Autistic POV

Sharing Our Autism Story EP 6

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

Job vs. Following My Calling: An Autistic Perspective EP 5

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

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

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

Autism Diagnosis, Bipolar Misdiagnosis and Podcast Update EP 3

In this episode, I talk a bit about being misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder for 20 years, prior to getting my (correct autism diagnosis) and why I've switched gears with the podcast. The memoir I mentioned in the episode is Drama Queen (affiliate link) by Sara Gibbs. 
If you like this content, please follow and / or share!
Episode 3 Transcript:
If your podcast provider cuts off the transcript, you can read the full transcript by viewing this episode at AutisticPOV.com. Closed captioning is available via the website or on the podbean app.
(If your podcast provider cuts off the transcript, you can read the full transcript by viewing this episode at AutisticPOV.com.)
0:06
Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hi everybody, this is Barbara Graver and I'd like to welcome you to the show. Today I wanted to talk a little bit about late diagnosis and particularly my late diagnosis and
0:32
And you may have noticed that I changed the intro to the show a little bit, and that was because I listened to my first couple episodes, and the first episode was kind of just me talking, and the second episode was more informational. And I thought it's nice to share information,
0:52
but that's not really what I had in mind when I started the podcast. What I had in mind was just sharing my experience, my point of view, hence the name. So I redid the intro to be a little more reflective of that. And I also changed my plans for this episode a little bit too.
1:15
Initially, I was going to present facts and some of my experience, but facts too. And I decided that you guys could get that anywhere. And what I would like to share is my experience. I've been reading a lot of autism memoir and books by autistic writers and one
1:40
thing that I find particularly helpful is when I resonate with something someone says and I never resonate with all of it because we're all different. We're all different people and different people have different issues and different talents and different abilities and different ways of looking at things. But there are commonalities.
2:00
And I think after a lifetime of feeling alienated and alone, when I read something by someone who we share a commonality, it's helpful to me. So that's where I'm going with the podcast. And I wanted to talk just a little bit today about my own diagnosis. I got diagnosed very late in life.
2:25
I grew up in the 60s and 70s when people didn't really even know what autism was and if there was any concept of it at all it was Hans Asperger and his work and the idea that mostly mostly boys were autistic or only boys were
2:45
autistic so there was nothing to fall back on and my parents I think like all parents of that era felt that the best thing they could do for their kid was to make sure you could function in society. And just like everybody else, no matter how hard that was, that really didn't matter.
3:06
They thought they were doing you a favor if they forced you to be able to function as seamlessly as possible in society. So there's a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure to do that. My mother used to make excuses for me.
3:23
She'd say things like I was the youngest kid in the class and I was an only child and these things were supposed to explain some of my problems, but they really didn't. And I got other explanations, too, that were not so positive. And, you know,
3:43
I was often told that I was selfish and uncaring and just like my father who may have been autistic. And I was made to feel very defective growing up. And I tried very, very hard to fit in. And I never really succeeded. And it's kind of funny looking back. I look back and I think,
4:06
grade school was horrible but I think in high school I was actually able to do it I was reading this really really good book by autistic writer and I'll link to it in the comments and she kept talking about her fresh starts like all her fresh starts
4:23
and that was what high school was for me and I turned myself inside out at a very high cost to fit in and quote be popular And it was kind of funny because I actually thought I fooled everyone. And now, looking back, I think popular girls, they get a pretty bad rap, and oftentimes it's deserved.
4:46
But I think looking back on my experience in high school, I think people felt sorry for me. And I think people were, some of the girls I hung out with were just plain gracious about And it wasn't necessarily that I fooled them, but I tried. And the effort, the Herculean effort to do that caused me, I think,
5:09
to have my first probably autistic burnout when I was still in high school. And that was really severe. And there were a lot of other problems that went with that. Maybe I could talk about that at some other time. But I can't say that I knew I was different because
5:25
because I didn't know when I was young that someone could be different. I thought I was just defective. I thought my difference was that I thought life was that hard for everyone. I thought I didn't try hard enough, and I just didn't really understand why things were so hard for me. I thought I was selfish,
5:43
and I thought I was lazy, and I thought I was all kinds of things, but it could have never occurred to me that I was autistic. But I was able to eventually get through college and have a career for a while, even though it was very difficult.
