Autistic POV

Masking and Unmasking in Autism: My Thoughts EP 9

Some observations on masking. My new unmasking workbook. How masking can be helpful at times. How it can hurt. Where I'm at in my unmasking journey.
Thank you for listening!
If you like this content please follow and / or share!
You can get all my media and articles for free at "Writing on the Spectrum:" BarbaraGraver.substack.com
Post quoted in the article: "Why classic therapies don't work for autistic people?" by Pascale Larivierre
Workbook mentioned in the article "The Unmasking Workbook for Autistic Adults" by Jessica Penot, LPC-S
If you need closed captioning, please listen via the podbean app or through my site: AutisticPOV.com
Episode Transcript:
0:06
Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hey everybody, this is Barbara Graver. Thank you for joining me today on Autistic POV. Today I wanted to talk about masking. I'm just actually making a few observations on masking.
0:32
I do want to return to this topic at some point. But I just wanted to take kind of a pro and con approach to it today because this is something that's come up for me recently. So I have been using a workbook called the Unmasking Workbook for Autistic Adults.
0:50
It's written by Jessica Pinot, who is a licensed counselor and autistic person. And it's a great workbook. I love it. I like the way it's set up. I like the way it builds. It builds to this point kind of in the center where there are two charts that the author calls a template for change.
1:12
And I like the way the book is structured because the way it works is if you work through each section, by the time you get to this very important part of the book, you know what you want to say, which is great. So I think it's very well constructed.
1:27
And this part of the book, it basically has two sections to it. what what do you consider a gift of autism and what do you need help with and i like that i like that approach i filled it in but i found it necessary to create a
1:43
third category of things that i considered adaptive measures so they're not they're not necessarily things i want to change some some things around it i may want to change But they are adaptive measures. And one of the things I listed in this, along with some other things we'll talk about at some other time, was masking.
2:05
And I was kind of surprised. I kind of surprised myself that I put it there because unmasking has been a huge thing for me. I've suffered a lot. through masking but I did put it there and the reason I did is because masking can
2:23
have a benefit I mean masking can be a layer kind of a layer between you and the world and while it is a soul-crushing thing certainly not being able to mask is highly highly debilitating And it was interesting because I came across an article on Substack, and I'll link to it below.
2:47
The article was about two sisters, two women with autism. One was highly masking and the other couldn't mask at all. And I was surprised by my reaction to it because to me, it wasn't really an either or. To me, I could identify the experience of both of these people.
3:06
And that's because sometimes I can mask and sometimes I can't. I have had epic, epic meltdowns in public when unable to mask. And at other times I've endured difficult things without any kind of incident because of my ability to basically pretend I was okay. So, I mean, that's not good. Enduring things is not good usually,
3:30
but sometimes there isn't another choice and it is useful to be able to to step behind masking, like kind of seeing it as a shield where you can step behind it and you can interact. And, and I do this in my everyday life. I don't have a lot of contact with other people in my everyday life.
3:52
I basically spend time with my family and my pets and do media online and have a few online friends. and see an autism therapist. And that's pretty much the extent of my social involvement. But I do leave the house. I leave the house and I interact with people on a limited, kind of superficial basis.
4:14
And I have stock phrases that I can use when I'm walking my dog and someone says hello. I have certain things I'll say about the weather or certain responses I'll make. And they're not necessarily memorized, but they're things I use over and over again. And it's kind of my way of interacting. And that's masking.
4:34
And it doesn't hurt me to do that. It's not satisfying, but it doesn't hurt me. And I kind of feel proud of myself when I have like one of those little kind of ordinary exchanges with someone. And I feel like I handle it well. And it doesn't matter that nothing important is being communicated.
4:54
What matters is that I'm kind of proud of myself after I do this. And it allows me to present an aspect of myself that people can accept. So it can be good. And masking in particular could be good when it keeps you from... It keeps you from having a meltdown, say.
5:15
That's what this article on Substack was about. I am kind of all over the place, but this article on Substack, the girl said how her sister who could not mask would have meltdowns at work and how it was so debilitating. And I agree with that 100% it is. And I have done that. I identified with both.
5:36
And I think a lot of people probably can. certainly there are people who can't mask at all and that's very debilitating I'm not trying to minimize that but I think that a lot of us have had that experience of being able to mask and then not being able to mask and I think that too is worth
5:52
looking at so that's kind of how I look at masking it's not a hundred percent hundred percent bad but it could lead to some pretty dark places and I wouldn't want to pretend otherwise and unmasking is a good thing. To me, unmasking is a good thing. At this point in my life,
6:15
I am looking at it in a little bit different way than I think a lot of people do, because I have kind of a limited involvement in the world. To me, masking is not Trying to blend in or trying to fool people or trying to seem normal. I did that. I've done that in my life.
6:31
I did it in school. And interestingly, I felt like I accomplished it, like particularly in high school. I felt like I accomplished it and at great personal cost. But now I look back and I think, I don't really think I fooled anyone. I think in most situations,
6:48
people always perceived me as awkward and unusual and a little strange. And I was sometimes just kind of oblivious to that. But so I don't think I was ever really, really super successful with blending in. But That's not the kind of unmasking I'm really worried about now because it's not only that I can't really do it,
7:10
it's that I don't really want to do it. I just don't want to and I don't have to and I feel really, really lucky that I don't have to. And the way I look at unmasking now is like simple, simple things. So one way I've tried to unmask is by recognizing when something's too much for me
7:30
and to not push myself to endure situations that are overwhelming for me. And another way I've done it is by not allowing myself to be unduly influenced by other people's ideas about my personal preferences. And just a couple examples, like one way, recognizing when something's too much for me, I did the taxes this week.
7:56
And when I did my taxes, I knew if I tried to, we have a rental unit, so there's a lot to that. I knew if I tried to do it all in one day, it would be overwhelming. So I collected all the little pieces of information I needed,
8:10
and there are a lot of them over the course of a week. And then I sat down to do it on tax day, which was a mistake, but I got through it. I got through it okay because I had everything there and my son had helped me with some of it.
8:24
But I was just washed out after I did that. And even though I don't consider doing taxes hard, I don't consider it confusing or difficult, I still find it super stressful. Like any paperwork, I find stressful. So I chose to not cook that day. I didn't even make lunch.
8:44
I ordered lunch and I ordered dinner, which I never do. I don't do that routinely. But I could have pushed myself to make the meal I had planned for that night, but I chose not to because I knew it would be too much.
8:58
And I think that's a form of unmasking because it's a mask to pretend you could handle something when you can't. That's masking to me. And another thing, when I mentioned not being influenced by other people's perceptions, there are things that bother me, like ceiling lights shining in my eyes and various noise things
9:19
different kinds of noises going on and I used to kind of internalize people's reaction to that when they would say that's ridiculous there's no reason why you that should bother you I would think you're right shouldn't bother me I'll just white knuckle it and sometimes they could and sometimes they couldn't but I don't
9:38
I'm trying not to do that anymore I'm trying to tell myself that they don't understand and that that isn't my problem. So that's another way. And kind of hand in hand with that, like honoring limits, like not attributing my reactions to bad behavior or subjective labels,
10:04
like thinking I'm picky or I'm fussy or I'm selfish or I'm immature. Like I try to just think that this is something that's overwhelming me. And I try to kind of honor that, that this is a limit for me. Example is I was making dinner and everybody in our house, we don't eat at the table.
10:25
We hate to, we just, I make the food and they grab it and take it. So somebody was getting food off the stove and a pan of corn fell off. So the pan of corn fell off and the person who was there when it fell started talking about how
10:42
this teapot's always in the way and on and on. And another person in the kitchen started talking about, don't worry about it. It's no big deal. And meanwhile, the dog's trying to eat it. And somebody else is saying it won't hurt him. It's good for him. It's just like all this pandemonium was going on.
11:01
And it was so overwhelming to me. And a lot of times I'll overreact, quote, overreact to a situation like that. And I'll kind of get shamed a little like it's just corn how could you overreact like that but it's not about the corn it's about the chaos and I'm beginning to kind of see things like
11:20
that a little more clearly and to honor my reaction to it to not to not demonize my reaction to it to not mislabel it so I just said everything has to stop I have to clean this up and it worked it kind of worked
11:39
And I had a similar situation with not having been given enough time to do something where should I be able to do these tasks in an hour and get to an appointment on time? Should I? Should the average person? Probably. But it's triggering for me and I felt it myself getting triggered and I had no choice.
12:03
I had to do it, but I was extremely, extremely pressured and triggered and I didn't quite have a meltdown, but I could have. I was getting close. Like if things had started to go wrong, I probably would have. And I don't let myself blame myself for that.
12:23
I don't make myself try to pretend I'm good with this because that's masking. I mean, it may be a basic form of masking. It's not masking like going into a board meeting and making everyone think you're competent. But it's still, for me, it's masking. And doing it is detrimental.
12:43
And there are times, I think, when it's good to mask. But there are times when it's better not to. And I think the times it's better not to far outweigh the times when it's a good thing. And the last thing I've been kind of trying to do with unmasking is to reject normalizing behavior.
13:04
And even though my sphere of socializing is very very small I do run into this and I read an interesting article also on Substack it was by Pascal LaRiviere and she talked about autistic psychotherapy and I thought it was really interesting and she talked a bit about
13:31
the autistic brain and she said in the article the autistic brain is hyper hyper everything, hyper connected, hyper plastic, and hyper reactive. This leads to hypersensitivity, hyper perception, hypertension, hyper fear, hyper memory, hyper learning, hyper emotionality. And she goes on to say higher perception and hypersensitivity mean that the brain
13:56
of autistic person has to process a lot more information than that of an holistic person. And that's just another word for neurotypical And she goes on to say that the cortex, autistic cortex, causes the brain to perceive stimuli in an intense manner, but also in a somewhat fragmented way. And I found that really interesting.
