Navigating Neurodiversity: A Conversation with Dr. Alondra Rogers| Authentic On Air S2:E7

Hello and welcome back to Authentic On Air with Bruce Alexander. I'm your host, Bruce Alexander, and I am here today with Dr. Alondra Rogers. And I'm going to have Dr. Rogers tell us exactly who it is or who she is and what it is she does. Thank you so much for being here, Dr. Rogers. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Hi, thanks for having me, Bruce. You can just call me Alondra. I am a social worker and an autism consultant. I also write books. I am an autistic and ADHD woman.

I'm late diagnosed and I'm also a mom of a non -speaking autistic girl. So. I have that sort of trifecta of positions where I'm an autism professional, an autism and ADHD individual and a parent. So you are fully steeped in the tradition of neurodiversity. and I'm interested in all, you know, every issue that comes up affects me in some way. So yeah, I'm interested in all of it.

So talking about late diagnosis, I know that's like, it's really a hot topic at the moment, but everybody's diagnosis story is different. Tell us a little bit about yours. Yeah, well, I feel like it's how far back do you go, you know? Like, I first realized that I was different from other kids pretty much as soon as I went to school. And, you know, fast forward through childhood and early adulthood, I really knew nothing about autism. I knew a little bit more about ADHD.

It just wasn't something that I thought I needed to pay attention to. So I didn't. And when I met my husband and got married, I always knew, you know, there's something about him that's different too. And, you I was interested in mental health, even when I first met him, when I was, you know, 20 years old, and I just couldn't figure it out. So what do you mean there was something different about him? Was he different from you or was he different from everybody? both.

Yeah, we're different from each other. And what I recognize now is that I have better masking skills than he does. And that may or may not be due to, you know, gender norms, or just ability, but my ability to mask is greater than his. So, you know, in college and going after college to look for jobs.

He had such a hard time with social aspects of everything, not just socializing, but like going to a job interview and knowing how to put on that mask of a job interview that I you know, everybody does, but everybody does a little bit different. And he really did not do that successfully. So trying to teach him what I realized I was trying to teach him how to mask. So many, many years go by and when we have our child, I noticed that there are differences about her too.

And she had a developmental regression. So that's less common for autistic kids. Most kids have delays. She was on time for all of her early milestones until she was about... just about two, and then she lost skills. So in trying to figure out what was going on, I came very quickly to the conclusion that it was autism, but I didn't really know about autism. My knowledge was really based on stereotypes, based on what was portrayed in media.

And so my idea of autism was like little boys who... wanted to play by themselves. Yeah, exactly. I didn't really know anything. And that was remarkable to me, because, you know, I had worked in mental health administration. And one of the teams that I supported was the kids team. And like, I went to their meetings. And one of their meetings was a meeting with families. And most of the people there had autistic kids. And, you know, still wasn't really seeping in. And I remember that.

I think about that a lot when I'm trying to do advocacy, is that people are not tuned in. Just trying to think about where was I? Yeah, but so my daughter was diagnosed at two and a half by the time that we asked for an assessment. to the time that she was diagnosed, I knew instantly that that's what was going on with my husband. And I called his mom and I started asking his mom questions about, you what was he like when he was little, little?

And suddenly, you know, she told me things that she'd never told me before. Oh, he didn't talk at all until he was three. He didn't say a word. And then all of a sudden he was speaking in complete sentences. His very first words were, I want more Kool -Aid, please. That was the very first thing he ever said. And I was like, oh, check box. And, you know, oh, he would run away from school and go home in the middle of the day.

So, you know, eloping and he ran away at Disneyland, you know, these kinds of stories. And some of those stories are similar to mine. I was an eloper. We lived in kind of a bad part of... of town outside LA and I was the like, that was in the 80s. So like, I don't know how things work now in California, but the very nice gang members would bring me home.

I would run to the park and they knew who I was. So he'd bring me home to my parents who didn't even know I was gone. But yeah, so through the process of my daughter being assessed and diagnosed, immediately I was like, okay, he fits the stereotype, but I didn't really know what the stereotype was. And it took me probably, I'd say six months longer to be turning that view onto myself.

And, you know, suddenly the things that I thought I was and the things I had been diagnosed with didn't make any sense anymore. Like, wait a second. Okay, yeah, I have anxiety. I've been diagnosed with depression, but I don't really have stereotypical depression. They just didn't know what they were looking at. And I think that that happens a lot. So in your practice, do you see a lot of this comparative diagnosis?

You know, people looking at their spouses and their children and it being a mirror that eventually brings it back to them. Yeah, and, you know, people who are other than male tend to have a different experience too. So women, but also people who have gender diversity, their path to diagnosis is or self diagnosis, either one is often longer and has more detours on it.

But definitely, People who are in my position, late diagnosed women tend to have come to that in a similar way, not exclusively, but a lot of parents have their kids diagnosed and are like, oh, wait a second, that is me too. And some are having the assessors turn to them and say, you might wanna get assessed yourself. Especially when you start saying things like, well, yeah, she does this or he does that, but I did that too. You know, it doesn't seem that strange.

And so we, the last time we spoke, we kind of talked about how, whenever you actually went to diagnose, you had a major frustration in getting it done.