5:59
But I was able to do it for a period of about 13 years. And my self-esteem, I think, was so low because the thing that was hard for me was I knew I was reasonably bright, but yet I made all these terrible mistakes. And the only explanation for that was that I was just being a fool.
6:22
I was just foolish. I was just impulsive, and I was just so many bad things. And I got that feedback consistently probably throughout my life. And eventually I hit a wall. And I had been working as an RN for about 13 years, raising a single family, having meltdowns, like struggling, finding life really, really difficult.
6:51
And finally we had a family tragedy that happened that made life, went from extremely difficult to impossible. It was just impossible for me to cope with this tragedy. And I experienced what I guess would be severe autistic burnout at this point. It was almost like a breakdown. And I just couldn't cope anymore.
7:18
I could not do it anymore. My employer went out of business, and I was glad. I was glad he went out of business because I had to stop. And so I entered the mental health system at that point. And I was told I was bipolar. Like so many people are, I think nowadays.
7:37
And, um, I was put on medication for a time. I was on a lot of medication and it never helped. And I kept telling people it's not helping. And when you tell people that, um, what they tend to do is just put you on more medication. And this was in the early 2000s.
7:58
And autism in women still wasn't really well known at that point. So I don't necessarily blame anyone for that. But I do feel that somebody should have realized that I was not bipolar. And so I ended up on medication. I did go back to work as a nurse. And it was terrible. It was still terrible.
8:19
And I kept telling people the medication isn't helping for a period of about Almost 20 years I told people that, and they basically didn't listen to me. And finally a family member was diagnosed with autism, and as happens to so many people, I started reading about it because I wanted to understand what they were going through.
8:41
And as I read it, I identified with more and more things that I read. More and more things seemed to be oddly like me. And so I met, actually met with the psychologist who had identified, diagnosed the family member. And I said, you know, it's the funniest thing.
9:02
I'm reading this stuff, and I feel like it sounds like me. And I expected her to say, don't be silly. And I said, I wonder if I should have an evaluation. And instead of saying, don't be silly, she said, I think that might be a good idea. And I was really taken aback.
9:20
that this could be the issue, this was in 2022. And I had my evaluation, it took, well actually I think it was in 2021 when I spoke with her and it took a period of time to get all the ducks lined up with insurance and scheduling and all that stuff. But I had the evaluation.
9:41
It was a very good evaluation. It was very extensive. And I was given the diagnosis of autism. And she told me she didn't think I was bipolar at all. And I did have some other comorbidities, such as anxiety and mild depression, which I think anyone, well, I shouldn't say anyone,
10:01
but I think a lot of people who live their whole life as undiagnosed autistics will end up with anxiety and depression. I think it's very, very likely. So I got the diagnosis, and initially I was really excited to have it because I had been telling people for 20 years I didn't think I was bipolar,
10:23
and I had been telling people in particular 19 years, I guess, and I'd been telling people in particular quite, quite often for probably seven years prior to that. that something else was wrong. I kept saying something else is wrong, and one of the reasons I thought that was because of problems I was having with writing.
10:46
I was trying to write full-time at that point, and I considered myself talented as a writer, but yet I was still having these terrible, terrible problems with constructing plots and with staying on a storyline and the actual structuring of the story. And I knew there was a reason for that.
11:10
And I knew it had nothing to do with being bipolar. And that was one of the things that kind of moved me to keep telling people over and over again there's something else wrong. And I'll talk more about autism and how it has affected me in terms of my writing in another episode,
11:29
but that was part of what motivated me. And when I got the diagnosis, I was really excited. It was like, here's a new thing. It was like my new special interest. I'm reading about it. I'm learning about it. I'm talking about it incessantly. And people were not receptive to that at all.
11:46
I think it embarrassed people on my behalf somehow. And I am very, very reactive to any kind of shame or humiliation. So as soon as that happened, most people would just stop talking about it. But I stopped thinking about it. And I stopped reading about it. And I just kind of set it on the back burner.
