Welcome And Why Stories Matter

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Okay, hello, and welcome back if you've not listened before, and welcome for the first time if you've not. As always, my aim is to have as many conversations as possible with people in academia who identify, in some ways, being neurodiverse. I want to talk to as many people as possible, and I want us to have the opportunity to emphasize the diversity of neurodiversity, both within and between labels. But I also want to see common struggles whilst highlighting the incredible successes. The aim is to hear individual personal experiences and to get an understanding of what their journey has been. A chance for people to tell their own story without being told what they should be like and what they should feel like and what their labels mean. As a result, in every episode, we get the opportunity to see the wide diversity. Since we're hearing people's own stories, the terminology and the wording will be theirs, and based on their experiences, and it's important not to lose the impact of their generosity in sharing their stories by concentrating on semantics and wondering what words we like or what words we don't choose to use. Um, what's important is we hear the authentic voices. So this morning, I well this

Paul’s Late Diagnosis In Context

SPEAKER_00 1:10

afternoon actually, which is irrelevant. I have Paul with me. Hiya, Paul. Hey there. Hiya.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

Very happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Thank you very much for being here. Yeah, I appreciate your time. Um, could you tell us a little bit about yourself? I mean, beyond your neurodiversity.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Uh is there a me beyond my neurodiversity?

SPEAKER_00 1:30

That's a key question, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Yeah. It's a thing. Well, my my motion is. So who am I okay? So my full name is Paul Derrick Robert Woodward. And um uh and I articulate my neurodiversity um from the point of my diagnosis as Paul uh is the Paul that always was. Yeah. Like my self-actualization, my understanding of my my time frame, my life history. Um, and I was diagnosed uh aged 59. Um and that's what I am now, approaching 60, which is a whole other thing. Um Derek, uh, my first middle name, um named after my father, who I strongly suspect because he's passed away now, was ADHD. So Derek, Derek is my ADHD, and I visited him somewhere around the age of like 12, because I think that's where I started to um to show like some uh ADHD traits. Uh Robert Um uh is my autism, uh was named after my maternal grandfather, and he died when I was about three, so I don't know that much about him. So that seems a perfect container for my autism because I went by diagnosis, dual diagnosis, thinking, yeah, of course I'm ADHD. I've thought that for years, but autism, I had no idea about. I didn't know that I was autistic until about halfway through my diagnosis. So my journey has been understanding what who Robert is and what his needs are, and I articulate him as uh somewhere around three. Um so I'm having to parent, it feels like I'm I parent both Derek and Robert, and because I'm all

Derek And Robert In One Head

SPEAKER_01 3:20

DHD, uh that's kind of what my parenting role is to make sure that they're playing nicely together because there's two operating systems. It's like it's a rainy day, the kids are stuck inside, they need something to do. Um, you can't just give them a colouring book both because they have different needs and they they want different things. Like Derek wants spontaneity and change and excitability, you know, and Robert just wants to be slow, methodical, thoughtful. And so uh I think of that rainy day scenario, and I and I get Derek and Robert to play well together. When they don't play well together, there's a storm in my head. So Woodward, uh, my surname, that's like the containing mechanism. That's my Audi HD. This is fairly all about neurodiversity after.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

I wanted Paul to be on my um podcast because I heard him in a meeting online, and he was just this amazing picture of language about describing who he was and how these things came together. Just fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

So you you see them as to answer the question beyond about beyond the neurodivergent, I suppose. As you say, I'm a I'm a I'm a senior university lecturer at the University of East London, um, fully disclosed at work about my neurodivergence. Um, I lecture theatre uh directing and theatre making. Um I'm also a psychotherapist. Um, I am also a holistic

