Hi, and welcome to the In The Cortex podcast. We are your hosts. I'm Paloma Garcia. And I am Danny Paraconi. And we're the founders of In The Cortex, an online community with programs that show people the tools that they need to change their lives through brain reorganization. No medication, just movement. When you get your brain out of survival mode and regulate your nervous system, you start to live in the fun, logical part of the brain, the cortex.
Subscribe today and learn how to live your best in the cortex life. And now, on to today's episode. Welcome back to another podcast within the Cortex Gurlies. I'm Danny and I'm here with Paloma. And we are really excited because, well, we're always excited to talk because we love talking. And we love that you want to listen to us. So thank you for being here, first of all. We're going to unpack a pretty big topic today, which is neurodiversity.
It's something we get asked about all the time on our Instagram, our TikTok channels. So many people are just trying to make sense of how our work makes sense with neurodiversity and does it have a connection. So we're going to break that down today. We're going to share some cool facts that are happening all over the world with neurodiversity. And we're going to just have a conversation of just reframing this concept of neurodiversity. And we're always doing it from the brain perspective.
That's our focus here at in the cortex. We look at the primitive reflexes. We look at the lower centers of the brain, the ponson midbrain, and of course, those subconscious beliefs. So we're going to bring all that in together. And we're going to just have a conversation to hopefully help you see our perspective on all of this. And again, this is not to shame anybody. This is not to make anyone feel bad.
If you have a label diagnosis or if neurodivergence is something that is existing in your life, we get you. And that's what we really want this to come through as, as we understand what you're experiencing. And yeah, so let's have that conversation. Ploma, what is neurodivergence? Neurodivergence is, well, neurodiversity is a term that was coined by Judy Sanger in 1999.
She started to see the way that people were being diagnosed with deficits, with disabilities, or with all this, this language that was kind of making it framing in a very negative way. And what she noticed were two things. One is that more people than not are neurodivergent, right? That neurodiversity is a reality. And so just really quick neurodivergence means that there are, that you're diverging, you're going away from the norm, right? So your brain is different from the neurotypical.
But neurodiversity is the concept that there actually is diversity in people's brains in the world. It's like there's gender diversity, just like there's racial diversity, just like there's language diversity. There's so much diversity in our world, right? And so this is just another type of that. And so what she said, and what she started to notice was that there was all kind of framed in a very negative way. She's like, disabilities, disorders, disabled. I don't like that.
I want people to feel like this is just part of a difference. It's not, there's nothing wrong with it. So that's where she came up with this term of neurodiversity, neurodivergence. There's a lot that goes back and forth because then she coined it, but then somebody else wrote about it for the first time.
So there's a lot kind of like a back and forth of who really started it, but it started in the nineties and it started to help people just reframe the way that they were looking at themselves and at others. And understanding that there truly are so many different ways that the brain is connected, that the brain processes things, that the brain works in this world, right? And that's, that's a reality that nowadays we really much, very much live with.
But think about how groundbreaking this was when she started to bring this to the, to the masses of like, hey guys, it's not a bad thing if you have some sort of diagnosis. It's not a bad thing if your brain works differently. It's just being a human. And that's where you and I come in, right? That's where you and I look at it as, listen, you can put as many names on it as you want. You're still just a person.
We're all just humans and we're trying to do the best with what we have and what's going on in our brain. Okay. So neurodiversity is exactly what Pauline said. It's just the differences that we're all experiencing in our brain function. If we go onto the internet and we Google, these are my behaviors of what I'm experiencing. Let's say it's lack of eye contact. I have a heart. I have social anxiety. I have a hard time regulating myself and I have explosive meltdowns.
You're going to probably show up with possibly seeing on Google that you have disorder. And so that's going to be like the overarching umbrellas, neurodiversity. And then within neurodiversity, you can kind of figure out what your label and diagnosis is and it gives you a direction, right? And this is all good. We all want direction in life. We all are searching for certainty. We're searching for belonging. We're searching for all these basic human needs.
