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Who Needs to Adapt—the Student or the School? | Emily Kircher-Morris · The Academic Coaching Podcast

• 0:00
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So often the message that neurodivergent people receive is, you need to be more flexible.
• 0:07
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: You need to be more adaptable.
• 0:09
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: You need to use better perspective taking." And when that message is conveyed, the person who is sharing that message is not being flexible or adaptable or using more perspective taking, right?
• 0:20
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): We ask empowering questions of our students.
• 0:23
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So what are the empowering questions we can ask of the school or of our parents to get people thinking critically and mindfully about what's happening?
• 0:33
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Welcome back to the Academic Coaching Podcast, brought to you by the Anti-Boring Learning Lab.
• 0:38
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I'm your host, Gretchen Wegner, and this is the show where we dig into the craft of coaching students to take charge of their own learning.
• 0:46
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): We're talking study skills, executive function strategies, neurodivergence, and more, so all students and their educators have the tools and the agency to not bore their own brains in coaching, in school, and in life.
• 1:02
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And today, we're talking about what good support for neurodivergent students actually looks like, both inside our coaching sessions and in the schools our students have to navigate.
• 1:13
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): To this end, my guest is Emily Kircher-Morris, co-author of Neurodiversity Affirming Schools.
• 1:18
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I also just recently met her in person at the ResearchEd St.
• 1:22
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Louis conference.
• 1:24
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And, uh, it was just great timing to invite her on the podcast because recently, a couple of challenging questions have come up from coaches in the Learning Lab, one about supporting a student who struggles with something called interoception.
• 1:37
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): We'll get into that in a little bit.
• 1:39
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And another about advocating for a student whose school isn't providing the accommodations she needs.
• 1:46
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I thought Emily would be the perfect person to help us think through both.
• 1:50
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And I love, I just love that this podcast gives me a way to bring knowledgeable authors and experts into the very real, ugh, and sometimes very sticky situations that academic and executive function and ADHD coaches face in our practices serving students every day.
• 2:08
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So, last thing before we dive in, if you're finding these conversations useful, please hit the like and subscribe.
• 2:16
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): It helps more academic and executive function coaches find the podcast, and it can, um, help us do even more good in this world.
• 2:24
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So thank you in advance for supporting us.
• 2:27
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And now, Emily, let's get into it emily, long time no see.
• 2:32
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Yeah, thanks for having me
• 2:34
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Uh, for listeners, Emily and I just met in person.
• 2:38
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Oh, and I meant to have to show to the video, you gave me this lovely little, when we saw each other in person, this lovely little guest expert pin since I have been on your podcast and in your educators hub, and that was so sweet to have a, a little token.
• 2:56
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Yeah, it's one of the small little things, but it's fun to give those out when I do get to see people in person.
• 3:00
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I love it.
• 3:01
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): It was so much fun.
• 3:02
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And those of you who are watching on the video get to see that Emily's hair tips are dyed, and it's always been.
• 3:07
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): You've always had some version of hair dye, I think, since I've known you.
• 3:11
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And it was just really fun when, you know, you meet somebody in person to be like,"Hey, it's real."
• 3:18
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Yes.
• 3:19
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Yes, for sure
• 3:20
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Briefly, just briefly, this is personal, but is there a story behind why you, like, why you dye your hair or when you decided or how it became a look for you?
• 3:30
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Um, I had wanted to do something for a long time, and, um, I just finally decided to do it, and then it just kinda became a thing, you know?
• 3:43
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Um, I don't know.
• 3:46
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: You know, it's nice because it, because it's really...
• 3:48
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Like, so my hair's, I mean, decently long.
• 3:50
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I mean, it's kind of middle, I don't know, you know,
• 3:51
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mhm
• 3:52
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: kind of past my shoulders or whatever.
• 3:54
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Um, but I don't know.
• 3:57
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I, I, I just, I like it.
• 3:59
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: It's fun.
• 3:59
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: It gets
• 3:59
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah
• 3:59
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: lot of...
• 4:00
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: It's a good conversation starter with people.
• 4:02
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: It
• 4:02
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Ja
• 4:02
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I feel like, um, you know, I always wear kind of funky glasses.
• 4:06
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I've got
• 4:06
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): ja.
• 4:07
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: hair, and, um, I don't know.
• 4:10
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: It's just
• 4:11
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I love it
• 4:11
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I s- I, I mean, I started doing it.
• 4:13
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I, I had wanted to do it for a long time, but I worked in the schools for a long time, and I
• 4:16
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Oh.
• 4:16
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: really feel like I could.
• 4:18
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And so then, um, when I...
• 4:20
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I mean, when I was a teenager, I used to try to dye my hair with Kool-Aid.
• 4:23
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Does anyone remember trying to do that?
• 4:25
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I
• 4:25
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Oh, well, I had brown hair, so it would never work for me
• 4:28
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: fad, you know, whatever.
• 4:29
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Um, but yeah, probably, like, I think I, I started doing it, um, yeah, 2018, 2019, something like that.
• 4:38
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 4:38
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Cool
• 4:39
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I've just kinda stuck with it.
• 4:40
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And so it's always typically been, like, various colors of purple and/or pink because when I first got my hair done, the stylist goes,"Well..."'Cause I kind of wanted to do, like, blue, and she goes,"Well, it fades kinda weird sometimes.
• 4:53
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Purple and pink tend to just kind of fade lighter." And I was like,"Great, let's do that instead." So here we are.
• 4:57
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Here we are.
• 4:58
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And actually speaking of you never felt like you could do that at schools before, I do think that's changing these days.
• 5:05
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I think schools have...
• 5:07
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I mean, I've seen people with nose rings and tattoos that, who are teachers.
• 5:12
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): But I do think that's a nice transition into neurodiversity-affirming schools.
• 5:17
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Uh, be- well, I could say why, but why do you think that's a nice transition?
• 5:22
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: No, I mean, I think it's, uh, yeah, being authentic, just showing up, not being, not feeling like you have to, to just blend and, and, um, yeah, I do agree.
• 5:33
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I think when I first started coloring my hair again, you know, I mean, it's not been quite 10 years probably.
• 5:38
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I'd have to look back and really see when that was.
• 5:40
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: But, um, I think it was, um, not as common, and I see a lot more people now.
• 5:46
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I think it's just become more kind of socially acceptable in general, but also I think in the schools, it's like people are realizing like,"Okay, well, just'cause you have that color hair or just because you have this particular trait or whatever, like, none of those things mean that you don't fit here.
