Autistic POV

My Autistic Traits: Difference Not Deficit! EP 13

In the episode I share how I rated my own autistic traits on a 1-10 scale and how I'm learning to think in terms of "difference, not deficit." Check out the blog post on charting my autistic traits here: https://barbaragraver.substack.com/p/charting-my-autistic-traits
Check out my blog Writing On The Spectrum here: BarbaraGraver.substack.com
If you like my content, please follow the podcast!
Full transcript below. If you need closed captioning (or the transcript is cut off), please listen via the podbean app or at AutisticPOV.com (https://www.autisticpov.com/).
Episode 13 Transcript
 
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 I wanted to talk a little bit about autistic characteristics and I'm going to
0:32
be doing this through the lens of the characteristics I've identified in myself. I just try to steer away from speaking for other people because there's such a a wide range of experience and abilities in autism that I feel whenever I try to speak for anyone else, I always feel like I'm getting it wrong.
0:57
So this is purely from my perspective. The disclaimer is these traits are not necessarily going to present the way they aren't going to present the same way across the spectrum as they present in me because we're all different. So I talked a little bit during my autism and psychic ability series,
1:19
I talked a little bit about the idea of a linear spectrum, a spectrum from high to low, as is suggested by the DSM-5. And I talked about why I have problems with that. I think ranking across the board is problematic, although I do think autism is a constellation of traits.
1:39
And I do think it could be useful to do specific individual ranking in terms of trait by trait. I think that's helpful. It gives you a better picture of yourself and what your abilities and what your challenges might be. Ranking people as a whole, to me, I feel that's a little problematic for various reasons,
2:01
such as the many different comorbidities, apraxia, for example, anxiety. all kinds of comorbidities come into play, as well as inherent differences like talents and abilities and intellect. It's just there's so much at play that I think ranking from low to high is problematic. And it's also,
2:26
it causes people to fall into a way of thinking that I don't feel is very helpful. I don't think it's helpful to to think of people as more or less autistic or more or less challenged or more or less worthwhile. I don't think that's a good way to think.
2:44
And I think when you're ranking individuals from low to high, you're always going to kind of suggest that or lead people into that kind of thinking, which I don't like. So I did discuss this before, but I just wanted to put it out there kind of as a disclaimer.
2:59
So what I did, and I have a blog post on this that I'll link to. What I did for myself was I looked at the DSM-5. I don't like the DSM-5. I don't like that it calls autism a disorder. I don't like that it ranks people.
3:14
But I do think it does a fair job of describing observable traits in autistics. I don't find it totally useless, even though I have issues with it. So what I kind of did is I took the traits that were listed in the DSM-5 and sort of adapted them to better reflect me.
3:35
And I used those traits to come up with categories for myself. And I made various charts and put them in my blog, which people seem to like. I'll link to that. And the chart showed my different characteristics. And this is not an idea that's specific to me.
3:57
You could see a lot of people will be looking at autism in this way. It's a spectrum, but it's not a linear spectrum. It's more of like a radial spectrum, which I think is interesting. You know, it's kind of interesting in terms of dimensionality.
4:11
We think of a spectrum as high to low, and technically that's what it is. But that's a linear 2D kind of dimensionality, where if you want to think of it more 3D, kind of as a radial sort of thing, you could do that too. So what I did is I came up with 10 categories.
4:31
One of my things had 10 categories. One had 12 because it just worked better for the type of charts I used. But the categories I used were hypersensitivity, hyposensitivity, hyper fixations, special interests, nonverbal communication. I don't like that word nonverbal, but I didn't know what else to use.
4:54
Some people will call it social cues, but I find that confusing too. But that's basically your ability. It should probably be called non-speaking communication, your ability to communicate and to read cues without speaking. Conversation. I use conversation. So instead of Expressive communication. I just kind of lumped conversation together. Relationships, transitions, echolalia, repetitive motor, and pattern recognition.
5:28
And then I rated myself. in each of these categories. And I think this is a useful exercise for everyone to do, and everyone's going to differ. But I think it's interesting to find that you will have some kind of, if you do this, you will have some kind of a relationship to each of these categories.
5:47
Even if you get a one, you'll have a kind of relationship to them, or that's what I found. So for me, fixations, hyper fixations, I gave that a 10. I'm not sure that might have been a little excessive, but that is huge for me. My special interests dominate my life. They dominate my thought processes.
6:10
They dominate the way I spend my time. They completely dominate my life. And I have tried to dial back I've tried to stop and I just can't function that way. This is how I relate to the world. And it kind of reminded me of there's episode in elementary where Sherlock says to Watson,
6:35
and I can't find the episodes. If anyone knows that, please tell me. But where he says to Watson, but we are what we do. And she says, no, you are. I'm not. And it's interesting, one thing I liked about that show is everything he does in that show, and I mentioned this before,
6:52
everything he does in that show, like all his friends, he interacts with them through his hyperfixation in solving crimes. And that's really the only way he could interact with people. And that's how I am. That's how my relationships are. My relationships with people are organized around an interest.
7:11
And when that interest shifts, I can no longer really relate to that person. And I don't really have any face-to-face relationships at all, aside from my adult kids. But if that orientation shifts, I can't continue with the relationship usually. I just can't find the common ground in order to do it. But there is a
7:34
in my opinion, a good side to all these things. I don't really consider them deficits. My therapist said that to me. I was talking about communication and a problem I was having. And she said, is this making you more aware of your deficits? And I said, I don't really see them as deficits. I see them as differences.
7:53
I communicate differently. It's not wrong. It's not bad. Here I am on the podcast blabbing away because it's one-sided. It's not that I can't communicate. It's that communicate differently. So anyhow, hyper fixations, mine are books, media, mythology, ancient history, religion, the occult, like anything kind of under that umbrella, that mystical umbrella and writing and books.
