Episode Title: Unraveling the Mystery of Autism: Can ONE Theory Explain It All?

Episode Number: 26

Release Date: Sept 17, 2024

Duration: 01:04:45

Episode Summary: In this episode of Now You Know One Autistic, Moshe and Leah delve into the complex world of autism theories, challenging the notion of a single unifying explanation. They dissect various theories, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses, and emphasize the unique nature of each autistic individual.

Key Takeaways

  • Autism's Diversity: Autism is a spectrum, and no single theory can encompass the vast array of experiences and traits within the autistic community.
  • Debunking Myths: The hosts challenge popular misconceptions about autism, such as the "extreme male brain" theory and the "mirror neuron" theory.
  • Processing Delays and Executive Function: The episode explores the impact of processing delays and executive function challenges on autistic individuals, even those considered "high-functioning."

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

  • Why the search for a unifying theory of autism is flawed.
  • The importance of recognizing individual differences within the autistic community.
  • How processing delays and executive function challenges affect autistic individuals.

Quotes

  • "When you know one autistic, you know one autistic." - Moshe

Resources & Links

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Transcript

[00:08] Moshe: Hi, I'm Moshe and I'm autistic.

[00:10] Leah: I'm Leah and I'm boring. Welcome to the now, you know, one autistic podcast.

[00:16] Moshe: The opinions expressed in this podcast reflect one autistic and one layout and don't necessarily reflect the entire autistic community.

[00:25] Leah: Let's get to it. Hi Moshe.

[00:32] Moshe: Hi Leah.

[00:33] Leah: How are you?

[00:34] Moshe: I'm good, thank you.

[00:36] Leah: Very good. So I actually just listened to last week's podcast last night when I couldn't sleep. For reasons, I do have to say that it was laugh out loud funny.

[00:45] Moshe: It really was. If you haven't had a chance to catch last week's episode, then I definitely urge you to. It was very jam packed. We talked a lot about masking and triggers and glimmers and fawning. We introduced our newest sponsor, Munchables. So if you haven't been to www dot Munchables dot ca, you can check that out and see their, their wide array of stim toys and chewable jewelry and those sort of things. Thanks again to to the wonderful people over at Munchables for their sponsorship and for Laura for partnering with the now, you know, one autistic podcast.

[01:24] Leah: So the first half of the podcast really did sound like a comedy special that we were doing, and the second half essentially sounded like me screaming about things that trigger me about autistic people.

[01:34] Moshe: Yes.

[01:34] Leah: So what are your thoughts on that?

[01:37] Moshe: Well, you definitely have opinions, and I feel like we play off well against each other or with each other. And you definitely made some really valid points because there's a lot to talk about. And one of the things that really makes us such a special podcast, and I've mentioned this before, is if you see some of the other neurodivergent, autistic content creators out there, they often fall into the category of explaining to the general public what neurodiversity is and what autism is and the different traits of it. And they don't really leave a lot of room for personal development on their part. And I'm one of the few autistics that is open to discussing some of the areas where maybe I fall a little bit short and where maybe some other autistics fall a little bit short, and some areas where they can definitely work on themselves, just like I work on myself, for the reason that we're definitely a very unique community and we definitely have very special needs a lot of the time. But there's always room for growth, because growth is part of life, whether you're autistic or neurotypical so this week's topic.

[02:47] Leah: Is based on calsiprise, another topic that came up this week that triggered Leah and made her obsession.

[02:54] Moshe: Yes. So let's talk about Leah now talks.

[02:57] Leah: About herself in the third person. Cause she heard how shrill and shrieky she sounded in the last episode.

[03:01] Moshe: Yes. So what are we gonna talk about this week, Leah?

[03:04] Leah: So we're talking about the theories of autism. There are a lot of them out there. When we're discussing a theory of autism, what some researchers have been trying to do is to come up with one unifying theory that explains all the traits of autism. So your brain is this, and therefore you do all of these things, or your genetics are this. So therefore you do all of these things. Generally, when we first started this podcast and going forth, we said, you only know one autistic because you know one autistic. And there's a lot of unique characteristics that have to do with it. And I don't know that there is one theory that could unify all of the symptoms that symptoms or traits or whatever you want to call it, that an autistic person could have. What are your thoughts on that?

[03:48] Moshe: So for whatever reason, and we talked about this many times, and in many of the past episodes, there's always been this, this urge, be it on the part of scientists and developmental psychologists and behavioral psychologists and psychiatrists and just the whole, all theists to stick autistics into a box and say, okay, so this is what defines an autistic. And these are the traits that are found in every single autistic. And really try and break autism down to, as you said a few moments ago, like symptoms.

[04:23] Leah: What they're doing is they're breaking down my patients, is what they're doing.

[04:26] Moshe: So we're gonna talk this week about, I guess, some of those, we couldn't.

[04:31] Leah: Possibly do all of them. There's a bazillion of them.

[04:33] Moshe: Some of those unifying or those attempts to stick autistics into a jar and go, this is the way we explain what autism is.

[04:42] Leah: Yeah. So here's the thing. I picked a few that are very prevalent, and I'm definitely going to discuss what I found in my research, and then I would like to get your feedback, but including the one that really, again, triggered me this week, which is the intense world theory, and we'll discuss that, and then we'll discuss maybe some better theories of autism that exist out there, but they definitely work in concert, which is what makes them better and more long lasting theories.

[05:06] Moshe: Right.

[05:06] Leah: So I wrote here there are so many theories of autism. Let's discuss.

[05:10] Moshe: All right, so what's the first theory of autism that we'll be discussing?

[05:14] Leah: By far the dumbest one that I found. It's called the extreme brain theory. It seems like it circa 2019. So none of these are, like, super recent. Some of them are older than others. That says people with autism process the world in a very male way. They're interested in stereotypically male topics like machines or weather patterns. So, yeah, that's a theory of autism. So every autistic person's brain is wired to be male in their interests. Now, I found this interesting because a very, very famous autistic named temple Grandin does have a job or a career, rather, that is typically male centric. Male centric career. So temple Grandin is very famous for being a rancher and a ranch hand, almost like a cowboy type of thing. And that's very typically a male dominated field, I want to say. So that's maybe one example of for this theory. Another theory that's put out there is that maybe feminine interests are more emotional, and autistics don't tend toward the emotional. So give me your thoughts on this.

[06:21] Moshe: I mean, first of all, we absolutely love temple Grandin, and we would love for her to appear on our podcast at some point in the future, but that's absolute nonsense. I think, first of all, when you try to make interests into genders, you're completely ignoring the fact that everyone can have an interest in everything depending on what it is, regardless of what gender they are or how they identify. I think the logic, maybe the logic that they're trying to come up with is because a lot of these, as they call them, male centered activities, are very methodical. Like, they require a bit more impersonality, like machines and math and calculators and cars and, like, cold, hard objects, rather than the warm, fuzzy, emotional stuff. And, I mean, it is true that the vast majority of diagnosed, at least, autistics, are male. But the jury is still out whether or not that an actual, like, correlation based on the gender or whether it's just that males are much more easily diagnosed.