14:20
And she says that the perception of environment by such a brain slightly varies and is therefore slightly unstable, which I think is accurate. And she quotes an article, which I'm going to read by Markram and Markram, that says, as a consequence, the autistic person would remain with a fragmented and amplified perception of bits
14:40
and pieces of the world. And I think that that is a good description of hyperconnectivity and how it works. And it can be a strength. I mean, it definitely can be a strength. Like when you're researching or learning or doing creative work, hyperconnectivity can be a strength. It can also be a problem.
14:57
It's been a problem for me I think in my writing, the fragmented worldview has been a problem for me in my writing. So I think that to reject normalizing behavior, we have to be aware that this is not a subjective difference. We're not subjectively different.
15:16
Like when I'm standing in the center of chaos and my processing is shutting down and I'm unable to think or talk, annoyed because a family member is playing the radio too loud. But when you talk to some people, holistic people, neurotypical people, and you
15:41
If you allude to a situation like that, they'll say, oh, I know just what you mean. The other day, my husband had the radio up so loud and I turned around and snapped at him and I felt so bad. And I'm not trying to minimize situations like that.
15:54
I think certainly irritability and fighting and trying to maintain a relationship, those are all difficult things and they're all worth talking about. But it's not the same as shutting down. It's not the same as having a meltdown. It's not the same as being completely overwhelmed to the point where you're not processing.
16:15
You've reached your saturation point for processing. It's very different. The thing is, it doesn't necessarily look that different from the outside. Sometimes it does. But if we're in that endurance mode of masking, it might look the same. And so people don't see it. And that's a big problem with autism just in general, that the whole entire,
16:35
which I hate the DSM-5 and what it represents, because the whole entire paradigm of autism is based on what people outside us observe. Like nothing is based on our inner experience. And that's a huge, huge problem. luckily people are beginning to address it but it's still a problem but I think
16:53
it's very very important to reject normalizing behavior and I think one way one way I am going to do that do that because I'm struggling with that actually right now doing something better with some things than others what the way I'm going to do it
17:08
I think is by trying to learn more about the actual architecture of the autistic brain because there are objective differences between the autistic brain and the neurotypical brain. It's not subjective. It's like you could hang labels like immature and impulsive and fussy and difficult. You could hang those labels on somebody. They're subjective labels based on outside observation.
17:36
But they don't account for the structural differences between an autistic and a holistic brain. And I don't think you could reduce it all to science. I think experience is huge. And I think talking about our inner experience and doing workbooks and validating it and journaling and Understanding ourselves is just as important as understanding science.
17:58
But I think the science is good, too, because I think it's one way you could reject normalization. Like when people say to me, everybody's autistic, I can say, no, actually only three percent of the population is autistic because. You know, that's just a factoid. It's just a statistic, but it helps. It helps to know those things.
18:20
So I'm going to try a little bit to learn a bit of the neurobiology. And I actually, my degree, my undergraduate degree is actually a science degree, but I'm not a science person, so it does not come easy for me. But I am going to focus on that because I think that, could help.
18:41
So I just wanted to share that, you know, and just as kind of a recap, masking isn't always bad. And people who do not have the ability to mask suffer greatly in the world, very greatly. And we, I think it's important to remember that, that for some people, masking is a choice.
19:00
I mean, that was kind of the point of the article I read. For some people, it's a choice sometimes. And for some people, it's not a choice at all. And there's all kinds of shades in between that. But the bottom line is, for me, I put masking down as an adaptive mechanism because I think it is.
19:17
And I think sometimes it's helpful. I think sometimes it's a shield against the world and that it's good to have. So I don't completely, as much as I hate masking, as much damage as it has caused me, I don't completely... demonize it because I think it does have a function like a lot of kind of adaptive
19:40
maladaptive things have a function so secondly unmasking is a good thing and unmasking isn't necessarily always about hyper performance it could be about recognizing limits honoring our own limitations, honoring our own sensitivities, rejecting normalizing behavior. It could be subtle things. It doesn't have to be performance related. It could be subtle things based on interstates.
20:09
And that's pretty much it. I think that working to unmask at our own level, like I feel like my level of unmasking is lower than the level some people talk about. But I think working to unmask at our own level is Highly beneficial, and I think that it's something we need to keep dialoguing about.
20:31
I think we need to keep making people aware of our interstates to the best of our abilities. I find it really hard, but I think it's worth doing. So that's it. This is my podcast, my first podcast totally dedicated to masking. I am going to have a few more. I'm honestly not sure what I'm doing next time.
20:50
I forgot to look, but so it'll be a surprise. Sorry about that. I'm doing the podcast on the first and third Friday of the month. So you'll see me next month on the first Friday. And if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me, leave a comment, or you could contact me on Substack.
21:09
My Substack is barbaragraver.substack.com. The name of the Substack is Writing on the Spectrum. I'll include a link. That's a good way to connect with me if you sign up for my publication. It's free. You'll get all the, all the podcasts. You'll get all of my blog posts. Some are on autism, some are on writing,
21:32
some are on metaphysics because that's my special interest, but you'll get the blog posts and the media and everything if you sign up for that. And you can also follow this podcast on all, pretty much all the major podcast apps. If you need closed captioned, You might want to look at it either on my podcast site,
21:52
which is autisticpov.com, or look at it on the Podbean app because I don't have closed caption on any other platforms that I'm aware of. I've only been able to set it up for Podbean. So I think that's it. Best way to stay in touch is the newsletter, the sub stack.
22:13
And I will see you guys again in May. Can't believe I'm saying that. And thank you so much for listening.
___________
Theme music by the Caffeine Creek Band

Dysregulation, Creativity & Special Interests: An Autistic Perspective EP 8

How does dysregulation impact creativity and our special interests? And what does this mean to autistic individuals (like me) who might already be struggling to identify their emotional states and stressors?
In this episode, I discuss my own experience with dysregulation and creativity and share insights from autistic blogger and therapist Karen Sheriff and podcaster and neuropsychologist Dr. Theresa Regan. 
The specific media resources mentioned in this episode are:
The dichotomy of being an autistic creator (Sheriff)
Powerful Self-Care: Awareness of the Internal (Reagan)
To read about the changes I made as a direct result of my dysregulation event please see What Writing on the Spectrum Means to Me
To get all of my media via email please subscribe to Writing on the Spectrum (always free) to get follow the podcast only, please follow in your favorite podcast app.
Please note:  If you need closed captioning, please listen via the podbean app or through my site: AutisticPOV.com
And if you like this content please follow and / or share!
EPISODE 8 TRANSCRIPT:
If your podcast provider cuts off the transcript, you can see the full transcript for this episode at AutisticPOV.com
Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hi everybody, this is Barbara Graver. Thank you for joining me today on Autistic POV. Today we're going to talk about dysregulation and creativity because this is
0:32
something that has been an issue for me and I think it's an issue for a lot of autistic people who are creative. And some of this I'm going to base on a recent series by Teresa Regan, who is a neuropsychologist who has a podcast called Autism in the Adult. Dr. Regan is not autistic,
0:58
but she does have a really strong background in autism and neurobiology and a son who's autistic. And I like her podcast. So she did a series on self-care, actually, that I thought was relevant to our topic of dysregulation in relationship to creativity. And she talked a lot about escape as a coping mechanism. And essentially,
1:23
she was talking about special interests, but also other escape behaviors, such as a comforting environment or person, things along that line. And she had a kind of different take on that, I think, than I do. She said that engaging in these kind of coping mechanisms tend to make us smaller.
1:44
And I'm not sure that she means that across the board. I mean, she did say they're not detrimental necessarily, but she does, she personally feels they're limiting. I don't always agree with that. And the reason I don't agree with that is because I personally feel that my own special interests are actually expansive.
2:08
I feel that my world has expanded through my special interests. So we're not exactly on the same page, I don't think, with the nature of the escape. But she did make some good points about it, and she listed some interesting strategies. And she talked about how autistics might not know
2:33
what's going on inside of us which is certainly true and it seems kind of counterintuitive because we are very sensitive but at the same time we don't notice certain things we might not notice when physical things for example like when we're
2:50
cold or hungry and and we also have a hard time or at least in my case I have a hard time identifying emotional states So Dr. Regan talks about recognizing when we are about to be put into a fight, flight, or freeze kind of situation.
3:13
And she looks at special interests or these kind of escape mechanisms as a flight reaction. And I think she's absolutely right in this. I think that's absolutely true. Again, I think that there's a value to it, but I also think it can be problematic. And I've had that issue myself. I recently,
3:40
and I talk about this a little on the blog, I recently finished my fiction story, my vampire story, and I sent it to Kindle to read it on Kindle. And when I did, I hated it. It was kind of the equivalent... When I was a kid, my father, almost everybody in my family were artists.
4:01
And my father, whenever I finished something, he'd look at it and he'd say, turn it upside down. And so you turn it upside down and you automatically see it just jogs your brain so that you automatically see everything that's wrong with it. It works. I don't know why, but it does work.
4:20
And the same is true of writing. If you write something, and then you print it out or read it on another device, you automatically see things that your mind was just kind of skipping over before. So I sent this story to Kindle, and I was not happy with it, and I thought it was done,
4:39
and it was kind of upsetting, and I decided, you know, I don't think I really want to write fiction at all. I thought, I just want to write about spiritual topics because I did that in the mystic review and I was successful with it.
4:54
And I should just write a book, a book about dreams and do the mystic review and that's it. And I decided, why am I even doing a podcast on autism and creativity if this is the direction I'm going? So I actually took the episodes in this podcast down. I redid the site.
5:13
I put up some old media I had on metaphysical topics. And I decided this was what I was going to do. So it's an interesting reaction. And I think in this case, this is absolutely a stress-induced flight reaction. And a lot of creative people, not only autistic creatives, but a lot of creative people in general, I think,
5:38
succumb to this. But as autistics, we're more likely to fall into this pattern because we do, many of us do routinely escape from stress through our special interests. For me, ever since I was a little kid, projects were my coping mechanism and continues into adulthood. And I'm grateful for this trait. It's, it's,
6:05
helped me to do things like the blog and writing and things in my home that I probably wouldn't have accomplished without this drive to always be engaged in a project. But there is a flip side to it because it's not always logical. And when I decided to completely stop writing fiction and talking about it and
6:31
talking about autism and everything around that, I tore it down. And tearing things down is not, that's not a good thing usually. That's Clarissa Picola Estes in her book, Women Who Run With the Wolves, talks about the goddess Medea, who when she was disappointed in love, killed her children.