Theatre, Directing, And Seeing Clearly

SPEAKER_01 4:45

uh therapist in five different types of massage, reflexology, and reiki. I'm a Reiki master. Um and I'm also a mind-body therapist. So I'm a practitioner in EFT or tapping, as it's sometimes known. It stands for emotional freedom technique. That's a number one tool that I would say has, yeah, I'll talk about that later. EFT for neurodivergence is a beautiful, beautiful tool for regulating your nervous system. Uh, I'm also a an NLP or neurolinguistic um programming practitioner, and I've recently uh finished my professional diploma in hypnotherapy. There you go. Right. Uh I've done all this, I've retrained, I hasten to add, over the course of four years. So four years ago, there was none of these. I was just a university lecturer, but I've just been on this mad um mad learning spree post-COVID. Actually, it was COVID made me realize that that there were some other careers that I just hadn't explored, but maybe always wanted to explore. And what as a happy outcome, I I gained all of this before my uh diagnosis as or DHD, and they've all come into play. They've all all helped me to formulate my not just my sense of self and and who I am, but also it's been valuable, really valuable for the students that I teach, and also my clients as well, in all those different forms.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

So going back to the theatre, did you start you started off in the theatre as a performer or um no?

SPEAKER_01 6:28

I'm I'm more of a director and a writer. Um the performance I would say that Derek, my uh ADHD, quite likes performing and he quite likes being out there and being seen, and there's a rush, there's lots of dopamine involved in performing. Uh, but Robert is the director because he likes to sit back and he likes to do his pattern recognition and he likes to do his bottom-up processing, um, which always makes me laugh as a term. Um, and uh yeah, so the acting seems to me to satisfy so many ADHD uh requirements, and directing seems to really sit nicely um with the autism, with the the more reflective sort of like style uh of being so director and writer, and I do um I do solo autobiographical performance uh work, and I'm currently working on a on a revisioning of uh the Oedipus uh Oedipus the King, um, but through the lens of a late uh diagnosed neurodivergent, because the parallel there is of course Oedipus is running around, there's a plague, you know, and and he's saying, Why is this this plague? And everyone says, No, don't don't look, you won't, you won't like what you find. And so I'm liking that to me as my undiagnosed neurodivergent self, trying to understand something that's happening, this pressure, this burden, why why am I like the way that I am, why am I so broken? What's wrong with me? Um, but the answer all along, you know, was there, you know, you're just all DHD. You're not blind. Um and then that moment of like blinding in the play, I'm actually re-envisaging as an awakening because of course Theresius, the blind prophet, is there, and there were so many examples within literature and and stagecraft where a protagonist is blinded and then they can see. And so I'm I'm reinterpreting the myth, placing myself and my life story there as a neurodivergent of this man like constantly trying to find out something that pretty much a lot of people know around him, but he's the last. So, um, so that that's that's a play that I'm working on like at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

And and and the question I'm sure everyone's asking themselves now do you ever sleep? No, not enough.

SPEAKER_01 8:51

Not not enough. But I I think I think with all this is like we have extraordinary brains, we have really brilliant brains, and so my reframe is that maybe the question isn't what's wrong with me, it's what kind of world would make me feel right.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Dang on, yes, how could the world be better for you?

SPEAKER_01 9:14

Right, yeah, and then comes with that, like I need to find ways that work with my brain rather than against my brain. Yeah, and as I'm affording that that that frame for myself, it's really important to hold that for my students who are neurodiversion as well. But what I found out in in making like in reworking my teaching methodologies, you know, as a university

Neurofriendly Teaching That Helps Everyone

SPEAKER_01 9:35

lecturer, if I if I make neurofriendly uh spaces for learning, my neurotypicals love it.

