You’re Not Broken: Neurodivergence, Felt Safety, and Late Diagnosis (with Adair Finucane)

Renae: Well hello Adair. I'm so glad that you are joining us for the TraumaWise podcast today.

Adair: Thank you for having me. I'm so happy to talk to you again.

Renae: Absolutely. We had such a great time in our first conversation and really diving into some wonderfully nerdy, um, aspects of of neuroscience and attachment and connection and co-regulation and systems and all of that. And and so I'm grateful that you said yes to coming back and that you're talking to us today about what you're talking, uh, with us about. Um, but I'd love for you to introduce yourself to folks who haven't met you yet.

Adair: Yeah, sure. My name is Adair Finucane. Uh, I have a lot of hats, and I feel like anytime I introduce myself, I do it differently because it's. We don't have enough time for me to tell you all the things about me, but, um, for, you know, the purpose of this interview. Um. I'm a mom. That's really important. I have a child. She's three. A little more than three. I am a social worker with a focus on mental health. I don't work specifically as a therapist now, but I'm trained as one. And I have in the past, and I spent a long time researching trauma, um, as a social worker and as a social work student and beyond. And that research is very much backed up by not just academics, but by personal experience and my work in, um, working with other people. So when I'm working with people, usually my hat is something along the lines of trauma informed somatic facilitator. What does that mean? Um, I help people with holistic wellness, and I come from a body first perspective. I'm also a multidisciplinary artist. I write, um, and I like to say I'm a lizard in a suit because I don't necessarily feel like, uh, I'm from here, which

Renae: Okay.

Adair: may resonate with some people who are listening. If they're interested in talking about Neurodivergence or listening to it or listening

Renae: Yeah.

Adair: about it.

Renae: So let me, let's let's dig into that feeling like maybe you're not from here. And, um, when, when is the first time that you can recall Hall in your history of this, that moment of feeling otherness.

Adair: I remember being at friends houses when I was a kid and preferring to be upstairs talking with their moms rather than like being in the basement. And it's not that I had a strong aversion to being in the basement. I did enjoy playing with my friends, but I just had a different way of doing things, a different way of being. And everyone always called me very immature. Now that I'm thirty six, I don't get called mature anymore because I'm simply an adult. But I always got that feedback of like, you're so wise beyond your years. You're so mature. Um, and I had a level of, of depth and feeling and awareness of things that were going on in the world that I didn't see reflected in my peers. So on the one hand, I did, I think to some extent a very natural job of camouflaging and to some extent it was work. Um, so that I seemed relatively normal with, you know, I didn't get bullied, which is a big deal. Um, and on the other hand, I had this whole private life that my parents and my family were somewhat privy to, that where I held a lot of pain because I was sensitized to really sensitized to pain. Like my sister once said, years and years ago, she was like, yeah, you have you're like a you're like a pharmacist's cupboard. And you have a little bottle of each different type of pain in the world in you. You know, I really,

Renae: Mm.

Adair: um, it definitely a blessing and a curse, right?

Renae: Mhm. Mhm. And when, when you were figuring these things out about yourself. Were there people around you that were, that were some of your friends or some of your peers that you identified might be in the same sort of situation? Or maybe there was a recognition, you know, recognizing they might have a little bit of the same experience that I'm having.

Adair: Not till I was twelve, when I was twelve. So I grew up riding horses and I, they were really my they were a sanctuary. Being around them was a sanctuary for me and my parents, thank goodness, um, listened to the child psychologist that they took me to. He was cool. And he was like, she loves horses. Keep it at all costs. Keep her around horses. That that will that will help. And it did. So I rode from the time I was six. Um, until I mean, I still spend time around them. I don't ride anymore. But I moved to a different barn, and I met a friend who was a year older than me, um, who was also obsessed with horses. And we had we had read the same set of fantasy books that we were obsessed with, and we just we clicked, we got it. We got each other in a way that, um, I hadn't ever felt understood by a peer of mine before, and we connected on our struggles to, you know, neither of us had an easy go in terms of mental health. And, um, that was really important that we we understood what Loa felt like, you know, for each other.

Renae: And when you're sharing about the not having an easy go with mental health, um, of course, only what you're willing to share with us. But what did that look like in in your childhood?