6:56
And Dr. Estes says that a lot of women are like that with their creative projects. When they go wrong, they destroy them. So that's what I did. But I wasn't just doing that only. I was doing that because I wanted to escape into a new creative project. And
7:18
Luckily I came to my senses and I reversed all that. I mean, I lost a couple of days of my life doing that, but luckily I did. But my point here is that it's an escape mechanism that could be good or bad. I don't think it makes us smaller. I don't think it's necessarily a limitation.
7:41
I think it can be expansive. I think it could open up the world. I think it can take us wonderful places. But I do acknowledge that it can be destructive too. So I launched into this brand new project. I escaped my stress and my disappointment by launching myself into this new project
8:00
that was going to be all about metaphysics and dream work which is a special interest of mine and always will be but it's not it's not the central thing it's not what I want to be the central thing so but I did it and it was interesting because I read a really good blog
8:18
article about that and I will put I will put the name of the author in the show notes but her name is Karen Sherriff And she has a blog on Substack that I read. And she expanded on something Dr. Regan said. Dr. Regan said, when we escape like this, we should look at it for clues,
8:43
clues about what is going on in our interstates. And I thought that Karen took it a little further because she said how she looks at it is in terms of let's investigate. And I love that. And she had had experience where she had put
8:59
a post on tiktok i believe and it had gone viral so she was constantly getting pinged about this post and trying to keep up with responding and and dealing with all that and it was dysregulating for her she got very stressed and she took down
9:16
all her social media and she started thinking about how she wanted to move i think to devon She wanted to move essentially to the country. And she was actually like thinking about this. So this she was in a flight reaction. She was trying to escape.
9:31
And she said when she kind of came to her senses, she thought, well. let's investigate. And I love that approach. And she looked at what she was going to do almost the way you would look at a dream, which I think is brilliant. And it's along the lines of what Dr. Regan was saying,
9:49
but in a little more expansive way, I thought. And so she said to herself, well, what does Devin or wherever she was going to move represent? Like it represents peace and freedom and solitude and all these things that She was lacking all these things that the situation with the social media blowing
10:09
up and not being able to handle it. She needed these things. So it made sense to escape to that. And I thought, wow, that's kind of what happened to me when I decided to take down all my autism media and all my things about creativity and fiction writing.
10:28
It was because I wanted to launch myself into completely focusing on metaphysics. And there's nothing wrong with focusing on metaphysics. I mean, I kept a metaphysical blog, The Mystic Review, since 2010, and I still write in it. And it's a special interest, and it always will be.
10:47
But since I got my autism diagnosis, spirituality is not the overriding theme of my life. And it's kind of like, and I've mentioned this before, but Sarah Gibbs in her book, Drama Queen, talks about how And relationships were the overriding theme of her life until she got her autism diagnosis.
11:06
And then she realized that she was looking for answers in relationships with men. And now she had the answer, which was autism. So she didn't have to do that anymore. And a similar thing happened to me with spirituality. I'm still very interested in metaphysics. I still write down my dreams. I attend a dream group.
11:25
I'm really into young and dreams. And it'll always be a part of me. But it doesn't define me anymore. It's not who I am. It's not the place where I'm trying to find the answers. I mean, dream guidance, yes. I think it's a really good compensating mechanism for autistics. Well, maybe do an episode on that.
11:44
But it's not who I am anymore. So going off to chuck all my old media and escape into this metaphysical media was... was an odd move. It was a dysfunctional, dysregulated thing to do. So I thought, let's investigate, you know, what does that mean? What does metaphysics mean? And it happened to mean the things that I needed.
12:10
And these were things, this was all about interstates. This is about doing things in the external world to try to regulate our inner state. And this is something that most autistic people have had to learn to do for themselves because the neurotypical world, I think the neurotypical world is very regulating for neurotypicals,
12:34
but it's not very regulating for us. So that's part of the reason, in my opinion, we develop special interests and that we have this relationship really brilliant, beautiful way of escaping that can get out of hand. And I think it's good to be aware of that. So I found all of this material really interesting.
12:55
And I think it's something to be aware of as creatives. I have personally like cognitive therapy. It's great in theory, but it's personally, and if you like it, I don't want to discourage you, but it's personally never worked for me. I go from zero to 60 in the blink of an eye.
13:15
My escape mechanism of plunging into projects is something that happens almost instantaneously for me. I don't think I'll ever learn to like nip it in the bud. But that doesn't mean you can't wake up and think, what am I doing? Where am I? And why? And I think it's the why that's important. So... Being creative is stressful.
13:40
It's very stressful. There's all kinds of things mixed up in it, like perfectionism and being criticized and fear of being seen. There's so many things that, particularly to autistic individuals who may have history with being criticized or bullied or dismissed or made to feel all kinds of terrible things, It's tough for us.
14:03
It's tough to do things and to put it out there. And it's not anything that you should beat yourself up for if you find it dysregulating, because at times it will be. It just will. And sometimes when you get dysregulated and you escape into like some crazy kind of direction you didn't expect to go in,
14:21
you discover something amazing. And that's happened to me before. But sometimes you're just kind of, making a mistake, you're kind of leaving something important behind. And I think it's important to be able to see that to pull yourself back. So that's what I wanted to talk about today.
14:38
I'm sure there's more to say on this, more to say on escape mechanisms, more to say on stress. But this is what just one small aspect of it that I felt applied to me. So I made the decision that from now on, when I find myself changing directions unexpectedly I'm going to just stop and say let's investigate
15:01
and and see what might have precipitated it and see why I might have chose that thing and then take that insight and kind of factor back into what I'm doing which I think is what I did I realized through that episode I realized that I was pushing myself too hard I needed to dial things back.
15:25
I needed to adjust my expectations and my own writing ability. I needed to take steps. That doesn't mean something like that will never happen again. Probably the first bad Amazon review I get on this story, I'm going to freak out and take it off Amazon, but eventually probably put it back up. But my point is,
15:46
There's insight to be had from these things. It's not a total waste of time. And I think it's important that we look at it. And there are times it does hurt us. I still don't think it makes us smaller, but I think it does hurt us at times. So that's what I wanted to talk about today.
16:02
I know it's kind of a quick episode, but I hope it was helpful. And I hope to see you again next time. I'm doing the podcast now on the first and third Fridays of the month. So I will see you guys again in the third Friday of April. And until then, this is Barbara Graver of Autistic POV.
16:25
And thank you very much for listening.
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Theme music by the Caffeine Creek Band

7 Ways Fiction Writing Can Benefit Autistic People EP 7

In this episode of Autistic POV, I share 7 ways writing fiction has been helpful to me. Some of these benefits go all the way back to childhood. I discovered others as I wrote my upcoming vampire novel (Trancing Miranda). I wanted to share this info because I think that other autistic people might find this way of looking at storytelling helpful. Having said that, please note—these are my own personal perks. Not all autistic writers will have the same experience and I would love to hear any differences that might pop up on your list!
Also, please note, these are interpersonal benefits that have nothing to do with building a business or making money.   
Check out my blog  at barbaragraver.substack.com. You can read the blog without signing up for the free subscription, but if you subscribe, you'll get articles and media via email PLUS updates on my vampire novel (including discounts and freebies)
If you like this content, please consider subscribing, liking, commenting or sharing—or all of the above!
And thank you for listening!!!
UPDATE: Regarding the blog name change. It seemed confusing to have the blog and podcast share a name, so I changed the blog name to Writing on the Spectrum!
Please Note:  If you need closed captioning, please listen via the podbean app or through my site: AutisticPOV.com
And if you like this content please consider following the show!
EPISODE 7 TRANSCRIPT:
If your podcast provider cuts off the transcript, you can see the full transcript for this episode at AutisticPOV.com
Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hi everybody, this is Barbara Graver. Thank you for joining me today on Autistic POV. Today we're going to be talking about my personal experience with fiction writing
0:33
and some of the benefits of fiction writing that I've encountered that I think would probably carry over to a lot of autistic people. And I wanted to do this now because I'm going to be publishing my first vampire novel hopefully this month. I kind of hoped I could get the book out there before I did the podcast.
0:55
It didn't turn out that way and that's okay. And I'll talk a little bit more about the book as we go. But I just want to go over fiction writing and why I think it's a good process for a lot of autistic people. I'm not saying everyone needs to write stories.
1:13
Certainly if you don't feel called to do it, you shouldn't feel that it's a necessary process. But for anyone who feels that call to tell a story and to live in their imagination and to share their experience through story. I strongly encourage you to do it and in this episode I'm going to try to give you
1:34
a couple reasons why I think it's beneficial for a lot of autistic people. So I do want to start with a couple of updates and the first is that I renamed my blog again. I was calling it Writing After Dark which was nice but kind of generic. So I've changed it to autistic POV, like the podcast.
1:58
And the reason I did that is because I really want to focus on the intersection between autism and creativity. And I will write other posts, certainly. I'll do a few book reviews. I'll do... Some straight stuff just about autism, just like I do here. But I do want that to be a theme with it.
2:20
I don't want it just to be another blog on Substack about writing. I want it to be more specific. So that's my first update. And I'll include a link for the blog in the description, certainly. And my second update has to do with the memoir that I talked about in our last episode.
2:41
And if you remember in the last episode, which was on nonfiction writing and memoir writing and sharing our story and various ways of sharing our story across various platforms, I talked about how I'd written this memoir and it had ended up really being more about spirituality. than it was about autism. And I didn't think that was appropriate.