• 6:00
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Right.
• 6:01
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Just be who you are."
• 6:02
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Right.
• 6:03
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Right.
• 6:03
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And so one of the many reasons I wanted Emily on is she's written this book, Neurodiversity Affirming School.
• 6:10
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): She's got hers too.
• 6:11
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): It's important to say she's a co-author, so Amanda Mor- Morin, is that how you say her name, is the co-author.
• 6:17
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And we are reading this book in the Anti-Boring Learning Lab for what we call our No Pressure Book Club.
• 6:22
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Uh, and no pressure means you don't have to have read the book to come to it.
• 6:25
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): You
• 6:26
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: could just show
• 6:26
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): you can just show up.
• 6:27
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): You can have skimmed the book.
• 6:28
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): You can have listened to a podcast of Emily talking about
• 6:32
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Mm-hmm
• 6:33
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): the book.
• 6:33
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Uh, but most people will have read it because we are recovering perfectionists inside the learning lab
• 6:39
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And I'll just throw out here, and I don't know if you know this, Gretchen, but Amanda and I did release a limited series podcast that goes along with the book
• 6:46
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): You did
• 6:47
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Affirming Schools.
• 6:48
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So anyone can go and listen to it.
• 6:49
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: You don't
• 6:50
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): OK
• 6:50
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: book, but it's, it's got some good content and basically there's one episode per chapter.
• 6:55
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Oh,
• 6:56
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: if you
• 6:56
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): good
• 6:57
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: and, if you prefer that, it would
• 6:59
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah
• 7:00
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: at least like a smattering of kind of what we're talking about in each of the chapters.
• 7:05
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So if you show up to the book club, you can
• 7:07
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Oh, that's exciting.
• 7:08
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): It is next week that the book club is, but I will
• 7:12
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Yeah.
• 7:12
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): the link to that, and I will put it...
• 7:14
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: to it at 1.7 speed or
• 7:16
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 7:16
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: you can get through
• 7:17
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Get through it.
• 7:18
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And we'll put the link in the show notes here too, so those of you who are listening can choose that.
• 7:23
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Speaking of neurodiversity affirming, having things in different formats for different brains and different learners
• 7:29
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Mm-hmm
• 7:29
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): an awesome thing.
• 7:31
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Um, okay.
• 7:31
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So, and there is one particular thing that we'll talk about a little bit later from the book that I hadn't even thought of or heard of before, and it was on page 10, I'll say.
• 7:40
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Mm.
• 7:41
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So as far as I am.
• 7:43
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So we're gonna talk about that.
• 7:44
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): But first of all, there were a couple of questions that come up in our learning lab calls that I thought you could speak to because I only have limited expertise, and mine is around study skills and the science of learning, and these were definitely more, um, therapy/school/neurodiversity questions.
• 8:08
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So let me just dive into the first one if you're ready.
• 8:13
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Uh, okay, I gotta go to my notes so I say this right.
• 8:15
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So, uh, the first one actually is on the topic of interoception and the student who struggles with interoception.
• 8:21
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So before we get any further, can you, for those who may not know even what that term means, can you define it?
• 8:27
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Yeah.
• 8:28
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So when we talk about sensory processing, people frequently think about, like, the five senses that we learned about in school, so visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory, right?
• 8:40
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Those are kind of the five that we all know.
• 8:42
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: But we actually have three additional sensory systems that people aren't as familiar with.
• 8:46
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So there's vestibular, which has to kind of do how your body moves and balance.
• 8:51
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: There's the proprioceptive, which has to do with, like, pressure and where your body is in space in relation to other things.
• 8:57
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And then the last one is interoception.
• 8:59
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So interoception is defined basically as how your body interprets your internal body signals.
• 9:07
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So for example, um, I had a client one time who had a very hyposensitive interoceptive sense.
• 9:15
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: She wouldn't, couldn't really notice those internal body signals.
• 9:19
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And so she would explain this, and she would say,"You know, by the time my stomach hurts, it really hurts, and I can't tell if it's because I'm hungry, I have to go to the bathroom, I'm sick, or I'm nervous." She couldn't, like, differentiate those different feelings in her body.
• 9:34
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So she would have to cognitively go through and say, was the last time I ate?
• 9:38
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: When was the last time I went to the bathroom?" Like, to try to deduce what it was because she couldn't differentiate those things.
• 9:44
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Hmm.
• 9:45
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: A lot of people have hyposensitive interoception, which influences not only those sorts of things but also emotional regulation because when you think about regulating your emotions, oh, I notice my heart's beating really fast.
• 9:58
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I notice that my face is flushing.
• 10:00
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I notice, you know, these sensations that give me information about how I'm feeling, and then I can kind of be proactive to regulate myself.
• 10:08
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Well, if you don't pick up on those things,
• 10:10
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm.
• 10:10
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Sometimes they build until they spill over.
• 10:13
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
• 10:13
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Side of that is you can be hypersensitive, so that might be the kids who are like,"I have to go to the bathroom.
• 10:18
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I need to go to the nurse.
• 10:19
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I've got a headache." Like, all of those little things, they just notice all of them.
• 10:23
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And so it's just, you know, a, a range.
• 10:25
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: You look at the bell curve.
• 10:26
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Some people are hypo, some people are hypersensitive to those things, but that's interoception
• 10:31
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And I imagine that different things can cause our hypo or hyper being in the middle.
• 10:39
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): For example, I'm thinking I used to think of myself as not a very sensitive person.
• 10:43
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Like I didn't feel a lot of feelings or feel even a lot of sensation in my body.
• 10:48
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And looking back on it, I'm pretty sure that was trauma because I did a bunch of therapy and have done a bunch of embodiment kinds of modalities that has-- Here I am moving my shoulders a little bit for those of you who can't see And so now I feel like I'm at what might be, I don't know if the word typical is even the right word or normative.
• 11:08
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): That's what you talk about.
• 11:10
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): That's the word you use in the book.
• 11:11
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Read up until chapter 10 very well For me, it was likely trauma, though I also may have some ADHD in me as well.
• 11:22
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): But then there are trauma is one reason, but there are other reasons related to neurodiversity
• 11:28
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Yeah.
• 11:29
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Yeah, specifically with autism is, is the one where it kind of comes
• 11:32
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm
• 11:33
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So one of the diagnostic criteria for autism, um, basically there's two categories, right?
