a little bit more important to mitigate that source of anxiety and overload, possibly habituate, which I don't think we do very well. So it's a very dependent. And I have heard lines of speaking about this before. I think, you know, I might have received some similar comments to my friends and such from my friends and perhaps like my parents at one point or, you know, so I can see that. And I think there is an aspect of somewhat being a part of community and feeling excited that you've like found your tribe and stuff. And so you're gonna take on board a little bit more from other people. Perhaps you might dress similarly to them. Perhaps you might take their advice and get the same things that they're used to support themselves. So I guess somewhat, yeah, but it's like it's always phrased as like a bad thing, you know, and that's kind of the crux of it, because if you're acting more autistic, okay, that's fine, but if you don't ascribe like a value to something like that, if you say, you know, if someone said, you know, you're acting, you know, you should stop acting autistic. It's kind of like painting it as a bad thing to be autistic. And that's like the whole crux of it. That's how I imagine like the ableism comes in there. Cause, you know, even if they are acting more autistic, why is that necessarily a bad thing? Maybe they're just being themselves. I think that makes sense. Yeah, you've been acting more autistic as of late. Did you get diagnosed? Oh my God. Oh no, the autism, it's infecting you from the social media. The TikTok, the trends, it's changing me. I can feel the autism bubbling up inside of me. Oh my God, it's, you know, I'm going to start wearing dungarees and stripey multicolored socks and... Oh my God, it's funny, isn't it? I think usually this stuff kind of comes from a place of like ignorance. And I guess to some degree, some somewhat of an ableist sentiment, I guess. But I don't think those people would necessarily like, I would call those people ableists, you know, I'd say it probably derives somewhat from an ableist sentiment. But, you know, it's important to be specific. People can take things really hard. Thank you for putting it so succinctly. Succinctly is a word for it. Anybody finding that people around you are acting more autistic since you learn more about autism? Maybe. Well, you got to think, like, if you're talking about people around you, if it's your family, and neither of them have been diagnosed, there's a pretty good chance that one of them might be autistic. And it kind of feeds into this whole idea of, like, when we actually get to one masking, and when you start being diagnosed autistic and you start explaining all of these traits, and it's like your family members like, this is pretty normal, I do that. I'm pretty much the same, there's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing different about you, like, you're not autistic, you're just the same, you're similar to me, and it's like, I wonder why we are so similar. There's nothing wrong with wearing stripy multicolors. I wasn't, because I just, I have seen somewhat of a trend of, like, was it like dopamine dressing that people label it as? Like, there does seem to be sort of an emerging fashion alongside, perhaps, a little bit of a, sort of a push towards, like, the goofy kind of alternative side, too. Other examples could be if someone is feeling extremely dysregulated, they could start stimming in order to try to self-regulate, so maybe they're rocking back and forth, maybe they're humming to themselves, maybe they're blinking really fast, maybe they need to start pinching their own skin or pulling their own hair, things like that. And let's say you, as the family member or the loved one, aren't used to seeing that, you think to yourself, where is this behavior coming from? You didn't used to do this, why are you all of a sudden more dysregulated? When in reality, perhaps this autistic individual were hiding their meltdowns from you, hiding their shutdowns, maybe they were stimming behind closed doors when they were absolutely alone, maybe they've closed themselves off to their stims so much so that they haven't stimmed even though they desperately needed to in order to regulate their nervous system, so they themselves didn't even know that that's something they needed access to. There's so much that goes into this that I think like, honestly, when I talk about it, it gets me so frustrated. I think because I was in ABA therapy and I was for a short amount of time, working with kids and essentially teaching. Stop. That is one thing that it does get me going. There's not many things that make me cry, but another human expressing such intense emotion it really gets me. It does. Oh my God. I'm gonna keep playing it. Teaching them to not be autistic, it makes me really frustrated that we live in a society that is still so backwards in trying to understand what autism is and the nuances of autism. It hurts that there's people out there even if they're not intending to, right? Who think that someone who's finally diagnosed and finally understanding what their needs are, not just like subjectively, but objectively speaking for their own body, regulating their nervous system. Instead of being happy for this person, we think to ourselves they're putting on an act or we start to be skeptical of them and think, oh, why are they all of a sudden having all of these more stereotypical autistic traits when they've lived their whole lives not having these traits? It's really not that simple. It really is not that simple. I feel like research has yet to catch up to the population of autistics that are only now starting to get diagnosed. I oftentimes find myself trying to call people like me and those out there like me, the lost population of autistics because we have for years and centuries not had access to educational resources and resources in general to help us understand the depths of autism and how that applies to us as autistic people who don't necessarily stereotypically exhibit the DSM-5 symptom criteria and this is another reason why I will always encourage people like me to go and get the official diagnosis because even if it doesn't affect your validity on a personal level, which is totally fine, you don't need the official diagnosis in order to feel valid, but on a systematic level, I think it's important for people like us to be diagnosed because that will reflect in numbers and that will get the attention of researchers and that is what we ultimately need as a society and for future generations is for research to finally, finally, finally catch up to people like us to finally catch up to what autism really means, right? We need the DSM to be more inclusive of what the spectrum looks like. We need the symptom criteria to be updated. Ways we could begin doing this is by taking the initiative into our own hands in our personal lives to start to get official diagnosis. I know it's expensive. I know there's a lot of barriers there. Well, before we dive into sort of the aspects of like formal diagnosis, I don't think that's necessarily like the top reason to why I suggest people go and get an autism diagnosis. I think for a lot of people it can serve a lot of different things. Like it can open up varying levels of support depending on where you are. It does come with some notable downsides, but it can also give you just like a little bit of social power to people around you, you know, rather than saying like to your granddad or your grandma who really don't understand the first thing about autism and sort of like new research and how it looks and the intricacies of it. Sometimes if you go up to them, say I self-identify autistic, they'll be like, what the hell are you talking about? But if you go and get a