3:04
And I still don't. I still don't think that's appropriate. But just sharing my autism story just didn't feel like enough to me. I think it's partially because of my identity as an autistic person. It's very difficult for me to divide my identity and from the things that interest me. And it's funny because I've been watching Elementary.
3:28
It's a show that's on Amazon Prime and I really like it. It's not perfect, but I like it. And there was one scene where Sherlock and Watson were talking and Watson was saying how she needed more. She needed her own life. She needed her own space. And she said, your whole life is what you do.
3:48
And I'm not like that. And that was a fact of the show. That's a fact of his character. He relates to people through what he does. And that's pretty much all he knows. And that's pretty much all I know, too. And so writing an autism story independent of a special interest was a big, big problem for me.
4:09
And I just realized suddenly I picked the wrong special interest. Spirituality is not as much a factor in my life now as it was. And I've talked about this before. I'll talk about it maybe more. But it's not the factor in my life that it once was. After I got my diagnosis, I kind of got my answer.
4:27
And I stopped looking for it outside myself the way I did before. So spirituality was not a good fit. And I thought, what is, like, what is my, really my essential special interest? And my essential special interest is writing and creativity. So I am going to do, I'm going to do the memoir,
4:49
but it's going to be about autism and writing from my perspective. It's not just going to be about my life is autistic or autism and spirituality or whatever. That's the focus. And I'll share life experience in it, obviously, but still, that's the theme. That's the focus. That's what I want to talk about. So that's back on.
5:08
I just wanted to share that with you guys. So as far as our topic goes, Autism and storytelling is a really fascinating intersection for me personally, and I want to share a little bit about my experience with that and some of the reasons why storytelling or fiction writing is, I feel,
5:31
a really good activity for a lot of autistic people, or at least why it's been a really good activity for me. And I know you hear a lot online about writing and building a platform and making money and all that stuff, but I'm not going to talk about any of that. That's not even on my list.
5:52
So if it's on yours, you're going to have to look for a more neurotypical kind of approach because that's not what I'm looking at here. I'm looking at how writing fiction can help us in our heart or in our soul. I mean, that's what's important to me.
6:07
So I came out with seven reasons that I feel writing fiction has helped me. May not resonate for you, but I'm going to share them. And the first one is it serves as a refuge or escape. And that was my experience in childhood. I mean, that essentially was my childhood.
6:27
I spent a lot of time lost in fantasy. I would draw. I would draw books. from my different fantasies. I would write short stories as I got older and illustrate them and bind them into books and really go the whole way with that.
6:46
And that was my way of kind of processing a world that was really pretty antagonistic to me. Another way that I have found writing fiction to be really, really helpful is that it provides a way I could connect with others. And this, again, goes all the way back to childhood.
7:08
When I was a kid, I grew up in the 60s and 70s. I mentioned this before. But we didn't have all the stuff kids have now. We had to kind of make up our own worlds. And that's one thing I was good at. I was good at crafting those scenarios. And that actually gave me a way...
7:23
to interact with other children, kind of like Sherlock interacts with people through his detective work. I was able to interact with other kids for a time. It didn't last forever through that. And I think if we write stories now, there's still that potential to connect with other people through our fiction. I mean, they may not understand,
7:45
like if we're writing about dark themes like I do, like my vampire story is dark. It's not... It's not super explicit, it's not super violent, but it is dark. And I think that... It's kind of a double-edged sword because there are going to be a lot of people who kind of freak out about that stuff.
8:04
But I think there are a lot of people, too, who will be hopefully, hopefully with my story, I'm envisioning like, I don't know, I'm envisioning bad Amazon reviews at this point. But I think there is that potential for people to see something in your story that they identify with and to make connections through that.
8:25
And I think that's important. My third thing is using story as a form of emotional healing. And I think as autistics, given our unique neurobiology, we run afoul of social norms and relationships all the time. And that generates a lot of unresolved trauma.
8:46
A lot of it goes back to before we even had language for what was happening. And we carry that with us. And most of us carry that with us. And stories are a way to explore that stuff and to express it, to bring it on into the light, as Jung would advise, and to look at it.
9:07
And to reframe it. And I think that's something I was doing, honestly, as a little, little kid when I was still drawing my stories before I was even using text. I was reframing things that happened to me. I can see it now.
9:24
and I think we could still do that and like my story my vampire story it's called trancing Miranda should be out soon there's a lot of dark stuff in that there's trauma and codependency and addiction and violence and a lot of dark stuff but I'm reframing it and when we take things like that
9:48
things that people maybe condemned us for didn't understand at some point in our life or left us for or used against us or whatever happened we can express it in a story which is healthy in and of itself and then we can reframe it we could give it
10:05
the ending we want and there there's a power in that there's a real power in that i believe there is So that is point, let's see, one, two, three. I don't know why I didn't number them. That's number three. Number four is increased understanding of ourselves and others. And I think the way this works is as autistics,
10:27
as we are often, often told, we don't have theory of mind. We don't understand how other people think. And I think that's true to a degree, although some of us are quite insightful, I think. I see through people all the time, but
10:41
At the same time, I have no clue what they're talking about often, so it's a weird thing. But also we lack insight into ourselves. So in writing, we can look at the things that come out and we can ask ourselves, why am I writing about this? Why am I writing about somebody who's been rejected again?
11:02
Like, why am I writing about someone who's been hurt again? Why am I writing about someone who's addicted again? And those things aren't always like... They aren't always direct equivalencies. I mean, you might write about addiction, and I think Infinite Jest is a good example of this.
11:18
Just because you write about drug addiction or some kind of violent thing doesn't necessarily mean you've undergone it. And I don't think people should make that assumption because it can be symbolic. But the point is, we're exploring something that is a problem for us or is symbolic of a problem we have for a reason.
11:39
And as we do that in our writing, we can gain greater understanding of ourselves. And we can also gain, I think, greater understanding of other people. Because in my stories, for example... As I was told in critique, my characters were very, very flawed. They were very flawed. It upset some people. They were so flawed.
12:03
But what I was doing and what was helpful to me was I'm showing these imperfect, flawed people, and then I'm showing someone else's. forgiving them for that someone else understanding it someone else bringing them home and saying this is okay like to me that's really really powerful probably
12:24
because it doesn't really happen a lot in real life but you can make it happen in a story and I think that's important I think it's important thing to do I think it's a healthy thing to do when unfortunately some people won't get it there's not much
12:38
you could do about that I mean that's that's the flip side of writing that's always difficult And I think you could also get kind of on a deeper level, and this is my one, two, three, four, fifth point, I guess, like a deep, deep insight. And that, that almost goes into the realm of symbolism.
12:57
Like if you have a dream, say, you look at your dream and you say, okay, well, what's a house? Does a house represent me? Like what's a car? Does a car represent my journey? Like however, however, you think of your own personal symbolism and you could decipher your dream and what
13:15
your subconscious is trying to tell you through that method. And you can do the same exact thing with writing. That's what literary analysis does. And I love literary analysis. So, I mean, you can look at things like you could look at the structure, the story, you could look at
13:30
color you could look at description you could look at all the all those things in your story and learn something about your subconscious self you didn't know before just like when you analyze the dream and and I think that's worth doing it's kind
13:43
of funny because we do that with other people's work but we don't necessarily do it with our own and I think we should be doing it with our own you know the creative process is is a subconscious process very often and a lot of stuff comes out with that that's important
14:00
Another way, I think, and this I think is number six, is the improved sense of identity. Autistics are often told that they have, and I know that's true of me, I have a poor sense of internal coherence, like Sherlock on the show. Who is he if he's not a detective? He's not anything. And that's how I feel.
14:20
Who am I if I'm not a writer? And I'm not saying I don't have other roles. I mean, I have kids, adult kids. I have all my people in my life. I have other roles. But we're talking about who we are in an essential sense. Usually we identify with something very strongly. It could be a special interest.
14:42
And That's, that's not bad, but we also tend to have oftentimes a poor understanding of our life independent of that. Like our life is a narrative, like our life story. And I talked about this last time when we were talking about writing a memoir, that writing a memoir can help us nail that down, help us understand that,
15:02
help us arrive at meaning through our life narrative. And a story can do that, too, because it's like if you think of a dream, like all the characters in a dream are aspects of yourself, all the characters in a story are aspects of yourself, too. And whether you want to own that or not,
15:19
that's where they come from, unless you're really basing it on some external thing. So I think as you see what those characters do and how things play out and you construct the theme I mean I have a lot of trouble with arcs and themes but you
15:38
construct a theme ideally at least a bit of a theme and that can help you see well I'm a person who's like this character in this way and this is their arc and maybe this is my arc too, or maybe this is what I want for my arc, or maybe this is kind of who I am.
15:57
And so I think it can help with our sense of identity, not just identity as a writer, but identity as a person. And I think another thing is just plain doing it just to be creative, just to express yourself, just to have fun. And autistic creativity, I think I'm beginning to feel is very different from neurotypical creativity.
16:20
I'm not sure that's a bad thing. I'm not sure, and I mentioned this before, that we should be modeling our work off neurotypical work and standard genre expectations. And I think There's something to be said for embracing our own type of creativity and avoiding professional developmental editing, possibly even, and just putting out what we want to write.
16:46
I mean, that's what I did. My book, my vampire story, Trancing Miranda. It's my story. I put it through a critique. It was a difficult process. I'm glad I did it. It was helpful, but it was very, very difficult. Not everybody was nice.
17:01
And I think that I put it through beta reading, and one person just hated the ending. And she was right. I changed it. But I didn't change it a lot. It's still my story. And I want it to be my story. And even if people don't like it, I mean, even if people say,
17:18
This is not what a paranormal romance is supposed to be because it's not. It isn't. I'll admit that. It's a story I need to tell. And I think there's value in that. I mean, I think if there's value in any of this, there's value in that. And all of this, these are my seven things anyhow.
17:38
All of these things, and I could read through them, refuge or escape, connecting with others, emotional healing, increased understanding of ourselves and others, deep subconscious personal insight, improved sense of identity, creative self-expression slash autistic creativity. All of these things really, really open us up to criticism.