• 11:39
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Like, so you have the social communication piece, and then what they call in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual restricted and repetitive behaviors.
• 11:46
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: But it's like comfort with consistency, need for sameness, those sorts of things.
• 11:50
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: But one of the four in that particular category relates to sensory differences.
• 11:57
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And so, so it can be, again, hypo or the hypersensitivity.
• 12:01
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Now, not all, uh...
• 12:02
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So for someone to meet criteria for autism, of those four you have to have two.
• 12:07
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So not
• 12:07
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Aha, oui
• 12:08
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: person will experience those sensory sensitivities.
• 12:11
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm.
• 12:11
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: however, lot of them do,
• 12:14
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm.
• 12:15
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And so, um, and so that's, that's a factor.
• 12:19
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Um, I- but there's also, like, other diagnoses where we often just see sensory differences in general.
• 12:26
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: ADHD is one, OCD is another, and actually there's some research that shows that, um, individuals who are cognitively gifted also tend to have increased sensory sensitivity.
• 12:37
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: It's usually more on the hypersensitivity side from the res- unless somebody is twice exceptional, meaning they've
• 12:43
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 12:43
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: overlap,
• 12:44
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 12:45
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: and maybe they're both gifted and autistic
• 12:46
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 12:47
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah
• 12:48
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: there's s- there's some clinical things that go there, but again, every person has own range,
• 12:53
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Ja
• 12:54
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: and, and, and different ways that they process that.
• 12:56
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And so it's not, not always clinically relevant
• 13:02
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Right.
• 13:03
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Interesting.
• 13:03
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Okay, well, there we go.
• 13:04
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): There's our primer.
• 13:07
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So the situation here is a coach in our community has a client who, um, she says he can recognize calm, like when he's calm and when he's highly dysregulated, but he can't recognize the sensations in between.
• 13:23
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): The coach is suspecting it's weak interoception.
• 13:26
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): They've talked through like the feelings thermometer and identifying physical sensations and like m- like theoretically how to do that, but it hasn't helped because he just can't seem to perceive those immediate cues.
• 13:40
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Now, importantly, uh, or I don't know if this is important or not, I'm thinking it might be, he is a trans student, and he has a history of bullying and trauma and sexual assault and significant struggles with like staying in school and even keeping jobs.
• 13:55
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I forget how old this person is, but I would say older teens or young adult.
• 13:59
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I'm not sure which.
• 14:00
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Um, he's quit school, he's been fired from jobs, and now he's in an online public school, and he's still struggling.
• 14:06
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And therapy hasn't seemed to help, so the family's trying executive function coaching, and she was reaching out to us to be like What else can we try?
• 14:17
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Apparently the student wants to work on this.
• 14:19
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): It's troubling to him that he can't feel what's happening
• 14:23
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Yeah, this is a tricky one.
• 14:25
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And so, uh, you know, when I think about...
• 14:29
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Well, if there is a professional who would be able to effectively support this person, I would probably suggest an occupational therapist.
• 14:38
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: That, that's kinda gonna be the person.
• 14:41
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Like, when I have somebody...
• 14:42
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Now, there are some things that I can do during therapy or that anybody could do.
• 14:45
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Like, I'm not s- But that's probably where that's gonna come from.
• 14:48
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: But it's also really difficult to build some of that sensation.
• 14:53
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Now, you shared, Gretchen, about your own experience between, like, the trauma and then reconnecting with that.
• 14:58
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So if
• 14:59
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm.
• 15:00
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Trauma,
• 15:01
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm.
• 15:01
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Trauma work might really do this.
• 15:03
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: If it is related more to neurodivergence, it's a little bit trickier.
• 15:07
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And so a couple of things that I'll do with, with my clients sometimes are, that are kinda like workarounds.
• 15:15
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: s- it, you know, it's like it's so interesting.
• 15:17
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: It's like we're, we're trained when we go through our, our counseling programs, like, you know, it's like, me how you feel," right?
• 15:24
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And then, and, and, um, I've lear- I've learned that I have to unlearn a lot of the things that I, are like kinda the traditional ways when you work with neurodivergent
• 15:33
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Oh, interesting
• 15:34
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Yeah, it's like the, like, open-ended questions sometimes for neurodivergent people are, like, too much.
• 15:40
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Like, sometimes...
• 15:41
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And that's, like, the, one of the tenets that we talk about in therapy.
• 15:45
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And so you have to adapt some of those things.
• 15:46
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So a couple of thoughts.
• 15:48
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: One would be, is there a shorthand that they might be able to recognize?
• 15:53
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So they can't really identify the emotions, and, and you said in the little description, like, they can identify when they're calm or when they're really dysregulated, but they have trouble kind of calibrating in between that.
• 16:05
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: It might be easier if you can simplify, like, just using perhaps numbers or s- like, some other sort of shorthand.
• 16:14
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: That can sometimes be helpful.
• 16:17
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: other thing would be kind of trying it, tying it a little bit more closely to their thought patterns, and this is where I end up going a lot of times.
• 16:24
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So I might say, like,"Well, how did you feel?
• 16:26
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Like, how did...
• 16:27
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Can you identify that emotion, or can you feel it in your body?" um, and, and sometimes someone will say,"Oh, well, you know, um, well, I thought that I wanted to hit that person." like, a typical therapist would say,"Well, that's not a thought," or,"That's not an emotion.
• 16:43
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: That's a thought.
• 16:44
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Like, you're thinking the thing." Um, I don't know if I said that correctly.
• 16:49
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I felt like I wanted to.
• 16:50
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I don't know.
• 16:51
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 16:52
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): yeah.
• 16:52
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah, yeah.
• 16:53
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 16:53
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 16:54
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I feel like I wanna hit that person.
• 16:55
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I think that's what somebody would say.
• 16:57
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 16:57
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: it's like, but, but that's not really a feeling.
• 16:59
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And so then it's like, okay, well then, when you notice those things, how is that then tying to your regulation, right?
• 17:08
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So, like, if I'm thinking I wanna hit that person, if I'm feeling like I wanna hit that person, is that then...
• 17:15
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Like, where does it fall on that scale of one through five, if that's
• 17:17
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Right Right
• 17:19
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: or I'm sitting here, and I'm trying to work On this assignment and I don't have any thoughts or any ideas about what this is.