8:19
So those are, are my hyper fixations. And that is what I spend my time doing. And I can't change that. Even if I want to, I can't. And there have been times in my life I really, really did, but I still couldn't. Another category I identified was hypersensitivity. For me, when I was little,
8:38
this had to do with feeling like wool burned and feeling like polyester cut. Like if you've read that poem by Emily Dickinson, A Panther in the Glove, that's what that's about. And it's A difficult thing because kids that experience these kind of hypersensitivities, they're subject to a lot of gaslighting because people will tell them, you're being dramatic,
8:59
you're making this up, you're being a prima donna, you know, all these things. And no, they're not, they're really perceiving it that way. And that kind of gaslighting is very detrimental for children, because it teaches them to dismiss their own perceptions and their own, their own impressions of reality, their own feelings.
9:21
And that's a very dangerous for a child, for and for teenager, it sets them up to all kinds of things, including exploitation. It's a dangerous thing. And it's something that people should be aware of. People are not overreacting. That's how people are actually that's a hypersensitivity. That's how they're perceiving things. So so Now I'm an adult.
9:42
I could wear what I want. It's not an issue, but I still have problems with lights. I have a lot of problems with sound, a lot of problems. I live on a very, very busy street. We have a business across the street. And for a time, people were leaving their vehicles running, including trucks,
9:57
all the time when they'd go into that business. And I went out and yelled at people. And it did not make me popular in my neighborhood, but I just couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand it. Traffic going back and forth, I got used to, but the idling, I couldn't stand it. People are better now. It works.
10:15
Eventually it works. And also I have noise canceling headphones and I do what I can. I mean, I always have white noise going, but I know I got that reputation in my neighborhood of like being a bitch, but it's not that. It's that it really is painful to people. It really is. And I also feel with hypersensitivities.
10:36
This is my own opinion. I have some intuitive abilities. I've had precognitive dreams. I've had a lot of experiences that I'm going to talk about in my memoir. I almost feel like that's an extension of the hypersensitivities. Hypersensitivities, the physical things, I feel like it extends into the energetic. I really do.
10:56
And hyposensitivity, that could be a tolerance to pain, for example. Even though I'm super hypersensitive, about certain things, I've got a fair pain tolerance. So it's kind of an interesting thing. So with hypersensitivity, I gave myself a 7. With hypo, I gave myself a 3. Pattern recognition, I gave myself a six because I'm not a genius.
11:20
I'm not spotting patterns nobody else could see. But I do tend to put things together. I'm not in a mastermind kind of way, but I put things together. I notice things. Part of it, I think, is detail, being detail oriented. Part of it is pattern recognition. I notice things that a lot of other people don't notice.
11:39
And that could come in very helpful for certain activities. It's good for like literary analysis. It's good with writing. It's good for spotting synchronicities. It's good for interpreting dreams. It's good for studying anything, but especially studying mythology. It has a lot of benefits. And for some people who are extremely intelligent,
11:59
that could give themselves a 10 in this, it can help make significant contributions to society. Pattern recognition, it's a big thing. Emotional intensity was another one I did. And I gave myself an eight on that. I'm not sure if that's really accurate anymore. I think that's probably part of sensitivity, general sensitivity. Meltdowns aren't simply emotional intensity,
12:23
but it's certainly emotional intensity plays a part. It's just trauma. Like a lot of people who are autistic have trauma histories. I mean, they may have been subject to exploitation. They may also have been bullied. They may have had experiences all through their life of being traumatized and just
12:42
being different is a little bit traumatic in and of itself. So I think trauma definitely can play a part in emotional intensity because if you get triggered with something, odds are you're going to feel intense. So in communication, which we talked about a little already, but I think that that is a big thing for me.
13:06
And it impacts relationships, it overlaps kids, therapy, friendships. life it's it's definitely impactful however I kind of feel like I personally don't want to be part of the negative kind of spin on autism because I I like my communication style I I write I express myself through writing or through one-sided
13:32
things like this podcast and I I my Receptive communication is different too. I receive information differently. I receive a lot of information through studying and reading, which there's an intuitive aspect and a pattern recognition aspect that comes into that. So it kind of all mixes up together. But I think I gave myself probably like, I closed it,
13:55
but I think I gave myself like a seven on communication because I don't necessarily feel... I don't necessarily feel that I'm terribly, terribly challenged in communication. I'm just different in communication. And I think that's true of all these things. You could flip all of them. And I feel like people, I like to see people do that more.
14:15
Because I feel... It's easy to feel bad about yourself and about your life. And it is difficult. I mean, I'm not saying it's not difficult. My life, I'm writing this memoir. If you read it, you'll see my life got pretty grim in a few spots. But I think we have to see that we're different for a reason.
14:37
And I think it's important difference. And I think there have been a lot of contributions made to society by autistic people. And one of the reasons for it is because of these different traits, these different ways of interacting with reality have a lot to do with that, in my opinion.
14:55
So, um, repetitive motor, I scored real low in that. I mean, I have a tiny bit of that, but I scored low in that. And also in echolalia, I scored low and the echolalia, like I gave myself a one. I probably maybe should have gave myself a zero, but then I thought I do have this repetition thing.
15:14
Like in writing, I have this thing in writing and One of many problems I have with writing, not problems, differences I have with writing that are autism-related, is it's very hard for me to refrain from saying something three times. If I say it twice, it's very hard for me to not say it three times.
15:36
Sometimes that's kind of poetic. Sometimes it's just stupid, but it's something I do. The other thing, executive function, I gave myself a seventh. But that, again, is related to the hyperfixations to a large degree. Because if you're writing 12 hours a day, you're not going to get a whole lot done. And if you can't, and also transitions.
15:58
I gave myself eight on that because it's very hard for me to stop an activity, a special interest activity, whether it's reading, whether it's media, whether it's writing. It's extraordinarily hard for me to stop. And I do. I'm much better than I used to be.
16:15
I mean, we have dinner at a different time every night, but we have dinner. And that's like huge for me. It's like a huge victory that I could stop and make dinner. And sometimes somebody has to come get me, but I can do it. And that's big for me. And it's very hard.
