← The Neurodivergent Experience
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Foreign.
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Welcome to the neurodivergent Experience Podcast. A podcast where we share the lived experiences of neurodivergent people to help create a better understanding for our community.
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Join us every week as we bring you honest, raw, and inspiring conversations with specialists, advocates, and individuals who know exactly what it's like to live the neurodivergent experience.
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I'm Jordan James, a neurodivergent specialist, father of neurodivergent children, husband to a neurodivergent wife, and author of the Autistic Experience. And I'm joined by my best friend.
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I'm Simon Scott. I'm an autistic ADHD broadcaster, actor and advocate. Join us as we journey into unraveling the neurodivergent experience.
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Hello. Hello, and welcome back to the neurodivergent Experience. Hey, Scotty.
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A
Hello. Hello. I haven't seen the sun in three days and I'm feeling sad. Hello.
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B
I've definitely got low, low energy today.
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Yes. I'm feeling the same. I'm feeling, like, groggy and not run down, but just low energy. And I am just fed up of January now, man. I'm just so ready to just not wake up in the dark and just be great all the time. I'm just ready to get out.
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I've never felt more like Superman, but, like, in the bad way.
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Yeah, I'm glad you said that. That's how I feel.
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It's like this weather seems to be my kryptonite and I need sun to recover.
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Yeah, I feel like, you know, he's like, all shriveled up and just like, that's just where I'm at right now. Yeah, I am ready for temperature above 5 degrees and some sunshine, please and thank you.
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But we would like to say welcome to season three.
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A
Oh, my God. Yes. Season three. Can you believe this will be the third year that we've been doing this? Now that is just.
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B
That is mental, isn't it?
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Yeah.
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So for season three, we thought we would celebrate slash, reminisce, going back to the first ever episode that we did, which was at the time, it was, why, why am I autistic? But now I think we can revisit it as why are we neurodivergent? And I think the greatest thing about it is that now you can join in and give your take 100 times better than you did back then. So it's like we're doing a rewind to help everyone out there who may be on the fence about their own neurodivergence or other people's neurodivergence or doesn't recognize a lot of the neurodivergent things that are neurodivergent about them, but would also like to understand the disability side of it and the abilities. So what we're going to do, we're going to talk about how we're neurodivergent, we're going to talk about how that disables us and then we're going to talk about how that enables us to do things that other people seemingly can't do. So where should we start? How we can do it the other way around? Now I can ask you, how are you neurodivergent?
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Oh, just quite, in quite many ways, my friend. And it's, you know, as we're sort of going into season three and I feel like I have more knowledge. I feel like I've done the Obi Wan route. I've gone from like the long hair to the short hair. I have a beard now and I'm like, aha, of course I know him, he's me. Where I'm at with my sort of neurodivergence, it's so ingrained in my identity now. I used to feel like it was a thing that I had and now it's a thing that I am. And there's just so many elements of my personality, my use of language, my way of communicating, just my way of existing. There is just pure neurodivergence. Like when we first met, I was very subscribed to a lot of the low understanding. I was using a lot of the wrong language. Like, you know, being a little bit autistic or a little bit adhd. And one of the things that has amazed me is I always thought I was adhd. First ed just had a hint of the tism, but I'm actually quite, almost stereotypically autistic in many, many ways. I'm extremely sensitive. I have crushing empathy at times and my justice sensitivity can keep me in a rage from anything from an hour to a month. And I have a lot of issues around, you know, my sensory needs. I need elements of quiet, but I feed off the energy of others. I love to be social but with the right people. I mean there's, there's so much that we've, we've discussed on this show that sort of illuminates how I'm neurodivergent. But like I'm, I'm a bottom up processor. When I imagine situations or see situations, I'm gathering like Sherlock Holmes every single Little detail. Like I've been watching the Knives out films recently and I feel like Benoit Blanc in 90 of social situations. I feel like I scan people and I'm reading, you know, body language or things that they've said or the tones that they've used. I'm never just sort of there. My brain's always analyzing, always processing, always seeing things like having a Jarvis hood. There's always tabs open. It's just, there's always something a little bit more going on with me than just what, what you see right in front of you. What about you, man? I, I, I feel a little lost for words today. I'm again, something that makes me neurodivergent is when I have low energy. I am low on energy. It's not like I'm just like, oh, I'm tired today. I'm going to yawn. I'm a bit headachy. It's no, my brain feels like, you know, the old end, the planes where you have to spin the propeller and they go. I'm having one of those sorts of days today. That in itself makes me neurodivergent in that I can be hyper on a Sunday and wake up on a Monday morning and I feel like I've been asleep for three days.
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Yeah, I definitely feel like the low energy thing exacerbates. Is that word?
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Yeah, I think I've heard that one before.
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Yeah. Accentuate makes our disabilities worse. And I don't mean ours is in the community. I mean ours is in me and you. I, I definitely feel more disabled the more tired I am, which, which is why I tend to try my best to get as much rest or much downtime as I possibly can. Because obviously me being alone or just with Sylvia is, it gives me energy. But being around most people, even if it's just town, even if I'm not interacting, just being around other humans takes my energy away. I would say that that is definitely one of the things that I look at. And I can actively see the difference between me as a neurodivergent person and other people who are neurotypicals. That, that direct difference of my battery levels and how they are charged and drained in comparison to how mine are charged and drained. It's, it's a, it's a polar opposite effect. It's like coffee actually calms me down and helps me think better, whereas coffee for a neurotypical tends to hype them up, make them not be able to sleep. I can drink coffee an hour before I go to bed and I'm fine. Like, it doesn't, it doesn't affect me the same. Like, there's a, there's a clear difference in how my brain is affected by the world in comparison with your average neurotypical person that I will converse with. And they go, that's a really strange thing. I, I don't understand that. I would say the other thing that, that specifically makes me feel very, very neurodivergent. In other words, I diverge. My neurotype diverges is, is the hypersensitivity, is the idea that the world around me, no matter if it's pleasant or unpleasant, affects me so much more than it does a neurotypical. It, it, it just, it has so much more of a bombarding effect, you know, in. Sometimes it's good and sometimes it's bad. I mean, we could, we can talk about that later. But there is a clear difference. You know, it clearly makes me diverge from the norm. I would say the other thing that, that clearly makes me diverge from the norm and is my child, like being my inability to have naturally grown up through my brain, just growing up through the synaptic pruning process and that I'm, I'm stuck in a childlike state, having to learn how to grow up by comparisons, by research, by mimicking, you know, everything I've had to do hasn't come naturally to me. I feel like I'm like the Frank Lampard of football, where Frank Lampard got all his skill because he would practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and never, he never ever stopped practicing. He was always the first one at training, the last one to leave. He would practice and practice and he got so good because he practiced, but he was never naturally gifted at football.
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Yeah, that's what I feel like about.
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Whereas Wayne, Wayne Rooney, Wayne Rooney was naturally gifted. He, he, you put a ball in front of that guy and he was just able to do it and he didn't have to practice and practice and he didn't, which is because if he did, he would have been even better than he was. But, but that's how I feel like it's, I, like I can be really good at adulting, but I, It's a learned behavior and it, and it drains me. It takes away my energy. So I need to be a child in my natural state. And the more I've accepted that, the, the better I have felt and the better my mental health has been.