• 17:30
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And maybe that's like a really kind of low, like I'm kind of bored or I'm just not engaged.
• 17:36
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So maybe that's a lower level.
• 17:38
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Or I've got so many thoughts, I've got so many things going through my head that it's hard to keep track of them.
• 17:45
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Okay, well that's like
• 17:45
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mhm.
• 17:47
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And so trying to find those sorts of, I don't...
• 17:50
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I hesitate to call them concrete because they're not really concrete, but some things that they can identify, some traits that they can identify
• 17:57
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah
• 17:59
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: and then helping them use those as like benchmarks a
• 18:02
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Right
• 18:02
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: to help, help make those connections there.
• 18:06
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Um, but it's, it's difficult and it's subtle to notice some of those
• 18:11
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mhm.
• 18:13
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I don't notice that I'm, my stomach hurts, but maybe I notice that I'm bouncing my leg a whole lot
• 18:19
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 18:19
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Those sorts of maybe outward
• 18:21
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah
• 18:22
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: that maybe you can even observe and help them tie together.
• 18:25
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Those are maybe some ways to kind of help with that a little bit, but it, it's,
• 18:28
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm.
• 18:29
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Really hard.
• 18:30
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Um, I'll mention one other quick thing is that we just finished recording an episode for, for the podcast, the Neurodiversity podcast, and, um, is specifically about boredom.
• 18:40
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Oh
• 18:41
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: so, but with the researcher, one of the things he said is that, um...
• 18:45
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Oh, now I'm gonna throw another term out there that people know, might not knows, know, but alexithymia,
• 18:49
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Aha!
• 18:50
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: term that refers to reduced ability to identify emotions, to tease out different emotions that feel kind of the same in the body, to talk about emotions.
• 19:00
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: But people who are alexi- e- alexithymia tend to experience boredom at higher rates,
• 19:06
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Interesting
• 19:07
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: makes sense to me.
• 19:09
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Like, if you're just kind of feeling kind of flat, like you just don't have a lot of those ups and downs, that can, I can see how that would be interpreted as feeling
• 19:18
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): On board.
• 19:19
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: right?
• 19:19
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Like, I'm not stimulated
• 19:21
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 19:22
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 19:22
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): What I'm imagining as you're talking is keeping a tab in our habit tracker.
• 19:27
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So for people who don't know, in the learning lab, one of the modules I have is a, is a way to use a Google spreadsheet in this very specific way to help students track a variety of things, and one of the tabs could just be, you know what?
• 19:40
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Let's not even work on interoception directly right now, but let's spend the rest of the semester figuring out what are the cues.
• 19:48
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And there might be, there might be things my body does.
• 19:51
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): There might be thoughts my brain feels.
• 19:54
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): There might even be feelings,'cause you do know some of your feelings when they're high, and let's-- or when they're super low.
• 20:01
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And so let's, let's see.
• 20:03
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: data.
• 20:03
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 20:04
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And then we'll look at it after a while and see if we can start making connections between things.
• 20:09
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Yeah, totally
• 20:10
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I also had the idea in the conversation, and I'm curious what you think about this.
• 20:15
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I was like, huh, I wonder...
• 20:15
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Like, I've just, uh, gotten an Apple Watch for the first time, so I'm getting more data about what's happening in my body, and it did occur to me, I wonder if that would be a distraction or if that would be interesting to get, like, to have a phone that might tell you when you're heightened but not all the way or, yeah
• 20:39
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Mm-hmm.
• 20:40
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Yeah, I wonder how accurate that could be or what, uh, what data.
• 20:43
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I don't know enough about, like, what...
• 20:45
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I mean, I love the, I, yeah, I mean, I think, I think
• 20:47
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm
• 20:49
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Um, I mean, I've got, mine is just a I don't have any- anything.
• 20:53
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mhm.
• 20:53
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: it to track my steps and, like,
• 20:55
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Ja.
• 20:55
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: and use it for an alarm clock.
• 20:56
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Like, that's basically what
• 20:57
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Ja.
• 20:58
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: it for
• 20:58
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Ja
• 20:58
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: because I also don't need any alerts outside of
• 21:01
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Right.
• 21:03
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: you know, distractions.
• 21:04
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Anyway, um, but yeah, that might be, that might be fascinating to kind of look at that.
• 21:08
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Like, how, like, i- is there enough data there to look at, like, your heart rate or your
• 21:13
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm,
• 21:14
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: or
• 21:15
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm.
• 21:16
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Where even if you're looking at it in retrospect, is it, like, could there be some things that might be noticeable there?
• 21:23
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Yeah, that's a good idea
• 21:24
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 21:25
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I mean, as we're talking about it, I think it's an okay idea for eventually, but I think the suggestion of just collecting the other data that the student has more ready access to is better because the watch data jumps you completely outside of your body, looking at your body from way on the outside, and we're trying to help the student, I think, incrementally get more and more detailed or nuanced about what's happening in my body and thought, in your body.
• 21:54
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So actually, I don't think, as we're talking about this, I don't know if I actually think my idea is a good one anymore, or at least not yet.
• 22:01
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I think, you know, your thought was like,"Maybe it could work," and it's like, yeah, maybe after we've done more data collecting, uh, about that's h- what the student notices about themselves,'cause that's what we're trying to build is the muscle for noticing myself.
• 22:17
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And when you have to jump outside of yourself and look at tech and then interpret cues, I think that's better done later in the process than first thing in the process
• 22:27
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I think that makes sense to me as well, but it's, it is interesting to kinda think about how that might be a support for folks,
• 22:32
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 22:33
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: of an accommodation even- you know, eventually if that is helpful
• 22:36
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 22:37
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 22:38
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Interesting.
• 22:38
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): All right.
• 22:39
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Well, thank you for that.
• 22:40
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I'm sure this coach also thanks you for these ideas.
• 22:44
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So I wanted to have a little break to talk about the thing in the book real quick, and then we'll jump to question number two.
• 22:51
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So on page 10, you talk about the double empathy problem.
• 22:56
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And number one, I was just like,"Ooh, double empathy.
• 23:00
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): That's a cool phrase I'd never heard of before.
• 23:01
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I wanna understand about that." And then I got even more excited when you said double emp- the double empathy problem is something that students and even neuronormative students need to better understand.
• 23:14
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Like everybody in a school environment, if they understand this double empathy problem, it helps us create more neuroaffirming spaces.