[07:28] Leah: Is it possible at all that quote, unquote, male centric interests just have more meat to sink your teeth into? And when an autistic gets an interest, they literally want to make their whole, you know, everything about it, and they just want to really sink their teeth into something. So maybe machines has more of a potential to be interesting to an autistic brain than, I don't know, puppies.

[07:50] Moshe: I don't know. I think it's important to define specifically what exactly is a male interest. Like, what makes one particular special interest that an autistic might have more masculine versus more feminine? Like, what is the definition of that exactly?

[08:06] Leah: I don't know. I honestly think what society says, I don't think it's a thing. So I'm interested in, I guess, some stuff that would be considered male centric, like finance. I do the finances in the house and you do the laundry in the house, which is usually considered female centric. And we don't think that's weird.

[08:22] Moshe: No. And we're talking about, like, I guess, gender roles, and that's more of a sociology question. But I've seen autistic interests that really kind of run the range beyond the stereotypical trains I've met. Autistics that are into insects or flags is one of my special interests, or just. I mean, religion is another special interest of mine. And you could certainly not say that religion is physical. It's definitely a much more theoretical interest, but it's really hard to say because it almost. It almost sounds like you are fitting the facts to suit your narrative. You're coming up with a theory and going, well, those are the reasons why that fits into that mold. Cause you can pretty much fit almost any interest into a quote, unquote, male or female centered focus.

[09:17] Leah: I mean, the reality is that a lot of astrophysicists and computer guys are known for being on the spectrum, but they're female astrophysicists and computer people. And also wasn't, like Oscar Wilde, known for being on the spectrum, and he had really artsy talents. I don't know, I just think that this theory, though a good attempt, is a really huge stretch of the imagination.

[09:41] Moshe: I agree. It's one of those situations where you're coming up with something that sounds interesting on the surface, but when you sort of delve down, deepen, it just doesn't make a lot of sense, because you are telling autistics that all of their special interests are male. And I know quite a few women autistics that would disagree with that.

[10:05] Leah: I agree. So we can sort of debunk the extreme brain theory based on our no experience and no PhDs and no, what.

[10:13] Moshe: Even is an extreme brain. It sounds like. Like one of the X Games sports. You know, we now stay. You know, we now switch focus to see how the competitors are doing in the extreme brain competition now.

[10:26] Leah: Extreme brain version? Yeah, absolutely. So the next one, which is circuit 2017, is called the magical world theory. Of autism. And this one postulates an inability to detect patterns and predict results.

[10:42] Moshe: So magical world, an inability to. I don't really understand where they even get that from.

[10:49] Leah: It's, I literally wrote, doesn't seem legit given. Autistics are very well known for pattern recognition, right?

[10:56] Moshe: So you're basically taking something that autistics, one of the stereotypes of an autistic is making patterns. And you're saying that autistics are characterized by an inability to recognize patterns. I think, how does that even work?

[11:09] Leah: I think what they're trying to say is that socially. So again, they're pigeonholing, right? So socially, the autistics deficit is that they're not picking up the pattern in the social situation, so they don't know what's going to come next. Therefore they don't know how to behave correctly. I also think maybe that they're postulating that it leads to some magical thinking. So, you know, if I jump off this roof, I won't die, I'll fly away. Like that kind of thing. Like not predicting the result of an action, which sometimes is a thing, but I don't think it's enough to be a theory.

[11:41] Moshe: When you explain it like that, it makes maybe a little bit more sense. So it's not necessarily an inability to predict patterns. It's really more of an inability to predict results. It becomes. It's a little bit more accurate because a lot of the time autistics will engage in interactions without being aware of the effect that they're having or the effect that others are having, or as they say, being able to read the room. And I think that that's really just an ability to recognize social cues, or possibly to recognize the emotions and nonverbal cues given off by other people in a given situation. When we're talking specifically about social interactions, but when we're talking about more object recognition, just, it doesn't really hold a lot of water, because if you tell an autistic person that this action will lead to this result, whether we're talking about people or whether we're talking about objects, the ability to not understand that as a rule doesn't necessarily strike as true for me.

[12:51] Leah: So I feel like this theory may actually be quite good at explaining one or two of the characteristics of an autistic person. But it's absolutely not a unifying theory, which is what people are going for here.

[13:05] Moshe: They're not trying to come up with various traits that often present in autistics. They're trying to say that this is how things go for autistics. And there's a reason that the podcast is called now. You know, when autistic, not now. You know how every autistic thinks. And I feel like if we were ever to conjecture that on our podcast, we are going to finally reveal the secret about how all autistics are. That would probably be a bit above our pay grade.

[13:34] Leah: I think we would need to take out loans and stuff and open, I don't know, a society, I don't know what people do for research funding. We'd have to get funding, we'd have to get grants.

[13:44] Moshe: We'd have to get funding. But I mean, we're not scientists.

[13:47] Leah: I am, but not this kind.

[13:48] Moshe: We're not scientists in this regard. We're not developmental psychiatrists or psychologists, and we certainly don't have any letters after our name. But even if we did, I think that this sort of thing, but would still not mean that this particular theory is very valid.

[14:06] Leah: I agree. So the next one is one of our favorite. It's an old one. I don't even know when they came up with it, but I think it was recently debunked. And it's called the mirror neuron theory theory. Let me try again. Mirror neuron theory. Got it. Meaning that there's a lack of mirror neurons in the frontal lobe of the brain of people with autism, leading to difficulty in acting human. So essentially, this theory is basically disproven by mirroring and masking, isn't it?

[14:36] Moshe: It is. So the old thought was that autistics lack mirror neuron, so we don't have the ability to understand what makes other people human. So we project effectively as robots because we lack the ability to detect the humanity in other people, which is why we're so challenged by mimicking their behavior. But the reality is that we're very good at mimicking other people's behavior. In fact, if you listen to last week's episode, one of the things that autistics are extremely good at is mirroring, which, in case you missed it, is one half of the mirror neuron idea, because we often mirror what other people do without really understanding why we're doing it. And if you go way back to, I think, the very beginning of the podcast, we did an episode on the uncanny valley of autism. And in that episode, just like last week's episode, we discussed how when an autistic person tries to mimic other people's behavior or tries to present ourselves or themselves in a certain way based on what we perceive is the appropriate behavior, then it can come across as, you know, not quite right, you're smiling at the wrong time, or your tone is lacking or something is a little bit off. And that is when the mirror or the mask is not quite as all encompassing as we would like. And that's where we get into the idea that we're coming across as dishonest. And so therefore, I feel like the whole idea, that mirror neuron, you know, mirror neurons lacking, it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense because a lot of our behavior, even if we don't understand what it is, comes from watching other people and trying to imitate them.