Adair: So I will set the broader stage of saying that I was raised by really loving and caring people. And I still have a really excellent relationship with my parents. And, um, that's just important to know. Um, I something I was talking about my mom with very recently was my diagnosis with celiac disease at the between the ages of three and four. Um, so this is important because, you know, this is the TraumaWise podcast. There's people listening will either have an understanding of or perhaps be very interested in this concept of the body keeping the score. Um, that's Bessel van der Kolk phrasing. But this is understood in indigenous communities eons back to, uh, we hold on to things that happen. And when I was around, um, like three and a half or so, I had failure to thrive. I had, like, a big, like, starvation belly. I couldn't I wasn't absorbing any nutrients. I couldn't get off the couch. I was really sick, and I don't remember that. But certainly my body, it makes me emotional even to, like, tap it a little bit. My body remembers that, and I grew up with a lot of anger and anger. Like when I was really little, I was a very, like, fiercely angry little person, and that I'm better at managing it now. But I have a lot of fire in my Constitution in general. Um, but I was very angry. I was angry that I couldn't eat what other people could eat, because back then there wasn't. It just wasn't. Um, being celiac wasn't as accessible as it is now, and I don't know how much of that anger came from that experience and how much of it came from being a really sensitive kid. But it's kind of crazy. I have this transcript of more or less a transcript that I discovered a couple years ago from maybe it was like seven. And it's it's from my psychiatrist, my mom or my psychiatrist. And it's like a dare is very angry about the criminal justice system. And she will scream. I didn't know anyone who was incarcerated. Like, I don't even know. Maybe I saw something on sixty minutes, but she will scream and yell indefinitely because she's so angry that people in prisons have bad food to eat. Like, I just remember like, little, little things like that that are like, not normal, not maybe not typical. However you want to say it. Um, and I, I also was very aware of how I presented, at least to some extent at school especially. So I knew how to kind of like keep a lid on things, and I, I, I don't remember exactly what it was like when I was younger, but, um, I mean, I know now I still check myself in terms of masking, just so that I don't make situations so that I don't be weirder than the people in front of me can handle.

Renae: Mm.

Adair: Like, sometimes it's

Renae: Yeah.

Adair: okay. It's like a good thing to mask a little bit for everyone's sake. Um, so those are just some examples. I was very I had a lot of like, depression and angry feelings when I was little, which I know now. Now I realized that I'm autistic. I'm like, oh, yes, these these tendencies are very strong in undiagnosed autistic girls.

Renae: Yeah. Well, I will get into the diagnosis in just a moment. I want to come back to the Uh, the, um, Emma, uh, McAdams from the Therapy in a nutshell podcast, um, earlier this year said that the working definition that she has for depression is the the depression is the opposite of expression. And that, to me, rings so true that when we're not allowed to expression doesn't mean just words coming out. It is the embodiment of who we are in the world. And when we can't do that, it can only result in a form of depression.

Adair: Yeah, it's got to go somewhere, right? So it tunnels

Renae: Right,

Adair: down instead

Renae: right,

Adair: of out.

Renae: right. And and again, before we get to the diagnosis, um, and this is I'm not asking you to throw any family members underneath the bus. What we are going to normalize the reality of, of belonging and and fear and how that works in a family system and in, in communities. Um, who who was it in your life that might have given you that script of don't be weird.

Adair: Will. I actually come from a pretty weird family like we. Especially when we're together. Like, we're. We like the freak flag. We like to let it fly. We also it was it's interesting how people edit each other, even in a space where weird is normal. Um, I mean, I'll flip that script and say that my sister has always been weird with me, and we like that. The level of weirdness and spontaneous bizarreness, um, was very much encouraged and stoked by our parents. My dad's super weird. I don't want to throw anyone under the bus, but I'm it. Birds of a feather tend to flock together. Like I don't, I'm not the odd man out. exclusively with Neurodivergence in my family. Um, and I think, I mean, as somebody who's parenting a fierce child now to to run up against a small person who's wildly angry in a way that's decontextualized to some extent, um, that would be very overwhelming. Especially, you know, I have all of the training that I have that I've like sort and sort and sort and my parents, they're amazing. My mom's a teacher, my dad's a lawyer. Like, they don't have the same levels of training that I do, and they certainly didn't then. So I think I think the messaging wasn't even necessarily so much, don't be weird. As I got the message, there's something wrong with me like this.

Renae: Mm.

Adair: I'm not. Well, like, this isn't this isn't okay.

Renae: Mm.

Adair: It's not in the sense that I was shamed. But just like, this isn't what my friends do when they go home, they don't have autistic meltdowns. Now I have the

Renae: Right?

Adair: word for it. Does

Renae: Right.

Adair: that make sense?

Renae: Absolutely, absolutely. And and what a what a great. Um, it's it's lovely. And maybe not entirely common for that to be the, the narrative for people who are diagnosed later in life that that they do have a, a place that they were safe to express that and that it was there was a level of normal to it. Um, and so I'm actually thrilled for you. I think that's awesome. And what a great what a great thing. Right.

Adair: What a gift. What an absolute

Renae: What?