• 23:24
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I'm a big fan of getting everybody on the same page, and what we teach to adults, we teach to students too.
• 23:30
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Totally.
• 23:30
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And so if you can define what that problem is and just speak to this, I'd love it
• 23:37
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Yeah.
• 23:37
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So the double empathy problem was originally written about by an autistic researcher in the UK.
• 23:43
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: His name's Damian Milton, and he first published about it in 2012.
• 23:47
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: basically, the whole premise of this is this idea that so often, and we're talking about autism specifically, but again, this is broader than this, but many autistic people, like there's this idea about the social communication and, and the, the thing- ways people kind of show up where it's like,"Well, you are lacking empathy for how people are approaching this.
• 24:09
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: You need to build better perspective taking.
• 24:12
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: You need to understand what other people are saying." And the whole point is that why doesn't that go both ways?
• 24:21
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: That is a...
• 24:22
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Because the you here is the neurodivergent person needs to be able to make all these changes.
• 24:27
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 24:28
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Yes, and it's
• 24:28
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah
• 24:29
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So, so here's the example I, I frequently use with this.
• 24:33
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So I had a client at one point in time, he was in middle school, and he walked into his science classroom, and the chairs were all out of order.
• 24:43
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: They were all in a horseshoe shape.
• 24:45
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: so he's autistic and ADHD.
• 24:47
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: He's also very, very bright, but he struggles with social problem solving and, you know, doesn't...
• 24:52
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: He's like,"I don't know where to sit." It's an unexpected change, so he wasn't prepared for it.
• 24:58
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So he goes and he gets one of the chairs, and he moves it to where his chair normally goes and sat down in it
• 25:05
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): so understandable.
• 25:06
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I just wanna have a moment of compassion.
• 25:09
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: A- and if only the teacher had also just taken that moment because the teacher then walks in and says,"You need to go put your chair back." he said,"This is where I sit."
• 25:20
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Uhum
• 25:21
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And the teacher said,"You need to follow my directions.
• 25:22
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I told you to go put the chair back.
• 25:24
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Go sit over there." He's like,"This is where I sit." Again, he doesn't understand why they've been moved.
• 25:30
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Nobody has taken two seconds to just say like,"Oh, hey, you know what?
• 25:33
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: We're gonna watch a movie today.
• 25:35
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I didn't think about it.
• 25:36
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: You can actually sit anywhere, or if you, if you wanna sit somewhere, we can move the chair somewhere else, but, like, this is maybe gonna be in the way." Right?
• 25:42
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Like, any...
• 25:42
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Just approaching it with curiosity.
• 25:45
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mhm.
• 25:45
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And so, so often the message that neurodivergent people receive is, you need to be more flexible.
• 25:53
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: You need to be more adaptable.
• 25:55
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: You need to use better perspective taking." And when that message is conveyed, the person who is sharing that message is not being flexible or adaptable or using more perspective taking, right?
• 26:06
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Like, I think of how many ways that situation could have gone so differently.
• 26:10
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Ultimately, that student ended up in a meltdown in the principal's office, getting sent home for the day over something as ridiculous as the chair, and it was just because he really didn't understand.
• 26:21
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And it's so hard for teachers to come sometimes see that, um, how can you be so smart
• 26:29
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Right
• 26:31
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: but you can't understand this or solve this problem?
• 26:34
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And it's like, well, it doesn't really matter how.
• 26:36
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: It
• 26:36
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm.
• 26:38
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And if you approach it with this empathy, right?
• 26:41
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: If you approach it and, like, try to figure out and then like,"I'm gonna communicate a little bit the way you communicate.
• 26:46
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: You're gonna try to communicate a little bit the way I communicate, and hopefully we'll come to an understanding," that's the whole premise of this.
• 26:53
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: But it influences social relationships between peers.
• 26:56
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: It influences like, like...
• 26:59
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: and again, having everybody understand this, expanding it beyond autistic individuals and, and it's for all, all students and all people in general.
• 27:12
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: it's just a better way to solve those problems.
• 27:15
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And
• 27:15
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah
• 27:15
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: it's, it's a really important concept to understand
• 27:20
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): It makes me think of a moment a couple summers ago.
• 27:23
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I have two nephews, and every other summer, one of them comes out to California and we have a, a venture together, auntie-nephew adventure.
• 27:31
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And I have one, the younger one is trans and likely AuDHD.
• 27:37
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): He believes so.
• 27:38
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And, um, he talks a lot, like a lot, a lot about his interests which when you're on a five-hour road trip can be a little much.
• 27:49
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And I was trying to figure out some ways we could talk about this.
• 27:55
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And I, I think what I end up doing as an example of this double empathy piece, where I finally said to him...
• 28:03
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Uh, well, I actually shared with him my informa- my cognitive overload mini lecture.
• 28:08
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Um, and we created a shorthand together called overloady, so that he could let me know when he's feeling overloady, and I could let him know when I was feeling overloady.
• 28:20
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And ideally, we'd let the other person know before we're completely overloaded.
• 28:24
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Right.
• 28:24
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So there were times then in the road trip where I was able to say,"Honey, I'm starting to feel a little overloady.
• 28:31
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I, I, I, I know you have sensory stuff, and my sensory stuff is too many words coming into my ears.
• 28:37
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And so, uh, if you can finish up your idea right now, then I need us to transition to music or silence or something like that." And, uh, it seemed to actually work pretty well with
• 28:47
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Yeah.
• 28:48
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): him.
• 28:48
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: But, but what you did there, though, was you were explicit, you talked to him about it, and you were compassionate.
• 28:56
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: It wasn't like, you need to stop talking now.
• 28:59
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Hey, I told you to stop talking,"
• 29:01
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Right.
• 29:01
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Right
• 29:02
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: handle..." Like, like, you explained what was going on for you, but then you also gave him an opportunity to explain what's going on with him,
• 29:08
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm.
• 29:09
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Like, that is...
• 29:12
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: It, it's, it seems so logical and just kind to do that.
• 29:18
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: But so often, we get in these power hierarchies, I'm the adult, you're the child, I'm the teacher, you're the student, and so you need to follow directions, and it's like we just need to let that stuff go
• 29:32
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm.
• 29:32
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Y- ultimately, what you do then is you get into this trap of, like, ending up where it's, like, a discipline issue,
• 29:39
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Right
• 29:40
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: and you're not solving any problems.
