Speaker 1Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like. And that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality, licensed therapists across the U.S., offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability. And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash ACAST. That's growtherapy.com slash ACAST. Growtherapy.com slash ACAST. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. ♪♪♪ Hello, and welcome to the How Not to
Speaker 2Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat, and enjoy the conversation. This is episode 117, and today's episode, My Daughter and Neurodiversity, I'm in conversation with my gorgeous, gorgeous daughter, Catherine, who will share her experience. of her neurodiversity journey. I'm recording this introduction after we've had the interview, and I'm just so proud of her courage and bravery, really. We've been talking about whether she was happy to have that conversation, because I get asked a lot around this notion of neurodiversity. So, there will be another episode that will look very specifically at strategies that we can adopt as parents to kind of help and support our children in that neurodiversity. But I thought it was important, important to initially share, and Catherine was really happy to do this. Her personal experiences and kind of neurodiversity from her lens. So, I do hope you love and you enjoy this episode, and well done, my gorgeous girl. And it would be really helpful if you want to give us some feedback as to what the conversation that I've had with her, what that raises in terms of questions for you before we record the episode with my tips and strategies, so we make sure that we cover that. So, there is no gimmick. If for this particular episode, it's just simply that conversation. But as ever, if you enjoy this episode, I would love it if you could follow and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love. So, until next time, here's my gorgeous girl, Catherine. Welcome to the podcast and to a slightly different podcast with a slightly different take. I have the best and most amazing daughter here with me. My daughter's here with me.
Speaker 3Catherine, welcome. It's lovely to be here. I'm used to listening to this. I'm used to my car, so it's strange to be sat here.
Speaker 2Oh, but no, quite genuinely, it is really. I'm very grateful that you're here. So, I guess maybe let me set the context of why. So, basically, I had a conversation with Catherine and asked her if she was happy to come onto the podcast and talk about her story, her journey with parents, for parents, really, who've been asking me a lot around this idea about neurodiversity. So, Catherine. I'm not going to say anything necessarily. I'll let you sort of start and kind of share your story.
Speaker 3Well, I kind of knew from a young age that I was a bit odd, a bit different. I mean, there was obviously bits. Odd? What? Just the bits that just, like, were pointed out that wasn't really something that, like, everyone had experience with. I would say something and everyone would kind of look at me and think, that's not really what the rest of us do or that's not really something that we're used to. I'm very good at. I'm good at keeping stuff organised to a sense. I have a lot of order in my life. I follow the same routine. My hair gets washed the same way each day. It's very, very specific. And. And then I think I told that to someone when I was quite young and they kind of looked at me in this whole. I don't really follow the set order. So, I knew from a young age that something was. Not odd. Odd's maybe the wrong word.
Speaker 2But you felt different.
Speaker 3I felt different and there was just a different way that I did things and, you know, growing up. And then you're getting older and meeting people with different life experiences. It was just. I just kind of assumed that, oh, this is just the way that I do it. Everyone has their own way of doing it. Mine isn't wrong. It's just different to other people's. And then I was in therapy for some anxiety that I was having at university. And, obviously, we'd had a conversation about potentially being autistic. And I was in therapy and my therapist said, oh, well, why don't you look at getting diagnosed? I went, oh, but I'm happy where I am. I don't really need a label. If I am, I know I'm slightly different. And then over the coming weeks and months, I thought it'd actually be quite nice to get that firm diagnosis. Not because I wanted to use it as an excuse for anything. I'll be like, oh, I can't do that because I have it. But it's more just to get that clarification of maybe the reason why I felt odd wasn't me being weird. It was something that. It's hard to explain. Can I take you back then, Catherine,
Speaker 2before we kind of talk around the diagnosis thing? Because that's. I think that's probably. That's quite a really interesting kind of discussion in itself. But this noticing that you were doing things different or that you were odd. So did you. Did other people make you feel different when you made those comments? Or did you notice? I guess I'm thinking from a parent's perspective when they're sort of looking at their child. Because I think what I would probably point out is that. Is that when we're talking about neurodiversity it presents itself very differently for girls as it does for boys. And there was never once was a comment ever made when you were at school or any suggestion that your behaviour was different. But you clearly felt different. And can you. What were the sort of things.
