 Well, hello, everybody. There's lots of new folks today. So I'll introduce myself. I'm Mel Hauser. I use Shiba pronouns and I am executive director here at All Brains Belong Vermont. And we're welcome, welcome to Brain Club. Let me share screen. Here we go. So this is our weekly community conversation on everyday brain life stuff. And so, and for those of you who've not joined us before, we every month have a different theme of what we talk about. And so this month's theme is neurodiversity and culture. Sarah, are you getting those participation pop-ups? Yeah, and I'm saying admit all, admit, admit all. And I don't know what to do. I don't know, it's not letting Sarah in. Yeah, I've hit admit twice now. Okay, all right. It's, I'm sure we'll figure it out. Anyway. I'm back in. Oh, fantastic, I hear it. So, if you'd like closed captioning for tonight's program, depending on what version of Zoom you have, you'll either see live transcript CC or the more dot, dot, dot. And for matter, you can choose show subtitles. And you can also do the same and choose hide subtitles if you change your mind. So we're gonna go over some ground rules because last month at Brain Club when our theme was about creating neuro-inclusive spaces, ground rules were an important theme that came up a month long. The idea of knowing your access needs where access needs are defined as anything you need to have full and meaningful participation and experience and to know or at least respect everyone else's access needs. Although it's hard to respect an access need that you don't know about. So we create a space where it is normalized to talk about what we need in a space. And related to that, there is no right way to participate. And what that means is that you can participate with spoken speech. You can participate in the chat box. You can participate by observing. Sometimes folks try and say, oh, sorry, I'm not participating. I'm cooking dinner. Well, you are participating because you're here. So there's no right way to participate. And as it comes to access needs, for many people saying that explicitly upfront is an access need. So like Luna, my five-year-old, sometimes she'll resist going to a thing. I'm not going. And I'll say, Luna, there's no right way to participate, remember? This is a place where there's no right way. And she says, oh, now I'll go. So anyway, the attitudinal norm is an access need for many people. That's why we include it. And of course, because we're all gonna have different brains, we're gonna have different access needs. And sort of acknowledging that and acknowledging that sometimes those access needs are going to conflict and that's inevitable. And so having a plan for course correction is okay. So we'll proceed through that. So that was a slide from last week. So anyway, the last thing that I'll mention is that a word on language. So tonight you'll hear me and maybe other participants using identity-first language as it relates to neurodivergence. I am autistic. And for me, that is part of my identity. That is not the case for all autistic people, but it is the case for me and many of our participants. And so sometimes when identity-first language is new, it can sometimes be like, ooh, that's new. So that's the idea. Is the idea that for many people, language reflects paradigm, the way that we're seeing the world. And when we do not need to necessarily separate things from our identity, that comes out in the language. And I think you'll hear that play out tonight. As I said, all forms of participation is okay and all forms of communication are okay. You know, in addition to, as I described before, chat box on muting and shouting it out, using emoticons, reactions, mixing, matching, whatever you're comfortable with. And safety, safety comes first. And so affirming all aspects of identity, and as I said before, respecting and protecting access needs. And so another slide from last week, we talked about how a safe space requires that a shared goal of not only meeting our own access needs, but not violating other's access needs. And so the last part of ground rules that I'll cover, because sometimes this term is unfamiliar, is that of a content warning. A content warning is an important part of neuro-inclusive space. You're welcome to share your truth, whatever you feel safe talking about. But just keep in mind, if there's something you're talking about that you personally experienced as distressing or traumatic, please let others know about it first by announcing the name of the topic. It's called a content warning. And try to keep those topics with content warnings as brief as possible so that participants who, they can listen with informed consent or they can turn their sound off or leave the room for a minute or two. And we'll type in the chat box with content warning over. And we may need to redirect the topic of conversation to protect other's access needs. Okay, we're gonna start. All right, so neurodiversity and culture. A few months ago, we had a whole theme, a whole monthly theme talking about the double empathy problems. I don't know if you remember that. May you remember that? I don't know if you remember. Where it's not that there is one correct type of social skills, communication skills, but it's about miscommunication being the result of a mismatch of worldview or a mismatch of communication styles. And in, which July, we took on the theme all month of bridging the double empathy problem in relationships, education, healthcare, employment, just about seeking to understand all the perspectives. And I think this is the natural progression of that. Because when we think about culture, we're really talking about the customs of a group of people. They're the norms of social