Well, hello Danielle. Thank you so much for joining me on

true Hope cast welcome to the show. What's going

well for you? How are you? Hello. Thank you so much for having

me.

Today we have a really nice day. I've it's

morning for me and it's sunny and it's nice. So

I'm looking forward to getting outside today. And yeah, just

kind of having a good day.

I'm glad to hear it and we've just talking about your beautiful words behind

you inhale courage and exhale fair if

you've got what's the story behind that?

Oh, thank you. It's really just to help remind me

because I am somebody who gets overwhelmed and I am somebody who

gets anxious and I think the first thing you drop

sometimes when you're in that state of mind is freezing. Breathing is

one of the most basic helpful things you can do. So just

the the reminder to keep breathing and it's

gonna it's gonna be okay just get through it. So yeah. Yeah,

I think when we when we put some conscious thought

into our breathing we certainly think about inhaling and

exhaling but not not quite putting it worth of

word to it like courage or fair or really like that that's adding a

bit more I think a bit more to it. Yeah, I

think you know

Not to get too into it, but you know

breathing in engages that part of your your brain

that part of your nervous system. That is the calming part, especially if

your belly breathing, right and so remembering

Kind of adding the courage piece to it for me reminds me

that I have control to some degree. We don't

have control over our lives, but I have control over how I feel in most cases

and I have control over what trajectory what choices I make and so

choosing to engage my nervous system

to my benefit and choosing to calm down and then

to let go of the fear and make a

decision based on connection right and and

collaborative intent instead of being scared

that something's not gonna work really helps me to focus

and grow so it's one of my go-to's. Yeah. Wonderful. Well

appreciate you explaining that that's right. It's really

good advice to kick these kick things off with but as an

introduction, can you just let us know who you are and

what it is that you do sure thing. So, my name is Danielle

Sullivan. I am the host of the neurodiverging podcast. I'm an

autistic coach a neurodiversity coach. I

work with neurodivergent individuals mostly adults

on all sorts of things social skills

kind of life skill.

Like learning how to be independent emotional intelligence

and Regulation and parenting so

I kind of stick my

fingers in many little pots and I really

enjoy it. It's a it's a really good job, so

Cool. Well, what are you tell what is neurode diversity? What

is neurodivergence? I think I think a

lot of people have heard of let's say neuroplasticity or

you know neural Linguistics, you know, we we have

a lot of terminologies within the Science World

and the medical community and within different practitioners as

well. So can you break that that word down for us? And you know, what does

that mean? Yeah. So I think neurodiversity is

also sort of a buzzword now and it's sometimes

used correctly and sometimes not but at

the root it's just this idea neuro meaning, you

know brain having to do with the brain and the nervous system that there

is a diversity in humans among how our brains and

our nervous systems work and that there's not one way for

brains to be right. There's no right way

to there's no correct style of thinking

or speaking or doing but we

have lots of different brains. And so when I say neuro diversity,

I'm referring to the range that's present.

human beings and specifically you

also hear it kind of related to people who are

autistic like me people with ADHD people who

have had some kind of traumatic brain injury like a concussion or

a stroke people who

are dyslexic were dyspractic or have other

sort of what's usually termed learning disabilities people with

Down Syndrome people with there's

like there's a huge I couldn't name everybody, you know,

people are schizophrenic people who are bipolar and there's many many

more people who are neurodivergent and when

we

Kind of group those folks together. We talk about the neurodivergence

of the population that there are many different kinds of

thinking Styles and brains and then we have people who are the sort

of group.

They may or may not be the majority actually, but

they have them the most power in our society are the neurotypical people

are the people with kind of the brains that are most supported

in our society that the expected brain say,

so yeah, there's just that's kind

of what I work with and so a lot of neurodivergent people

are held up to what we call neurotypical standards

you're expected to act away or behave away or think

away or communicate away that is not really part of

part of how how we naturally do things. And so we're

many of us are pushed into more neurotypical Styles

in a way that can be harmful in the long term. So when

I work with neurodivergent people part of

when I'm doing is saying well, you know, what is you holding

yourself to a standard that is not really reasonable for you as a neurodivergent

individual and what parts are things that we can

actually scale build that are just a gap and skills that maybe we

want to bridge a little bit. So yeah, is

there is there a place where you would learn to

become a newer of Divergent practition?

Is this something that's kind of new or there's schools out

there is being is being taught to people.

So I think that there is more awareness of neurodiversity in

coaching programs in therapy kind of

training programs, but it's still there's not

great resources yet. And that's part of why I started my

podcast is I was identified pretty

late in life in my 30s after my young son was

identified and there are many many other parents particularly

women who tend to present autistic

differently than men do not always but often

and a lot of us are missed and late diagnosed.

And so there's this whole group

of people out there. Excuse me who have had to

Learn about ourselves relatively late and

so many of us have done a lot of kind of individual independent

work on, you know doing research

reading and there are some therapists out

there who have done that work and some coaches out there who've done

that work, but it's not really institutionalized yet.

I guess that's the best way to say it. There are some great organizations out

there who are doing a lot of research and putting out a lot of white papers

and trying to get data out there to practitioners who want

to become more nerd diversity friendly is the terminology we use

or neurodiversity inclusive right who want to work with

folks with different brains and be respectful and and

informed about it, but there's

There's not many good programs. I know

that.

AA and E which is the autism Asperger's Network,

which is an autistic-led organization

has just started a coaching program that's based in

kind of autism studies. I know

a couple of Occupational Therapy programs in United States

graduate programs have a

kind of autism or neurodiversity lens that they

are starting to promote.

