Latest / Shouty Brain / #1: Introductions
Transcript
- T: Hello, welcome to the Shouty Brain Podcast. My name is Trevor Holland and this is episode one and I'm kind of flying by the seat in my pants here, so please forgive me. ⁓ I thought I'd give you a little bit of an introduction episode first before I really kick off the the full series. ⁓ just to give you a bit of an insight into who I am and what this podcast is and what you should expect from it. So my whole deal is that I'm forty two years of age and I've in in the last few weeks being diagnosed with autism. I was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of twenty eight, but it's taken me this long to get the autism diagnosis as well. And it's kind of thrown me through a loop a little bit. ⁓ although I have been the way I am my whole life, I feel that somehow everything's changed overnight and I'm coming to terms with the realisation of of what I am. and trying to work out in actual fact what I am. And what I am, in fact, is is disabled. And that's quite quite a thing to to wrap your head around, especially when ostensibly you're high functioning, ⁓ in the biggest adverted commas in the world, because it's not really a term that I particularly ⁓ like. so what I'm gonna be doing going forward is ⁓ I'm I'm gonna be speaking to various different people from different walks of life, all of whom have one thing in common, and that is that they're all neurodiverse, ⁓ either ADHD, autistic or Audi HD. And the point of doing that is to try and find out what makes people tick, and and how they navigate through a world that isn't really designed for them. You know, part of what I am is I've got quite a small network, I've got quite a small circle of friends, ⁓ which is not an uncommon situation for people like me to be in. And it's not that I can't make friends, it's that I find it incredibly difficult to maintain friendships. I tend to keep people at arm's length, if I'm being honest. I've got a few friends in my life, but I hardly ever speak to them. You know. my best friend, for example, I've known him for maybe thirty years at this point. We're like brothers. I love him to pieces. But I can say now I haven't seen the guy in over a decade. I can't even remember how many children he's got because I haven't met any of them. Our relationship at the moment comprises of the occasional text exchange and that's basically as far as it goes. And that's pretty much all I'm capable of at this point. The point I'm making is that not only do I not have many friends I really don't know that many people that are neurodiverse. So what I'm trying to build here is a little bit of a community. ⁓ this podcast is going to be as much about me learning about this situation as it is learning about other people. And just being brutal and honest about what it's actually like to live like this and how other people do it. Cause I'm not alone here. There are so many people out there who are either identifying as neurodiverse or have been diagnosed either recently or a long time ago. But the world for people like us can be an incredibly lonely and intimidating, frustrating place. So the point of this podcast is to try and open that conversation up a little bit. It's gonna be fun, you know, we're gonna have a laugh, we're gonna take the piss out of ourselves. But we're also gonna confront some probably quite difficult topics because that's what this is all about. This is about talking and being honest. And sometimes you've got to confront those difficult conversations to move forward. You know, so that that's really the point of what we're trying to do here. So this this episode is ⁓ really more of an icebreaker ⁓ to give you an idea of what's going to be going on. I'm not always going to be sitting here on my own rambling. As I said, I'm going to have guests quite regularly and they're going to be from all different types of walks of life, ⁓ all with neurodiversity and with some hopefully interesting stories to share. so I think really this is this is gonna be as much So I think this is gonna end up being a therapy session for me as well, to be honest, because I'm trying to wrap my head around this whole thing. make sense of things that have been present in my life for forty two years and and try and ⁓ live the rest of my life in a maybe a slightly different way, because I've been so apologetic and fawning and and and and a an habitual people pleaser my whole life because I didn't want to upset the Apple car or rock the boat or whatever other bloody cliche phrase you can think of for it. But I've been wearing a mask my whole life. Those in the know will know but the the concept of masking is is that a lot of what you do as an autistic person or someone with ADHD or both is is you will put on a mask. day to day in order to appease people or to not expose yourself too much to ridicule or to scrutiny. And I've realised quite recently that my mask has been stuck steadfast onto my face my whole life. To the to the extent to which I I barely even know what my actual face looks like without the mask. I've realized that so much of my life, my public life, has been performative. So much of it. Every single interaction I've had with a a human being, both before, during, and after, has been so heavily rehearsed and planned and then dwelled upon afterwards for decades, if I don't feel like it's gone quite right. Every nuance of of of every conversation. How long do I maintain eye contact for? What's the best facial expression to use around this person when that person says that thing? One the misconceptions about about autism is is that is that people can lack empathy and I think a in a lot of cases that is absolutely not the case. I would consider myself incredibly empathetic and the reason for that is because I feel everything so intensely. And because a lot