interaction, behavior, communication, attitudes. And whenever we are encountering someone who belongs to a culture different from ours, sometimes those norms may be different from ours. And this is not a big deal. We celebrate that, we celebrate that diversity and we seek to understand it. And that works out. And for lots of people, neurodivergence that is the way that, you know, that one's brain is wired to think, learn and or communicate is actually a culture. And often it's not talked of in that way. Sometimes, lots of times in fact, the message is given either explicitly or implicitly that there is one correct way to socialize, one correct way to behave, communicate. When really it may be an issue of culture. So I shared last week, I'm gonna keep using this slide because I love it so much. I used this slide from a training I gave to some therapists a few weeks ago about neurocultural competence. And I said, hey, Luna, she's five. Luna, what should, I'm doing another neurocultural competency training. What should I tell the people? And this is what she said. She said, mama, person. As she sits there in her mermaid sparkle dress eating chicken off a stick. Yes. Yes, Luna. There's no right way to be a person. So I thought about any number of ways that we could have taken tonight's brain club. And I thought about like getting really specific about some of the cultural trends in many, not all, but many neurodivergent communities. But then I remembered the long game. At ABB we often talk about the long game and often throw a hashtag behind it and post it everywhere. We really wanna think about that of inclusion, right? Like creating spaces for people with all type of brains to belong. And so, I really wanna be moving away from an us versus them paradigm, right? And really just promoting safety and connection for all people. Because I think Luna says it best. There's no right way to do most things. And so since connection is the pathway to health and we want everyone to be as healthy as possible, remembering that there's like any time that there's like a default behavior, a default way of communicating, a default way of like being in the world, a default way of writing an email, a default way of like attending a Zoom meeting, like that's not going to make all people with all types of brains feel safe and connected and therefore it's not healthy. So I think that with that introduction, I'm gonna play a video. Actually, what I'll say first is that some of you have been, we started Brain Club back in January. And when the format has evolved like a lot over time, but I'd say lately we're getting into, because I think when something loses novelty, we change it up. So lately the ABB staff, when we find ourselves having an interesting conversation at a meeting, we're like, this should be a Brain Club and we record it. Anyway, so we're gonna do another short video clip. So this is a conversation Sarah and I had, let's us Sarah Wilkins, our community programs coordinator. Hi Sarah, I'm gonna play our casual conversation. And this video is, I was gonna say it's about, no it's exactly nine and a half minutes. I know because I just made the video five seconds ago. Anyway, so while this is going, feel free to keep the chat box going and then we'll have plenty of time for conversation. But we can start the conversation now in the chat box. All right, here we go. I never remember the motor plan of getting out of this box in time. Here we go. So you were saying something about not feeling alone. Yeah, I feel like that is something that comes up a lot with the ABB community as feeling like people have found their tribe and feeling less alone in their journey, whether it's as a parent or as an individual connecting people with one another and making people feel less alone. Yeah, like I think that connection is a path to health. No one tells you that though. And so like when you're in it and you're alone, you don't know that the reason you feel so terrible, one of the reasons you feel so terrible. Actually, you know what? If I have to unhide self view, show self view, okay, because then it can be like a conversation. So like when you're in it, when you feel terrible and you don't know why you feel terrible and if you're gonna make a list of all the things about why you feel terrible, being alone might not even be like on that list because no one tells you that connection is part of health. It's in fact like the important path to health. Right, right. And with the neural pathways in our brain dating back to many, many years ago, there's a huge part of our brain that still functions in that need to belong. And if you didn't have that back in tribal times, then you could not survive. And so I think having community is, it's a deep wired part of our brain to need to belong. Yes. And when we don't have that, there's a part of us that feels like it's, you know, just super isolating and I think people just need that for safety. They need to feel that sense of belonging and community. And I think that's what people find when they come to all brains belong. Today I attended a virtual talk by my professional idol, Dr. Virginia Spielman who's the executive director of the Starr Institute for sensory processing. So Dr. Spielman had the most like, I mean, anytime I hear her speak, I'm just like, everything you say is old. But some of the things she said were things like, self needs other in order to become. Wow. And she talked about like self-actualization, part of that is communal actualization. It's like part of the development of personhood. And she talked about skills for the job of living and the skills for the job of living are doing, being, becoming and belonging. Wow. Because I mean, this is how people lived for so many years in hunter