Latest / Aspergers & Autism Podcast [The Aspie World] AuDHD / Autism and Loneliness Are You Lonely

Transcript

Autism and Loneliness Are You Lonely · Aspergers & Autism Podcast [The Aspie World] AuDHD

• 0:00
  You have arrived. Welcome to the Aspy world.
• 0:04
  Here's where we talk about anything and everything ASD in
• 0:07
  an upbeat and informative way. And now here's your man on the
• 0:11
  spectrum, your autism ambassador, Daniel Morgan Jones.
• 0:19
  So are you a lonely and autistic in this video?
• 0:22
  I'm covering all of that right now.
• 0:24
  Don't go anywhere. Hey guys, welcome back to the
• 0:26
  ASP world. My name is Dan and I have autism
• 0:28
  in ADHD and I'm I make quickly videos all about this stuff.
• 0:31
  So if you're interested in learning more, don't forget to
• 0:33
  hit that subscribe button by clicking the notification bell
• 0:35
  down below and follow along with all the videos I publish.
• 0:37
  OK, So about about two weeks ago, I came across an article
• 0:42
  online, and it was talking about how autistic individuals are
• 0:45
  lonely, right? And then it really got me
• 0:46
  thinking, like, I, I'm an autistic individual, and am I
• 0:49
  lonely? Yeah.
• 0:49
  And I thought I was lonely because of my job.
• 0:51
  You know, I'm a YouTube or an influencer.
• 0:52
  So I'm sitting at home all day on my own making videos, you
• 0:56
  know, doing meetings on Zoom. I'm not actually interacting
• 0:58
  with people. I don't have any communal office
• 1:00
  space. I don't actually have water cool
• 1:03
  where I can talk to people, hang out.
• 1:04
  And because of that, it does lead for a quite lonely life.
• 1:07
  And pretty recently, I've been feeling really lonely because
• 1:11
  before the pandemic, I'd fly around, you know, go to LA for
• 1:15
  Vidcon and fly around doing different things.
• 1:16
  And then since Covic, everything slowed down and haven't kind of
• 1:19
  like done a lot of those things. OK, that being said, we're kind
• 1:22
  of moving into 2024 now and you know, covered with a few years
• 1:25
  ago and I am now moving around to do more events.
• 1:27
  However, I still feel lonely because I don't work with
• 1:30
  anybody. I don't have any friends.
• 1:31
  I don't have friends who have coffee with.
• 1:33
  I don't have friends who out see.
• 1:34
  And one of the biggest challenges autistic individuals
• 1:37
  face is the fact that social interaction can be so difficult
• 1:41
  and challenging that it's not something that we naturally kind
• 1:45
  of go for. So I want to do a series all
• 1:47
  about kind of, you know, loneliness.
• 1:48
  Like this is number one in a, in a, in a series.
• 1:50
  I want to make about 3 or 4 videos on it.
• 1:52
  And the reason why I'll tell you in a minute.
• 1:54
  So I run a poll on my Twitter or X account.
• 1:58
  I run a poll on my Instagram and on my community SAP here on
• 2:01
  YouTube asking my autistic audience, do you feel lonely?
• 2:05
  Right on X 82% people said yes, which is a staggering statistic.
• 2:10
  On Instagram, 88% of people said yes.
• 2:13
  And then on YouTube 75% of people said yes.
• 2:17
  They are lonely. One of the most interesting
• 2:18
  thing about this was 1.6000 people voted on this and 75% of
• 2:23
  those voted yes, they are lonely.
• 2:25
  Which to me is a big cry saying that hey, we're we're a
• 2:28
  community of autistic individuals and we feel lonely.
• 2:31
  But what's more fascinating is that 1.6000 people just told me
• 2:36
  that they are lonely or just less than about 6000 people.
• 2:39
  So they were lonely on my YouTube channel.
• 2:41
  Which is interesting because if I could get all those in the
• 2:43
  room together, they no longer be lonely, right?