12:07
Because this is kind of... Kind of a mechanism, a coping mechanism, I guess, on my life when I get negative feedback on something, I would just totally kind of carve it out of my personality or my life. And so I kind of did that. And so two years went by, and I really,
12:31
aside from my initial couple of months of learning about it and thinking about it, I didn't really do anything to process it at all until I ran into trouble with my writing. I didn't really try to understand why autism affected my writing particularly or what I might be able to do about it.
12:51
I just kind of went back to writing, and I completed a manuscript. And when I completed it... I was very happy to have finished something, and as it turned out, that story just basically failed kind of across the board. And that was very difficult for me,
13:08
but it served a purpose because it brought me back to looking again at autism and how it affected me and what that meant. And I don't even know if it's right to say how autism affects you because when you're autistic, that's who you are. You have a neurodivergent brain.
13:27
It's not like something you catch or something that happens to you. There is no you really separate from that. And at any rate my own unique neurobiology and what it meant and why it made it hard to construct the kind of fiction other people were constructing and so I came back to
13:49
that and I started blogging about it a little bit and I started talking about it and I started learning about it and I started to realize how much I had to process I really had to process a lot and I think that the work of doing that is worth sharing.
14:09
So I want to share that as I do this podcast. And I'm really just at the very beginning of it. The only thing I would say I've really... possibly began to process is the idea that I'm a vulnerable person. I am vulnerable. I'm not necessarily to blame completely in a vacuum for every mistake I've ever made.
14:34
I basically never really had anyone to help me. Even though I was involved with the mental health system for 20 years, I never really had anyone who actually helped me. And part of that was my own fault because I masked in a phenomenal way and I never let anyone help me I thought being helped
14:57
was a sign of weakness and I did did everything myself pretty much all my life so I can't necessarily blame blame other people for that although I do I do think that probably the mental health providers I saw had some responsibility to get things right but they didn't
15:19
And now I'm coming to it and I've got a lifetime of regrets and missed opportunities and mistakes and burnt bridges behind me. And it's, it's a lot to wrestle with. It really is. But just that one idea that it's not all my fault and that, I'm not to blame for everything. It's a good starting place.
15:46
So what I'm doing right now is I do see an autism therapist, and she's very good. She's helpful, although I've been seeing her for two years, and I'm just getting to the point where I'm starting to trust her. So there's that, and I'm starting to do free writing every morning, which is helping, and I'm reading memoirs,
16:05
and I'm going to talk about that more next time, what I'm reading and how that helps. And I just like to share it here. So that's why I redid the intro. I don't want to, like, try to set myself up as some kind of expert.
16:21
And I'm glad I did the episode on free writing because I wanted to learn about it. And I'm finding it helpful. And I hope other people are too. But that's not the tone of the podcast I want to have going forward. That's not my plan. So that's it for today.
16:38
I just wanted to share a little bit about what I'm looking at with the podcast. So you could decide as a listener if it's something you want to follow. I hope it is. But either way, I just want to put it out there. So the next show, I'm going to talk a little bit about what I'm reading,
16:58
I think, and how that's helping me, and a couple books I've read recently that I liked. And I guess that's it. So if you liked the episode, please consider following the show. If you think it's something someone you know might be interested in, please do share it.
17:15
And that's it for today, and I hope to see you next time. Until then, this is Barbara Graber of Autistic POV, and I hope to see you soon!
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Please note, this episode includes amazon affiliate links. If you purchase through one of these links, I may receive a small commission at no cost to you.
Theme music by Caffeine Creek
 

An Autistic POV on the Benefits of Freewriting EP 2

An autistic perspective on freewriting and how it can help us improve creativity, explore identity, and even improve physical and emotional health. This episode was a bit of an experiment. While it was fun sharing information, future episodes will be more conversation and based mostly on my personal experience (as opposed to research). I wanted to share the following resources that I used to prep for this episode:
Psychological Benefits of Free Writing.
Therapeutic Journaling PDF
I also referred to Expressive Writing by James W. Pennebaker and John Frank Evans. And Tony Attwood's book The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome. Both should be available from your local library or elsewhere via interlibrary loan. 
