Hi, are you a gifted or twice exceptional adult who feels a bit stuck in your journey? Do you have goals and dreams which you would love to achieve, but you don't know where to start or feel a little bit overwhelmed? Or maybe you have a thousand ideas, 500 projects and get distracted by your own thoughts and would love some support on focus and accountability.
Whatever gets you stuck, I wholeheartedly believe that gifted and twice exceptional specific coaching will help you unleash your power so that you can be your most authentic gifted self. I recently embarked on my journey on becoming a gifted and twice exceptional coach. So if you are interested in working with me one-on-one, please reach out via email at hello at giftedunleashed.com
Or you can find more information about my coaching offers on the website giftedunleashed.com forward slash coaching. I would love working with you and I would love to get you unstuck. So please reach out and let's get started. Hello and welcome to Unleash Monday, where we talk about the brain, especially the gifted brain, and how does it affect our thinking and experience of the world differently.
There are a lot of stereotypes and stigma around giftedness, and I'm here to challenge those. I'm here to raise awareness and to have a conversation around this topic of what does it mean to be a gifted adult. Common experience among gifted folks is that they feel out of place they don't quite fit in they are too sensitive too intense too emotional too over excitable and too deep thinkers about the world and about themselves
So if you have been called too much of about anything, then this show is for you. My name is Nadia. I'm too loud, too colorful, too bubbly, too bossy, and I love to talk too much. So welcome to my world, and I'm so happy you are here. And happy Monday. I hope you had a wonderful weekend. I'm so excited you are here. And I'm sending you some love for this special Monday in the year. Today, we have an amazing guest, as every two weeks. I invited Ludmilla Proslova to join us for a conversation.
And Ludmilla has extensive experience in the field of diversity, equity, and inclusion. And she's a professor of psychology. for organizational psychology. So she works at Vanguard University and has a professorship there and does consultancy and focus on supporting organization in creating systemic inclusion, informed by an understanding. of neurodiversity. She's also a contributor to Fast Company and Harvard Business Review and other amazing
platforms where her passion is writing. And I will link everything we talk about into the show notes so you can go and read her amazing contributions. So without further ado, I just want to... introduce you to Ludmilla and she will share her own story and what she offers in the neurodiverse space. So welcome Ludmilla. Welcome, Ludmilla. I'm so excited to have you on the podcast today. Thank you so much, Nadia. I look forward to talking to you. I'm super excited that my network and my...
contacts are growing in this neurodiversity space. And I found you through your LinkedIn page and you have such a vast... resource there and you share so many amazing articles. But before we talk about those, for the listeners today, do you want to share who you are? How did you get into this topic of neurodiversity? And just introduce yourself a little bit. Sure. I've done quite a few things in my life, but they all...
mostly related to diversity in some shape or form. So I have been in my professor position for a while, and I'm a professor of... industrial organizational psychology at gungard university of southern california but i actually started as my first job in global diversity and that was a long time ago Actually, when I was still in college, I started working in global diversity and a large multicultural not-for-profits.
trying to create an environment where different kinds of people could collaborate. And what was interesting, despite the fact that it was a really long time ago, I think we were doing something pretty pretty far ahead of its time because we're really aiming for culture ad rather than culture feed or the third culture. So we didn't want to have one dominant culture within an organization. We really wanted to have something that is very fluid very flexible where people are able to you know use
words from several different languages in one sentence and different kinds of traditions would all be celebrated. So it was really a lot of fun and it was a really nice way to end. into diversity space because it was very inclusive and very focused on appreciating differences. In general, people did not talk about culture ad until prayer recently.
And so that was actually pretty unique to be doing an organization that doesn't do culture, she that strips people of their individuality and cultures and personality and do culture. where people can bring a lot of uniqueness that really enriched the environment. So that was my first angle on diversity. But then...
After that, I got my PhD in industrial organizational psychology. My dissertation and my thesis were also on cross-cultural global level diversity. But then I also started looking at all the... other aspects like gender and disability. And then only pretty recently in the last couple of years, I started thinking more specifically about neurodiversity.