16:32
And that too can really interfere with your life. I mean, it can make you late. It can make you neglect things. it could just cause all kinds of problems really. But the thing is with this, is it a problem because we're a problem or is it because our society is set up
16:50
obviously for neurotypical people who function in neurotypical ways. So it's not, it's not geared towards, it's not geared towards autistic people. So there's always going to be that, that disconnect, that problem, that clash, that, way that things just don't quite align. That's why I don't like to think of it as deficits,
17:13
because I think part of it is just we're trying to fit into a paradigm that doesn't really suit us. And if we were the predominant neurotype, which who knows, maybe someday we will be. Some people think that. I don't know about that, but it's an interesting idea. And I think autism and autistic traits are valuable,
17:35
whether they're valuable as an evolution of consciousness, debatable, whether they're valuable as an outlier perspective that contributes greatly to society. I think Definitely, I think definitely that's true. And like all these things that people say that are negatives, they're not actually negatives, they're deviations from the norm. And the more we understand the specific characteristics,
18:02
and the walls we run into in dealing with, quote, normal society, the easier it is for us to reframe some of the stuff. And it's not really just about feeling good about yourself. It's about being the person you're meant to be like if you if you could see some of these
18:20
things like I see my hyper fixation as a strength does it mean I can't have a quote normal life with like a husband and a ordinary day job and yeah it does kind of mean that so does it cause me distress yeah it definitely does but I still see it
18:39
as a strength because I feel that's the person I was meant to be And I feel like we all need to do those things that we're put here to do. And I think that our traits and our characteristics are part of that. And I think it's good to look at them through that lens.
18:59
And that's what I try to do now. And I'll talk maybe a little more about that in the next episode. And I'll talk too about how you have to make accommodations and stuff like that too, I think in the next episode, but this is what I wanted to share for here.
19:13
And I will link to this blog post. It's called charting my autistic traits. I'll link to that in the description. You, you might like that. It's real visual. I made these, you can make these great charts with canvas. So of course I did.
19:28
And maybe do your own inventory of traits and look at them and see where you could flip those things and where you could see the advantages and the strengths in it. It doesn't mean you're not going to struggle. We're always going to struggle. It's just a given. But I think the key is that...
19:45
you want to understand why it's worth it i think that's important so that's it for this time i i hope you enjoyed the walk through my autistic traits and i will link to the blog post in the description and next time we'll talk more about
19:59
accommodations and and maybe a few more specifics on this topic so until then this is barbara graver of autistic pov and thank you very much for listening
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Autistic POV theme music by the Caffeine Creek Band
 

4 Issues with the Telepathy Tapes Podcast EP 12 (3rd in my Autism and Psychic Abilities series)

In this episode, I talk about 4 possible issues with the Telepathy Tapes podcast AND share a great resource for further reading. I hope I've offered a more nuanced look at the Telepathy Tapes podcast in this episode (which is the 3rd in what has become my Autism and Psychic Abilities series) than I did in my previous episodes!
The first two episodes are:
Autism and Psychic Experience EP 10 (#1 in series)
Autistic Traits and Psychic Abilities EP 11 (#2 in series)
The resource I mentioned in the podcast is:
SarahCook.substack.com/p/for-the-birds-radical-empathy
This is an excellent article and a really good Substack to follow.
You can also follow my Substack if you're so inclined at:
BarbaraGraver.substack.com
If you like my content, please follow the podcast!
Full transcript follows. If you need closed captioning (or the transcript is cut off), please listen via the podbean app or at AutisticPOV.com (https://www.autisticpov.com/).
Full Transcript for EP 12
0:01
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. This is our third episode in what has kind of become a series on psychic ability.
0:31
I recorded episode one after I discovered the telepathy tapes far later than everybody else on the internet, and we'll talk a bit about that. And then I recorded episode two once I learned a little bit more about the podcast. And I talked about a lot of other things in these episodes. I talked about
0:49
my own experiences and I talked about parapsychology and a little bit about the ruling scientific paradigm in our society. But I talked about the telepathy tapes a lot too. And so I wanted to speak just a little bit on that in this episode because when I did the first episode, I was really excited to discover the podcast.
1:12
And then when I did the second episode and I was a little more aware of some of the controversy around it, I was a little more dialed back. But if you're not familiar with the podcast, it's a podcast about telepathy. and in it they feature several different non-speaking autistic individuals who are demonstrating telepathic abilities.
1:35
And it's really compelling, compelling podcast, but a lot of people have had a problem with it. And looking at it a little more critically than I maybe did initially, I could appreciate that. I think there are a few issues around it. So I wanted to just kind of share my take on that.
1:52
And I think the one problem is that we have a very materialistic mindset. There's a lot of prejudice against anything that is in any way immaterial, non-local, psychic. That's always, always, always going to be challenged. So talked about that, I think, in the first episode. I'll link to all of them. Number two,
2:16
which I talked about in the second episode in this series, I think there's just kind of a general disregard for the lived experience of autistic people. That's very pervasive in our society. So that's another issue that has played a part in generating controversy around this podcast. Number three,
2:35
I think that some people have raised concerns about the potential for exploitation and of non-speaking autistics and their families. And I think that's valid. I think that's something that's worth discussing. And also there is a lot of confusion around augmented and alternative communication and facilitated communication, which is somewhat different.
2:58
So there are a lot of things that kind of come into play. And this All of this was a lot for me to take on. I'm not sure I would have taken it on if I'd realized how much there was to it. But I am glad I did.
3:12
I'm glad I did because exploring this helped me increase my understanding of autism as a spectrum, which I think I'll talk about a little more in the next episode. It helped me kind of come to terms with some of my own experience. It helped me organize my thoughts.
3:29
But I was a little bit all over the place when I did it. So kind of want to try to sum it up a little. As far as the first and second points, the scientific community and the prejudice against the lived experience of autistic people, I think I've discussed that enough. Number four,
3:47
talking about augmented and assisted communication, I think it's absolutely valid, but not everyone understands it. And more relevantly, the more variables you put into research and the more complex it becomes. And when you're trying to research anything to do with psi, telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, whatever it may be,
4:11
it's already difficult and it's already going to be challenged like crazy. So having that extra variable of the communication devices does make this more complex, definitely. So those are the four things I kind of see with issues with the podcast. However, I don't mean to say that I discount it. I found it very convincing.