diagnosis, you know, what are they arguing against? It's kind of like, so I think somewhat that can prove to be beneficial for some people to just kind of have something written out there that it can just, you know, you can say that. The thing is the medical system is there to diagnose problems and offer solutions with human health basically. Sadly, understanding oneself and your identity and ways to live your life in little bits, in little areas better is not at the top of their priority list, your identity, you know. Although it is such a massive part and I wish it wasn't like that. I think that is just kind of the way that the system works. Perhaps in the future, perhaps we might have the ability to go and, you know, say, you know, know for your own sort of personal development whether you're autistic or not, you know, that would be great. But at the moment, usually tends to happen when people have breakdowns, when they get burned out, when something goes wrong in their life that they can't really explain, they find this concept towards them, they look at it and it makes sense to them and they kind of go to a doctor because of a problem that they've had, you know. And so it kind of works in that fashion, but yeah, it's interesting that all kind of debate over identity and how impactful that can be to one person because I mean, I would definitely say that it's preventative and for like future difficulties that we might have to know more about ourselves, I would say. It really does give me the feels. It very much takes me back to like my time in teaching and seeing like these amazing pupils with amazing brains and ways of looking at things that are different and so it's like beauty to their being as a human being and for them to have like such a large portion of themselves like ripped away just because people find that it's not as appetizing as the norm. I think it's a real shame, you know. It makes me really sad to think about like the impact that I can have on someone, assuming that you as a person is wrong. It's, yeah, it's just so impactful. Like, and I'd say probably the thought's part of you watching this. I don't think this is a unwarranted amount of sort of emotionalness. I know you said you wanted to keep it quiet, like to sink and perhaps calm, but I think it's, you know, I think a lot of people feel you. But I know a lot of autistic people do think on systematic levels and we recognize patterns and stuff. So I know there's a lot of you out there who understand exactly what I just talked about and understand the importance of having the numbers be reflected in the research and the need for more research and things like that. So that is just something to keep in mind, right? But back to the topic. I consider myself a high masking autistic because for most of my life, I have come across as relatively normal to the people around me and the people I came across. And that is something that other autistic individuals are not able to do is to camouflage and mask. And I don't necessarily think it's a luxury to be a high masking autistic. It is just a different set of struggles. And I think in general, the way our society is set up, no matter what level of autism you have, we all struggle, right? And one doesn't negate the other's validity of struggle. I didn't necessarily look more autistic after my diagnosis. And the reason being is- The masking element, like there is, of course, like gonna be some benefits to masking. Like you can't really get away from that. Like being able to be perceived in a good light and to communicate with other people in the way that they want to communicate, I think can be seen as like an advantage in the working world in some respects. I know people who are like sales, like really, really good at sales who are autistic, who obviously mask a lot. And the topic of masking, I think, there's lots of reasons for why people do it. I don't think it's always just, I feel inadequate in my own skin that I don't, you know, sometimes it is intentional, right, I'm gonna act this certain way at this job and after work, I'm gonna be myself kind of thing. I think there's a conversation to be had about that, but if you are like the type of person that I think the fourth spot's speaking about is someone who has like masked in every single circumstance for their entire life, like, you know, I can see some potential benefits, but also some really glaring sort of issues with that when it comes to like energy and, you know, self-identity and self-advocacy and a whole host of different things which are definitely not very good. Being able to be perceived already too much, being perceived that is the worst, yeah. People can make a lot of judgments based on like, certainly something that I find once I started on masking, like in my day-to-day interactions. People get a whole different perception of who I am as a person. It's kind of crazy. I had some of my stems in public. I think that's fair enough if like, I understand like the inherent danger or risk that that can sort of impose depending on where you live and what the culture is like and search and where you are within that country. Yeah, I mean, I think you can always incorporate like little stems, you know, maybe not the big stems that we talk about, the ones that we associate more with like autism that can sometimes draw attention to you. I wish we lived in a society where people didn't make those judgments and we just felt comfortable doing that, but I understand that it's not always, you know. It's a difficult one because with all the masking, a degree of the self must vanish 100% of angel. I was unknowingly unmasking already, the years leading up to the diagnosis. And I didn't know I was doing this. From my knowledge at the time, I didn't know or suspect I was autistic at all. I just felt chronically burnt out, like intensely chronically burnt out. I could not function outside of just going to work. I couldn't maintain like a personal life. I couldn't maintain friendships. And because I had such low energy, I couldn't put as much energy into masking as much as I would have in the past. And so, yes, I think a part of it was objective, right? I didn't have the energy to do so, but also on a spiritual sense, I had started to awaken to wanting to be more authentic to myself. This was kind of after college. So I think from the ages of 23 to 25-ish, I started to go through this process of, I just wanna be me. I wanna show up as myself and people could take me or leave me. I don't care. It is what it is. Because at this point in my life, I was getting constantly misunderstood by so many different types of people for so many different reasons. Everyone always thought they knew who I was based off of what I look like or whatever conceptions they have of me or stereotype I fit under physically. And then once they got to know me, we're completely baffled by my personality and how it had nothing to do with what I look like. You get so tired of being misunderstood and misconstrued. Usually for negative reasons, I hit a point where I was just like, I am gonna be myself and I don't care. You could say that's an autistic trait of mine, right? Because that's the social deficit. I don't feel the need to be liked and everyone. And I don't feel the need to put myself in harm. I like that reframe. It's a deficit because I don't wanna be liked by people. I mean, I've talked about it a lot, but exactly the fault spot experiences. People definitely do make judgments based on me, which are just nothing like me. And I have the same experience where people have kind of taken a chance on me and they've continued talking to me and they've realized that I'm not who I seem to be. I suppose it makes sense not only due to autism. I think I display a pretty diverse array of