• 29:43
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Like, so for your nephew, like, that's actually super helpful for him to be able to know that and maybe perhaps in another situation be able to, A, self-advocate and use that language or, B, check in with somebody to say, like,"Oh, I see what's happening.
• 29:59
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: You're getting that overload-y feeling.
• 30:01
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 30:01
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: yeah, I've
• 30:02
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): We
• 30:04
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: know, but that's...
• 30:05
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: It, it just takes a, it takes a little bit more time,
• 30:09
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm.
• 30:09
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: but ultimately, it saves a lot of time in the long run.
• 30:12
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Right.
• 30:12
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And that's true with so many wonderful techniques that we adults or the, whoever the person with more power in the situation, we just have to practice them and build our own muscle, because actually what we're doing when we're blaming them is we're actually having a sensory overload moment, and the only way we know how to handle that is blame and put down.
• 30:36
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So it's actually we are the ones who are less capable in that moment, but we're not seeing it that way.
• 30:42
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Right.
• 30:42
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Correct.
• 30:43
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Correct.
• 30:44
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Yeah
• 30:45
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 30:45
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Interesting.
• 30:46
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Interesting.
• 30:47
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And then, uh, although this may be less relevant to those of us working one-to-one, uh, I, I just love the idea of school environments where we just name...
• 30:57
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): We, we want empathy.
• 30:58
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): We want everyone to have empathy for everyone.
• 31:01
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And they're also, you know, this, we're talking about neurodivergence right now, but you could talk about this related to gender.
• 31:07
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Women are expected to empathize with men's situations more than men have the capacity
• 31:13
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Mm-hmm
• 31:13
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): empathize with women.
• 31:14
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And I recognize that's a binary gendered example I gave, uh, but I do think it's true in the dominant culture.
• 31:21
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And then race.
• 31:22
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Folks of color are expected to empathize more with white folks, and white folks are less practiced at empathizing in the other direction.
• 31:29
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So it's just, I think what diversity-affirming schools is that we're using the example of neurodiversity and it's just, it's good for everybody
• 31:42
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Right.
• 31:42
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: What's good for neurodivergent kids is good for all kids.
• 31:45
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yes
• 31:45
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: and, and, and that's where we get into some of the universal design types of things, right?
• 31:49
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Right
• 31:50
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: do we just make spaces accessible for people?
• 31:54
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm.
• 31:54
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Like making a podcast where you talk through each chapter of your book
• 31:58
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Right.
• 32:01
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Nice.
• 32:02
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Um, anything more you wanna say about that?
• 32:04
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Otherwise, we'll switch to the final, uh, the final scenario I wanted to run.
• 32:08
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: let's go
• 32:09
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Okay.
• 32:10
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So in this one, we've got an 11th grader with ADHD and anxiety going to a very rigorous university prep school.
• 32:20
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And, uh, this particular student uses, uh, she/her pronouns and, um, gets, generally speaking, ninety-five to one hundred percents on coursework and projects, so very capable and clearly understands what's happening and the things she's learning, but her exams don't remotely reflect what she knows.
• 32:40
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And the school has been super rigid around assessment and accommodations related to exam taking.
• 32:46
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And the parents even originally disagreed about whether she needs a different school or does the school just need to support her differently.
• 32:53
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So mom and dad are having disagreements about this.
• 32:56
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And the coach in question, um, well, when she...
• 33:00
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): She just brought this scenario to us.
• 33:01
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): "What do I do?
• 33:02
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Like, how do I, as somebody who's supporting the family, but I'm not a part of the school at all, how can I help them?" Um, and we had a whole conversation around it.
• 33:13
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Then she went away and did some of the things we recommended in the conversation, which included researching the school's inclusion practices or policies'cause she hadn't done that prior to this conversation.
• 33:24
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And when she did, she saw that they had just had a review done and a report written, but they weren't putting into practice some of the things in the report.
• 33:35
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So that clearly provided something that the coach could then advocate for the parents to advocate around.
• 33:43
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And so I think just being the researcher was a great role for the coach in this moment.
• 33:49
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): But I wanted to run this scenario by you because this person-- When I told this person that I was gonna be talking to you, here's her exact question.
• 33:58
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): She said,"I'm curious about Emily's advice on how, as an EF coach who works outside of the school, I can develop a positive collaborative relationship with the school while maintaining a strong advocacy role if they are not open to exploring different ways of supporting the student."
• 34:16
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Well, I, I mean, those two things seem a little at odds.
• 34:21
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Aha
• 34:21
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: hard, I think, to collaborate if they're not open to
• 34:24
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): If they're not the ones collaborating, I'm here, we're talking about power differential.
• 34:27
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So school and coach is, is a power differential
• 34:31
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Yeah.
• 34:33
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: thing that they might try to do, and this is very time-consuming, so I'm cautious about this, but maybe talking to the student and asking specifically, like, um, who at the school does the student feel like is most likely to help them advocate or to advocate with them?
• 34:50
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah, yeah,
• 34:52
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Oh, well, you know what?
• 34:53
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): yeah Yeah
• 34:54
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: kind of understands and does some things in the classroom that help me, um, even though it's maybe not part of a formal accommodation plan, they're just able to do that." And so maybe then getting a release to talk to that teacher specifically, and then, and maybe using that as a way to collaborate and have that person, like, on the inside who can then maybe at least provide some suggestions or some ideas
• 35:18
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm
• 35:20
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: advocate,
• 35:20
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm
• 35:22
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: continue that advocacy.
• 35:24
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Um, when I work with schools, a lot of times I really try to make sure that the conversations that I'm having, whether it's with...
• 35:35
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Well, I mean, I feel like I do this all the time.
• 35:37
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: If I'm in the office, I'm talking to a parent, if I'm talking to whatever, it's like, okay, where are they?
• 35:41
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: How can I meet them where they are?
• 35:43
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And just kind of take one step,
• 35:45
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm Mm-hmm
• 35:49
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: but then also pointing out where there might be areas to shift some things.
• 35:55
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And so I, I kind of frame this as making sure...
• 35:58
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I know that I...
• 36:01
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I do it intentionally.
• 36:02
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I don't know that I had a name for it when I kind of started doing it, but I'm really cautious to make sure people feel like they are called in as opposed to called out.
• 36:09
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm.
• 36:10
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Because I think what happens is if we are not careful, and unfortunately, I think parents sometimes do this, where they're, like, calling out, and it's like, there is no quicker way to meet resistance than for somebody to feel defensive, like you're told- telling them that they're doing something wrong.