And I'm sure you know there I'm sure there are other individual folks.

There are lots of people who do sort of neurodiversity training

under the kind of umbrella of diversity equity

and inclusion training the Dei training who have a neurodiversity

focus in there, but I think a lot

of us are really just sort of pulling together the resources that

we find more helpful in trying to give them to other people and pass

it down that way hopefully in the next 10 years. We'll have a lot more

sort of formal programs and training available for folks.

But yeah, please do us it's still

pretty new. Sorry. Yeah, of course. I just wanted

Are there any thoughts that you have in why maybe

it's being it's being slow to develop

into establish. As you say you're having to pull from

your own resources. There aren't

a lot of

organizations

there that are creating these kind of programs themselves. So it sounds like

it's it's slow to get momentum is

is this because there's like a lack of understand still a lack

of understanding when it comes to autism and the

the other range of conditions that

are out there, you know, you mentioned so many of them so

many of them at the beginning and that's obviously where the birth of neurodiversity comes

from.

So and I can totally understand why it might be difficult to

create a training program. I mean to be

easy to create a training program for let's say an acupuncturist or

a nutritionist, you know, like it's quite specific. We've

got a lot of we understand so much

more about those those things, but maybe we're

not

developing these

programs all this

or this way of teaching because there's a

lack of understanding and you know, not a lot of people want to

dive into something where it's kind of, you know,

misunderstood perhaps or there's not and there's not

so much information to pull from to create something that's really

challenging.

So I'd certainly have sympathy for that. But what

do you think in regards to how it's

gone so far?

As many places. I'm I'm basing the United States and I work

with people worldwide, but the United States has sort of where my focus is and

I work mostly with autistic ADHD people. So,

you know, I don't want to try to speak for everybody who's never

Divergent because there's it's huge number of

the population in terms of autism. I can

say that

In the United States until very recently

there wasn't a very good understanding of how autism

of the the spectrum of autism in

Spectrum doesn't mean that there's people who kind of work

better on one end and work worse than the other end. But rather that we have

lots of different traits that comprise the autistic

profile and not all of us have all of those traits.

So there's mixes of different traits, right? You have

people who are speaking people who are not speaking people who can

have a family and people who are less independent and

need more support with day-to-day tasks.

You know people I'm trying to like think of

common so I can for example have a

family be a parent mostly.

Managed by you know, I manage my business I can mostly do

day-to-day tasks. But I also need support with many things that

are sort of hidden behind and for a long time people like me

weren't

kind of

What's the word we weren't put under the autism spectrum.

We were an understood to be autistic instead. You

had people who were needed more support

day to day who were thought to be autistic and many of them were put

into kind of institutionalized for

a very very long time. And so,

you know, I think one of the big sort of autistic rights

leaders has been

Temple Grandin just in the idea that she's somebody who she's written

many books and she's in her. I

want to say 60 to 70s now and she is somebody who

had high support needs but was not institutionalized who had a parent

who happened to support her highly and and help

her a lot and made it through school and graduate school and has become a

leader in her industry and people like Temple were mostly

institutionalized, you know, 50 40

30 years ago. And so you had

this big kind of gap between people like me and

people who need more support and I do need more support

so I don't mean to put myself way over here, but sort of in the middle

and I think neurotypical people

or people who weren't working with autistic people every

day just weren't aware of how many of us there were because we were

literally segregated and separated out and those

of us like me were just sort of put under the Oddball category or

a little off or a little weird right and you

know many people like us we were just not pathologized into

autism the way we are now so that's one

reason is I think there was just a totally different understanding of

what autism was and how it worked and who who counted as autistic

in the past few decades

and then the second thing is that for a

long time and this is true in many cases with a minority

group we had

Trading programs or support programs or special

education programs that were led by neurotypical people right who are

many of them doing the absolute best they could and really trying

to improve our quality of life. But also we're coming at

it from this perspective that neurotypical is the way we want to be and so

we should make autistic people more neurotypical and that

doesn't work. We have lots of research that that is like

highly traumatic and causes a lot

of kind of Psych issues for for autistic people. So it's

not the way we want to approach it but it is the way that you know,

it was handled for a very

long time and to some degree is still handled, you know,

many of the folks who go into special education, which is

a term. I don't love but is the sort of umbrella term for, you

know supporting non-neurotypical people.

Are our neurotypical and they mean well, but they're also coming

from this lens of we can fix this autistic child to not

fidget to not spend to not

you know stem to not

what else do we do? I don't know repeat things right

all those sort of stereotypical autistic traits and

and we do those things for a reason like they're not just so we're different

they they support us in a certain way and so

until very recently. I think that hasn't been well understood and

it's starting like there are a lot of more autistic-led organizations now

who are doing the advocacy work and really trying to kind of

get the word out that there are ways to support autistics being

autistic and still integrate us into

society and have everyone try to be happy with that integration, but

it's definitely a work in progress. So I hope

that was a helpful answer let me know absolutely and

I I not really had the thought process that

having somebody neurotypical have

all the old all the best intentions to

you know support and

Create something to support these individuals, but if

you don't have the actual internal experience.

and trying to

create something to get get the crate neuro

and it's very difficult to explain a

lot of neuros going on it is yeah, but to

try and get it from the trying to

Target it from the lens that you've got neurotypical individuals

creating these programs for these neurodiversion individuals.