stereotypically masculine and feminine qualities, which you don't always see by looking at a person. I also do dress in pretty much all black all the time. And I go to the gym. So I'm not doing the best on the thin slice judgment department of things. There's a lot of characterizations that people can make of me. I think, just better not even speaking to me. But no, I'm a gentle giant. And I like speaking about fancy things and intellectualizing to a very annoying degree. I tend to hand flap in public. When I'm getting stressed, I find I had to suppress at that point. Spent more time on masking over the past few years. There's still time I do mask, but I try to be mean more. I think that's the thing, it's like as long as you are happy with it and you see yourself and you see yourself expressed. Like, I suppose don't get too bogged down with trying to not fit all the categories of what someone deems to be like an unmasked person. Like, if you feel better about yourself, you feel like you can self-advocate, you feel like you can be yourself and people see you as the true you when you can look at yourself in the mirror and identify with yourself, then you do well, you know? And if you mask at work then you have to because you have like a social job. I might say don't do that, you know? If you can have spaces in your life where you do and you feel comfortable doing that and it doesn't impact you negatively, or it does and you're happy with just staying with it even if it is negative, then, you know, fair enough. But I think if you can sort of reach those categories and you can at least unmask and be yourself around people who are most important to you, I think that's a good place to try and get to. And harm's way in order to be accepted by everyone, it's still hurt, it still felt very lonely and very alienating, but I did not want to sacrifice my own well-being to just be simply accepted by other people. And I'll get a little bit more into that later in the video when I talk about ableism, but. And it's not fun, like it's not nice. Like it's not nice for people to make those things slice judgments of me, make those initial judgments. It doesn't feel good like in the moment. It's not like a breakthrough moment when I'm like, well, I am just myself. It's kind of like, oh, thanks, more than anything, you know? But I think, you know, generally sort of the mentality of not trying to mask to impress others, I think. It does me good because it means that I find the people who I best relate to and that are entrusted in me rather than people who I'm just arbitrarily trying to make friends with. I was already doing what I needed to do on a personal level to just show up as Irene, whatever that meant to me. I knew I was more monotone than an average person. I knew that I was more low energy than an average person. I didn't go out of my way to be bubbly. I didn't go out of my way to compliment and fawn after someone. I didn't go out of my way to talk to someone if I didn't want to talk to them. And none of these things mean that I dislike a person. It just meant I didn't want to, so I'm not going to. I didn't go out of my way to follow social norms when it came to dating, for example. If I liked someone, I would message them right away. I would reply within one second. If I liked them and I wanted to see them, I would say it. I wouldn't think to myself, what's normal is to wait a little bit and then text them or what is normal is to wait a little bit and then see them or move at this pace is what's normal compared to this pace. I just kind of started to follow what felt right to me and move in my own specific beat of the drum. And I knew at the time it was different. I knew at the time I wasn't normal or like in the average person, but I didn't necessarily think that it was attributed to anything bigger like autism. And so when COVID rolled around and I started to be exposed to other high masking autistics and I started to realize deep within myself that there are these questions and unknowns that could be linked to something more. And I went on the journey of getting diagnosed and I was finally diagnosed. I started to realize not necessarily all the ways I was masking because I was already unmasking for years leading up to it, but what I really realized was all the ways I was shamed for honoring myself and my autistic needs. When I was finally diagnosed, it wasn't necessarily that I was... I really like the fact that they brought up shame because I think that's the emotion that we as autistic people can feel very often. There's so many sources of shame like throughout our sort of existence. Shame about being different, shame about not meeting certain expectations. Shame about miscommunicating something that to other autistic people seems like reasonable. All sorts of different sources of shame, which like totally like, yeah, it's been a lot for me to personally work for it with myself about, if you're not particularly liking myself because of the reactions that my personality gave to other people, the ways that I was different. And it's, I think it's still something that I'm learning to do a bit more, like be kind to myself, see myself as a friend. It can be hard sometimes, especially when you're surrounded by people who don't really understand. Not out of their own maliciousness, but just, in fact, they just don't relate as much. I was finally allowing myself to be more autistic and exhibit my autistic traits. It was more so the fact that I finally got answers as to why I am the way I am. And in a sense, it gave me more permission to be myself and not feel like there was something intrinsically wrong with myself for being Irene. All of a sudden, instead of feeling like, I'm just not going to talk to this person because I don't feel like it, I guess, because I'm a bitch. I would instead say something like, I don't really want to talk to this person. I'm not going to talk to them. And it's just because I feel non-verbal right now. I feel overstimulated and I'm going to honor that. I found myself feeling more empowered after my diagnosis to say yes and no because I knew where the yes and no was coming from and I knew why I needed to say yes and no. Whereas before the diagnosis, I feel like a lot of autistic people struggle with their yeses and noes because they either honor their yeses and noes and feel bad about it and feel like they're a horrible person because of it or they dishonor their yeses and noes and are accepted by society and those around them. But to the detriment of themselves, it's like you can't win. It's true. It's, you know, self-advocacy is a really key component of like living as a disabled individual. Like you really need to have explanations for things, especially because people can be so ignorant to like, they're ignorant to the experiences of autism or the aspects to it that would interplay into the conversation that they're having with you. Does that make sense? I think it does. In. Let's just take a deep breath together, you guys. I want you to put your hands over your stomach and I want you to feel your stomach expand as you inhale. So what this is called is a deep belly breath and we don't practice. Are you ready guys? I'm going for it. This enough. We usually breathe into our chest, which is shallow breaths. So let's practice bringing that breath all the way down to our stomachs, feel it expand. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have to unbutton your jeans in order to get your stomach to expand fully, you do it. If you have to pull your waistband down and let your stomach hang over in order to take that deep breath. I'm still doing it. Okay, but let's take a deep breath together and let's exhale all of that tension that we may have in our body right now because I know this topic is a lot, right? Okay. I'm already off beat. The reason why a lot of autistic people reach a breaking point in which they are coming across as more autistic with or without diagnosis is due to the fact that we were born into a world where a neurotypical holistic user manual was shoved into our hands and we were told to shape our life and to shape ourselves after this user manual. We were not provided with a user manual that matches our own system, the autistic, the neurodivergent system. And so throughout the years across our lives, we learn to manage all these little parts of ourselves, our behavior patterns, our responses to a system that is almost in so many ways completely opposite of ourselves. This for some is doable. This is kind of going into the high masking, high camouflaging type of autistic, but to an extent, because it does begin to affect you, it begins to affect your mental health, it begins to affect your physical health, which is something I have yet to talk about but is very real is that it begins to affect your health. There is a reason why a lot of autistic people struggle with a lot of health issues. There's a reason why a lot of autistic people have autoimmune disease or chronic illnesses because we are taught to operate in a system that is not meant for us. If you tell a fish to survive out of water, it's not going to survive for long. If you tell a bison to go swim in the ocean, it is not going to survive for long. But if you allow every single organism and animal to thrive in the environment and in the way that they were meant to thrive, it will be able to do all sorts of things. It'll be so much more capable. When you see someone who is starting to be more autistic, it's not because they're trying to convince you. It's not because they're putting on an act. It's not because of anything other than they're finally honoring what they were always meant to be. They're finally accommodating for the struggles that they've always needed to accommodate for. They're finally doing things in a way that feels right to them and in a way that doesn't take away from them. Now I kind of want to talk a little bit more about ableism and why- I feel like it's just speaking to my soul. I've just been like locked eyes. It's like, it's taking on board. The wise words of wisdom. Yeah, forget it. Does that breathing thing made my head start to tick? I do have ticks, but they only tend to happen when I'm either stressed or if I'm thinking about them. So I'm trying not to think about them. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I just know what people online can be like. Stop putting on ticks. You don't have Tourette syndrome. I can see it now. Pongna Horizon. Feelings then with our little breathing exercises. I like them. Might start doing them as part of my videos as well. Do you think it'd be a better out of place for the overall aesthetic of my channel? It's like, okay, let's take a break from this presentation and let's deep breathe. I don't know if it worked as well as the false false one. It's okay if you tick. Yeah, I know. I think it's less about one not feeling comfortable with it because I do it within my own life quite a lot. And it's more that at any point when someone sees someone online who has a tick or something, I think that there can be a lot of people who say, like, you're putting it on for views or you're doing it for attention or you're doing it for any sort of reason. So that's why I tend not to do it as much, but in my own life, like, you know, around the balance than I do. You know, it's, I mean, it's not really something that I can control, but I have some verbal ticks as well, which can be sometimes quite hilarious, but it's, yeah, it's, it's definitely part of me, but I try not to do it online because of people making assumptions. These ideologies are ableist and why that is so harmful. So what is ableism? Let's read the textbook definition of what ableism is. Ableism is discrimination and social prejudice against people with physical or mental disabilities. Ableism characterizes people as they are defined by their disabilities and it also classifies disabled people as people who are inferior to non-disabled people. What are the ways that I have experienced ableism in my life? Surprisingly, I experienced ableism more before I was diagnosed than after. I know everyone's gonna have a different experience, but for me, I experienced a lot of ableism before the diagnosis, and oftentimes I find myself thinking, would I have experienced as much ableism if I had a diagnosis and people knew at the time that I was simply autistic and it's not Irene is a bitch or Irene is this or that, right? And in many instances, I do think I would probably experience less ableism, but I'm not gonna let myself really dive too much into these hypotheticals because it's not very helpful, but I will explain to you guys what type of ableism I experienced in different parts of my life and how that affects me. The ableism I mostly experienced was in dynamics involving women and work. There were many experiences in all different types of work environments where because of my autism and because I had social deficits, I wasn't able to understand and blend in seamlessly to a lot of social dynamics with coworkers specifically. Because I wasn't diagnosed with anything and because at the time, everyone thought I was just a neurotypical person. They attributed a lot of things that I struggled with or just simple personality traits or autistic traits to me being a bitch, me being hard to get along with. All of these very negative traits that they thought that I was choosing to be just because I was a bad person. And this hurts on a personal level, yes. It hurts me because I feel alienated. I feel like there's something wrong with me, but it also hurts me in a very objective systematic sense because it affects how I'm able to be perceived at work and how I'm supposed to function at work. I think this definitely reminds me of one of the videos that we watched by that particular streamer called Pan Show where they were talking about the fact that sensory adjustments at events was an idea of being woke and that people should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and deal with it and not be scared of people clapping and people definitely do assume things based on your differences. If you struggle with an audience that's clapping, people are very quick to say that you're weak, that you're emotionally unstable, that you're an unstable individual and that you haven't been exposed to the elements of human life and such, which is completely wrong because we do experience and perceive the world differently because we're different. But people take that as a personality trait or if your executive functions bad, they take it as you being lazy. Little things like that that are here and there scattered about, I think it can really... People can make really wild assumptions about who you are as a person based on your autistic traits as well. They can't empathize or conceptualize in their brain that you are different to them. There isn't some kind of overreaching personality trait or trait as you have a human being that makes you worse in some way. You know what I mean? The bitch thing is real with our direct communication? Yeah. Yeah. Or even like little things, like not making eye contact as much. You don't care about what someone's telling you. Like you're not paying attention, which is what I do when I'm trying to pay attention. You don't look away staring to the distance and ponder exactly the every syllable of the words that are coming out of their mouth entering my brain to be processed. Yeah, little things like that. People leave a kind of a scene that's some negative personality trait or they take it as you