18:02
I mean, it makes us vulnerable because you're putting so much of yourself in there. You're not really filtering. When you write for these reasons, like when you write to market or when you write to fulfill genre expectations, there's a layer between you and that creative work. When you're writing to better connect with yourself and better understand yourself
18:24
and deal with shadow elements and express personal truths, you don't have that kind of armor. So when people, and they will, I mean, this is my first book I'm putting on Amazon. And I told myself, if people are really mean, I'm just going to take it off.
18:40
But even going through critique, like people could be really, really brutal. And it's hard, particularly like if people actually like do name calling, like they say, your character's a jerk or a creep or an idiot. Like it's very hard to absorb that when you're actually writing about yourself and you know it.
19:01
So all of these things, they make us very, very vulnerable. And most of us have kind of had that experience of being low hanging fruit for bullies all our lives. And it can be very triggering when people criticize our work because We're like Sherlock. They're criticizing our work. They're criticizing us. It's different. It's different for us.
19:23
And a lot of us have past experience with feeling shamed. And it's tough. It could be triggering. And it takes a lot of courage to put something out there. This is the first time I've done it. I mean, I've written hundreds of thousands of words over the course of my life, written multiple manuscripts.
19:41
And this is the first time I'm putting anything out there. And I'm kind of scared, but I decided to do it anyhow because I want other people to do it. I mean, that's my reason. I'm not putting it out there because I think it's going to make money. I know it's not going to make money.
19:56
I'm putting it out there because I want other autistic people to do this too. And the flip side of that is you don't have to. You don't have to do that. You could be like me. You could write all your life and write for yourself.
20:10
Write for none of the reasons on this list have anything to do with audience. None of them. You can write for yourself and reap all the benefits. There's no reason you have to put it out there if you don't want to. Nobody should feel like they have to. So that is it for this time.
20:29
I hope this is helpful. I hope it'll encourage you to write fiction, even if it doesn't encourage you to publish it. And I will be back probably. I'm still doing the podcast once a month for now because I just get overwhelmed if I try to do it more.
20:44
And fiction book, I hope it's going to come out before the end of the month. I'll... shoot an update out I guess through my newsletter so if you're interested sign up for that I'm gonna put it I think on Kindle Unlimited I'm not gonna make it
21:00
expensive I'm gonna offer it for free when I can I mean this is more proof of concept than trying to make a living as a writer and if you like the content please consider liking or following or subscribing or sharing or commenting or whatever you feel called to do or all of the above because that really,
21:21
really helps. It helps like with the algorithms and it just is really super encouraging to me. So that's it for this month. So until then, this is Barbara Graver of Autistic POV and thank you very much for listening.
______________________
Theme music by the Caffeine Creek Band

Sharing Our Autism Story EP 6

There is more than one way to share our autism story! In this episode of Autistic POV, I talk about my experience sharing my own story through memoir writing and online media—with a focus on what did and didn't work for me and why
I also chat about my substack blog, my special interest blog and other resources. I promised to provide links these, so here they are:
Metaphysical blog (special interest blog) MysticReview.com
Substack blog (some special interest posts plus autism podcast episodes and articles) BarbaraGraver.substack.com
My article Autism and the Narrative Process (barbaragraver.substack.com/p/autism-and-the-narrative-process) touches on Julie Brown's book Writers on the Spectrum. The book is more geared toward fiction, but I found it helpful. 
Link for my Podbean website (as mentioned in the episode): AutisticPOV.com
My autism diagnosis / bipolar misdiagnosis episode is EP 3 in app or online at https://www.autisticpov.com/e/late-autism-diagnosis-bipolar-misdiagnosis-and-being-vulnerable/ 
Please consider following and / or sharing the podcast! 
If you need closed captioning, please listen via the podbean app or through my site: AutisticPOV.com
EPISODE 6 TRANSCRIPT:
If your podcast provider cuts off the transcript, you can see the full transcript for this episode at AutisticPOV.com
Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hi everybody, this is Barbara Graver. Thank you for joining me today on Autistic POV. Today we're going to be talking about sharing our story.
0:29
And I specifically called this episode sharing our story versus writing our memoir because I think it's important to acknowledge that there are a lot of different ways we can share our autistic experience. And writing a memoir is only one of those ways. So I love autistic memoirs.
0:50
I've read a bunch of them and I really, really enjoy them. And I decided that I should try to write one too. I wanted to talk about my experience growing up as an undiagnosed autistic and I started it. I actually wrote it. But I had a lot of trouble with it.
1:09
I had a lot of trouble with it for different reasons. And this is something that a lot of autistics struggle with. It's kind of ironic because I am a writer. I consider myself a writer. I've written a couple of novels, but I really, really struggle with writing novels. And there's a reason for this.
1:31
And writing the memoir was easier in a way because it's chronological. You don't have to struggle with structure to the same degree you do a novel. But there is still kind of a genre expectation, I think, with a standard memoir. And maybe this is something that needs to be challenged.
1:51
But the idea with a standard memoir is usually that there will be a theme. It's not an autobiography. A memoir is not an autobiography. It's not someone's story from birth to the point they write it. It's the story of a specific aspect of their life.
2:10
So with the autism memoir, the expectation is going to be that aspect is autism. And I think that's what made it hard for me because as an autistic person, Everything in my life is related to autism because my autistic way of looking at the world is global. There's no way I could step away from that.
2:34
Everything I've done in my life has been, and everything I've seen and experienced has been through an autistic lens. So I found when I tried to write a memoir about is that I just couldn't stay in my lane. And that's something, I read a book, and I think I mentioned it before,
2:52
but it was by a literary critic named Julie Brown, and the name of the book was Writers on the Spectrum. And in that book, she analyzed the writing of eight different very famous writers who are widely thought to be autistic. And she came up with these problems that all of them had, and they all had these problems.
3:11
And reading that was really helpful for me, Because at the time, I was struggling with writing fiction. And I saw a lot of those issues in my own writing. And it was helpful for me. I've written a couple novels. One is going to be coming out, I think, before the end of the year.
3:28
But they were so hard for me to write. And I actually think if I try another one, when I try, I've already got another fiction novel. story started, but I think the next time I might actually try a short story cycle because of issues I have around narration.
3:47
And this is common, and I'm not sharing this to discourage anyone. I mean, obviously a lot of people write autism memoirs. They write them brilliantly. I have an episode called autistic POV reading roundup where I talk about four books that I really love that
4:04
I read recently and three of them are autism memoirs and I love them and I think everyone should read them especially if you think you might want to write one you should definitely read a bunch that's the best thing you can do as a writer to prepare you to write is to read what other people do
4:21
But I think the issues I have personally with narration, and obviously every autistic does not have these problems, but the problems I have are not uncommon. And one of them is fulfilling genre expectations. This was something Julie Brown actually identified when she did literary analysis of the work of these writers.
4:44
one way this is a problem is because of what Bernard Rimland, who's a researcher, calls the autistic tendency to view life as an incoherent series of unconnected events. And that makes structuring anything difficult, even a story you tell, even a podcast, even to a degree a blog post.
5:05
But the longer the piece, the more difficult this could be. And a memoir is essentially a chronological story and you can tell it chronologically but what I found is that I still had trouble staying in the quote autism lane I kept veering into spirituality and that's another issue because if you have somebody buying an autism memoir they
5:32
know this was my problem they don't necessarily want to read a book that's like half or two thirds about the author's spiritual experiences that's not why they bought it And it's not fair to them and it's not fair to you because odds are you're not going to get great reviews from that.
5:46
But mostly it's not what it's supposed to be. And that was the problem I ran into. And I have this debate with fiction. Do we really as autistics want to be about fulfilling traditional neurotypical genre expectations? I'm not sure. I think that's a good conversation to have. And I'd be curious what other people think about it.
6:08
But if you're looking to write a traditional memoir, you may have problems staying in your lane, potentially, or you may not. This isn't everybody. But you may find it a little bit difficult to structure things. And this is something that has been identified as an issue at times for some autistics. And autism researcher Matthew Belmont says,
6:33
and I love this, that we move from chaos to meaning through narration. So in other words, that's how we make sense of our lives. And it makes me wonder if the difficulties some autistics may have with narration, the difficulties I have with narrating,
6:49
might have to do with the difficulty I have in having a coherent sense of self. I was listening to This Jungian Life, which is a great podcast. And they were talking about, and I forget the name of the episode, but they were talking about your narrative, your life narrative and how that, impacts your sense of identity.
7:10
So it's all connected. I think it's all connected. And I do think that writing a memoir, like I'm glad I wrote it, even though I'm not going to publish it, at least not in its present form. I think writing a memoir is good because I think it helps you reflect on your life.
7:26
I think it helps you see your life more as a narrative. Even if you don't, like I didn't end up, I felt with the kind of narrative that other people would want to read. But it helps you see your own life as a narrative, which is a really valuable thing, I think.
7:41
So it helps us make sense of our lives, and it helps us to share our experience. It can be validating for other people. It can help other people feel less alone. I'm not against writing an autistic memoir at all. I think it's a great exercise, and I think more people should do it.
8:01
so if you feel called to write a memoir you should definitely try it and the time you put into it will not be wasted because even if like in my case I feel at this point I probably won't publish it I may change my mind about that and and try to
8:15
rewrite it but even if you don't publish it it's still a valuable exercise I think it's still worth doing and a memoir does not have to be super long so Decide if you want to fulfill genre expectations or if you just want to do your own thing.