Speaker 3I mean, so obviously it's obviously different from when I was a teenager to when I was tiny. But I remember in primary school obviously you'd go out to play time and everyone would be like doing these imagining games. Everyone was really easy about getting into character. And I always felt I just could never really do it because I never really got it. I was like, you can play this person. I'm like, I don't really get that. I'm not really kind of. And friends were like, oh my God, friends would slip into it really easily. And I was just kind of sorting it out. So I think I could do it but it just took a lot more effort or I'd literally just have to pretend to be pretending. Like, oh yeah, I can do it. I can do it here. I'm feeling it. And I just could never really get to that level. And then I'd be sat in the classroom and it was always just a slightly strange experience being sat there and everyone's doing stuff in maybe the order that the teacher's been teaching it. But I know for myself I have a slightly varied way of getting to that answer. And I think when people then used to look at my work it would always look a little bit different a little bit hashed or a little bit rushed because people would be thinking well, that's not how the teacher's taught us. That's how I've maybe got to that conclusion. Which maybe a couple of people then looked at I'm like, oh, that's a bit strange. But then I can't say oh, it might just mean me getting it wrong or I just have a weird way that worked.
Speaker 2So that's interesting then. So you noticed it in the imaginative creative play that people that and I guess as a girl with other girls who would then get massively into the flow of things. Yeah. And then you noticed it then academically because you would approach questions in a particular way.
Speaker 3Yeah, it was more just because of stuff like times tables and stuff like that. Yeah, it was more just like maths equations where people would maybe find it quite difficult. The questions where it would be a longer phrased question of oh, I know Betty has this many. Someone has this many. I always then used to take okay, look, this, this, this very like mathematical approach. And I had a lot of friends that struggled with that. So when I reached the answer quicker a lot of people can be like how did you get there so quick? And it was always I used to be like oh, it's quite simple. And so people would look at me and go it's not simple to me. But I mean, there was even instances with like friends and sleepovers where obviously like you go to a house and like sleepovers and stuff and all the girls would like be doing in their own groups. And it was just feeling a bit on the out. There was nothing wrong. It just, I just assumed that everyone sort of felt like that. But again, growing up I learned that that's probably not the case.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah. Did it, was it a big part of your growing up when you think about because obviously it's very once you get the diagnosis and we'll talk about that. But once you've got the diagnosis actually, why don't we talk about what is, what is the, we keep talking about these things. What was the diagnosis that you were there for that once you went through the process that you were given?
Speaker 3I used to obviously fill out a load of like questionnaires and they ask you kind of a range of questions and you know, do you like putting things into categories, agree, disagree. And then as I went through them and marked it off I suddenly realised that oh, a lot of this stuff that I do is just on these questionnaires. And I went back through one of my diagnosis and apparently I scored 47 a 50 and anything above a 32 is strong is a strong indication for autism um but no so my main diagnosis was asd and then i had adhd on the side like accompanying which i never really anticipated but apparently it's like 40 of asd get adhd on the side and then now i look back on stuff that maybe i wasn't aware of being adhd like my love and mom can attest to this it does annoy my mom of having two screens on at once when i do work at university i have my laptop screen and an ipad going for some background noise i just never knew that was a classic adhd symptom until i got told and then i got the diagnosis and it was a bit of a weight lifted off my shoulders it was like oh these things that i do with these categories and my love for order and the fact that i wash my hair the same every day in my shower it's it's not odd it's just the way that i'm wired yeah
Speaker 2and i think that that was for you was actually quite a huge relief wasn't
Speaker 3it yeah i think you know obviously maybe other people in the family are a bit more not surprising but the way they do things and for me to kind of i have a real issue with like spontaneity and like spontaneous plans and to know that it isn't necessarily just me as a person i've got something that i'm trying to put it off on that but there's a slight reason why i'm not the best with certain things it was just a big relief to kind of know it's oh okay it's not just me being an issue there's something that's there