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I completely agree with that because when I am in periods of poor mental health, it's Because I am beating myself up for not having the motivation to adult. Like, there's. There's so many times in my life where I sit in front of a computer and go, and go, simon, and just start doing your work now. And there's. There is literally a little battle going on in my head where the inner child in me goes, yeah, I really don't want to do that. And it's like this sort of having to bribe yourself. I have to do it regularly where before I will start work, I may just play a video game for half an hour just to be like, okay, you had your game time, you had a bit of fun. Now it's time to be. To do the adulting and to add on top of that as well when, like, real adult shit happens, the anxiety that it gives me, because I feel like a child cosplaying as an adult. Like when I've had the process of buying the house. Last year, when I was on the phone to solicitors, there were times where I was having these conversations where I was going in my own head, well, people are going to find you out here that you're just sort of using words you've read that you don't really know what they mean. And it's. You know, you just feel like you. You play pretend, you know, like when you were kids, and you'd be like, right, we're gonna be Mummy and Daddy now. Like, that's genuinely sometimes how I feel when I'm trying to adult. But the energy that that takes from me is so incredibly taxing that it makes me feel how I'm feeling today. And that's hard in an adult world because we're recording on a Monday. It's the beginning of my working week and I almost feel like I need a weekend now to get over the weekend, because I had a. A couple of times of. I went out to see a friend yesterday and had a great time. My parents were over seeing my auntie and I popped through for an hour, but their schedule overran and it messed with my schedule and it took me like an hour just to leave the house because I felt like I had too much to do in a short amount of time. And I just sort of froze. And I was sat with my coat and my shoes on, knowing I had to leave, and I was just sort of sat there like, come on, Simon. And go and go, and just couldn't sort of coax myself out of it. And that's really hard to sort of. Just to explain to 90% of the living population. When you're like, oh yeah, I was just sat with my coat of my shoes on, just frozen in paralysis, like, well just get up. If only it were that simple, mate. And trying to explain it to people. You feel crazy half the time.
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Yeah, you do feel like no one's going to take it seriously. I mean that's, that's half the battle, isn't it? To just be taken seriously. So that would be another thing that I would say that that makes us neurodivergent is the fact that we're so misunderstood. There, there is a, there's a clear communication breakdown between neurodivergent language and culture and neurotypical language and culture. It is not a, it's not a bridge that can't be crossed. It is not a language barrier that can't be somehow translated. But it is, it is never easy. And it has to be a two way thing. So it has to be we want to communicate, which most of the time we do. And it has to be, you know, working from the neurotypical perspective of wanting to understand because I do find that so many people just don't. But there are some wonderful people that genuinely do and even when they get it wrong and it actually ends up being quite insulting. I would have said that when we first started this, it would be something that triggers me and I get annoyed about it. But over the last just over two years I would say that I can, I can see where someone is coming from and I will happily just sort of correct them as in a nicer way and I will try harder rather than just automatically judge. So I'm definitely less of an activist and definitely more of an advocate of just like let, let, let's find a way that we can, we can bridge this because I remember one of our first episodes with Dr. Luke Bearden, he, he brought up the fact that I'm very. And it wasn't an insult, it was, he was actually just commenting that I'm very challenging towards neurotypicals and it's like an us versus them thing. And I certainly don't feel like that anymore. I don't. I kind of just feel like it's an us versus the rich thing. Like I definitely feel like I'm, I'm more against like rich people and wealth and, and I feel more part of the, you know, trodden down like, like I feel like that's a battle that's worth fighting for and it's better that we all come together, neurotypical or neurodivergent. Against the real enemy, which is the enemy that continuously, continuously tries to divide us within the community. Because a divided community is an easier community to control. And that is what the mega rich want to do. I know this sounds like a crazy, weird conspiracy, but it's not. The mega rich are trying to control us. They, they control the media, they control social media, they control the narrative, and they're turning us against each other through algorithms. It's literally brainwashing us. So I feel like we should be coming together and building that communication bridge. But it is a 5050 thing. But there is. Going back to the subject is there is a clear difference in the way I communicate and the way I can communicate really well with other neurodivergent people. But I definitely struggle with neurotypical. It's right there to see, you know, it's not even, it's not even a nuance anymore. It's just bloody obviously because one of.
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The things that I've had since we started this podcast is I've really understood autistic people as a culture in the. A way that you would maybe describe how northern people are different to southern people in this country or how like an Italian American is different to like a Jewish American. And there are very clear and obvious traits that define each culture. And when I've sort of been advocating, I agreeably, I think you would say was a bit like you. And I was militant in that. As soon as I figured out I was autistic, I was like, I had that sort of not, I don't know if the term is like survivor's guilt, but I did have that. I was angry. I was angry at the fact that. Of the way I'd been treated and the fact that it took until I was nearly 29 years old to figure this out. And I was. And I was grieving the time that I'd lost of understanding myself. And now I feel like I've accepted that people that are trying to communicate with our community and advocate, even though they may not be doing neurodivergent themselves or trying to like, create a, you know, a language between us. I've accepted that people don't know what they don't know. And I'm not going to hold it against them if they try and communicate with me and go, oh yes, well, everyone's neurodiverse. You know, like, you know, I mean, like the certain language and wording that people uses, I don't get hung up on it anymore. I try and like go as a representation of my culture. As a neurodivergent autistic ADHD person and go, well, that's not the term that we would use in the community. We would use this or I prefer to be spoken about or addressed as this. Or I'm not lazy. I have pda and let me explain why. And I try not to hold on to the opinions of people that have a lack of understanding. I try and be a little bit more open and go, well, if you're up for an education, I'll give you one. But if you're telling me that I'm wrong and you know better, then I will meet you at that line. But I'm more comfortable at sort of being. Being open to people, sort of being intrigued, I guess, in a way.
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No, I know what you mean. I mean, I've. I've literally, I've actually got to the point where I'm like, okay, well, I will try and explain it to you as best I possibly can from a scientific perspective as well as a lived experience perspective. Because obviously I could, I can explain both.
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Yeah.
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And if people just won't listen and all they want to do is argue, I now will just walk away. Whether it's through social media or it's physically. I would just be like, okay, cool. And I will literally walk away. I am not wasting my energy trying to convince someone after I've planted the seed. I don't. I'm not going to sit there watering the plant the entire time. I will let the plant grow. I will give it its space. And if it never grows and it never, it never blossoms to understanding, then I can't. I. That's out of the circle of my control.
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Yeah.
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I have got to this point where if I can't convince you once I've originally explained myself in the very, very eloquent way that I can. If that hasn't convinced you, and most of the time it won't in that one moment because of cognitive dissonance, because people don't like to be proved wrong. I'm just like, okay, that's cool, no problem. You carry on thinking like you're thinking, and we will just talk about something else. Like, I'm not even that person that will go, well, I don't want to talk to you anymore because you think this way unless they're a trump support and they can off. But it's more of the fact that, okay, so you just, you just don't really understand what I'm saying. So that. And that's okay. And then I just get on with my life. But let's have a break and then when we come back, we can. We can talk about our disabilities, respectively, and and how they mostly impact our life.
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In a world where January is supposed to be boring, one staple of the holidays refuses to end the great deals at Verizon. The joy just keeps on coming. Right now you can save on four new phones and four lines. Critics agree it's the deal that keeps on giving. Come into Verizon and save on four new phones and four lines on unlimited welcome. Additional terms applied seeverizon.com for details.
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Lunch was great, but this traffic is awful. Can we stop at a bathroom?
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Are you alright?
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I keep having stomach issues after eating, like diarrhea, gas and bloating, abdominal pain and sometimes oily stools.
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Sound familiar?
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Those stomach issues may actually be a pancreas issue called exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, or epi. Creon pancrelipase may help manage epi. Creon is a prescription medicine used treat people who can't digest food normally because their pancreas doesn't make enough enzymes.