4:37
I found it very convincing and it spoke to me in a a different way to look at the spectrum and it validated some of my own experience and it just it made me aware of things that I wasn't really aware of before but I
4:59
did want to say I understand that there are issues around it and I understand why and I wanted to speak just a little bit about my third point about exploitation and And to me, there is a potential for exploitation with this. I read a book by William Stillman, which was called Autism and the God Connection.
5:20
And I really liked that book. I liked a lot of what he had to say. But I felt like he was kind of romanticizing non-speaking autism. And I think because my particular situation, I am a late diagnosed autistic. I have a child who's autistic and I have another child who's in a power chair. And everything that
5:43
RFK said about autistic people could apply to my child in the power chair he's not autistic but a lot of those things apply and that is no easy road and for parents who have children who in addition to being non-speaking may require lifetime care That's a difficult thing to take on. And people are vulnerable.
6:08
People are definitely vulnerable. And I think that we have to be wary of romanticizing something that is a very difficult situation for some people. So I do think there are issues around it, definitely. But I also think that there's something there. I do think there's something there.
6:26
I do feel that some autistic traits like sensitivity and pattern recognition and do tend to occur in proximity to psychic abilities. And I think when people are challenged in a certain area, they do tend to develop compensatory abilities. And I think that is one way to look at psychic abilities, definitely, is compensating for other issues.
6:54
And I don't have a whole lot to say in this episode, but I just wanted to kind of share that, that I realize it's a complicated and nuanced And I also want to share a resource. Let me find it here. I follow quite a few different people on Substack.
7:14
And one Substack I really like is called For the Birds. And this is written by Sarah Teresa Cook. And she did an article on the telepathy tape. So I'm going to link to it. But it's called Radical Empathy, the telepathy tapes and the trouble with coherence and the real people we're harming when we wholly dismiss the podcast,
7:32
which is very good, much more comprehensive than what I'm giving you. And I'm going to link to that below. But I do think that we have to be kind of careful with things like this. But I do not think we should dismiss it out of hand. And I think a lot of prejudicial stuff, both scientific and cultural,
7:52
comes into this, certainly. And I just wanted to kind of say that. I also wanted to speak to a couple of mistakes I made when I was doing this. I used the phrase nonverbal, not understanding that nonverbal is incorrect, that non-speaking is the correct phrase. And I was thinking nonverbal, like verbal contract, written contract.
8:16
And that is a legitimate definition of nonverbal, but really verbal speaks to language. not only speaking, although culturally it's kind of used to represent speaking, but the more correct term is non-speaking, not non-verbal. So I wanted to mention that. And also I said, I think in the second podcast,
8:36
I talked about how science can't really help us with understanding psychic abilities. And I was more thinking of science in terms of the actual anatomy of the brain, because I don't personally feel the brain generates consciousness. And I stand by that. I think there's a limit.
8:52
how much studying the brain can tell us about non-local abilities like psychic ability. But I also think that science is much broader than that. And obviously, parapsychology is a science that can help us understand these things. So it's not true that science can't help. It's just maybe true that biology has its limits.
9:17
So I did want to mention that. And I'm going to be, this is just a short podcast, just kind of correcting my past episodes. But I did want to mention that going forward, I'm going to be continuing to talk about autism and psychic ability and autistic traits, obviously.
9:34
But I'm going to be doing it more from my personal perspective. And it's nothing against the content in the telepathy tapes or anything that has been written about it necessarily. It's just... I'm better off, I feel, if I stick with my own lived experience. I don't really feel qualified upon reflection to talk about other people's lived experience.
9:56
So I'm probably not going to do that or at least not do it often going forward. But I am going to be talking about, I'm going to be talking about psychic ability and autism because I'm writing this memoir and it's coming up and coming up and coming up,
10:10
even though it would be easier for me if it didn't. It just has to be part of it. So we'll be talking about that. And I will be talking a little bit more about the spectrum. And that's what I kind of like to touch on in the next episode, like my evolving understanding of the autism spectrum,
10:30
part of which was sparked by this exploration of the telepathy tapes. And I do recommend the blog article on Radical Empathy. And I'm going to link to all that stuff in the description. And go back. If you didn't listen to my first two episodes, go back. I mean,
10:46
I think some of the comments I made about the telepathy tapes weren't as nuanced as they should have been. But I think the information I gave on psychic abilities and parapsychology was okay, was fine. So you may want to listen to it. And next time, I'm still doing the first and third Fridays.
11:05
Next time, I'm going to be talking a little bit more about the spectrum. And if you would like to follow the show, please feel free to do that. And you can also find me on Substack. The name of my Substack is writing on the spectrum, but the URL is barbaragraver.substack.com.
11:24
So I'll put that link in the description too. So that's it for now. Kind of a short episode, but I just wanted to clarify a few things and give you this resource of the blog article. So that's it. I will see you guys later this month.
11:39
Until then, this is Barbara Graver of Autistic POV, and thank you very much for listening.
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Autistic POV theme music by the Caffeine Creek Band

Autistic Traits and Psychic Ability EP 11 (2nd in series)

Is there a relationship between autistic traits and psychic ability? 
Join me for a discussion of how autistic traits like hyper-sensitivity, hyper-connectivity and pattern recognition might relate to psychic abilities. 
The blog post and autism trait charts I mentioned in the video can be found on my blog at: https://barbaragraver.substack.com/p/charting-my-autistic-traits 
If you like my content, please follow the podcast!
Visit my blog at Writing On The Spectrum (https://barbaragraver.substack.com/)
Full transcript follows. If you need closed captioning, please listen via the podbean app or at AutisticPOV.com (https://www.autisticpov.com/).
EPISODE 11 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 Graber and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hi everybody, this is Barbara Graver.
0:21
Welcome to Autistic POV. In this episode, we're going to be continuing to talk about autism and psychic abilities. In our last episode, we talked about autism and psychic abilities, particularly in the realm of some of the research and controversy around nonverbal autistic people and their telepathic abilities.