Speaker 2well let's yeah and that is let's talk about the diagnosis and uh and i'll kind of qualify a few things here so katherine's primary diagnosis is asd autistic spectrum disorder and you know which is obviously this notion that most of us are more familiar with with this idea about neurodiversity and what katherine also has so her primary the main presenting diagnosis is asd but for girls who have asd as a primary diagnosis there is a 40 percent chance that they are also adhd and with for you your adhd is not in the same way that you might typically expect someone with the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder because your hyperactivity comes very much from your thought processes doesn't it so rather than it being it's not hanging off the walls and bouncing around it's actually much more to do
Speaker 3with thoughts yeah it's more like the craziness of my thoughts and jumping from one thing to the next and yeah like multiple screens it's having that like attention being everywhere as opposed to that classic what most people think of almost adults think of when they hear the word asd which is a child bouncing
Speaker 2off the walls yeah and we will just you know we will be covering in a very in a separate podcast episode i will be covering very specific details about asd and adhd and behavioral strategies and how we can support the people how we can support our children but i just thought that this was a great opportunity to talk to someone firsthand about this now obviously katherine's diagnosis came you're 20 now yeah six months ago so i
Speaker 3was 19 and a half technically when i got it yeah let's talk
Speaker 2about the diagnosis because um we're being completely honest when katherine talked about wanting to have the diagnosis as i have very openly and honestly say i'm not always a big fan of having the diagnosis quite often you know i'm a massive supporter where parents need the diagnosis in order for their child to receive the support that they need educationally and but that i have a very strong belief that quite often a diagnosis can then end up becoming self-fulfilling so we had yeah we had an honest
Speaker 3conversation about it and i think for me it was more important for me to get it on paper not as so i can point it and use it as an excuse oh i can't do that because but to get that oh my god i'm not the odd one out there are other people that have the same like expressions of have the same i've one of my best friends is adhd and asd so it's nice to find that person and realize that oh god it's not just me there's like there are other people that can feel like this but no we did have a discussion about yeah we obviously i think you suspected as i got older and most recently with obviously just me getting older that asd was probably going to come up yeah
Speaker 2but it was and actually what i would say is from a family perspective and be interesting for your comment on this is that i think the diagnosis actually helped everybody it wasn't just you because i think
Speaker 3yeah it helps in terms of kind of it's hard to explain but realizing it's also like to other mental family to you to my brother that the way that i do things and the way that things get done i when i come in like cleaning the house cleaning the kitchen tidying my room i make my bed the same that you know something that for you if maybe you came in and like moved my bed or made it in a different way for you it's like oh it's just it's just making your bed in a different way but for me it's that it throws up so many things that i then can't explain and then to have it to have the diagnosis and go to check with my brother when you come in and mess up my bed it really does trigger me to another level just please it was just nice to then have that clarification and you know this is this is the reason why i do the things that i do i'm not just yeah
Speaker 2and i think actually what suddenly happened is that your brother has responded to you with a lot more understanding definitely i
Speaker 3think there's been a lot of there's been a mutual understanding of oh okay she's not just doing this because she's trying to be patented or she's trying to get me in trouble she's doing this because it's just the way that i work all the way but i choose to live
Speaker 2here yeah let's talk about some of those um overwhelming triggers because i know i've almost i'm almost certain i know some of the things that are going to come up and i'm i've literally opened paved the way for myself to be utterly slaughtered but i think it's i think it's really important that we talk about some of these things i think also for parents
Speaker 3as well from a parental perspective you know if you do something small that you might not realize but if you have a child with diagnosed or like isn't diagnosed something small that you do can have a massive repercussion on the child that you just don't think of and it's like she did it maliciously it just happens i remember there was one time there's a there's a there's a chair in my room and that was like the perfect angle for me to like walk in and put my bag down i think i was about university and i think you moved it to an old nursing chair that i had and i walked in and it was a really weird experience of trying to explain to someone and i walked in and i just broke down in tears and it wasn't because i was trying to spot like oh you need something in my room but it was that oh my god there's change okay we're just gonna ride it through it's not that bad it's not that bad and obviously like naturally i've just left to deal with it and she's like oh it's there but something's small and you're like yeah i just i just moved the chair in your room it's like