[16:31] Leah: Right. It doesn't make much sense to me either, because the theory is that mirror neurons in the brain help you observe other people and behave the way they do. So, as we discussed last week, what's lacking in an autistic is likely not that likely. A combination of lack of understanding and lack of attentiveness and some of the other characteristics that come along with the diagnosis.

[16:53] Moshe: Yes. So we do have the ability to perceive the overt stuff. Like, if I'm sitting there watching other people existing, for lack of a better word, then I can usually pick up certain traits and mimic them, especially if I'm not following a certain situation. I had this habit, and I still do on occasion, where if someone is talking and I'm not necessarily following their conversation, I've learned through experience the appropriate sequence for nodding to appear like you're following. So someone will be sitting there talking. And my brain has already left the room and gone down the stairs, and I'm going, uh huh. So it looks natural enough that it appears like I'm actually paying full attention, but I'm absolutely not. And that is an example of I always know. I know you always know, but that is an example of the fact that we do have the ability to mirror human behavior. But again, I say human behavior like we're not human. Don't tell them our secrets, but we don't always know the reason for them or the appropriateness of when and how to do them. So I don't think that this is what this is talking about. This appears to refer to something specific to a lack of ability to recognize, you know, human behavior. But it's less, for me, at least, it's less about recognizing what it is and more about understanding how and when to use it.

[18:17] Leah: Yeah. So a little bit of science speak here. They were looking for a physical structure or characteristic in the brain that could explain autism. And again, even if it did, which it doesn't seem to. It wouldn't unify the entirety of the spectrum. Again, not a unifying theory.

[18:34] Moshe: Right. And what they really wanted to do is they really wanted to sort of look at mirror neuron in any given person and go, oh, well, that person's autistic because of these things, and they can't do it because what they've discovered is that autistic people have mirror neurons and they employ them, just as you would expect.

[18:49] Leah: It sadly turns out that you can actually probably more accurately predict autism, even in very young infants, by tracking their eye movements.

[18:58] Moshe: Yes, exactly.

[18:59] Leah: Because nobody knows why the eye movement patterns are different, but they are.

[19:03] Moshe: That is an example of a trait that's very common across the spectrum. No pun intended, I guess.

[19:08] Leah: Cause the eyes are directly wired into the brain.

[19:10] Moshe: Exactly. If you examine certain characteristics of behavior specifically related to the eyes, you can pretty accurately predict autism. But that's just one of several early indicators. And as the child develops and learns and starts masking, then it becomes a little bit less reliable, mostly because you can sort of train yourself out of it to a certain extent. But that's definitely an early indicator.

[19:37] Leah: In fact, I'm going to be very controversial here and say that they've likely come up with a set of tests that can very accurately predict whether even an infant is going to be autistic or not or is autistic or not. My concern with that is, and we've discussed this as well, is that there's only one cure for autism, which is to not be born autistic. So once you've already got an infant, what exactly are they expecting to do with that unless it's for early intervention?

[20:04] Moshe: Well, the thing with autism is, and I think we're going to discuss it a little bit more as we go through the different theories, is autism is not something that you can cure because it's not one particular thing. It is a disorder, it's a condition, so you can't really treat it as you would treat an illness. But what you can do, especially if you detect it early enough, is you can put in place support. But then again, you don't actually know what supports will be necessary until you see how the child develops, not developments, because autism, once again, is not a universal theory. You don't look at an autistic, or if you indeed feel like you've diagnosed an autistic, you don't look at this autistic infant and know exactly how his life is going to progress. There are many genetic disorders and other conditions that a child can be born with that. You can, in many respects pinpoint these. People with this condition often have these things, or you have to look for these things, or these are always present in these things. But with autism, you really can't. It's impossible, I mean, at least on the surface, unless you're really looking for it, to look at a baby and go, well, that baby's clearly autistic, unless you're looking for specific traits. But the traits just tell you that they have it. It doesn't tell you how it's going to affect them.

[21:21] Leah: Sometimes it's also retroactive. So when Avram was a baby, nobody looked at him and said, oh, he's clearly autistic. But now we look back at videos of him and we're like, wow, that baby is so clearly autistic, but you have to know what you're looking for, right? Yeah. So in terms of that being a unifying theory, I don't know why we got off on that tangent, but it was really interesting.

[21:40] Moshe: We always seem to go off on different tangents. That's why when we look at the outline of the shows as we write them, and they're usually very rough drafts because we don't believe in scripting, although sometimes maybe we should, we always end up going off on these either relevant or even non sequitur tangents related to other things. So podcasts are, in effect, like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get.

[22:02] Leah: Absolutely. All right, so now onto the theory that got me researching about theories and the one that really triggered me this week. It's called the intense world theory. It was postulated first in 2005. And the theory here is that microcircuits in the brain are hyper. They're hyper connected. So that leads to hyper reactive fragments of how an autistic experiences the world. It allows them to zoom in on small details but ignore the larger picture, including those that integrate many streams of sensory information. So the theory here is that, you know, as opposed to what was initially thought, your brain is actually hyper connected. It works too well, so it makes you sensitive to everything and allows you to zoom in on things that are not useful at all, but ignore the larger picture of life. I can see why they tried to make this a unifying theory, but there are some issues with it which we can discuss. But first, I want your opinion on the theory.

[23:05] Moshe: So, this is a very common one, but it's also a very simplistic one. Essentially what it comes down to is autistics experience everything in a much more intense way. And this is something that a lot of people see for autistics, and it does seem to have a little bit of weight to it, because when we're talking about autistics, we're talking about things like hypersensitivities to certain sounds, certain smells, certain things that they see, certain colors. We see the world. Okay, so let's go back a little bit. The autistic person, and I can only speak for me because, again, one autistic, the autistic person, in my case at least, perceives the world through a bit of information that's kind of coming at us from all sides. And because of a processing delay, we often struggle to react to it. So in effect, sudden bursts come at us and have us react in intense ways. For example, if I were to stub my toe, it would hurt because it's a sudden stimuli, and it would just sort of come at me all at once, as stubbing your toe often is. But if I were to, you know, injure myself in some way, the pain may not necessarily be as crippling in a lot of ways as it. As it would be to other people, but the reaction is disproportionate. The example that I often refer to is if you put a piece of food in your mouth, you're going to. And it's a little bit on the warm side, you're going to go, oh, that's really hot, and you'll spit it out. Whereas an autistic person might scream and yell like he's being stabbed or burned to death because it's a sudden change in stimulation, don't you think that might.

