LOVE ON THE SPECTRUM

Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut.

I'm Laura and I'm Britney, and I am.

Coming to you from the deep dark and cedy place that is Sydney in lockdown.

Here we are hang hang on a hot second. You are literally in my laundrym Are you saying that that is deep dark and city because I play.

I'm back to you from the deep dark and city place that is Britney's apartment. Thank god that you gave me keys though, because okay, so obviously you guys know BRIT's overseas. Brit gave me keys to her apartment, and I have been sneaking up here, which is fine because it is very COVID safe. There is nobody here at the moment. I'm all by myself, but I've been coming

It's chaos. Everything is chaos. The floor is lava. I knew that you'd need a safe place, so yeah.

I've been telling Matt, hey, I'm just going to go up and do some work and I've literally just been sitting here on the couch in the serene silence.

No, but I did. I very likely gave keys to two friends that I said. You can come and go as you please if you need a safe place, if you need a bed. So also, just water my plans and look after everything. Thanks, love you, bye.

Guys. You don't come here for us to be sad. You come here for the uplifting content. However, we cannot avoid the fact that one half of us is very much in Sydney locked out at the moment. So for anybody else who's experiencing it, we just want to say that our thoughts and our feelings and our love and everything is with you, and for everybody who is in Melbourne who's thinking, oh it was about time that Sydney got their turn of this.

We're all in this together, guys. No, and what Laura said is right. You don't come here to listen to the dark, gloomy stuff, but we do just want to say, like, our thoughts are with you. My thoughts are really with you over here, and I mean I lived it last year as well. We're very lucky we didn't do it for a long time, but just make sure that you

And there was somebody who actually wrote on our Facebook discussion group, So if you haven't joined the discussion group, jump on it's Life Uncut discussion group on Facebook. But somebody who has lived and breathed and done the Melbourne lockdowns actually did a post the other day and I love this. It was her ten point plan for how she survived Melbourne lockdown and I'm just want to read off some of these because I took a screenshot of it today and I was like, this is what I'm

I love this.

I'm not that self motivated to learn how to knit, but like, I really appreciate this. Maybe I'll get small plants. Four. The freezer is your best friend. Number five. Use Amazon Prime for next day delivery. Number six. Make sure you mix it up. One day eat in your bedroom, maybe one day eat on the couch, maybe one day eat on the balcony. Really keep yourself guessing here, guys. Number seven declutter while you can pick a room each day and just go for it.

Number eight.

Plan a date night with your friends on Zoom where you all order food from the same restaurant and then you sit down at the same time and eat it together. It feels like you're actually catching up with friends properly. Number nine. Make the most of not having to wash your hair. Okay, I've embraced this one. Make the most

I love all of those I particularly love and I think this was really good like this was a suggestion we did for dating during COVID was the but I think it was number eight Laura, call your friends, make sure you order from the same restaurants, sit down and have a dinner. I really love that. But when I think about my lockdown, I just remember I just let everything go wild. Like I didn't shave my legs for a month. It was pretty scary times back then.

I've been doing that since I had kids. Yeah, so like twenty twenty ones really set me backwards, but I'm here for it. But also I did want to say one thing, and like we said, we're not going to harp on about the fact that we're in lockdown, like we've all heard it before, we've all read the news. But there is one thing that I think we can all appreciate and relate to, and that is that with the current climate, it makes it so hard to actually

Guys, I am so excited about today's episode. This is one if you follow along on my Instagram. For the last little while, I've been hyping on this TV show, Love on the Spectrum. It's better than The Bachelor. I'm obsessed with it. I love it. I love how real and raw it is. You know, it's a window into another world that we don't really get to see that we don't really know about. I think that we're not as educated on as we could probably be. Anyway, I

So before we get into that, and I honestly, am so excited by this interview. I learned so much and it just there was one thing that was said by Cassandra, and I really loved this about the show and the purpose of the show. So one of the things that Cassandra said to us just before we started the interview, she said, Love in the Spectrum is not really a dating show for people who have autis. She was like, people who have autism already know what it's like to

Me on that.

We always want to bring you the best content that we possibly can, and it's important to us that the content that we bring.

You is correct.

But Brittany, you did send me an article that you wanted to touch on before we got into the episode. Please look, take the microphone.

I just landed in London. I landed in England from Spain. Obviously, it's Wimbledon next week, so I'm very excited about that. It's one of the big Grand Slams and I absolutely just can't wait to watch Jordan play. But what I do every single morning, and especially in another country, I've always done this since I was like thirteen years old. I wake up and I read the news. I'm obsessed

I'm laughing for good reason. Guys, don't think that I'm a fucking evil person.

No, I was like, I just couldn't imagine what that's like. So obviously I read the article and this woman had been dating or her husband on and off for ten years, finally married him in her ceremony in Israel, and he died only a couple months later of stomach cancer. Now, the reason this is funny, and I shouldn't even say it's funny. But her husband was a dolphin. Her husband was adult. She married a dolphin. Now I didn't know that was a thing.

It's not funny because it's not funny that a dolphin passed away. I'm just gonna say that to start with. The funny part is is that it took me a little while to actually realize what this was talking about. And then I was like, this is so sad, and I was like, I'm sorry. She married a who she married a what?

Well?

The only reason that gets funny is and it's I mean, like, this is a real thing. Guys googled it. Okay, there's people that marry I googled it, so it must be true. There's something called objective sexuality, but that's more people that marry objects. So what this went into, I just went into the depths of the internet on this. I mean,

I want to know, like, how does a dolphin consent and opt into dating? Because like I could say that, like I've dated a guy for ten years on and off. They have to like, how does a dolphin say, yes, I want to continue to date you.