gatherer societies, right? Like I've heard Dr. Gabor Matay say that, you know, this the ideal environment for a child to grow up in is a hunter gatherer society. That's what the research shows. Totally. Because being around the community, having aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents and neighbors and friends and, you know, having that community around, you know, around a family provides well less stress, you know, on all the responsibility falling on the parents, for example, if it's parents with children. And it's just, you know, it's just the way that we're wired to be is to live in community and cooperate with each other to each have different roles that we play. And, you know, that idea of interdependence, it really is a primal need, really, to be interdependent. And this myth that we live in, you know, a world where we're supposed to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and live in an individualistic way is really toxic. And, you know, just a world that, you know, ABB is providing a space that is much more in tune with sort of where people started with communities and bartering and sharing and, you know, taking care of one another. Totally. And I also think that in societies where groups were collective, like all doing the thing together, like that's also missing. So you don't like go to a group of autistic people, you like, like, because you're not doing anything. So you're not becoming, you're not collecting, you're just like sitting there, like just like, anyway. So the idea of that you would meet someone through your shared interests and like do the thing, the thing might be talking about a thing that you care about, but you're still doing the thing, doing it together with other people who are, you know, interested in that thing. You know, it's not just like, oh, you know, put a bunch of random people together and form friendships, like that's not how it works. And so like a lot of times, you know, there'll be like social skills groups or like something like that, which are often, you know, like, giving the implicit message that like, you don't have any social skills because there was one right way to have social skills and you don't have it. So like there's that. But it's also like not how people make friends. Yeah. So it's, so I think back to, so I think back to when Anna House presented at Brain Club and was talking about like, okay, so like where do you meet friends? Like how do you even get started? And it's like, you have to figure out, you have to first actually figure out what you love. Yeah. So like then you can find people who love what you love, but if you don't even know what you love because you're so dysregulated, like it all just, and then I connect that to like the Hannah Bloom Brain Club two weeks ago where it's like, okay, well, here we were thinking about like how as parents, do we signal safety within like the culture of our households? And like what came out of that? I was like, as an adult, I am so rarely regulated. And Hannah was like, I think she was surprised to hear me say that. I was like, no, no, I am so rarely regulated. Yeah. So you like have to be regulated in order to know what you love in order to then do the thing you love and be connected with people who love what you love. And you're not regulated if you're not connected. It's like this vicious cycle. It is. So at least to come and connect as the path to health and regulation, like that's like another starting place of like, all right, well, let's talk about the journey. Let's talk about regulation. Let's talk about these things that, they're relevant to my life, at least start there. And then you can differentiate based on your interests once you become regulated enough to even engage in your interests. Yeah. I think like you've talked about, people have to feel safe and they have to feel that sense of community to even access that part. Because I think a lot of people, they're just, they're burned out by life. And so they maybe aren't in tune with what brings them joy. And so being in an environment that talks about access needs, not just for some people, but for everybody that everybody has access needs. And so normalizing that and allowing people to discuss, openly like what their access needs are. I mean, that's something that a lot of people have talked about with ABB that they never had, they didn't have language for that before. Right. They didn't know what that, they didn't, yeah, they just didn't, and they didn't consider that they maybe had access needs or that other people might as well. And just having, coming to ABB and having the language for what their experience has been up until that point, which, for some people, it's in your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and you've not had language to go with some of the feelings you've experienced throughout your life. And so having language to put to that is the first step and feeling safe and having community. And then I think you can get to like, well, what are we passionate about? What can we connect on with other people? Any thoughts, just resonating with anyone? I was just about to type in the chat and then I'm so happy that I don't have to type in the chat and can talk because I hate typing. But I was so glad that you shared your access needs. Thank you, yes, I'm so happy to talk but I'm not gonna show my face because I'm in my PJs and my dog is being crazy. Anyways, I wanted to say yes to that idea, that access or that vocabulary and language is so key to being able to create community because it's so key to be able to express ourselves and to be able to articulate the emotions that we feel on top of the experience we're lived. So I just wanted to say yes to that. ABBs taught me so