Adair: gift. Like. As challenging

Renae: Absolutely.

Adair: as life has been, I am sometimes too aware of how much easier I've had it than I might have. Like the comparative

Renae: Um.

Adair: suffering thing like that is just such a busted train. But yeah, on the other side,

Renae: Yeah.

Adair: I'm really lucky to have been surrounded by many people in many layers that have embraced me and seen me and encouraged me to be myself.

Renae: When I think what it does, um, on one end of it too, is people may not have had that experience, but it does speak to that it exists. And so I think that that's the even to sometimes we in our, in our imaginations of what life is or could be. I like to say that a lot of people have actually a very underdeveloped imagination of suffering, and they'll use the phrase, oh, I couldn't even imagine. And I'm like, that's actually very unsatisfactory to me. I would like you to imagine what this is like for me, because I need someone in my emotional reality. And so even if it's not the exact same situation, the feeling of being othered of of of being not enough, too much all, all of these things of of scarcity, of fear. You've experienced that as a human being because we all experience it. And so I just need you to travel with me just a little bit on this. And and so by you saying, yeah, families can actually create that space where you just let people be who they are and you talk about when it's safe and when it's not safe, but you create a place where it's always safe to do that. Um, that gives people an imagination to be able to do it because someone else has given them the vision of it. Right?

Adair: Yeah,

Renae: Or the

Adair: we

Renae: example?

Adair: have to know that it's possible. Totally. And one thing, that one little language trick that I think is helpful for what you just said about, I can't imagine, is I can only imagine that is a very empathic and genuine thing to say. If it's genuine, that gives in this case you like, I can say that to you and you're like, okay, you're with me.

Renae: Yep.

Adair: But I also don't

Renae: Yep.

Adair: know exactly what it's like. So I'm not going to say I know. I know how you feel.

Renae: Yeah.

Adair: I can only imagine.

Renae: Yeah. Well, there's, um, let's go ahead and dive into the part about the diagnosis and your your journey of that. Um, what prompted you to begin to examine this? And and how did that go?

Adair: I went for a walk the other day with a friend that I haven't been close with in several years, and I was recalling to her, I was like, you told me that you're autistic like eight years ago. And she was like, yeah, I only tell people who I think might want to know. And it was over my head at that time. Um, I didn't actually realize that I was autistic until after I gave birth. I had Goldie in twenty twenty two. Um, so, you know, there's different time layers of late to the game, but it's a real like I'm putting my heel of my hand on my forehead. Homer Simpson Simpson. Me, though, like, you got to be kidding me. Of course, this is the thing that explains all of the satellite factors that make me seem like a weirdo to myself. You know, that might be like my less kind, um, self-talk or like, what the fuck is wrong with me? Like, why am I like this? Well, there's actually a word for it, and it's autism. And I honestly, it was a pretty rough period of my life. I don't remember a lot super well, but I do remember coming to this realization. Some, like, starting to go down the rabbit hole, uh, of women, late diagnosed women with autism. And I'm a researcher. So I started I put my fingers together and like, I'm a little mad scientist, I'm like, okay, now I'm ready to, like, hit up Google Scholar and see what papers cite this paper. And just you could almost see me, like, in a pile of papers, just like throwing them behind my head. Like this one, this one, this one, this one. Um, I'm gonna just make an adjustment with my light. Um. Yeah. If something happens, something must have happened. I must have been having conversations with fellow neurodivergent friends. It tends this stuff. Sort of. It almost seems like it's contagious until you realize you were just hanging out with all the people who were also autistic and didn't realize it. And then you realize, no, it's not contagious. We've just flocked together. Um, but something very funny happened around my kiddo was probably about one and a half, so it would be like almost two years ago. I met up with a friend of mine, one of my best friends from high school, and we were both like, I have something to tell you. And we both disclosed our autism to each other

Renae: So funny.

Adair: in the same conversation, and we were both like, yeah, I know, to the other one. Um, but what really one of the things that really started to make things make more sense to me, um, was was how badly I crashed after I had my child, um, which was really sad and very scary and lasted way longer than I would have wished, um, that to happen to anybody. And also pregnancy. Pregnancy was hard. Being in my body was very, very hard pretty much the whole time. My mental health also tanked in my first trimester. Like to a scary degree. But um, once parents will understand this and even non-parents, it makes sense. Once you have a kid, you don't have your own your alone time anymore. Or if you do, it has to be very carefully and possibly very expensively orchestrated. Um, and I gave birth. I didn't have any super specific expectations. And I just remember my sister asking me, um, like when Goldie was a couple weeks old. It's clear from what I've said so far, I'm super close with my sister. She's incredible. She's my number one bestie, And she's also really, like, wonderful with babies and and just caring. Um, she was like, how often, how much time do you think it's reasonable for you to spend alone with Goldie? And I said, never. I never want to be alone with

Renae: Hmm

Adair: her because

Renae: hmm

Adair: I felt scared. Um,

Renae: hmm.