If you like this content, please follow and / or share!
Episode 2 Transcript:
If your podcast provider cuts off the transcript, you can read the full transcript by viewing this episode at AutisticPOV.com. Closed captioning is available via the website or on the podbean app.
0:03
Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver. I am a late diagnosed autistic, and I hope you'll join me as we talk about life, identity, and self-acceptance from an autistic point of view. Today, I wanted to talk about free writing. And free writing is to essentially just start writing and to keep writing.
0:29
And it's a stream of consciousness thing where you jot down whatever comes into your head. And one of the reasons I want to talk about this is because I'm doing it right now. And I've been toying with the idea of writing like an autism memoir for a long time, and it's very hard for me to do.
0:46
So I thought maybe the free writing would help. And I think it is. It's early days, but I think it is. So the main things I wanted to cover about free writing, I have three points I'd like to make about free writing. And I do have references for each of these.
1:01
Those will be in the show notes because this is a short podcast. I'm not going to be taking a real deep dive. So if you want to learn more, I'm going to give you the references that I used and hopefully they would answer
1:13
some of your questions or at least get you started on your own research if this resonates. So the first, the three topics I want to talk about are free writing and increased creativity. Free writing as a way to explore identity and and free writing and the potential for healing.
1:32
And you could do a whole podcast probably on each of these, but I just want to give a little bit of an overview. So increased creativity. There was a study that was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology on free writing and creativity. I actually couldn't read the study because it was paywalled,
1:51
but I did find a website that talked about it. So that's what I'll be linking to in the description. But the gist of it is that the study showed that people who did free writing had increased innovation and creativity. And this is something that I think a lot of people already know.
2:09
I mean, there's the artist's way, there's various things about journaling and how it helps. But I think a lot of people haven't actually tried it. I mean, we know it'll probably work, but we don't really want to put the time in. And that's understandable. I mean, I kind of feel that way too.
2:26
So one of the things I've done is I've limited it to 20 minutes. I have a timer and I recommend, I love my timer. I have a timer that when you turn it, it's actually, I'm not sure how to describe this, but as you turn it, it's a colored timer.
2:43
It shows a colored wedge of how much time you have left. So every time you look at it, you could see that time going down. And it's very helpful. I find it very helpful. So one of the strategies is to just do a set amount of time. And with free writing,
2:59
a lot of times people think free writing is just writing whatever comes into your head. And it's not necessarily. You can pick a topic. Particularly if you're, and we'll discuss a couple different kinds of topics, but if you're dealing with a creative issue, you could start writing something about that, definitely.
3:18
Or, you know, you could write something unrelated and just see what kind of pops in. And autistic people tend to be very, very creative. But we also tend to have a lot of issues around creativity. And I'm going to talk about that, just that, in another episode. But I think if you're autistic, you're probably creative.
3:39
And if you're autistic and creative, you probably already know this. And we can get in a loop with our creativity. And there are a lot of negative things that could come in, like perfectionism and self-censoring and judging ourselves that can really get us all tangled up. Or at least that's been my experience with writing.
4:02
Been writing all my life, but I've never published anything. I've rarely even showed my writing to people. And so it's not surprising that we have reservations and feel conflicted. And I think that journaling can be a way to recover from this. It's a way that we can kind of regain our center with our creativity.
4:25
And if you've read The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, she was essentially in creative burnout when she started the process. So it helped her, and it's helped a lot of people. But also what I find with journaling, and I also use dreams this way, but just sticking with journaling,
4:44
is that I get ideas when I journal, even when I'm not journaling about my writing or about my work. And this is why with free writing, you can pick any topic or no topic. And whatever you pick, it's very likely that while you're doing it, because you're in kind of a flow state,
5:03
That something will just pop in. It's kind of like the way you get ideas when you're in the shower, except you're writing. So you just write it down. You just add it in. That's what I do. Like I'll be writing about an experience or I'll pick a topic.
5:17
of some kind and all of a sudden an idea pops in and I just include that, put a little asterisk by it and I come back to it. So that is one way and it is a proven way. It's evidence-based way to increase creativity and innovation and you do not have to write about your project.