[24:44] Leah: Be more due to a processing delay than any hyper connectivity in the brain? Not to say that autistics don't have some. I think they're doing some research to prove that there is some, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's doing what you think it's doing. I would think that inappropriate reactions to stimuli would be due to a processing delay. And I'll tell you why. For me, if I put a piece of hot food in my mouth, it hurts me just as much, but my brain will kick in really quickly and say, okay, it's only food, spit it out, you're fine. And then I won't have the need to scream and cry about it.

[25:16] Moshe: Yes, in what you're describing through a processing delay is essentially like, you don't necessarily pinpoint exactly what the issue is. And because you have such an easy time discerning what it was that created the feeling and what to do about it. It becomes very simplistic versus. The theory goes that if you were to put a piece of hot broccoli in your mouth, your brain can only process that you've now burned yourself, and you don't know if it's because there's a piece of hot broccoli that you need to spit out or because someone stabbed you with a hot poker. It is the same sensation, and you react to it in the most extreme way because your brain hasn't yet figured out a. What the appropriate reaction to that would be. It's just bad. And then reaction.

[26:01] Leah: Well, you know where I came up with that theory, where the fact that this is caused by. By processing delay rather than any kind of hyper connection in the brain.

[26:11] Moshe: Right.

[26:11] Leah: Is that you and Aubrey both have huge reactions to pain, but after two or three minutes, when you've had a chance to actually process it, you're fine.

[26:20] Moshe: Yeah. Once, like, we've had found a way of sort of putting it somewhere on, like, a shelf and categorizing it.

[26:27] Leah: Right. So processed it.

[26:29] Moshe: Exactly.

[26:29] Leah: Yeah, exactly. That makes sense.

[26:31] Moshe: Exactly.

[26:32] Leah: So, for example, one of the things I noticed that you might do is if we're in a public place, right. And as a grown man, you don't want to necessarily embarrass yourself. If you accidentally put something really spicy or really hot in your mouth, instead of screaming, you'll sort of lean over to me and grab my arm and go, oh, I really burned myself.

[26:49] Moshe: Exactly. I found ways of expressing things that would normally cause me to react in an. I guess they would consider it over the top way, in a much more restrained way, by releasing some of the feelings that I have onto you. But not in, like, a bad way.

[27:06] Leah: No, not like, in an abusive way. Again, please don't call us people.

[27:10] Moshe: No. Like, I'll grab your arm and I'll be like, wow, that was really spicy. Or, oh, I really hurt myself. So it's sort of like an outlet. It's like I'm packaging up my feelings and handing it to you, and you're deciding where to put it.

[27:21] Leah: That was going to be my next question to you, is, like, because I'm more likely to sort of say to you, it's okay, honey, it's just food. Spit it into this napkin. Does that actually help you process it faster?

[27:31] Moshe: It does, because the processing delay really only applies to me in most ways. I can kind of take your cue from that, because I trust you. You're my trusted person, and if you tell me that something is not a thing, then it's not a thing. And I know that it's not something that I necessarily have to react to in a overt way. And burning my mouth on something doesn't equal, like getting shot.

[27:56] Leah: True enough.

[27:57] Moshe: Not that I've been shot or anything.

[27:58] Leah: Let's hope not. So can you describe maybe what it's like in terms of somebody helping you handle your processing delay? Like, for example, when it comes to processing emotions or feelings or physical sensations?

[28:12] Moshe: Well, it is, in a sense, like trying to sort what I'm feeling and thinking in a way that allows me to categorize it. Because really, what it comes down to is it's a form of categorization. If you have an over stimulation or a sensation that's kind of all over the place, then it manifests itself in this very overt way. Whereas if I can rationalize everything and categorize it, then it becomes a lot easier to deal with. And, for example, the pain that I feel when I stub my toe is categorized as I've stubbed my toe. Whereas the pain that I would feel is something that's more serious and requires more urgent attention can be characterized in another way. And it's a way that I found to distinguish between what my reaction feels like it should be and what my reaction actually is. It's something that I've developed over time as a way of understanding that not everything has to have the same extreme reaction.

[29:11] Leah: So basically, what you've just described for people who aren't in the know, let's say, or for people who aren't autistic, is you've described what it's like from an insight perspective, to have a processing delay.

[29:20] Moshe: Yes.

[29:20] Leah: You have to manually take that feeling or emotion or experience and say, hey, where does this belong? In my brain? And then you have to apply it there. Whereas most people, or for neurotypical people anyway, it's just automatic or quicker. I don't know that it's automatic for me, even. Like, if I cut myself, it takes me a second to realize I cut myself, but it's quicker.

[29:41] Moshe: It adds a manual element to something that would normally take me a little bit longer. Because when you have a much younger child, as I was, everyone was, once upon a time younger than they are. At least I hope so. Then every single time something happens that is negative to them, they react in an extreme way because they don't necessarily know how to categorize their feelings. Whereas if. If I can categorize everything that happens to me, I can decide where it belongs. If it's something that is extremely negative, then it's harder sometimes. But if I take something, for example, that is like, let's say I eat a hot piece of food, my brain will react in an extreme way due to overstimulation. But my rational brain can go, well, this is hot food. You didn't stab yourself in the face with a hot poker. You're not on fire. It's not something that requires urgent attention. You may want to spit it out so you don't burn your mouth, but it's not something that requires you to react in an over the top way.

[30:48] Leah: The question is, if you have a trusted person there to sort of walk you through that processing process, for lack of a better term, does it happen faster or is it something you can do on your own? I guess what I'm asking is, what do autistics who don't have a trusted person necessarily do?

[31:03] Moshe: They basically have to learn to categorize it on their own. So they have to sort of build, in effect, a shelf.

[31:09] Leah: So it does help to have somebody help you.

[31:11] Moshe: It does.

[31:12] Leah: Okay.

[31:13] Moshe: But they have to be a trusted person. It has to come from a good place, and they have to be able to offload a lot of these things on to you. And this is something that didn't happen overnight, obviously, this is something that took a quite a while. And you and I had to work through the way I reacted to certain things where you taught me to stop and to think and to take some time to decide if this is something that I want to react to, in what way I want to react to it. And it's something that you can teach to children. When you have a reaction, you can take 2 seconds to temper it. It's how we teach kids not to swear. It's how we tell people, you know, teach children not to talk back. Because if they don't react to everything the moment it happens, then you can take two or 3 seconds for your brain to just sort of look it over and go, okay, so this is how I'm feeling. What reaction would be appropriate in this circumstance? And if you allow it to sort of follow its natural course, you end up ending up looking like a fool because you'll stub your toe, scream really, really loud. Everyone will be given their attention. And in the 15 to 20 to 30 seconds that it takes for your brain to process that, you'll go, oh, no, I'm fine, don't worry about it. Whereas if you take the time at first to temper your reaction or to at least think about it, or in my case, to talk to you about it, then it can take the reaction from something that's over the top and would bring attention to me, which is obviously not my desired result. And you can sort of walk me through it. Okay, so this happened. I understand that this would make you very upset. Here's what I think you should do about it.