Adair: like I wasn't going to be a a safe mom with her.

Renae: Hmm.

Adair: Um, so that was even, like, early. And then when she was about three months old, she became very colicky. Like, we went on this long, way longer than we should have. Probably trip to visit my husband's family. And she wouldn't let anybody else hold her besides me and him. And my body was the only thing that really soothed her. And being very sensitive, having, like, feeling like I didn't have choice around touch was a lot. Um, and then the crying, the like ceaseless screaming for about three months. She just. If I wasn't working really hard physically, she wouldn't stop crying. So my body tanked. My I am just getting my wrists back, like from

Renae: Um.

Adair: holding her like I'm fine. My body's finally feels like I'm a yoga practitioner. Um. And I'm just an athletic person. I love to move. I love to dance. And we're three years, three plus years in. And thank goodness it's happened. But I'm finally getting. I really feel like I have my body and my capacity to build strength back. But my body tanked. I there was a I'm not trying to trauma dump specifically, but there was a point where I my kiddo was screaming and crying and my back was so bad that I couldn't move. So we were just home by ourselves like that. So audio sensitive. I've always been audio sensitive to the point where very cool. I have asked DJ's to turn the music down before I realized I just needed to, like, bring ear, um, earplugs with me everywhere, which is something I did before I realized I was autistic. But once I realized I was autistic. I was like, oh, my audio sensitivity makes sense. The fact that I totally tanked after my kid, who was just not a not a straightforward and easygoing baby, um, the needs that she had just absolutely wiped me out. I had said before I had her that my greatest need is to be unobserved again.

Renae: Um.

Adair: You think you might have considered

Renae: Um hum.

Adair: autism as a as a factor, but with my if being observed is my greatest need and I'm not able to be unobserved, or even if I am able to be unobserved, but I have an hour while my mom takes her or whatever. That's not enough. That's panic inducing. Um, and it just didn't give. So,

Renae: Um hum.

Adair: you know, I went through a really hard time. I spent most of a month in inpatient, which was its own scary and unfortunate situation, even though, you know, they kept me alive, which is good. But I

Renae: Um hum, um hum.

Adair: was really trying hard not to take my life for like,

Renae: Yeah.

Adair: a good long time while trying to be a mom, while trying to

Renae: Yeah.

Adair: maybe kind of have some kind of work. Thank God I have an incredible husband and a wonderful family, as I've noted, um, who really cared so much but and took great care of me while I was trying really hard to be okay. But the thing about realizing that I'm autistic, the thing that's I keep having to come back to even still, is like, I think about people who are higher, who have higher support needs because I've worked with people with autism, um, people who have higher support needs maybe who don't, who are don't use, you know, words or use words very much, or maybe don't have the physical capacity to dress themselves. And I think about their needs, like, if you can't toilet yourself or dress yourself, then your need is to have someone do that for you. So my needs are a little more subtle, a little more soft edged, but there needs. And when I don't get them met, I don't. I have a certain lack of resilience that some people, maybe people who are not neurodivergent, would be able to suck it up. But I hit a certain point where I can't suck it up and I look fine, you know, and I, I comport myself in a way that, you know, you wouldn't unless, you know, you wouldn't know that I'm actually carrying a lot of gifts and a lot of baggage that all require a tremendous amount of space and a tremendous amount of time. Um, and yeah, so I just hit enough low points, I think, where I realized, like, what's going on, it's like I wasn't having my needs met and it wasn't

Renae: Right.

Adair: the fault of the people around me. They cared. It was a system's fault, for sure. But I don't even know if we have time to go into that.

Renae: Well. And and to, to go back to a phrase that you just used about resilience and and sucking it up. Um, to be clear, sucking it up requires us to. In the in the best cases, we are put we are putting our some level of our needs to the side to accomplish the task. And in in the best systems, we are able to go back and get those needs met in imbalanced systems that that requires us because we're not going to go back and be able to get those needs met. That's when we have like high masking and we have dissociation. And

Adair: Yep.