5:34
You can write about whatever you want and you'll still get that effect. So that's the first one, increased creativity. That's the first benefit. The second one is that free writing can be a way to explore identity. You just write about anything, and it could be experience that pertains to identity, certainly. It could be your special interests.
5:56
A lot of us, we get our identity from our special interests. So this is something we can explore. One of my special interest going all the way back to childhood was vampires. I was always very interested in vampires and gothic fiction. And I could trace this all the way back,
6:13
like I grew up in the 60s and 70s, so I could trace this all the way back to the TV show Dark Shadows and the main character Angelique. And there were reasons why At that point in my life, I identified with this.
6:27
And through the free writing, I could see why grade school was very, very hard for me. And there was a reason why a powerful, beautiful, exotic witch like Angelique would appeal to me and why the whole world of Collinwood and stuff was kind of escaped from me.
6:46
So the same thing with books, like along that line, I always like gothic fiction. So this is a way that we shape our identity because oftentimes our special interests kind of become our identity. And this is something that happens with neurotypicals too. Somebody will be like their job, like they're a lawyer. That's who they are.
7:06
For us, it might be we have a certain interest and there's nothing wrong with that. Tony Atwood in his book on Asperger's, which I'll also link to, kind of like an old book, a little out of date, but still he makes some good points, I think.
7:21
And one thing he says about Asperger's, I always want to make that a B, is that identity is an issue. Identity is an issue for autistics. It just is. We don't have that strong sense of central coherence that neurotypicals have. So we spend a lot of our life
7:42
trying to figure out who we are and define who we are and feel secure in who we are. And it can be a really difficult journey. And this is another thing we should do a whole episode on, so I don't want to go too into it. But we can explore this through our writing.
7:58
We can explore what our identity is, how it was shaped, what we want our identity to be. And again, we don't have to necessarily set up. set out to talk about these topics. Like I was writing about an incident that happened to me in grade school, which I'll talk more about in our next point.
8:16
And I got a clear sense of how my identity formed from this. So that could be very helpful. But I think the main thing about free writing and identity is it's learning about who we are and how we became that person. And it can be about who we want to be and changes we want to make.
8:34
But I think it's more lends itself to actually discovering who we are. And we tend to think of ourselves as odd or weird or, you know, and sometimes we need to understand the process. Like, is it weird to be interested in vampires? Not so much now, but when I was younger, definitely. And yet,
8:55
when you see how that happened and why, it just goes a long way to kind of incorporating that and feeling good about it. So I think that's another great example great way that free writing can help us. And the third way is the potential for healing. And this is kind of what I'm doing now.
9:14
I got this book, Expressive Writing by, I think it's James Pennybaker. Again, I'll put a link to this in the show notes. But Pennybaker is an experimental psychologist. So it's kind of interesting he wrote this book because he doesn't work with clients or help people change their lives and stuff.
9:35
And yet he did this experiment that was exactly about that. And what he did is he had people write for 15 minutes, I think it was, I do 20, but 15 minutes on a difficult topic. It doesn't have to be major trauma. Like, I'm not even really sure it should be major trauma, but it could be.
9:54
But it could be something like, for me, like incidents of bullying I kind of focused on. And so you're writing about that for 15 minutes a day, and you might actually feel worse afterwards. But over the long run, he found, and this again is evidence-based study,
10:13
he found that people who did this for even 15 minutes four days in a row on a topic that they considered difficult or traumatic or dark or disturbing or whatever, had actually better health afterwards. These people went to the doctor less. And he did this study with college students.
10:35
So these were people who were really only going to the doctor because they had a cold or flu or respiratory infection. You know, they weren't really going to the doctor to have their blood pressure checked or things like this. So this was a clear measure of their health, and their health actually improved.
10:51
And there have been multiple studies since then that have supported this, that it has a benefit on people's immune system and on their psychological well-being and ultimately on their health. So there's, again, evidence-based reason why this can be helpful for you. And my experience, I had a really,
11:15
really hard time in grade school and in high school in a different way. But in grade school in particular, there was one incident in particular that I never told anyone about. Actually, probably several incidences I've never told anybody about. But this was like a really hurtful thing.
