Latest / Aspergers & Autism Podcast [The Aspie World] AuDHD / Autism And Life Expectancy Talking All Things Autism Controversy (Interesting)

Transcript

Autism And Life Expectancy Talking All Things Autism Controversy (Interesting) · Aspergers & Autism Podcast [The Aspie World] AuDHD

• 0:00
  Guys, welcome back to that. I asked we were live video
• 0:02
  today. I'm interviewing a good friend
• 0:03
  of mine. This is Thomas.
• 0:05
  He is an influencer as well. We've got various different
• 0:09
  social media channels and this guy populates my TikTok feed.
• 0:12
  Like seriously, it's the I always see is this videos on
• 0:15
  TikTok. So without further ado, Thomas,
• 0:17
  what's going on? Ah well, quite a lot lately.
• 0:22
  Loaded question. OK.
• 0:24
  Yeah, yeah. But it's no, no, I'm, I'm good,
• 0:27
  Good. It's it's nice.
• 0:28
  It's been nice and sunny lately. As an outsider, it's yeah.
• 0:30
  It's been lovely. Yeah, it's good.
• 0:31
  I'm going to go for a running in a bit and since it's nice and
• 0:34
  and sunny and hot, I'm going to there to a crisp and I'll put on
• 0:37
  some sun tumbles. Yeah, it is really good.
• 0:39
  I I really enjoy the sunshine. So do you want to give my
• 0:43
  audience a little bit about who you are and what you did?
• 0:46
  Yeah, sure. So I'm Thomas I I run the
• 0:51
  Asperitus growth YouTube channel, Instagram page, and
• 0:55
  also the 40 or T podcast, which is, you know, every, everything
• 1:00
  that I tend to do is around autism and mental health.
• 1:04
  So, you know, I, I quite like to and take, take bits from each of
• 1:08
  them because it's, you know, it's quite a highly linked,
• 1:14
  think the, you know, those two bubbles quite highly linked.
• 1:16
  Yeah. So I do stuff like public
• 1:20
  speaking. I do a lot of different things,
• 1:24
  usually not not the best at any of them, but.
• 1:27
  Well, modelling as well. I saw you modelling for Harvey
• 1:30
  prices new range in London. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:32
  That was, that was really cool. I actually linked up with one of
• 1:36
  the people from the autism show in Manchester called Alex
• 1:39
  Herron. Yeah.
• 1:41
  Who's like a photographer for Vogue.
• 1:44
  She's doing like this project called like breadth spanning,
• 1:47
  expanning the spectrum, where she kind of goes around and
• 1:51
  takes pictures and gets testimonials and stuff.
• 1:53
  Wow that's fire dude. You do a lot man.
• 1:57
  I love it. So you know it's funny like most
• 1:59
  of the like like autism kind of advocates and kind of like
• 2:03
  Youtubers or if you're not on social media don't mind.
• 2:06
  By the way, what I'm doing is I'm sending up 1 bitch like
• 2:08
  people little by rush. And this, this is my lifeguard.
• 2:11
  I have a multitask because I don't have anybody in house any
• 2:14
  time like an intern or something.
• 2:17
  But yeah, and most of the advocates and stuff like that,
• 2:19
  they're all like American or like Canadian.
• 2:22
  And so it's really nice to see, you know, someone like yourself
• 2:26
  who's in in the UK and stuff like that.
• 2:27
  So talk to me. I know you talk about mental
• 2:29
  health, animalism. So what kind of topics do you
• 2:32
  cover? And, and I want to talk a little
• 2:34
  bit about why those topics are important because we've spoken
• 2:36
  before. We had like a, that initial meet
• 2:39
  and greet. Gosh, it was like about a month
• 2:41
  ago, wasn't it? Yeah, we also, we also had a
• 2:44
  little chat at the the audition. It did.
• 2:48
  Very painful and. Very brief one.
• 2:49
  Yeah, I was just, yeah, I was a bit flustered.
• 2:51
  I'd just done a talk. You'd have walked in and was
• 2:53
  like, OK, guys, see you later. So you just just missed it.
• 2:57
  It was really that was really good.
• 3:00
  And so annoyed I was like, I was talking to my to my girlfriend
• 3:04
  like the entire night before. I was like, we need to get up
• 3:06
  for this time and I, I did my my presentation the the previous
• 3:12
  day. Yeah, my head was like in full
• 3:14
  on meltdown mode. So.
• 3:16
  Yeah, This is why I pulled out of London yesterday or Saturday,
• 3:20
  because I was like, there's no way, Are you in Birmingham on
• 3:22
  Saturday? No, I'm not.