• 36:26
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm, mm.
• 36:27
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm
• 36:29
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: say, like, helping the student, it's like,"Okay, so tell me what is working for you.
• 36:34
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: me what accommodations they have made." And then is there a way to just kind of shift those a little bit, right?
• 36:39
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm.
• 36:41
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: a step further.
• 36:42
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Um,
• 36:43
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And
• 36:44
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: do is, is really try to come with, with the, the research.
• 36:48
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I mean, I feel like that's just helpful, and you can say things like, um, know, well, like, here's what we kind of know, and this is what we've seen, and here's the evidence for this.
• 37:00
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Um, and, and here, let me send you this article.
• 37:02
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: You can just kind of take a look, right?
• 37:04
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And just kind of see how it, how it fits with things.
• 37:07
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): it, do you imagine the coach in this moment is sending the article to somebody at the school or sending it to the parent to send along to somebody at the school?
• 37:15
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: already have, if they've already been able to reach somebody at the school, and the school seems somewhat receptive and they're having those conversations, yes.
• 37:21
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: If not, if the parent is acting as the intermediary, then the
• 37:24
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Uhum.
• 37:26
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Um, the other thing that I think sometimes happens too is schools tend to be very much like,"Well, we've never done that before, so therefore whatever." thing to remember about accommodations as we are advocating for them is that accommodations are about providing access.
• 37:43
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And so you mentioned that this student is at a really rigorous school with very high expectations, and sometimes when I'm working with schools, um, you know, they'll have their AP classes or their honors classes or whatever, and the immediate response if somebody requests an accommodation is,"Well, they should take the lower level class." That is not an accommodation.
• 38:04
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: is a denial of access, and an accommodation provides access.
• 38:09
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So if a student needs be able to listen to something on an audiobook, but they're able to master the content and they are interested in the class and whatever, like, we should provide that access.
• 38:23
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: But that is a shift I think sometimes when we get into those really rigorous settings, people tend to be more resistant to providing those accommodations because they'll feel like it's, it's not fair for that student to have extended time, or it's, you know, it's an, an uneven playing field if that student gets that particular accommodation.
• 38:42
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And that's a, just a big part of the shift.
• 38:44
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Now, I don't, I don't know where necessarily the a- the, the EF coach goes with that information, but just kind of keeping that in the back of their mind as they're advocating and saying like,"Just, you know, we don't want you to change the curriculum.
• 38:57
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: We're not asking you to change the objectives.
• 38:59
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: We're not ex- you know, we are only asking to pr- are only asking to provide access in a way that allows this student to learn and show what they learn, um, in a way that works for their brains." And, and, but it's, it's hard.
• 39:13
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I mean, it's, I mean, it's like I- you run up against roadblocks, you know?
• 39:16
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I, I mean, one of the easiest accommodations sometimes for students is to grade them based on either what they've completed or w- you know, or shorten an assignment where you can still measure the objective, and sometimes schools are really resistant to that.
• 39:32
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Here's actually the thing.
• 39:33
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: When I, when, when I talk about accommodations with folks, the litmus test for whether or not an accommodation is effective or not or should be allowed or not is whether or not it still allows you to measure the objective that is being taught
• 39:49
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm.
• 39:50
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: If you can boil it down to that, then the accommodation is fine.
• 39:54
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So for example, um, let's use group work, for example.
• 39:58
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: A lot of students really struggle with working in groups, right?
• 40:00
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And they just wanna work on their own.
• 40:01
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Well, there are some classes where you literally have of your curriculum says, you have to, um, be able to collaborate with your peers and, you know, produce some work, like, collaboratively." Okay, well, in that situation, working independently is not an appropriate accommodation.
• 40:20
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: But if it's just like,"Hey, find a partner and work on something," because, you know, because you know, just practice and whatever, and th- and that's fine, and someone wants to work on their own because they work better, they can focus better, they can, you know, whatever, yeah, then let that accommodation through.
• 40:37
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And so if you're advocating with the school and you, you keep that in your mind, and they're pushing back, maybe that's the next question to ask.
• 40:45
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: "Well, what are you trying to measure through this?
• 40:47
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And how d- would, would this accommodation actually get in the way of that?" And that might even be something that enlightens you and goes,"Oh, I didn't realize that that was actually...
• 40:56
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I understand now why that accommodation isn't appropriate." Or,"Well, wait a second, I think this accommodation could be appropriate, you know, in this way."
• 41:05
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): What I'm appreciating about everything that you've said here is I'm sort of going through the things that I teach since I train coaches.
• 41:12
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): We have a module called Academic Coaching 101, and a lot of the things that I train them about their, how we are as beings in a coaching session, we forget to do with other stakeholders in the environment.
• 41:29
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Just like we said earlier, when we blame a student for like,"You blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." It's like blaming the school.
• 41:35
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I mean, you can have empathy for where a school is.
• 41:38
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): If you're coming from a place of rigor and really wanting to get students into rigorous environments, given the history of education in our country, you can really understand where they're coming from, and we believe in the least you need to know for students, but that's also what's the least a school needs to know about accommodations or neurodiversity to get into the tiniest next right action.
• 42:01
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So we don't expect students to suddenly be able to do everything, and maybe with schools, we shouldn't expect that either, e- either.
• 42:10
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And the family, it's the disconnect between the parents.
• 42:13
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): It's like, well, this is the right school.
• 42:16
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Not if they completely say,"Okay, we'll give the full accommodation right away," but it's the right school if they start listening, if they start being willing to take the next incremental step.
• 42:25
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): If, and also we need to get curious.
• 42:27
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): We ask empowering questions of our students.
• 42:29
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): So what are the empowering questions we can ask of the school or of our parents to get people thinking critically and mindfully about what's happening?
• 42:39
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Um, and if the school is making tiny changes, then it is the right school for the student.
• 42:44
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): If they're not open to the conversation at all, then the other parent might be correct that we just need to move to a different school
• 42:51
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Yeah.
• 42:51
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: The only other thing I'll add there, Gretchen, too, is that, so s- part of my background, I, I did a lot of work in gifted ed, right?
• 42:59
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And, and working with parents specifically and helping them understand, like, just because a child can take all of the AP classes doesn't mean that they
• 43:07
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Fair.