0:45
And one of the interesting things for me that came out of that was it kind of changed my thinking on the whole concept of the spectrum. And this happened actually as I was doing the podcast. I was thinking about how I have some intuitive abilities and here are these people who...
1:02
that have these strong, apparently strong, telepathic abilities. And I was thinking, you know, it really is a spectrum. But the more I thought about it after, that one trait is on a spectrum. So to me, you can't put one autistic person... at one end of the spectrum and another autistic person at the other.
1:25
And I know people say, oh, it's not that kind of a spectrum. But the definition of a spectrum really is something that goes from one extreme to another. Like even with color, you might say, oh, red's not in any way inferior to violet. But yet red is, if you look at the wavelength of red,
1:44
you will see it has a slower, larger pattern where violet has a very pattern so it is a rating system a spectrum is a rating system and I just don't like that because the more I learn about autism the more I realize there are specific quote autistic traits and people have a constellation of these traits we
2:08
may not have all of them we may not have all the same traits but but a lot of us have a gradient of traits. For example, and I'm going to share a link to this. After this podcast, I did actually a blog post on the traits in autism, and I listed 10 traits.
2:29
I kind of loosely adapted from the DSM-5, and I rated myself 1 to 10 on those traits. So some traits like repetitive motor, I was very low. Other traits like hyper fixation. I gave myself a 10. Maybe that was too much, but I'm very, very high on that. So that's, I think that's true of everyone.
2:50
And there's other things that complicate it, obviously, like apraxia and different intellectual capacities. But I just think that whole idea of low to high that's perpetuated by the DSM-5 is very misleading. So I'm not using that word spectrum anymore. I even changed my blog. It was writing on the spectrum.
3:09
I changed it back to writing after dark because I just don't buy into that spectrum idea, that ranking anymore. However, when it comes to individual traits, we certainly can rank people. And If being psychic is an autistic trait or not, I think is debatable. But it is a human trait.
3:29
And I do think it can come under the greater heading of sensitivity. And the reason I think that is because I had a lot of experience, a lot of different psychic experiences. I've had precognitive dreams. I've had visions. I've had a lot of experiences. I do not consider myself... overtly psychic.
3:49
These are just things that have happened to me in kind of an episodic way over the course of my life. And these things have informed my belief system. I believe in certain things like the paranormal, the supernatural, because of my psychic experiences. And I use my intuition all the time in understanding things and understanding people.
4:11
It's a huge help to me. So I To me, it's a trait that falls under the greater heading of hypersensitivity and possibly hyperconnectivity too. One of the things I was thinking about over the last two weeks since I did the podcast is the idea of the brain as a receiver.
4:31
And that's an analogy the biophysicist Rupert Sheldrake uses. He says, imagine a radio. And if you took a piece out of a radio, you would no longer hear music. And you would think that the radio could no longer produce music. If you didn't understand a radio at all, you might think that this radio is broken.
4:51
It can't produce music. But that's not actually how a radio works. What's happened is that the radio is no longer receiving the music. So the brain can, I think, be thought of also as a receiver. And the question is, what are different brains receiving? And I think in autism, perhaps, our ability,
5:16
our hyperconnectivity coupled with our hypersensitivity might make us possibly make our brains a different kind of receiver. And there's been no research done on this. This isn't scientific at all. This is just kind of what I think. But I don't personally believe that the physical brain generates consciousness. I like Carl Jung.
5:41
I like the idea of the collective unconscious. I like the idea that we're receiving information. And the reason I like it is because it's happened to me. I've gotten information in dreams and I've gotten information through various psychic means. And it just made me think that maybe we're making connections in different ways.
6:05
And maybe our hypersensitivity extends beyond the material to a degree and maybe we're using a different kind of method of connecting and I know in my own life I've gotten a lot of information and and understood a lot of things through synchronicity and synchronicity part of
6:28
synchronicity is pattern recognition you could be going along in your life and there could be a bunch of synchronicities but if you don't have that eye for detail and that capacity for pattern recognition that a lot of autistic people have, you could totally miss that. You could totally miss the synchronicities because it's not going together for you.
6:52
And pattern recognition is... connecting things. So it's funny to think that the model of autism is that different areas of the brain aren't connecting, and yet we're still making connections, maybe through hypersensitivity, maybe through pattern recognition. And I don't have any answers on this at all. I have no answers, but I do think it's really worth exploring.
7:17
And I did because I started having what my one friend called the dead boyfriend dreams. I started having these dreams about people I had known and lost touch with who had died. And they were evidential because I had no idea. that these people had died, and they were unusual dreams.
7:34
And this was just a short period in 2012 when this was happening to me. And so I decided to study mediumship, which was not the way I really should have applied this, but that was how I felt at the time. I felt getting information, I'm dreaming of the dead, I must be a medium.
7:51
And so I studied with a spiritualist for a couple years, and I ultimately decided that I don't personally want to be the person who is like the ambassador for the afterlife to the grieving. I just don't want that responsibility. And it's fine for people who do. I just don't.
8:11
So after a couple years, I'm like, this really isn't for me. I moved on to something else. But I sat in on a lot of spiritualist development circles. And I did a lot of psychic development exercises. And one thing I noticed in almost all of those groups is that we were all kind of highly sensitive people.
8:28
And not that we were all autistics. Definitely we weren't, but we're all very sensitive. And I just thought that was interesting. And people used to talk about the clairs. I imagine they still do in these development circles, how you have different senses of the material and you have different senses of the immaterial.
8:50
So for example, clairvoyance is clear seeing. So you could see the material world, but some people could see the unseen realms, say, and they have clairaudience, they have clairsentience, they cover all the senses. So is this just hypersensitivity, a very refined way of sensing? And is the lack of interconnection between different brain regions in the autistic
9:20
brain not really a lack of connection, but a different kind of connection? This is what I'm curious about. And for me, I bring information in and a lot of times something happens. It's creative. It's intuitive. It could be psychic. It could be a synchronicity. Something happens outside of me that helps me make sense of that information.