just trying to communicate something to them in a negative fashion. The panchos of the world make it so difficult. Yes. Yes. I just wanted to drop in and quickly add that threatened in this context could mean something different for everyone. Threatened could be very literal. Like someone is literally threatening your job or threatened could be a lot more nuanced in sort of like these microaggressions. And you guys will kind of see examples of what these different meanings of threatened mean when I start to give you examples of all the different ways I was discriminated against at my workplace. In the more microaggression type of way it could be through your interactions with a certain type of coworkers that doesn't make you feel safe or welcomed. It could be in ways that your coworkers treat you different or your coworkers go out of their way to alienate you or the rules that you are held accountable to don't really apply to certain coworkers as they would apply to you, things like that. I wanted to take a lot of care in explaining these types of microaggressions because for many, many years I didn't know how to even process some of the experiences I've had at work. I just knew that they felt very intense and traumatic for me. And I know some people might think it's dramatic because it might not be a big deal but it always felt like a bigger thing than it was for me. I would have nightmares about some of my work experiences and I feel like it wasn't until I made this video where I realized how much deeper those experiences went and how my invisible disability, which is autism kind of made me a target in many of these workplace environments. I feel like it's important for me to come on here and try to explain those little microaggressions that some might miss or some might not know how to understand or interpret themselves. I hope that me saying this and me giving my own personal experiences and examples is helpful for some of you guys in trying to understand some of your experiences if you've had similar experiences. No, I think sometimes this can come from a place of mal-intent, you know? People can't be like that. I think sometimes it can come from a place of not really understanding sometimes. It's very difficult for me to like explain the concept of like masking and what it means like to my boss who has limited time during the day to kind of understand all that kind of stuff and understand a bit more about how to work with me and like, I mean, in my last workplace they made a lot of attempts to adjust things and, you know, they're not too clued up on like the whole socio-political aspects of autism, some of the nuances of it. And that was okay with me, but they continued to like try and, they continued to try and understand and, you know, so some things that people do, I think they're not necessarily meant within intent, you know, they just didn't really understand like the impact that saying a certain thing or doing a certain thing could have on an autistic person. I think one thing that hasn't really been talked about, which I think is probably one of the most like pernicious, difficult responses that people can have towards us as autistic people. And that is infantilization. You've probably experienced this yourself if you've been unmasked or you've been, you know, around particularly individuals your whole life and so you couldn't really mask around them, that kind of thing. But infantilization, it's such a difficult thing to get around because the whole idea behind it is basically people treating you like an infant, a child, a person who doesn't have the capability to understand what they want and all sorts of different things. And the annoying thing about it is that the person who is infantilizing you is being somewhat nice and is actually like approaching you in a sort of pleasant way. But at the same time, they are not really listening to you. They're not really like taking into account what you're saying. In some ways, people can infantilize you in the workplace to think that you can't do certain things or you don't understand certain things, you don't have the capability to do certain things because you can have certain struggles in some areas. So that's a way that it can express. And I've experienced that both in the working world, not necessarily my last employment, but in the working world and also interpersonally as well. It's a really annoying thing. It's like one of the worst things. Yeah, I get it a lot, probably the most consistently when I go to the doctors. It's kind of trippy, right? Yeah, it is. It's trippy as heck. It's kind of, they're not really listening to you. They're just kind of monitoring your emotional state and then making suggestions and convincing you to go through that suggestion without taking into account your perception of something, you know? The infantilization, but it sucks. It sucks. Very trippy. Yeah, it's hard because at the same time as them disregarding your humanity and your agency of thought, they are being outwardly quite nice in a way. But sometimes people can infantilize you and do it in a way for selfish reasons too. And I've experienced that too. And it can happen for any sorts of reasons. And it tends to be when I particularly self-advocated for myself and said that I couldn't do something and that I already needed help with something. That tended to be kind of like the breaking point for people being infantilizing, you know? They're like, okay, well, you've got a disability. I'm not gonna take you as seriously. Like, what? I'm still the same person. I just can't do this particular thing. This makes your reality feel less real. Does that make sense? Yeah. And it can often come combined with like, what is it? The idea of unintentional gaslighting, like trying to basically stamp their perception of reality onto you disregarding your own experience of reality can happen very much quite often for autistic people. Usually done as intended in the word unintentional in a positive light, positive way. Like, you are going through a busy shopping mall or a supermarket and you're having a hard time with the sensory environment. And so the person is saying, you know, you can deal with this. This is not too bad. That's kind of like unintentional gaslighting because evidently we can't deal with it and it is too bad to the point where it is causing us stress, you know? But it's done with the intention of helping us. I suppose it's kind of somewhat similar to like infantilization, I suppose in a way. Very interesting line of thought. Well, please talk more about what you mean about unintentional gaslighting after this or whenever you feel like it because you have control over your own device, I suppose. But there is a podcast episode that I did with Joely Williams on gaslighting and we talked about that extensively. But yes, back to my examples. For example, I've worked shifts where all the girls put me into the back by myself as they were all rotating amongst each other, talking to each other and working. And even though I was supposed to rotate with them because that's how the company works, they would just rotate me into one or two positions that was off by itself and wasn't able to interact with other people and that affects how my mental health is at work, right? It makes it so that I don't want to necessarily show up at work because I feel bullied and I feel like I can't have the same work experience as everyone else. I've been in situations where let's say as a waitress, we were all told that we have to help each other bring food to their tables if they're busy and you're free. I was in many situations where all the girls would help bus and run each other's food during a rush and they would go out of their way to leave my tray of food lying in the back of the