So it kind of went from global level diversity to a very deep individual psychological level diversity. It was definitely very personal because I was trying to figure out some of the things about myself. and how different people function. And then I came across some readings about autistic women. And even though I took... all the foundational psychology courses the way autistic functioning is described is so oriented to five
year old boys that anyone who doesn't fit in that category would not even recognize themselves. And then when I started looking specifically at how artistic women function, I kind of had a light bulb moment and uh so that is how i started looking at neurodiversity. And specifically because I'm an industrial organizational psychologist, then I found those completely horrendous employment numbers with 85% of autistic.
college graduates unemployed. That just kind of sent me on a crusade. May I ask a question here? You know, you just mentioned this. We have this stereotype in society about five-year-old boys being autistic. I hear a lot of women that say, hey, I got identified autistic as an adult and I had no idea, struggling through life.
why hasn't anybody seen this told me i really want to help women especially or adults in general to really get a connection to this topic and and maybe there's somebody listening that was like oh wow this also applies to me maybe this is where i can find some answers for myself What were the things that you read about autistic women? What was things that you could say, wow, this applies to me and makes me different from the majority of women? The neurotypicals.
There's something I was just thinking about earlier today, because people always told me, you need thicker skin. Why do you have to be so sensitive? And, you know, this autistic stereotype, of course, you know, there's no...
empathy, no emotionality. So I always thought maybe it's just kind of strange combination of different things that don't fit together. Actually, but if you look at research, then a lot of autistic people are actually... hyper empathetic specifically autistic women have very significant concern about uh people and relationships and trying to make it work and not always working it the way other people would expect. But it's definitely one counter stereotypical thing that I like facts.
I like analyzing things, but I'm also very, very kind of emotionally responsive to things, which definitely is one of the things that other autistic people, women, report that is very different from what is. traditionally portrayed. You mentioned the stereotype of autistic people not having empathy and especially... You just mentioned, right? It's the opposite, but it's the sometimes it's shown differently or it's also self-protection to not inside your empathic, but it doesn't portray.
Or how do we need to understand this discrepancy of this prejudice and what's actually going on? Again, it's not going to apply to everyone, as we all know. You met one autistic person, you met one autistic person. But we also know that some literature completely portrays that there's a trade-off. between systemizing mind and being able to emotionally connect. But a lot of it is misunderstanding. At least certain percentage of autistic people with probably more women.
definitely are very much emotionally attuned and concerned about other people. And that actually research shows that we put a lot of... effort into trying to understand and processing emotion and connecting with people so in some cases it is actually overwhelming So you are so flooded with empathy that you freeze. And also... Sometimes we're taught to not show it because when we do show our emotion, people say it's too much and inappropriate. So after you've been taught.
for years and years that there's too much just i don't want to deal with this and where are you coming from tone down then you also learn to kind of clamped down and not sure what you feel but it is also physiological when you are so overwhelmed with empathy you literally use so much of your energy that you don't even have the energy to express it because just feeling it takes so much but then also there's another thing we're talking about more and more about complex PTSD And the research is...
very early but we do know that many autistic people because of how they're treated especially if you're not identified your parents just think you're weird and need to be corrected or you're identified and sent into aba and that doesn't help very much you kind of develop trauma patterns which could also prevent you from expressing emotion like if you have a freeze
For example, response. You just try to... become invisible or if you have a phone response you may not necessarily verbally express what you feel but you just kind of keep bending over backwards for other people which they may not necessarily also interpret as intended. So it's pretty complicated because I think in addition to all of us being different and hyper-empathy.
not being identified or discussed until very recently. I think well-meaning parents do things that end up... hurting people and general advice for how to communicate with autistic people that permeates society is actually pretty damaging as well so when you bring in biological wiring differences and layers and layers of trauma from different contexts, you will end up with all kinds of variations of your individual. patterns of reacting. So when you learned about your own autism just recently,
May I ask, how did it make you feel? What was your reaction? Was it a shock? Was it kind of a liberation, empowering, or a mix of all the emotions?
Well, I figured it out at the very end of 2019. So I was pretty certain after I kind of looked at some of the literature on women and... get some thought i was pretty sure but then when i got diagnosed it was all right it was already pandemics it was the late spring of 2020, which was kind of an interesting time because there wasn't much interaction going on other than Zoom, but...