Well, she has wedding. She's put her wedding pictures up. I'm looking at them right now. She's in this like beautiful white dress. She has a floral head piece on. It's the wedding and the dolphin is in the air like it's bellies kind of come up onto the platform and it's kissing her. It's unbelievable. It's a proper It actually looks like a beautiful ceremony to be honest. Well, basically she said, it's not a perverted thing. I do love this dolphin. He's the love of my life. It's

Yeah, can I just say in this article as well that Brittany sent to me. Meanwhile, a woman in Devon married her own duvet, claiming it was the most intimate and reliable relationship she has ever had.

Say subjective sexuality, and when I went into it, there are so many. There's a woman that married the Eiffel Tower. She changed her last name to Eiffel. There are people that have married the bridges. There's one woman that married her chandelier, so it's actually a thing.

I do remember there being a guy in the States who married his sex doll, which like, there's a lot of issues tied up into that. But anyway, okay, with that out of the way, all the really important stuff, it is time for our very favorite part of every episode, and that is accidentally.

I'mffiltered this one. Laura gave me very very heavy Laura vibes.

I feel like, okay, literally, you say that every single time, and every single time it's something wildly inappropriate. It's like, oh, this person chat themselves in a supermarket line, and then you're like, Hey, Laura, this is something you would do. Hey, this person got blackout drunk and vomited on their boyfriend's peters. Hey Laura, this is something that you would do.

Okay, you'll understand why when I read I'm okay with this, We're really not okay. This isn't something that you did, though. It was something that happened to this girl that reminded me heavily of you. Okay, hey hit me. I was seeing this guy a little while ago. He was most certainly a rebound for me. I was over at his friend's place and they were all weed smokers. Now I was only twenty one. I hadn't been around many people

Now.

Somehow, his penis made its way between my thighs. But I'm not talking about my vagina, just sort of like in the crease of my groin, And all of a sudden he started convulsing like a jack crabead. He was going hard.

Thankfully it was dark, and I had this really weird look of confusion on my face, but he couldn't see it. I have never experienced anyone on weed before, so I was like, maybe this is a reaction from it, maybe he's having a seizure. But then in minutes he whispers, I'm.

Going to come. This is talking by surprise.

Here I am thinking he's having a fit and he's coming and fucking my leg. Maybe he thought he was in Maybe he was so off his chops, or maybe he's also like my eggs and just like to have sex with all of her.

He goes, oh my god, I'm gonna come, and she goes, what you're not even in? He came in my figs. He wasn't even nearer vagina.

I'm debating this. I reckon he was so cooked he thought he was in girl science. Nah, I don't care how much weed you've had. I feel like you know where the vagina is.

Okay.

Well, mean, some guys don't some guy doesn't need a roadmap and they need an X mark the spot and they need to be shown.

I wonder how many people are like that. I wonder how many people have had this happen where they're in an intimate situation and the guy has very obviously thought it was somewhere that it's not. I reckon, it's probably pretty commet.

I've definitely had a guy I think that they knew where my clip was and it certainly was not it. I was like, why are you furiously rubbing that? That is not helping anyone.

I feel like that has happened to everyone. That has definitely happened to me. I have a really really good winter. Strap yourselves in, Strap on your undies, ladies.

I'd been talking to this guy online for a couple of weeks and we had been on a coffee date and he was really really handsome, a little alternative with long hair and not my normal type, but you know what they say, date outside your box. So he said he was really into yoga and being the yeah, sure, I'll give anything a try kind of girl that I am, I suggested that maybe I could come to a yoga class with him and he could show me the ropes. So anyway, fast forward to our next date. He invites

Old girl. I bene he was gonna die. There was no hiding that it came from me.

The look on my face of shock and horror would have been enough to give it away. Now, anyway, I thought I was in the clear. You would think that the story would end here, but no, I continued the move thinking that everything was okay, and another two consecutive quefs followed at this point. By this point, the woman behind me was pissing herself laughing, and then the instructor says aloud to the entire class, it's okay. We all make some unusual noises sometime.

Haha, No, don't make it like.

I was so upset.

I started to cry.

Girl number one rule never queep and cry.

You never quep and cry. I was like I had to text her and I was like what happened? Like where did this go? She was like, I never spoke to him again. A fucking cart Okay. Firstly, Firstly, firstly, queaping is normal with all there. Don't fret if if you quep, Like so many people are like, if that happens to you during sex or some embarrassing it's not even just tell him it means it's good or something like.

I think it's different when it happens during sex. Like when it happens during sex, you can just have a giggle and be like, oh, what's that happened? Like we've all been we've all been in a compromising position where we've been having really great sex and then it's happened. I think the worst part about this story is like, you know what, just let the woman quef and everyone just pretended doesn't happen. Don't be the person at the front that calls it out, and it makes it even worse.

Like don't worry, sweetheart, we all make those sounds. No, just like let that slide.

I used to have a friend who could queef on demand, like she could do it as a party trick. You know what, if she was living her best life, kief and after a few wives, you're gonna be fine doing it in yo, Guru.

And if he doesn't want to see you again because you're creeping, then that is his lost girl.

All right. On that note, I think it's time to get into the episode.

Autism Spectrum disorder affects one in sixty eight children, and we all know, or maybe we all don't know, but boys nearly five times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with ASD, and that is why we decided to get a woman in. So we have the very lovely, very beautiful Cassandra from Love on the Spectrum And I am so excited because I'm just like a super fan of the show. So welcome to life on cut Cassandra.

Thank you for having me on. It's great to be here.

Okay, So I got Laura into the show. We just so you know our background, because I don't think you do know. But we were on The Bachelor. We love love, we love dating, and I just fell in love with love on the spectrum.

Love on the.

Spectrum is like the much more wholesome version of the Bachelor, so much more wholesome. I I remember putting it on Instagram, going, this, shit's all over the Bachelor, and I think it's just because if anyone hasn't seen it, it's so real and it's so raw, and there's really not a lot of mask in your emotions, which I think when we see other dating shows, we're just.