And so when you get onto social media, when you get onto the internet, you start to self-diagnose. And you start to actually go, oh, here's this explains me. I finally have a direction and where I need to go with all of this. So that is neurodiversity is considered the idea that people experience and interact with the world around them in many different ways. And there's no right way of thinking, learning and behaving in differences. They're not viewed as deficits.
And we love that definition because that gives such hope that like, yeah, we're all human. There's no normal brain really anywhere. And neuro typical, right? And if you think about it, that's really a societal shift that we're seeing nowadays where everybody is more like embracing what makes them different, right? And we'll talk about that in a second because sometimes we take it a little too far, right?
But that's where we're actually allowing ourselves to be ourselves and to not have to fit into these molds that society has put on top of us because we used to think that everybody had to act the same way, be the same way, react the same way, whatever it is. And that's where we have older generations that are like just riddled with all these like things that they've been hiding and just holding in for so long, right?
And so that's where this awareness just brings a different level of understanding to ourselves and to others. And that's where it's amazing. And we love that part of this movement. And that's why we always say we embrace neurodivergence, we embrace neurodiversity. I know they're different concepts, but we like to, we're using them a little bit interchangeably now because we don't want to get into the details, but it's really the reality, right?
And so that's where it takes a little bit of a turn where we say, okay, if you have these differences, some of them are great. Some of them are like, you have a really great memory. Some of them you have an amazing ability with music or with math or with something else that you're just like so good at, or you have the ability to hyper focus. Some people will say like they're, they're hyper focused. They can't focus on anything else.
They can't do, you know, pay attention to the world around them. You can see it as a negative, but you can also see it as a positive. Like how I love when I'm hyper focused and it doesn't happen that often, but when it happens, I'm like, I'm a machine. I love it so much. It's such a great thing. So these are things that we also can put a positive spin on, right? It doesn't all have to be about what makes you different. What makes you like, let your life harder. What is challenging?
And at the same time, where we come in as we say, okay, but have you looked at the primitive brain because a lot of the actual challenges associated with a lot of these, with these diagnoses and with these labels can be very much diminished if you look at the primitive brain. For example, auditory processing challenges. A lot of people that are on the spectrum have auditory processing challenges and they have also tactile sensory processing challenges, right?
That's where we say, is it making your life harder? Yes. Okay. Let's look at what's going on in the brain. And that's why we always want to say, let's look at the primitive brain first and then do all the other approaches. And you've heard of say this on every single episode of the podcast, but that's where we can get a little bit more of an explanation instead of just putting a name on it.
So that's why we kind of advocate for looking at that primitive piece before we go put a label on something. And before we go and put medication or put other approaches and that's fine. But the importance of looking at the brain work first at the primitive brain first is that you really need to look at the imbalance that's there and address it so that things, these characteristics can diminish and your life can get a lot easier, right?
It's not about having this label for the rest of your life, having this diagnosis for the rest of your life. And we also wanted to talk today here about why people are looking at these diagnoses, right? Like, why are we truly identifying so much with these differences? Yeah. And there's so much to say with that. And that's important to know that we're not trying to say that what you're experiencing isn't real.
And we're just trying to share that there is an easier way to go about living and that's not who you really are. You're not really a person who needs to be constantly focused on your tags and your shirt or being overwhelmed by sounds outside. That makes life harder. And that's what we always say it in the cortex is life can be easier. And the cool part is you do address all that primitive brain and you address all, you know, the primitive reflexes, the lower centers of the brain.
All of a sudden, your brain just starts processing the world differently. And it doesn't mean that now you're not a human anymore. It doesn't mean you're not going to still have your human moments. It just means there's more ease. There's more grace. There's more compassionate understanding. And then there's regulation because we all get dysregulated. And then how do we regulate ourselves?
So it just, it just, what we do is we just, we just, we just, we just, we just, we just what we say is it just builds your bandwidth. So you can do more, you can do it more efficiently. And I do think that we need to have this conversation because we see so many times that people identify with whatever they've discovered is making sense to them.