And trying to create the trying

to get them to be neurotypical. That doesn't that doesn't

really when you express it. So simply like that it really that

wouldn't really make sense because you know, we're also different I was

my next question was about you know, you specialize in an

autistic and ADHD adults, but do

you think anyone can kind of benefit from the therapy that

goes on with neurodivergency? Because I think I think

everyone's brain is wildly different and you

know, we say we say neurotypical but there

are a lot of individuals that you know can certainly benefit

from many different types of therapy to you

know, support brain health and to support function and to

do all of these things. So do you think anyone can

benefit from the the types of therapies that

that go on within the neurodivergent?

Realm sure so I'll just

say that I'm a coach and not a therapist so I can answer generally but

don't take this as like therapist advice because it's not but

personally from my experience as an

autistic person and also with my children who are neurodivergent as

well. I have an autistic and an ADHD child each. I have

two children one of each and

the therapies that we've most engaged in are sort of

the traditional talk therapy, which can be very helpful in digging out

kind of cognitive distortions many autistic

people have dealt with significant trauma just

from trying to live in a world that's not

really supportive of us and build for us. So those

therapies can be really helpful and I do recommend them to

clients all the time because as a coach I work with practical kind of

on the ground things, but if somebody is having, you

know a much bigger kind of emotional issue, I think you know

there as a neurodivergent individual

it can be harder to find a good therapist who is going to

come come to you not wanting to fix

you but rather to hear you as as an autistic or as a

nerd virgin individual, but they do exist. There are many good therapists. So

I do recommend talk therapy when possible. I love

occupational therapy.

For me and for my children many of us.

have

Sensory processing challenges or differences they

can look all sorts of different ways.

For example, I'm I have auditory processing disorder so

that the I hear fine, but the way my brain interprets

sound can sometimes be delayed and so I'm

one of those people who's like can you say that again and then halfway through you're repeating

it? I'm like wait. I got it. Now that's auditory processing

disorder. Right? And so many therapies can

be really helpful with that and that's not again fixing me into neurotypicalness,

but helping me, you know Bridge a

skill Gap in in society where it's helpful

to be able to hear people and to be able to respond to them in a

certain amount of time. So, you know

again some occupational therapists are more about making you

look more neurotypical in some of them really get many of

them are nerd Divergent, you know people it is true that

people go into

Those kinds of trading programs often because

they're looking for support themselves. And so you have many autistic therapists

and many Autistic or ADHD OTS. But again,

you have to be careful as a neurodiverant person

kind of screening. I think there are

also fantastic for neurotypical people because many neurotypical people have

You know.

Autism ADHD and many of not all of

the neurodiverses but many of them are a cluster

of traits and when you have enough of those traits that

gives you this autistic label, so it's not about you know,

do you match one two three on the criteria, but rather this cumulative

like how much and how

much does it change how you interact with your daily life? Like

how much does it change how you live and that's

different for something like bipolar disorder than it is for autism,

but for autism specifically a lot

of us neurotypical or not have some of these traits that

comprise the autism spectrum and so

If you are having kind of a skills Gap or you

need support with something, I think therapies can be a great way

to access that regardless of your actual neurotype. What kind

of bring you have? So yeah,

I'm trying to think of other like

I think a lot of people could.

Get value out of sensory support whether that's in occupational

therapist or some other professional many people

are overwhelmed by sensory input in our daily lives

in terms of noise parenting I

get some I mean I work with autistic parents, but even neurotypical Parents

Without autistic children who come through parent coaching

will say they're overwhelmed by the touch

that involves the parenting involves the constant noise

parenting involves and that sense very

overwhelmed right whether you're neurotypical or not. So a lot

of the tactics we use with emotional regulation can be really helpful

for anybody regardless of neurotype.

Wow, that's great. Yeah, that's I mean it's so

it's so fascinating that

our brains are so remarkably individual. It's so cool. It

makes it yeah absolutely and just

just goes to show that how wonderfully unique we

are and the approach to anything, you

know be it no matter I'm a listen nutritionist and I've

written hundreds and hundreds of programs of people. None of

them are the same. Yeah because we're also wildly different with

the kind of most body bodily system. So it's truly is

fascinating and a question question popped

up for me because I don't know much about it and I want to

know but what's the though for those individuals that

don't find an amazing coach like you who's got

the experience and you know, and you you

coming at it from a very very specific and

unique and correct angle I suppose but there'd

be so many so many people that that don't find you and

I was wondering kind of what's the typical root of

diagnosis and therapy for those individuals.

Yeah. So again, I guess I'll just speak from an autistic perspective

instead of trying to cover everybody who's not Divergent because

that's my wheelhouse, but I can

say that.

Many people are caught as children nowadays. We have

better screening processes in place at least in the United States and

I think even better as far

as I understand in Britain the UK

and in Australia are much more

ahead in terms of understanding neurodivergence in

the United States is

and

I lost my train a little bit me one sec. No worries.

You said oh diagnosis. Sorry. I like totally lost what

we were talking about. Okay, so many people are caught as children and then

there are

still many folks who are not caught especially women or identified

female birth people.

People of color and I really do just

mean non-white people of all kinds our unfortunately tend

not to be caught Spanish speakers are not

caught as often as English speakers in the United States and this

is often just because of kind of cultural differences in

terms of how people parent and what people expect from children, but also

just lack of access

to good good medical care

and good intervention at the Young

ages. And so for people like me who are caught older

a lot of it is I've heard many

many parents who have been self who

have self-identify themselves after a child has been identified.