Not getting that authenticity. So I think that's why I fell in love.

But also I think there is still so much stigma and mystery around autism, spectrum disorder and what it is, and I think looking in love on the spectrum gives us a better understanding, and I think that that was a big part of this. I'm really interested in how you got onto the show in the first place and why you signed up for it.

So this is a few years back before COVID, my mother was looking for ways for me to get out into the world amongst people my own age. I'm quite a very young minded person. I'm still into like anime and cosplay and all the kind of teen interests, and my mum wanted me to kind of get out there amongst my own peers. So she was looking into all these different things, and she found employable me I think It's called which was like one of the first shows about autistic individuals.

I did apply for that.

I didn't get on I'm a bit too employable. It was more about to show lower spectrum needs to get into workhorse. So she continued looking. She found season one of Love on the Spectrum and applied for me, and I didn't get through. Obviously I'm not on season one. But when season two came around, they kind of gave us a call and we're like, are you still interested? And I was like, yes, get me somebody, So yeah, I jumped on that chance, and yeah, that's how I got into season two.

Let's like sort of go back to your childhood, your diagnosis, how old you were, et cetera, and like walks through what those early years were like for you.

So I didn't get diagnosed till I was in grade seven, about thirteen years old. Like most other girls on the spectrum were not diagnosed early at all. It's an average of eight years or older, and governmental help runs out at the age of eight, so we've got no help. My mom sent me to a girls school for high school like my sister went to before me, and the school figured it out. They were like, she's got some traits we've seen before. Have you ever heard of autism?

I think, like, when you hear that as a parent, the instant fear is worst case.

Now you hear horror stories.

Yeah, my mum was terrified, and she got me in to see a psychologist, and that psychologist spoke to me for five minutes. She said, I was just too smart. I should have gone to a really brady person school. She didn't read the notes from my school. She didn't

So you are not a very verbal child.

Oh, I was extremely verbal, but I would talk at people, so I had to have it explained to me. Like a game of tennis, the ball is the conversation. So you hit it over with a question, they answer it, they hit it back. What I was doing was like those tennis ball machines, but to shoot them out, That's what I would do.

I would talk at people.

It's a great analogy.

Yeah, she was brilliant.

Could you explain to everyone sort of what the breakdown is for how they diagnose or where people sit on the spectrum, whether it's mild or high functioning. How is the breakdown done and where do you sit on that spectrum?

So my personal diagnosis is high functioning mild autism, which means I function well in society, which is the high functioning. The mild means that you not you guys, but neurotypicals in general will experience my autism mildly. I can moderate my behavior well enough that it doesn't socially affect me too much, but I still have autism, which means my social learning was delay my experience things in a different way.

You said something that was really profound to me before we started recording, and that was that it is mild as in the way that neurotypical people perceive your autism is mild. However it's not mild to you. Absolutely.

I experience all the hypersensitivities, the anxieties, the internal repercussions of being in the neurotypical world extremely like I am constantly moderating my behavior, checking in with my own stress levels.

I have to be constantly aware of where I am.

Mentally and physically so that my perception remains mild.

It's that exhausting for you hearing That makes me really sad, because you should never have to moderate who you are to fit in with the rest of us cities.

Yeah, and I think the same thing, like, surely there must come a point where you feel like you don't get to be your authentic self and you're constantly showing up to the world to fit in with what other people expect.

In a perfect world, I wouldn't have to. But we don't live in a perfect world. We live in a neurotypical society. We live in a world based off of I guess, the average. So we live in a world that's not built for people in wheelchairs because they're not the average. We're built for people with vision, not the blind, because that's the average. Just the same our societal social

They help relax you a little bit.

Yeah, we're constantly doing that, and I do mean constantly. We suffer from mental burnout a lot quicker. I myself cannot work nine to five. I have a job that is evening hours about five hours, and that's about maybe maximum seven and that's on the days I can do. I cannot work more than that. I've tried, and I immediately burn out, and I am in a mental place that is no good.

I feel you. I can only wait for five hours too when I burn out for very different reasons, for different reasons.

Can you tell me how have you found your relationships and your connections with people has been affected by having autism.

So over the years of my social training with Julie, I also had to become aware of other people's social I guess habits. So I'm hyper aware of not only myself, but also of other people. This isn't for all autistics. It's maybe it's just for me, Maybe it's just for a few of us. But I don't read body language naturally like you guys would breathe and be like, ah,

We're all worried about those things when it comes to dating. Do you know what that's? One thing is like, no matter where you sell on the spectrum, I think it's in the dating world, especially in the starts, so fucking hard to know what the other person is thinking or feeling or doing.

I'm extremely genuine, I don't lie. I'm very forward with everything about me, Like I tell people straight off about I'm autistic.

So when you meet somebody you mentioned to us before that in the first five minutes, you'll always tell someone that you are autistic. Why is that? Is that because you feel like people might judge you for something, or that you might misunderstand something, and you just want to make it clear.

Absolutely, I one will tell them I'm autistic and to ask them like, if I ever do something odd, please just fill me in because I'm still learning, but also it gives me a reason why I sometimes ask, like, I'm not currently sure about your emotion, can you explain it to me?

If I hadn't explained how autistic, would be like what why?

Where's that coming from? Where I've already explained I'm autistic, I don't understand it all one hundred percent me asking for explanations is kind of normal, natural, neutral.

And do you find that having that conversation upfront allows for a greater level of empathy from the person that you're talking to. Do you find that like most people receive that information in a way that's really helpful to you being able to better have these conversations and better engage.

Absolutely, if they're negative about it, I will kind of feel like, Okay, this is not going to be a situation that I'm going to continue. But ninety eight percent of the time people are like, oh, okay, cool. If I have questions going to ask, and I'm like, that's great. I can educate more people and continue furthering our awareness.