Speaker 2and that's okay so i think that that's something that we ought to kind of talk about so for you now obviously asd presents very differently can present very differently with girls and we will cover this i promise you in a separate podcast episode but talk to me kind of we'll go back to some of the things and i have done many things to screw up my kids but there are some very specific things that i have done and again you know not deliberately but have had a massive impact on and really spiked catherine's anxiety levels because i've just done them without any kind of thought to how that might impact her um but talk explain what for you in terms of the diagnosis for the asd and also the adhd where do your challenges lie where where you most having you know the things that you're having to work on regularly so one thing i
Speaker 3can think of straight off the bat for the adhd is leaving things to the last minute not because i can't do them but to motivate me i need a sense of urgency sometimes to do things eat planet is a common i think it's like time blindness where you know you're sat there think oh i've got ages i've got ages and then you're realizing oh my god let's say i've got 10 minutes to get ready and then you're suddenly trying to rush and you don't realize that the time you have isn't the time enough and i'm trying to work on that like when i leave the house or when i'm trying a classic is when i'm trying to do uni assignments is trying to get it all done and completed and proofread and sent by a deadline that i'm happy with it's obviously then ties in for me with the asd it's i've set obviously high goals for myself and trying to kind of reach those consistently and then not get myself tripped up by the adhd it's like a double-edged sword it's like my room i love to have order but below that order it's just mess sometimes which is then it's hard to then have that balance of trying to have the order that i like but i'm naturally slightly messy so it's trying to deal with those two conflicting
Speaker 2emotions yeah oh my god massively and i'm guessing the from a parent's perspective what you might be seeing with a child with adhd is constantly leaving things to the last minute and it's not because
Speaker 3obviously like we're too lazy to do them but it's sometimes i i think i don't get motivated to do something until it is like the last possible time but equally as mum contesting i like to equally get stuff done very far in advance i can be too far in advance so i've never found a middle ground i'm kind of always
Speaker 2too late or too early is that how it feels with the diagnosis because you know what i've observed of you with the asd is that your that your anxiety is at its worst when you feel that you're out of control and you know things are being forced upon you you talked about spontaneity things are last minute things are chair you know my changing the chair in your bed
Speaker 3dream it's i think yeah for me it's my big issue is change in my life i've never really been good with change and you know see if i if something's been said and it's like i'll say a lecturer said right this this assignment's going to be due in in a week i'm like great i'll get it done for that week and the lecturers are going to know we've got another week to do it i then really struggle with that sort of you told us we had to do it this week so i put everything on hold to get this done which means i put and it then triggers a lot of emotions that i maybe can't control and i know i mean growing up i've always been tearful like just if anything happens i just burst into tears and it's something that i can't really control it just kind of it just happens it's bubbling up it's like oh god i can't control it and so trying to explain that to a parent who maybe doesn't really say oh why are you crying all the time it's like but it it's not something i choose to do it's not something that i wake up in the morning i'm gonna cry , when my chair gets moved or when this uni assignment gets moved or when i'm told something for dinner and then it gets changed it's not something that you do as a malicious thing it just happens and it's that whole massive wave of emotion i can sense it coming and it's like oh god
Speaker 2is it also a release though once you've cried do you feel does it help at all or not at all
Speaker 3really personally again obviously it may be different for everyone else but i personally don't get that release from that i get the release from other stuff if that's literally just going out and just literally just like screaming at nothing that's to get my release um it is yeah it's i think it's deeply personal for everyone but now i don't get my release through crying i don't have to cry get the at least the emotion out and then if i've got rage or anger or something bottled inside me i need to do something else to calm myself whether that be watching a film going on a drive which is like though some people can think well you're just lazy just watching films it's like no but that's my way of releasing all that tension and going okay right happy i'm back in the zone again i can come back with a new mindset yeah