much language and vocabulary and just ways to think about the same, the problems. So yes, I just wanted to say yes to that, yes to the vocabulary, yes to the language. Thank you for that. That's amazing, right? You know, like I didn't have a language for this for like almost all of my life, right? So just, and I think now I was having this conversation not about neurodiversity and access, but about a different topic, but like the analogy I think will be apt is I was telling my husband, I said, I think that little kids when a narrative is not provided for someone's experience, they tell themselves, we tell, we told ourselves a narrative to fill in the gaps and almost always the narrative that a little kid comes up with is I'm broken, I'm defective, it's my fault. And I think that like, you know, as an adult, like unlearning the narrative of like, there is a correct way to do the things and it's not me, like that is real. And, you know, I really want all the young kids, you know, my five year old, all my little kid patients to grow up, like actually thinking that there's not like a default way to be a human. And then it's really like, it's all okay. I mean, I think what we're bumping into is just feeling like this world is made of systems and the systems are not designed to accept our child or even interested in truly understanding like what his access needs are. And it's demoralizing, I guess. I don't know what the right word is like frustrating, you know, like wanting the culture to be there and feeling like, yes, we are, you know, I just, I guess, like maybe we just, if we think of ourselves more as like pioneers because nobody's done this before and hopefully in a hundred years we'll look back and be like, yeah, those folks that were like on the forefront of increasing access and just changing the way that neurodiversity is talked about and thought about, like that's, you know, they were on the right track. So I don't know, I just, sometimes I think it's just hard to even crack into this, you know, to crack into anything like, because it's really just not designed for people that don't fit neatly in that little box. So my two cents. Totally, thank you for naming that thing. And I'm so glad you're here, Stacy, you know, I think that, I mean, like so many people have said that exact thing at Brain Club before. And if you don't name the thing and then have someone else be like, me too, then you don't, you think you're the only one, like dealing with these dysfunctional systems. It's a, you know, it's, it's a, it's a, like of all of the many layers of privilege that I have, like one of them is that I actually, and I spend more of my day around people who get it than people who don't anymore. That was not the case a year ago. And so it's, I think it's about, like, you know, anytime I have these conversations with even people who never, like not the people from the Brain Club, but like people who've never thought about this before and like aren't living this, this isn't relevant. But anytime I like name the thing, people are like, oh, I never thought about that. Like nobody's like, oh, well, that's nonsense. They just really, I think never thought about it. So, I mean, yeah, reading the chat, what has changed for you now that you're around people who get it? Yeah, that's a really interesting question. Let me think about that. I would say I am, I guess I'm more able to discern safe versus not safe. That's like the single biggest difference. Like in a world where everything is pathologizing and everything is not me. And everything is like, this is the way it is. Now, when I'm spending most of my day in a different paradigm, when I encounter, you know, the outdated concept of, you know, there's normal brains and everyone else, it stands out as like, oh, that's that paradigm. And I get a limbic response and I notice it and I, you know, it depends on what role I'm in. Like if I'm like doing a training, if I'm like, you know, trying to accomplish some long game, you know, then I courtically overread my limbic system and, you know, all that, but like if I'm wearing mama bear hat, I leave, I actually leave. That's what's different. Because I know that that's, I have a choice when you think that all the environments make you feel bad about yourself and make you feel bad about your child and make your child feel bad about yourself. Like when you think that's all there is, you would maybe think you got to suck it up or like comply with it or whatever, but it's more like, that's not how I felt yesterday at this other environment. That's what I think's different because I didn't know it was possible. I like wanted to imagine something was different, like that something different would be possible, but I really, I really had no idea. It was like the ultimate experiment of like quitting my job and serving a nonprofit and like all that, the ultimate experiment. I wonder, you know, because I think that for, for, for, hi Amy. Hello. And I guess I'll stick with, I'll speak and I'm sorry to cut you off, but this was bringing up a couple of things for me as people were talking, but are you familiar with the Lakota Circle of Courage? For some reason, your sound is gone. Let me do something. No, no, no, no, I was, I was still muted. Yes, yes, I was very recently learned about this. I'm doing a Lens Fellowship and that actually came up in my, in my, in my course two weeks ago, but I, yeah, but say more, say more. Well, it was just the ideas of, and we tried to do this at Lairway, even though there were like the pressures above to be properly documenting stuff in like an ABA style or what have you, but we were really focused on the, and I'm totally forgetting one of them, I think, but it's belonging, generosity, mastery, and