of the the the the social interaction side of things never came naturally to me. I by virtue of that became an incredibly observant person. I studied people and their interactions so closely. I became a student of the human condition. And something I said in my blog recently ⁓ i is that I attributed my my my kind of formative years to third rock from the sun, where you've got an alien or a group of aliens who are trying to assimilate into humankind by learning and watching and being confused by all the things that people do. And I became very good at picking up those signals because I was studying them so closely. In actual fact, one of the reasons it's taken me so long to be diagnosed with autism is because it was initially rejected as a as an idea on the basis that I was capable of engaging with people that I was in that I was capable of having meaningful conversation and showing emotion and having a sense of humour and ⁓ maintaining a a reasonable amount of eye contact. I was roundly rejected for the idea of having autism for those reasons. That was quite a while ago and and and things have changed since then in terms of understanding. But what really frustrated me is that yes, I yes, I do those things. A lot of us do. But we do them because we've learned how to do them through fastidious studying of the human condition. We don't do it because it comes naturally to us. We've had to work so hard to learn how to do those things. And to maintain doing those things is so incredibly draining and exhausting. I can't tell you, man, I am fucking tired. That would be my my my prevailing state is knackered. I'm always knackered because I'm always working at everything. And it's an invisible struggle, right? It's the the the cliche Duck on the pond. You know, you look like you're just coasting through life when actually you are just constantly working yourself to death just to try and be at what you perceive as the same level as everyone around you. Now listen, I should tell you at this point, I know I'm rambling, I'm meandering. That's gonna be the thing. I'm gonna be doing that. I'm hoping that in between my flights of fancy and and and you know, nonsensical tangents that I'm gonna make some salient points. I think you're just gonna have to bear with me because, you know, I'm disabled, mate, you know, fuck you. But s but, you know, that that has kinda brings me on to my one of the points I wanna make. The whole concept of unmasking. I mentioned that I've been wearing a mask my whole life and that I barely know what I actually am. underneath it. But it's an important step to to take to try and take that mask off and try and be your true self because I've realised how unsustainable it is to constantly have the mask on because it's so exhausting mentally and emotionally to constantly be performing. I've I've realized that in in my in my work because I push myself really hard at work just to keep up. And I burn myself out to the point where I don't want to speak to anyone or I don't want to do anything. I just want to shut myself away until my batteries start to recharge. So what I'm trying to do trying to do now is I'm trying to learn to appease people less. I'm trying to learn to not be such a people pleaser and to actually relize without trying to be selfish about it that it's not up to me to make you feel more comfortable around me. It's up to you to accommodate me and accept me. And that's a difficult thing to do for somebody who spent their whole life trying to please everybody. And I don't want to do it in a fuck you kind of way. But I do need to be kind to myself and be like, you know what? I don't do this kind of thing very well. Or I don't want to do this thing. I'm not going to do this thing. I'm disabled. And there are certain accommodations that I would expect you to make. ⁓ that's going to be a tricky one. So one of those things is the fact that I might ramble on. And I'll just let it happen and stop trying to overthink it so much that I end up second guessing everything that I do. And again, that kind of feels like I'm rewriting my whole personality. So the whole thing's incredibly confusing and it's very early days. another thing I said in my blog is that although I've been autistic my whole life, I I I feel as though I've only been autistic for a few weeks because that's when I was not diagnosed. And from the outside nothing has changed, but everything has changed because everything now has a definition and a meaning and something that I can under try to understand. But man, it's been a really weird few weeks learning that about me. ⁓ and I hear from a lot of people, and I say people I don't speak to anyone, ⁓ people that I see online talking, that when they are diagnosed with autism, they feel as though they become more autistic as a result. And that's an interesting concept. And I don't think that's not saying it's not true, but I think what what's more the case is is that you you're you're aware of what the meaning is of the things that you're doing. So you're becoming more aware of them and more cognizant and you're analysing your own behaviour a little bit more because you're attributing it to something else. But I can definitely sympathize with it because I feel super autistic now. Where before I was a guy who thought I might be on the spectrum somewhere here. But now I'm fully in. I I am fully in. It's weird. It really is. 