It was definitely more of the confirmation and relief that I was not imagining things that weren't there. And at this point, I've also kind of... had enough interaction in those six months or so with autistic culture. It was actually very liberating because I didn't feel like I can.
speak on behalf of the culture, participate in it. So I know the self-diagnosis is accepted, but I kind of felt, maybe because I'm a psychologist, that... and the scientists, and I like to have data before I say things, it definitely was actually liberating because I was like, okay, now I can go engage very significantly. And I guess with your background, you probably already had the vocabulary, but it probably also helped you.
advocate for yourself and for others even more as you said now you you know you can speak on behalf Right, because things are definitely not perceived in the same way. And because the autistic community has been the hurt by the scientific community. speaking broadly. Just speaking as an academic is just not the same. I will be able to speak to academics, but it will not necessarily be...
perceived by everyone in the community. But on the other hand, if I'm just the person from the community speaking to academics, I don't get sometimes the desired respect. So actually being both. Being both is very beneficial when you really want to communicate the message and communicate it to very different audiences. So business audience. academic audience, but also very closely working with the community and on behalf of the community, it's very helpful to...
kind of legitimately be in both identities. And as I briefly mentioned already in the beginning, you started... or you already been writing, but then you really started writing from your own perspective, right? And do you want to share a little bit about your writing journey and how that came to be and the topics you're covering? Oh, my gosh. Well, do you have seven hours?
It's an open question. Share the most important things you want to share with us. Well, I always liked writing and I actually was a journalist and doing a lot of creative writing. Way back when, again, in college and early 20s, and actually all the way through childhood, I was always a writer. But then... I went to graduate school in the States. I had to write an IPE style. And so I had to switch the language.
and the style and so for 20 years i didn't do anything creative and that wasn't in a very um formal and non-personal language so i kind of went back to my earlier way of writing, which is much more advocacy and personal. That was just in itself a tremendous gift because that's something I always loved. But I haven't done it in a very long time. So, and I guess once I started, I couldn't stop.
i actually enjoy the process of writing that sometimes people uh you know they're just like okay i have to write if i could if i could live by writing i would i can't but it's most enjoyable thing, really. It's hard to, sometimes, you know, getting published is not good for your self-esteem. People tear you down all the time and you get all kinds of unpleasant feedback. But once you kind of start writing for people and it starts resonating and then...
People say, my gosh, that's exactly what we need. Why nobody else is saying those things. You're the only one who is saying those things. Or, oh my gosh, like for the first time I feel heard and understood. Well, that definitely. And that's what happened with my latest piece, which was not actually on neurodiversity, but it was on moral injury. And then after that, I did a piece on moral injury in the workplace and neurodiversity.
So when you get that kind of response that people say, oh my gosh, now I have the vocabulary to talk about things that happened to me. It's definitely very motivating in addition to just enjoyment of writing, period. But writing more personal things like my Harvard Business Review article, that was probably the hardest. I think it was harder than my dissertation. So it was 200 times shorter. But that was a very hard piece to write, actually, because...
The balance between personal and intellectual and keeping it professional and keeping it with a focus on business audience. That was a task and a half. And I also was very determined not to write inspiration porn. Very aware that sometimes people take the stories. like of, you know, autistic people. And then the journalists will turn it in a way that it's really for other people to just kind of feel stuff. And I was...
very determined not to do it. So making it personal without making it inspiration porn, that was literally so many rewrites. way more than two months to write this article. You can write a book in that amount of time. It's a beautiful article, and I'm going to link, obviously, the article in the show notes so people can just click on the link and read that piece.
Do you want to share a little bit about the topic you covered in this Harvard Business Review one? Yes, Harvard Business Review article is specifically about autistic people in the world. place and all the topics that come with those horrendous unemployment numbers and how we got there. So you don't get this kind of... unemployment numbers among people who want to work and are capable of working without talking about discrimination because it is not.
intentional people did not set up selection procedures to discriminate against autistic people but that's what those selection procedures do because very often you just need to be able to talk to people and be chatty and pleasant and that's the major factor for hiring regardless of what your job actually is so if you are the kind of autistic people who really struggles with you know chatting with strangers or
chatting about things that they don't see how they relate to the actual job because it's small talk rather than what they are being hired for, or hopefully. hope to get hired for, that really doesn't work very well. So one of the points I've been always making, just create valid selection. We're not even saying for preferential selection. We're not asking for preferential selection. Create something that would let people demonstrate their skills with...
a task that actually is relevant to the job they're doing. And if their job is making small talk with strangers, fine. Select them on that because then it's relevant. If their job is not making small talk with strangers, then just let them demonstrate whatever is relevant to the job. So that's one of the things. And I was like, talk about it for way too long. But in that article, I do talk a little bit about my personal experiences.