Can you talk a little bit about that? yeah, of course. So at the time, this will try to make it meaningful. At the time, my husband was active duty military. So our medical team was some of them were also active duty, some of them were civilians, but there's just a different culture in the military community that I think I would have had a different experience if I had gone to a civilian doctor first, but I didn't have that opportunity. My doctor was uniformed. I think he was a major.

I don't know. Something like that. Major? Yeah. I don't... I'm gonna pretend like I know. And so I told him, it's like, my daughter's been diagnosed and I now realize... that I have all of these unexplained symptoms and experiences that make me think I need to be assessed for autism. And he looked at his nurse and was like, okay. And they brought in the clinic's embedded social worker. I told her the same thing. And then she went out in the hall and conferred with the doctor.

And they, instead of sending me to a psychologist to get an assessment like I asked for, they wanted me to see a therapist first. So they sent me to a social worker. And I was like, well, that's great. You know, I was in social work school at the time. So I was doing therapy for soldiers. And I thought, you know, it's just part of the work to also be going to therapy yourself. So I was like, this will be great.

I'll go in, I'll tell her I need my assessment, and then we can talk about other things. She'll give me my referral. And the first thing that she said to me when I got to that part of my story is, hey, I think I might be autistic and I'd like to get assessed, is she said, you can't be autistic because you're making eye contact with me. And, you know, first, that's a huge stereotype. A lot of autistic people have the ability to make eye contact.

But the thing about me is that I actually have pretty limited eye contact. I make eye contact with people that I'm close to or strangely when I'm very angry, I'll make eye contact. But usually, I don't look at people's eyes. I usually look at their mouths. And there's, I think two reasons for that. One, I avoid the discomfort of looking at their eyes, but I also have auditory processing issues. So looking at their mouths helps me hear what they're saying.

And so I told her, you know, I understand that it might look like I'm making eye contact, but I'm actually looking at your mouth. And she argued with me about it. She's like, no, no, you're looking at my eyes. I'm looking at your face. I guess that's close enough. I did not get a referral from those people. I had to come back to it when I got a new doctor.

So to pause on the story right there, this ability to make eye contact from what I've learned myself is we are predisposed as autistic and ADHD people to certain things. We are not necessarily completely obfuscated from anything. We might have challenge. I had a challenge to make eye contact through, sometimes it's masking, sometimes it's through. like gaining new skills is like I wanted to be able to like control the eye contact game. So I learned to get better at it.

I learned to like, you know, part of it was like not staring at their eyes all the time, but also like, like you said, looking at their mouth, looking at the general part of their face, not looking over here to have a conversation because like I wanted to be taken seriously in conversation. So I learned to level up that skill. Do you think that that is that is often like.

misconstrued as masking because you're learning to improve how you communicate. You know, I think it depends. And like, in autism, kind of the name of the game is heterogeneity. That is just a fancy word for meaning diversity. So everybody's brains, there's actually studies on brain wiring and you. I love this part. I was gonna bring this back up. So yeah, I could do this whole thing this before. So our brains, let me start over. Neurotypical people's brains are generally all very similar.

They function the same and on functional MRIs where they watch how your brain is communicating, neurotypical people's brains all look the same. Autistic people's brains all look different. from neurotypicals and from each other. So there's general similarities, but autistic people are not all the same. We all are different. And so in every single trait or symptom or however you categorize it, you're gonna find a lot of diversity.

So for some people, so my daughter is, she's 12, she's a non -speaking. She does have a communication method, so I'm able to talk to her and get responses. So for her, she says that eye contact causes her physical pain, and that's not an uncommon statement. So for her, could she work on that? If she wanted to, she could. I would never push her to do that, and I never have.

And... I really think that there are truly, you know, autistic people who cannot work on that and get better at it without causing themselves harm. So I think it's very important that people like teachers and parents know that, that pushing people to learn skills can backfire. If they're not, if that's not a skill they want to learn, if that's not something that they can do, Just expecting that they're going to be able to do it can actually backfire and cause harm, cause trauma, you know?

And that's another bit of research on autistic people in particular, as well as ADHD people. ADHD people is that we're all more prone to experience events as traumatic and experience more trauma, even despite that. So... what would typical people would experience as trauma, we are exposed to more of those kinds of experiences. And I want to say something judgmental, but it's neurotypical people who are responsible for that. It's not our fault.

Well, and then, you know, to further worsen that situation, neurotypical people don't have to deal with the dialogue of the thing that they just did in their head constantly running. So the traumatic thing happens no matter who was caused by. Then it's re -traumatized by us reliving it in our heads at least once and sometimes many, many times over as we continue to beat ourselves up and, you know, and say, I should have done this instead of that and guilt ourselves and shame ourselves.

And so it's like this this never it's not never ending. It can be ending. You can. This is another thing that with the right work and then it all goes back into like the pain game is like is the pain you're in worth gaining the skill or is like would gaining the skill cause more pain than just surviving the way it is because it all it all goes back to that. has to be the choice for the individual.

They have to decide because that's the difference between trauma and growth is making the decision to do something hard because you know you can do it. But also, you know, autism is a disability and it's okay if you can't do some things. It's okay. So my daughter makes eye contact very rarely. When she does, it's always about a superior type of connection. But most of the time she doesn't and it's okay. For me, eye contact feels intimate.