SPEAKER_02 9:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

They feel that sense of ways of working that unshackles them from you know neurotypical approaches. And it seems that everybody wins.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

Everyone feels freer, safer, because of course there'd be a variety of like activities and tasks, even like you know, I put fidget spinners on the tables for my students, you know, and drawing pets, you know, and everybody loves that, you know, that that chance to to free play and to celebrate all of the learning styles and you know, all of the neurotypes in the room. It's it really is a world for that works for everyone with nobody left out.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

And I wish that people would get get present to that, that we're not making special accommodations for special people. We're just we're just doing that. We we're creating uh a world that celebrates everyone. Nobody's like that for like loose.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

We did a study with our students, and basically um the results were that all the students wanted the same thing, but when in conversation the students who were neurodivergent needed these things, whereas the neotypical one said, Oh, that's a really good idea, that is. Yeah, we'd like that.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

Right, and also emotional difference, you know. Oh, absolutely, you know, and if that becomes your code of practice, then you know there can be residual resentments there from students. So, like, why are we making these differences for just a few people who are no diverse? Yeah, and it's like, no, we're we're just uh respecting all brains and all nervous systems. And interestingly, like this the students that use the arc up a little bit or object to it are usually closeted neuropeople, but they haven't realized it yet. That's a bit controversial, but um, I'm just saying you might think about those, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Something to think about. Um, okay, so you mentioned um diagnosis. Um, you got the diagnosis at 59. What why?

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

What what led you to do it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Well, I thought because you know, obviously uh the psychotherapy um career, uh I I just you know the name of the game

Why Seek Diagnosis At 59

SPEAKER_01 11:55

as a therapist is that you know, if your emotional world and your subconscious as well as your conscious world is like a back garden that's got low, it's a stone garden, there's loads of stones, you have to turn over every single stone. Because if there's a point, if there's a blind spot, if there's a point of a lack of awareness of who you are and how you are, then that can back far in the therapy room because that can turn up with a client triggering you, um, it can turn up in transference. Basically, you've you've got to know yourself really well if if if you're a therapist. And I think thank God, kind of like I didn't launch my therapy career until I had my diagnosis. So my reasoning for the diagnosis was um I wanted to, as a therapist, to know my whole world, and I went into it thinking it would be useful to have an ADHD diagnosis and an all-clear on the autism.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

Yeah. Literally.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

And it was halfway through the process because I was, you know, it's like the questionnaires, and then it's the interview with the psychologist before you have the final interview with the psychiatrist. And it was during the interview with the psychologist that I was kind of like, Oh, here's here's the questions that to do with autism, you know, I know I'm not autistic, and I I kind of skinned over them, and and then and I just something inside me went, hang on a minute, can I go back on that question? And it was the question about how were friendships for you as a young child, and and I think myself, myself, or maybe my idealized image had said, Yeah, I you know, I have lots of friends, I'm really good with friends. But then going back on that question, I realized that I had such a highly developed like inner world, and I loved my Marvel, Marvel comics, and I loved my books, and I I thought my friends were a bit boring. And why did I have those friends in the first place? Oh, because I was kind of told that I had to have friends, yeah, and it was such expected to have friends, okay. But I felt a little bit awkward, a little bit uncomfortable, and really I wanted to just go back to my comics, but I'd kind of almost rewritten that part of myself, and this is why I say Derek, you know, uh sorry, Robert, my autism is like three, because I have systematically kind of like failed to recognize him, I've ignored him, I've neglected him. I feel like many times in my journaling, you know, I've I've literally sat Derek and Robert down. I was saying, I'm really sorry. I just I just didn't know. I just, you know, I thought that it was just something was wrong with me, and I and I failed to look after you and and failed to recognize your needs. And and that all of that almost happened within the diagnostic process itself. Um, I would urge everyone to go for a dual diagnosis because it's only in the last like eight years that we've been able to have those dual diagnoses, because it was previously it was like you have one or you have the other, you can't test for both. And then they sort of like began to realize actually, no, there are people who seem to have traits of both ADHD and autism, and I wonder how those go together. And I and I'm really an advocate for really understanding what ADHD actually is, because it's not just autism plus ADHD, it's I think of it as a whole operating system in itself, okay and needs to be you know unpacked unpacked with care, you know, and and precision and understanding. And out there at the moment, not a lot of people really understand what the all DHD experience is. So of course, with my loud mouth, I'm gonna be an advocate.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