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Creon may increase your chance of fibrosing colonopathy, a rare bowel disorder. Tell your doctor if you have a history of intestinal blockage or scarring or thickening of your bowel wall, if you are allergic to pork or if you have gout, kidney problems or worsening of painful, swollen joints. Call your doctor if you have any unusual or severe gastrointestinal symptoms or allergic reactions. Take Creon as directed by your doctor and always with food. Do not chew capsules, as this may cause mouth irritation. Other side effects may include blood sugar changes, gas, dizziness, sore throat and cough. These are not all the side effects of Creon. Call 800-633-9110 or visit creoninfo.com to learn more. That's creoninfo.com I'm asking my doctor about epi and if Creon could help. This is a neurodivergent experience. Public ANNOUNCEMENT if you live in England and you or a loved one is waiting for an autism or ADHD assessment, you don't have to wait years. RTN Diagnostics is now part of the NHS Right to Choose scheme, which means if your local wait for a consultant led autism or ADHD assessment is more than 18 weeks, you can choose RTN instead and it won't cost you a penny. Jordan chose RTN for his own family because their care and attention to detail were second to none. They didn't just diagnose Autism and adhd. They looked at the full picture including pda, ocd, anxiety and more. The team is friendly, neuroaffirming and comprises many neurodivergent individuals. So they truly understand getting started is simple. Download the GP referral letter and questionnaire from the link in our show notes. Take those to your GP and ask for a referral to RTN diagnostics. If approved, RTN will be in touch within eight weeks to begin your assessment. Remember, this only applies in England and some exclusions do apply. RTN is not currently able to accept referrals for child ADHD assessments, so check the details before you start RTN diagnostics, helping you get the answers you deserve without the wait. Welcome back to the Neurodivergent Experience. This is the first episode of season.
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B
Three, Season three.
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That wasn't planned but now we've been discussing what makes us neurodivergent. This was the very first episode that we ever did and blimey, we've. Even though I was new to sort of all of this sort of world, I've grown a lot. But my man, so have you. And I think it's obviously something we discuss in the show. We try and focus on a lot of positives but we don't want to have toxic positivity around being neurodivergent because disabilities are extremely common in everyday life.
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I find that word toxic can be taken in so many different ways.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Because I, I literally, I, I feel like with some people you can't, you, they, they are so self hating, they are so drenched in, in their own ableism that they cannot hear anything positive about neurodivergence. They just see it as this terrible affliction.
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Yeah.
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And it's. Autism is just a disability.
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It's a disease to a lot of people, isn't it?
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Exactly. And obviously neurodivergence isn't just autism. It's, it's, it's. I'm going to go through all of the different things that, that it, that comes with. But I don't think of myself as autism, adhd. You know, I call myself the autistic photographer, but so that's simply to give others hope and to motivate others to feel good and you know that being autistic is not something to be ashamed of. I, but I don't really consider myself, I don't, I don't. That's not me as a personality. Like I'm not the autistic dude, I am the alternative neurotype and it is simply once again down to that synaptic pruning process and how we go through it differently and that leads to disabilities. Now, the disabilities that I'll go through are technically counted as disabilities on paper. And let me be clear. Everything that I'm going to go through, none of these are physical manifestations in my head. They're not like separate part. It's not like a hippocampus or, you know, a frontal lobe. It's not a physical thing. It is purely based on my interactions with the world and how the world disables me. And then they say, oh, the world disables you in that way. And therefore we'll give it a name. So if the world disabled me by, I don't know, the entire world is set on fire and I'm not fireproof, then fireproof becomes a disability, you know?
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Yeah.
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So. And then someone will give it a name, like non fire anti flammabler. Yeah, my brain 100.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Paracetamol causes me to not be able.
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To not fire retardant.
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Just like, you know that I use that word. Yeah, I'm fire retardant.
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That isn't technically what they say though, right?
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I know, I know.
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It's just ironic that. Yeah, yeah, that's a disability. I put my foot in it all the time.
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Technically, you didn't do anything wrong. But we'll crack on anyway.
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Yeah, we'll crack on.
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So the disabilities are technically counted as autism, dyspraxia, dyslexia, adhd, rsd, hypersensitivity to light, sound, smell, touch. And I've got a really horrible gag reflex PDA that's pathological. Demand avoidance hyper fixations. When I get stuck on one thing and then my bank account slowly starts disappearing as I buy too many T shirts and pop characters. Executive functions which come across with adhd, eds, Elon, downless syndrome, and hypermobility, which kind of go side by side, meaning that I'm very, very prone to injuries and injuring myself through over stretching, over flexing, just very easily breakable.
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And if you're listening at home or wherever you are and you're taking all of these off, like I am. Welcome.
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Yeah, welcome. I feel like the, like the dude in glass, that movie. He just break the Samuel Jackson's just breaking.
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Stood up and I broke. Yeah, sat down and I broke some more.
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RSD for anyone that doesn't know, is rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria, which means I'm technically, it's a hypersensitivity. I'm hypersensitive to my feelings and that's more trauma based, but it still is a thing that disables me and, and stops me from being able to even, even take a compliment. Even when people compliment me, I reject a compliment because of my past traumas.
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Or when other people are complimented around me and I'm just like, yeah, yeah, it's icky. It's like, so.
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So some of these, some of these are trauma based. Some of these are due to the reduction in synaptic pruning. It's all up for debate. I have my own thoughts and my own research, but it doesn't really matter essentially at this point, what makes me like this, what really matters is the fact that I am like this and I need help with all these things. Now you will probably be sitting there going, but he said autism is a disability. And I've said a million times, autism is a disability and it's ability, but it is just a word. It is not an actual thing. Autism is a diagnosis that was based on my deficits. Do I agree with that? Not really. I think it's far more nuanced than that. Yeah, but essentially autism on paper is, is, is technically a disability, but it's like, how does it disable me? And that's why this list is, this is important because I could have, So I do have all these disabilities, because adhd, again, like autism, by the way, again, this is the same brain. These are, these are separate conditions in the same brain. Not the same condition. Separate conditions, same brain, lack of synaptic pruning, which is a good thing. And we'll get onto that in the second half. But most people, for them, the disability stops at the word autism. And that's wrong. And that's what we're here today to show why that's wrong. Because if we did this episode and I said to you, what is your disability? And you just went, autism, adhd. And you go, was that it? And you go, yeah, because autism is a disability. And then we finish the episode and that has not explained anything to anyone about. Yeah, it has just said the word autism and everyone's like, yeah, that's a disability, but how is it a disability? Because I guarantee you, I will bet my mortgage that my autism is a disability in quotes. And then I went into how it disables me. There isn't a person on the planet that is going to have exactly the same experience as me.
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Oh, when you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person.
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B
Thanks. Like, I really hate that phrase. But it does make sense.
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But that's the thing is, for me, I, I, I don't hate that phrase because it totally makes sense to me because I, when I first got diagnosed, as soon as I had the label autism and adhd, a lot of people assumed that they just knew me because of their idea of autism. And what was crazy is, as I've learned who I am, I have learned what my autism and ADHD looks like, sounds like, feels like, because I've had all of these really complex feelings because I have in, like, in like I can't even speak again. This is part of my, my traits, is that I can't sometimes get the words out because it's on the tip of my tongue and I can't form it. My interoception is shocking. I have this, like, mess of a feeling, and I have no idea what it is. And understanding myself and learning these terms of, of neurodivergence as a whole have actually given me names to the feeling now. And I can go, oh, that's what that means. Oh, that's what that feels like. Or that's what that looks like. And I've realized that 90% of neurotypical people seem to all look and feel and, and sound the same in a way. And there's not almost a lot of nuance compared to, like, the many neurodivergent people that I know. It's like you and I have got, if on paper, you and I have got the same diagnosis, we could not be more different. We have so many overcrossing similarities, but a lot of those are personality traits. But we've both been treated differently, and we've both reacted differently to how we've been treated. But on paper, you and I would be in the same file next to each other, almost crisscrossing, overlapping in many, many ways, but we're incredibly different.