So if I am having eye contact with someone that I don't have a strong relationship with, I feel really uncomfortable. So I can, you know, what I learned to do as a child is to look at someone's face without looking at their eyes to accommodate, you know, my grandma telling me you look at me when I talk to you and my own level of comfort. So that's a compromise that I have made and that has worked for me. I would say my husband is in the middle. He makes eye contact sometimes.

He can if I, you know, ask him to, but at the same time, you know, I don't need to ask him to, you know? Something that is really important for people to know is that for an autistic person, we don't filter information. the way neurotypical people filter information. So when I look at someone while I am trying to think or do anything else, I am now getting so much more information from you that it's distracting.

So I like, I notice one of the things that if I'm trying to mask that I try to... differently is when I am speaking, I hardly ever look at the person because I'm trying to think and I can't think and look at you at the same time. So if you know, I'm sure if you watch this later, you'll watch like every time I talk, I'm like looking over here because I'm trying to think about what I'm saying versus you know, how are you reacting? How are you taking it? Are you understanding me?

Like I can't deal with all of that stuff. Right. Yeah. And that's like all that feedback is a lot. And as a coach for ADHD parents and you know, I don't coach anybody who's currently identifies as autistic, but there's, there's some of that in there. It's the, the urging for them to understand why they're doing what they're doing. It's like, if you're masking, are you doing it for a reason that is worthy of shrinking yourself?

Because they're, I mean, uh, on my last episode, I talked to, uh, a person who talked about, her autism, I'm sorry, their autism and how it is important to go out safely as I go out softly, come home safe. It is this idea that there are, there are certain amounts of things that are worthy to shrink just a little bit because you get to come home alive. Like, you know, showing up all the time as yourself does not always equate to safety for everyone. I am, I am a large man who is imposing.

I can get away with being fully myself most of the time and not feeling intimidated. That's not the same for everybody else. So I choose not to mask to very like, we're hardly any degree. There are skills that I've decided I want to have. It's like, it's not like me trying to make more eye contact when it feels comfortable is not me trying to act like a neuro -typical. It is something that I decided, like, I feel like that makes me feel more seen and valued in a conversation.

So I want to offer that as an option for other people. If it doesn't feel right in a conversation, I don't try to press that because it's something that I want to be an exchange. Like I all want it to be a better exchange between other people. So it's not about me trying to shrink who I am. It's me trying to be the best version of myself directed towards exchanging with other people in those spaces.

And I think that, you know, that's perfectly okay. My sort of social work perspective on anything is that people get to do what they want to do so long as it's not hurting anybody else. And I always want to hold space for people who cannot do that. You know, that's okay, too.

And I think it's worth mentioning here that masking can be, and it's not, you know, just eye contact, it's, you know, masking in the broad sense, can, can be automatic, can be something that you're not even aware that you're doing for safety. And that varies from what your identity is. But I think it's a common experience for a lot of different people. So I think as a woman, I might mask in certain situations that I might feel threatened without even thinking about it.

And I think I would be remiss if I didn't mention that there was recently a shooting by police of a black autistic 15 year old boy. And that should remind all of us that... there are risks to not masking. Unfortunately.

and part of that is you know once again being aware of being aware of your capacity and what like what's your what the deficiency is between where you exist and where you Are like what's your place is in neurotypical society like there is once I understood that a lot of the things that I was showing up as in neurotypical society was because I was told sit still Don't talk when other people are talking I was told to shrink who I was and I just did that because that's what you know,

like authority figures were telling me that's who I was supposed to be as I grew older and that like those urges were still there and I was still hearing those same things. I was able to do work on myself and realize that that they're not allowed to tell me that like that is it's my choice to decide how much of myself I want to give to people and if they don't like it, they can they can remove themselves from my space and.

Then I was able to like understanding that first was a huge component because if I didn't know where where all of this stuff was coming from, I didn't know how to make adjustments to then understand like what is me, what is actually me? And then once you understand who you are, then you can start to say, okay, this is the piece that is that I would like to bring back into myself to then go out into that society because it's important to do A, B and C. Like I need to go get a job. I need to.

make money, I need to be able to, you know, have a relationship with friends or whatever. Once I realized all of that, then it was like, okay, I don't really I'm going to work for myself because I don't want to try to show up at a nine to five job and be unhappy all the time to make dollars that didn't really buy happiness. I remember being 18 years old, graduated from high school, and I was going to community college and I had to work a full -time job.

And I remember coming home after like week two crying, like, I cannot do this my whole life. This is misery. I was like, I definitely am going to go to college and do what I want to do. And I sort of do that. Well, because my daughter has really high needs, I have to be really flexible.

So I definitely have that. So it's mostly worked out. I thought I would do therapy, but no therapy for me. Not anymore, yeah. I actually really do like consulting because I do have flexibility and I have a lot of prominent ADHD features. Like I like change and I like doing different things. So I like having different projects come up and people with different issues than the last person that I helped. I enjoy them.

moving through all these different spaces and dealing with ADHD and autistic people on so many different levels, what do you feel like the biggest challenge to showing up as yourself is that you see comprehensively? Mm. I am a natural oversharer. So when when I was in therapy school, I was very observant of boundaries and rigidity about sharing anything. And now there is in therapy, you can like disclose something. or talk about some experience for yourself and they call it the use of self.