• 2:44
  So I have this crazy idea. I want to build community.
• 2:47
  I want to build a way for people to interact.
• 2:51
  I don't know if it should be an app, if it should be a forum or
• 2:54
  website, I'm not entirely sure. So let's chime in in the
• 2:58
  comments before I move on with the next part of what I want to
• 3:00
  talk about and let me know what kind of platform do you think we
• 3:03
  should do? Should we have a group chat with
• 3:05
  WhatsApp? Should we have a website kind of
• 3:08
  like Facebook, but our own one for autistic individuals?
• 3:11
  Should we have a forum like a, you know, to go on there and
• 3:14
  it's not instant chat kind of like, you know, update every now
• 3:17
  and then like I, I want to know what do you think is the coolest
• 3:20
  way that we could create community so we can not feel
• 3:22
  lonely, because it really does bug me.
• 3:25
  I was talking about the the average survival age of an
• 3:29
  autistic individual. And some of those figures are
• 3:31
  quite shocking. I'm not going to get into it
• 3:32
  right now because I did some posts about on, on Instagram.
• 3:36
  It's kind of quite sensitive. But because of that, it kind of
• 3:39
  makes you think, well, is loneliness A contributing factor
• 3:42
  to potential short life spans? And I think so.
• 3:45
  I think it really is. I think it plays on your mental
• 3:47
  health. I think it plays on a lot of
• 3:48
  different things, especially socially relationships, like not
• 3:51
  just friendships, I mean romantic relationships.
• 3:53
  You know, you need all types of relationship in your life,
• 3:55
  right? We have health, wealth and
• 3:57
  relationships, and those relationships are key to to our
• 4:00
  existence because we we communicate with people, with
• 4:03
  beings, right? We have relationships with the
• 4:04
  animals we have as pets. We have relationships with
• 4:06
  everything. We have to have good solid
• 4:09
  beingness around people. You know, we're communal
• 4:10
  animals. We always have been from, from,
• 4:12
  you know, you look at hominids and an early man, right?
• 4:14
  We were hunter gatherers. You know, we in packs of people.
• 4:17
  We take the whole village, right?
• 4:18
  You've heard that saying. That being said, what I want to
• 4:21
  do, not just online because we spoke about the online thing,
• 4:24
  which I'd love to have your comments and chime in, but
• 4:27
  outside of online, I think that I want to do something really
• 4:32
  interesting. I've never done this before.
• 4:33
  I want to set up physical kind of Aspen World social groups,
• 4:36
  and I'm going to demo the first one in North Wales where I live,
• 4:42
  and I'm going to document the whole process.
• 4:43
  So this is process number one. I've spoken to a guy I know
• 4:46
  called Ben who's also on the ultimate spectrum, who lives
• 4:48
  locally and he's a cool guy. And I said to him, Ben, would
• 4:51
  you help me run these social nights if we put one on right
• 4:53
  once a month? Like the, I don't know the
• 4:55
  Angleseed autism social group, right?
• 4:57
  For adults or, you know, older people ageing.
• 5:01
  PQ is really interested in that because there's a lot of stuff
• 5:03
  for kids, right? The thing about this, there's
• 5:04
  loads of social clubs for kids and kids are in school so
• 5:06
  they're not as lonely as autistic adults.
• 5:08
  I'm not saying that. Look, let me put this straight
• 5:10
  autistic children, they can be lonely and probably are lonely
• 5:14
  as well. I'm not saying that they're not,
• 5:15
  but I'm saying they have a bigger chance of having access
• 5:18
  to social interaction than autistic adults who will rather
• 5:20
  just isolate themselves in their house rather than, I don't know,
• 5:24
  going out and and doing something interesting.
• 5:26
  Well, look, check this out. I, I, I just wanted to bring
• 5:29
  your attention to this. This is the auto roller.
• 5:30
  OK, This is my favorite fidget toy right now.