And when you over identify with anything you're searching for, what you were just about to lead into is what we're all searching for is that connection is belonging as being a part of something. And the problem with over identifying with saying, you know, I just have a neurodivergent brain or I just have ADD or I just am ADHD, it then kind of just puts you in this box that you're never going to get out of. And we are not against the labels.
We're against the labels, then not taking you further to get you to the roots. Having this fulfilling life. So against the labels that make you feel like you're stuck in a box for the rest of your life, and that's the way that unfortunately a lot of people, a lot of mental health professionals do it, right?
They are going to, you know, at least from what I've seen and a lot of the people that I've worked with and you have to these parents are going to a neurologist at when their kid is four or five years old and they're saying, oh, yeah, they're never going to talk. They're never going to look at you in the eye. They're never going to socialize or probably always going to help with going to the bathroom. And the parents brain is going, wait, why?
And the kids brain is going, okay, that's the box that I'm in, right? And so that's where the subconscious piece comes in. We're going to talk about that in a second, but that's also where we, it's not about like the name is going to give you one thing, right? It's going to give you that belonging. It's going to help you identify. Okay, there, it's not just all in my head, right?
I did have something that's different, but it's all about what you do with that label or with that diagnosis, whatever you want to call it. If you don't do anything with it and you stay in it, that's where we feel that a lot of people don't lose hope. And then they just kind of keep themselves in that box. That's why we always advocate for looking at the other pieces of it, right? What's behind all of these behaviors? Because that's what all these diagnoses are.
A conglomeration of symptoms and challenges and behaviors and characteristics. That's all that it is because there's no way we can look, open up the brain and say, oh, there's the ADHD. Oh, there's the ODD. Oh, there's the auto. It's all behavior based. So why don't we look at the other part of the behaviors where it's coming from and then we can see what this label really means for each one of us.
Yeah, essentially, this is a really big, I think this is an important mission for all of us humans to really start looking at because the numbers are quite alarming. And if we don't start as a society waking up, we're going to be going down a path where we're just taking care of the majority of the population because we're just, we have no tools and resources to help them because if you think about it, in 2023, one in 36 children was diagnosed with ASD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, one in 36.
Only 20 years ago or 23 years ago, it was 150, one out of 150 kids. And then the numbers are just getting, the margins of that are just getting smaller and smaller. So I think about my kids and their generation and what's that going to look like? What's that going to look like when all these parents age out and they can't take it on? This looks like a bigger issue and we're not saying that there's something wrong with these kids, but we're saying that the approach is obviously not working.
And that's what it is. In 2008 to 2018, we spent $2.5 billion on ASD research. We spent in 10 years, $2.5 billion on research and the numbers have gone worse. What does that tell you? It's not working. So the system we have, and if you think about this too, Judy, back in 1999, she coined the term neurodivergent or neurodiversity and now all of a sudden it's picking up steam 25 years later. And so this is where we're like, okay guys, we get it. There's a serious thing going on right now.
We're just not able to connect how we used to. There's a multiple, like people always ask us, well, why? And we're like, well, we have a million reasons why definitely living different lives than we ever have in human history. And you can point it at technology. You can point it at toxins coming into the body. You can point it at literally anything that's going on right now. And there could be some sort of an effect of it for sure. But we have to do something different now.
And what we are telling you is movement, the absolute key. We are not moving as much as we ever did in the past. Like we've let we're living such sedentary lifestyles. The technology has put our kids to sit in front of a screen. Can you imagine? Imagine when we were kids, like you had to know when the show was going to be on. Yeah, yeah. And our parents say, you didn't have a remote and the TV was black and white or we didn't have the cable. And so you just look at how far it's progressed.
My kids can sit in front of a TV fast and they can have anything streaming in front of them for hours on end and never have to get up. It's kind of mind blowing of where we're going. So we're still in the alarm. We need to get out and start moving more. And the no, absolutely. Is that if 1% of the population, that's the entire world, that's 75 million people in today's world have ASD labels.