• 3:24
  I'm only for the I was only asked to do the Manchester one.
• 3:29
  OK, yeah, I'm in London was purple Ala.
• 3:32
  On No, no, no, not on Birmingham with purple Ala and Connor and
• 3:35
  everybody else on Saturday. Saturday.
• 3:38
  I was really cool. Yeah, I was really, really cool.
• 3:40
  She's yeah, she's really cool. Known for a very long time now.
• 3:44
  And yeah, it was really good. I actually helped to like give a
• 3:47
  loads of tips on, on how to optimise content for YouTube.
• 3:50
  It was really, really cool. So Thomas, let's get back to
• 3:53
  your content. What kind of topics do you
• 3:55
  cover? Like what's your main kind of
• 3:56
  bulk of like 4 topics you cover? Sure.
• 4:00
  Well, I, I tend to do a lot of stuff around sort of theory
• 4:05
  crafting. I tend to cover topics which
• 4:09
  would be considered quite controversial by a lot of other
• 4:15
  autism advocates that I, I talk to, you know, things like
• 4:19
  talking about masking and you know, where, where the lines are
• 4:23
  with things and, you know, sort of putting their focus, taking
• 4:28
  the focus away from the language and sort of putting it on their
• 4:32
  quality of life statistics that autistic people have, like
• 4:37
  social isolation, bullying, severe, severe mental health
• 4:41
  things, things of that nature. But I also, I also do a lot of
• 4:45
  stuff which is very neurotypical focused.
• 4:49
  So I try to help parents and help people.
• 4:55
  I don't know a lot about autism. Like an education thing, right?
• 4:59
  Or re education program. But also recently about dating
• 5:03
  as well, which have seemed to be quite a hot a hot thing.
• 5:08
  It's huge, huge. Do you know what's funny like to
• 5:11
  talk about like life expectancy or, or, or you know, people on
• 5:15
  the autism spectrum? I was reading, I think it was a
• 5:19
  paper published and they were talking about saying how the
• 5:23
  average lifespan of people on the, the lower end of the autism
• 5:27
  specialism, like they have high support needs is about anywhere
• 5:30
  between, I don't know, 30 and 40, which is really low, right.
• 5:36
  And then? -2020 odd years isn't?
• 5:39
  That yeah. And then the people who are who
• 5:41
  are like, like ours who, who are like the lowest 1 needs all
• 5:43
  these used to be high functioning or asparagus between
• 5:46
  50 and 60, which isn't that much different really.
• 5:51
  And it's all down to a few different things.
• 5:53
  And this is fascinating. I mean, a huge chunk of that is
• 5:56
  mental health, right? So you have a lot of suicides
• 5:58
  and you have a lot of kind of like, you know, depression that
• 6:01
  leads into drinking and then those kind of problems.
• 6:03
  Then you also have, the flip side is you have this lack of
• 6:10
  nutritional information or, or, or, or lack of nutritional input
• 6:14
  into the body because autistic people can be picky eaters and
• 6:17
  what makes it very difficult to have quite a balanced lifestyle.
• 6:20
  If you're deficient in things for a prolonged period of time,
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  it could cause quite, you know, in the long term would be just
• 6:26
  quite destructive to your body and, and cognitively shorten
• 6:28
  your, your lifespan. So it was really, really
• 6:30
  fascinating looking at this stuff.
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  But the suicide thing was such a big kind of chunk and sad, you
• 6:37
  know, because I feel like that's why it's important that the work
• 6:40
  you're doing's important because it's, it needs to be said
• 6:43
  because we don't know if they should reach out or not.
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  I mean, suicide is a huge thing as well within males.
• 6:46
  It's huge. I don't know.
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  I don't know. It's I don't know why, Like
• 6:52
  what's. It's like Madden.
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  It's just Madden in general. Just.
• 6:55
  Yeah, and it's and 80. 5% of suicides.
• 6:59
  Yeah, and it's it's so it's this whole kind of like there's this
• 7:02
  pre, pre assigned culture, a man that just kind of like, yeah,
• 7:05
  get on with it, man. You know, you know, dudes spit
• 7:09
  and shoot guns and like everyone expects a guy to just get on
• 7:12
  with stuff, you know, But I feel like it's kind of like that
• 7:14
  buckaroo type of thing, you know, you can only put so many
• 7:17
  things on before it kicks back. And I guess that's where a lot
• 7:19
  of people who are on your subscription of hey.