- [35:04]
B
I think that where it starts really, really confusing me is the fact that I can say, okay, I have dyspraxia. And I can specifically say that my dyspraxia, for me, I find it difficult typing. I tend to often press the wrong keys or press the wrong buttons on the phone. I tend to knock things over. I have very, very bad spatial awareness. I think that my hand is closer or further away from how it is. So the thing with this bacteria is your brain. It, it doesn't always match up with your physical body. So it, you know, I, I tend to mess up a lot. And now it's, it's not as bad or pronounced as a Friend of mine who. Who even when he speaks, he. His mouth moves completely differently to how his brain is thinking. It's moving. Yeah. And it's. Find it very, very difficult to understand him. It affects us in different ways. But dyspraxia is that. So I know what that disability is. It's. It's how the brain is not interacting with your body. I can tell you dyslexia is a memory problem. It's a spelling problem. It's a. It's a reading a word problem simply because of that memory, that when something is unfamiliar to us, it. We. We can't figure it out, become super literal with it. So I can tell you what dyslexia is, and I can tell you what ADHD is. It's a. It's a desperate need for dopamine, a constant need to. To be entertained and, And. And. And to have something to distract us. And an inability to get.
- [36:55]
A
Like being allergic to being bo. Yeah. It's an allergen to boredom.
- [36:59]
B
It's an allergy to boredom. It's literally a dopamine fixation that's needed and that makes us easily distracted because we're constantly searching for dopamine, which is why we're so good at concentrating on things that we're enjoying and terrible at concentrating on things that we are not enjoying. It is a disability inability. But I can tell you what adhesives, I can tell you what rsd, I can tell you PDA is a little bit more nuanced, but I can still tell you what PDA does. Yeah, I can't do that with autism. I can tell you what the book says. It's like, oh, autism makes you hypersensitive. But I've already got that as a disability. That's a separate disability as far as I'm concerned. Because how I'm hypersensitive is completely different to how my wife is and how you are and how my kids are and how every other autistic person I've ever met. So just to say that hypersensitivity is an autism thing is completely incorrect because also people who have adhd, because it's the same fucking brain, it's like going.
- [38:00]
A
Welcome to Autism, Inc. We sell in high abundance. This, this, this, and this.
- [38:06]
B
My. My thing is that on social media, anytime that I might allude to the fact that it's. It's. You know, it is technically a disability. But I would ask the question, like, how. Break it down for me how autism is a disability, and there'll be people like oh, autism isn't a bad word. Disabled isn't a bad word, of which I've never said any of those things, but it does seem rather cliche and boring that people just keep spouting out the same bullshit. I'm not saying disabled is a bad word. I'm asking a very, very simple question. Can you break down autism for me? Can you tell me exactly what autism is, is not what it does to you as an individual? Because if you're going to say that it's a blanket disorder, a blanket disability, then tell me how it is. Now the National Autistic Society and a lot of other people will tell you that autism, and this is the most simplistic bullshit I've ever heard, is a growth disability. So it's, it's. What's the word? It disables us from growing at the same rate as everyone else, so it hinders us.
- [39:22]
A
So someone's like a degenerative sort of like growth disorder is. It's like you're stuck as children. Like the forever children sort of.
- [39:30]
B
Yeah.
- [39:30]
A
Thing that people say.
- [39:32]
B
So I'm, I'm, I'm not saying that it's a developmental disorder is how they put it. I really hate that word because development is a comparison. So they're, they're basically saying this, this is how one should develop by this age, by this age, by this age. But because you're not, therefore, we're going to tell you that that's autism. So according to them, the disability of autism. And by the way, every time I've asked someone this, no one seems to know it, but it is right there in writing with, with certain charities, is that the disability is that we don't develop as quickly as others. And, and, and this is what I would argue with. This is that you are now comparing cats and dogs. We are not the same. We are not the same.
- [40:28]
A
What's that phrase? Judging a fish on its ability to climb a tree.
- [40:32]
B
Exactly. And, and that is what they're doing because they, they, they will continually look and judge our deficits, but they will, they will almost mock and make fun of our abilities because it's. Look, he can read every postcode and then speak it out loud and then tell you exactly. If you just gave him an address, he'd tell you exactly what that postcode is. What a fun trick.
- [40:59]
A
What, like a circus act?
- [41:02]
B
Yes, like a freak show, my friend. Yes. We are treated like that ability, which is a remarkable ability, is a freak show, fun thing to put stupid music to and be like, hahahaha, some person.
- [41:18]
A
To curate and put together and profit.
- [41:20]
B
Off of, but at the same time that person can't tie their shoelace. You know, they, they, they can't string a full sentence together without sounding like a five year old. And it's like, okay, so they do have disabilities within the world around them, but they also have abilities. So this is why I look at autism as like you can't just judge it on this one thing. Because that person being autistic, their developmental delay, or whatever they want to call it, is 100% different to every other neurodivergent autistic person. So why don't you just say that a alternative neurotyped person can have developmental delays and when they are serious developmental delays, in other words, they can't get past five because of the synaptic reduction in synaptic pruning that we know is a fact. That is a disability. So autism is a developmental disability, but developmental reduction and slowness is its disability on its own. So why call it autism? Because then you're saying, well, autism is all these other things. Autism is hypersensitivity. Autism comes with pda. Autism comes with hyper fixations, executive functions, eds. But that's not autism. That's the alternative neurotype. Because the, the same people who have dyslexia and, and ADHD will have all those other things.
- [43:02]
A
So in that's in that sort of context, then the word autism is sort of just. Oh, it's just, it's just a word. It's just a word, isn't it?
- [43:10]
B
All of the. Because that's the thing is most of these, you, you can break down and say, well that means that if I.
- [43:16]
A
Talk about arfid, I can go, well it's X, Y and Z.
- [43:19]
B
Exactly.
- [43:19]
A
Yeah.
- [43:20]
B
But when you talk about autism, autism is simply according to paperwork is the developmental delay. But when I had my assessment, developmental delay wasn't even part of that. And no questions about developmental delay.
- [43:36]
A
It wasn't with eye either.
- [43:37]
B
It was, can you do eye contact? Did you have any friends? All the stereotype things where you have with autistic people, but at no point did it address the actual disability according to the paperwork, which is that I am developmentally delayed. And this is where it always gets confusing and there always seems to be some sort of argument is that you have parents of severely impaired children who's in my opinion, the reduction, synaptic pruning has not gone past, you know, seven maximum for a lot. It's, it's a lot Younger. To me, it's quite obvious that that's what's happened. I'm not saying it is. I'm just saying that that's how I see it. And it's. It's pains the nose in my face to me. And, and they, they want that to be autism. They. They want the, the reduction in synaptic pruning where it stops. They want that to be autism. That's what they want autism to, to stand out from us saying that we're autistic when we're not like that. And, and I know we said this before and, and I actually feel like they've got a point because. But then you, you. I think it's. It's so weird. It's. It's. Autism has literally become like a culture, like you said. And in my brain, it's still a piece of paper that says autism. It's not an actual physical thing. But I do feel that it definitely has become a culture. It's become a minority. It's become an identification of oneself and how we interact with each other. I'd prefer it to be a neurodivergent community, which is why we do this show, an autistic community, because I feel like that divides us even more. More. And the idea of an alternative neurotype should be bringing us together more. And autistic, adhd, dyslexic people, they all have their own little groups and that's cool, but I feel like, you know, we can all come together because again, it's the same brain.