[32:52] Leah: I want to thank you so much for being so open and honest about this, because, again, what you've just heard is Moshe expressing what a processing delay may look like from the inside. And for neurotypical people who are used to processing things at lightning speed, it's a very interesting topic to learn about. I mean, I'm really attached to this theory now. I'm going to call it my theory of, you know, processing delay, and I'll write it down because everyone else is writing theirs down.

[33:17] Moshe: Why not get a paper published?

[33:20] Leah: Yeah, tell me about it. So going back to the theories that we were talking about, this all comes back to the intense world theory, and it seems like a good theory on the surface. However, there are some real problems with it. The first issue is the avoidance theory that goes along with this. So as somebody with anxiety, I can tell you that a symptom of anxiety is avoidance. I'm too nervous to go outside, therefore I won't go into a social situation, and I'll isolated home. This theory takes that to an extreme, where autistics are going into themselves or not making eye contact or going nonverbal, or living in their own little world, let's say, if you want to put quotes around it, not because it's part of their process or because it's part of their disorder or part of their brain, but because they're avoiding the overstimulation of the world. So it's like an extreme avoidance theory. What do you think of that?

[34:11] Moshe: I think one of the older opinions of autistics and autism, even back when I was much younger and autism was very poorly defined, was that people always said, well, no, autistics are inside themselves. They're lost in their own little. And not only does that infantilize autistics in general, but it over generalizes something. You're treating autistics, especially the lower functioning autistics, like essentially someone with locked in syndrome or some other condition where they're fully functional, neurotypical, normal people. But dang, if this autism hadn't made them forced so far inward that they can't react properly with the outside world, right?

[35:00] Leah: But this theory postulates that that is all because of the anxiety associated to being overstimulated all the time. So you disappear into yourselves. I found this to be the first problematic, like, real problematic part of this theory, because I don't see how that could be the case necessarily, because. And I wrote down here, let's discuss level one versus level two, level three. If a level three person who never says a word, for example, or at least a word that we understand, or who never toilets, or who can never really function, could turn it off and sometimes function or sometimes speak, then it would make sense. But can they?

[35:37] Moshe: It really depends on the extent to which they're affected, and that is, once again, far outside my pay grade. If you have, for example, approximately 10% of the autistic population who are characterized as savants, and you are, for all intents and purposes, non verbal, even though I hate that word, as I've mentioned in previous episodes, for example, you can build amazing sculptures, or you're an amazing painter, or if you put a piano in front of him, they can play symphonies by ear. That really just kind of goes back to the fact that autistics have to borrow a lot of the time from other skills and therefore have deficits or delays in other areas. But it is not like you are an otherwise normal and functional person who has this disease that keeps you from functioning. It's really more of a holistic overall delay.

[36:33] Leah: Right. Because my experience is that avoidance is a sometimes thing. So when the overstimulation is removed, theoretically, that should all but cure the autism symptoms. If this was correct.

[36:43] Moshe: I mean, there are autistics that are functional to the extent that they have their over sensitivities compensated for in some ways. And you'll see them, for example, walking around with the headsets on Orlando, or they have a person that comes with them and sort of helps redirect them.

[37:02] Leah: Yeah, that's absolutely a way of dealing with the sunglasses, like the overstimulation that comes along with autism that might actually be caused by, you know, hyper connectivity in the brain. We don't know that. That's not correct. But my point is, has it ever been the case where you have a level three autistic who doesn't speak language, for example, like language like you and I speak? But, you know, when all the overstimulation is removed, they spontaneously start speaking? I don't think that that's how it's would indicate, I think.

[37:30] Moshe: No, that's not at all how this works. It's not like they are able to function you know, to the full extent that a neurotypical would be able, but because of all of the noise, both literal and figurative, they are reduced to a non functioning state. It does happen, but they always start somewhere. For example, if I'm in a place with lots of bright lights and lots of noise and lots of strong smells and whatever I might be, become far less functional.

[37:59] Leah: Right? And I was going to say that's where in a level one, the avoidance theory does actually make sense to.

[38:05] Moshe: Oh, absolutely it does.

[38:06] Leah: But the higher up support needs you get to, the less and less that theory makes sense. So again, it wouldn't be necessarily a unifying theory for autism. Maybe a good theory for some people with autism. I've seen avoidance happen with you all the time, but it's definitely not universal, right.

[38:23] Moshe: You don't start from like nonverbal, non functional, and then add or remove certain things from their life and suddenly they wake up.

[38:33] Leah: Exactly.

[38:33] Moshe: And they're like fully functional people. They don't, they don't become that way. I mean, okay, so it could look.

[38:39] Leah: That way if somebody sees you on a bad day and then they see you the next day.

[38:44] Moshe: There are many autistics that, and I'm definitely one of them, where their functionality is based on their overall condition. When I'm very sick or I'm very tired or there's a lot going on, my functionality diminishes significantly to the point where I become very much a level two where I need constant redirection and constant care and constant supervision. And I do really bizarre things sometimes, like take my pants off in the doctor's office when I'm not asked to.

[39:14] Leah: And you don't lose language, but you don't use it to the best of its ability during those times. Remember last week? I still bug you about that. You meant to ask where the wine was in the fridge and you came up to me and said, there's wine in the fridge. And I said, great. What would you like me to do about that?

[39:28] Moshe: Right? So my vocabulary was, was limited to identifying that something was somewhere and leaving it up to everyone else to guess what the next step of that process would be.

[39:40] Leah: Right? So you don't lose language, but you don't use it to the best of its ability when you're not well, right?

[39:44] Moshe: But I don't start there. Now that's not to say that if you are very high needs and with enough occupational therapy and speech therapy and I don't know, heaven forbid, some form of Aba, unfortunately, you can get to a point where you're far more functional.

[40:03] Leah: Yes, but you'll see the progression there. It'll be a bit of time. It's not like this magical. Remove the stimulus and they're fine, right? Whereas for you, it does almost look magical. When your cold is over or when the noise is over or when the overstimulation is over, it takes you like an hour or two and you're like Mister normal Manning.

[40:20] Moshe: Right. Because I can divert all of my energies back to my overall functioning and not to my ability to mask.

[40:28] Leah: So again, this, for me, disqualifies this as any type of unifying theory, though it is a theory for some people. And the thing about this that caught my attention is actually always the case. Influencers, autistic influencers, are using this theory, but a very simplified version of this theory to make autism look like a superpower. Like, hey, our brains are hyper connected and we can do all these cool things and it's just like, no drawback, all benefit. What are your thoughts of that?

[40:58] Moshe: Well, as I've expressed to you in some form or another, I have a disability. I don't have a superpower. I'm not the next step in evolution.