• 7:22
  A lot of, you know, like every social situation that I tend to
• 7:26
  enter nowadays, I get instantly labeled as a a white cisgendered
• 7:32
  male and what? What who he's can something.
• 7:35
  Verbally be used. Just for, just for being you,
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  just like, just for being alive, that is, that is a huge one,
• 7:42
  yeah. The, the, the, the, the balance
• 7:45
  has been completely flipped the other way.
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  And now we have a radicalized formation of an identity, which
• 7:52
  is really interesting because like you, you have, you know, to
• 7:54
  acknowledge white privilege, you know, like, in that respect, you
• 7:57
  go, OK, I can acknowledge white privilege.
• 7:59
  I get it. You know, we, we are fortunate.
• 8:00
  And like, not even that, but just like geological privilege,
• 8:03
  like I was born in the Kingdom. We have great freedoms here.
• 8:06
  And I'm so thankful and I thank God every single day for those
• 8:09
  blessings that I've been thrust upon.
• 8:12
  But we shouldn't. You may feel guilty for those
• 8:14
  things. I think you know, and that does
• 8:16
  start a an inherent self destruction mode, you know, and
• 8:20
  then and then it kind of does it, don't you know?
• 8:22
  The funny, The funny thing is, is that I used to when, when
• 8:26
  stuff like that happened, I used to, I used to say, OK, well,
• 8:31
  this is my physicality, but I'm also autistic.
• 8:34
  You know, I'm also one 2% of the population are very again, what
• 8:41
  would you say a very under supported section.
• 8:44
  Of minority. Society, But you know, just a
• 8:48
  moment, like you know, it does it.
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  I kind of got to a point where I was like, do I really need to do
• 8:58
  this? Can I not just turn up in, like,
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  most of my friends are female, you know, most of most of my
• 9:03
  friends are not straight for some bizarre reason.
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  I think I've got like, one or one or two straight friends.
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  And like, not, not that that's like a much fun release or
• 9:15
  anything, but it just, you know it.
• 9:17
  Yeah. It boggles me sometimes, Yeah.
• 9:20
  Yeah, it is. It is super interesting.
• 9:22
  But like, OK, so I got a question, what is the process
• 9:27
  for you to create content? You know, how do you come from
• 9:29
  the ideas that and the topics that you want to talk about?
• 9:33
  I think, you know, I, I just, yeah, what I did at the start of
• 9:39
  me doing my creating and starting YouTube is that I, I
• 9:43
  just observed things in my everyday life with, with other
• 9:48
  people, what people were telling me about autism and then and
• 9:53
  sort of looked looked into it and researched like a bit and
• 9:58
  then, you know, gave my own sort of take or opinion on on a
• 10:02
  variety of different things. I'd create YouTube videos and
• 10:07
  podcasts and then I'd, you know, around about now I've started
• 10:14
  chopping them up because you introduced me to that lovely
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  programme software. Yeah, it's good, isn't it?
• 10:22
  Yeah, it's really, really, really helpful.
• 10:27
  But yeah, I think it's, I'm, I'm, I'm a very natural sort of
• 10:32
  writer and I like to, to write, get my faults out onto paper.
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  So it's, it's quite calming. It's quite a good, good anxiety
• 10:40
  relief for me to kind of get all my faults out there and you
• 10:45
  know, wind down for the evening kind of.
• 10:47
  Yeah, like a therapy, right. It's interesting because like I
• 10:52
  feel, you know, I'm like super like hyped up all the time.
• 10:55
  Like I've ADHD, the hyperactive type and like, you know, bounce
• 10:59
  off the walls constantly and you know, with yourself you're such
• 11:03
  a chill, relaxed person. It it it it.
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  Kind of allows for a more intense focus of the type of
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  content that you will be producing.
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  Like so you know that it's going to be very detailed and very
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  concise. Like I do kind of quite
• 11:18
  snippety, you know, very shaving off the top.
• 11:23
  You're so good at doing that. I just, my brain is like, I just
• 11:27
  can't do it. No, that's what I mean, but I
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  mean like that's, it's important because, you know, I can't do
• 11:32
  the way you do it, you know, And so it's quite, it's, it's to me
• 11:37
  that being a content creator and having this varied amount of
• 11:39
  creators and why it's important for everybody to do what they're
• 11:41
  doing. Because if we just had me, or if
• 11:43
  we just had, you just had Ella, it would be kind of like, well,
• 11:46
  it's not going to be fitting for everybody, right?
• 11:48
  And I think that's why we all all have a place in this
• 11:50
  community. And it's all important that we
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  do that because, you know, we're trying to spread the
• 11:54
  information. So here's a question.