Speaker 2so okay so there's that so there's a control thing there's that um also that other flip side that you have with the um with the adhd which has you leaving assignments and not well actually it doesn't have you leaving assignments to the last minute because you typically hand in assignments early but i think this is
Speaker 3where the asd and the adhd like they trip themselves up it's that last minute procrastination but then i tell myself it's last minute if it's not done a week before it's due right but i don't know whether that comes from just me in school and what my schools have taught me or whether that's come from me or whether it's come from just me in school or whether that's come from just me in school
Speaker 1therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough it shows up in the smallest moments you bite your tongue instead of escalating you put your phone down instead of firing off that text you say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most nobody applauds those moments but they quietly change your life that's what growing feels like and that's exactly what grow therapy is here for grow is therapy that works covered by insurance sessions average 21 with insurance and some pay as little as zero dollars depending on their plan there are no subscriptions no long-term commitments you just pay per session grow connects you with thousands of high quality licensed therapists across the u.s offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends you can search by what matters like insurance specialty identity or availability and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days and not the national 48 day average see if you could pay as little as zero dollars for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash acast that's growtherapy.com slash acast growtherapy.com slash acast availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan
Speaker 3from it's just i just have a set need to do things it's again set me because i want to do stuff like in a particular way so when something happens something changes like with university it's a little bit easier to control so you're left on your own a little bit more but i mean back at school if we're talking about primary school secondary school gcses and a levels there are plenty of times i could count where i hadn't i was flying very close to the wire to literally bursting into tears in a classroom yeah that's interesting
Speaker 2let's talk about some of the other things that i've done that have monumentally triggered things for you because i have done quite a few when we think about it yeah there's a couple of the springs in mind go on kathy um i will do one that mom knows i think i
Speaker 3was at university in first year it was in my second term and so about like march time and i think you were out of the country and i'd come home to look after coke and i was back at uni i was like oh i'm done i could relax about uni and then i got a message from mom going what are you doing next week i was like for how long she's like a week i was like why i was like oh like um coke needs to be looked after i was like i'll help come home i remember kind of coming home feeling a little bit angry kind of being like oh you know like how long have you known i was like a couple of days so it's fine let it go katherine let it go you're home you're with coco you're in a big countryside just breathe but it's last minute changes last minute changes last minute plans to get thrown in and then i just go into it hey why i like to plan i have four diaries i have a paper two paper ones i have a monthly one a weekly one my phone and then i have a separate diary it's
Speaker 2it's a lot and that control thing that aspect of control really soothes your anxiety doesn't it it soothes
Speaker 3me to know that i have everything written down and it just have that control and know okay right so monday i'm doing this this this and this even down to the food that i'm making on that day for example one way i've learned to kind of manage it is now i do click and collect through jessica's from the university and it is the best thing because i can just calm i know everything's there i know everything that's in my fridge i then know what's for dinner and it's that utter need for control yeah which is very nice
Speaker 2which is and that and that is a quite a typical sort of aspect of that asd talk let's talk about i i i'm so surprised that you did not push me under the bus about your toy car collection have you forgot i honestly thought you were gonna well there was go on catherine spill the beans but
Speaker 3this is one instance i will say to mom that i don't think i will ever forget that but we had this box this crate obviously i had lots of time to think about it but i think it's really nice to have a lot of toys growing up i had these toy cars from the movie cars like little hot wheel size cars massive crate of them and for whatever reason whatever excuse whatever they got taken to the dump one day and yeah i was i was not happy i'm still a little bit hurt but that was i can't remember my reaction now is it i can't remember exactly how i acted but i was obviously upset yeah but there isn't like an immediate response that springs to mind but one thing about those toy cars that mom can attest to that i've still done later in life is used to put me to bed so i'd go to sleep i'm gonna lay in bed and i said this crate lived in my room and i'd get up and i would order them in perfect grid order sometimes by color if i was feeling extra adventurous you did them in color and then i would just fall asleep sometimes next to the cars or sometimes back in bed and then even now when we're playing board games we're playing the disc a couple of months back and obviously like you have the soldiers in the game and you have the ones on the side and i just line them up perfect grid order and it's just it's even down to those sort of things i need to have it at least logically done in my for my brain to kind of