11:34
Like this is one of maybe three incidences, but it affected me. Even like in seventh grade, I remember all of seventh grade as being overcast. And I don't think it really was, but that was my mindset. I was depressed. This really threw me. So I've never told anyone about this. I don't even like to think about it.
11:55
I don't even like to admit that it happened. But I decided that's what I would start. I picked like one of the harder things. It's probably not on the trauma scale, the most traumatic thing that ever happened to me. But for whatever reason, constellation of reasons, it affected me quite a bit.
12:11
So it was essentially bullying, I would say. And I wrote about that. And as I did, I discovered, like I mentioned earlier, like why I got so fixated on Dark Shadows and Angelique and why this I'm still writing vampire fiction today. I still like it. If I find anything with vampires in it, I'll check it out.
12:34
Even if it's crappy, I'll check it out. And I love paranormal fiction. I read all kinds of fiction, but I especially like paranormal. So I understood this and I found this like very, very helpful. It helped me like kind of integrate this. And so to me, that's healing when you integrate something. It's healing.
12:55
So I think that whether I'll be physically healthier because of this, I don't know. But I kind of think if I keep doing it, I will be. I think there's a reason why the study that Pennebaker and others did turn out the way they did. I think this is a very healthy thing to do.
13:12
And I mean, there are cautions, like he even says in the book. And I'll link to the book, Expressive Writing, because... I think it's good to have a guide when you're doing this. Like, I wouldn't say just go ahead and do it. I would say at least read Pennebaker's book.
13:27
But he gives various cautions in it, which I think are good to know. But if it makes you feel really bad or really depressed, obviously you stop. I mean, that's like with any of this stuff, it's going to help maybe most people or the majority of people, but some people it's not going to help at all.
13:44
And some people it's even going to be detrimental. So you definitely want to use your own feelings as a guide to this. It's normal to feel a little bit down like immediately after, but if that sticks, if you don't come back up, if you don't feel like you're integrating things and feeling better,
14:02
then you probably want to avoid it. And again, with me, I started out with a situation that was damaging to me, but not the most traumatic thing I ever, that ever happened to me because I don't feel like I'm really want to go there right now.
14:18
So I would definitely say be cautious with it because it is a powerful tool that can help you with your creativity, And in defining your identity and accepting your identity, a lot of us have a certain identity, but we find it hard to accept because of feedback we get from other people.
14:38
And sometimes understanding how that formed and why helps us see this is kind of a natural thing. I see how this happened. Could be just your nature, certainly. But there could be things that have either made you that person or made you feel conflicted about being that person.
14:56
So identifying this stuff, it really does kind of neutralize it. It helps to neutralize it. So these are my three topics on free writing. There's certainly a lot more to say about free writing, and maybe we could revisit it at some point. I mean, I'm just starting with it.
15:14
But again, the three things are increasing creativity, and this is evidence-based exploring identity. I couldn't really find a study on this, but I know it's helpful for me personally, and the potential for healing. So I will include the resources for this in in the show notes. And I hope that this could be helpful for you.
15:37
Try it, but be aware that it does have the potential to be triggering. So if that happens, back away from it. Talk to somebody if you need to, certainly. But I think for most people it's a good tool. So that's it for today, and I hope to see you next time.
15:52
Please consider following the show if you're interested in this content. And definitely, if you like it and you know someone who might benefit from it or be interested, please, please feel free to share. That's the best thing you could do for anyone who does this stuff is to share their material. But only if you think someone's interested.
16:12
So I will see you guys next time. And until then, this is Barbara Graver. And thank you for listening!
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Autistic POV Intro, My Autism Diagnosis & Caveats EP 1

A bit about my autism diagnosis and my plans for my podcast, Autistic POV. I hope you'll check back and, if you're able, please consider following the show. This episode includes a few important caveats for the show, including my target audience. I'm planning on airing new episodes about twice a month. I do hope you'll check back!  #autism #late-diagnosis
If you like this content, please follow and / or share!