9:42
It helps me connect things. It's a different way of processing. And I just wonder, there's so much about autism that's described like what you could see from looking in the window. It's all based on behavior. The diagnostic criteria is all based on behavior. And it was a model of behavioral psychology, essentially, initially.
10:07
And people are starting to move away from that, but it's still, if you look at the DSM-5, that's all stuff you could see from across the room. It has nothing to do with anybody's inner states. And I just wonder how much that's missing. And so it's interesting to me with the whole, like,
10:25
I'm not sure about the telepathy tapes and the nonverbal autistic telepathy. I read about it and I was really excited about it. And then I thought there's just, there's just a lot here, a lot here that's very tough to research. And I'm not discounting it, but I'm not basing
10:43
I'm not basing what I think about autism and psychic ability on that either. I mean, I think with savants, people always say, how are they doing this? How is a three-year-old playing Mozart? To me, it's not how. It's where did they get it? Where did it come from?
11:00
Like, where are they just plucking it out of the air? It kind of seems that way. So I think savants could make a case, possibly, for some kind of non-local transfer of information. But for me, it's just easier for me to base it on myself and what I do and how my life works.
11:19
And I'm not sure that I'm explaining this very coherently. And it's because it's a new idea to me. I'm just exploring it. I'm not a science person. It's very hard for me to understand the science. And the science is important. Just like if you're trying to listen to music, the radio is important,
11:37
but that doesn't make the radio the source. And our brains are important, but that doesn't make our brains the source. And I think that it could just be that with autism, we have a different way of processing it. Autism was looked at from a behavioral standpoint for so long, and the science is far,
11:57
far from where it needs to be, obviously. And I'm not even sure we can ever understand it through the science, particularly if some of what we're doing is actually non-local. How are we going to understand it through the science? I don't know if this was helpful or not.
12:14
I mean, this is just me kind of trying to figure this stuff out. And I'm going to talk a little more about it. I'm going to try to put it in some kind of a coherent presentation. And I'm probably not going to rely hugely on the science,
12:29
partially because that's really not my thing and partially because it's not there yet. And also, I always feel that the materialistic paradigm is looking at things backwards. I've always felt that.  I feel that there is something that informs our. physical reality.
12:51
You don't have to believe in God necessarily or religion to believe that. You could believe in the collective unconscious. You could believe in whatever you want, really. It's kind of all somatics. But I do think there is something beyond us that is more relevant to our existence than what we're kind of seeing at ground level.
13:12
So maybe that's true with autism. Maybe it's not. But I'm going to try to talk about it a little more in my bumbling, kind of not particularly coherent way. And just not because I have all the answers. Obviously, I don't. I'm just kind of stumbling around in the dark like everybody else.
13:30
But I think it's nice to talk about these things. It's nice to think about these things. And I hope maybe something I said... might get you thinking and you might go in a completely different direction and that's fine. But the point is we're thinking about these things.
13:44
And I think seeing autism as a spectrum of low to high or a disorder or a dysfunction is just does a such a disservice. But the neuro normative paradigm is, is always going to be there because just because of the numbers, just because there's more neuro normative people than there are us.
14:04
So it's kind of up to us, I think, to reinterpret this stuff and to try to look at it from a different perspective. And that's what I'm trying to do right now. And I'm very interested in the idea of autism as a different way of processing, not a dysfunctional way, a different way. And...
14:25
And this is where I'm at with it right now today. So I'm going to do more reading. I'm going to do more thinking. I'm going to do kind of going over my own experience more. I'm trying to write this memoir, which I mentioned before. And that has a lot to do with psychic stuff.
14:42
And that's how I kind of got here because I couldn't tell that story. I couldn't just tell the story of me as an autistic person without going into all the psychic stuff and all the paranormal things. Because to me, to me, they're connected. And that's how the memoir is going to be.
14:59
And I want to kind of explore this in the podcast. Hope you'll bear with me. I hope you'll take it for what it is. Somebody trying to figure it out, not somebody with all the answers. So that's it for today. These are my thoughts on autism and psychic ability for today.
15:13
And I will be back again in June. I'm doing the podcast, trying to do the podcast the first and third Friday, sometimes I'm a day or two late. But I will be back again in June and I'm going to continue on this topic. So I'm going to be sharing a little bit of my own experience.
15:32
I may come back to the telepathy tape stuff or I may not. I'm not sure how relevant that really is for me, but I may. And Diane Powell, like I read her website and I think she's really interesting. I listened to some of her lectures. I mentioned her.
15:46
in the last episode, but I'm not sure how relevant her research really is for me. So, but I'm going to be doing like some of my own research to the best of my ability, and I'm going to be kind of trying to process my own experience through that and share with you guys what I come up with.
16:02
I hope it's helpful. So that's it for this week. Next time we'll continue on this topic. And until then, this is Barbara Graver of Autistic POV, and thank you very much for listening.
________________
Theme music by the Caffeine Creek Band
 

Autism and Psychic Experience EP 10 (1st in series)

Is there a relationship between autism and psychic experience?
A connection between autism and telepathy has been reported by the families of some nonverbal autistic people. As a late diagnosed autistic this interests me because intuition has been a guiding force in my life.
Like all many areas of parapsychology, more research is needed, but I think it’s a topic worth discussing.
In this episode I talk about my own person experience, what other people have to say, the idea of psychic ability as a spectrum trait and a bit about parapsychology (from what I have learned at the Rhine Institute).
This is my first time talking about this topic, I’m going to be talking about it more in the next couple of podcasts!
Resources for this episode include:
Autism and the God Connection by William Stillman
The Telepathy Tapes Podcast (https://thetelepathytapes.com/)
The Rhine Institute (https://www.rhineonline.org/what-is-parapsychology)
Dr. Diane Hennacy/Powell (https://drdianehennacy.com/telepathy/)
Psychology Today article on the Telepathy Tapes by Jeff Tarant PhD (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/choosing-your-meditation-style/202503/science-skepticism-and-the-telepathy-tapes)
Dr. Hennacy/Powell's Response to Jonathan Jarry (https://thetelepathytapes.com/dr-powell-defense)
Sharing Our Autism Story (https://www.autisticpov.com/e/sharing-our-autistic-story-ep-6/)
If you like my content, please follow the podcast!