Well, I guess that's why we wanted a big reason why we wanted you on the podcast is because I just think there is a lot of miseducation out there, and like you said earlier, when you were diagnosed as a child, and I think there was always this really negative kind of to someone with autism or someone on

So hypersensory is a kind of side effect of I guess most autistic spectrum disorders. I myself have light, sound, and touch. Imagine you're driving at night with a foggy windscreen. The kind of the light kind of stars out like blurs. That's how light is to me all the time. So driving at night, I have to wear driving glasses. Otherwise the light is just blinding and I cannot physically see past headlights. So the sun is like that too, Yes,

Blink, we see that much earlier. With sound. It's very similar. Like I did a small.

Discussion of this on the show about the dog barking, and there was a very long discussion that they cut out most of it. But our brains get kind of stuck on the irritation and it becomes like a loop.

In our head. We can't get it out. Have you ever had a song stuck in your head and it's like to.

Do and it's like just that short bit and you don't know the rest of the song, but that one little bit keeps looping.

I guess as well.

Like the way that I'm interpreting this is if there was some sort of distracting noise that was happening, like someone clicking a pen or you know, my kid crying in the room next door, that for me, I might be able to dull that down, and I might be to dial it back and pay attention to whatever's happening in front of me, where for.

Us it's amplified. Our brains link onto it and stick on to it, and we can't not pay attention to it.

What do you think is some of the most prolific misconceptions that surround autism.

Probably when we most people call it a meltdown, but when we break down because we can no longer mask Masking is where we consciously change our behavior to hide our autistic traits or non neurotypical traits.

So sort of before when you explained that it's exhausting for you because you're constantly trying to not be your authentic self, that's masking where you're like, I'm just trying to fit in with you guys. Look don't have a tick.

So when I'm extremely stressed, I might stim which is for me playing with my fingers, which usually I can do in my pocket. So that's a bit of masking.

But it could also.

Be like some people have echololia where they repeat sounds that they've heard, so baby Shark and the doo doo doos, and you'll have one autistic child just doing the doo do dooos for the rest of the day. It's an ecololic habit where for masking we realize we're doing it, we have to physically stop ourselves from doing it. Sometimes we do it where we can't be seen, Like if I was doing it right now, I'd be doing the doot dooos inside my mouth without noise.

A big misconception that I know of in the autism world is that and I hear it all the time, and we put just so you know, we put some questions out on our Instagram page, the podcast Instagram page. We had so many people with questions which we will never get through them all, but one of the ones that sort of just kept popping up recurrently was And I hate to even say it, but I'm just going to say it. Do people on the spectrum feel anything?

I don't think it was just feel anything. I think the big one was feel empathy. I think that was the real one.

That is a conversation I've had so many times. We do have empathy in a way. So if you fall over skin your knee, we are the first person there with band aids to check on you, dry your tears. We have that type of empathy. The empathy we usually like is when we're playing a game, it's my way or the highway. Do it my way or go away. That's the empathy we kind of lack. When it's a set thing that we know has to be done one way, that is it.

It is stuck on that one way.

You cannot change it easily regardless of whether someone feels because you know, I guess like even if there is one specific way of doing something or the right way of doing something, if it means that it hurts someone's feelings, we might sometimes bend.

The rules to cater for that. Person's feelings.

Thats quite often we are so we being the autistic people are so bound by our mental rules and structures that that's the empathy we lack. So I can love like anybody else.

That was a big one. Can they love and why?

Of course?

Like, absolutely, we can love, but we love in our own way. Quite a few of us are touched sensitive. We don't like being physically touched. Funny story in year seven, my friend hugged me every day of the year until I stopped being touched sensitive to our group. So now with our group, I'm comfortable being touched, which is great, but quite a few people on the spectrum are like, no,

And also you know that she's someone who you're in a safe space with it. It wasn't just like a stranger making you hug them, Like I know that someone will listen to this and be like.

You should never be forced to hug someone. She was very aware.

I was touch starved as well, right because the only people I would touch on my family, So I feel everything you guys do like I will feel fear, I will feel pain, I will feel grief, like Heaven knows, I've degree with my time. It's our expression is completely different. We do feel it, we don't convey it in the same way.

Dated a long time ago, I dated someone for a while that was on the spectrum, and it was like it was a beautiful relationship, but I always felt like he wasn't interested in me, or he didn't love me, or he didn't care about my feelings all the time, and it was a constant battle, and he would always be like, you know, I love you, Like, how could you possibly not know that? I'm like, well, because you don't do anything to show me.

This crops up in my social circles as well. Love languages and the language of autism. It's like if you were sitting here in Australia and you decided to teleport to Japan into a rural area they don't speak English. You're not going to complain that they don't speak English. You're gonna be like, oh, I have to learn their language. It's the same you need to learn the language of the person in front of you. So over time, I've

Have made the bed.

They might have remembered you said you wanted to get something and they get it on their next shopping trip, things like that. So understanding their love language and their autistic language bridges that gap.

When you talk about love languages for people who sit on the autism specing disorder, do they still perceive the same love languages that we perceive. Could you sit down with someone and be like, here, do this love languages test and would that give you a better idea of the things that they like or don't like.

I personally think yes, okay, because you will find probably ninety percent or something.

Do not have physical touch as a love language?

Zero?

So our one was yeah, he was really great with physical touch. That was not the problem. It was like conveying anything in his brain that was the problem.

So that would be a communication. So words of affirmation, Yes, because we did the love languages test.

There you go, and I guess maybe even as well if you're sitting down and doing that love language just test with somebody who is on the spectrum. I know as well, like when we did a whole episode on it, and the thing I found really interesting is that you sit as a percentage, like you're not one hundred percent one zero percent of something else. Very rarely is that the case, Whereas I feel like somebody who maybe is on the spectrum could be zero percent touch or could

Absolutely, learning the love language or the autistic language of the person it extremely helps with it.