So in my case, my son

started like spinning things very early

in his life had a typical times when

he learned to stand learn to crawl his speech

was delayed. He had a couple of characteristics and I was

like hmm. I think this might be autism and

so, you know, we brought him in we got

Evaluated and the more in that process of

getting him evaluated because the weightless can be years long. I

had read so many books and done so much research and gotten online

and started to talk to people and the

more research I did the more I was like, ah, I

am also autistic and also these other

people in my family who were never caught because it is often a hereditary

to some degree.

So a lot of us then self-identify

when we're adults and then some of us will

go and get a formal diagnosis as well. It sort of depends if it's

going to be helpful for you by the time you've kind of self-identified or

not. So the process looks different

for everybody. Some people kind of go to their General physician

and are able to get a diagnosis. Some people

have go through a huge our process with

my son was we went to through a hospital system and he

was evaluated by there was

a general psych and occupational therapist

a physical therapist a speech therapist a

Child Development specialist. I think a special

education specialist. It was a whole panel of

people and they each did their own evaluation over

a period of a couple of days and then we came

together and got this big results kind of thing. So amazing

it was I was

very happy that they took me seriously because

my son is an atypical presentation of autism.

Some of the traits they sometimes look for are not

present with him, but then other traits are but it

was also sort of a depressing experience. I appreciate

the medical care and it was it was definitely a case of everyone there was

there because they wanted to support and help people

like me and my kiddo but it was also

this idea that they didn't want to find autism because

if they did then he would be autistic forever and it

would it was like a life sentence, right and having autism isn't

like having cancer like it's not a disease and although

some people have co-occurrences with autism that

are very difficult and I don't mean to diminish those or very

challenging the autism itself in

my experience is not usually the thing that is causing.

You know a difficulty with daily life, right? Yeah, some people

have intellectual disabilities. Some people also have down some people

also have you know, it's it's usually a collection of things. So it

was very frustrating where I was like, yes,

he is diagnosed like now we know what to do. Now. We

know you know what the next step should be instead this

group of people at the table were just like, you know,

we're really sorry but he is autistic and I was just like, what are

you sorry for? Like why are you approaching parents and I felt

Happy that I had done enough research and had

worked through it myself individually enough to come to

this point of being like no, this is not a death sentence. This is an okay

thing and I'm happy for this information. But

I just thought of so many other parents going

through that and being told by a group of medical professionals like

we're so sorry. He's autistic and what

that must be like as parents and

how awful that must be and then they feel like they spend

their whole lives feeling like they have to fix their kiddo and doing who knows

how much damage to their family kind of

team Dynamic and to their kiddo. Unfortunately sometimes because they

feel like they have to fix it instead of just supporting but

it's there. So yeah, I I know I've

gone off from your original question, but the diagnosis process looks

really different for a lot of different people. We have self-diagnosis all

the way up to formal team kind of diagnosis and

everywhere in between and whether people

even see when tends to depend on what they're looking to

get from it and what support they need. We thought one because

we need

Speech therapy, and the only way to access speech therapy

under our insurance at the time was to either have an Autism diagnosis or for

him to like have had a stroke. There was no way to access

speech therapy for any other reason which is

a whole other topic in his ridiculous. But, you know,

love kind of luckily for us. He did have autism so

we could access speech therapy, but it wasn't the autism that called the

need for speech therapy. So it was just like this wacky insurance

issue that caused us to I don't

know if I would have pursued diagnosis for him. Honestly if

we didn't need the speech therapy covered under

Insurance because there's not you know for us personally didn't

create a whole lot of value because we already knew so like

what you know, so yeah, you obviously had so much

experience with it anyway, so yeah, that's if that's the

remarkable Insight in regards to that diagnosis process

and how that group of doctors that

do, you know, they those white white coats hold

a lot of power when it comes to when it comes to

that type of a thing and especially

A group of them labeling labeling

the child and then, you know considering that

to be you know, like negative or like really

bad or you know, that's that can that would hold with

the parent for such a long period of time and that would

travel through to the kids that question. Yeah, and how would

you approach an individual

who might you know that you might suspect to be neurodiverse?

Um the same way you approach anybody else I guess

is your question about should

Can you give me more information about yeah, yes how I

think probably I think it's I think it's

probably coming from the because you're talking about, you

know, you you didn't find out about yourself until you're 30. So there

must be still lots of an adults individuals out there that

that are you know, that obviously living totally fine

and normal lives, but there

will be you know, maybe a family member or a

friend is, you know, concerned perhaps about the world

being of an individual and that comes out of a place of compassion. Yeah. And

so yeah, I mean, there's no easy way to

I mean obviously communication and being open and you know,

but doing it in a respectable way

I suppose. Yeah in your experience.

Well, what would you recommend or what would you say?

Yeah, so I thank you for like explicating

that a little bit more. I do work with a lot of late

identified adults. And once you are yourself identified a

lot of times you look back in your family tree and you're

like, oh that for, you know, great uncle John, you know,

he was definitely or oh my sister or oh, you

know, whatever and so this does happen a lot and I

think from me it comes down to

well many of us when we're identified have

this sort of

process of grief for not being identified earlier and

going through life kind of without this information that could have really

supported us. But also this overwhelming Joy at

being like, ah, I'm not the weird person. I belong to this

whole other group of people who are just like me and especially

as an autistic, once you start to meet other autistic people.