Visit my blog at Writing On The Spectrum (https://barbaragraver.substack.com/)
Full transcript follows. If you need closed captioning, please listen via the podbean app or at AutisticPOV.com (https://www.autisticpov.com/).
EPISODE 10 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. everybody this is barbara graver thank you for joining me today on autistic pov today we're going to be talking about autism and psychic experience as most of you
0:30
know i tried to write an autism memoir and i talk about this in an episode i'll link to it telling our autism story but i tried to write this memoir And I realized that I kind of couldn't stay in the autism lane. I was talking about autism, but I was talking a lot about the paranormal,
0:51
my psychic experience, past spiritual experience, metaphysical topics, all this stuff that to my mind then, didn't have anything to do with autism. And I thought, I can't do this. This is supposed to be an autism memoir. And nobody's going to want to read all this if they're looking for autism memoir.
1:13
So I set it on the side, but it kind of kept pulling at me. So Not long ago, actually a few weeks ago, I decided, you know what, I'm just going to write it. I'm just going to do it. I mean, it's actually written. I thought I'm just going to edit it and finish it and do it.
1:32
And after I made that decision, I thought maybe I should do a little research on this topic, this topic. Is there any connection between autism and psychic ability? And I had never really thought that there was. To me, the metaphysical, actually parapsychological is the correct term, was always a special interest. It was just a special interest.
1:56
It didn't really have anything to do with being autistic. And maybe it doesn't. I don't know that for sure. But I do know that when I started to research, I found a book. by this guy named William Stillman. It's called Autism and the God Connection. And this was an interesting book to me.
2:14
There's some pros and cons on it, which I'll talk about in another episode, but it was a really interesting book to me because it addressed this idea that there's a relationship between telepathy and autism. And in particular, William Stillman, who is on the spectrum and does have psychic ability, I think has worked as a medium.
2:36
But William Stillman worked primarily with nonverbal autistic children and teenagers, maybe adults, but nonverbal autistic people and their mothers. And a lot of these moms were saying, my kid could read my mind. And of course, everyone's like, That's ridiculous. People are even saying really mean things, like horrible, cruel things.
3:02
And that's like part of the culture of just dismissing what is essentially at its core the inner experience of the autistic, which we'll talk about more. But William Stillman didn't dismiss it. He wrote a book about it, and it's a really interesting book, and he's an interesting guy, and he shares a lot of anecdotes about
3:23
And he mentions in the book this podcast called The Telepathy Tapes, which I listen to. And that also is about telepathy and nonverbal autistic people. And it's really compelling. It's super compelling. And it is based on and around the work of this, actually, she's a medical doctor, neuroscientist, Diane Hennessy.
3:46
And she got interested in autism and telepathy and decided to research it. And she said that she knew when she made that decision that it was the end of her scientific reputation, she knew it. And so it was. They even found a way to take her medical license away from her for a while.
4:05
And it's interesting because this is the culture. And it's almost like there's a double prejudice when you talk about this issue. There's the prejudice of dismissing the inner the inner reality, the lived experience of autistic people was just systemic. And then in the scientific community, there was the prejudice against parapsychology, also systemic.
4:31
And it's really, really interesting because I've studied parapsychology. I took courses at the Rhine Institute, which is... was started by J.B. Rhine, who did the original experiments in ESP. But I took courses there. I think I'm going to take some more, actually. And it's interesting because that prejudice towards parapsychology is so ingrained in the scientific community,
4:55
like even Rupert Sheldrake, who's that. I think Cambridge-educated biophysicists, he would submit papers when he was doing his research on morphic fields. He would submit statistically valid, well-designed scientific studies and write a paper on it and submit it to these academic journals. And they would send it back without even reading it.
5:17
They would say, we know this can't be true, so we're not even going to read your paper. Like that's the scientific community at its worst. And parapsychology brings that out. It just brings it out so much. And it's kind of interesting because on Diane Hennessey's website, she actually quotes from this paper.
5:38
And just give me a minute here and I will find it. So this paper was written by molecular biologist Jonathan Jerry in critiquing Diane Hennessey's work with autism and telepathy and what is interesting. interesting about it for the purpose of our discussion, is that he begins by talking about parapsychology. And he says, and this is a quote,
6:03
parapsychology is a grab bag of powers and experiences like telepathy, telekinesis, and precognition that involves some weird transfer of energy or information that currently exist outside of our scientific understanding, if they exist at all. And this is like kind of an interesting way to characterize parapsychology because it's not a grab bag of powers and experiences.
6:29
It's an actual science. And I'll just quote from the Ryan Institute's website on parapsychology. Like, what is parapsychology? Parapsychology is the scientific study of interactions between living organisms and their external environment that seem to transcend the known physical laws of nature. Parapsychology is a component of the broader study of consciousness and the mind.
6:53
parapsychologists study five broad areas, telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, PK, psychokinesis, and survival studies. So you can see the difference here in perspective, and you can see the prejudice of the scientific community towards parapsychology. I'm not saying that the telepathy tapes is a scientifically valid study. Like, I don't know that. I couldn't even really analyze that.
7:18
I suspect it probably isn't, but The point is, anecdotal evidence is still evidence. And it's kind of systemic of popular culture as a whole to just dismiss out of hand the lived experience of autistic people. So it's not really surprising that this telepathy in nonverbal autistic people is just going to be dismissed out of hand.
7:42
None of that's surprising. And probably when I mention all this, you're thinking, but wait, that's been debunked. It hasn't been debunked. It hasn't been properly studied, perhaps. But that's the most you can say about it. You can't say that it's been debunked. So I found that really interesting.