then I think autonomy is the fourth one. Well, the problem is the other one's independence. Independence. Okay. Yes, okay. It's important. I think over the course. Yeah. But the other piece about the Lakotas that was very interesting is they did a, they had an official ceremony basically for giving the colonizers and inviting colonize, the descendants of colonizers to start learning about their culture. And one of the concepts that I thought is very fascinating is their belief of the child is always right in their approach to upbringing children. The two parallel thoughts I'm having because I'm a dual processor too. It's almost like what you're doing here, what ABB is doing is unpacking some old damage that's been done as far as like old truths that we used to know and live by that got taken away, mostly through colonization. But the other thing as a moment of being a history dork, which hunts, the original witch hunt was an attack in Scotland, the first one that was really documented. It was an attack on a local healer and bidwife that had a lot of power in the community. And it was more about the church and Western medicine coming in and trying to, and taking that power away from the women that were healers, that were parts of the community and very accessible to their communities. So. Yeah, you know what that is, I'm gonna say, but there's so much that's really interesting about that, you know, I think that learning, you know, like, you know, if you can zoom out and, you know, I remember being as a little kid and being taught the theme that history repeats itself. And like, having a, you know, the predictability in many ways of, you know, for good or for really not good, of kind of the predictable aspects of human behavior, learning from, you know, like, you know, I think that, you know, your example of the circle of coda as a model, like such a powerful model of like, of what works about believing in the wisdom of children. Like, yeah, that is the key to the universe. And, you know, to be able to learn from all kinds of cultures that I don't belong to, that have really important messages and models that can be applied to all kinds of things. That's the whole point, I think, about being curious about, and like, it's so clear that there's not one norm. And I think to your second point about like, yeah, it's a, when we talk about this at Green Club quite a bit about like, when someone tells someone that they're wrong, that they have brain rules, that they have to change what they're doing, because the way they're doing it's not right. It's completely a predictable thing that there's gonna be this limbic response. No one necessarily talks about it in terms of brain science, but like, yeah. Which is why I think that it's, we try to not be saying like, hey, systems, you're doing it wrong, but like, this is really just about, oh, great, we've learned new things. We've learned the neurodiversity paradigm and the big scheme of things is relatively new. We've always had different brains, now we have language for it. And when we really, I think in a community that is motivated toward the pursuit of inclusion, how could it not involve paying attention to neurodiversity and access, as opposed to like, change in the system, Mia, thanks for your patience. Sorry, I didn't see your hand. You're in my periphery, so I didn't see you, sorry. Yeah, I was gonna say that I actually have found that in principle, I think that a lot of me has always believed that, okay, these people are in the wrong, but it's like it feels like, well, but they have more power over me because they can, because they could, these systems could abuse me or deny me access to things. It's like that was very much my sort of, it's like, even if we do believe, even if I did recognize that they were wrong, it's like, but they could overpower me anyway sort of thing. Yeah, and I think that, I don't know the best way of saying this, I think that it's about, it's so hard. Like all of this is so hard. And I think all we can do, I'm just seeing Sarah's comment in the chat, I think that just as connecting with other people who get it, I think is, not just from a shame reduction or like a reality checking standpoint, but it's like, hopefully it actually strengthens your resolve to discern what environments to move toward. And again, there's like so much, there's so much, the intersectional layers of privilege versus oppression that play into that. And there's not a right answer. But it's sometimes when I think about, sometimes people like adults share the stories of feeling broken, defective. And then when you think about like the messages as that young children often get, how could people not grow up feeling that way? There wasn't like, are we surprised? You know, when, sometimes I don't think, I don't know if I've told the story of Brain Club, I tell the story like a lot, because it's anyway, so content warning for school shame and emotional trauma. So a seven year old that we know said that their teacher hates them. What do you mean? Like you're a sweet little love. Well, no, I'm always told that I'm not doing the thing. I can't stop talking, I never stopped moving, I'm never doing the thing, I never do what I'm told. I'm like, well, anyway, it was just, when you really think about it, that's not, that's a systems problem. So many times stories are told by like, this person said this thing. We all have ways that make us feel safe in environments that are dysregulating. You know, so a lot of the norms that really relate to having order in a state of chaos. So a lot of like the compliance based brain rules are consequences of a dysfunctional system. It's a different spin on that story than I usually tell. But, you know, I think that so many people, you