And I was really nervous about ever doing that because I didn't feel like I knew I couldn't predict what the consequences would be two or three steps down the road. So I didn't want to do that. But I felt inauthentic in that way that I couldn't do that. And So as a consultant, I still struggle with that, but I believe that part of connecting as an autistic person is doing that, is saying, I see you because I know what that's like. Here's what it was like for me. That matters so much.

I think to me as an autistic person, it matters. And... to neurotypical people were always told, don't make it about you. But that's how autistic people connect is I know that you know, because you just told me that you had something just like that happen to you. So it's really helpful. Yeah, as a coach, that's that's everything about earning the trust of the client is

like, you have to know that I see you. And if I'm dealing with, you know, exclusively ADHD and autistic people, they need to know that I've that I've been through it or I've been connected to it to a degree in which I can explain it back to them basically, as if I've lived it. And once they once they've heard enough of those stories are able to to stop thinking I'm judging them while they're sharing their truth. And that is like up to that point.

It's just, you know, us like, you know, kind of tiptoeing on eggshells because they're like, I can't really open up to tell you what I need to tell you until I see that you really get me. And I still think it's really important to have boundaries. Like I'm not going to share some intimate detail like, oh, my, I got an argument with my husband yesterday and I'm going to tell you about it.

You know, like that's too personal, but to be able to tell someone, you know, yeah, I have a child with high needs and I know what it's like to struggle, to do self -care. Like, you know, that's something that I want to be able to share in a way that is meaningful. So I still struggle with, okay, where's the line? But I always err on the side of caution. And so as you know, luckily for me being a life coach, that boundary is totally different. It's like I like very much my life is an open book.

It's like this is something I'm struggling with because they come to me because I'm able to struggle with these things openly and able to have the conversations that get me out of those situations. And if they, if they define this person who never struggles, then I never have the testimony to offer them with those struggles. And that's, you know, and that's very different. You've got degrees to offer. You have got like, you know, years and years of training.

I've got years and years of experience of just living and fucking up. Like that is like, I'm bringing you all of my, you know, all of my testimonies of just messing things up and they're all yours to read through and share. And the, I think the, the life coaches who aren't who I'm not going to say are, they might be successful, but who aren't doing good work are the ones who are trying to do therapy with a life coach experience. Like you can't do it. You're not a therapist. You're not a doctor.

If you are, and if you're trying to do the opposite as a therapist, be careful. Because that boundary gets very confusing if you're sharing all of your personal shit and experiences and trying to stick to the formulaic logic that exists in the therapy world. It's gonna get really, really dicey. Yeah, it doesn't work that way. Therapy does not allow that because the supreme rule of therapy is that you are there for that person and the boundary is very thick.

The boundary between you and me, if you're my client, is really, really thick because you don't want to cross any lines. There's also a power. differential when you go to a professional, whether you realize it or

not, there's a power difference. So as a therapist, you have to be really, really careful with that power. So you don't want to... as you hire a therapist, you are deferring like you're deferring the like the entrance into your mind. Like there's no earning it. Like soon as you book the appointment, you have already deferred to let this person into your mind and start poking around.

So if they then were to shrink that boundary and to like, I mean, that's how inappropriate relationships happen in that world is because. really true issue. Even I mean, you know, everyone thinks about like, you know, romantic relationships or sexual relationships as being the big problem. That's a problem, too. But there are like, the line of friendship or like, dual relationships is what they call them.

But yeah, like, oh, if maybe if you stop being my client, we can be friends like, that's You can't ever do that. You can't ever undo the relationship that you had first. So. That sounds so like... Does that hurt? Oh, um... I would think that it's more concerning for the client because something when I did therapy, so just to like be clear, I have a non -clinical license right now. I don't do therapy.

But when I was doing like my internship or whatever, you have learned all the rules of therapy and it's very clear to you what those are. So it did not bother me at all because I felt like having those boundaries is like a duty to your client. That's the right thing to do that preserves their safety and trust. So it never bothered me.

But one of the ways I think that therapists and the institution of therapy fails clients is that we never educate clients on what therapy is, what it looks like, what is this relationship. Because, you know, if you've never gone to therapy before, how are you supposed to know what it's like?

Like, it's just... A lot of people think that they don't need therapy because they can just talk to their friends because that's what it feels like when they go to therapy sometimes is you're just sitting there talking about your problems. But there is actually something else going on. But if you never explain that to people, then they don't know. Well, what's the explanation? What should the therapy world be telling people? Well, I think they should be telling people what is this relationship?

So as your therapist, I'm not a friend. I'm not someone who's going to fix your life for you. What we're gonna do, and it depends, depends on what your goals are. Some kind of therapy is like, we're gonna spend years talking about your childhood and how it affected you and how you can repair. Or you might want to do 10 weeks of therapy to get over your divorce or something. You know, it totally depends. But I just think that it should be talked about.