[41:06] Leah: I mean, you might be, but I might be.

[41:09] Moshe: Everyone in society has a role to play, but to try and make autism into this super duper amazing, you know, skill or quality that someone has is very demeaning and very infantilizing.

[41:26] Leah: Like, this explains everything. I'm just better than all of you, which, I mean, it's nice. It's great to have confidence. But is it true?

[41:32] Moshe: Well, I often tell the story of the time that my mother decided that I must be gifted because I was different. And the really funny thing is they were so close. Like, they could have just said, you know, maybe he's autistic and this could mean that he's gifted. But no, it was. He's very smart, he has other deficits. He's very awkward in public. He must be gifted. So they sent me to a gifted astrophysicist for sure. So I ended up in a camp with other gifted children who were younger than me and my own age, and they were doing calculus on the blackboard and quoting shakespearean sonnets. And I was just kind of there trying to figure out where I fit in, which was pretty much nowhere. And I discovered that just because you're autistic, it doesn't mean that you're rain man.

[42:18] Leah: Or even rain man wasn't rain man.

[42:20] Moshe: I mean, Rain man was Dustin Hoffman, but it doesn't mean that you're some savant or even some special talent. Like, that's not to say that I don't have talents. I could read and vocalize myself from a very, very young, but I didn't walk or toilet myself until I was or five years old. I had deficits that were offset by being. I don't like to say the word gifted, but definitely accelerated in certain other areas. I'm very good at language. To this day, I pick up language very easy. I am quite good at reading. I can usually sort of skim something and make sense of it fairly quickly. Those are my, if you want to use the word superpowers. But I'm not a typical autistic because there's no such thing as a typical autistic, right?

[43:06] Leah: There are certain things that are universal and certain things that are optional and certain things that are totally different.

[43:11] Moshe: And I think that unfortunately, with movies like Rain man and beautiful mind and all those Hollywood portrayals and stereotypes of autism and Asperger's or Asperger's, we focus far too much on the positive aspects and not nearly enough on the negative.

[43:31] Leah: I say that Rain man was positive. Kind of turned out to kind of a really bad situation.

[43:35] Moshe: It was a terrible situation. I mean, Dustin Hoffman did a great role, but I think he's a great actor anyway. But at the same. I think at the same time, if we focus on one aspect, Rain man, if we're going to focus on Rain.

[43:48] Leah: Man at all, and financial benefit of being able to count cards that quickly.

[43:52] Moshe: Obviously, I think it did look at Dustin Hoffman's character from, I mean, at least at the time, a very balanced approach. Because on one hand, he obviously had some significant skills when it came to counting, but he was very drastically affected in other ways.

[44:09] Leah: That's true.

[44:10] Moshe: And that is definitely important to show, because when you look at autism and autistics in general and as savants, which once again form maybe 10% of the autistic community, then you can't just say, wow, this person can sit down at a table or an easel and produce these masterpieces of art. You have to look at the fact that they don't know how to put their pants on, or maybe they're still wearing diapers, or maybe they have other drastically debilitating conditions as a result of the fact that all of their processing power went into the ability to create art or make music or do math at an exceptional level.

[44:53] Leah: Abram is probably closer to a savant than you are because he can reproduce beautiful drawings. But he, most of the time. Can't put his pants on, you know, the right way, or his shirt, or remember to make food or brush his teeth.

[45:07] Moshe: Right. And these are all things to take into account. And we did, I don't know, I thought a really interesting survey the other day on measuring his ability, because you really can't just look at one or two or three aspects of an autistic person and say, this person is affected this way, or this person is affected that way, or this person has high needs, or this person has low needs, or this person has medium needs, or this person has all the needs, or this person has no needs. You have to look at it and it becomes very pedantic. It really does. And maybe that's why a lot of people don't want to go into it, but you really do have to look.

[45:44] Leah: At the whole spectrum, universal person.

[45:46] Moshe: Because if you say, well, this person here is high needs, what does that mean?

[45:50] Leah: He was only four and a half and his initial diagnosis is 25 pages long. Exhausting. So can you imagine an adult going through the same type of evaluation? It would be hundreds and hundreds. It would be a book.

[46:01] Moshe: Because if you look at a person's overall functionality, you have to look at it from the very basics. Can he go to the bathroom on his own? Can he feed himself? Can he get dressed right up until the most high level?

[46:15] Leah: Like, can he budget?

[46:16] Moshe: Can he budget? Can he have a relationship? Does he know how to balance a checkbook? Does he know how to go grocery shopping on his own? Does he know how to use a key in a lock? Like all the. Like fine motor, gross motor, mental, emotional, functional hygiene. Like just so many different aspects that if you just look at one autistic based on this theory or that theory or the other theory, and you go, yeah, he's pretty high needs. What does that even mean?

[46:43] Leah: Yeah, I think that the audience, if they have two brain cells, throbbed together at this point, are starting to formulate. What our opinion on these theories are, is that there just isn't one. There isn't a unifying theory, there can't be. There are some much better theories, but even these in and of themselves are old theories, but they stand up, some of them do, and they're not unifying. So let's discuss some of these. This one you dealt with a lot and we dealt with it together. It's called theory of mind deficit. You were, I don't know, six months ago old. When I explained to you how theory of mind works and what it is. Would you like to explain to your fellow neurodivergents, what happened there? Not that all neurodivergents are bad, a theory of mind, but Moshe was not good.

[47:25] Moshe: So if we spent enough time today talking about the unifying theories and the fact that there are no such things as unifying theories, then it's important, at the very least, to come up with a few unifying qualities. And one of them is that many autistics. But of course, we're not at all going to say all, but many autistics do struggle with theory of mind, because autism is often mischaracterized as a very. A form of extreme selfishness. But I think that even that is too simplistic. What it is, is it's a very internally focused process based on what your needs are, what your sensitivities are, what your experiences are. So much so that you often struggle to understand or to practice what other people's experiences in the same situation might be.

[48:20] Leah: Right? So there was a point where you were like, I think this, and I feel this, and I have that, and all this stuff is going on in my mind. And I looked at you and I said, me too. Like, other people have those processes going on in their mind, and you have to be able to imagine that they are, otherwise you're going to always come off as uncaring. And that was real, a real breakthrough for us. I don't know if it was the first time I tried to do that with you, but it was the time that stuck, for whatever reason it did.

[48:45] Moshe: Because when you spend so much of your life as I did, trying to make sense of the world through your own eyes and your own ears and your own nose and your own body, then you're not even really going to invest much time, if any at all, in trying to understand what other people's experience might be.

[49:03] Leah: Right? Theory of mine, for those who haven't put it together based on what we're saying, is, when you can imagine in a given scenario what would be going on in the other person's head, and then apply the appropriate behavior to that versus only seeing it through your lens, and the other person is like, I don't know, a doll or like a pet or something that's with you and doesn't have their own thoughts, feelings, and emotions about the situation.