• 11:55
  What kind of world do you want to see?
• 11:58
  What? What's your vision?
• 12:01
  I want to see a world where I don't have to worry about having
• 12:08
  having an an autistic child, about exposing them to all of
• 12:14
  the things that I've experienced and having to to deal with the
• 12:18
  consequences of them. It's just like.
• 12:22
  The workplace and employment education also in the media,
• 12:29
  accurate sort of representation. And then I suppose suppose in
• 12:34
  relationships as well, you know, for being able to find someone
• 12:39
  that you love and someone that you want to spend your life
• 12:42
  with. I think it's very, you know,
• 12:44
  it's it's all of those quality of life, you know, things.
• 12:47
  Yeah, that are really. It's, it's the focus of society,
• 12:51
  though, isn't it? It's like how, how do you
• 12:53
  perpetuated society where you, you implement those things,
• 12:56
  family values, a a appropriational attempt or an
• 13:00
  effort to keep a, you know, the survival rate of a species
• 13:04
  alive. And you know, we've actually,
• 13:06
  and it's funny, the humans are, are breeding less and less.
• 13:11
  So we have we're, we're down less than people were.
• 13:15
  I mean, we have, they've got the lowest reproduction rate ever in
• 13:20
  the history of of the planet, which is lower than the 1920s
• 13:23
  where it was like really low because you have like, you know,
• 13:25
  the influenza outbreak and stuff like that.
• 13:26
  And then you have the Great Depression.
• 13:28
  So yeah, we're at a really all time low of, of procreation,
• 13:31
  which is really interesting because, you know, we're told
• 13:34
  that we're consuming more remote because it's only people on the
• 13:36
  planet. We're not an actual fact.
• 13:37
  There's less people probably being born daily.
• 13:40
  So when when you have this kind of like, you know, death toll
• 13:43
  keeps rising because you know, more and more people keep saying
• 13:46
  it will balance itself up, but I don't know, see, that's the
• 13:48
  thing. I don't know if it's a balance
• 13:50
  in the planet, whatever, but it's super interesting.
• 13:52
  So Thomas, tell us a little bit about like, what have you got
• 13:55
  coming up? What are the cool things that
• 13:57
  you're planning on doing or you are doing like?
• 14:00
  Shit. Well, I think the biggest thing
• 14:03
  at the moment for me is the podcast.
• 14:08
  So I've started editing my my first podcast episode with
• 14:13
  Temple Grandin. He's very kindly came on to talk
• 14:18
  to me for an hour and 40 minutes.
• 14:20
  Yes, she's a friend of mine and she does like to talk.
• 14:23
  She does. Talk about cows and children
• 14:27
  growing up and jobs, Yeah. Yeah, so there's there's that.
• 14:32
  And you know, I'm, I'm also trying to, you know, at the at
• 14:37
  the moment and preparing for my, my knee operation wish I'm going
• 14:44
  to have an ACL reconstruction. Goodness.
• 14:48
  Which is a bit scary. So you know, I'm trying to like.
• 14:53
  Prepare some. Hard on the whole social media
• 14:57
  YouTube stuff until that's over there I think.
• 15:00
  Get some recovery in place and then yeah.
• 15:03
  Yeah, but just after that, possibly go back into sport
• 15:07
  maybe. Cool.
• 15:10
  Muay Thai or Taekwon now I think those are the 2.
• 15:13
  The Taekwondo's kid would shoot. For.
• 15:15
  Yeah, sounds good, dude. I guess like it's, you know,
• 15:19
  mental health as well after the end of the day.
• 15:20
  So if you keep yourself kind of like really level headed and I
• 15:23
  think things like that really help.
• 15:25
  There's an article released. I've just done a video on it.
• 15:28
  It's not out yet, but it will be where they were talking about
• 15:30
  how drumming for about 90 minutes a day helps autistic
• 15:34
  people reduce a lot of their issues.
• 15:37
  You know, if it's not a cure or anything otherwise, please don't
• 15:40
  get me, you know, wrong here, but it was really interesting.
• 15:46
  Sensory. Yes, those would sensory
• 15:48
  stimulus. A proprioception activates it
• 15:51
  right and and that had a foot but for 90 minutes.
• 15:54
  It then had a profound long term effect and I found that just
• 15:59
  really, really interesting. But I'm a drummer as well, but I
• 16:01
  think that the idea is that it's it's physical exercise.
• 16:04
  So I was like, all right, now I have to put a drum set every day
• 16:07
  92 in. So it's not that.