And there's just lots of things that aren't talked about. I think every time someone starts therapy, the therapist should remind them, I'm a mandatory reporter. So if you tell me about anybody, who is a vulnerable person, a child, your grandma, you know, your disabled cousin, if there's any kind of abuse, and it doesn't just mean, you know, hitting someone. It could be my brother's taking money from my grandma. That's a reportable issue, and people should know in advance.

Yeah, it's I never had any desire. So there's this these worlds that I always thought I would have to go in to do the work that I was called to do. I would either have to go into the world of the church and be a pastor or I would have to go into therapy or counseling. I got like, that's where I would have to be. So I always push this calling away because I didn't want to like have that thick boundary between people or I didn't want to have that superstrict dogma to live by.

None of that sounded any kind of good to me. the when you do life coaching, right?

When you are like completely willing to create a space that is where first off, I have to have my my plate clean. I have to be willing to be totally vulnerable and honest. So whenever you come into my space, I'm able to hold space for you. Korea and like if my soul is clean and I can hold up a mirror so you can just see what you are dealing with and I can just hold space for that and ask the right questions to deal with what is on your mind.

and what is blocking you from wherever it is we've decided that you want to get to, that is literally all I have to do. And then just keep, hold you responsible for the goal that you stated as we move forward. It's like you stated this is what you wanted. Are you sticking to it? And it is really so powerful how something that simple can get so much done. It's like just, but it's like, as soon as I'm not being honest, as soon as you're not being honest, it doesn't work.

Like if you're hiding behind your lies to yourself, if you're not being honest to the questions you're asking me, there is no transformation. If I'm coming into it and I've got my own baggage I'm carrying into it and I'm triggered by what you're saying, I am not gonna be able to hold space in the proper way and it doesn't work. Like it's so interesting to see all this happen. Yeah, and I don't want to therapy is transformational to especially if you have

a therapist that you do connect with. It's really wonderful and powerful. I had an experience where I had weekly therapy for two years and it really did change my life. That was before I went to therapy school. But you know what, it's not for everyone. There's a high rate of burnout because you have so much emotional investment. And I know for me that as a, you know, working 40 hours a week during therapy, I don't think I could do that.

And part of that is because of my, some of my autistic traits like hyper empathy. I can't not feel what the person is feeling. Um... makes me wanna ask the question again, how were you okay with that thick boundary

between you and them when you're feeling hyper empathetic for them going through a struggle? How did you survive that? It's it's hard. The way that I managed it was to really use the tools that I was given in school to and in my training. School gives you a lot but also you know, like when I did my internship, I had a senior social worker that I worked with who was he was awesome. He was like, 40 year veteran, had a lot of experience doing therapy.

Being able to tune myself, I don't even know how to explain this, tune myself wholly to the other person. So I would hear my own sort of. thoughts about what was going on, but it was in a sense like I'm outside of me and totally focused on the other person. That level of emotional effort is not something that I could sustain 40 hours a week. But I still found myself really emotionally invested in my clients.

And my very first... experience with therapy, I worked with soldiers who were transitioning out of the military. There was a special unit for soldiers that had been injured or were ill and were transitioning out of the military, so I did kind of short -term therapy with them. And I still remember the very first patient I ever saw. And I so hope that he's doing well because he had been through unbelievable things.

And yeah, I was really emotionally invested and that is, there's a very fine line of how much investment you should have. And I don't know if I would have, you know, ever got that right. Because yeah. I don't know how to completely turn that off, but I think I did well while I was doing it. But I'm also, I'm very glad to have a different model to work on now.

And that's the consulting, right? So this something that I've I've been uncovering as I've been doing my work with my clients is we are like as ADHD and autistic people, we are taught for so long that everything that like our impulses are wrong are like our inner voice is is stupid and it's lying and we should not listen to it. You know, if like our urge to move is wrong, like everything that we're doing is just wrong.

My goal has become to help people re like start to retrust that in that impulsivity, retrust that inner voice that tells you it within a framework, like not to just, you know, uncaged to beast and let it run wild, but you know, to live by a code like a standard of living and then to trust your inner voice. What did like, what does that make you like? What do you think of that? What are your thoughts? Yeah, I actually have a little phrase for that and I call it living a neurodivergent lifestyle.

So there's a lot of aspects of that, but one aspect of that is listening to your own needs and being able to understand them. So that's really tricky when you're talking about impulsivity because some impulses can be dangerous. You know, people have like... impulses to do drugs or have risky sexual behaviors like these can be damaging to you. So on the one hand you have to determine what's the need behind the impulse.

So if your need behind the impulse is something you can recognize like I'm low on dopamine. then you can make a good choice about doing something a little bit different. And movement is always a great way to address some of those impulses. Yeah, and what I've found is that a lot of it is so where we miss, we miss construe what that inner voice is telling us because we've got so much junk in our head. Like, and part of my program is like teaching people how to get the junk out of your head.

And then like first thing in the morning, you have to do like a meditation and then a like we use what's called the stack. It was what's this program where you are able to. Basically have a conversation with yourself and work through whatever feelings you are having to start the day. Then you do some movement. Then you like you put some love into the people that are important to you.