It's like it's like finding the country you

were born in it's just like suddenly feeling like you're part of

the group after not really managing that for most

of your life and you want to share that with other people in your

in your group in your family who you feel like might be autistic, but

for me what it comes down to is it

gonna serve that person to have this label or not and

it really depends and so

especially for older adults and

even for people my age the word autistic is

still a negative label and it's not

something they want to have which can be hard to wrap your

brain around when you've been excited to receive this label

after many years of struggle in

cases, but

it is challenging for certain kinds of

people to.

Kind of think of themselves that way and want to

think of themselves that way and so what can work better is

to really approach it from the ground up and instead of being like hey, have

you considered getting diagnosed because I think you have these traits

and sort of coming in with a label and kind

of pathologizing but until recently they

thought was just normal about themselves to come at it from the

other direction and say, you know, I noticed that

sometimes you seem like this is hard for you. Is there

anyway I can support you in that right and really to instead

of saying, you know top down I'm gonna put a label on you

because you're autistic. We're going to give you these supports and said

to just come from the assumption that everybody deserves accommodations regardless

of their neurotype this includes neurotypicals. If

something is hard for you, then you deserve support in

that hard thing and if your family

member is struggling with something and

you know trying to offer them support and trying

to be open and saying I'm seeing this, you know can is it

have you thought about is there a way we can help you with this right or

make this easier for you and then over

time you can open some conversations and if they start to seem

like they're open to researching on their own and looking at

it on their own then you can bring up the label if you

want to if you think it's helpful, but often and

I

You know, I like the label because I do

I do think it offers a sense of community to many people

and I do think there's a lot of work to be done in destigmatizing some

of these labels like ADHD autism schizophrenic Bible.

Like these are all labels that especially neurotypical people

tend to hear and go. Oh that's that's I'm sorry to hear

that. Right, which is not always something we need to do but because

there is a stigma attached to them. It's it's reasonable

to assume that other folks might also feel

stigmatized by being labeled by you as unfortunate

as as that is and instead

to come from this accommodations Palace of you know,

I notice that you get really upset when you have to

deal with this thing, like what if we traded chores or

I noticed that you know, the light really

bothers you at a certain time of day. What if we got you sunglasses for

that or whatever it is, you know, there's a wide variety of accommodations.

And you know often if people want a label they'll

if once they start once you start them on the

accommodations perspective, then they might go Google it or

they might go talk to their therapist or they might go whatever and then

come to you and ask for support and if somebody asks you like hey,

I know you're autistic. Can you point me to resources that's great

give them to them but coming to people who are really in

that mind space of being ready to to think

about themselves that way and just dumping stuff on them is

not really kind or polite or supportive. It's

more about us wanting to share our thing,

but that's not about them and we have to work from them first that

you know, so I hope that's helpful. Yeah because

of a good place but yeah, so it's

so unbelievably tricky and obviously you have to know that

relationship and yeah, I think coming at it from the

perspective as is is what I'm about to express

for the individual or is it about

me I think that's it. That's an important standpoint.

And you say that you I think what you said about finding your

community, you know after your diagnosis when you're in your

thirties, you find your community. Did you feel like an outside of before

that before you knew anything about it? Oh, yes.

Yeah, I am.

I and I've heard this from other people too. So I don't think it's just me

but many of us get our our label of whatever it

is and and you sort of reinterpret your

whole past and you're like, oh that time

I was unbelievably awkward in high school like that

was, you know, a social deficiency quote unquote or

oh all those times. I didn't know how to

respond or

You know, I didn't realize this person meant this thing until hours later.

That's a processing delay. And these things

are normal and common in my group. Right? So

instead of it being me who can't

do things and taking that burden on myself as a personal

fault or a set of personal false instead. It's

like no these are actually totally normal things in

this group of people. It's just I didn't know I was part of that group of people

right? So I think

that

it really

Kind of blue kind of blew my mind open it. I can't

think of a better way to say it. It really changed how I

approached my own life and changed

which things are quote unquote my

fault and

Instead. It's like oh these things are.

Me just being bad at life. These things are just autistic traits

and reframing that whole narrative for myself and

saying you are doing the best you can you communicate differently

than other people you move differently than other people

your brain literally Works differently than other people and I have a

lot of strengths other people don't have but also a

lot of weaknesses because we're all mixed a mix of those things and that's again

normal but in neurotypical social

life, I was just a set of

weaknesses like constantly and being able

to say Oh, no, you're not just a bunch of

weak traits. You you have all these strengths that you just sort

of putting emphasis on because they're not valued by this group

this neurotypical group the way they're valued and autistic Society

was really yeah just mind

blowing and and really shifted my perspective of myself

and that's something I try to do for clients too because a

lot of times you get this diagnosis late in life and people have been

Not on purpose, but for a long time kind

of putting you down for not communicating.

The way they expect you to for not meeting

their expectations basically because you're not a neurotypical but we

thought you were neurotypical. So why can't you mean irritable expectations? Right? And

the minute you have this? No, I'm actually ADHD. I'm

actually autistic you can say well those expectations aren't for me

different neurotypicals. I'm autistic. So all I

have to do is meet autistic expectations which are

different and and tend to match us better. Right and

now I can communicate to neurotypicals and say hey I noticing

these expectations. I can't meet them and

that's not my fault. But that's just how it's gonna be. So, how can we collaborate to

me in the middle? Right which is a speech pattern

or a script that I didn't have before because I

I thought I was just supposed to be able to do it. Right so it was always about

me and instead of about let's let's meet together. So yeah,

I think I think a lot of people struggle in

their lives when they don't this is this is this is for

most people when they don't find their Community or

their little clicks, you know, like and

I think back to being at school and I think I feel

I don't think I was really an individual at school. I feel like I was

just trying to fit in and survive and just

you know know where the right things that I thought

everyone else would wear, you know, like we do those things and they're so

unbelievably like not unique to you as a natural person. So you

grow up they do this huge part of your whole life not actually

knowing who you are and what it is that you like and expressing

that

And then for a lot of individuals who don't find.