[49:25] Moshe: It's often very useful with neurodivergence to practice with animals, because animals are by their very nature, in most cases, extremely vulnerable and extremely innocent. And one of the easiest ways to teach an autistic person to understand other people and of course, things perspectives is to give them, like, a mouse or a hamster or even a fish. Like, you don't have to be all warm and fuzzy and just sit with them and say, what do you feel? You know, that mouse or that gerbil or that hamster or that cat is thinking about right now? Like, what do you feel that? You know, it's really warm today. Do you feel that the cat is also really warm? Why do you feel that might be? Or that cat looks like it's in pain. Why do you feel that that might be. Can you think of a time when you were in pain and you felt like that cat is feeling? And it allows autistics to put themselves in the minds of not just other people, but other things and really kind of realize, I'm not alone. Like, there's other people there who are also feeling certain things. If you see somebody hurt themselves, you go, well, remember when you hit yourself, that must really hurt him. Do you think that that person also is feeling a lot of pain with what they're going through and really trying to understand what someone else might experience and then applying it to the present situation? When you are experiencing, let's say, stress over a financial issue with a partner, you can then go, wow, I'm really stressed about what's going on with our finances right now. And then have the partner go, yeah, me too. We should talk about it, and we can help each other.

[50:59] Leah: Exactly.

[50:59] Moshe: And know that you're not just sitting there by yourself with the world sort of happening around you. Everyone's experiencing feelings, sometimes at the same time over the same thing.

[51:08] Leah: And that's, unfortunately, here I go again, being controversial, where you can't always listen to the experts when it comes to teaching your autistic child things because I feel like I missed an opportunity with Avram to teach him more theory of mind because we concentrated very much on, okay, what's this picture of this person is smiling. What do you think they're thinking because they're smiling. What do you do when somebody does this facial expression to you?

[51:30] Moshe: Social stories, right.

[51:31] Leah: But we didn't get into the, you know, that little girl fell down and bumped her knee. How do you think she's feeling? We were more about that, you know, facial recognition. So these are. It was more surface. It was very aba, to be honest.

[51:44] Moshe: It was very aba.

[51:45] Leah: The person smiling at you, so smile back at them.

[51:47] Moshe: It was. It was what people did and still do to a certain extent with autistics, which, you know, boils down to, you're teaching them to math.

[51:55] Leah: So you can't always listen to the experts. Depending on what's important to you and your family, maybe everything the experts give you is fine for you, but for me, I feel like that was a missed opportunity.

[52:05] Moshe: And every opportunity is an opportunity to explain to him, just as it is an opportunity in every opportunity to explain to another autistic that what they are going through is not unique to them always. And a lot of the time when you're experiencing something together, that their experiences matter just as much as yours do, especially if it's someone that you care about.

[52:29] Leah: Another or second better theory that they have here is weak central cohesion. What that means is the struggle to incorporate information used to describe both strengths and weaknesses in ASD. So strong skills versus weak skills. So difficulty in incorporating new information into your everyday. So, for example, when we have to tell Alvaram six, seven, 8910, 1112 times to do the new thing before he picks it up, it just, it explains to why certain skills are astronomical and off the chart, and certain skills are extremely hard or almost impossible to pick up. So what do you think about that?

[53:05] Moshe: Well, I mean, there's a lot of different moving parts there. And it really comes back to some things that we discussed before, which is the readiness that someone adopts a new idea or a new behavior is relative to, number one, how much it interests them to do it. And also, as I continue to harp on to the point that it's sort of become my catchphrase, they have to know the why, because you can tell Avram, make sure you pick up your clothes, you know, when you take a shower, and eventually he'll remember, or he won't. It doesn't really matter. But if he doesn't really understand why he's doing it, then he's much less likely to retain that information, especially long term. And it really comes down to what's in it for him. What's in it for him to do the things that we're asking him to do?

[53:49] Leah: Well, exactly. And right now, because he's a child, it's very much child things. If you don't do what you're supposed to do, you lose privileges. If you do what you're supposed to do, you get praise and more privileges. That's how it works. But, yeah, for example, Avram, Avram, why didn't you flush the toilet? Huh? I didn't flush the toilet. I don't know. It's not that we haven't told him 500,000 times that he has to flush the toilet, he just. He hasn't necessarily incorporated that.

[54:12] Moshe: Right. It's not important to him. It's important to him to always charge his electronics because he knows that if he doesn't, then they won't be usable. But flushing the toilet doesn't actually matter to him because when he's done with the toilet, it's no longer part of his plan, and what happens next doesn't matter to him. Whereas if you try to explain it in a way that it affected you or me or Raya or someone that you know, that it mattered to him, because you can do negative stuff. You can, like, apply punishments.

[54:42] Leah: Raya finds it. She'll yell at him, make him go. What else is new? Raya's yelling at.

[54:47] Moshe: Right? But that's as much her fault, though, because she really does need a temper, the way she reacts to him. Because if you make your angry at someone just part of the background noise.

[54:57] Leah: It'S no effective anymore.

[54:58] Moshe: It doesn't have any effect. Of course she's mad at me again. She's always mad at me. So it doesn't really matter if she's mad at me about this, whereas if you apply it to someone that, like, really matters to him or you make it important enough for him to do, then he'll do it.

[55:12] Leah: Yeah. So our go to is usually interrupting whatever he's doing, making him get up again, go back to the bathroom and wash the toilet, and then go back to what he's doing. So it's sort of motivating him to not have to interrupt the thing he's actually interested in by doing it the first time anyway. Can you identify any time in your life where you had a central cohesion?

[55:31] Moshe: I figure I probably have them all the time.

[55:34] Leah: Probably.

[55:36] Moshe: I often struggle to retain basic functions that have to be reminded for me over and over and over. And I've been in many positions where even failure to retain certain things caused great personal cost to me, and it still didn't sink in because for me, it wasn't important enough until it became important, and then it was all that was important.

[55:58] Leah: I guess that makes sense. The last, you know, better theory that I found that I want to discuss about is executive functioning. Everybody has heard of executive functioning disorder. If you know anybody who's neurodivergent, because it's common in autistics and people with ADHD and people with Tourette's syndrome, people with, you know, frontal lobe injuries, etc. Etcetera, etcetera. Anything that affects your frontal lobe area can affect your executive function. What is executive functioning? So it's complex tasks involving abstract concepts like reasoning, planning. So, for example, being able to carry out ten steps versus only being able to carry out two steps because you can't remember them in order. Or, you know, as we discussed, showering, the top down, you know, version of showering and still forgetting stuff, that's executive functioning. So planning, reasoning, and then carrying out the plan. So let's talk about that.