8:33
I kind of feel like I'm getting to a place in life where I feel we should just be doing our own things creatively. We shouldn't be worrying about reviews and critique groups and whether other people get us and get our work and our creativity because I'm not sure that the traditional accepted
8:54
expected way is better i'm not sure that at all but anyhow it's that's a hard thing to do creatively because if you go outside what people are looking for you're you're taking a risk you're definitely taking a risk So definitely if you want to do it, read other memoirs, think about it,
9:15
decide what kind of memoir you want to write. Possibly check out Julie Brown's book, Writers on the Spectrum. It's not a cheap book, even in paperback. I bought it, but it's something you could probably get an interlibrary loan. So you might check that out just to be aware of some of the common pitfalls that
9:34
autistic writers go through. And if there's an interest, I could do an episode just on that probably. But I want to talk about two different ways you can share your story because this is kind of what I'm doing. There was a time when the only way you could share your story was to write a book.
9:50
That's not the case anymore. We have blogs and podcasts and YouTube and even social media. Like there's some people who use things like Instagram to share their stories. I don't do that personally, but I think if it works for you to use Instagram or Facebook to share your story, Do it. Go for it. Definitely.
10:11
To me, I like blogs. I like podcasts. I like YouTube. And what I've kind of done, and this has sort of worked for me because writing my memoir, I just could not keep my special interests out of it. And it ended up being more about my special interests, I think, than it was about autism.
10:28
And I didn't feel that was working. And I kind of didn't know how to fix it. Maybe I'll figure it out. Maybe I'll publish it as is. But as of right now, it was like half, maybe a quarter autism memoir and three quarters spiritual memoir. So it didn't work.
10:44
But what I've done, I have a blog called The Mystic Review, mysticreview.com. And that's purely about metaphysical topics. I mean, I talk about, I call it like, traditions, mysteries, and something, and dreams. But I talk about dreams. I talk about Carl Jung. I talk about spiritual experience. I talk about, sometimes I talk about faith.
11:09
And I talk about various topics that interest me about metaphysics. I've always been fascinated by the supernatural, the paranormal. And I can talk about all that in the blog. I can talk about anything from paranormal investigations to God in that blog. And that's perfect for me. And that blog actually does really well.
11:32
Like a lot of people read it. And then when I want to talk about autism, and I try to stay in my lane, I find the podcast works pretty well for that because it's short. I keep it pretty short. This one's going a little longer. And that's a way to tell your story.
11:51
I mean, I told my story on here. I have an episode that I think I'll link to it in the description, but it's about being misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder, being involved with the mental health system for 20 years. That's a big story. And I was able to kind of tell it, I felt, in a podcast episode.
12:11
And it's a way to share. It's a valid way to share. And I like podcasting because for me, it's easy. I like YouTube also. I do metaphysical YouTube things from time to time. And I do share this podcast on YouTube. But I don't do video because usually when I do these episodes on autism,
12:32
I have to edit them because I go off track. And that's what I like about the podcast. I could do that. If I go off track, I could take it out. When I do a short YouTube on metaphysics, that's not so much a problem because that's a special interest. And I also have a sub stack.
12:48
And on sub stack, I share my podcast episodes on autism. And I share some of my metaphysical posts, not all of them. But I share a lot of different content on that, and I kind of don't care. I mean, that's sort of fragmented, and I don't really care. I just do it. And that's another option. I mean,
13:09
there are a lot of options for blogging, but I think Substack is kind of nice because there's a growing autism community on Substack. And if you decide to do it, if you decide to go on Substack, look me up. I'm Barbara Graver. I call my Substack writing after dark, but... I'll put a link to that too.
13:30
So Substack is definitely an option. And the nice thing about blogging or even podcasting or YouTube, you can end up with written content that you can repurpose if you want for an e-book at a later date. So you don't necessarily even have to look at it as either or.
13:47
You could do these things and very easily generate a transcript and And then you can repurpose it for a book if you feel you want to do that at some point. And getting an editor is also an option. But like Julie Brown says in her book, which I thought was a really good point,
14:05
she says that if we heavily edit these stories to make them more acceptable to neurotypicals, are we kind of negating the autistic creativity of them? And that's something I haven't completely come to terms with yet, but I feel like I need to. And the other nice thing,
14:24
last thing I'll say about podcasting that I think is nice is if you don't really have anybody to talk to in your everyday life about autism, like I don't, I do see autism therapist and she's good, but that's like once every two weeks. And if you don't really have anyone to talk to about these things,
14:42
having a podcast or a YouTube is really nice because you're actually talking, like I'm talking to you about this. And sometimes people comment back or even email you and you can actually have a conversation. And monologuing or just sharing your side of things is kind of an autistic tendency. I think everybody knows that.
15:04
So podcasting and YouTubes can work pretty well because it allows us to do that. We don't have to really, I mean, we should ideally worry about people getting bored, but not in the same way when you've corralled somebody in the kitchen and they really don't want to hear it.
15:18
So my point is there are different ways we could do this. And these are my three things. Writing a traditional memoir, definitely an option. Consider writing kind of avant-garde autistic memoir that doesn't adhere to the expectation. You could do podcasts. I use Podbean. I really like Podbean. I think it's a good deal.
15:40
It gives you a website and it's a nice, a real nice interface, I think. or YouTube, or even social media. These are all options, and it doesn't have to be one or the other. You could start where you're at with what you're comfortable with, and then you can see where it goes. You could build.
15:59
And I think that more of us need to do this, however we do it. I think we need to keep sharing our story, because I hate when people say, oh, everyone's autistic, because no, that's not true. Like 2% of people are autistic. We are a minority. And I think anyone who is part of any kind of minority,
16:18
if for no other reason than statistics, you're going to be underrepresented in the media. You're going to be underrepresented in books. You're going to be underrepresented on TV. I mean, that's just what happens. And I think it's important for us to be heard and for us to share our experience. I think it's validating.
16:37
I think it makes other people feel a little less alone. And I think it has the potential to educate people, which really, really needs to happen. That's a whole other topic. I'm not going to talk about that. I'm not going to talk about that today. So this is my episode on sharing our story.
16:55
I don't know if people want more specifics about any of these kind of platforms because I've done them all. Let me know and I'll consider a future episode on that. And I guess that's it. So... I don't actually know what I'm going to do for the next episode, which is unusual. I just realized that.
17:18
I hadn't thought about it. So it's going to be a surprise. Usually I like to say what we're doing next time. This time I'm not sure, so it'll be a surprise. I will put links to all my different stuff if you want to look at it.
17:31
Not that it's perfect, any of it, but it could give you a little bit of an idea of what I do. And if you want, let me know what you think about the idea of... not adhering to genre expectations. Let me know what you think about that. I almost feel like it should be a thing.
17:50
So that's it for today. If you have any questions or comments, please put them on whatever platform you use, and I will look for them. And I'll put a bunch of links at the bottom, and I will surprise you next time. If you like this content, please, please, please feel free to subscribe or follow or share.
18:11
That's highly appreciated. This is still a pretty new podcast, and I found... that I can really only do it about once a month because I've got all these different platforms going. But please do subscribe or share if you like it. It would be very appreciated. So that's it for this time.
18:31
And this is Barbara Graver of Autistic POV. And I want to thank you very much for listening.
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Theme music by the Caffeine Creek Band

Job vs. Calling: An Autistic Perspective EP 5

My experience with working a job vs. following my calling and how this relates to autism. As a late diagnosed autistic, I now feel that my original job choice was actually a form of masking that interfered with my ability to engage in my true calling. In this episode, I talk a bit about how that happened and why I think it's so important for autistic people to embrace their special interests, honor their true selves and follow their unique calling
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Episode 5 Transcript:
(If your podcast provider cuts off the transcript, you can read the full transcript by viewing this episode at AutisticPOV.com.)
0:06
Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hi everybody, this is Barbara Graver. Thank you for joining me on this episode of Autistic POV. Today we're going to be talking about work versus calling.
0:31
In other words, a job versus what you were born to do. And the reason I wanted to do this, well, two reasons. The first was that when I did our last episode, the Autistic Reading Roundup, I talked about several books that I'd read, science fiction books, several memoirs. And these were all books written by autistic authors.
0:54
And all of these authors or their characters struggled to find what it is that they were meant to do. And I think that's a struggle that is pretty much universal, certainly not confined to the neurodiverse. But in all the memoirs I read, autistic people had a lot of trouble with work. They had trouble fitting in at work.
1:16
They had trouble finding the right place to work. They had trouble dealing with colleagues. And I certainly have experienced that too all my life. So I think work is a big issue for a lot of autistic people. Certainly has been for me.
1:30
And I think the key to all that is the kind of work that we choose to do. That's my theory. So a job, it's the even exchange. You give a certain amount of yourself and you get compensated. And what you're giving may not be who you are. It may not move you.
1:51
You may not feel passionate about it. You might not enjoy giving it, but you do it to get the compensation. And sometimes this is okay. This can be okay. I've had jobs where it was okay. But I think a calling, on the other hand, is something you would do even if nobody paid you.
2:08
You would still show up because you love it, because you're not just making an exchange. You're sharing something of yourself that you need to share, that you feel called to share, that you want to share, and that you love to share. And I think this is huge. Particularly for me,
2:27
my special interest was always had to do with, I guess you would say communication, which is a little ironic because I'm very bad at face-to-face communication. But I loved communicating through story. I would draw a series of pictures that told stories. I would stay awake all night pretending and constructing these elaborate worlds in my mind and characters.
2:54
And I would escape into that all the time. And I loved it. I would write the stories down. I would illustrate them. I would make little books. I just loved it. And I always had social problems. But when I was younger,
3:08
I was kind of able to fit in with the neighborhood kids because I grew up in the 60s and 70s. So That was when playing pretend was a big deal because we didn't have a lot of the stuff that kids have now. Like we had to create our own worlds. And I was always really good at that.
3:26
I was the idea person when we would. want to create a pretend scenario, I was the one who did it and did it well and had the ideas and kind of kept things going. And so that was an outlet for me. It was a way I could interact with other kids for a time.
3:45
I mean, obviously, as I got older, that no longer worked. The point is, story was always huge to me. I loved to read. I loved to watch TV. I loved media. I loved to draw. I was very creative and it all kind of revolved around the idea of story. But as I got older,
4:05
I began to look at more and more, look at other people and how other people were living and how other people were acting. And as I experienced more and more social setbacks and social troubles, I decided to model myself more and more after other people. In grade school, I even changed my handwriting.