The community whether it's whether it's like sports teams or

whether it's like a religious Circle or whatever. It might

be. Once you find your in those individuals

that have very similar interests and similar passions to to you.

You can start being a bit more comfortable in

your own skin, I think and I think that what you're

talking about in regards to finding your community after you

know, 30 plus years of

not quite having your tribe.

How wonderful and uplifting that that must have

been for you and you say you're taking that you you took that whole experience to

be like a really positive.

Wonderful transformation. It sounds like

statement

I think a lot of us especially as we're

youth in adolescence and trying to figure out what life is and

what we even want and what we're doing a lot of us are

struggling to meet expectations that are sort of just floating

out there in the world. How you dress how you act how you

speak? Right how you communicate with other people? I

think it's sort of true for

everybody and then kind of almost another tier or even more

intense for neurodivergent people and the

best sort of analogy. I've seen

other people used to say it is go, you know

trying to be normal in another country where you just don't understand the Norms

right and you're gonna have more trouble it's not

like you can't do it. It's not like it's impossible. It's not like everybody else isn't struggling

too, but it's just this extra layer of difficulty.

So that's one piece. I wanted

to say and then it was really uplifting for

me and really supportive for me. But also there's this and

I mentioned this before there's this other side of it, which is

this grief of having spent, you know,

My entire young adulthood and and childhood

feeling like I was a wrong person right like

that. I wasn't working. Right and I've

heard that echoed with many of my clients that

many of us are identified in our 2030s

many of us are identified as children. But many of us I have

multiple clients were an identified till they're six years or

70s and at that point it's like this never too late like, you know,

you can still make a lot

of changes but it's also like that's 60 years

of feeling like you don't fit in or don't belong or like you're

in this country where no one speaks your language and that's

why

you know, I really

Want to Advocate that's part of why I do the work I

do is because if we can get more people identified earlier

and kind of finding their people earlier. That's

how many more happier healthier. Well,

you know people in the world then you

know, there would have been and how much less

trauma that people have to experience for, you know

forcing ourselves to fit in in a way that's not

supportive to us for 30 years. And so

many of us have to unlearn stuff that we picked up that's not it

is similar similar to trauma. It's not

exactly the same but you know nerd Divergent trauma is

a thing where we have learned to kind of

hide ourselves and subvert ourselves in order to fit into

a mainstream. And once we have a label

we can be we can start to uncover that and dig that out and say, oh, I

don't actually have to you know not wave my hands in public.

No one's judging me right or that's that's a really kind of

Obvious example, but it's the best way to have

right but there are layers of things that we have suppressed as Autistic or

nerd hydrogen people that then we finally feel comfortable

digging out but to dig that out in your 60s or 70s. There's

a lot of grief associated with that, you know and even in my

30s, so yes this very binary. It was

very liberating and also very tough and

hard and sad and you know, it's it's a

complex. It's a complex. I think that happens save

a complex and I really appreciate you sharing that with me because that is

yeah. It's something like, you know, a lot of people just

wouldn't understand.

And be very very difficult for them to even put put themselves

in your position to even begin to understand it.

And I totally agree with you in regards to the extra layer

of complexity when it comes to

Trying to find find your community within within that

Circle. Yeah, I absolutely understand and when it

comes to collaborative problem solving, can you

tell us a little bit more about like what that is?

You certainly covered a little a little bit I think of it, but can

you tell us what it is and how comparents use it to start improving

their whole families well-being. Oh sure.

So this

Under my wheelhouse as a parent coach and I work with mixed neurotype

families which just means families where some folks are

neurodivergent and some folks are neurotypical or there's a mix

of different brains and this again

gets back to this idea that often.

We have expectations about how things should go and those

expectations might not actually be founded in reality. There's often

pulled especially with parenting from our own parents. How did

our parents do it? What did they expect from their kids? And so okay. I

should expect the same from my kids, but kids are people for

first and foremost and so with collaborative

parenting collaborative problem solving what we do is we

treat everybody who's having the problem as a

person first and foremost with basic human rights and

we work from there and we try to figure out what

are some ways that we can both adjust our expectations

to meet in the middle and collaborative problem

solving is used in many offices in many

workplaces and whatever but it works really well with parenting neurodiverging

kids because often neurodiverse kids have extra

sensitivities sensory processing challenges.

Processing delays, whether they're auditory processing

delays, like I was describing before or cognitive. So sometimes

it takes us a little longer to get through

a decision than a neurotypical person or there's

more things. We have to consider in terms of our comfort and our

safety our feelings safe in a situation. So collaborative parenting

is about assuming that

your child is doing the best assuming that any kind of

struggle or push back you're seeing is not personal to

you as a parent but is rather about the child struggling.

And kind of stopping what you're doing slowing down and really

working out. How can we fix this problem to both of our mutual benefit

and it's a process of parenting

that initially takes a really long time where every

time you have a problem you are stopping what you're doing and just

really digging down into what the issue is. But

then over time you both get better at it as parents and children

and you solve things fast and everybody's happy and it's real nice.