Renae: it's not sustainable. And so I think that's part of the the traumatic piece of this is when you are a person who has different types of needs that are not typical to maybe other people in the system around you. Um, that the the dismissal or the confusion or the rejection or ejection because your, your expression of those needs is, is is not understood or they don't feel like they have capacity to meet those needs. Um, so they're that they have a fear response to it. And it is a fear response. If if there's any denial of meeting those needs, it is either a fear response because they don't have capacity for caring. They don't have the resources to meet those needs. They're feeling scarcity themselves. They're in their downstairs brain. So whatever it is, it's a fear response because their their assumption is, is that to meet your needs will cost them a part of themselves. And the truth is, it will cost you a part of yourself to engage. This is why it's so important for us to to be connected and have the conversations and have the relationships, and to find our people, because we're going to move in and out of capacity. And so when I have capacity, I look up and say, who else needs it? And when I don't have it, I'm like looking for the people whose eyes are up and be like, I need help. And we're meant to have that dialogue, that back and forth, that that type of relationship. And when, um, perhaps in seasons when there are narratives that create an othering based on neurodivergence that there's something broken or wrong or, or malformed versus this is just this architecture of brain. And we all have different architectures, and it just seems easier to you to meet people's needs. And not other people's needs. When you're looking at people. But it's it's really harmful. To create narratives of broken, it's really harmful to create even the even the I love I actually love being a weirdo. Gonzo's

Adair: Yeah.

Renae: a weirdo for the Muppets, you know, um, I always have told my kids, they said I'm weird. I'm like, well, that's why you fit in our family. Like, that's how you know you belong.

Adair: Good, good.

Renae: It's like we're

Adair: Weird is unique.

Renae: all, you

Adair: Weird means you're

Renae: know.

Adair: doing something that is working for you.

Renae: Absolutely.

Adair: That you're weird probably means you're doing what you want to be doing, and there's

Renae: Yeah.

Adair: going to be some strong feedback in certain environments for that. But if you can keep it. You're going to be happier in the long run, especially as we get older.

Renae: Well, and and creativity itself, you know, anything that's that's art or thought provoking or or a discovery is out. It's an outside of the normative experience, and we actually all crave that. We like

Adair: Yeah.

Renae: we want consistency, but we also want novelty, and

Adair: Sure.

Renae: we want new experiences. And if we don't have us weirdos creating those new experiences, life would be really boring.

Adair: It sure would be. It sure would be.

Renae: Right? And so I say us weirdos too, is that I'm. I'm a late diagnosed person myself, so I'm a middle aged lady in my fifties. And, um, when I was about forty five years old, um, right at the beginning of, of Covid, I had a pretty significant healing, um, experience where some of my very deep seated, um, sources of my cptsd there was a lot of really great resolution that happened. And in that, um, as I started to realize the things that I had been holding on to for decades to, to live, um, were no longer serving me. And I started to let go of some of those structures and some of that rigidity. Um, what became very clear to me is my well, my brain stopped working and I freaked out. I thought something was really, really wrong with me because I was like, I can't get my brain to work. I don't it just doesn't work, I can't function. And, um, at the time, I was a field supervisor for a bunch of MSW students at Baylor. Um, and I asked one of them, I'm like, hey, can you go ahead and download adult ADHD screener and screen me? I have a feeling that there might be something going on here. So she screened me and she's like, well, yeah, um,

Adair: Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding.

Renae: you

Adair: You didn't

Renae: might in

Adair: need that

Renae: fact.

Adair: screen. You didn't need that screen. You knew what was happening.

Renae: And I said, okay. And so I went through the whole process of and I actually had it was like a very thorough process, although don't give a bunch of paperwork to a person who has ADHD and ask them to turn it in. Um, but, you know, like it was very it was frustrating, but I it was like my, my biological mother filled one out and my husband filled one out, and I filled

Adair: Mhm.

Renae: one out. And we went through this whole thing, and I talked to the doctor about my trauma so we could parse out what was trauma and what was ADHD. And then

Adair: Yeah.

Renae: we did, and

Adair: Yeah.

Renae: I learned that that as I was healing, the same structures that were keeping me going with my trauma were what were keeping me going with ADHD. And so, you know, found my found my right level of medication, found my right rhythm, started to realize that I didn't work well in certain, uh, environments. Um, that, in fact, I, I could no longer work in certain environments I was

Adair: Yep.

Renae: not able to function in that way and then

Adair: Yep.

Renae: made adjustments. Um, and, and then just, you know, continued on. And then about a year ago, a little over a year ago, um, I happened to start spending time with, um, an autistic adult and an autistic child. We were living in the same space, and I went, oh. Um huh. So I started watching videos about what it's like to be autistic and ADHD, and then what it is to be a woman, a high functioning woman with all these things. And then at a certain point, I, like, sat my husband down and I'm like, I need you to watch this video. And he just kept looking at me as they're describing all these things. And the video is titled twelve Reasons You're Not Autistic. And, you know, it was like, because you don't do this, this, this, this and this and this. And I was like, I knew all of those things.

Adair: Mhm.

Renae: And I started crying.

Adair: Mhm.