And that allows you to like kind of weaponize your mind to be able to actually hear what you're trying to tell yourself versus having all these distracting thoughts saying like I need to take care of my body. You know, like there's you know, all these things running through my mind because I haven't made any peace there. I'm ignoring my wife. But as soon as you do all those things to start your day, all of a sudden, you're free to actually think about what is going to drive you forward today.

And it's been pretty powerful. Yeah, I think that's good advice. If you take the time to just have some mindfulness, instead of reacting to everything is taking the time to actually consider where you are and what you want to do. Yeah. So, as we're just gonna start to wrap up here, but before we get too far close to

the end, you mentioned as like you were going through the process of diagnosing your daughter that she reverted on some of her skills. And I didn't wanna go without talking about that part. Like, how did you find that? How did you find the reversion of your daughter in this process? Yeah, so she had this noticeable change.

And it's less common, but it's not uncommon for autistic kids to have this similar experience. Hers was quite dramatic, and that's a bit unusual. So she developed pretty normally. Looking back, she had a lot of sensory issues. And by the time she was about nine months old, I expected that she would get a diagnosis of sensory processing disorder. But, you know, she was speaking, she walked early, like she was walking at nine months old. Because I think she had a tremendous drive to move.

She used to cry if she wasn't moving, like you had to... My husband would say she's like a shark. She can't stop moving. And before she could do that on her own, we would have to be moving. So carrying her around, I would wear her in a little whatever, you know, little carriers. I couldn't think of it. And take her everywhere, all around the house. But about... I'd say about 18 months, I noticed something change. She just stopped talking as much.

And very gradually over months, she started losing speech. She stopped responding to her name. When I would call her, you know, she used to look, she stopped doing that.

She started having kind of different behaviors than she did before where she would like, She had a glow stick, like my husband had these like military glow sticks in his kit and he gave her one one day and she held onto that glow stick 100 % of the time she was awake and she'd fall asleep and when she woke up she would look for her glow stick and she didn't play with any other toys. You know, it was unusual and...

It was very interesting because her pediatrician, when I came to her and said, I'm having concerns that she's losing skills and I would like her to have an autism assessment, the pediatrician said, well, she said hello to me and she waved and she's looking at me. So I don't think that that's a problem. But if you want a referral, you can just call these people yourself. So she gave me this little pamphlet. I called them.

and they made an appointment and like two weeks later they saw her and they told me they were absolutely certain that she was autistic and they fast -tracked. They called in favors to get her diagnosed quickly. So at the time we were living in Kansas and the wait list was nine months to get seen at the one of the two places in the state that did autism assessments.

And this local county zero to three program was able to get one of the universities to come out and do six autism assessments for the military because we lived in a rural community in one day. So we did get her diagnosed really quickly within two months. So that's a pretty like, I mean, that collapses the time for the assessment, which is nice, but for you, that means that that like speeds up your time to grieve the life that you knew. How did that affect you? It was very...

I don't know if I don't think of it as grief. I just think of it as like orienting. I had to reorient myself to what the world actually was for us. You know, yeah, I had expectations. You know, I thought she would... go to ballet class and read aloud to me and do all these things that were different. And in my mind at that time, I thought the faster we get our diagnosed, the faster we'll get intervention and things will just be normal.

Eventually she'll just be pretty much like I was, like weird, but okay. Things are different than that too. You know, I've had to reassess what is many times and I've never thought of it as grieving because I'm lucky to have her and I love the way she is. It is different than pretty much anybody else I know.

I mean, the reason why I use the word grieving is because we build these lives, like, you know, these whole lives of imagination, you know, my kids as well, with like, based on certain things that we think that we know. And then life happens. And it turns out that that life is not going to happen. That life is, it's dead. And so for me, like a process of grief, like grief is not a bad thing. Grief is a necessary action to be able to move on properly. to the new life.

And so for me, like I say, grieve that because you seem like you are very like all in into the life that you are leading and you're not like, you know, regretful of any of it. So like, it seems like you did grieve that, but that's just me on the outside, not having that much information. I mean, I processed the change. I did. But that's an ongoing process too, because I have had expectations change all along the way. Yeah, pretty much frequently.

And I am comfortable with that if I know, this is so funny, I'm comfortable with the changes if I know what to expect next. That makes me feel safe as long as I have some kind of control, which of course is just silly because I have no control. But the way that I... hope with that is like, okay, what's the next thing I need to do? How I help her and I've been really lucky to be able to do a lot to help her, especially with communication, because she has absolutely no language.

She occasionally says yes. But that's it. So having communication means everything. So yeah, once... Once we get over kind of that initial like, okay, things are not going to be the way that I thought they were, then you make a new picture in your mind of what it's going to be. And then you adapt when it's not like that either. Do you feel like you're the combination of your training in the fields that you've been trained in and your ADHD allows for you to adapt that picture faster?

I absolutely do. Yes. it's like you said, as long as I'm okay with the change ADHD, as long as I know

what's gonna happen next and because of your, but you also have the training to understand what is likely to happen next. And that is, so that's actually the perfect mix of things happening. empowered by my training to manage whatever happens. That has come in handy in lots of different experiences in my life. I definitely feel like I have a handle on it.