We did have a lot of people write in that their partners are on the spectrum and they sort of wanted to know what can they do better as a neurotypical partner? What advice do you have for someone like that? And I guess, like before we get into the show, briefest on your dating history as well.

Okay, so I am a person who doesn't like to be constantly masking obviously, so I don't like having to talk to someone that I've only just started dating every hour of every day. The thing I hate most is when they send me a good morning and a good night message.

Most of us are like, why haven't you messaged me good morning yet?

Exactly so, I'm the complete opposite. So the best thing to do with an autistic partner or a partner on the spectrum in any capacity is to sit down with them and communicate.

I show my affection by doing this. How does that make you feel? So? I show affection by making a cup of coffee.

I like hearing you look good today. I don't like hearing I missed you. I don't know why, but it just makes me feel uncomfortable discussing things like that.

This is how I.

Show my affection. How does that make you feel? What can I do to change it? If it makes you feel uncomfortable? And I guess that's the only thing you can do. And we preach that in every relationship is communication.

You can't. I mean, we all know that the word assumption is making an ass out of you and me. You're not going to know unless you sit down and ask. And that could be a family member, that could be your romantic partner, that.

Could be anyone in your life. Talk to me about love on the spectrum. What was that experience like, because I think from our experience on the Bachelor there were some really stressful pinch points with producers and actually with the whole environment. How did you find the environment of shooting or how did you find it going on dates and having cameras in your face?

So it was excellent. I'm really surprised to say it was absolutely excellent. I love that it gave us a liaison I had Alex. I still love her.

She's great.

And they would take care of us. They had two or three people to take care of and that's it. They wouldn't help the other groups. And when it came to dates, she was like, are you going to be stressed driving in? Yes, I will drive you for free. I will drive you.

That would there to make you comfortable.

We'd be at the date and they would constantly like walk past and check in, are you okay?

Do you need anything?

And it wasn't like condescending either.

It was you look a little stress? Can I help?

Oh it's a bit too cold, I'll change the air conditioning. It was very very welcoming. Our interview are keen? And he would ask the question and then later on be like you didn't seem comfortable answering that one do you want us to take it out? We won't err it And they were always very accommodating of anything and everything you needed.

This is the most special reality TV show. I have never heard anybody speak of their experience on a reality TV show with such like wonderful accolades.

But it's so great to hear that.

On my first date, when I had the panic attack on the episode one, I myself had to say can I have a break? But Kingan was like ready to ask do you need a break?

And he was like.

Okay, I was about to ask do you need to go outside?

So did you have that panic attack? If you guys haven't seen it, this is season two and Cassandra was on a date and was just very uncomfortable and had to leave. Did you have the panic attack? What was that due to? Was that due to being on a date with someone you didn't know? Was it due to the pressures of camera? People that because you know everyone's around.

So it's a mixture. His anxiety was obvious to me when my body was feeding on it. I was becoming more anxious because he was anxious. It was a part of the city I didn't know, so getting there made me anxious, and my social life at the time was not one hundred percent. COVID was happening, things were happening at the studio that was making me stressed. I had other things that I was thinking about, and it had

For us, it doesn't.

It kind of sits where it was, and then the next day it builds up more. The next day it builds up more until you just pop the top off and you have your breakdown because you just haven't been able to bring yourself back down.

Like did you meet anyone on the show, or did you meet anyone in that experience, who'll you were like, Yes, I can have a connection with this person.

The second date with Sam, I went on a second date with him off the show. We went to the aquarium, which was lovely, but we've decided to remain friends since then. I've spoken to quite a few people that have seen me on the show and they're like, you're so amazing, But I'm kind of keeping to myself.

Did you get anyone slide into DMS?

Oh?

So many.

My favorite ones are like the moms who are like, my son saw you on TV.

He's so excited. My daughter saw you on TV.

I just got goose bumps. Could we like Matchmaker's amazing? Because this is this representation that people don't see. You know, it's so incredible.

Love on the Spectrum is not for autistic people. It's for neurotypical people. We know what it's like to live on the spectrum. We know what it's like to try to date. We don't need a TV show to tell us how we feel, how we.

Know things are.

This show is for everybody else to inform you guys. It's an education program, so you guys see our world at least a glimpse of it, and there are so many variations on the spectrum. We're not going to show everybody's form of autism, which is unfortunate.

I wish we could.

So yes, there are people like saying, that's not how I experience autism. That is fine because you already know how you experience it.

It's for everybody else.

And I love that so much because it really is so eye opening it I guess I want to ask you, do you think it was a really good representation of autism.

I was extremely happy with how they represented me and the people I got to meet on the show. My autism is different to Michael's, mine is different to Tao. The way they represent us is individualized.

They yet to know us.

They learn how we see and feel the world, and then they use the best parts of what they've recorded to represent us individually.

And they do have I mean, like we see people everybody fell in love with Michael. We see people that you know, they're high functioning, they're low functioning, their mild, they're severe, And there really is the whole range. There are people, there are couples that are dating. One gets engaged. Not going to spoil it in case anyone well, oh, my god, that engagement I was I was so happy. It was the best thing I've ever saying.

I found out about it maybe a week before it went to air.

There's another secret.

I have to keep a lot of other people on the show, a lot of the other contestants. I'm just gonna use Micael as an example because I have that in my head now I can see him saying it. A lot of them say they prefer to date people on the spectrum. It's not the Bill and end all, But when asked an interview, they're like, yeah, I would prefer to date someone on the spectrum. How do you feel about that? And does that make it easier for you?

So it is again person to person different. I've dated both sides, and there is always going to be something that happens that's going to make something difficult. If it's another autistic person, their traits might conflict with mine. When I have a meltdown, I retreat. Some people will have

What did you learn from the show? Like, are you happy that you did it? What you took from it? And what if you can leave our audience with something that you wish people knew or could understand better. What is your message to then? What do you want to say to them?