Renae: I

Adair: Mhm.

Renae: started crying because there was this moment of, oh my gosh, again,

Adair: Mhm.

Renae: I'm not broken. This is just how my brain is. Oh, and then I had the moment where I realized what my trains were, my special I was that's what we call special interests in our house is what's

Adair: He trains.

Renae: your trains? What's your trains right now?

Adair: Yeah.

Renae: Um.

Adair: Yeah. Totally. You mean because little kids love trains. Little autistic kids love trains.

Renae: Yeah.

Adair: Yeah totally.

Renae: Um, and Sheldon on on, uh, um, Big Bang Theory with the trains. So

Adair: Okay.

Renae: it's like that, that very special. And I was like, oh my gosh, Salesforce was my trains, wasn't it? And like, the thing that I thought was so important and I couldn't understand why no one else thought it was this important. And I was just like, don't you understand? Oh, and so even that part of it of. going through and and collecting data and evidence and, and realizing that part of why it was so hard is that so much of the research has been for males, like

Adair: Yeah.

Renae: so much of the diagnostic material, so much of the markers, and it just presents differently. So I'd love to hear a little bit too about for you, what you might have noticed were some differences for you where it might not have been as apparent, um, years ago, because of the fact that it seemed to be a like very prevalent for males, that girls aren't don't tend to be autistic.

Adair: Right. Well, one thing that I found really interesting, right when I was starting to realize what was what was up, I listened to an interesting book called. But you don't Look autistic at all. It's by a Dutch woman. Her name is escaping me at the moment, but one of the points she makes is that if horses. If. If horses were trains or or train timetables, you know, that's like a classic, like kids getting just so sucked into, like, these systems. If horses were trains, little girls would be diagnosed with autism a lot more often. Um, I had this CD-ROM and it was called Encyclopedia Horse, and it had one hundred horse breeds with different like

Renae: Oh,

Adair: profiles

Renae: wow.

Adair: and videos. And I had a notebook, and I copied every piece of information from the CD-ROM into my notebook. I also had, well, there were four walls in my bedroom growing up, and all of them were covered with sometimes big posters. But more often I would just cut pictures out of Inside Out of Horse Illustrated magazine and Horse and Rider magazine and Young Rider magazine. Wow, this is a it's crazy what's in there if you just open the lid? Um, my walls were covered with pictures of horses. I was obsessed with them. And I still am in a different, um, kind of in a different way, but maybe not really that different at all. Um, so that was an indicator. I mean, just that, like that obsession with detail, my super high sensitivity, my sensory sensitivity, I, I could smell if my mom cut open a cantaloupe from upstairs and I would, like, yell, uh, this was, you know, I was maybe, like, eight or nine, but, like, older than I could have been. But I would yell and I wouldn't come out of my room until it was gone. Like, I felt like a strong sense of threat from many different types of fruit, a strong fruit aversion, which, coincidentally or not, there seems to be some correlation with people who have celiac disease not liking fruit. I haven't seen that in real life, but I have understand that there's some research backing that up. Um, And I'm to your point about watching one of those videos. I had this video that kept coming up on YouTube, like, watch this, watch this, twelve Signs of high, high masking, um, autistic women. And I watched it and I also cried, but it took me until a couple months ago to actually watch it because I knew it was going to make me emotional if I saw that all of these things are the case. One of the things that I notice even today, like these days that I do, that I'm like, this is not, this is not. I don't think that neurotypical women especially do this all the time. Maybe we do, I don't know, but I set my face all the time. What face should I be making? What face should I be making? And it's not that I'm. You know, some people with autism, especially males, can tend to be sort of mono. Mono, um, mono facial. I'm not mono facial. I have quite an elastic face. And still I've checked myself. I'm like, what face are you making right now? What face are you making right now? because that's something that autistic people do. Like when we're when we're when we're used to masking, it's like, okay, how am I presenting?

Renae: Mhm.

Adair: How am I presenting, how am I presenting?

Renae: Mhm.

Adair: Um, which doesn't bother me now. I just I would rather know what kind of face I'm making. Right. But those are things the the the audio sensitivity. When I got finally

Renae: Mhm.

Adair: got noise canceling headphones, my quality of life went so much higher.

Renae: Yeah.

Adair: Um, yeah.

Renae: Yeah.

Adair: Yeah, those

Renae: Yeah.

Adair: are some.

Renae: Loops are amazing. Like I have the, the loops that adjust. And um the first time I went to Disneyland with the loops I'm like and I love, like I love Disneyland and I get exhausted quick like I have to do recoup recoup recoup. Um and it comes with a cost. But I went and I was like, oh, great googly moogly like, this is I feel so much better. I am on way less hyper vigilant alert. I can

Adair: Sure.