I also feel like this is terrible, but I also feel like when I go to... providers, my daughter's providers, and they know that I have doctorate that they treat me differently. Oh, that's not terrible. I mean, yes, it's terrible for them. It's great for you, though. Obviously. Yes. fair that they don't treat every parent like that. I mean, but then you have to be balanced. The fact that you're a woman and then, you know, they take you less seriously because you're a woman.

So maybe you get treated like a regular person just because you have a doctor. one of the things that I actually make an effort to do is to make sure that all of her providers are women. And that's part of the reason is that there's an equality there that I don't have to deal with when it's a male provider. Because that is, you know, one more thing to have to deal with. And I do... I absolutely love her providers.

Like I said, we were in the military, so we had a lot of different ones for her first eight years. And the last four years when my husband has been out, it has been so nice. I just get no pushback. Well, speaking of like providers resources on last week's episode, Autism Speaks came up and I was okay. That face was something that was new to me. Like I did not, I did not know like I for one being on the spectrum of something that is also new to me.

So I had no, no correlation to Autism Speaks, but I was told and I, you are somebody who's knowledgeable in this. I want to just, you know, to counter check it. that there's no there's no autistic people on the board whatsoever.

And that is very much it is about curing autism versus giving resources to help autistic people exist as they are. me give you a little bit of nuance. So first, Autism Speaks is the biggest autism charity in the world. They are incredibly unpopular with autistic people. They're pretty popular with parents of autistic kids. The reason that they are unpopular with autistic people is... most of their history.

So they were created by some grandparents of a child who was autistic in the 90s and their goal was to cure autism. So that was their mission for most of their existence and a lot of their PR really painted autism as a tragedy and autistic people as a burden without, I mean not directly meaning to do that, but that was the result. And at one point they did have a couple of autistic people on their board and those people resigned.

And I think that they do have a couple of autistic people that I don't think they're on their board of directors, but there are a couple of autistic people that do work with them now. But their history has done a lot of harm and they've really tried to adapt to the interpretation that most people have had of them, most autistic people, they have tried to make some changes, but their budget is still reflective of their values and they don't really provide any help for autistic adults or children.

They mainly are devoting money to research and cause causation. They're still invested in curing whether or not they say they are. So I would say, you know what, they create a lot of resources and some of them are okay. Some of them I don't particularly like. I never recommend them because they're a mixed bag. I hope. you recommend? If you were looking for resources for ADHD and autism, what are the resources that you suggest to your clients, to whomever?

Yeah, I mean, I think it depends on, you know, what are they looking for?

What do they need? I mean, there are some really big organizations that have all kinds of resources, like especially for ADHD, like Chad is a huge organization that has all kinds of resources, has been around forever. So they have tons of articles on everything. For autistic people, I would say, you know, what is it that they're looking for?

There are organizations that are devoted to different kind of aspects of autism or like there's the Autism Self Advocacy Network, which is focused on autistic adults. There's the Autistic Women, I think, Non -Binary Network. I'm not sure if their name is reflective of... you know, gender inclusion. There's the yellow ladybugs, which is for autistic girls, or they probably also are gender inclusive. You know, it depends on on what you're looking for. It's kind of hard to say.

This show is primarily for parents, like adult parents who have ADHD or autism, which means that if they have children, there's a likelihood that they are probably parenting it as well. But I'm trying to focus more on being a resource for and helping provide resources for the parents themselves for ADHD and autism. Yeah. Well, I would say that another organization that I want to mention is neuroclastic. Neuroclastic has tons of articles on various subjects. And is it called embrace autism?

They also have lots of scientifically focused information that is endlessly useful, but broadly, if you're looking for resources, you should consider the sources. So I definitely think that following on social media, you know, other parents or organizations that reflect your values and your needs. So yeah, if you're an autistic parent and you want to find other autistic parents, yeah, look, look for them, take a look at what they're sharing.

and don't be afraid to unfollow accounts that aren't reflecting your values. In the autism community, there's so many creators. Some of them just share kind of humorous content. Some of them use their children as content. And I'm not a big fan of that, actually. Um, and then, you know, there's people like me who are professionals and autistic and parent. Um, so I think casting a wide net and just following a bunch of accounts and unfollowing ones when you think, gosh, that's not really for me.

That's okay too. And I think that's really important that you mention that because a lot of people

feel like once they start following somebody and feel some sort of loyalty to like, you know, to the accounts, like, well, I didn't like that one, but I'm, they provided me so much or whatever. It's like you, it's okay to just no longer align with what somebody is posting because social media is a world of like constant evolution and people are trying to like attract new people all the time. So they might pivot any point and stop making the content that you brought you there.

It's okay to back away for your own, like your own mental health. It's important. It's actually important to do it, to say like, this is not something I want to see on a daily basis. I don't want to be guilted or ashamed or, you know, fear might feed. Yeah, for me, I, not too long ago, I just started unfollowing accounts that featured their young children without any protection of their privacy. Because I'm uncomfortable with that. And there's an account that I really like. His name is Shaden.