Speaker 2we can breathe yeah and i think that that and that's a really important kind of aspect to kind of that we didn't necessarily you know i i certainly remember when you were younger it was quite marked that i would go into your bedroom at night and i would go into your bedroom at night and that you had you know emptied your cars and you'd put them in in color order or you they were always in some form of grid whether they were color or just some other factor that you'd block you'd grid them by and then you'd get back into bed so there you know in lot there's so much in hindsight that we could have retrospectively said okay there were some indicators there but i think what's crucial from a parent's perspective is that that i have a real need for you know clutter-free living and so you know decluttering your bedroom when you were younger would have was massively unsettling to you because that took away familiarity where things were knowing where they were because even if my
Speaker 3room is messy like even now my room's slightly messy i could tell you where any given thing is within like this it's it's that sort of unsettling and i know that obviously you had to grow up with you obviously had to deal with this for me it obviously if you go on holiday and you get kind of like trinkets and stuff finding that stuff very hard to throw away again it means to me oh he's just cluttered just been it but it's that emotional tie to it which i think a lot of parents maybe don't always understand with the child is there's probably a deep emotional tie to it that they like having so taking that away even if it's just a simple piece of ribbon that ribbon obviously came with something or means something something to that child so it's not just a simple rhythm to them it's a lot more
Speaker 2yeah and that has it that has a lot that has a huge amount of meaning and so i think the way that it's managed now is i just i think probably from about i don't know at what age i just stopped going into your not that i stopped going into your room but your room and how it was organized and what went where was entirely yours and even if i didn't like from about
Speaker 3let's say 11 12 onwards it was kind of a bit more okay this is your room as long as you keep it tidy it's up to you how you deal with it just keep stuff off the floor
Speaker 2yeah yeah well yeah so okay so that was a and and that's really important to kind of understand to kind of know talk a little bit katherine around the kind of the social side because one of the real classic aspects of asd you um is around sort of social anxiety and that does impact whether you're male or female that's that's a classic and it's universal and it's
Speaker 3something that i am very very aware of and i have i am aware of it as growing up is obviously in your primary school you have lots of friends and then as i moved to secondary school i went into the secondary school and it was amazing i loved it but i never clicked with the people the people i never got with and for me it was hard to kind of branch out and try and maybe understand it from their perspective of where they were coming from and so i moved school and maybe if i just moved school it would be different and i formed a really good group with the school that i moved to and then as i got older i never really gravitated towards large groups but even now i have very i've a few very close friends and and then when i went to university because my university is quite small and because the nature that i am i don't really drink because it's that whole out of control thing and trying to make friends in that way it is incredibly hard like at university i probably only have a couple of friends that i'm close with and i think again it's it's upsetting to me sometimes when i think about it but i know that the friendships i have are ones i've spent a lot of time cultivating we're both very good friends and they get me so they know that it's that and i and one of my friends i laugh and joke about she's also autistic and so we get each other on that sort of level like she can call me at three o'clock in the morning and she she'll know that i'll pick up but it's that sort of we've got that extra close bond i think because i think autistic people naturally tend to stick together i mean actually tend to just naturally tend to just kind of click but it is it's something that i am aware of and i'm trying to get better and put myself into more social situations where maybe i'm not so comfortable but again it's the whole you know you want to push yourself but you don't want to run from something but you're absolutely terrified of yeah and
Speaker 2that's quite and that's probably where we're at at the moment isn't it we have you know we're being honest we're having conversations around your tendency to avoid certain situations that you feel uncomfortable in because you can't control them and social situations are a massively unpredictable it's unpredictable i