- [45:48]
A
Well, that's like subcultures within a culture, isn't it? It's like rock music and then it being punk rock or pop. Punk rock, absolutely.
- [45:54]
B
And like I said, there's nothing wrong with that. As long as it doesn't divide us, then that's. Yes, that's fine.
- [45:59]
A
We shouldn't be in cults or clicks. It's a community.
- [46:02]
B
Yeah, it is a neurodivergent community, but again, that we should be able to interact with neurotypicals as well. And it should just be a human community and be accepted because that's all we want. We want to be understood to the certain extent, but we want to be accepted. That's all we're looking for.
- [46:21]
A
Want to live authentically without any judgment or comparison to people that shouldn't. We shouldn't be compared to. That's that. That phrase of, you know, judging a fish by its ability to climb a tree. One of the reasons as to why I think we have such extreme responses to our environment and the world around us is because we're constantly told we shouldn't be the way that we are. So then there's that sort of negative viewpoint of yourself which is where like no one ever talks about ableism as a disability of neurodivergence. But it is because we stop ourselves from doing so much stuff because we're told and we think we can't do it when a lot of the time we can within the right environments, with the right opportunity. We're just told that, oh, you can't tie your shoelaces between 10, you'll never amount to anything. Oh, I did realize that was a judge on whether I'm going to be a formal member of society or not. But thanks for the heads up. That's sort of how a lot of my experiences anyway felt.
- [47:17]
B
Yeah, I mean I, I feel like it's, it is, it's always a double edged sword with any label that if we say, oh, this one's autism, this one's adhd, this one's dyslexia, this one's pda, blah blah, blah, or that behavior is that, that behavior is that in a very humanistic way it does make us go, okay, well at least now I, I can understand why I do those things.
- [47:42]
A
Yeah.
- [47:43]
B
But for me, I think that I would love a future where we didn't have to separate everything into a word or, you know, a bunch of letters that, you know, we didn't have to say autism, adhd, dyslexia. We could just say, oh, I'm the alternative neurotype.
- [48:03]
A
I'm ant. Yeah, I have an ant brain.
- [48:05]
B
Yeah, I'm an ant brain. And I, and I struggle with X, Y, Z, B, Z, G because I'm dyslexic.
- [48:14]
A
I really want it to get to the point where saying that you are an alternative neurotype is as simple as saying you're left handed.
- [48:20]
B
Yes.
- [48:20]
A
Like I really want it to get to that point. And yeah, it's difficult because I feel like we make a lot of progress and then we sort of like have these things that take us back a little bit.
- [48:32]
B
And again, I don't think it's ever. Sorry to interrupt, but I don't think it's ever going to ever be that. We can wish it a million times over, but it's, it's never going to be that because mainstream has already solidified us in these are the conditions and psychology is already, as far as I'm concerned, damaged the narrative just to sort.
- [48:56]
A
Of add to that and I think we'll finish on this point. I actually feel like there is a bit of discourse that's changing where people are going, oh, you know, like what we were saying. You just got, oh, I'm ant. And people go, okay, cool. I actually feel like that is happening with ADHD in that people go, oh, I'm adhd. And people just kind of sit back and go, oh, yeah, of course. I can see that now. And it's becoming a thing that I see online a lot, where you have somebody that does express, you know, ADHD traits as. As they are sort of written down, and people go, oh, they're adhd. And that seems to be becoming quite acceptable. But then mention autism within the conversation of a lot of these people that identify as adhd, and a lot of them actually take offense. So that is. It's weird that, isn't it? How that's sort of coming into the.
- [49:46]
B
That's been a problem since I started advocating, is that it's like adhd, quirky autism. That means you're basically a timmy in the corner dribbling. And I won't go into too much detail, but I was speaking with someone with an authority a while ago, and I. As part of the conversation, I mentioned that I'm autistic, and I mentioned that I'm adhd. And they were going through, because it was like, you know, what are my rights within work? And stuff like that.
- [50:24]
A
Yeah.
- [50:25]
B
And they basically said, oh, do you require. And they said, because you're autistic. Not because I'm adhd, because you're autistic. Do you require responsible adult? That was a genuine. And that is exactly how it was phrased, do you require within this meeting a responsible adult? And we have to ask you that because you're autistic. And I went, but I'm also adhd. And they went, yeah, but you're autistic, so do you require a responsible adult? And I said, well, I'm 44, so.
- [51:00]
A
And a manager. I manage people.
- [51:04]
B
I. I own a house, a car, and. And I'm like, I am a responsible adult. And they said, yeah, yeah, but you're autistic, so do you require one? And I'm like, I. I feel like you're not listening to me.
- [51:18]
A
Like, it's literally like going, but do you need your. It's like you turn up for a school trip and they go, did your mum sign your paperwork? Are you allowed to come on this?
- [51:26]
B
Yeah, or a work trip? And then saying, do you need a response about that?
- [51:30]
A
Hold your hand in this situation.
- [51:32]
B
So my, my, my question back to them was do you because, because you're acting rather dumb. So I'm wondering if you also need a responsible adult. So I'll wait and we'll leave that there. Yeah, it wasn't but yeah, let's have a break and then we'll quickly go through us sweet abilities dude.
- [51:58]
A
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B
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A
The same day you sign. Visit sofi.compower to learn more. That's fantastic. Loans originated By SoFi Bank NA Member FDIC Terms and conditions apply. NMLS 696891 have you ever felt stuck in patterns that don't serve you, struggled with stress or wanted to connect more deeply with yourself? Then I have to introduce you to a friend of the podcast Ashley Bentley of Integrated Coaching, Breathwork and Hypnotherapy. Ashley is a highly experienced clinical hypnotherapist and coach specializing in working with neurodivergent minds. Through a unique blend of integrative coaching, breathwork and Hypnotherapy, Ashley helps people rewire subconscious patterns, regulate their nervous systems, step into more empowered versions of themselves. Whether you're dealing with addiction, anxiety, burnout, or struggles with self acceptance, Ashley offers practical and science backed tools tailored just for you. Her unique methods combine neuroscience, storytelling, subconscious transformation to create real, lasting change. Jordan and I can personally attest to the profound and transformative effects of her sessions, which have been life changing. She does all of these sessions online, meaning she can work with you no matter where you are in the world. If you're ready to break free from old patterns and start living with more clarity, confidence and connection, go to Bit ly Ashleynde to book a free consultation or learn more. Welcome back to the neurodivergent Experience. We've been touching on a very old topic of what makes makes us autistic or neurodivergent or all those fun little labels. So we've sort of looked on the, the negative sides, the disability sides of it. So let's talk about the things that a lot of people don't talk about, which is the positives, the good things. What some people online like to call superpowers. I don't like to lean into that.
- [54:22]
B
Yeah, no, not for me. But to be honest I. I like the X Men comparison of the fact that we have these abilities that can also disable us. That. That for me, the X Men is like, it's the best thing. And. And even more recently, you've got 11 from Stranger Things. Yeah, like, she has these abilities, but, you know, it makes her nosebleed. And, you know, she's constantly tracked by the government. And, you know, she has social. She has social communication disabilities because of the way she was treated. So, yeah, she. She's like rogue. And it's. It's. It's quite an interesting comparison of neurodivergence of that disability and ability. I was gonna say. How. How would you say that? Being neurodivergent, what abilities does it give you?