know, it's like a little kid who may have an experience, you know, like it's loud, I'm hot. And someone's like, it's not hot, it's not loud. And like decades of that, it's, you really lose, you can really lose touch with intuition. And it's, there's so much unlearning that goes into like reducing that brain body disconnect. Oh, thanks, Mia. Oh, I don't know that I can download to this. It's not letting me download. Is there a web-based link, Mia? Hi, Dave. Hello. Hi, yeah, go for it. I didn't realize I was on mute. So in, you know, there was, the theme is about culture and like, something that someone else had mentioned, you know, about, or it was in the video, the hunter-gatherer culture and stuff like that. And that was, I think, my generation and, you know, post-World War I or whatever, you know, the idea of the nuclear family that can just survive all the things by themselves, you know, is I think a similar theme in kind of how society has designed education, you know, like a one-size-fits-all box. And to me, I think the feeling of culture is, and a lot of what ABB is about, is about bringing education to, you know, there's no one right way to teach a first grader, you know, like, or a third grader or, you know, someone who's in college. And some of the things that I've seen, and I'm sure that you've seen with patients is when you come across like a school system that is like, oh, we've identified this thing and we identify that their learning needs are different than others, I'm like so ecstatic, as opposed to like them just getting like, kind of like lost in the weeds. And I think that's a shift that's happening in education. I know that there's like a lot going into training teachers and things like that. And I think that's a huge, moving forward is gonna be a huge part of, like I suppose advocacy might not be the right word, but like promoting neurodivergent culture kind of starts with how we educate children. Right, and I think that, you know, even better than that would be, you know, universal design offering everything in flexible multimodal ways that, you know, for everyone because I think what ends up, you know, and it's not of any fault of any individual, it's the way the system is currently set up in, most public school systems is that in order to qualify for differentiation for the way your brain learns, you have to fail. And at least here in Vermont, that was pretty close to being improved and then a big setback in terms of legislation changing, changing that about defining kind of the requirements to be able to access supports. But that's I think the next step would be like to really accept that neurodiversity and diversity of ways in which our brains learn is to be expected. This is common, which is why universal design is best practice. You know, I can say in my medical education experience, there's one way to learn a lot of the things, like, okay, so you will, you know, if you're gonna learn a procedure, you will see one and everybody can imitate the thing they see, and then you go do one. Like you can just see it and imitate it, like that was the default. That's not how my brain learns. I always felt like really, really bad all the time as a medical student. I had no idea about dyspraxia or, you know, that like one in 10 people at least is not gonna be able to learn a motor skill that way. Reading the chat, Emily says that the school system is waiting for kids to fail before stepping in as a common theme in Massachusetts. Yeah, I think, you know, and from a systems perspective, it's like, well, anyway, there's systems. Systems are hard, but I think like, you know, surrounding people, you know, with people who get it, and you're just like shifting that paradigm of there's no default brain. I think that alone, you know, goes somewhere. At least that's my hope. Well, I think what's cool about it too is that it triples the other parts of your life. So if you learn it in a safe space, like all brains belong, like understanding the idea that everyone has access needs and you understand, like it's a safe place to explore concepts and have words for things you never had words for, I think then when you're in other spaces in your life, like you said, you can either just exit if it doesn't feel congruent with what feels good to you or just know how to advocate for you or your child's access needs. And so, you know, it sort of gives you that like protective bubble of being like, oh, I'm not alone. There's other people who are in this situation and feel the same way I do. Yeah. For those of you who are new to thinking about neurodiversity and access, you know, like has what's your experience been with like the either the rewriting of old narratives or what Sarah said, just like the applying of, you know, one narrative to other worlds that you exist in. Mel, I have a thought. Go for it. Because through this conversation, you know, I'm thinking about, I'm constantly thinking about my relationship to my experience and I think it's part of who I am. It's part of the work that I do and I've been thinking a lot. Hold on. I've been thinking a lot about whether or not what I know or believe is true because it's attached to a world rule or a brain rule. And I'm a therapist and that's a lot to unpack. But that kind of awareness is really powerful but it's also unsettling. But in my experience, those things that unsettle us are usually the things that teach us the most. So that's where I am. So that's where I am, wading into a pool. Totally. So, you know, in many ways, I think that when one's professional training in a paradigm is, you know, like you train for so long in a paradigm and then to see the mismatch between your experience and your training and then it's so hard. And so I think