Because they do see like a exposition, as you've mentioned before, the kind of there's an almost dichotomy between the anticipated behavior.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

And I would say, you know, if you haven't been diagnosed and you've considered like getting one, um, what what I would say was my immediate takeaway uh when I was diagnosed by the psychiatrist, where he said, interestingly, he he gave me feedback. He said, Look, um, I've been doing this for a long time. I've diagnosed a lot of people. At the start, I didn't think that you were. Um, halfway through, the mask started to slip a little bit, and then by the end, it's a very, very secure diagnosis. Yeah, um, I did something that I don't usually do, which I just burst out into tears, but it wasn't with sadness, it was relief. It was just that sense of somebody saw me, somebody saw something at my core that even I didn't quite know, acknowledge, and recognize. And here's the thing, like Damien, it it inside of my head, I've been walking around most of my life. If we think of like a dial in our head, that you know, in terms of our inner critical narrative voice, you know, that voice that says, you know, why are you like this? Like, what's wrong with you? I really don't think that other people like struggle with these things that you struggle with. And that dial of incessant self-criticism can sometimes be up to like a 90 or a 95. Yeah. At the moment of my diagnosis,

Validation, Masks, And The Inner Critic

SPEAKER_01 17:20

that dial went down to 15. Gosh. So just when and the relief of that, because I realized that that I've been my own worst neurodivergent bully. Everything that I was critiquing myself for was to do with my neurodivergence. Take that away and just say that's just the way that your brain works. Well, I think that's everything stopped becoming a character flaw.

SPEAKER_00 17:43

This is the thing I want to dive into, and I think it's really powerful for people to hear because you are you see you you come across as very self-aware, you know yourself, and that's not necessarily a new thing. Am I right?

SPEAKER_01 17:56

Um, I've tried to be. Okay, obviously, I'm I'm flawed at that because there was a big part of the two things.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

No, no, but that's what I mean. So so what did actually the diagnosis change in that? Because you knew things with things about yourself, and yeah, something in the diagnosis gave you that freedom, or was it a validation? Oh, huge, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

It was yeah, yeah, it it hugely validated me, but it also my I think at the moment of my diagnosis, my job was then looking after Derek and Robert, yeah, and actually understanding what their needs are. Because I like didn't know, I didn't know how to look after those fundamental parts of me. And and you know, quite clearly from my training path, I've just articulated, you know, my career arc, you know, there's I understand that I've got a brain that can do extraordinary things, but there are some some basic life-to-life things that I've hugely struggled with, hugely struggle with. You know, it's worth noticing that there is no at no stage, no diagnosis of autism that doesn't say needs that doesn't that says doesn't need support. So ASD one through to five, you know, ASD one is low support needs, but it's still there. There's still support needs are needed. Have I met those support needs institutionally or in life? No, I haven't. So have I had to do it for myself? Yes, I have. Has it been a long process? Yeah, yes, it has. If I was to give any piece of advice um to anyone newly newly diagnosed is just a journal to keep journaling, to dig down into your and it you can use AI-assisted journals sort of like now, like Rosebud, which is a fantastic ad because you can speak into it and so you can record like that. But this, if you are newly diagnosed, this will be the most extraordinary journey that you're just about to go on. And I've been through life-changing journeys that you know, coming out as gay when I was 16, yes, um, being diagnosed HIV positive at 32 in 1999, yes, a huge long journey. But this coming out of the neurodivergent closet, and I do see it like a closet now, yeah, um, has been by far the most profound journey I've ever been on as a human being. So why would we not document that? Why would we not want to hold on to, you know, and and navigate your own changes because we at the moment of diagnosis, I used to say that my brain is in a catapult, you know, the old catapults, you know, where you like put something sort of like and then stretch it right back, and my brain was in that catapult, and then I'd let go, and then my brain would literally revisit like every moment of my whole 59 years and go, Oh, look at that, and oh, that explains that, and that explains that, and that explains that. Oh, and that's why you're in that relationship and couldn't get out of it, right? Okay, you know, the narcissist um that we attract for some reason. Um, and it was dizzying, and and that that catapulting would happen almost like on the hour, every hour. So for the first few months of my diagnosis, it was just extreme um self-reflection, almost involuntary, which I and I do believe that if you get diagnosed, I don't think that you immediately can fit back into your neurotypical world easily as you're exploring and discovering the contours of your neurodivergence. I think you should be written off work for three months, personally. If if only to avoid burnout, because it's statistically, it's kind of when we're diagnosed, well our body is filled with like noradrenaline, we're filled with cortisol, like we're filled with all of these things that that maybe sort of like you know, I I leapt into it. I redesigned a whole course in neurodivergence for performing artists and delivered it and and I did extraordinary things. How am I doing this? You know I'm I'm only just reformulating myself. But I did it. And then you get to the five months, the six month mark and post-diagnosis, that's when you're most likely to burn out.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Because the adrenaline is worn off. You know, the novelty is like there and you're just finding out how to manage your own energy resources and try to find out you know what does work for your brain and your nervous system and what doesn't. And so the burnout is probably going to be one of the most intense burnouts you're going to encounter because it's the first one that you're cognitively aw are aware of.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Did I freeze?