I guess. Okay, So before I went on the show, I was almost self assured that there was something wrong with how I was dating. There had to be something I was doing wrong. There was something that I was doing that was stopping me from getting the one forever. After being on the show, it was good to see that no, I'm doing it right and there's nothing wrong.

It's just dating is hard.

You just haven't met yourself dating. So that's literally the crux of this entire podcast, and we say it every single week.

Dating is hard.

And I guess what I want to leave people with is you cannot trust your own brain. Your brain will tell you you're failing. Your brain will tell you there's something wrong with you. There's the brain will tell you that. My one likes to tell me I'm a freak. And back when I was a child, that was a word you didn't use, because you can't call my daughter a freak, she's autistic. These days, I revel in it like I am weird, I am a freak, I am unusual, and

Actually right, that is us out.

There's never been anything more profound said on this entire podcast.

And like it's my favorite quote to say is out of twenty four trillion possibilities, you exist the way you exist now.

And one thing that we always say, and I think that this is like just to flow on from your statement, is that thoughts are not facts, just because you think something and they're fluid, you know, like you might think something or feel something one day and that may not be a very positive thought or feeling, but those things are dynamic and they change, and in six months time or a year's time or a day's time, you may

It's been such a I just like a fan girl.

And it really is. It's a conversation we really want to work towards destigmatizing a whole variety of conversations on this podcast. And being able to talk to you and hear it from your own lived experience is something really truly special for us. Thank you so much, Cassandra. Whereas you've been the best.

Thank you.

It's been great being on here.

So we spoke to Cassandra earlier on and now we're going to speak to Jody Rogers now. Jody is a specialist on love on the show Spectrum Now. Jody is on this show so that she can help the participants with the little things with dating, with relationships, and with social skills. Jody has a degree in sexual health and she possesses extensive experience working with people with disabilities. So Jody, welcome to life.

Uncut Ah, thanks for having me.

We are so excited to talk to you. So just so you know, we did speak to Cassandra earlier on and you guys will be sharing the episode, which is really great because we did want to have I guess two perspectives. We wanted to speak to somebody that is experiencing ASD that can tell us firsthand what that's like, what it was like to be on the show. But we wanted to also speak to someone that is helping these people navigate life on the day to day and

Life? Isn't it? Sometimes you never know how you get there.

But I started, well, I've always worked with people with disabilities my whole life. Even when I was doing my undergraduate in teaching, I was still working as a support worker. So I think since I've been about fifteen or sixteen, I've been hanging out with people with disabilities. Well, originally I was a teacher. I actually have four degrees. I'm just a bit of a nerd that so I really

A bus or something like that.

But the most important thing in my life is relationships, you know. I think it's the thing that we all

There wasn't an emphasis.

So I worked for Family Planning Associations in Australia, so I was do it, working with them to support people with disabilities around sexuality. And yeah, finally just put my money where my mouth was and got a master's degree in sexual health counseling. And my whole life, every single day of my life, is based around giving people who sometimes don't have access to really good counseling and education

So do we what we do as well?

You know, there's a lot of myths around autism or what the general population receive autism to be. Isn't how it is at all?

You know.

I stumbled onto the show because no one's paid to be on that show.

There was no casting agents, there was nothing like that.

They just sort of put a call out to people saying who want to be on the show, And at that point I received this early in twenty nineteen, I got an email saying, oh, you know, we're looking for autistic people to be on this show. I printed this fly out, stuck it up in my office and they just didn't think anything else about it at all. And then later that year, a friend of a friend of a friend was talking to somebody about producing this show and they said, I have you heard of Jodie Rodgers.

Was like, no way.

And that's the vulnerability of it. You put yourself in a very vulnerable position. And this is my profession, this is my job. I'm an accounselor and a therapist. So a family member said to me, You've got to think about the greater good.

You know, what is it that this show could offer.

I just knew if this was done well and it was done right, then it would allow people to actually understand how diverse and how absolutely incredible autism is and how much we can learn from autistic people.

Can you just tell us what exactly is autism? Give us a bit of a definition, because we spoke to Cassandra about it and she described what it's like for her. But can you give us an actual definition.

Yeah, it's very complex and hard to define.

And if you ask any autistic person, they can give you their understanding of autism, but their experience of autism is very different for different people. So the simplest and best way I can explain it is it's neurological and it's a lifelong neurological People don't say disorder, but if people looking at diagnosis, then they still call it a disorder.

I like to call it a difference, you know. So it's a.

Neurologically different way of seeing and perceiving the world. But diagnostically what the people that do the diagnosis, they're looking for sort of differences in two distinct areas. So they're looking for differences in the way that people socially interact with one another and they're also looking for an area

So you can imagine how diverse that is.

But then every single person has to have repetitive and restricted interests. They might have a really special interest, or they may really need to have sameness and routine, or they may have difficulties with sensory processing. But every autistic person has both of these difficulties. And then I think the other thing that people need to also understand about autism.

Is that you can be the most intelligent person on the planet. It's not about somebody's IQ.

So you can be really really intelligent and have autism, or you can also have a profound intellectual disability and have autism. So then if you put those two things together, then it shows the complexity and diversity of it.

So you mentioned earlier on that the understanding of it is so poor. You know, I think that we especially because of TV shows and not love on spectrum, and I'm talking about like how it's represented in sort of more like your Hollywood TV shows, there's this huge gap in like the understanding between what it is and how it actually presents itself. And what do you think some of the biggest misrepresentations are for autism.

There's this perception because there's shows that show people with sort of high level skill that one thing is that people believe that if you're autistic, then you're going to be really skilled in one area, and often that's to do with you know, maths and science and things like that. That's not how it presents in any shape or form.