7:59
And essentially what Diane Hennessey and the telepathy tapes and William Stillman are all saying, some people at least on the autism spectrum have telepathic abilities. And this is like widely reported by mothers of kids that are nonverbal saying, you know, my kid could read my mind. And you think that's ridiculous. That can happen. It's a normal reaction.
8:26
I'm a skeptical person. The only reason I believe the things I believe is because of direct experience. I don't really believe anything. metaphysical other than stuff I've had direct experience of. So I'm kind of like that too. It's human nature, but it's problematic.
8:45
It's problematic when it means you can't take a look at things from a reasonable perspective. And that's essentially the problem. That's a big part of the problem. And so on the telepathy tapes, they're nonverbal autistic individuals who are communicating their spellers. They call it spellers. They're communicating via assistive devices, which is part of,
9:10
it would definitely be a challenge in setting up a study for various reasons, but they're communicating. And some of the examples, like you really should check it out. I'll put a link. Some of the examples are really, really compelling. And That's not saying, again, they're scientifically valid. It's saying they're compelling.
9:28
And the way parapsychology works is that parapsychology looks at things that happen, quote, in the field, spontaneous events, apparently paranormal, apparently psi. They just call it all psi for ease of communication. Apparently psi events that happen in the field, they take those events and then they do a study where the scientific community
9:51
looks at those events and just dismisses them out of hand. parapsychologists look at them and then they do a study. They don't just accept them. Like that's not how it works. And their studies are actually, and I know this from my courses at Ryan, their studies are actually more rigorous than your average scientific study.
10:10
Like a regular scientific study might do a double or triple blind. Parapsychologists will do quadruple blind. Like they really, because they know everybody's going to do their best to discredit them. I mean, it's an ongoing thing. So it would be great if we could get some parapsychologists to take a really good look at this.
10:29
But people are looking at it. And I just don't know enough about the work of Diane Hennessey really to comment on it. But it's very interesting. And the telepathy tapes are very interesting. And the idea that autistic people are receiving information via telepathy is fascinating to me. And I'll tell you why.
10:52
When I first got diagnosed with autism, the idea of the spectrum was confusing to me because I thought, first of all, I had people telling me, well, what you have used to be Asperger's, but now they put it all together kind of so they could bill for things. That was the explanation I sort of got.
11:11
So it seemed to me like maybe it's just all these different kind of neurobiological things grouped together. And it's a spectrum, but it's not necessarily a linear spectrum like we're going from point A to point Z on this spectrum. It's just kind of a hodgepodge.
11:29
I always sort of thought that and then when I found out about the telepathy tapes my opinion just suddenly changed because I realized this is a little bit like what I've been doing through my whole life but intuitively always and that is the way I
11:48
get information even in everyday way I've always been very sensitive to what I call energy what the weird energy that Jonathan Jerry mentions. But even when I was a little kid, like I used to have a sense of people that was, it, it was, and is, cause I still get it an actual palpable thing.
12:11
It felt like an energy, like almost like pins and needles would feel like kind of like energy. It felt like that. And yeah, I remember as a little kid, like trying to explain that to my friend and them looking at me like I was insane. And that's when I realized other people don't do this.
12:28
Other people aren't doing this. Other people aren't getting information this way. And it's like, I'm not very good at conversation. Like I could do this podcast because I edit it. And because I'm not looking at anyone, I could do it. But when it comes to conversation and I'm still all over the place,
12:45
but when it comes to conversation, like I'm horrible at conversation and it's, Yet a lot of times when I'm talking to people, especially certain people, there's almost like a subtext. There's a conversation beneath the conversation. Like even if somebody's saying something, somebody could be saying one thing and then there's the subtext and that's intuition.
13:08
So it's not the same as what the nonverbal autistic people are doing where they're actually You have to watch the podcast. It seems like they're actually reading minds. I'm not doing anything like that. But it's a similar kind of thing. It's a similar way of getting information.
13:26
And I'm thinking about this, and all of a sudden I'm thinking, it really is a spectrum. It actually is a spectrum because this is part of who I am. And my special interests that I always kind of put out to the side, like it's this random thing that doesn't have anything to do with me.
13:43
My special interests have always been since the time I was a little kid, like the Ouija board, ghost stories, gothic fiction, tarot cards, astrology, everything along that line, witches, dark shadows, everything along that line just spoke to me, spoke to me, spoke to me. And it's not really something that's off to the side.
14:03
And it's not a problem. I don't think that I put it in my memoir because it's kind of central to who I am. And I'm like seeing the spectrum for the first time. So I just wanted to share this. I'm going to do some more podcasts on this topic because I think it's fascinating.
14:20
And I'm going to write my weird hybrid kind of memoir, too. But I'm going to do some more podcasts on this. I want to talk a little more about William Stillman and the telepathy tapes and my own personal experience, like with the paranormal and paranormal investigation and mediumship and all this kind of stuff that I explored.
14:41
And it's who I am. So why shouldn't the memoir be that too? And why shouldn't I talk about it here? I mean, I hope people consider it relevant. I don't know for sure, but I'm going to come back to it. I'm definitely going to come back to it.
14:55
So the next episode is going to be on this topic. I don't know specifically what, but it's going to be on this topic. And I'm going to keep talking about this. So if it's of interest to you, please consider following the show. I'm on most popular podcast apps. I'm also, I have Substack, which is barbaragraver.substack.com.
15:16
I call it writing on the spectrum, but you can find it there. I'll put links to that. Please feel free to follow the show or comment or share it. All that helps more than you could know. And I will be back on the third Friday of May, and we will be talking more about autism and psychic experience.
15:36
So until then, this is Barbara Graver of Autistic POV, and thank you very much for listening.
________________
Theme music by the Caffeine Creek Band

Masking in Autism: A Pro and Con Perspective EP 9

How masking can be helpful at times. How it can hurt. My experience with autistic masking and unmasking. My new unmasking autism workbook. I am planning future episodes on the topic.
Thank you for listening!
If you like this content please follow and / or share!
You can get all my media and articles for free via my newsletter:  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 9 Transcript:
If your podcast provider cuts off the transcript, you can see the full transcript for 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. 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.
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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