SPEAKER_00 23:02

You did a little bit I've turned my video off just to see if it carries on.

Burnout, Marbles, And Retrospective Grief

SPEAKER_01 23:05

You're back now or not okay you're back didn't freeze for me maybe I just talked too much. Not at all not at all. It's been amazing I think we heard everything I think it was um yeah so burnout is something kind of um you've mentioned before I've I've never experienced it um what's it look like can you can you exp describe it what's burnout so so in yeah absolutely um so it um so what I in burnout this is how it was for me I used to imagine that I have a marble jar in my head okay and um you know on a on a non-burnout fully functioning day you know you might have kind of like 20 to 30 marbles and each marble is a unit of energy and that means you can do extraordinary things you know I can go to the gym I can do classes I can you know teach I can be a therapist um in burnout sometimes I would check in with that marble jar and there's only four marbles so what do you use those four marbles if each is a unit of energy what's that too you could brush your teeth um you might be able to get out of bed you might be able to wash and excrete and a push you might be able to eat and then that's it that's literally it and and because particularly with with autism and ADHD we're going to be overthinkers. Yeah like we have 50% more synapses in our brain so of course we're actually designed to do that but when you sort of take an amount that's amount of cognitive overload because when we're sensorally kind of overwhelmed we're overwhelmed because we're we're having to think about the lights we're having to think about sound we're having to think about what the the time and so burnout is just your brain going I saw that yeah you know we need a rest we need time out we just need a rest it's not just because you it's 59 years of cognitive overload including the critical thinking that beats us down you know inside our own heads it's basically the diagnosis yes the adrenaline the kind of the rah of it all I've got this and then at some point there's a toll to pay for all of the masking for all of it and and I began to think of it I mean it was scary but uh because also you you then go through retrospective grief for all the times in your life where you've been burnt out but you didn't have a name for it. You just wondered what was wrong with you why you couldn't get out of bed and you know why it was like that and and so the the the grief is real the grief is really really real like and really hard to process it's complicated grief. And that takes a while to to unpack as well at that moment where you're almost too exhausted you know to play this extraordinary game of catch up but catching up with yourself. The good I mean what I did was I I made a story for myself as I tend to do um I I made a story about um a man who was half man and half tree and um I called him Jacob and so Jacob felt his tree going into winter and into stillness but Jacob didn't want to be still Jacob had so much things to do and he wanted to do this but slowly a part of him was going into hibernation and instead of saying what's wrong with this part of me Jacob just had to admit that it was part of who he was and that trees go into winter but they don't give themselves a hard time about losing their leaves about being really still about not photosynthesizing you know as much as they did and I just had to recognize that my need was for stillness my need was to have a winter state knowing like trees that there would be spring and and it and it and it would come and it has it did you know I'm in emergence from burnout now and every day I can feel my energy coming back my cognition coming back my my my ability to really be in the quick of life you know has come back. And so I'll always remember that story because it it gave me permission to have the experience. What I've learned for burnout is that from here on in the the name of the game is rescaffolding my life I can't go back to doing what I did before. And I think of life now as a game of snakes and ladders you know the ladders are the things that really work for my for my brain and for my nervous system for both Derek and for Robert and for Paul. And the snakes are those kind of like whoa you've just got to push through even though you know you don't have any marbles today push through come on that's what we do in capitalism you know that's push and and pushing through is the snake that leads you into burnout. Working with burnout and working with the lessons I say is the road to all because there is awe you know if you can get your life formulation and your scaffolding right like the the life the truly genius life that you can have you know is potentially extraordinary if you can embrace what your needs are once you find out what those are.