And I actually can do small talk for a short time during the interview. It's not my favorite thing, but it's not something I'm capable of. When you are in, you get, in addition to access issues, there are plenty of success issues in the workplace as well. The promotion and other kind of benefits like training, all of this could be influenced by the fact that workplaces are designed. by people who are kind of opposite to the typical autistic person. They're usually designed by...
Confident, gregarious, extroverted people. All those systems really don't work very well with our strengths, which is sit down. concentrate for the full day, create amazing piece of work. But as far as promoting ourselves or pitching our work, that... or even taking credit or even saying, you know what, I did this work and not the person who is claiming it. We're not really good at that. So very often we are... kind of invisible performers who don't get credit or reward for our work because...
We do the work and other people are much better at self-promotion. So there's all kinds of things about workplaces that really favor. certain kinds of individuals now i had some people complain that uh pandemic actually put it in the other way and and now performers are actually can show that they were doing things and it's much harder to just kind of randomly take credit in the virtual environment because the people don't try.
We'll see what happens in a post-pandemic workplace. But my idea is that let's focus on outcomes. Let's focus on what we actually need to produce. And let's... put people into positions that are best suited to their talents. If their talent is chatting with people, fantastic, do that. if your talent is focusing for four hours fantastic do that unfortunately the way many jobs are designed now they're not designed for any real human They're designed for this kind of average person.
who is capable of doing a little bit of everything, who really doesn't exist. So then you have extroverts suffering because they hate all those introverted pieces on their plate.
You have introvert suffering because they have all those extroverted pieces on their plates. And organizations are just too rigid to even let people trade those things. So I think we need to have... conversations with organizations about allowing people work with their strengths so again it's not just okay autistic people are getting hired
Let's find a way to use them, which is a horrible way to talk about it. In response to one of my articles, I actually had a critic say, but you never told us how to utilize them. That's because that was not my point. I don't want you to think about... Any kind of humans as how do we utilize them? It's how do we include them and allow them to live their life to the best of their abilities? So, yeah.
A lot of mindset issues to deal with. Thank you for sharing of saying already a little bit what employers can do to especially lower the hurdle. But what would you say now? for people, neurodivergent people or autistic people in the workforce. And I know you mentioned this in your article. That's why I'm asking you to share it here, like to take matters in their own.
hands how can they improve their quality of life at work and how can they kind of if you cannot change your environment how can you change yourself or how can you change within your own means Well, again, preferably, I would love people to be in environments that work for them and looking for a job that is. more inclusive for an organization that is more inclusive is the first step. Of course, we don't have as many opportunities, but there are several ways.
If you are able to find a workplace that is generally open to some form of job crafting, you could show that you're so good. at this particular piece, that it will benefit your organization to give you more of that piece. less of things where you do not excel because really it is in their best interest to have people working with their strengths. So you could do this kind of job crafting.
when you are already in a job that kind of fits you in general and you figure out your overall industry. From there, you could... engage in job crafting and negotiating and just showing this is my portfolio of work. How do we create a situation where I do? more of that and sometimes more progressive organizations could allow you to trade with co-workers another thing is to maybe engaging
with people outside. So let's say people in your workplace just don't see you because they kind of see the quirkiness and they don't see how good you are. Sometimes getting external validation is helpful or for people who don't see you because we know that content. is not what we're judged at. So if you can judge on your content without your presentation and put yourself in the situations where you are evaluated on your...
work products, that usually is going to work to your advantage. And there's probably other things in the article. Yeah, we're going to link that as well. So everything we're mentioning and you will share your LinkedIn contact as well. So everything will be in the show notes. Time is running out, but I have to ask you about the moral injury at work, because this is such an important topic to talk about. Do you want to say a few words about this?