Imagine if we could give every single person this little tool kit of like, Hey, let's all just get on the floor and creep because the way you creep will show us what's going on with your brain and shows us what automatic functions you have access to. And then all of a sudden, if you don't creep in a very efficient pattern that was coded into you, every single baby is supposed to go through a certain series of ways that they evolve into this pattern.
If it was interrupted, then that's going to show up later in life. And the behaviors of connected to an underdeveloped pawns is very strikingly similar to those that have the ASD spectrum label. And it's crazy the overlap. And again, like Paul said, there's no like ASD, there's no ADHD part in the brain. We're looking at the behavior.
And so we have found, and this is what brought me on this journey was because I was on a path when I came home from Ecuador, I was like, what am I doing with my life? So I found ABA therapy, which is called applied behavioral analysis. It's to help kids with autism learn skills and less than problematic behavior.
So obviously there's a spectrum when we're talking about ASD, there's definitely more of like Asperger's where is less of, you know, you can mask or you can commonly a little bit better versus some of them that don't have that ability. So there's a spectrum there. But I was learning about this about like 16, 17 years ago, I was like, I'm going to sound so fascinating. I want to help kids that have autism. And it wasn't as well known back then.
And it was just kind of starting to emerge at this whole thing. I remember my best friend in high school sharing with me what her job was. I was like, that sounds like what I want to do. So I remember coming back to San Diego, I found a job doing ABA therapy. I was literally trained for like a week or two, two weeks max. And then I was thrown into working with kids.
And I had never really been around kids that had some extreme behaviors like this before, like biting and hitting and stuff like that. And I was terrified because I was like, I don't know what to do. You guys haven't told me what I'm supposed to do. Yeah. I immediately, because that's what we are grown up with in society. Oh, something's wrong with you. We need to fix you to bring you onto our side. And so that's another part we were going to unpack too was like, how messed up that part is.
But I remember being in there and just going, wait a minute, why are we training these kids and doing this? This makes no sense to me. Like this doesn't feel like we're doing anything. Yeah. It feels like we're just like teaching them to act quote unquote normal, which is what a BF Skinner used to say, he wanted to normalize children with neurodivergent brains. Starting there, that's a red flag. Right. And he's the founder of ABA therapy.
And so anyways, once I was doing that for a little bit, then I was going to people's homes and I was like in there trying to help them. And these families are just desperate, like give me something and my insurance covers this. So they're like, I'll do whatever it takes. And I'm, I was just like, this is such a waste of time and resources from my experience. I cannot say that for all of ABA therapy. I'm only talking about my personal experience.
And then I found brain organization relatively at the same time. And I was walking into this place that was, that's where I was being trained. And I was watching kids who had an autism spectrum disorder label. And all of a sudden they were told they're never talking. And all of a sudden they start talking. All of a sudden they start, you know, doing the things that doctor said they would never do. And I was like, what's happening here? What we, you're doing these simple movements.
And now these kids are coming out of that place that they were in before. And it doesn't mean they were in a place that wasn't good. It just means that they were working really, really hard and it was frustrating. It's so frustrating to not be able to talk. Yeah. It's so frustrating to not be able to express yourself and be able to connect with people. So we started seeing these kids shift. We started seeing families transform.
And I was like, okay, this, this looks like this is what I need to know. What is this? What is happening here? And now 15 years later. We see this every single time that we work with families, whether it be the child who can't stay dry all night long, the extreme emotional dysregulation, the kids who can't get words out because there's a lot of disluency or the eye tracking or eye teaming or we can't make eye contact. Reading and writing. Any of the things going on. We start to see that shift.
And parents are like, oh my gosh, my kids are just wearing clothes that they would have never worn before. Do you know how life changing that is when you're a parent trying to get out the door? You put that clothes, clothes on, let's go. You know, so that's what we're trying to help people see is that there's nothing wrong with being neuro diverse, but what are you doing about it? What are you doing about it? And also I think the mainstream approaches are not working. Let's be honest.