'Cause you think about everything you've done in your life and everything you've the journey you've been on and realise where you are now and think, ⁓ yeah. No wonder. And another thing about being kind to yourself and me being kind to myself is Just accepting the fact, you know what? I don't need to answer to anybody here. My life has been fucking hard. It has been hard work, hard graft, and it continues to be. It's rough, man. And I'm not comparing my experiences to anyone else, people with physical disabilities, people with other things going on in their lives, because people are on their own journey. And it's not for me or for anyone else to judge anyone else's journey and and try and compare them. ⁓ in terms of what's more severe and what's less severe and what you need to man up and get over. I have had a fucking difficult life up till now. And I need to be kind to myself about it. Because I have spent my life comparing myself to everyone else and wondering why I'm not there. Why am I 42 and don't have a mortgage? Why am I 42 and Have a career, but not one that I've had for a long time. Why do I find it so difficult to be in the supermarket when everyone's talking? Why does that thing smell so strong? Why does everything sound so loud? Why am I always so tired? Why am I exhausted? Why am I angry all the time? Why am I so frustrated that I could just demolish my own house? Why? Because I'm disabled. Because the world wasn't designed for me. Because I'm trying to I'm trying to fit a round peg into a square hole or whatever the fucking phrase is. And that's alright. It's okay. It's not easy. It's okay to be a bit broken. But that is why we're doing this, right? This is why I'm doing this podcast, because I'm wanting anyone who might be in a similar position to me to feel all right about what they're going through because guess what I am as well and it's rough man and that's why I want to speak to as many people as I can to increase my own understanding but also just to get a conversation going. We can compare war stories about how the world works for us. You know, what our strategies are. And it's gonna be interesting and I'm gonna really enjoy it. So you might argue that this podcast is somewhat of a selfish endeavor because I'm using it as an opportunity to have a bit of therapy. But you know what? Call it what you want. Call it therapy, call it a midlife crisis. I don't give a shit. I wanna do a podcast about being neurodiverse because I am and I want other people to have a place to go to to listen to honest conversations and maybe learn a little bit about themselves. And I wanna learn about other people. Sue me, motherfucker. So that's what I'm gonna do. So this is it. This is what Shouty Brain is all about. I called it Shouty Brain for obvious reasons because I'm I'm ⁓ I'm the owner of a brain that never shuts the fuck up. So this is what it is. I've got a website, it's called shoutybrain.com. You go there, you'll see ⁓ various different bits and bobs that I do. You'll see links to my social media. I've got an Instagram and a Facebook page where I share various bits and pieces, little bits of poetry, little doodles, drawings. I've got a s a substack as well. That's linked in my website. this podcast is going to be audio and visual, so you may be seeing it on YouTube. If you're listening to the audio version of it, you can go to my YouTube channel to see the visual. If you want to see my face while I'm talking to you, I can understand entirely if you don't want to do that. Because you know, why would you? It might be more interesting when I've got other guests on there, because you can actually have a little a little insight into the conversation. ⁓ yeah, so if you go to shoutybrain dot com, you'll have links to all of that. You'll be able subscribe to my Substack, you'll be able to subscribe to the podcast and you'll be able to subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me on my social media channels. But listen. This is all a little bit new to me. I'm not a Luddite, but you know, I'm a bit shit at this and I'm gonna be a little bit of a maverick about it. I'm just this is me doing a podcast, so this is it. You know. Hope you enjoy it. I'm gonna have a lovely time doing it. You might have even noticed in the last, you know, twenty minutes since I started this episode I'm being much more chatty than I was because I was being awkward as shit at the beginning, 'cause I didn't know what to say. And now I do know what to say. ⁓ and it's coming to an end in a minute. So great timing, Trev, you know what I mean? But this is what it's gonna be. I'm not gonna overly edit. I'll be cutting out some of the more extraneous like pauses ⁓ and brain farts, but for the most part it's gonna be as is, you know. It's not gonna be neat and tidy. It's gonna be rough, it's gonna be messy, it's gonna be real, and that's all I really want to do. Just this is the reality. Let's not try and sugarcoat it. Let's not try and make it look a little bit more fancy and make it more palatable because that's not what the world is. The world is lovely and and beautiful and fascinating, but also scary and terrible and horrible. So let's just be honest about what it is. Let's not fuck about. You know what I mean? So this is episode one. I'm gonna be probably posting well, I am gonna be posting a new episode every Thursday. All right. So if you subscribe you'll get ⁓ You'll get a new podcast every Thursday. And most of them are going to involve me speaking to a guest, but others are going to be solo ones like this. ⁓ if you do go to my website, you can contact me through there as well, and I'd love to hear from you. If you have things that you want to share with me, your own stories, your own things, or you have ideas for people that you'd like me to have on the podcast and speak to, then certainly do that on there. ⁓ And also if you've got things that you want me to to look into or or bring up or talk about, more than happy to to do that. So please get in touch. I look forward to hearing from you. So I hope you enjoyed this ⁓ first episode. A little bit rough and ready, as I said. But take care of yourselves. I'll speak to you all next week when I'll have a a very special guest talking about having shouty brains. All right. Take care, guys.