 Good afternoon, Us Be Legion. Welcome back to another video. With me, Thomas Henley from the Us Burgess Grove channel. Today we are going to be talking about autism, the split brain. What exactly do I mean by the split brain? It's kind of an offhand topic, doesn't really sound like it's a thing. Well it's sort of a creation of my own to better help people understand what being autistic is like. Autistic people are generally very difficult to understand if you don't know one in particular, even if you've read lots about them, or even have a child or friend who is autistic. Sometimes people find it hard to understand just what the other side of the coin is like. So today I'm going to be breaking down what I mean by the split brain and how you can better understand what being on the spectrum is like. If you're interested in any of the things that I've said there, or just intrigued to know what my very strange hypothesis is, stay tuned. One of the main things that has been very strange for me, looking at neurotypical people, people who aren't autistic, is that for some reason their brains just seem to be fully integrated together. Meaning that the logical parts of their brain and their emotional brain is very intertwined and it seems to work harmoniously in one. Sure, sometimes maybe the emotions may be a bit more of a driver, which is usually the case in terms of impulsivity and likelihood of doing things that don't seem very logical. But in some cases that can be better than the card hold logic of the autistic individual, like myself, dissecting everything and chopping it up into little pieces and trying to understand it. Which in some ways is good, but it makes it very difficult for neurotypicals to understand what it's like for us, why we act in certain ways. What we do. The best way that I can describe this sort of split brain type phenomena, phenomena, and get better at saying it, is that when we think about something, we split up our emotions and our logical thought into two sort of separate entities. If you've read a book called the, I think it was like the monkey box, monkey brain, something like that. One of the psychologists, the sports psychologists, look at the emotional part of our brain, the primitive primate behavioral brain, as sort of like a monkey that you have to control and that you need to sort out and manage and please and discipline. And this, you know, sort of idea is quite a good concept for understanding just how to discipline yourself and make yourself better at sport. But it's also a good way of demonstrating just how autistic people view their emotional brains. It strikes me as a little bit of a dissonance, a little bit of a oddity that autistic people can be so logical and direct and to the point and use their intellect to dissect any sort of situation. But on the flip side, they tend to be very emotional. In general that you sometimes have difficulties with aggression, panic attacks, meltdowns, sensory difficulties. There's a lot of very strong, you know, differences in both of these sides of our brains, not saying that they are actually anatomical sides of our brain. But as a concept, it's basically how we view ourselves. I believe that my behavioral emotional brain is that little monkey, that little monkey that I have to try and control. I have to try and reason with it. And a lot of my personality is tied up in how I think and the logic that I display, sort of like a gatekeeper to action. It's not often that I will let my emotions dictate my behavior unless I am not conscious of it or I don't pick it up. Same thing. Or I really can't think of another way of dealing with something. But other than that, my personality, who I believe I am, is very much my logical brain. I don't really empathize with the other side of my brain, the monkey brain, the emotional behavioral brain. And for some people, that can be very strange. It's almost like feeling like you're referring to yourself in a third person for us. I would look at my emotional brain and think, what is going on here? What do I have to do to please this? What's the problem here? I have no idea. I have to ask it and I have to try and wean it out of my emotional brain. It's not like I inherently know what the problem is and what I have to do when it comes to emotional issues and social issues. Anything that is not completely concrete and logical, I struggle with a lot, even if it's in myself. Never mind other people. Like, God, that's a task and a half. When I was a child, when I was younger, I went through a lot of phases of trying to make up my own concepts and ideas to try and explain the strange things that were happening in teenagehood, the development of my emotions, whether it be negative or good, or strangely puberty related. And one of those things was that I thought I had some kind of split personality. Because I felt such a disconnect between how I felt and what I thought. And for a lot of the time I used to act basically completely on my logic. It doesn't matter how I felt about something, I would ignore it. And sometimes that can be good. It's very good for productivity. I'll get myself doing stuff very quickly and I'll stick to routine. But on the other side, I neglect a part of myself that needs to be dealt with. If I have some social issues, I would just sort of ignore it and leave it on its own. Try and wait it out, which is not a great thing to do, especially if you want to be emotionally stable. It was only until maybe like two or three years ago that I realised just how important it was to try and understand my emotional side of my brain. It's a very difficult thing to do for an autistic person. We need to research, we need to test things out, we need to hypothesise, we need to write down our notes, we need to make a diary, we need to track our mood, we need to look for physical sensations of emotions and try and pinpoint exactly how emotions affect us. And that is a difficult thing to do. It's almost like doing a university degree. You've got to make a thesis, you've got to compile knowledge together, but also add in a little bit of your personal life. A lot of people that are friends with me will understand what I mean when I say I feel something, but I don't think something. Because when I say that I feel something, it's almost like I'm talking about myself in a third person. I'm saying, well, my brain's doing this. I have no idea why, but I don't think exactly how I feel. And for some people that can be a very difficult thing to wrap your head around, particularly because most people don't do that. I think it's very useful to do that for a lot of communication, a lot of social communication, getting over difficulties and relationships. But no, not a lot of people do that and it can be quite strange and quirky and weird for people to experience me talking to them about things like that. About emotions, complex things. Not to be underestimated though. I'm having a meltdown, but I don't know why. Maybe it's this lack of understanding of our emotions, lack of ability to perceive them or look back on the past and recreate in our minds what that experience felt like. But there are a lot of barriers for us to understand our emotional brain. And that might be the reason why we don't integrate that into us. That's why we think we are just thoughts and we are logic. Because it makes us feel safe. And we don't like to not have control over ourselves. We always want to think and plan and prepare ourselves just so that we feel in control. And that the world around us isn't just some chaotic mess that we have to navigate using some type of internal emotional compass that we can't really read properly. It's pretty much what being autistic feels like for me in general. But you know, it's just an idea. A little bit of a thought experiment. That's how I feel about my brain. Very much split into two. One side, very logical. What I would call me. The other side. A bit emotional, a bit uncontrollable. But nowadays, integrating more into who I am as a person. If that makes sense. I hope it does. Did you like the video? If you did, please make sure to like it. Give your autonomy boy a like. Just down there. Just click it once. One click. That's going to take. You know, I spent so long making this video. All you got to do is just scroll down a little bit. Give it a like. I won't know who you are. But you'll just contribute to making. You know, giving me a dopamine hit every time someone likes something. Pretty much. Feed my addiction. What did you think about this video? Autistic people. Do you agree with me? Do you think that we are? We do sort of view ourselves as like a split brain. We don't view ourselves as our emotional parts and we sort of have to rein it in like a wild tiger. Let me know down below. Maybe you disagree with me. Put it down there so that we can have a discussion. If you want to contact me directly, talk about anything, maybe you're struggling in your life and you want some advice from random guy on the internet. You can go onto my social media accounts. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and you can send me a direct message or if you just want to follow my stuff, check out what I'm doing other than on YouTube. Go have a look. Go check it out. The 4080 podcast has its third episode up so if you haven't checked that out already, it's available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and a whole other load of stuff, especially on YouTube. If you want to listen to that, give it a listen. It's quite fun. Relax. Do it while you're doing house chores that you won't do because you're autistic and you have difficulties with executive functioning. Do it while you're engaging in your special interest. Thank you very much my lovely viewers. I love you dearly. You're part of my heart on the internet. I know I can't see you but you can see me and I'm giving you love. Can't think of any more rhymes. See you later.