kitchen, getting cold while I was busy greeting a table and serving a table and then I had to go to the back and run my own food while simultaneously running. Man, like, oh, I hate that stuff. It's that kind of not overt bullying but definitely like a large heavy dose of discrimination involved. Man, it's not good. It's not good. I've had similar experience at university, like doing group projects. I think like at one point I was told to go home by the entire group, you know, when I was trying to work on the design of a poster that we're making. Absolute madness. Absolute madness. They're running other people's food because that was the rules. Everyone just decided altogether to not run my food even though it was against the rules, things like that. And that affects my performance at my job because now my tables are getting cold food and that affects my feedback and that could go to my managers might tell me things like Irene, why is your performance low, blah, blah, blah. They might even be able to fire me because of that. And these are things that I've now realized affected me a lot more severely than I thought. The ableism, right? In many cases, it threatened my job and my livelihood. I literally had a job before where because I didn't necessarily go out of my way to befriend my coworker that I was working with. So I would show up to work and I wouldn't necessarily talk to her. I would just do my own thing, do my job and leave. She developed all of these personal opinions of me throughout our time together that led her to go out of her way to target me at work. She was constantly reporting everything I did wrong to our manager. She was constantly trying to essentially get me fired like all the time. And she wouldn't have done that if I was non-autistic or if I masked more and I came across as more friendly and more neurotypical to her. And she wasn't doing it because she knew I was autistic because I wasn't diagnosed at the time, but it was because of the autistic treats. Apologies for hitting my mic earlier. I know that that can be somewhat not fun. The fact that autism is an invisible disability, I think people misinterpret what like the meaning of like an invisible disability is. It means that you can't necessarily always look at an autistic person and know that they're autistic. What people can do is they can look at a person and see autistic traits, but they don't sort of marry that up with autism. They just see it as like a personality trait. So people can definitely see differences that we have. It's just knowing exactly what and why is what people don't know. So people can definitely be discriminatory. You know, sometimes not even, I guess by its nature, not even on purpose to discriminate against your disability, but part and part of discriminating or bullying you or as an individual is because of your autistic traits. So it's a difficult one to conceptualize, I think. This is why a lot of autistic people, whether they're conscious of it or not, mask their autistic traits because they're just trying to survive is what it is. So when someone is diagnosed with autism or they're starting to honor their autism and integrate the autism back into their lives and people are saying things like, why are you all of a sudden like more autistic? This is just like not how I know you or this is surprising. It's very hurtful and harmful because what it essentially communicates to us is who you're becoming, although is good for you, is not good with us and the systems that you have to show up in. We recognize that you are different. We are not accepting of that difference. And so what that also tells us is you need to make a bigger effort to hiding that because the attributes coming out right now is not something we wanna deal with. It's not something we wanna look at. It's not as admirable or advantageous as all the neurotypical traits you might have been forcing yourself to have. I really hope that we could get to a point one day where people don't have so many ableist ideologies interlocked with their own perceptions of others and how they carry themselves. And this is why I try my best to, in my own personal life, not judge someone when they're different. If I ever catch someone pointing out a certain type of trait that someone has in a negative way, like for example, something I come across a lot in circles with women is just like a judgment of like them being mean or standoffish or not nice and things like that. And I always go out of my way to challenge that person in their viewpoints and be like, well, why do you think they're a mean person? Why do you think they dislike you or they're ignoring you? What if they're just wanting to keep to themselves and it has nothing to do with you? Why did they owe you all of these things to make you feel good and reassured with yourself? Because they don't. This is a time for you to evaluate yourself and why you're insecure instead of accusing them of being a bad person because they're not going out of their way to stroke your ego and make you feel comfortable with yourself. And I'm not saying this to like make the other person feel bad. I'm not saying that they're bad people, right? A lot of people unknowingly do this because ableism is so contingent and entrenched into how we're raised to be. I just want that person to have some sort of understanding and empathy that there's other ways to be a good person and that could look many different ways, right? Instead of this one set way, someone might not go out of their way to ask you how your day was or to have a conversation with you but they might be the type of person that will remember that you like tomatoes and they'll go drop off tomatoes at your front door because they're thinking of you and maybe they just want to like find other ways to be a loving human in a way that feels comfortable to them. A good way to understand whether or not you might be ableist. This is an interesting topic. How do I know if I am an ableist? Oh my God. I do think that people can overuse the word a little bit too much but that's my personal opinion. I'm gonna take this test, let's see if I'm an ableist person. Just in the way you think and carry yourself and hold others accountable is to ask yourself how often are we forcing someone to be a certain way or else? That's the main thing here or else. Are we forcing someone to be more social to manage their tone, all of that stuff or else their job is threatened, their relationship with you and the group is threatened? I mean, I go where they're going with this but like, you know, some people like just are assholes. Some people like maybe perhaps if you say, hey Gerald, how are you doing? And they go, dope, bloody talk to me, I hate you. It's pretty like reasonable to say, please mind your tone with that a little bit, you know? I don't know if that's the good way of telling if you're ableist or not. I think if you necessarily enforce a specific ideal or a way of being onto other people as sort of seen as this kind of beacon of important normality and that everything else done outside of that realm or any different routes that people take or a new different way that people express is wrong. Specifically because they're disabled or they're different in that way. Have a neurodivergence then. I'd say that's ableist, like, you know, or this idea of like internalized ableism, I think telling yourself that you're weird and that you're cringe and that you're stupid because you're stimming. I think that's a good example of internalized ableism because you're making a value judgment on that, which is like, it's something that you do to regulate and it's important, but you're sort of internalizing the views of other people. I think ableism is more common than one thinks. One should question one's own bias