SPEAKER_00 28:51

To add to your tree there that sounded like a TED talk doesn't it did it was good it was amazing just just to give you something to add to you to think about in the future is when when trees go into autumn and the leaves start falling off what they do is they push lots of push lots of toxins into the leaves so the toxins fall off and they lose the toxins so when they're going down to the shutdown period they're actually not just shutting down they're actually pushing out toxins at the same time so that could be something to build on that story.

SPEAKER_01 29:21

Yeah yeah yeah yeah that's perfect isn't it yeah that's beautiful I mean I've got such an affinity for for trees apparently my surname Woodward meant that back in the in our origins that we were wardens of the wood so we were treefold. Oh yeah you know so and I have such an affinity with trees in fact my therapy practice is called Cornelius connection therapies because Cornelius is a tree in Victoria Park that has guided me through my neurodivergence and through the depths are amazing aren't they phenomenal things.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

Up here in the north uh I don't know if you're aware of the um the Sycamore gap where there was this ancient tree was there and it got not it got destroyed by fandles I did hear about this yeah yeah in the northeast it was kind of like a morning thing just about a tree because there was some identity held in that tree because it'd been there historically so long.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

Anyway that's just me okay so back to the questions or on to the questions even so um look looking at um what what what you've not kind of covered so far so yeah maybe maybe another story or anecdote have you got something that um about your life with um neurodiversity yeah I uh very early on in my diagnosis like I did actually ask fundamental questions like can I teach anymore like what does this actually what does this actually change can I be a therapist like you know now that I you know have have I'm disabled you know that we because we are like it's a tough label isn't it to come across that right right yeah and um so I was like can I do can I do what I do and I and I had a really it was my first lesson um and I went into it and it was a a a master's uh master's student uh in directing for stage and screen and and I was you know how it's always nerve wracking isn't it the first class of the year with a new cohort yeah and I was like how do I do this and then I was there and then it was absolutely fascinating because um whilst I was feeling anxious