So an example I often use

I have some I do trainings on this I have resources on

my website and I'm happy to email like help

folks over email, but the the most basic example, I

usually use is that my daughter when she was very young

would have three hour Tantrums over

putting on shoes to get out of the house because of

sensory overwhelm where she didn't like the way the shoes felt

because of what's called demand

avoidance, which is a horrible term, but basically means that

there are some children who don't like being told

what to do because it interferes with their kind of

health

I what's the word?

Their ability to feel like their own person, right?

So they want to choose and that can be very common in

narrative urgent kiddos who are already

a little bit rigid and already like things the way

we like them and I'm speaking for myself here too. So we

would have these three-hour Tantrums over shoes and eventually what

the only thing that worked was every time sitting down

waiting for her to calm and then once we

were both calm really talking it out and saying well, what is

it about the shoes? Is there another way we can do this dropping all

of my expectations that we put on shoes to go the grocery store and

saying well what what else can we do in this situation that solves both

our needs right? I need your feet to be protected. She needs

to be comfortable.

And so how do we meet and sometimes it was different

every time sometimes it was like, oh well where she was on one foot but not

the other one.

It's better than nothing. Sometimes it's like oh, well, we're double socks. Sometimes

it's like for this one outing. You don't actually need shoes. We

figured this out. You know, what if we put our shoes on when

we got to the store instead of right now in the house and you

know, this is a small example, but if

you what happens is over time, you're showing

your child that you respect them as an individual that you will hear

their side of the story that you are on the team with them and will

support them and then they're on your team too. Right? So if

I get overwhelmed and I need a minute I can just say at this point

in my life. I am overwhelmed. I need to go in

my room for three minutes and they'll be like, okay mom's taking a break,

right? So there's this Mutual support that happens and mutual trust

that happens on both sides, which is really important with

narrative urgent kids because again as a parent, I don't want my kiddos

to have to suppress themselves the way that I was, you

know suppressed by well meeting people when I

was a kid and so really focusing on their needs

and their ability to learn to articulate their needs to

say what they need to set boundaries.

Themselves in their bodies. These are all kind of really important parenting goals

and collaborative parenting kind of encompasses all of those very neatly in

a way that has been really supportive of my family personally,

but also a lot of other families that I work with so

Yeah, I think that type of problem solving would benefit

so many different relationships and so

many works everywhere. Yeah. Yeah that question

because we have as again it's like

It is is us going

to the store about me. Is it like you know, or can I

actually meet meet my child where they're at? You know, like I think

especially I've got two year. I've got two year old and a

10 month year old and especially the two year old. He's soon. Yeah,

and it's called you

you're constantly having to problem solve. Yes and

collaborate and I know when things are a bit too much

for me and I might get a little bit.

Might get a bit anxious or might get a little bit angry or rageful

in the moment. I know that I know that that

that's never what 100% of the

time it's never helpful. We're never benefits the situation. But when when

I

Do find do you find it within myself to no sit

and communicate? And yeah, you say like meet the

child where they're at and take their understanding and

their feelings and what they may want to do and how

they're feeling into consideration.

It's so beneficial and it spans out

throughout the relationship. It's not just about it's not just about that moment

about that situation. It's about the whole relationship

building with within the family. And as

you say if everybody can kind of get on board with that type of approach the

children can start to

Learn how to do those things with with the adults because you know,

we obviously get overwhelmed as well. We don't always want to put our shoes on. No we

do not.

So I find an interesting.

Sorry, I didn't mean to direct you. No, that's when I was I just I find

that very very interesting especially having you know, yeah young young

children who are literally learning how to be human beings

in a very complex remarkable way

in the neurochemistry that they have and the the ability that

they have to think and feel and behave. It's quite remarkable

and overwhelming for anybody. So we have

to we have to run

Use compassion and understanding and patience

and time to be able to improve improve those

relationships and you know develop help develop these individuals as

individuals rather than attempting to

control them and sculpt them into what we think

that they should be. Yeah, that's exactly my perspective you

that are the nose and I think collaborative parenting

anyway is about this kind of democratic approach

of you know, taking everyone in your family

and putting you on the same because you have more experience as a parent right

like, you know, what a red traffic light means and you know what it means in a car

is coming and so there are ways that you have more information than your

children and experience but in terms of our actual human-ness we

are on the same page, right we are so we

want to

And my my opinion is that if we

uphold sort of this Democratic idea of everybody

having their own rights, everybody being supported in the

world that accommodations perspective. I was talking about before of

just making it easier for everybody that Democratic

parenting is a good way to do that too to really interrogate

whether their needs how do we meet them and that as

you say builds up it takes a long time in the beginning but it

gets faster because eventually everyone trusts each other

and you know, you can assume you can start to

assume. Oh my kid isn't just bugging me to bug me right or oh my

dad isn't angry because he hates me it's

because you know you start and you talk about stuff like

emotional regulation right you talk about how do I take a deep

breath? How do I calm down and you can use vocab you

can build vocabulary together and say, you know, I'm feeling

very stressed out right now and I need a minute I did

that. I was at the pool with my kids yesterday and one of them asked

me to fix their goggles and I hate I can't handle Vegeta little

I get really angry real fast.

It's not a thing. I'm proud of but I tried for like a minute

and I was like child. I'm really sorry. I'm going

to throw these I'm gonna have a tantrum. Can you bring them to your dad and

I'm gonna take two minutes and she was like, okay cuz she like she

know it wasn't about her the goggles. It was just I can't handle 50 things.