Episode 1 Transcript:
If your podcast provider cuts off the transcript, you can read the full transcript by viewing this episode at AutisticPOV.com. Closed captioning is available via the website or on the podbean app.
0:03
Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver. I am a late diagnosed autistic and I hope you'll join me as we talk about life, identity, and self-acceptance from an autistic point of view.
0:18
Hi everybody, this is Barbara Graver and today I'd just like to share a little bit about what I'll be doing on the podcast and what I have planned going forward. And this is kind of hard for me a little bit because it's my first time really talking about autism in public.
0:39
And it's funny because I could talk about a lot of things online and have--personal spiritual experience, my work, my feelings, you know, personal stuff. But I've never really talked about this. So it's new. It's a little bit threatening, but I'm going to go ahead and try it.
0:58
So, part of the reason I think it's a challenge for me is because I wasn't diagnosed until 2022, which means that I've been kind of trying to fit into a world that I could never be totally comfortable with for decades. And it was a lot to process.
1:18
It kind of cast my whole history and experience in a new light. And it took me a while to To sort of get a handle on that, I mean, honestly, I wouldn't say that I have necessarily got a handle on it, but I think I've made progress.
1:36
So I got diagnosed in April of 2022, and now it's two years later, and it just so happened that Some of the issues I've been having lately with my writing kind of peaked and I thought, kind of like Joanna Penn says, maybe I should create the kind of content I need to hear.
1:57
So I was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder one. I was diagnosed by psychologists and autism spectrum disorder one is what used to be called Asperger's and to me it's sort of like the walking wounded version of autism people can function in society
2:17
more or less but there's cost to that or at least there has been for me there's been a cost and that cost has actually been pretty high I would say across the board but I do have mixed feelings about honestly about about talking about the challenges of autism. And part of the reason for this, I think,
2:39
is because I've known people, known a couple moms who've had nonverbal autistic children. So sharing that same diagnosis is weird to me. I wish they'd kept Asperger's, honestly, but they didn't. So this is the terminology we have. And I'm going to use it with the understanding that most of the stuff I talk about
2:59
in this podcast is probably going to be pretty autism spectrum disorder one specific, because that's what I know. And even within that demographic, I know there are a lot of differences in the way people process things. So I don't know if what I say is going to make sense to you necessarily, but
3:19
But I think that's always the way. And I think all we can really do is try. So I guess those are my caveats. But for me personally, my initial evaluation for autism was really comprehensive. And there was a lot of cognitive. I received a lot of cognitive information as part of that.
3:42
And I know not everybody can do the evaluation, but I think for anyone who can, it's worth it because a good evaluation will give you a wealth of information about your mind and the way you think. It's not just about checking the autism box. It's about everything else you learn. And, you know,
4:01
one of the things I learned was that there was a cognitive split, which is not uncommon with autism. And I think that's part of the reason why I find constructing novels and staying in my lane genre-wise kind of a challenge. but there's a lot more I want to learn about this and share.
4:20
I don't, this is just the introduction. I don't want to try to go into everything, but, but there are a lot of issues and they're different for different people. Also, there are a lot of really good resources out there and I'd like to share some of them.
4:34
And I think doing the podcast to kind of keep me a little bit on track with that. As far as the format for the show goes, um, Interviews are hard for me. I've been active online for a while. I have a kind of successful blog, mysticreview.com, and I've done a lot of media around that.
4:54
And I can do both sides of interview if I have to, but I do find it stressful. So I'm presently undecided about the interviews. I do definitely want to share information, but this might be in the form of a review or a resource or a topic or aspect of my own experience. But we'll see.
5:16
I'm not closing the door to interviews. I'm just saying that I'm not sure. And it's kind of like to me when I undertook the journey of to understand the psychic dreams and psychic experiences I was having all the way back in 2010. When I chose to undertake that journey, I felt very isolated and very alone.
5:40
And that's when I started the Mystic Review because I wanted to take other people with me. I wanted to share that with other people. And I did. So that's it. That's my intro. So please consider following the show if you're interested in this kind of content and checking back. And I hope to see you next time
6:02
And so until then, this is Barbara Graver, and I hope to catch up with you again soon!
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Theme music by Caffeine Creek