[56:49] Moshe: So, I mean, complex, top level things, things that are very much, in this case, do that or when this do that, or multiple step processes that require retention of all of those steps from the most basic right up to the most complex. For example, when you take out something to eat, you put it back when you're done. If you finish a bag of chips, you don't just leave it on the table, you throw it in the garbage. Or you have to remember what you washed in the shower and what you still have to wash or what the routine is for having to locate something. It's often times a struggle with understanding what to do in a given situation when it requires more complex thought.

[57:37] Leah: So describe how having sort of a double whammy of ADHD and autism makes this more difficult.

[57:44] Moshe: So ADHD makes it very hard to pay attention or to focus on one single task.

[57:52] Leah: Right. And you can't create memories or input facts if you haven't even heard them or seen them or not.

[57:58] Moshe: Exactly. So it makes it hard to understand what to do if you are not able to process the information. Going back to your theory about, like, processing delay, if you're trying.

[58:10] Leah: Processing theory?

[58:11] Moshe: Yes. Lay is processing theory. If you're trying to explain to me to do a task and it involves more than, like, two, maybe three steps, then I've already started to forget about the first step, even if I'm medicated, like, even if I have, I found.

[58:24] Leah: So every Friday we clean the house because we're not allowed to clean. We're not allowed, we're not supposed to clean over Friday night to Sunday morning because it's, you know, our Sabbath. It's the day where you're supposed to rest and not do any cleaning. And I found that. I say to both you and Avraham, okay, come to me, get a task, finish that task. Then when you're done, come back to me and get another task. Because if I say you have to mop the floor and vacuum the rug and clean the toilet, and it's gone.

[58:49] Moshe: Right. So assigning tasks based on one bit of information and then coming back for more is very handy. It's not always possible. Sometimes you. You have to give certain things out.

[59:00] Leah: Also, some things are personalities. So, for example, Avram will do only what he's asked, not even very well, and then either come back for another task or disappear because he's a child and he's also more of a lazy personality than you. Whereas advice ad, please go wash the toilets. You'll have cleaned the whole bathroom of your own volition, which is kind of one of those ADHD superpowers. But if I asked you to do things in a specific order, you would forget. Right?

[59:23] Moshe: And that is actual executive functionality. Because if you tell me to go clean the counter in the bathroom, I will clean the counter in the bathroom, and I will notice this probably also should be clean, or the toilet paper roll is empty. I should probably replace that. But while I'm in here, I might as well clean the toilet, because then you're assigning similar tasks to a single task.

[59:45] Leah: Assigning yourself tasks is different than somebody externally assigning you tasks. But both can be difficult, right?

[59:50] Moshe: Yes, absolutely. And the alternative to that is when we used to ask Raya to wash the dishes, and she would wash the dishes that were only in the sink and none of the dishes outside of the sink, because specifically, you said, wash the dishes in the sink, and she didn't have, she doesn't have the executive functioning to know that the dishes outside of the sink also need to be washed.

[01:00:10] Leah: The thing is, she also seems to suffer from weak central cohesion in that case, because we have told her several times that it's all the dishes, and she still only does the dishes in the sink and maybe the ones around that she can kind of see now, but she won't go to the table, she won't go to the living room coffee table, and she won't go. We have, like, this counter thing in the kitchen where you can sit and eat or prepare food. She won't go around to those areas to look for addition.

[01:00:35] Moshe: Right. Because it's very, like, zeroed in on this task and this task only.

[01:00:40] Leah: And if, like, God forbid, leave something on the stovetop, forget it. It's going to be there for weeks.

[01:00:44] Moshe: Exactly. Because it's outside of the. The range of understanding.

[01:00:49] Leah: So, I mean, so those difficulties, especially when somebody incorporates ADHD, it could explain why somebody who seems so highly functional, like you, still does require support, because people meeting you, maybe if they haven't heard too many of our podcasts, or they might even think we're exaggerating on the podcast, you know, for listens or whatever meeting you going, he doesn't need support. He's fine. Like, why are you always reminding him of things and helping him with things? The combination, especially of, you know, ADHD and autism and the executive dysfunction problem do explain why even an adult who's as functional as you require support.

[01:01:30] Moshe: Yeah. And it really kind of becomes a chicken or the egg thing. I saw a really interesting graphic on, on a Facebook group related to a neurodiversity that I frequent sometimes, and it was two people talking, and one person said, you know, Jimmy does so well in school. He, he seems to do really well at home. He has, you know, he's very nice, he's very social, he's very polite. He does all of his homework. He interacts with people properly. He never does anything inappropriate. I don't know that he's so autistic that he requires all that support. And the answer was, because he has all of that support, he can do all of those things.

[01:02:09] Leah: Exactly.

[01:02:09] Moshe: And that really is what it comes down to, is if you have support, then you can be very functional, but you have to have support. And if the support is not there, then your functionality diminishes as a result.

[01:02:23] Leah: Yes. For example, Moshe has to be reminded, either by me or by his phone to take his medication, because by two or 03:00 if he hasn't taken his medication, you don't want to see his functionality.

[01:02:33] Moshe: It's drastically reduced.

[01:02:35] Leah: So, yeah. Any final thoughts? Unifying theories of autism?

[01:02:38] Moshe: No. I maintain the title of the podcast now, you know one autistic, when you know one autistic, you know one autistic. And the reason for that is because autism is a spectrum, and there are so many moving parts to what makes someone a neurodivergent that it's impossible to pick out one or two or three or four things and sort of throw everyone into a jar and say, this is what makes someone autistic. I think overall, it's very much about what your functionality is relative to your other, you know, things. There's a reason the diagnoses are multiple pages, and if you try to come up with connections, then it's far more accurate to be able to not only support autistics, but identify them than it is to try and say that it affects everyone in sort of a catch all way. I will also say, going off on my usual tangent there, that we recorded this episode actually relatively soon after we recorded the last one, which was already quite late, and it's already gotten quite a number of downloads, and quite a number of views.

[01:03:47] Leah: Amazing.

[01:03:48] Moshe: So we're really, really trucking along. I am so pleased with all the new people that are constantly subscribing and liking and following. Of course, now we have two amazing partners, arc Therapeutic and Munchables. We follow the thinking person's guide to autism on Facebook. It's a great resource. And we encourage everyone to share this podcast with their friends, their family, their coworkers to listen and re listen even right from the very beginning to the story that Leah and I are telling. And we look forward to sharing more of ourselves and our story with you every week. So thank you for that.

[01:04:27] Leah: See you next time.

[01:04:29] Moshe: Well, that's our show for today. Now you know one autistic just a little bit better. So something you may not know about some autistics is that we often struggle with ending social interactions. So, Leah.

[01:04:45] Leah: All right, Moshe, I'll take care of it. Thank you for listening to now you know one autistic. See you next week.

 

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