Renae: actually I can breathe better. And um, I try to explain to people where they're like, oh, I'm like, can you repeat that? They're like, you can't hear me. I'm like, no, I hear everything.

Adair: I can't process what you're saying.

Renae: I have no idea what you're saying because I'm hearing this here

Adair: Yeah.

Renae: and that here and that there and that and the light and all the things.

Adair: Mhm.

Renae: Um, and for me, the one that that I keep laughing about, where I'm all like, oh, there she is. Um, is when people ask me a question and they think it's an incredibly straightforward question and I'm like, I don't know how to answer that. They're like, it's a straightforward question. I'm like, no, it went like this. There's

Adair: Pew pew

Renae: like

Adair: pew pew

Renae: a bazillion

Adair: pew pew.

Renae: different ways to answer this question. And I need more like data or context to know which path I'm supposed to take with you. Because I can I can go on all of them.

Adair: Right. But

Renae: Right?

Adair: it's going to be it's going to get weird if I go on all of them at the same time. You might

Renae: Yes,

Adair: not like your answer?

Renae: yes. I wanted to thank you for the the honesty and and sharing around the despair that comes with crashing out. That comes with the, um, it's it's there is no there is no sucking it up because there's nowhere to go when you've crashed out.

Adair: Yeah, it's really scary.

Renae: It's really scary. And and when you're when you're feeling like there's no end to it and there's isn't hope. What options are there? Right. And there's a, um, for you for. So thank you for sharing about your time with inpatient and that reality. And, um, when people say to me, you know, why is this person make this choice? Or, you know, why are they doing this thing that could be harmful to themselves? Um, I often will say, you got to be careful to assume that there's a choice here. It may just be the best option their brain and body could come up with. And while we may see other options, they may not have enough evidence or experience or patterns or that may not be their reality. And so we want to be really, really gentle with that. And so if you could, um, say somebody is listening to this and they're like, there are some things here that I am hearing that I'm feeling like I really resonate with and relate to, and they they are wanting to go maybe on a little more of a journey, but maybe they're scared of what the answer might be. Um, what kind of words would you give?

Adair: That's such a good question. Well, if you're scared of what the answer might be, you're living with the answer already anyways. And I get it, you know? That doesn't mean you have to press play on exploring. Um, however, if you start to uncover narratives of late diagnosed autistic women in particular, there's a lot of queer people who are autistic, too. There's a very strong, um, overlap there, which doesn't surprise me, because autistic people don't see power structures in the same way, and queerness doesn't operate under the same power structures as our normal. Normal. Typical neurotypical world. Um. Wow. There we go. I went on a little tangent there. Um, if you're if you're curious, then it may well be worth starting to explore some things. I'm actually working on a tool called the Neuro Curious Starter Kit, which I would be happy to share. Um, because it's everything that I started to look at online, I actually didn't, I self-diagnosed. Um, so I would say, first of all, you living with the answers already, and if you feel like there's truth there, there's very likely you're probably right, because people who are not autistic don't spend all day wondering whether they're autistic. Um, that's just not a thing. So, um,

Renae: Yep.

Adair: and then another thing to be curious is about what kind of affirmation do you need? Uh, there's nothing wrong with looking for an external diagnosis. It tends to be very expensive, and it tends to not be very well covered. Um, so I just decided to do my own thing because first of all, I'm a mental health professional. I understand how the DSM works, and I understand that a lot of it's BS. I also

Renae: Right?

Adair: understand

Renae: Yeah.

Adair: that like, you know, I mean, if if you're looking at the autism diagnosis under the DSM, the first, uh, the first bullet point is an issue around social communications. And you ask any autistic person it's like, no, it's sensory or no, it's this like you

Renae: Yeah.

Adair: neurotypical person, think that it's communication. I'm fine. So you're living with it anyways. Consider what kind of needs you or impulses you might have around validation, because I've had many people reach out to me and be like, I want to get assessed or this or that. And I'm like, well, for like this amount of money or it's not going to give you any more leeway in terms of like the Americans with Disabilities Act. Knock on wood that sticks around, It's not going to give you anything extra in terms of accessing resources unless you have like a dual diagnosis. Um, so that's important to consider. Like do you why do you want the diagnosis? Um, and another thing that's important to consider that I'm going to put into the toolkit is a twenty twenty four or twenty twenty three article that was very robust. Many thousands of women were involved in it. And, um, there was excellent evidence to suggest that self-diagnosis is equally as effective. Um, so that's another thing that we got to keep in mind. It's not that we need to be self-diagnosing left and right. Autism is a very particular experience, and it's helpful to know that you're autistic to the extent that it will validate and normalize all, in my experience, the constellation of bizarre and inconvenient and painful parts of me and brilliant parts of me. It

Renae: Yeah.