Speaker 3i said this to a friend the other day i've been doing it for years but she hasn't noticed when i go into a restaurant or if i go into anywhere new even if i'm not in a restaurant i'm not in a restaurant i'm not in a restaurant not so much if i've been there before i will get someone to walk in before me i will open after you and i told my friend that she went i haven't noticed that you've done that but i never really clocked as to why i didn't i said well it's because i don't like walking in first it's that anxiety it's that feeling vulnerable i get someone to go in before me i'm fine and there is small stuff like ordering stuff off the menu i'm still very nervous i don't like really speaking to waiters i get that a lot of anxiety so you obviously sometimes help with that i mean not helps and you make the anxiety worse you help order and it's it's hard to explain maybe to parents with everything oh you know the child's just a bit and so there's reasons because the child maybe finds it so triggering and so nervous and i know a classic thing is if i've maybe gone for lunch with a friend or i've gone recently i went to see barbie with a friend the day after i need to just decompress i need that day by myself even if i'm going out and doing something like going to the gym going to a car show as long as i'm doing something that i like i then need that to recharge my batteries i'm very introverted so to do like lots of people day after day it's not something that i'm i've been gifted with if i need to recharge my batteries i do it in
Speaker 2myself yeah yeah do you do you see because i say that just because you said you know gifted do you see your your diagnoses as a limitation as something that restricts you or do you see it as just part of who you i mean i think in some
Speaker 3ways it's a double-edged sword i think a lot of people if you look at it as a it's going to limit you you will only think of it as i'm autistic okay i'm limited but if you take that and flip it and go okay maybe i'm not the best at social situations maybe i'm not the best at this but you know i've got a half decent memory i'm good at making things ordered i'm good at planning things if you use your strengths and if you find out what your strengths are so my strengths will be different to someone else who's autistic strengths if you find out what they are and capitalize on it that's where you no longer feel like it's a bad thing yeah obviously there are things i mean we sat around the dinner table and i think i made a comment and i everyone kind of went so i was like is that is that is that when my autism if i tripped up like my brother was like yeah okay right so every now and again the social cues i do need someone to kind of be like i can't say that i can't say that but that's not appropriate right now but most of the time i don't really see it as a bad thing
Speaker 2yeah but what when you i mean and this was genuinely not scripted the answer that you gave around you know about it you know looking at your strengths and other things i mean that you couldn't get a more sort of authentic and oh god that sounds so cliche what word am i looking for but that that you know you couldn't have said it any better in terms of an ideal as a parent child who has these diagnoses how they it's the absolute ideal mindset and it's
Speaker 3taken me a long time to get there and it's obviously there's been a lot of support from you and from charles and everyone so from a from a child's perspective he's looking back at it to have that support from the parent going okay right you may be you know you're not the best with change but you're really good with this and obviously not diminishing what you can do well in but not saying right let's only focus on what you can do well in and not saying right let's only focus on what you can do well in and not saying right let's only focus on what you can do well in and not saying right let's only focus on what you're doing well in but learning to integrate that back into maybe the things that you're not so good with so okay you don't really like changing i think but how about we plan what's going to happen with this change and using your advantages to help your disadvantages from a child's perspective that's been the best that's been amazing because you're using your strengths against something that you know your weaknesses so for me you're still going to parents i would say find out obviously try and find out what your child's strengths are and then try and incorporate that into maybe your challenges and
Speaker 2what's celebrating those those things and um but as you say and i think what i would what we would kind of stress more than anything else is that it's this isn't an overnight thing it's it
Speaker 3really is it takes a lot of time i'm still working out what triggers me and how to deal with it i'm still dealing with it it's not something that you're just going to wake up and be like oh right sorted i can get on with my life it is something that just takes a lot of time a lot of searching and yeah i've still not got all the answers i still have some tears every