- [55:17]
A
Oh, dude. My ability to gather information is outrageous. Like, outrageous. Like, information for me is like a currency. Like, if I have a special interest or I get interested in something, it's not like I can get conversational knowledge on it. It almost gets to the point where I can become an expert on something that I care deeply about and I'm interested in. It's like my brain has this expressibility of just procuring and keeping hold of knowledge around the things that I care deeply, deeply about, almost to, like. I'm trying to think of, like, just sort of a word that really shows it in the. I can get interested in, say, like, American football. And I can have a conversation with somebody who lives in America, who has played and watched American football their entire life, and not only keep up with them, but then maybe even teach them something so I don't even have to have, like, firsthand experience in it. I can read about it and read about other people's lived experience and create this, like, curation of information around my special interests. And that is. Is awesome. Like, seeing somebody who. Who knows so much about their chosen field. It's like, you know, like, you've said to me many times that you think I would make a great tour guide or somebody who works in a museum, but it would have to be about the right. I couldn't just stand in front of something I don't care about. But if I worked in as like, a tour guide of an area of something that I truly loved, like a.
- [56:55]
B
World War II museum, that I don't.
- [56:57]
A
Think the gen. And I don't mean this sort of in an arrogant sense, but I don't know anybody that could probably do it as well as I could. And I don't mean that as like a sort of arrogance thing. That's it Just is like I can have conversations with people that have served in the military and keep up with them and I've never even stepped foot on a air base in my life. It's like I have this ability to just absorb information like a sponge. And I love it. I personally love that about me. Like when I meet somebody who has the same special interest as me, it's literally like, dude, it's like two atoms hitting each other and the reaction that comes off of it creates endless amounts of energy for everybody involved. And around it, it's literally like fusion reaction go boom. And the whole room is just filled with energy. If everybody there has similar special interests, like if you went to a comic con and you went to a Halo convention, like, you know, everybody there not only speaks your language, but you can absorb information from them, they can get it from you. And it's like the tide rise, you know, it raises all ships. Everybody in that room will just feed off each other's energy. Like photosynthesis of information. And it's freaking awesome to watch happen live. Like when everyone like connects and hits that frequency and somebody gives out a bit of information and you can see a reaction happen where everyone's like, oh, I didn't know that. That's freaking awesome. I love that about myself. That my neurodivergent trait. I love when special interests convert into energy. Like data gathering and, and bottom up process combined to create excitement in me. Like it activates my atoms. Dude, it's freaking awesome. It's such a great feeling.
- [58:47]
B
I, I love that about neurodivergent people Ice and I certainly associate it with people that would, would hit the, the criteria of autism over adhd. I mean they, they might hit both criterias, but it might be like more obvious that they're autistic in the criti in criteria based language. To have that ability to just get one or even two subjects and then just go fully into them. So it's like for me, I, I just don't have that. It's almost that there's like a wall that I hit that. I find that a lot of my neurodivergent friends, they, they're able to just. There is no wall. Not that they're able to get over the wall. There is no wall for them. They can just keep learning to till. Till they die. It's just solidly. And they retain that information in, in like a Sherlock Holmes knows every type of poison, what it tastes like, what it smells like, what it feels like. Because it's the thing that he's interested in but doesn't know. And it doesn't know how many planets revolve around the sun because he's just not interested in it. Whereas I'm. I'm the sort of person that needs to know everything. So I kind of. I get to that point where I'm like, okay, I've learned enough about that thing to satisfy me. Now I need something new.
- [60:33]
A
I do experience that, though. I. But. But I have, like, my core. I have my core sort of like three or four things, and everything sort of comes off of those. It's like they're connected in some way.
- [60:46]
B
What is your favorite album?
- [60:47]
A
Dude, you can't ask me that question.
- [60:49]
B
Okay, what. What is an album you really, really love? What is an album by Blink 182 that you really.
- [60:55]
A
Oh, dude, for me, Enemy of the state.
- [60:58]
B
Okay.
- [60:59]
A
1998 in the sound.
- [61:00]
B
What is track seven on that?
- [61:02]
A
It's probably. It's either Mutt or going away to college, I think.
- [61:08]
B
Okay, but those are two songs that are on that album, right?
- [61:11]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [61:12]
B
Okay. So one of my favorite albums is Bon Jovi album.
- [61:16]
A
Yeah.
- [61:17]
B
Right. For the life of me, I can't remember what the fecking album is called now. And that's. That's where I get to. I go, okay, I really love the album. It's an album that I will listen to constantly. It's the album that I know. I know it has, like, Bed of Roses on it. And that's as far as I get. Like. Like, honestly, my. My brain just goes, well, that's not really that important. It's not that important.
- [61:41]
A
Do you know how important it was to me while you were saying that I had to look up Enter of the State, and it's actually Adam's song, which is number seven on the album. And now I want to tell you the story of the song and how it was written and made and when they recorded it and yes. Tuning out and.
- [61:57]
B
And that. That's the point I'm trying to make is the fact that it's. It's a beautiful brain that can do that. And it's almost something that. That I envy but at the same time relieved that I don't have because I feel like there's so much pressure that one puts on oneself in that situation that when they can't remember it, they will punish themselves. It's like, oh, my God, I feel so dumb that I can't remember exactly what shape that particular storm trooper or what type of trooper that. Because apparently there's different types of troopers.
- [62:37]
A
I don't even know there's many.
- [62:39]
B
Exactly. And I love Star Wars. I have an entire shelf of Star wars pop characters. I absolutely love Star Wars. I think it's so freaking awesome. And that is as far as I will get. I will say I love R2D2 and the, and the sword thingies. And there I go. I know that, I know they're called.
- [62:59]
A
Lightsabers, but what sort of like there's.
- [63:02]
B
Some realistic people like who doesn't know what a lightsaber is?
- [63:05]
A
Yeah. And there's me there that's going yes. And there maybe with kyber crystals which were originally found on a planet called Ilum, which had a very force sensitive thing. And it's in the eastern side of the galaxy hut space.
- [63:15]
B
And this is why, this is why I don't. This is why I'm kind of relieved that I don't have that. Because although that I, I. When I'm hyper fixated on something, I definitely fully will. Will be like that. Like if I'm into turtles in that week, I will be able to tell you all the things about turtles that I have learned. But I've also learned as I've gotten older that no one else wants to fucking hear about that. So I wonder, I do wonder at the more I've tried to accommodate Neurotypical's inability to listen to a monologue that goes on for three hours. My ability to give that monologue for three hours has completely disappeared. So I'm pretty sure that when I was younger I absolutely had that ability to learn everything about a subject to, to the extent that you do. But I feel like it, it just hindered me in social situations. All it did was hinder me. It just annoyed people. So it's kind of sad that I feel like I've lost that ability even. I don't know to the extent I, I even had it. I mean I literally. But I know I annoyed the shit out of people that I would literally like. It'd be like 5 o' clock in the morning and I'd be like, you never guess what, just go into a monologue.
- [64:39]
A
Yeah, I've done that about a few.
- [64:40]
B
Times about something that only I am interested in and not even ask the question, would you like to know something about this? And at least given them the chance to run away screaming.