4:26
I still have two completely different kinds of handwriting because there was a girl who was very popular, and I would actually copy her handwriting. I started to write like her because I wanted to be like her. And I fell into this, this is my dog shaking her collar. I began to mask.
4:47
I began to want to behave like other people because that was safer than behaving like me because I didn't want to target on my back. I didn't want to be different. Even if it meant not being creative, even if it meant not doing the things I loved, I wanted to be like other people.
5:01
I wanted to blend in. So I worked really, really hard at that all through high school. I worked super hard at it in college, and it was stressful. And I'll talk more about masking and the toll it took on me maybe in another episode. But I think picking a career became part of the facade for me.
5:21
I wanted to do something that was normal, quote, and acceptable. And I wanted to be just like everybody else. And it's kind of sad when you think about it, that you have people who maybe could be an author or playwright or artist,
5:39
and they don't want to do any of that stuff because they don't want to be outlier. They want to be like everybody else. And that was where I was at. So I went away to school the first time. I majored in experimental psychology. And I did have an interest in experimental psychology, and I still do.
5:55
But college was not for me. I found college very difficult. I left school. I came back a few years later. And at that point, I had a child and I wanted to be practical. But more than that, I wanted to be ordinary. That was my goal.
6:09
And it's so sad to think now that there are a lot of us who could be extraordinary. And still, what a lot of people still want most is to be just average. And it's sad, but Average does not put a target on your back, and exceptional does. And I wanted to be average,
6:31
and I'm not saying anything against the career I chose because I've known people who, when I decided to be a nurse, and I've known people who have gone into nursing who are exemplary nurses. They're extraordinary nurses. They're so good at it, and they're so gifted at caring for people, and they're so intelligent,
6:50
and they do a great job. And I'm not putting that down. But I didn't choose nursing for those reasons. I chose nursing because it was what everybody else was doing. And I wanted to be like everybody else. So even though I didn't have a great aptitude for science, I mean, I could get through science,
7:10
but my real aptitude was for English. When I took my SATs, my English score was practically double what my math scores were. And Part of that was because I didn't go to school, but also part of it was because that was my natural aptitude was always for English. I always tested really, really high on things like that.
7:34
That was my special interest, and yet I chose to major in nursing because I wanted to be just an average girl with an average family. And I got my nursing license, and I went to work, and I raised a family, and I tried to do things the way other people did things, and it just imploded.
7:58
It definitely imploded. But I think what really is... The main way that it was damaging for me was that I was so sensitive and being in the hospital and being around people who were being brutalized by modern medicine was extraordinarily traumatic for me. I had a lot of trouble coping with it.
8:25
And I did it, but I just was hanging on like by the skin of my teeth the whole time and It was just really awful for me. It was really hard. And sometimes I think I did a good job, and sometimes I did a mediocre job, but it was not where my gifts slide.
8:43
And I think that's true of a lot of people. I think a lot of us, we want an identity, a specific identity, and we want to keep our heads down, and so we pick something safe. And there's no true safety in that. I don't think there's any true safety in that, I think, ultimately.
9:01
that situation can become at least emotionally unsafe for a lot of people. And that's what happened to me. And when other stresses in my life began to pile up, I got to the point where I couldn't do it anymore. And I talked a little bit about this in the last podcast, too.
9:18
But my point is this was a form of masking for me. To be a nurse was a mask. I actually envisioned myself not as somebody helping people or making a difference, but as a typical girl in a white uniform fitting in.
9:35
That was where I wanted to be, and that's what I did until I couldn't, until I couldn't do it anymore. And it was always hard for me. I never really fit in with the other nurses and I never really felt, I always felt like I was struggling just to, just to do a good job. And
9:58
I was somewhat successful. I got promoted everywhere I worked. I was in administration and supervisory positions, and I wrote policies, and I was always good at solving problems. So people like that. Administrators like the person who sees the problem and writes the policy. They like that person. And so I always was getting promoted. And that was fine.
10:22
That was fine. But I never really fit in. I was never happy. I was very stressed. I was just always, always terrified of making a mistake. I would wake up in the middle of the night worrying. I did like people. I liked the patients. I liked helping people. I did like that.
10:38
But it just wasn't who I was. And I think that is an issue. I think that's something everybody's susceptible to. Certainly everybody, everybody has a work identity and a home identity. Everybody likes the idea of having a certain persona. I mean, there are people who are doctors or lawyers or bartenders that they love that persona.
10:59
Like it makes them happy and there's nothing wrong with that. But I think that if you're autistic, you have to be very careful about what, you ask yourself to do and what you expose yourself to. And I never really was. When I was in school,
11:19
I would get up in the morning to go to clinical and I would just feel like I did when I was in grade school. I would feel so stressed and like sick and shaky and depressed and everything would seem so dark and awful and I just I didn't I wasn't
11:35
diagnosed and I thought everybody feels like this everybody feels like this and I'm the baby that can't push myself through this so I was at a big disadvantage in a lot of ways but I picked picked the wrong thing and I kind of paid for it because I
11:52
spent a lot of years I spent about 13 years I guess in nursing and that was kind of all for nothing because I'm not doing that now and I'm not going back to it. And so my education and a lot of my work experience was just kind of wasted. And not only was it wasted,
12:10
but it took up time that I could have spent doing what I really wanted to do, what I really love and what I'm doing now, which is writing. And that the time I spent doing the wrong thing, the job, took away from the important thing, the calling. And I'm lucky. I feel I'm lucky to have realized that.
12:31
I feel I'm lucky to now, at this point in my life, be writing full-time and able to do that. And I'm really grateful for that. But I do think that masking had a lot to do with why I kind of went wrong. And writing in full-time, even though it's my calling, is not 100% problem-free. There are issues...
12:55
I think, related to autism that have to do even with pursuing your calling. And I might talk a little bit more about that in the next episode. But I do. I'm writing fiction full time now. I'm blogging. I'm doing the podcast. I'm thinking of writing memoir. I'm writing, writing, writing. I love to write.
13:16
I could write 16 hours a day, probably. I try not to, but I could. And That's pretty much what I wanted to say about masking and working and calling. I think it's really important for anyone who is autistic to try to find work that is as closely aligned to their calling as possible.
13:44
Obviously, getting a job as an artist or a novelist does not... really thing and it's hard to do and it's competitive and there's a lot of challenges inherent in that but there are a lot of careers that are adjacent that can be very fulfilling to people and I think it depends what your love is your
14:09
special interest might be highly highly practical if you have a very practical special interest if your special interest is has to do with technology In any form, you're probably a little bit ahead of the curve as far as working. If your special interest tends to be more creative,
14:26
you're going to have to be more creative to find that thing that you could either do part-time or that thing that you could do full-time that might be adjacent. But I do think it's possible. And I think the main point of it all is not finding the right
14:44
job i think the main point of it is honoring who you really are and i think if i had to say one thing that really tripped me up it was not honoring who i was and that's what masking is and that's why masking is so detrimental it's just such a
15:03
soul crushing terrible thing to mask and i just wanted to share a little bit of my experience and in hopes that this would kind of resonate with someone else and that if you have a special interest if you're especially if you're a younger person like going
15:23
into the workforce for the first time look at your aptitudes and look at your special interests and look at what makes you happy and try to find something if you can that's close to that like try as hard as you can And I know for me,
15:39
it was very important for me to have a secure job and to take care of my child and to be a productive person. But being yourself is really, that is why you're here, I think. And to do what brings you joy and brings other people joy, hopefully. And if you're lucky, pays the bills. But that, to me...
16:02
If I had it all do over, that would be the last thing on my list. I have to say that honestly. So as far as my writing, I do have issues around writing that are autism related. I have issues with plotting. I have issues with multiple issues with storytelling that makes it difficult for me.
16:24
And I'm going to talk about some of that a little bit more in the next episode. But this is it. for today, kind of all over the place. I hope it was helpful, and I will see you next time, and until then, this is Barbara Graver of Autistic POV, and thank you very much for listening!
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Theme music by Caffeine Creek.

First Autistic POV Reading Roundup (books by autistic authors) EP 4

In my first reading roundup I talk about a wonderful Sci-Fi series and three incredible memoirs. All of the books covered are written by autistic authors. The memoirs detail the lived experience of three amazing late-diagnosed autistic women. And the Sci-Fi series features an autistic protagonist central to the adventure. Just as interesting, in my opinion, the theme of finding our true autistic calling is central to each of these books. All of the books featured are available in ebook. They are:
Xandri Corelel Series (affiliate link) by Kaia Sønderby : 0. Testing Pandora, 1. Failure to Communicate, 2. Tone of Voice
Drama Queen (affiliate link) by Sara Gibbs
Label Me (affiliate link) by Francesca Baird
U Don't Seem Autistic (affiliate link) by Kathleen Schubert
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Episode 4 Transcript
0:00
This is Barbara Graver of Autistic POV and today we're going to be talking about four books by autistic authors. Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hi, this is Barbara Graver.
0:29
I'm so happy you could join me for my very first autistic POV reading roundup. So we're going to be talking about four different books, actually one series and three memoirs. And the reason I chose these books is because they all kind of center on a common theme. And 
0:48
this is the theme I want to explore probably in our next episode, but I'm going to talk about the books in this one. The first one is a sci-fi series, and this series is written by Kaya Sounderby, and it's the Zandri Corello series. series, and it begins with a fantastic book called Failure to Communicate.