Speaker 2now and again when something gets changed but obviously i'm not changing anything because i'm not going into your room but yeah yeah that's it catherine i want to say such a massive thing i mean we could talk and talk and talk and maybe we'll have you back on um and uh talking about other bits particularly i think the work that you're working on i think that would be a great thing to share because yeah you are working on that social anxiety aren't you
Speaker 3yeah and it's so for me it's putting myself into a social situation that i'm not comfortable in but using what i am comfortable in so i'm very comfortable around cards and finally i love mine i'm you know formula one so learning to maybe push myself but within the limits of something that i know so it's for me it's just okay right you know i'm not comfortable maybe going to a restaurant and eating by myself but i'll go to a car show by myself it will challenge me but it'll also give me a bit of comfort knowing that i'm around people who ultimately are like me and they both like us yeah
Speaker 2so it's that it's you know it's what i talk about as this sort of scaffolding isn't it because the scaffold is the the thing your strength and something that you feel really comfortable with but that you've then got the unfamiliarity piece yeah because
Speaker 3the social side obviously isn't hyper fixation with adhd it's something that you like you love and you've got that complete fixation on so for me cars formula one using that's my strength and you know pushing the boundaries with that that's helped me massively
Speaker 2yeah the hyper fixation will be part of the asd yeah um and but part of the adhd will be much more related to the sort of the difficulties around focus and attention and yeah um and uh pinging from one thought to another
Speaker 3yeah it's it's true you did live with sometimes from the middle as i was like oh let me go do this and then come back it's like oh i was like oh i was like oh i was like i was halfway through something and
Speaker 2i've just completely left it how do you manage some of that that sort of pinging from one thing to the next
Speaker 3because when i first got my diagnosis i did try medication i can't everything is something yeah and it did help with the thing with the attention and literally if i would sit down if i would focus on something i remember i did an assignment that was due in 10 weeks i did the first part of it and i was like well this medication actually does work but the side effects of it was i got a massive amount of increased anxiety like my anxiety would come and go in waves i've learned kind of just ride the wave out and the medication made the anxiety just hit like a freight train i couldn't stop it which worried me ironically worried me a lot so i was like i'll come off the medication and it stopped instantly so but dealing with like the focus it's just trying to eliminate just funny enough trying to eliminate distractions but also realizing that sometimes what other people class as distractions i need so when i'm even if i'm just by myself i have to have some sort of music background or if i'm cooking one weird thing to help me cooking is having just a tv show running in the background even if i'm not paying attention to it just hearing that but equally if someone's in my if someone's in the kitchen and two people are talking i can't stand that it's like no i need you to leave it's just finding out what works i think yeah for you yeah
Speaker 2and the medication thing was quite an interesting one because um i had sort of said i really didn't you asked my opinion and i said i having worked with a lot of children that have been on adhd medication obviously you're you're an adult at the time you were an adult when you got your diagnosis was that i was very much of the view so i wanted
Speaker 3to at least try it because if i tried it and obviously it didn't work out i could at least say well at least i've done something about it and i'm not just trying to find more natural foods um and like some more not homemade but a but i i did try the medication and there was just too many negatives that outweigh the positives i think or one thing i think was loss of because it was helped to binge eating it would then wipe out my appetite and i was not going to test i do like to eat
Speaker 2i'm a very big foodie we all like to eat
Speaker 3big foodie and so having that wiped out i was a bit like oh i could get if i took it about eight o'clock in the morning i can easily go to about three four but i've not eaten anything today i have an apple i'm stuffed i really i really don't want to eat anymore and that would wear off quite late so i go to it was just it was a culmination of factors i went i think i'm for you it didn't for me i i don't need that but for other people i know i've got friends at university that take adhd medication and it works a treat i think it just depends on the
Speaker 2person yeah and i and we'll cover that in the separate in kind of another podcast episode uh katherine thank you my lovely um yeah really grateful for your honesty and i hope that for anyone listening that this is a sort of helpful perspective on it from the viewpoint of your child really yeah and
Speaker 3there's so many other things i could talk about with terms of parenting for example like the food is i could talk about that for probably about an hour
Speaker 2about food well maybe we do an episode on that just on that bit talk about some safe foods thank you katherine thank you my lovely you
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