They're not working. You just told us the numbers and it's increasing and increasing and increasing. And we all know somebody who is having these challenges and they're going to the mainstream therapies, they're going to the mainstream things and they're not working. And we understand that we're on the fringes. We understand that what we're saying is completely out of the blue for a lot of people that it's totally new and different.
But at the end of the day, all that we're asking you to do is move. And that's the most natural thing that a human can ever do. So why not give it a try, right? Whether or not you have a diagnosis. And that's where, you know, all these things, it's like, we, you know, we say with like yoga, right? When people start doing yoga, people are like, what are they doing? And I feel like now little by little, people are like, okay, I get this. I'm going to crawl. I'm going to creep.
I'm going to do these things. And once they feel the difference, they're like, oh, I'm never going to stop doing this ever in my life because it's amazing. And so that's where I think this whole podcast, the message of this whole podcast is, let's just shift the way that we're looking at neurodivergence. We're not looking at it as something negative. We're not looking at it as something that you have to live with for the rest of your life.
And part of it is amazing and part of it is also neurodiversity is the reality. Everybody's brain is different. But when you look at the challenges associated with certain diagnoses and certain types of neurodivergence, that's where life can be really, really, really difficult. We don't want your life to be difficult. We want your life to be easier.
And giving your brain the neurological foundation it needs to process the world more efficiently is what's going to help you feel better at the end of the day. 100%. And we are so excited to keep sharing this message because think about it, if that took, you know, I don't know, in BF Skinner sort of ABA therapy, but if let's look at even Judy coming up with that term in 1999, 20 years, we've been doing this now for 15 years. It's been on and happening now for a while.
I mean, this is when Glenn Doeman and Carl Delacato started creeping and crawling and doing all that stuff back in the 50s. So it's not new stuff. We didn't invent any of it and, but the cool part is, is we really feel like we're the messengers here to like share this information with the world that your life can change. Your life can get so much easier. No matter what your label or diagnosis is, whatever you're resonating with in this conversation, there's hope for you.
And there's so much that even Paloma and I, when we work on ourselves because we do it daily, we find out so much about our subconscious and our programming and how we're seeing the world and our biggest thing this past, I'd say like year and a half is just to having more grace for ourselves for being human. And I feel like that's a huge thing happening where we're really removing the stigmas of you're supposed to be here at this point in your life, doing this at this point in your life.
Like Paloma doesn't have kids. I went through a divorce. We all have our stuff and there's so much beauty and just embracing the differences in all of us and we need to normalize it. Not just label it, but just normalize that we are all different and we can make life easier. And it's something that like, I can imagine my life without it.
Like having my four year old, almost five year old having her moments where she's just completely dysregulated, Danny before brain work would have wanted to do what my parents did, yell back at her and just tell her she's too sensitive and knock it off. Right. Now that I have brain work, I have nurtured revolution in my tool belt. I have so many more tools that I'm like, Oh my gosh, she's scared. She just needs some emotional attack, like connection.
But if I would have taken her to a pediatrician and said, Oh, she has ODD. She's oppositional defiance disorder. Cause anytime I say no, shoot, that's her trigger. Right. Yeah. But it's really that she's scared and it's hitting her subconscious of like, wait, I need someone to help me co-regulate. I need to borrow your brain. I don't know how to do this. Help me, help me. Yes. So I can look for her, I can show her what a calm and regulated adult looks like. She's going to get that now.
Who knows what her future is going to look like, but it's not going to look like mine because I still have those feelings of my subconscious getting triggered. And so that's really what this is. It's like, let's really just get to the root of why we behave the way we do and how can we behave in a more cohesive, loving, compassionate way. And we see it, how often do you see this moment everywhere? Millions of times. Everywhere. All over the place.
And so there's a spectrum for everything and everybody and we're just trying to help take out that stigma that there's something wrong with you. Exactly. And there's something you can do about it. Yeah. And get taking out the idea that that's like the way that you're stuck and you have to find different compensations for the rest of your life. That's where I struggle and I'm trying to tell people that you don't have to find those compensations forever.