I can't remember what the name of like the account is, but he is. Um, you know, he's an older child. He's like 12 or 13, and this is something he does with his mom. He presents himself and he talks about topics that are important to him. That's the kind of content that I think is, is awesome. He is a self advocate and he is sharing his experience. He's not being, you know, he's not a product that is being created by the parent and saying, you know, whatever. whatever the parent wants to say.

And there are a lot of great parent content creators that also are protective of their children's identities. You know, they don't show their names, they, you know, hide their faces or, you know, cover it up or something. I really do respect that. I respect the desire as a parent to share with other parents, like what you have learned. And I do that. I don't share. images of my daughter because she can tell me that she doesn't want me to. So I know that her privacy is important to her.

And that's part of the reason I think that I don't really enjoy accounts that follow around autistic kids, especially if they don't have communication, like they can't really consent or, you know, not. Yeah, I mean, and of course, to me, it makes sense that it would not feel good to you. Like for like very similar to me is like I don't it took me a while to understand the the downside of sharing my kids on social media. I didn't like do it a whole lot, but I wasn't actively not doing it.

And now, like so if I use a picture of my family as like a thumbnail for a YouTube video or something, everybody's face gets blurred out except for mine. It's like, yes, my family exists, but to you, they're just an idea. It's like, I will share the idea of my family. You don't need to know exactly who they are. You just need to know that I have a family and sometimes I feel like I'm failing them.

And that is, you know, that's part of my platform is like, I mess up sometimes, but I constantly keep showing up and trying. And, but that was not how it always was. And it's, it's okay to make those mistakes and realize like, oh crap, I've been oversharing, but at some point you have to take responsibility.

of the fact that you were putting tons of photos of your children out there to be used, however, and then in the case that you were speaking of, you're putting entire stories and narratives about children out there that they don't get a say of. And at some point they might be made aware of that and completely disagree. Like over my shoulder, Mike, one of my kids was like, why didn't you blow our faces out? And I was like, because you're not old enough to make the decision yet. That's okay.

And whenever you are, you can have your own social media. I don't want to share that. Yeah, my thoughts about the, especially about non -speaking kids is a lot of parents will be like, they don't even know. They won't. And I'm like, no, if you don't have a communication, you do not know that. My child has such eagle eyes. She can look at my phone upside down from, you know, eight feet away and know what I am doing. She, she. than that, even if they didn't know, you do.

Your responsibility is to protect them, to protect their stories, to do what is best for them and sharing their story without their consent is not what's best for them. And if they can't consent, then don't fucking share it. That's my opinion. Yeah, no, I am of the same opinion. And I think that you have to really consider like, what's the value of that, of sharing something personal about your kid. And I always think about my own mom. Like if social media had been around, like, oh my God.

we would have been humiliated children. Have you watched the America's Funniest Home Videos recently?

Like I started rewatching it with my kids and it's still funny, but so much of it is like shaming children and like, you know, it's just like all of a sudden you realize how jacked up the 90s were. I was like, oh my God, like, you know, it's like, people would just get hurt like tragically and it's like, I got it on video. And it's like, it's okay. and go, oh my god, do they have to go to the hospital after this?

It's like nobody cares as long as it's recorded like we might win some money for this and like i'm talking to my my oldest daughter and she's like That wasn't funny. That was really uncomfortable and I was like I was like what humor was has changed drastically in the last 15 years it was okay to shame people to maim people to do whatever to get a laugh and Everybody was in on the joke.

Everybody was okay with it and now in like This is the landscape has shifted so much to where like if there is a person in the center of this joke being hurt, it's all of a sudden we realize it's not funny and it's just realizing how much of the content over the last 20, 30 years was built based upon that. Like I'm gonna go back, try to share an old movie with my kids. I was like, this is so cringy because that's what it was based off of is like.

making laughs off of the backs of other people and it was like oh man I got to reassess sharing some of this stuff after we watch it first but that you know I think that's a pretty good place to stop but I want to make sure you give time to share your like what you like you know talk about your consulting you know your Instagram profile anything that you'd like to share to the audience Okay. Yeah, I am the author of three books, two of them are on self care and community

care for parents of children with disabilities. And both of those are called Thriving Together. And I also have written a third book called Meeting Myself in the Dark, which is a shadow work journal with prompts for nerd virgin people. And all those are available on on Amazon. and you can find my social media profiles. I am on Instagram and threads which is the cool Twitter and my handle is just dr.

Alondra Rogers and the name of my consultancy is Divergent Autism Services so you can also find my website where I blog occasionally. Yeah that's it! And if you wanna, if you just wanna send me all of that stuff in the email, I'll post it all in the show description so people can find you. This has been a great conversation. I really truly enjoyed it. To my audience, this has been Dr. Alondra Rogers, and I hope that you gained something from this conversation.

And I'm Coach Bruce, and if you are looking to really find that inner voice we were talking about earlier and learn to trust the impulse that you have. Feel free to go to my website, AuthenticIdentityManagement .com, set up a consultation at forward slash consultation. That is AuthenticIdentityManagement .com forward slash consultation.

And we can set up a free conversation and we can give you a few strategies on how you can start living your life on purpose and stop being, stop being at the whims of what all is happening to you in your life. This has been a great conversation. Hang out with me for a minute and we will wrap this up. Thank you everybody for listening. I will see you again next week. Mmm.