Right? We've built that up over a period of time. Whereas when I

was a kid despite having really excellent parents, especially for the time period

if a parent got angry in their same

room I was in it was like, oh gosh like I have done

something right? So I think parenting Norms

have really shifted and that this is a great way to kind of shift with them and

really enable kids to

Be brave and be themselves and be able

to to say, you know.

You know, my kids will often say Hey,

you know, I I feel like you're overwhelmed you

want to take a break my co-parent the other day was telling

me that he was playing a game with my son and he was fidgeting on

a Rubik's Cube while he was playing the game and my son got annoyed

with him and said do you think we could put that down just until the game is

done my son's nine and he told his dad to like put

the Rubik's Cube away and I was like setting boundaries advocating

for one's needs like that's amazing, you know, and I

would give that to collaborative parenting I think like

that's what it does. It allows kids to step boundaries and

be sure of themselves when they ask what they need. No, I was real proud.

Yeah, that's amazing Bravo for that

because that's obviously a lot of work goes into that and your child

understanding the power of the power of their words and the power

of the parents to understand them

and respect them and knowing that if they ask them

in their very particular way, then they will be hurt. They will be listening

to yeah.

That's important. I think it really if you

want the Next Generation to you know,

it's a parenting kind of phrases. You

just want to do a little better than your parents did for you. And for

me. This is the way this is the way to do it and you know, I didn't

learn how to advocate for myself. I didn't learn how to tell

people no until way too late in my life. And I'm like no I

want my seven-year-old daughter to be able to say no right now, you know if

she needs to if she needs to set a boundary, so yeah

just to finish up. I love to see

if you go if you go any takeaways for neurotypical people

to maybe increase their understanding and compassion towards

people who

Towards neurodiversity neurodiverse people

because I think well, first of all, I don't think a lot of neurotypical

people even understand that these individuals.

Are there and they are absolutely no

but you know, I just thinking about like in my

life experience. I think a lot of people just expect everyone

else that they see out in the street to you know know the

rules of the game or whatever it be like

them to be typical. So and I think

I think there's so many people will have

people in their circles in their relationships at work or whatever

that there would be that obviously a different.

And I just wonder if there's something

that you a takeaway you can think

of that might help those individuals think a

little bit differently about their expectations of everyone.

Sure. So, yeah, 10 to 13 percent of

people worldwide are in order Divergent. So, you

know somebody you probably know multiple somebody's who

are you know, some kind and many

of us it does sort of

double up so many of us are

more than one kind of narrative origin, but you definitely know

somebody there's probably someone in your family. There's somebody at work. There's somebody in

your kid's school class, you know, probably more

than one somebody and I think

the best thing I can say is to just try and

I know this doesn't fit with the World At Large in

many ways. But unless you have good evidence

to the contrary try to assume that folks are doing their best and if

somebody is a you know

slower than you would like if somebody asks you a million questions

before they under you know

seem like they understand what they need if whatever you're

seeing that's causing you frustration. If you

can just take a breath and assume that they are

asking you because they need the help or they're slow because they need

the time and working from there. Right and sometimes

just asking if you're seeing an issue

or if you're perceiving an issue saying, is there anything

I can do to make this easier because a lot

Of us are used to just sort of sucking it up and pushing forward because when

we ask and this is getting better, but many

of us when we've asked in the past have been shut down

real hard and so we don't ask anymore because we might get fired or

we might get you know, some kind of negative consequence. But

if you ask us like hey, is there a

way I could you know set up this process process at

the office to make it easier for you. Do you want more meetings

less meetings, you know, are you

is the place you're working a comfortable place for you to

work whatever you can do in whatever way you

can ask us what we need.

We know and we will try to we would love to

be working better. You know, we want to support

the world just as much as you do and

then the other thing I'll just say

is you have regardless of

the neurotype you have advocacy organizations

in your community. So there are

chapters of autistic lit organizations.

All over the country adhd-led organizations bipolar-led organizations.

So if you can if you're interested in learning more about

any specific neurodivergence find the

organizations that are led by the people who have that narrative evidence,

right? One of the big pushbacks against

places like Autism Speaks is that they're run by neurotypical people.

And so that whole issue of even when

people are doing their best, they're still maybe promoting stuff that actually

autistic people don't want promoted or isn't helpful

to us. So if you can find the organizations that are run by the

folks who are you know, with that neurotype, you

will get better information. You will get better resources to

actually improve our lives and and improve our

well-being and that is

the best advice I can give everybody I think.

I hope it's helpful. Fantastic. I

think that's really really helpful. And I really appreciate that very wonderful

inside that you have there. Can you let us

know how we can connect with you just for my audience? Oh sure.

Thanks. So I'm I host the neurodiverging podcast

which comes out about twice a month and you can find that

on any streaming service. I'm also at neurodiverging.com where

I have a Blog with lots of Articles links

to the podcast and my coaching services. So

if you are in need of a parent coach or a

neurodiversity coach or even if you are just looking for resources, if

something I said was like, oh, I really want to find

autisticled resources in my community and I can't find

it Google if you email me I will help you. I will

not tell you stuff because I think it's important to get that information out

there. So

Amazing. Well, I'll make sure that that information is

in the show notes, but thank you so much again for joining us

Daniel. I really appreciate your Insight and time. Thank you

so much for having me. I

really of the opportun

Ity, of course, well, thanks for listening everybody for more information

about anything we've spoken about in this episode. I will make sure I

will leave notes in the show notes. Don't forget to

subscribe if you haven't yet. Thank you so much for listening to

True. Hope Carl see official podcast of true hope Canada. We're gonna

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