• 5:32
  Somebody asked me a question of it yesterday on the live and say
• 5:34
  like, oh, what's your favorite fidget toy?
• 5:35
  I just remembered it was the auto roller.
• 5:37
  Now, this actually is my favorite figure sign.
• 5:40
  I always got it to hand. So why was it easy to kind of
• 5:41
  find it really quickly? Then you can actually get 10%
• 5:44
  off if you want access to this little bad boy.
• 5:46
  There's a link in the URL in my bio.
• 5:49
  So if you go to my bio on anyway social media platforms and go to
• 5:52
  that link, it's tinytower.com. And then go there and you'll see
• 5:55
  the honor roller. You get 10% off.
• 5:56
  So go sign up for it. Super awesome.
• 5:58
  And if you're watching on YouTube, I'll leave a link for
• 5:59
  it down in the description down below.
• 6:01
  So setting up social groups, I want to document it on this
• 6:04
  process. This is why I kind of turn into
• 6:05
  a series. I'm going to vlog the process of
• 6:09
  actually setting this up from creation of a logo, promotion of
• 6:13
  it on Facebook and stuff like that, getting people to sign up
• 6:15
  to it. So we have like a list of people
• 6:17
  who can e-mail and then executing the the first kind of
• 6:21
  meeting. I'm not sure how how well it's
• 6:23
  going to go or who will turn it up or whatever.
• 6:25
  But if this works well locally for me on a local level, I know
• 6:29
  I can then encourage you to start up your own ones in your
• 6:32
  own areas. As long as we have safety
• 6:33
  protocol that we can follow. And this is something that also
• 6:36
  I have to follow as well. So we'll have a blueprint some
• 6:38
  way of knowing how can we do this because the autism
• 6:41
  loneliness epidemic is really kind of but bugging me because
• 6:46
  like I know what it's like to feel lonely, right?
• 6:48
  I know what it's like to feel isolated.
• 6:49
  I know what it's like to feel all by yourself in a crowded
• 6:51
  room. You know, there's hundreds and
• 6:53
  thousands of people around you all the time, yet you just feel
• 6:56
  completely isolated, not just socially, you feel isolated from
• 6:59
  kind of just real life, like what is going on outside, what
• 7:02
  is what's going on in the world. So I think it's time to change
• 7:05
  that narrative. I think it's time to autistic
• 7:06
  individuals because like I said, you know 83% of the people who
• 7:10
  answered yes on X, you know 88% of people added yes on Instagram
• 7:14
  and 75% of people added yes on on my YouTube channel.
• 7:18
  Those people alone, you're looking at like 100,000 people
• 7:20
  like how come we have 100,000 people who feel alone, but
• 7:23
  they're also part of the same community.
• 7:25
  We need to bring them together and so I'm really, really
• 7:28
  excited to do this. I want all suggestions and
• 7:30
  everything and right now it's funny, I'm live streaming on my
• 7:33
  TikTok channel. So if you haven't followed me on
• 7:34
  TikTok, go go follow me right now.
• 7:36
  And I'm also live streaming on my Twitch because I live stream
• 7:39
  every single day on Twitch and TikTok.
• 7:40
  So, and I want to know anywhere you're watching this right now,
• 7:43
  leave a comment and then let me know.
• 7:45
  Or you can just e-mail me theaskmeworld@gmail.com and
• 7:47
  you'll find out more information.
• 7:49
  So that being said, guys, to let me know any ideas that you have
• 7:53
  on this subject, I'm going to document it loads.
• 7:55
  And yeah, give this video a thumbs up.
• 7:57
  Let me know that you care and like this type of video and I'll
• 8:00
  see you in the next one guys, peace.
• 8:05
  Hey guys, thank you so much for checking out this podcast.
• 8:07
  Make sure you are subscribed because there are people
• 8:09
  listening right now who not subscribe to this podcast.
• 8:11
  I can see you. Make sure you subscribe.
• 8:14
  OK, guys. See you in the next one.
• 8:15
  Peace.