Adair: validates it and pulls it all into one constellation instead of having them be disparate Spread stars. And once we realize kind of what's going on, that there's a name for it and there's other people, then you can go on Reddit and see what the other autistic people are doing, like, oh my gosh, they've already problem solved. This and their brains are so brilliant and they work just like me. You know, the internet is is a wonderful place. Um, it's a good time to be autistic because the internet is full of resources for people like us. Um, and we need that because so many of us have experienced a tremendous amount of isolation, self shaming, um, that, you know, it's just not it's not warranted and it's it's not necessary.

Renae: Right? Right. And that the, um, over and over, it's, I think for me, the a lot of, um, my levels of self-discovery throughout my adult years, um, each time it has been a validation, not a. Oh, no. It's been a like a. Oh, now we have a name for it. And in general, these are not things where I'm broken. In

Adair: No.

Renae: general, it just means I have a different way of seeing things, and I'm I, I love my brain. I love

Adair: Yeah.

Renae: my brain's not letting me down at all. The system around me might let me down because it's going to fight back against

Adair: Mhm.

Renae: things it doesn't understand. Um.

Adair: Mhm.

Renae: Or it doesn't like to be called a task or, um, or all those other things that make up part of who I am, too. Um, and the I will see a pattern. And if it needs correction, I will tell you, um, in no uncertain terms, that it needs correction. Um, and people don't really love that. And people also pay me lots of money to do that. So I it it's like it's it's beautiful, it's wonderful. And it's um, it's rich And so I think that that I love that that it was affirmed to me too, that, um, you know, if, if you think that you're autistic or ADHD, which is the two of them together, uh, which is its own special bucket of fun, um, that you you probably are, because, again, neurotypical people do not run around going, I wonder if I wonder if this is what my brain is doing. Like

Adair: They

Renae: it's

Adair: don't

Renae: just not.

Adair: develop a special interest regarding the quality of their brains. Most of the time, I would guess, right? It's

Renae: Doesn't

Adair: just that's

Renae: happen.

Adair: just not like you're like, that's just not it. Like, it doesn't

Renae: Oh,

Adair: have to be a disability either.

Renae: no.

Adair: Like, and this is just my particular take when

Renae: Oh.

Adair: I have what I need and thank goddess, I have what I need. The more and more stable I get, the more often it's just a gift.

Renae: Yeah.

Adair: I start to, you know, I stop having what

Renae: Yep.

Adair: I need or I start to get imbalanced, then I feel it as a disability. But

Renae: Yeah.

Adair: it's not always. It doesn't always feel like a disability to me, and that's also

Renae: Yeah.

Adair: something that's worth exploring. You know, it's very

Renae: Yeah.

Adair: personal. Um, but it's very empowering

Renae: Yeah.

Adair: to have it not feel like a disability. It's very disempowering to feel like it is a disability sometimes

Renae: Yes.

Adair: because I'm like, I can't help it. But, um,

Renae: Right.

Adair: the other side of that with stabilization and, um, you know, just more ease, is feeling the superpowers without having to suffer as much.

Renae: Yeah, I. The only time I have ever felt disabled is in the workplace.

Adair: Um.

Renae: Workplaces were not created for brains like mine.

Adair: I've never. I worked in food service, um, for a very long time because I could set my own schedule. It was a vegan restaurant. Like it was. The vibe was good. Um, that was after working at other restaurants that were hard. But, um, now I work and I work for myself. I have not

Renae: Yeah.

Adair: held a forty hour. I worked one like a normal forty hour a week once and was like, I can't do it. It doesn't work for me,

Renae: Yeah.

Adair: which meant I forewent a lot of different types of security, because the

Renae: Yep.

Adair: flexibility and the the ability to recharge myself was absolutely essential. Um,

Renae: Right.

Adair: you know, which is just it is what it is, but there's definitely very real ramifications for that too.

Renae: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I, I'm so grateful that we got to spend this time and and learn more about your, your history and your journey and hear the wisdom of that internal wisdom. I hear you drawing a lot on the, the, um, encouragement for people to seek the answers they actually have inside of themselves with their internal wisdom, and to to hold that as a high value. That's obviously a high value for us at TraumaWise and with me as well. And so I thank you for, um, putting words to that and sharing your experiences and just being so generous with your time in person today. Thank you. Adair.

Adair: Well, I sure do love to talk. And any time you want to go into any rabbit hole, you just send me an email and we'll get back on the horn. Thank you so much for the opportunity to share. It's been great, as it always is, to talk with you.

Renae: Awesome. Thank you.