175: I’ll be me; can you be you?

In this most personal episode I've ever created, I'll share with you how my autism self-diagnosis has helped me to understand the experiences I've had in ways that bring a great deal more clarity and insight than I've had up to now. In addition to hearing from me, you'll hear the actual voicemail the therapist who has been helping me left to explain the results of my autism screeners, as well as conversations with friends about things that are hard in our friendships. You'll hear from listeners who find things I do on podcast episodes to be hurtful and judgmental and also relatable and approachable, and sometimes it's the same things I do that prompts both the 'positive' and 'negative' reactions. And you'll hear from a listener in my membership community who has been on a similar journey to understand how her ADHD diagnosis wasn't really about her as much as it was about her reactions to the ways her family interacted with her - they encouraged creativity and expression in her artwork, but never never never ever related to emotional expression. My goal with this episode is to help you draw together threads in your own life in a way that maybe you haven't been able to do until now so you can understand yourself better, and make requests to help you meet your needs, and maybe change the situations you're in so you can be in them with more ease and authenticity. And I also hope it helps you to see how your child's struggles are a reflection of their needs, and of whether those needs are being met. Just as you didn't need fixing when you were a child (and neither did I, despite all the people who tried to fix me), your child doesn't need fixing either. Instead, we can use the struggles to better understand our needs and our child's needs, and work toward meeting them both. To investigate screeners that Dr. A. has available for free on her website, visit https://spectrumservicesnyc.com/resources/