over others. It is easy to see within other than in oneself, I would say. I think the issue that I have particularly is like, at what point do you consider something to be just making up a hypothetical? Someone is, you know, they have anger issues. You know, you could say that that is a neurodivergence. It may be anger issues and not the right one. Like if someone's being like outwardly aggressive towards you and they have a neurodivergence that makes them perhaps a little bit more emotional or prone to anger, like where is the cut off? Like are you just not allowed to, like you're just supposed to like let that person be them and not criticize them? And is it, where's the line? You know, how do you definitively say that, you know, is it ableist to like defend yourself in that situation or not? Like who decides where that line is? You know, I tell my brother to use indoor voice a lot. Does that make me an ableist? And maybe, maybe this is what I mean. Like it's not, it's not so clear cut and easy to like say, okay, this is inherently coming from an ableist sentiment. I think it is really dependent. And it's not say that there isn't such thing as ableism. I just think that sometimes it can be somewhat hard to draw the line somewhere. I get quite annoyed when I don't approve of others, behavior of others, regardless of theoretical art, too loud, too close, fix it, too excited, fix it. I'm working on it though. But I'm just kind of trying to present a scenario where, you know, we can all find ourselves in maybe a scenario where someone's not being particularly nice to us. Maybe they have a personality disorder. Does it make us ableist for saying that's not a good thing to say to someone? I don't, I don't know. I'm not too sure. So I know for yourself isn't ableism, but if you are standing up to one person, but not the other, because what that one is disabled, then that's ableist. I can agree with that, that's fantastic, yeah. Cause some people will get criticized for being ableist because, but they don't necessarily, they're not necessarily trying to discriminate because they are an ableist person. But they just don't understand all the aspects to it. Does that make them ableist in that situation, even if they don't understand? I don't, I'm not sure. You know, it's, hmm, yeah, it's a hard one. It's difficult to kind of understand in my brain. Like there's so much like nuance to every sort of situation. Like I think the only times at which I will use like the word ableism or call someone an ableist if it's like genuinely like flat out like discrimination, you know, or a sentiment, which is very, very heavily tied to other ableism sentiments. You know, it's, but I'm very careful with it cause I know like what impact that can have on somebody. Yes, one can accidentally be ableist just like other things too. I think the difference is one is communicating that someone's upset with you. The other is expecting someone to change your expectations. Yeah, but then you could even say like, okay, you're a manager. Like what do you do in that situation? Do you ask them not to be that way? Do you tell the other person to deal with it because they have this certain thing? You know, at what point does it become ableist? I suppose it's the intention, isn't it? I suppose I'm trying to view it from a very objective, this or that categorical kind of standpoint. Whereas it's very like dependent on the situation, isn't it? And the intentions of the person or the people in that situation. And you can't always see that on the outside and that's the difficult bit. That's where people make assumptions about your intentions about things, you know? And I think that that can be where it gets a little bit gray and muddy when sort of using the words so flippantly, I think. Sometimes you just don't know what people's intentions are. I don't think it's the best thing to do to, like, assume the worst, if anything, I would try and assume the best, you know? Zantasa says, for example, telling someone I could not live like that in accommodations, those are ableist thoughts because it rates the worth of someone's life based on their abilities. Yeah, yeah, I can stand behind that. The whole thing about, you know, I couldn't live without it. Like you see it physically, you say, well, the person who's on the leg, you say, oh, man, I couldn't live with having one like them. Yeah, I can understand why people might take offense that it's like, what was so bad about it? Like, this is me and this is how I'm doing things. Like, yeah, I get that. I do get that. It's all relative as well when we're talking about people's abilities. Like, to some degree, everybody is somewhat dependent on another human being for support in some ways, whether it be gas heating, electricity, building a house, you know? There's so many different things that interblane to like someone's dependency on others as a human being. But it's just when it's kind of like different, I suppose, and sort of definable. I'm not talking from a place of like, understanding it all. I'm still trying to like, wrap my head around other people's kind of perceptions of it and such. The sentence isn't meant to be against disabled people, but it inherently is. So that's what it means to be ableist without intention. I can see that, I can see that. I think maybe some way that I might differ from a lot of people is that I just, I tend not to use the word unless it's like, very, very clear, you know? I would say that, I think it's fine to say like, okay, that sounds like an ableist sentiment rather than saying you're an ableist because you said that. I think it's, there is a bit of a difference and I think factoring in like the general amount of ignorance that most people have around things like that, it's important not to like label those individuals as like being evil or wrong or like against disabled people. You know, perhaps if you had a conversation about someone who said something like that and they said, okay, I see it like that and I wasn't aware of the fact that you kind of live like that and you're pretty comfortable with that and such and I think factoring in ignorance, I think is quite important sometimes. Yeah, so great, the expression and the sentence or the thought can be ableist like a person is probably rarely fully ableist like as a whole. Yeah, I just hesitate to like label people as like ableists just in general, like unless they are specifically like talking about, you know, people with disabilities in a bad light and discriminating against them through their actions and contributing to ableism and such, then, you know, perhaps I might be a bit more, you know, kind of on board with like saying, you know, this is not good. Impact versus intent. Yeah, it's the whole thing, isn't it? I think intent is important, you know, it is definitely important, but you know how you can't really measure that. You can't really see the truth in all situations, which inherently makes it quite difficult to have like discussions about ableism, I suppose. How free is this person able to be themselves and still function properly within the system or the dynamic of the group? Is this autistic person able to be their autistic selves and still get the job done? And I say this because I feel like with all of the people that I have come across that, I feel like have straight up like bullied me in all these different work environments. I don't think they're horrible, malicious people. The irony is that I feel like all of the female bullies that I've ever come across in these situations would probably consider themselves feminists, would probably feel really bad if they were to learn I was autistic. In many ways, they would have probably went out of their way to be nicer to me and inclusive of me if they knew I was