You don't have to keep going down this route that is clearly not easy. And I'm not saying life is ever going to be easy because it's not. Absolutely not. But it can be easier when you get those tiny little battles out of the way in your life when you're able to truly be as efficient as your brain can be. And like once again, if you do need some other support after you do your brain work, that's fine. We do all the different modalities do, right?
We've done our brain work and we do all these different things that we're constantly trying to improve ourselves with different ways. The difference is our nervous system is ready to accept these new things. That's what our last podcast was about, right? Christy saying, oh my gosh, after I gave my my brain the foundation it needed, I was able to respond so much better to all the other stuff that I love to do, right? All the meditations, all the acupuncture, all the whatever she's into.
And that's the whole point is for all of us to just start with that level of baseline regulation and then we're all going to always need to support ourselves in different ways, right? So it's not about not having the diagnosis. It's about what do you even do with it? If you want to seek out the diagnosis, good for you. That's if you want to have like a the peace of mind of like, okay, it's not all, you know, I'm not imagining it. There's definitely something that's different about my brain.
Great. What are you going to do about it afterward? That's the biggest piece. And so that's where we don't want people to get caught up in having to seek out these diagnoses, having to seek out this belonging to that community that might be on, you know, challenged with this or challenged with that on TikTok, on Instagram or wherever it is. The point is, what are you going to do about it so you can actually chart, start to live your best life? Like, I know it sounds so corny, but that's it.
Like living your best life and being your authentic self is only going to come after you find regulation. Yeah. When you become a member at ITC, you come into a space, a community where we literally understand you. You could say, Hey, my daughter is doing this, this and this. My son does this or I have this or my partner does this, whatever it is. And we'll pinpoint you to, it's probably this reflects this, this and this. And then we tell you, here's what you can do.
And we give you that daily guidance to go practice this at home, help yourself understand how your brain and body are connected. And then we give you journal prompts. We have fun assignments for you to dig deeper into, to really expand your awareness as to like, wait, oh my gosh, I'm shifting my perception on everything. And now my perspective on the world has completely shifted. And that's what all of our members experience is just complete eye opening.
And it, when we say change, people get so scared with that word because they're like, wait, what do you mean I'm going to change? And that's such a scary thing when you think of like a nervous system changing, but it's changed for the better. You now things don't rattle you. Instead of getting really upset, you just stay calm. We have so many kids that just one of our members just shared today.
She's like, she had a scene about, you know, her daughter said something about not wanting to go to school because this might happen and the son overheard it. Then they went and did their brain work and then the son completely left that thought and he's like, okay, I'm ready for school now. So it's stuff like that. That's what changes life just gets in the flow easier and you can just roll with things. You don't get so scared and fearful of life anymore.
And so that is what we support you with at our community here in the cortex. We give you that space to just be human, have your ups and downs because we all have them. Here are some tools to ease that up and down and you know, just a place where we can all be positive and help uplift each other, but then also support the human. So it's a very like, I don't know, it's my favorite place to be because it's like, okay, we fall apart, but there's so much we can do to put it back together.
And so that sounds like a awesome place that you want to be. We hope you want to join us. And we have so much to share with you right now about where to find all that. So Instagram is in the cortex underscore us. Tiktok is in underscore the underscore cortex. Facebook is in the cortex us. YouTube is in the cortex us as well. Website in the cortex.com. And we've been having a little bit of challenges with that. So if you see, you go to the website and there's nothing there.
Just DM us on Instagram or email us at hello it in the cortex.com cause we've been having some challenges with that. And if you want to get 10 bucks off your first payment of our program, use promo code brainiac of our nurtured parenting through brain reorganization program. It is an amazing program with neuroscientists. Dr. Greer Kirschenbaum, we're talking about nurture.
We're looking at all the research behind it and how to support your own nervous system as a parent before you even approach your children and start to guide them in their own nervous system development and regulations. So if you still want to sign up, you can sign up, but all the links are in our bio again. If that's not working, please DM us and we'll send you the info to sign up and let us know what questions you have. We're always here.
And you know, if you have any ideas for episodes of the podcast, send them over because we really do use them. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.