- [64:50]
A
I have been in conversations and I have created conversations where after about an hour and a half I go so anyway, what were we talking about? And everybody in the room has wilted. And, and died and wish they could leave. But again, that is, for me, I think that's a great positive and as well, like a lot of people sort of say about how emp, you know, this stigma of, like, having a lack of empathy, which I've never really sort of understood, but I think the compassion and empathy of a lot of neurodivergent people, like, once I've realized I'm neurodivergent and I've connected with neurodivergent people, there are some incredible friendships that can be created between two neurodivergent people. Like, you and I met each other online and have started a podcast together. And we have become like family. Like, we have deep bonds and we. We love deeply. And I think that can be a really beautiful thing, like when people sort of come together and connect on that level.
- [65:51]
B
I think with you and I, it's obviously, it's our shared interest in the cartoons that we like and the TV shows and the movies we like. I think that that is always something that brings people together, is liking the same entertainment, whether it's the same sports or the same sports team or both being into the same sort of games. There's loads of things that can bring people together. But I do feel like the greatest neurodivergent bonds are created and broken based on one special interest. So when someone's special interest, so that when you've got someone like my dear friend Alex, who is just, oh, knowledge. He's like a giant brain of science fiction. Mostly Star wars, but just science fiction in general. So he's not even that interested in Star Trek, whereas I absolutely love Star Trek. But he, he can. He knows more about Star Trek than I do.
- [67:03]
A
Yeah.
- [67:03]
B
Even though it's. He prefers Star Wars. But I'm just like, oh, I like Star Trek and I. And, and I like watching it.
- [67:14]
A
We just. Some of us just love a good lore. Don't worry. It's like, I really like 40k. Like, Warhammer never played the game, like the Tabletop game, but the lore is like, it's so juicy and there's so much of it just like, oh, give it to me.
- [67:28]
B
Do you know, I. I do tight. I do kind of feel a lot of the time that I'm. I'm missing out on a lot of pop culture, despite the fact that I have watched or been involved, either played a game or listened to music or watched a TV series or a movie within that pop culture, because I feel like, oh, I'm really into that thing. And then suddenly I learned something that it's like, it's now like a really well known line from this game that's now become like a pop cultural phenomenon or like a meme or something like that. And I was like, oh, I just thought it was part of, like, Andrew Ryan's speech in Bioshock. I didn't. I didn't even think.
- [68:17]
A
Would you kindly. Has become a very common thing in pop culture, you know, but it's not.
- [68:21]
B
It's not the. Would you kindly. Even though, I mean, I. Again, I didn't actually know that. I mean, I remember that bit because it's a very, very important bit in the whole game. And if you haven't played Bioshock, do. Because it's the best. It's such a good game. It's. It's the. Are you a man or are you a slave? It's that whole idea of, you know, do you have will or are you controlled? Where you think you have self control, but really you're being controlled. And. And that, for me has always been a really interesting thing, but apparently that speech has now become like a huge thing. And I had no idea. Like, I just generally, I always feel like I'm on the outside looking in, even with my own interests, because I. I've never got fully into one thing. If we. I mean, dude, my favorite thing in the whole world to watch, to listen to, to collect, is Lord of the Rings. I love Lord of the Rings. There are people out there that have the most ridiculous knowledge of Lord of the Rings. I've got people of good. They're outrageous and they're so passionate and defensive and they just know all of this stuff. And I'm like, I wish I could be like that. But at the same time, I'm really glad I'm not like that because I want to love loads of different things. I want to enjoy loads of different things. This week it's Poldark. Don't ask me why.
- [69:59]
A
Okay.
- [70:00]
B
Yeah, yeah, I know. Out of left field. We just. Sylvia and I decided to watch Poldark and we. We're loving it. We're loving the pot. We're in second season. Love a bit of Poldark. She. She calls him Poldrick for some reason. But Sylvia, that's fair.
- [70:14]
A
That is fair.
- [70:15]
B
Yeah. Because he does come. He comes up with some very cunning plans and they don't always work out. And because it's like, it seems like a Blackadder type thing, she just calls him and. And doesn't matter how many times I said Pol Dark. She'll go, yes, Poldrick. And I'm just. I just give up now. So now, apparently we're watching Poldrick, bless her. But I haven't gone and bought the pop characters and T shirts. There wasn't any. But I'm. I'm. I'm trying to get to this point where there's the whole thing this year of not letting that hyper fixation become a disability, where it literally disables me to not be able to think about anything else. So I'm trying to just enjoy something for what it is and understand that when that's over, it's over. So I really got into Stranger Things. I watched all the seasons from season one all the way through the end of the season five. Conflicted, but essentially as a whole, if you actually watch it as a whole, that is one of my favorite TV programs of all time.
- [71:18]
A
Oh, yeah. It's generational. It's. It's very much.
- [71:21]
B
But I didn't buy the characters yet. I didn't buy the T shirts yet. I didn't buy the hoodies yet. I allowed myself to enjoy it for what it was and not get completely sucked in. And I feel like that's. That is progress, my friend.
- [71:41]
A
Oh, yes.
- [71:42]
B
That is sincere progress for sure. Sure. So I. I would definitely say, as far as abilities, the ability to learn in. In such an intense way is. Is. Is a wonderful, wonderful thing. And it's a thing that I think that are not enough people understand how important that is for this world.
- [72:07]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [72:09]
B
Even if someone devotes their entire life to grass and calculates every type of grass on the planet, and everyone's like, jeremy's at it again. He's tasting that grass. And it's like, well, yeah, because Jeremy is finding out what the difference between that grass and that grass, you don't know. And he's wondering if it might be the taste of it. Maybe it is the taste of it. Maybe it's not. Maybe that's a poopy.
- [72:32]
A
See, then this is. Then him. This is my brain going, oh, yes. I remember watching a video on golf where they were talking about the different spin rates you get from different grass because Bermuda grass creates more of a top spin.
- [72:43]
B
There was one person that literally figured out every single type of grass. I can't remember his bloody name. But. And when. When I remember hearing about him, and I'm pretty sure it was in Steve Silverman's book, the.
- [72:58]
A
You know what? You're right. This is ringing a bell. Yeah.
- [73:02]
B
There is this one dude that knows Everything about every grass on the planet. And you're just like, you're. That. That if we can say that's neurodivergence right there, that's. That's the benefit. And it's like that might ruin that man's life because he could have had a lot of things going on in his life, but he dedicated to that one thing because that's how our brains are made. And now we know everything he knows.
- [73:26]
A
Yeah. And that, you know what I love about that as well, is it gives the opportunity for other people to. To get just a huge bank of information. Like, how many times have we heard of, like, great innovators that obviously we can't say were neurodivergent, but you listen to like, accounts of like, Vincent Van Gogh or Da Vinci or even like Steve Jobs, people like that. And a lot of the time there are a lot of deficit conversations around their social, you know, the social ability and that. They were difficult people to sort of work with. But then what they created or what they left the world with was game changing. Like, absolutely game changing. As an example, I went to South Carolina last year. Sorry, the year before. Blimey, time is a freaking illusion. And I went into a museum and the guy who was the curator at the museum for me, I was like, oh, my people, he's one of. He's one of me. And he was the reason as to why the museum was amazing. It wasn't the things that were there, it's the stories that he told around them. And I think neurodivergent people create the most incredible worlds, like the storytelling that they have. Like, we, I think is like sort of friendships. We connect on what gives us dopamine. That if something gives you dopamine and it gives me dopamine, we can sort of mine it together in our special interests. But I just think that, like, the storytellers that we have in this. In this world, like Stephen King or people like that, they create this incredible ability to escape reality.