1:13
The second book I'm going to be talking about is Drama Queen, written by Sarah Gibbs, and this is an amazing memoir. It's my favorite autistic memoir I have read to date. It's fantastic. And then I'm going to talk about two other memoirs a little more briefly, primarily because they go along with the same theme,
1:32
and one is called You Don't Look Autistic, and you in this is spelled with a u, Actually, You Don't Seem Autistic is the name. And the last one is Label Me. So we're going to talk about all these books. And I'm going to try to explain why I like them and why I think they're,
1:50
they're all have a lot of value. And I do want to say with memoir, like I've heard people say, there's so many autism memoirs out there and that's true. There are, but I feel like all of them have value. Like every autistic memoir I read,
2:07
I resonate with or pick up on something different and I find them all helpful. They're helpful on multiple levels. I think they're helpful in terms of making you feel a little less alone. They're helpful in giving you insight. And they're helpful in terms of learning and support. I think they serve multiple purposes. And these books,
2:29
all of these books, and I just want you to kind of keep in mind as we talk about them, all deal with the importance of our calling. So the first series I wanted to talk about, the first book I want to talk about is the Zandri Corello series. And this is a sci-fi series.
2:49
It's set in just an amazing world. It's just a wonderful world. And the characters are great. And one of the things I loved about the world was the diversity of the world. And it shows... quote alien species as not all humanoids not they're not all guys in suits and i
3:08
understand why i i watch a lot of sci-fi and i read sci-fi and i like sci-fi and i understand why say star trek like all the quote aliens had to be able to be an actor in a suit and understand why the humanoid ideal is always or often represented in sci-fi,
3:29
and that every species encountered is a variation on the human ideal. But I really like the fact that this author, that Kara Sounderby, treated the various races throughout the galaxy as being capable of evolving from different types of life forms, different species. So there might be a species that's like dolphins.
3:56
There might be one that's very like various kinds of mammals. There might be others that are humanoid. And I thought this was a really cool way to present this. And the book was really, really well constructed. It was plotted out very well. It was suspenseful. The characters were engaging. The main character, Zandri, is autistic.
4:18
And I thought the author did a really good job of that, of portraying the challenges and the strengths of autism really well. And she is the heroine of the series. She's not a peripheral character. She's the heroine. And she has unique abilities to communicate, which seems kind of ironic, but really the way it's presented in the series,
4:41
it isn't, to communicate with different types of cultures and different languages and different kinds of people throughout the galaxy because of how she'd had to learn to do that as an autistic. And it's really well done. It's really suspenseful. It's a really great series that has three books. There's a kind of a prequel called Testing Pandora.
5:06
Then there's Failure to Communicate. And then there's Tone of Voice. That's book two. Testing Pandora is book zero. Failure to Communicate is book one. And Tona Voices book two, and I hope she writes book three, I really do. And I really liked the theme of this, of the autistic protagonist struggling, struggling with people, struggling with her past,
5:30
struggling with all kinds of things. But also finding her niche. She finds her niche in this. She finds her calling. And that's kind of a theme with all these books. And I think it's an important theme. And the second book I wanted to talk about is a memoir by Sarah Gibbs.
5:45
And that is called Drama Queen because that was something she was told all her life, that she was being dramatic. And that's a very common theme. charge, I think, that's leveled at autistics. It may come in various kind of deliveries, but it's a common thing that's said. And she focuses a lot, she focuses obviously on her childhood,
6:08
everyone talks about their childhood in these memoirs, but she also focuses a lot on her work life. And she does an excellent job of showing how she didn't fit in in the standard office 9 to 5 and why. And how other people treated her and how unfairly she was treated and what a double
6:28
standard really there was for people who were neurotypical and people who were autistic in general. And she was diagnosed relatively late in life, and I identified with a lot of what she said. Now, not everything. I never identify with everything people say in these memoirs, and I don't really think you should.
6:47
But I did identify with the fact that she was always making these fresh starts, and that was something I did really all my life. So she would just get overwhelmed and she would walk away from things like jobs and make a fresh start. And she was always making a fresh start. And I used to do that too.
7:07
I actually, I think between the ages of maybe 17 and 20, I didn't live anywhere. And by anywhere, I mean different states, different cities for more than six months. I just kept leaving and making these fresh starts that always failed. And she has the same mentality. She's like another fresh start.
7:30
And so I really, really identified with that. And another thing she talked about that I found really insightful is obsessiveness. And for her, a lot of her obsessions had to do with relationships. She would get very, very obsessed with either someone she was in a relationship with or someone she just had a crush on.
7:50
She even called it her crush monster. An interesting thing is she talked about how once she found out she was autistic, that kind of went away. And the reason it went away was because she understood that she was looking for something. She was looking for an answer in these partners, in these romantic partners.
8:13
She was trying to find an answer. she found that she was autistic. She had an answer for why life was so difficult for her, and she didn't need to do that anymore. And I thought that was brilliant. And I've kind of experienced that too. And I'll talk a little bit more about it.
8:29
Maybe we'll do an episode on spirituality at some point. But for me, my answer was not so much relationships, although I did some of that, but spirituality. I was always looking for an answer in terms of either organized religion or different specific spiritual practice. And I went through so many religions and so many spiritual practices.
8:53
I was like the perennial seeker. And I would go kind of from one thing to another. And not just when I found out I was autistic, but when I started to really think about it and integrate it and understand it. and kind of gain some perspective because of it,
9:11
that need to be immersing myself in different spiritual practices just kind of evaporated. It was really, really surprising. It just isn't really there anymore. And when I read that in Sarah Gibbs's book, I thought her crush monster for me, it was like crushes on spirituality more. The same thing kind of happened to me.
9:32
And I thought that's really interesting. So I'm kind of curious if anyone else has had that experience. And the other thing I really appreciated in Sarah Gibbs' book and Drama Queen was that she needed to find out what it is she did. And it turned out to be writing comedy. And the book is just brilliantly funny.
9:54
And I think that's a testament to how much this was her calling. And I feel personally that people with autism are probably more focused on calling and career than a lot of neurotypical people. I think it's oftentimes very central to who we are. At least it's central to who I am.
10:16
And trying to find my calling has been something that has kind of haunted me all my life. And I was always very creative in terms of writing and art, and yet I couldn't ever really find where I belonged. So I find it interesting that in all of these books, the fiction and the memoir,
10:36
that was also a big theme. And Sarah Gibbs could not function in an office environment, no matter how hard she tried. And yet when she began to explore comedy, which is a really challenging thing to be a comedian or to write comedy, is very competitive, I'm sure, and very challenging. I'm sure the bar is set very high.
10:59
as is the case with a lot of creative things, but I think particularly comedy, that's a tough pick. It's a really tough pick. And yet that was where she excelled. And I found that very interesting. And it just did me good to read the story of somebody who struggled,
11:16
kind of like I struggled when I worked as a nurse in an office environment. I was never, never part of the in-group. The office politics were kind of always skewed against me. And I'll talk more about that, I think, in another episode. But it's so difficult. And like Sarah says, it's not about doing your job.
11:38
She always did her job very well. It was about the social aspect of fitting in in the office. And that was my experience, too. And I think a lot of us have that experience. So I just love to see that she, quote, made it.
11:52
I love to see that she became a comedy writer and that she wrote this amazing book. It's just a good thing. to, uh, to know. So I love that. And then the two other books I just can mention briefly were You Don't Look Autistic, and that's you with the letter U, and Label Me.
12:13
And these were both books written by autistic women. And I really especially liked Label Me because I The author of Label Me, her autism presented a little bit differently. Francesca Bard, I believe her name was, or Baird. Her autism presented quite differently, I think, than mine does, but yet I could identify with parts of it.
12:34
And one of the things that she did was she got very attached to places. And I have that a little bit. And I think there's so many ways that we try to develop a sense of identity. And I think this is one way that we often do is by getting very attached to place.
12:51
And so I thought that was interesting. And with You Don't Look Autistic, which I believe that's Kathleen Schubert, but I'll put it in the show notes. She talked a lot about masking. And I think too, in both of these books, you don't look autistic and label me finding their calling, finding their, their place,
13:14
their calling in life was very important. And for, for Kathleen, it was, she got into integrative medicine. And she actually had problems because she was interviewed by a very unfriendly, kind of skeptical journalist and made to look very bad in the media at one point. But she didn't give up.
13:37
And that's what I think is so amazing about all these stories. One of the things... that nobody's giving up nobody's giving up no matter how hard it is no matter how much they don't fit in no matter how hard it is to find their place and to realize
13:52
their calling and to be seen and to be true to themselves and kind to themselves and overcome their challenges they don't stop trying and I think that's huge I think that's really huge And eventually all of these people learned to stop masking. And I think in Label Me, Francesca found a different sort of a calling.
14:19
Like she didn't find necessarily a creative calling, other creative aspects of her job having to do with finance that she was very good at. But she found a place that felt safe to her because her place was important. She found a steady job in a place that felt safe.
14:34
And she was able to do well there because of that. So it's a question, I think, of honoring ourselves and valuing what is important to us that is kind of the underlying key to all this. So I just wanted to kind of do the reading roundup of these books. Again, this is the Xandri Carrello series,
14:59
Drama Queen by Sarah Gibbs, and You Don't Look Autistic and Label Me. And I think a common theme in all of these, which I find really interesting, is calling, finding our calling. I'll put links to all these books in the show notes. They're definitely, definitely worth reading.
15:15
And I would sort of like to continue for the rest of August. I'd like to continue... really with two topics that these books kind of suggested to me. And the first is autism and career versus calling that I'd like to talk about. And I'll mostly be sharing my experience on this.
15:35
And the other one I would like to talk about is writing a memoir, issues around writing a memoir, because that's something I'd like to do And as I said before, even though people say there are a lot of autism memoirs out there, I think there's always room for more because I read them all the time.
15:55
I love them. I think they're so helpful. Some are better than others, but they all teach me something because they're a human story, a story of another autistic person's struggle. So I want to encourage myself to write a memoir, and I want to encourage other people to write a memoir.
16:14
So these are going to be the other two episodes I'm going to do in the month of August. And that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed my first reading roundup. And I also hope that you'll consider following the show or subscribing or liking it or whatever you feel called to do.
16:33
And I will see you again soon. And our next episode will be discussing career versus calling from an autistic perspective. And until then, this is Barbara Graver of Autistic POV. And thank you so much for listening.
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