that, you know, in, you know, I think Sarah and I, we are constantly, like there's all kinds, I mean, like we've come a long way, I think, of unlearning a lot of our training but like even daily, there's something like, yeah, I don't know, is that a brain rule or a rule rule? I don't know, but there's a lot of brain rules. And also, oh, I don't want this to be helpful to you, Matt, or anyone. And so by the way, that's like ABD jargon. Like we made that those terms up. So, you know, new to this, a brain rule is like something you think is a universal life truth. It's like a cultural assumption or the way you were trained or the way you were raised or, you know, whatever. But it's not like an objective law of physics or anything, it's not a true world rule. So, you know, something like to be polite, I must make eye contact when someone's talking. Like that is a brain rule, but it's not a world rule. But like, you know how many times are like kids told that? Whereas in the, if truly viewed through a cultural paradigm, like if someone, you know, has a, you know, a different type of culture for whom eye contact is not the norm, like you would never be like, you know, shamed for not doing the thing. Anyway, just it's very similar. But anyway, I think that Matt's your point about like brain rules and world rules, just cause you distinguish something as a brain rule that doesn't mean you have to give it up. We all have brain rules. And the purpose of a brain rule is to keep you safe. And so if your brain rule is working for you, you can keep it. You can know something as a brain rule and still keep it. If it serves you and if it doesn't serve you, you might choose to make the new brain rule or let it go or something. But like, I think that, you know, your paradigm of like, you know, becoming more familiar with your experience, I think like, maybe it'll feel like a little bit less unsettling, not that you're trying to be unsettled, but you know, less unsettling, if you can remind yourself you don't have to give up your brain rules. Hi, Mia, go ahead. I think a lot of us like who think like a lot of other people make out that our brain rules don't keep, don't work for us like, but basically like, I think what I always like to make clear was that it wasn't my brain rules that were harming me. It was the people who were excluding me because of my brain rules. And it's like- Right, it was their brain rules. That's what, that is much more common. I don't think our brain rules hurt us. I think our brain rules keep us safe. I think that other people's brain rules very commonly hurt other people. And it sounds like that was your experience. Yeah, and it's like, a lot of people would tell me to take therapy, a content warning study, a lot of people would tell me to take therapy so I could overcome my brain rules. But actually it wasn't my brain rules that were the problem, it was their sort of, yeah. Yeah. It was theirs, yes. And that's so common, right? So in a traditional, I don't wanna say traditional, in a lot of, maybe Matt can help me with my language, in a lot of mental health, or like the default mental health paradigm, it's to say that in all cases, it's your thoughts that resulting your emotional experience. When there's so much more that goes into that, it's sensory processing, it's vibe, it's everything. Amy, I can for sure show you how to raise your hand, but you also don't need to do the zoom raise hand, you could just raise your hand, but if you wanted to use the zoom raise hand, which I never do, but if you wanted to, your menu might say reactions at the bottom, and then raise hand is a choice on that menu, but you never have to use that button. You could, you can do what you did, it's just to type in the chat, you're trying to raise your hand. There you go, raise your hand. I'm not very good, I don't know if I'm unmuted, okay, I think I am. I'm not very good at the chat reading it, or, which is hard to admit or typing in it, but I wanted to say one thing when you were asking new people, people who are new to identifying as autistic or neurodivergent, I had an interesting thing, I'm trying to access a medical procedure and my therapist wrote out a response based on a conversation, so I had, so then I was able to bring that to Sierra, who then helped me with the prompt of going to the doctor, so I was like, okay, I had these two prompts that were like so helpful, and what was interesting was, as I was asking my questions, I got the answers I really wanted, but I kept getting laughed at, but what was so cool was because I had the prompt of the support from, you know, like my therapist is neurodivergent and Sierra, who's like helping me navigate how much to share, to access the service, I just didn't see it as a problem with me. I just was like, there was just a question of like, I wonder what's funny, but I was like, oh, maybe there's just like nervousness of someone not being used to someone, accessing their needs or getting prepared of having an expectation of what I should expect in the consult, and then I went to, then I had to call the insurance company to figure out like, will this be covered? And that's when I didn't have a prompt for that. It was like everything went downhill for me, and it was like, I can't even get this, and I don't even know how, and you know, I was like, it went from like excited to like, so then I just brought it back to my therapist today, and they were like, oh, this is how you can navigate that. And I realized like having this community of just like having a prompt to begin with can then help understand the difference between like, say how we can access our needs here, translate the difference between someone who wants to, you know, help us access our needs or not, and