- [75:11]
B
Dude, you are smarter than you would ever understand. That was. I never thought of it like that. I was the one. I'm literally here saying, oh, what makes really great neurodivergent friendships can make and break them is our hyper fixations, our hyper, you know, our special interest, hyper focus. But you just hit the nail on the head. It's dopamine seeking together.
- [75:34]
A
It's dopamine we're mining together.
- [75:38]
B
Absolutely, you are correct. Because you're like, oh, I'm really into this one thing, and I've got lots of dopamine for it. But it wouldn't it be lovely if like someone else could do this with me? It's like trying to play tennis up against a wall. And it's like this is fun for a certain point, but it would be great if I had someone else to play with it. And that, that is that childlike mind is like I want someone to play with, I want a friend to enjoy this with because then that's, then you can fit. Because of our almost hive mind empathy level that we just, we feed off each other's energy. So you saying that has literally shown me that it's like when we seek dopamine with a subject and then there's a person that's also having that dopamine, we feed off their dopamine and they feed off ours. And that is, and that might be why when that, when the other person goes and feeds off someone else or chooses someone else choose a different subject to get dopamine from where we fade, the friendships can fade away because you're like, well we just went in an opposite direction. So that thing that really brought us together now does now no longer exists. So what is the benefit from being around those people? That's. I did. That's so.
- [77:04]
A
And it's the thing as well as if we're mining like information and, and dopamine many hands make light work is like if you're all doing it together, you're not expending as much energy. You're not as like deep as deep dived into it. Because by having everyone around you, it's like it's surface level. You can dig in deep but not go too deep because you're not on your own.
- [77:26]
B
Do you think that's the reason why so many neurodiversion people, they, they will, they will head in, in the wrong direction or like a negative direction because they're so desperate to seek others dopamine that they look for dopamine in, in places that are harmful. Like this whole red pill, you know, toxic masculinity drive for young men that they're finding their social media as the dopamine fix and, and they join these people and then they're feeding off that dopamine of this. Oh, this is a new thing that I can be part of. And then they suddenly feel part of something and they're just driven to it.
- [78:10]
A
The dopamine of belonging is intoxicating.
- [78:14]
B
Yeah man.
- [78:17]
A
And it is because like I said it to a buddy of mine the other day, we were We, I went around to his house and had a pizza and we were just sort of chewing the fat about life. And he said to me, do you know one of the things that I'm most grateful about since I learned that I was neurodivergent is that I only hang around with people that give me energy. I'm truly trying to work on not being around people that take it from me. And we have so many shared interests. But he has one interest that I'm interested in, but it's not a special interest is he's collects fish, he has, he has aquariums. And every time I go around to his house, we've almost built in a routine of he goes, oh, hey, sigh, how are you? Great to see. Take shoes off, come inside, let me show you the new fish I've got. And for 10 minutes he just, he just, you know, sort of hyper fixate some monologues. But even though I don't have the interest in the special interest, I love the energy he gives. It's like a light bulb that radiates heat and I get warm from it. That's sort of what it feels like. And if I spend too much time around too many neurotypicals and I'm masking, I'm freaking exhausted because I don't feel like I'm getting like any light. I'm just in the dark all the time. And you're gonna stay in the dark if you can't find the light, right?
- [79:32]
B
Do you know one of the funniest things I've experienced and this, this will be the last thing everybody, don't worry, we're almost there.
- [79:41]
A
Is if you're still with us. Thank you.
- [79:43]
B
Is when I'm, I'm hanging out with neurotypicals or neurodiversion people masking as neurotypical calls because obviously that is something that happens especially within males. They, they, they will. I know that females are high masking individuals, but I think they do it to fit in, whereas males do it because they, not because they want to fit in, because they want to dominate, because they, they, they feel that any sort of disability is a weakness. So they don't want to. There is definitely this masculine thing of like not wanting to show weakness. So they, they also think of like nerdy things, which, let's be honest, is the coolest things in the world anyway as a weakness. So I do find that, that it's quite funny because I will have conversations with people at work about Star wars or Star Trek or Lord of the Rings or You know, aliens and cool shit like that. But then when I. I see them and then they speak to someone else and they're like, yeah, I'm building a shed this weekend. Yeah. Yeah, I'm. I'. Exact.
- [80:52]
A
Man.
- [80:53]
B
Yeah, I was. I was going to say, like, you know, I've got. I've got a 2 bar. I don't know what a 2x4 is. I assume it's 2x4.
- [81:00]
A
T a plank of wood, sir.
- [81:02]
B
Meters. T. A plank. No. Well, I mean, yeah, I remember. I remember in wrestling, people used to hit mankind. That. That's. That's as far as my knowledge goes. Building a shed is. Apparently you need wood, metal, who knows? But it's. It. The conversations go back to, like, diy, and it's like, do you want to talk about Simpsons? And they're just like, no, that's for kids in it. But it's like, I. I had that conversation with that same person, but, like, suddenly, because somebody else is around, they don't want to have that conversation.
- [81:33]
A
Yeah.
- [81:34]
B
I just find it really, really strange that, like, a neurotypical conversation does tend to be about home improvement, where you're going on holiday, what you do for a job, and what the weather's like.
- [81:52]
A
Oh, yeah, it's like the. The London 101 conversations.
- [81:56]
B
Oh, hi. So great to see you.
- [81:57]
A
Terrible weather we're having. So what is it you do for a living going anyway this year?
- [82:01]
B
Yeah, exactly. That.
- [82:04]
A
You're like, all right, cool, I guess.
- [82:07]
B
And I'm just like, I collect giant pop characters and boglins. Do you want to talk about that? And they're like, no. And I'm like, bye.
- [82:20]
A
Yeah.
- [82:20]
B
And that is what we need to be. We need to be honest with ourselves that we don't want to talk about nails and screwdrivers. We want to talk about cuddly toys and pop characters.
- [82:30]
A
Unless you're Silvia and your special interest is diy.
- [82:33]
B
She's weird. I don't like her. But at least we have Poldrick.
- [82:40]
A
Yeah, Poldrick. He's. He's bringing it in. He's bringing the bacon home for you. This bump. I love that.
- [82:45]
B
Oh, that was fun, dude. What a way to kick it off. Why are we neurodivergent? Because we're not neurotypical.
- [82:51]
A
Yeah, that's the tweet. Oh, man. Well, thank you for being with us for the entirety of this episode. A slightly longer one. And thank you if you've been with us since season one. You know, we're obviously. We wax lyrically about our audience and thank them regularly. But genuinely, that's. He doesn't. But, you know, I think it's awesome.
- [83:11]
B
I love you all. I do.
- [83:14]
A
It's his way of showing love. He doesn't. That's how he loves you. Anyway, well, we're going to be back with our Hot Topic tomorrow, so check that out in your feed. And as always, Ashley will be bringing Mindful Mondays on a Monday that will be in your feed. So thanks for sticking with us. Please enjoy season three. Very, very excited to bring you more episodes every single week. Bye, everybody. Well then, nightly.
- [83:38]
B
Bye.
- [83:42]
A
Thanks for tuning in to the neurodivergent Experience. We hope today's episode sparks something for you, whether it's a new idea, a bit of validation, or just a moment of connection. Remember, new episodes are every week, so be sure to join us for the next one for more conversations and insights into the neurodivergent Experience. If you've enjoyed this podcast, help us grow. You can do that by rating and reviewing this show. Your support makes a huge difference in helping us reach more people who could benefit from these conversations. You can connect with us on social media, find us on Instagram, Facebook, Facebook, TikTok. Just search for the neurodivergent experience. Thank you again for listening. And until next time, take care of yourself. You're not alone in this journey.