So what are some of the reasons that people on the spectrum. Employ you employ your services to help them. Is it more social day to day things? Is it specific to relationships and dating and coaching into that world. Is it trying to learn how to have conversations, to touch, to care.

So people come to me for anything to do with sexuality, and that's you can imagine how diverse sexuality is as well. You know, I will have many, many people that will rock up and say I really want a boyfriend or I really want a girlfriend, but they have no idea, absolutely no idea about even basic skills of that.

So even today it will give you an exam.

Today, a woman who I've been working with for three years quoted me back to myself because she's just met somebody, but she met somebody online.

And I said to her, oh so great.

She's actually met two fellows online and both of these have been successful relationships.

And I'm saying to her, you know people looking.

For partners online all the time, and where are you getting these skills from? And she said to me, you taught me the three text rule. So the three text rule I say to people is that because part of autism is not understanding reciprocal nature, what we do with reciprocity, and that if we're first getting to know someone, often.

We all do it.

I'm just going to put it out there, you know, when you kind of get those first feelings going, oh my god, this is so exciting, and then you hammer somebody from bard them with the tech.

I'll send another one rock up at his house.

Look at your phone thirty seven times in three minutes, and all that sort of stuff. But so she has learned a really simple technique of I am only allowed to send three texts and then I've got to stop. Because people with autism sometimes don't understand the reciprocal nature of back and forth in a relationship, and so can get into trouble and they can drive another person away by just being really insistent with expressing their devotion or their desire.

So that's one example I work with.

I do couples counseling, so I can work with couples where one person's autistic and the other's neurotypical or both autistic and sort of navigating. Sometimes that can be navigating even things like you know, sensuality within sexuality, or being able to compromise or understand. But one of the diagnostic criteria for autism is actually about social and emotional reciprocity.

To do that. It's such an incredible thing. And this is one of the things when we were speaking to Cassandra that like I felt so naive to the fact that, yes, we learn these social cues just from living every day. Like I mean, we go to school, we learn algebra. No one teaches you how to navigate a relationship, no one teaches you how to have a conversation, but we observe other people doing it, and that's how we kind of learn.

I had never even really thought.

About the fact that somebody who does have autism has to be taught how to maybe interact with those social cues and this idea that they have to show up in a world where we all act and behave in a certain way. Or people who are neurotypical act and behave in a certain way, and then they have to mask what is natural to them to be able to fully function and fully be received in what is our

The lest way I explained it to neurotypical people is if I said to you two tonight, you have to go out to a big function, but you can You can't go with each other because then you've got your wingmen, then you've got your support system. So you have to go completely by yourself. And most of us experience this. I have to go byself. You're going to walk into a room, there's going to be three hundred people there, and it's going to be out of your comfort SiGe.

Or should I be? Is there somebody else or should be talking to?

When we go to those nights, it is exhausting because you can spend the whole night you're not relaxing into yourself. It's almost like you're playing a characture of what you think you should be doing in that and you put on a sort of frontal and you can feel it in yourself sometimes and you're like, oh my god.

This is the worst experience. You know, it's really hard.

It's what we often have one or two many glasses of wine when we're at those things.

All right, but it's also one of the reasons why we say, like, oh, small talk is so hard, Like I had to turn it on tonight like it's that exact sentiment, right.

Yeah, it is.

And so if you think about how exhausted we are after doing that, imagine if you had to do that every single day and every moment in your life in a social interaction with another person outside of your own home.

That's exhausting to think about.

It's exhausting, is it?

Because it takes so much mental power to have to constantly think, am I saying the right thing?

How are they perceiving me?

There are typical people. We've got innate priority and we learn by watching other people. So from the moment we're born, one of our highest priorities is to be with other people, to socially engage with another person. The fact that both of you are nodding your heads at me to encourage me to speak. No one ever taught you to nod

And then we mimic each other, We mimic those social skills, and this is what.

We're learning a lot about because we have so many great people autistic people, and if you listen to all sic people, they teach you what autism is. It's just the fact that we don't listen because we came from this really patriarchal medical model of we know what autism is. When she talks about masking, Cassandra has mimicked other people. She sat back, and many women talk about it that they desperately.

Want to fit in.

They really want this, and so what they do in their life is that they copy another person and they learn to sort of. Cassandra talks a lot about she gets into character and sometimes being a character is easier than being herself. It's because she has spent her whole life copying what other people are doing around her, because she thinks that that's what's socially acceptable. You know, that's the masking. And masking can be really hard because you're

They know that men who are diagnosed don't do that as much as women do.

Interestingly, because I think that's just the way many many women are really wanting to fit in. A lot of men sort of learn their social skills in a different manner, but not through copying another person.

I think that's evident even with neurotypicals. Social media, you see women and we all do we all do it. We copy each other. We see something that we like, we see something that looks good, we see something that's trending, and all of a sudden, every second person has to go and have that handbag, everyone has to have that outfit, everyone has to be doing this thing. I don't think you see that as much in men and eurotypicals either, So I don't think that's even just an autism thing.

So there's two parts to that.

One is that people don't recognize that the way that we learn to give words to feelings is by somebody teaching us that. So when you guys were children, if you were really frustrated, you know, they knowing the difference between anger and frustration and being a little bit irritable, somebody puts those words in their mouth. So somebody would see you being frustrated when you were really little, they

At somebody else.

When we're talking about emotional reciprocity as well, we want our partner to know what we're wanting and feeling without communicating it. But the number one thing with autistic people is they just need it said straight out. They need it really clearly and bluntly communicated to them. So if that person is upset, they need to actually say I am upset so that the partner can actually hear the

So the best answer I can give is number one.

If you're feeling a certain way, say it, say it really clearly and bluntly, and it doesn't hurt an autistic person's feelings.

They like it.