autistic, but the truth of the matter is, is that they have internalized misogyny still, they have internalized ableism still. So when someone like me came across their radar, they went out of their way to be mean to me and to alienate me and they thought that it was just- See, here's the thing, it's like, are they being, are those individuals that the Foxbot is talking about with the knowledge that none of anybody in this interaction was aware about autism? Are they being ableist? Are they? They're definitely not being nice and they're being pretty discriminatory and horrible, but is their intention to discriminate against an isolate in the individual or they're just kind of being arseholes? I don't know, I don't know. There's so many questions in my brain. What do you think about this situation guys? In this situation, could you retroactively like call them ableists for that? It's a difficult one. Right, that's the point, yeah. There's so many questions, so many nuances, such subjectiveness. I'm not sure about that one, not sure about that one. It was justified probably because they just attributed my autistic traits to just me being a bad person and I deserved that treatment because of that, you know? I hope that your loved ones are taking the time and efforts that they need in order to learn more about autism and neurodivergency in a non-abelist way. In order to understand you more and in order for them to grow as people as well. Because it tells a whole new history of autism but also, if you look at the subtitle of his book, he talks about the future of neurodiversity and his book in many ways is a sort of manifesto for this new concept of neurodiversity which as psychiatrists and clinical psychologists we should be paying a lot of attention to because it's really the idea that there are many ways for the brain to develop. There isn't a single way to be normal. There are individual differences in the population which may be there for reasons of natural selection. We're not all made the same that we all have our strengths and our weaknesses and autism may be just one example of neurodiversity in the environment. I like that. I've, I've, funny figures about this. I've interviewed him. I've interviewed someone very ongoing and I've interviewed the author of NeuroDrives as well by Steve Silberman. Let's see what you guys think about this situation. If they are discriminating because you are unable to do something they can, then yes, they are ableist. But then you could say like things that are not classified as disability like doing like really complex algebra. Not everybody can do that but you would just, if you had like a mass problem to solve you would discriminate and like give, give them it and not other people. But they don't know that they're disabled or that they're different in that way. I'm not necessarily saying that you're wrong or like being contrary because I don't think the same. I just, I suppose it's, it's such a, you know, everyone will have their own kind of ideas and takes from that I guess. They were being unkind for sure taking steps to over someone even if subconsciously has a harmful impact yet. I guess that's why it's good to check in with our biases from time to time. They're not questioning why they are discriminating. They are clearly not found or hovering. So yeah, it's definitely not easy to label as ableist but it's clearly discrimination. There you go, like definitely discrimination. That is, there's a clear discrimination there but ableist I don't know. I think it's, it can be, you know, it can be interpreted in a lot of different ways, I suppose. I think it's silly that we're viewed as black and white thinkers. That's what I think. Yeah, me too. I think some people can be very black and white but I found most of the time that people who aren't autistic seem to be actually a little bit less open to like concepts which are inherently quite gray than other autistic people that I've talked to. But I do know some autistic people who are very black and white. I think it's just not easily possible at IRL to know what, on what base someone is discriminating you against. Yeah, exactly. I think you've landed on it. It's fantastic. I think that's pretty representative of my thoughts. You know, I've received DMs and messages from people who are like in bits, like emotional, mental bits from like being labeled as like an ableist and a long list of other things when they're quite clearly not but people have assumed intentions about what they've said and it can be really distraught because it makes like getting into the autistic community pretty inhospitable. Like don't use certain words if you use certain words you're an ableist if you don't, you do. And you know, people don't take the time to like understand where you're coming from and why you are saying the things that you do. They just assume the worst. And I think we need to stop like doing that although people will do as they do. I think it's a somewhat healthy amount of distance and perhaps a little bit more on the side of positive regard giving people the benefit of the doubt. I think can be especially valuable when trying to incorporate other people from outside a specific group. It's important to take time to try and understand. Be careful with the ism, zests and bicks. Yeah, I think so. They're very powerful words. I think they do have the potential of like destroying people as well. Both for the good of people and also like for the bad of that person in whatever situation that word is being used. Silberman chose as the front cover design for his book, an image of biodiversity and we're all very familiar with that related concept of how important it is for us to preserve diversity in the Amazon rainforest or elsewhere. And he really argues the same should be true for neurodiversity. I encourage you guys to honor the way your brains work and the way that your systems were made to work and to begin to replace that neurotypical user manual with a neurodivergent one. In the comment section down below write your unique neurodivergent trait that you are going to highlight this week or this month. And through that, I want you to encourage another person to see your difference as a positive and to encourage them to allow their differences to come out and shine as well. Let's all encourage each other to be unique. Let's all encourage each other to be ourselves. Other than that, thank you guys for tuning in on today's video. Don't forget to take care of yourself this week and I will see you on next week's video. Bye guys. Yes, another awesome video from Irene. Ooh, it seems like they've got an Instagram. Let me have a little look at that, give them a follow. I can tag them in the video that I made. Hopefully we can organize a pod. That'll be a really good podcast. Yeah, I mean, go ever, please go over to the video ways ableism towards neurodiversity can be missed. If you guys find the fault spot, give it a like. Subscribe to their channel, of course. I think there's been some really good discussions around this and I appreciate that it's a very complex, nuanced and often quite subjective topic. Talking about this stuff. And I mean, I hope that, you know, I really, really like to enjoy you guys, like the community, because you guys are just like, we're having like discussions about things and there's no like assumptions of malintent and you know, things like that in nature and it's really nice to see like, and to be a part of myself. Yeah, I mean, very complex issue. And I think there's been a lot of food for thought and I will definitely be taking that to my dreams, trying to figure out the ins and outs of this ableism concepts. But I hope you have enjoyed it. Make sure to like, subscribe, do all that stuff and I'll see you later. Goodbye.