What is it and how does it affect neurodivergent people differently, maybe? Right, which is exactly my newest piece from this week. In general, moral injury... was first identified in veterans. And it just... seemed that there was something more, not just PTSD, not just experiencing something that made you fear for your life, so mortality. danger of death but people would also report i just i can't believe i did it and i feel so horrible about doing this and why would people
Force me into doing those things. Like, why would somebody force me, let's say, into harming civilians? So that is where the idea of moral injury came from with Jonathan Shea. And then... After that, it was studied in healthcare, doctors and nurses, and one of my colleagues, Annette Callis, actually did a study on. nurses who were pushed into doing things that went against their conscience. So that made me think about how this could apply to
other workplace situations and other occupations. And there is research on teachers and journalists and different kinds of first respondents. So people have done this research, but... talking about people in general in a variety of occupations, even, you know, selling things when they know they're... terrible quality but you're just you just feel like in order to feed your family you have to push those things that are actually bad and convince vulnerable people to buy them
Over time, this kind of moral distress can add up to moral injury. And we talked about empathy in neurodivergent people. Some research that shows that neurodivergent people are sensitive to injustice more than average people and committed to doing the right thing. more than average people. So that kind of makes you think perhaps neurodivergent people are more likely to acutely feel.
moral injury and definitely if you look at a lot of qualitative data that we're looking through and the stories that people are sharing, there is absolutely a pattern that many neurodivergent people love jobs, just couldn't do. what that was expected of them specifically because they just couldn't bring themselves to override their values so sometimes they say well autistic people are rigid
But another side of it is actually very hard to make us do things that go against our values. Some people call it rigidity. Other people can call it commitment to the right thing. So, so far, the qualitative phase of the research that I've been doing definitely shows that there is a pattern. But my hope is to also do that.
quantitative part, which is why both in the Fast Company article, the Moral Injury in General, and Special Eastern article on moral injury and neurodiversity, there's a link to sign up for the next stage of the study because I definitely would like to look more into this. Thank you so much for sharing, because, yeah, it's really interesting. And it's also, I believe, some things that I haven't thought about. But now when you talk about this.
it makes total sense. And it just, the data validates what I've been experiencing. So I'm really interested and curious to see your further research on this. If people would like to connect or learn more about you, where can people find you on the online space? Well, the easiest way to find is my LinkedIn profile, Lyudmila Praslova. It's pretty easy to Google. It's probably going to come up.
And from there, many of my articles are linked. My university program is also linked. So you can find our graduate program, Master of Science and Industrial Organizational Psychology. It's all linked under my contacts. Also, the consulting group that I work with, Focus Leader, is also linked there. A LinkedIn page is kind of a hub for all the different things that I'm trying to do, which is all about, you know.
creating better workplaces. You do it through writing, you do it through consulting and training in organizations, and then you do it by training. other people who hopefully will go and help organizations create as much fairness and inclusion as humanly possible. So I will link your profile on there in the show notes so people can just click and find you and connect and follow you.
see the next articles coming out. So is there anything else that you would like to share something that you wish people knew or something you wish you knew earlier? There's a lot of things that I wish I knew earlier. But I think one thing I would say that it's never too late because... I was just actually earlier this morning talking to a group of women of certain age and sometimes we'll start feeling like, oh my gosh, like...
There's so much to do and so little time, but overall, it's a very... positive way to think about life that okay so wish we knew something earlier and we can say well I wasn't informed about this, but it doesn't have to define what you do from now on. And honestly, if I had been identified as a child, obviously where I grew up,
there weren't too many resources. But knowing my parents, they probably would have put me into ABA. And I don't know if that would have been any better than what transpired. So just a lot of people feel like, oh my gosh, I wish I were identified earlier. But... It depends on how society treats you. There are situations when you identify it early and you accept it and you are taught that.
you don't have to drastically change yourself but in many cases people who are identified earlier were pushed very hard to change themselves and not be who they are so that's definitely not something to regret and and whatever your life experience is it is what it is so i just tried to use it in All the different examples for how can people and organizations do better? Thank you. Thank you. Beautiful words and I couldn't have said it better. Thank you for sharing and thank you for being here.
And we'll stay in contact. And I'm looking forward for your next article. Thank you so much. It's been an absolute delight to meet you. Bye. What a wonderful conversation. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. Such an amazing story, such an amazing resource. And I hope you will click on the links and read her amazing.
articles. And I'm really curious to hear your thoughts. So you're also welcome to share your thoughts and email me at hello at UnleashMonday.com. You can also subscribe to the very sporadic newsletter. unleashmonday.com you also find a link there to the amazing community for gifted and twice exceptional women i'm inviting you to join us it's a very
Amazing space to share and learn and grow together. And if you want to support this podcast, then please like, subscribe and leave a written review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. And that will help the algorithm show it to other people and just make it more accessible for others. So I'm reading all your reviews. So thank you so much for your kind words. Thank you for your time, for being here. And I'm wishing you a wonderful day. See you in two weeks. Bye.