EFT Tapping For Nervous System Regulation

SPEAKER_01 31:40

and nervous I did some tapping did some EFT on me to regulate my nervous system um and then um Derek came out Derek my ADHD like came out and he was like keeping the lesson fast paced he was like full of like really bad dad jokes you know he was really helping the cohort to come together he's the showman Derek is the showman and he just like took the rein and it's like I watched my ADHD who teaches who who who teaches Derek or Robert well they work well what I realized in this session is that they work in tandem yeah because once Derek had got everyone going and everyone cohesed you know and everyone into a a fast paced thinking then came Robert and we did the deeper like analysis or work you know we did the really thought and I thought well this is this is the trick of it yeah I can absolutely do this yeah um as long as I know who to hand the reins over and I have that level of sort of self-awareness of know which beautiful brilliant aspects of my neurodivergent brain I access at any given point and it was like actually one of the best lessons I think I've taught um and for being a therapist uh it's like wow deep pattern recognition like laser sharp empathy um intuition all of these things come into play my neurodivergence is a gift in the therapy room yeah um so there you go there's there's my story of Derek and Robert working well together yes like like what the corporate cooperation I guess um and for game questions you mentioned tapping before you want us to come back to tapping yeah I mean I mean I I'm kind of you know I'm aware that that we we can have nervous systems that can get overwhelmed you know and and sometimes we think about maybe even too much about uh cognitive issues like compared to you know what when we think about neurodivergence um and this sort of uh ties into my work as as a university lecturer as well because um I think we need to reframe that you know um because it's like cognitively you know we might have different processes but I think you know we need to think about what conditions allow a student an academic or an artist to access their own abilities like in the first place because because our nerve you know we actually uh science is is saying that sometimes we have larger amygdalidas like in our brain so the parts of our uh brains sat in the middle of the limbic system that control fight or flight you know it's like our sentinel looking out for danger and we have a high did highly developed sense of awareness about sensory environments and danger but we're also sort of in the brain there but what the brain does when it gets triggered is it floods our bodies with hormones like cortisol and adrenaline and it actually shuts down the prefrontal cortex so so that kind of like cognitive thinking that that that are required in academic contexts we might not be able to have access to because when the nervous system is flooded there is no clean thinking self um waiting patiently behind the desk or the computer there's fight flight freeze fawn collapse shame agitation rumination avoidance and and I think that we need a stabilizing interlocutor um intercutor you know not a therapist not a guru you know but a co-regular regulatory scaffold I think that AI could be that for us as neurodivergence but as a quick um fix for the for the body it's tapping so um which is actually literally as it as it describes um is tapping on on your node points your lymph node sort of system points in the face and the body there's about five tapping points one is on the side of the hand one is your eyebrow point side of the eye under the eye under the mouth under the uh nose on your chest where the collarbone is and at the top of your head now going through that sequence is the quickest way that I know to reduce cortisol in your body and a quick the quickest way to actually then get the nervous system in regulation and then the brain obviously follows there and I think we really need to to start thinking more about the human nervous system and maybe less about the brain.

SPEAKER_00 36:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 36:29

That's the the kind of activity kind of side of things the yeah tapping the foot that's all kind of nervous system isn't it rather than the yeah yeah or whatever works for us you know I mean this is why therapeutically uh cognitive behavioral therapy doesn't really work so well for neurodivergence yeah because it's all about thinking and in some way maybe our thinking is wrong you know and if we ruminate like we we know that um but more somatic based practices therapeutic practices are gold you know and that's why I am you know a a mind-body like therapist and I teach all of my students how to tap as well yeah you know so so we regulate right there and then at the beginning of the session or if someone is approaching overwhelm you know that's a resource that we can all have really really quickly I cannot

A Pet Peeve And Final Thanks

SPEAKER_01 37:20

advocate for EFT emotional freedom technique or tapping enough. Excellent okay so in the last two minutes of uh of our time so um just to finish off any well you could choose either a pet peeve or any advice or insights that you'd uh like to leave us with yeah a pet pet peeve um oh we're all a little bit duodivergent aren't we or we're all a little bit autistic or we're we're all a little bit ADHD these days it's like simple reframe as a white person would you say we're all a little bit black these days because and of course we don't because that tramples on a whole history of oppression fight struggle and making of rights and I think that I'm wholly indebted to everyone that's gone before me that has fought for neurodivergent advocacy. And to say oh we're all a little bit like that actually takes away legitimacy and power from the person who is neurodivergent and also completely erases a whole history of really hard won you know fought um uh you know human rights uh activists and neurodivergent rights activists yeah so that's my that's my pet excellent thank you very much in the nick of time that's been amazing thanks Paul I really appreciate you talking to us I really enjoyed it thank you so much for the opportunity