• 16:08
  It's kind of more what kind of activity could you input into a
• 16:13
  sensory diet, which is nothing I'll talk about in in my course
• 16:15
  actually, but you know, and the sensory diet, it's all kind of
• 16:18
  like it's a very proprioception, you know, based and and and
• 16:23
  getting those duck the deep muscle muscle, kind of like
• 16:25
  activity going so helps your senses.
• 16:27
  Very interesting. But I think that Taekwondo is a
• 16:29
  great way because they're going to keep you in real good track.
• 16:31
  So I just hope that operation goes smoothly for you.
• 16:34
  I know, I know me too. They're.
• 16:37
  Going to need taking one of my tendons out and from the back of
• 16:41
  my hamstring and get rid of the ligament and then stretching
• 16:45
  over and then touching it. It sounds more grease than it
• 16:49
  is. It's a very common surgery, so
• 16:51
  yeah. I was going to say it's quite,
• 16:52
  yeah, it's quite, it's not, it's not the most extensive thing,
• 16:55
  but it will be a recovery based. You got to be on it with
• 16:59
  recovery, right, so that it doesn't like tighten up and you
• 17:02
  know, because the, you know, like fascia, it covers every
• 17:07
  part of your body, right. And so it's going to be that
• 17:10
  that's going to tighten up. So you got to kind of really,
• 17:12
  really be on it. But yeah, I'm not a biologist,
• 17:15
  but do you know some things? Dude, it's been awesome.
• 17:19
  I have one last question. How did you get into wanting to
• 17:25
  create content? What was the what was the aim
• 17:27
  there? So it's a long story.
• 17:32
  I think it. Just just can sort of concisely
• 17:35
  down a bit. I think I started because I was
• 17:38
  very socially isolated and alone, and it was only until my
• 17:44
  early 20s that I started to really understand what autism
• 17:48
  was and, and how it affected my interactions with people.
• 17:51
  And, you know, because I, I saw them move to university around
• 17:54
  that time and, you know, I had actively go out and make friends
• 17:59
  and do all of this stuff. Yeah.
• 18:03
  Student Life. I started with the the idea that
• 18:08
  I just wanted to share my story on the show.
• 18:11
  I found difficult show what I found good, but over time, you
• 18:16
  know, learning more about it from different arenas, from from
• 18:20
  teaching, from science, from the community, from, you know,
• 18:25
  philosophy and psychology, You know, it, it gave me some
• 18:30
  insight and I started to work on myself very, very intensely for
• 18:34
  a number of years. And I, I got to a point where I
• 18:38
  was, you know, despite having these quite severe mental health
• 18:42
  conditions, I, you know, I can go about life and live how I
• 18:47
  want to and feel confident. And, you know, generally it's,
• 18:53
  it's a massive source of well-being and a big anchor for
• 18:57
  me, you know, going out and trying to help people.
• 19:00
  I think sharing your story is so impactful because you are the
• 19:03
  only person who are you. And I think those those the
• 19:08
  stories that you have, because they're so unique, somebody else
• 19:10
  will relate to those stories. And so to have that kind of like
• 19:13
  relatability is, is really important.
• 19:15
  And I think most people forget about that when they're thinking
• 19:17
  about themselves because they feel like they are isolated,
• 19:19
  right? We're going to really start
• 19:20
  sharing, you know, it comes down to that whole thing, You know, a
• 19:22
  problem shared as a problem halved, but also works either
• 19:25
  way, a problem heard that relates to you as another
• 19:28
  problem halved, right? So I think, I think that's super
• 19:31
  important. So Thomas, where can my viewers
• 19:34
  find you online? I'll leave all the links in the
• 19:36
  description down below, but I'd love for you to just tell us
• 19:37
  where they can find you. So you can find me on my
• 19:40
  website, thomashenley.co.uk as well as chiefly my Instagram
• 19:47
  Asperger's Growth, the YouTube channel Asperger's Growth and
• 19:52
  also the podcast which is the 40 or T podcast.
• 19:58
  It's not the easiest to spell, so you might need to go down to
• 20:01
  there. To links people.
• 20:03
  Definitely go to the links. I will leave a link for
• 20:05
  everything in the show notes and also in the description of these
• 20:07
  videos because they're on social media as well.
• 20:09
  Thomas, it's been an absolute pleasure having to spend some
• 20:11
  more time with you. I feel like I've seen a lot of
• 20:12
  you over the past month, which is great.
• 20:14
  You know, the more the merrier. So thank you so much.
• 20:17
  It's been a pleasure and I'll see you soon probably, no doubt.