• 43:08
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah
• 43:09
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: all of them Or, uh, you know, however you wanna frame that.
• 43:12
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And honestly, for a child's mental health, maybe a public school is a better setting.
• 43:17
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm.
• 43:18
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: and that's okay.
• 43:19
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: You know, or a diff- or maybe a different
• 43:21
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): A different...
• 43:21
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 43:22
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah
• 43:22
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: know, it's like, it, would rather Put someone in a situation where they can feel successful
• 43:30
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm.
• 43:31
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: than, than having them white-knuckle it through a situation where they're totally stressed all the time.
• 43:36
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: It's just a recipe for burnout and, and overwhelm
• 43:39
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): and, you know, another thing that just occurred to me speaking of that, like, if the student likes a school environment, they have friends there, they feel confident about theirselves and their 95% to 100% projects, I would be curious how much is, are these test grades lowering our scores?
• 43:55
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Mm-hmm
• 43:55
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Uh, because if it's not that much, or if they're making Bs instead of As, or even C+s instead of Bs, I might be okay with that.
• 44:06
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): If the whole family is okay with that, it'd be like,"Oh, honey, we get it.
• 44:09
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): We get it.
• 44:10
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And in fact, maybe we can go over the test just to prove to you so you feel better about yourself that in a different environment you do know the answer to these questions." But what the grade the school gives you doesn't have to affect the way you see yourself, and we also don't have to have the story that a bad grade, bad being a C, is gonna not get us into the college we wanna go.
• 44:30
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): You will find the right college for you regardless
• 44:34
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: You know, it's interesting you mention that.
• 44:35
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So our oldest son is 18, and he is in his first year of college.
• 44:41
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: as we were going through the college search process, I was very much of the mindset, like, I am not a pushy parent.
• 44:48
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: It's just probably more than anything a reaction to my own parents who were very pushy about the expectations, and so I've kind of like...
• 44:56
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And, my, my belief really is like, yeah, okay, challenge yourself a little bit, but also kind of take this.
• 45:01
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And so, um, you know, the question I would sometimes ask myself, though, as we were going through this college search was like, I should have pushed him more.
• 45:09
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I should have been on his case more.
• 45:10
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: I should have helped him more so he would get better grades.
• 45:13
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: You know, whate- I mean, his grades were fine,
• 45:15
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Mm-hmm
• 45:15
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: and, you know, but ultimately...
• 45:17
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And I was like, and then, but then the next question I would have is like, to what end?
• 45:22
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah
• 45:22
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: goes to a college that he's not prepared for, that he can't actually be successful with?
• 45:26
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Like, good is that?
• 45:28
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Ja
• 45:29
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And, and, you know, I don't know, I can argue with myself back and forth about all the mistakes I've made as a parent.
• 45:35
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: There are many.
• 45:36
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And so, but, but that's kind of where I land with it.
• 45:39
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: It's like, to what end?
• 45:40
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: What is, what is the long-term goal, and does the student have buy-in to that long-term goal?
• 45:47
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: whose goal is it?
• 45:48
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Right
• 45:49
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: It's something that's just worth reflecting on.
• 45:50
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 45:51
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Whose goal is it?
• 45:52
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yes.
• 45:53
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And I think we-- I don't even remember in the conversation if we talked about what does the student want and how is the student truly being impacted by these grades, which is hilarious because that's usually my very first
• 46:03
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Mm-hmm
• 46:04
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): But I think I was so thrown off by,"Oh, right, how do we make the school blah, blah, blah?" And, and that's compliance versus connection language.
• 46:11
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Whenever we notice our-ourselves in compliance, uh, habits, then there's-- we can question ourselves and our approach.
• 46:22
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Uh, because you, you might, you might with compliance language get what you think you want in the short term, but what this school really needs is a culture shift, and culture shift does not happen quickly
• 46:32
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Mm-mm.
• 46:36
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Well, thank you.
• 46:37
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I'm sure the people who are listening are really grateful, or especially the ones who ask the questions are really grateful.
• 46:44
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): But I really strongly recommend folks get the book, Neurodiversity Affirming Schools.
• 46:48
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): I don't know what I expected actually, but when I looked at it immediately, you know, did my usual skim of headings and that sort of thing, I was like,"Oh, this is a primer."
• 46:58
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Mm-hmm
• 46:59
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): and I could imagine it being a wonderful gift for parents, uh, or s- or school-based people.
• 47:07
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): But even for us coaches, it's a primer of just some basic language and concepts in the world of neurodiversity and, and then gives us, gives us some language for how to advocate with schools, just even in the book itself, I think
• 47:22
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Yeah.
• 47:22
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: And just to understand the learning needs of
• 47:24
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 47:25
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: students, and so that's relevant, you know, if, if you're a parent or a coach or
• 47:30
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah, or whomever.
• 47:31
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 47:32
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 47:32
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Well, thank you.
• 47:33
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): This has been so much fun, Emily, and I'm looking forward to more
• 47:39
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Yes.
• 47:40
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Yeah, absolutely.
• 47:41
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: You know, thank you so much for having me.
• 47:42
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Super fun conversation
• 47:44
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 47:44
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): And, um, everybody who's listening, I forget if I said this in the intro or not, but please, we are a very new podcast.
• 47:51
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): You know, Emily, tell the people how important is the likes and subscribes and the Apple
• 47:56
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: all the things.
• 47:57
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: All the things.
• 47:58
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Yes.
• 47:58
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: L- give all the, give all the ratings, the, uh, review,
• 48:02
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yes.
• 48:02
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: it helps everyone find it.
• 48:04
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: So,
• 48:04
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): It really does.
• 48:05
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: you're doing it for Gretchen's, do it for mine, too.
• 48:08
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yes, so go subscribe to Emily's.
• 48:11
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: The
• 48:11
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): There are-
• 48:12
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: Podcast.
• 48:12
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: The Neurodiversity Podcast is the main podcast.
• 48:14
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: The Creating Neurodiversity-Affirming Schools is the one that aligns with the
• 48:17
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 48:18
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Beautiful.
• 48:18
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Beautiful.
• 48:19
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Anything else you wanna say, or are those sort of the two asks, listen to the podcast and read the book?
• 48:23
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: so.
• 48:24
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Yeah.
• 48:24
  Emily Kircher-Morris,LPC: absolutely
• 48:25
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): All right.
• 48:25
  Gretchen Wegner (she/her): Well, take care, everybody