then go, oh, maybe I need to figure out an insurance company who actually wants to help me and give my money to those companies. And so that's sort of like my new idea of like kind of reframing where I actually even put my resource of who actually wants to help me, whether that's a restaurant or, you know, a school or anything like that is like, we get to say where we put our energy is kind of what is coming out of this conversation for me. I love that because when you, first off, I'm so proud of you and I'm so profoundly disappointed that you were laughed at for asserting your access needs. And I'm so proud of you for like about like, how far you've come in your journey in such a short time really, to be able to like, the moment that you can blame the environment instead of blaming yourself, like that is, that's a game changer. But it's sort of like because I have these two people. I was just gonna say it's just, I think it's partly because I feel bolstered by the community, right? So it's like, I hear other people's experience or I have like, I have Sierra's voice in my head that saying it's okay to say, I have, you know, you don't even have to say, oh, I'm autistic. If you don't feel comfortable or safe, but you could say you have sensory processing or you're, you know, are really sensitive. And so just like reframing that. And so to have that voice in my head really helps me navigate what's on the other side of whether, you know, I'm safe or not. So it's sort of like, you bring like Mel and you bring Sierra, you know, bring all these little people with you, you know? That's amazing. Oh, that warms my soul. Right, so like the whole point of community, right? Like connected to other people. So not only, you know, I think your story is also, I think an incredible model for like the whole culture of interdependence thing. Like whenever, I forget who I was telling this to earlier today, I was like, most of the time if I have like, you know, a stressful situation coming up or like I have a conflict I have to navigate, I definitely reach out to other people to like give me ideas for what to say. Like people write my emails for me a lot. Like, I mean, this is just, that's okay. Reena Chad, yeah, me is saying, I've been in my environment since being a child but lots of people told me I wouldn't progress if I quote get and take responsibility, right? So, you know, that's a brain rule. Someone else's brain rule. It's so hard. It's so hard when you get these messages and so many, so many people get these messages. And so, you know, and I think there's also, culturally shared brain rules are the ones that are most difficult, I think to distinguish from world rules, right? Because lots of people say lots of stuff and when you repeat something that someone else has said, you like, sometimes don't even question it. Yeah. And, yeah. And, you know, your next comment about power, you know, I talk a lot about power with my five-year-old because I think it's really important. Sometimes the only, you know, the only time the only concept of power is power over and people seek out power over other people but that's not the only power. So, Luna's like, why do you owe me? Anyway, so, you know, like the power of connection, the power of community, right? Like that's why we watch a lot of My Little Pony, the magic of friendship and connection. Where like the people who are seeking power over others, they don't prosper. And, you know, or they prosper in like the very short term and it's hard because in real life, short-term, medium-term, long-term, it's not, it's the damage of short-term power over is so, can be so damaging and so traumatic. And I think that I'm hoping, hoping that we see is that, you know, the power of connection can facilitate healing. So, I was gonna say, I totally agree with Kavis, it's like they don't, they always make out that the problem is our reaction to our environment instead of the environment, like, oh, if you were a stronger person, you wouldn't let it affect you, right? Right, right. And it's as opposed to framing strength around asserting your access needs, strength around, you know, self-awareness when really, a lot of times we talk about that, you know, when, for so many diagnoses, you know, in particular autism, right, is that these are autistic stress behaviors less than the DSM. The idea being that you're not gonna see these, these particular described behaviors until someone is profoundly dysregulated and a lot of people are because of the environment and that's entirely missing. So with that 707 wrap us up, I really appreciate everyone being here and participating in all the many ways that you've participated tonight. And we look forward to seeing you next week. I forget what next week is, what's next week? Anybody know? The A, oh, I kind of remember what the topic is. No, I just saw the Ableism. Ableism. Oh, perfect. All right, well, I will see you for, sorry me? Do your clocks go back next, this week? Oh, I never, I sort of, so like this is the first year I think I probably feel comfortable necessarily naming this. I never have any idea when the clocks go back. I always reverse the direction. I have like my memorize fall behind spring ahead or something, so I guess we're going back. So do you like to see things? Is that, is that this weekend? Yeah, it is, it is. Thank you, Mia, that's good information. Yeah, because today it's actually an hour earlier for me because my clocks went back just the weekend just gone. So. So, and then we go back next weekend and then it continues to be the midnight time for you again. So for this one week, well, I'm glad you could, I'm glad you could make it. I'm sorry it becomes midnight again for you next week. Yeah. All right, thanks everybody. Bye.