They like it if you say I'm angry, I'm upset, even to be that blunt to say I need some affection, I need tenderness, you know, but you have to sometimes say it because autistic people want to not reading us.

All the time in that way.

So that's that first one and the other one is to really support autistic people to be able to have emotional words themselves. So if you see your autistic partner expressing an emotion, then help either asking them what are you feeling? Tell me the word like, help them get

Language between those two, and the language.

Has to be really upfront and really blunt and saying emotions out loud.

Will you answer the next question two, which was yeah, I mean you answered it in it because we got a lot of the same kind of questions. So it's obvious that people are experiencing the same kind of problems in these relationships. I think something to take away from that what you just said then, is there's no subtlety. There's no subtle cues, there's no hints in these relationships. There's no like leaving a ring out with a circle around it hoping that your partner walks past some things.

Sometimes autistic people, some autistic people I work with, is so empathic and feel so much of another person's feelings that it's overwhelming for them, and so they actually retreat

At them for.

That's not normal, but it's so true, and I reckon there's so many people listening to this who do the same thing, because like a part of you is like I don't want to have the same conversation again, or I don't want to seem like I'm needy, or you know, maybe it's a bit confrontational or whatever. It is one of the things that we advocate for on this podcast, and pretty much on every episode, it comes back to this idea of like communication, and you can't expect that

Thinking and feeling.

And I think having this like expectation that you should be so in sync that someone can read your mind regardless of where you sit on the spectrum is like, it's such an unfair way of approaching a relationship.

It is it's complex, and so then if you're walking along at least the similar path that neurology is similar, then that's helpful. But if your neurology is so different, then if you don't have good communication skills between you, if you don't develop these communication skills, and the whole thing can just fall to pieces.

We don't want to leave out the parents in this conversation because we had a lot of people write in saying it can be a really lonely experience for the family members and for the parents of people on the spectrum. Some of their questions were around how to know or what early signs to look for in their kids at any age, from lake toddlers to primary school and onwards. And then I guess what they can do once they've figured out that there could be something that's not quite right,

So the first thing I say about diagnostically, what they talk about with autism is that it is when somebody skills and not matching what's a developmental milestone. So often what will happen is that we will see autism, and we can see earlier indicators of autism before a child's even three, when a child's really young, even prior to three, you would actually want to see some of the body language skills that I'm talking about.

You want to see that a child will.

Turn towards a caregiver to get security from them. So if you introduce something new, a typically developing child will actually turn to a caregiver with their body. That's called body orientation. They can actually pick up these incredible research on these. They can look at a primary care give mother or father and they can look at them and that person doesn't even have to give them a big smile.

They may not be interacting in the same way.

They may find It's funny, lots of parents say they kind of know before they know, they know something's just not quite right.

So some kids are given very very early diagnosis.

They can see these repetitive behaviors that it's not a typically developing thing for a child to be given a set of blocks and just line them up and lie on the floor and look at them. You know, that's not They learn to play differently, but then we see different steps. So if a child may have all of those skills, but then we also go through other steps

They think their parents seek the same as they do. They're just walking out.

But when we get to about six or seven, what starts happening is we start changing our behavior to become part of a gang. We go to school and they start talking about us being an us and are we and class A and we follow each other as a group, and we actually start imitating the behavior of people around us. So if the teacher says, you know, everybody go to

You ever heard of autism?

Or you know, I've got a mate that is autistic and he learned he was autistic by listening to a podcast while he was riding his bike because he heard people talking about.

Autism, and as they talked about him, what that's me. That's what I do every day.

When you're talking about parents, Parenting is really really hard. And I'm not just talking about parenting a child that has a neurognological difference.

Parenting is hard, and so.

We all go and buy these big books, you know, like how to be the Best Parent on the Planet books. If you have a child that's autistic, those books make no sense because they tell you how to do something, but if your child's not neurotypical, it doesn't work. And so you're trying really hard as a parent to do

But it actually can allow parents.

To say, Okay, this is the reason that they're doing this, and it allows parents to then have a new guidebook, a near guidebook to parenting that they didn't have before. And I think the thing is that sometimes it can furity isolating because if your child is doing things so differently to everybody else, rather than as supporting each other and rather than is helping each other sometimes which is

I also think as well, and I had the privilege of interviewing a woman a little while ago who son had severe cerebral palsy, and she said one of the most challenging things that she found is that when she found out her son had cerebral palsy was that every other mother was like, oh god, that must.

Be the worst thing in the world.

Thank god that didn't happen to me. And it was this real like pity almost, and she said the pity came from not understanding. And she's like, and even myself, she's like, when I found out, I felt like my world was over. I felt like the mother that I thought I was going to be was gone. And she's like, even though my little boy was the exact same little boy he was the day before, but that diagnosis felt

I couldn't have said it any better, Jody.

Thank you so much for coming and being a part of the podcast. Like brit said, she has been obsessed with Love on the Spectrum and she's gotten me well and truly in love with it as well. And it's

And I love that that's what this show focuses on.

Yeah, me too.

I'm really glad too, because I think the connection being connected, that sense of belonging and connection and I'm loved.

Everybody wants to have that feeling, no matter who they are, no matter where they live, no matter what part of their life they are. It's a universal feeling everybody. Everybody wants to feel that. Okay, guys, you know we never end an episode with it. I'll suck in our sweet, our highlight, our lowlight, the best and the worst. Sometimes it's big, sometimes it's not. It's called suck and sweet.

Yeah.

Look, I mean I know that everybody's affected, so I don't want to go into like the real nitty gritty of why I feel sad about it. I had a holiday plan to go to New Zealand that's been canceled. Matt and I also were going to do our wedding planning this weekend.

We had booked.

I'm not going to tell you whether the wedding's going to be guys, I'm not going to slip off on that one. But we had booked a weekend away where we're having our wedding and pretty much all of that's now being put on hold.

But that is my suck.

My sweet boat is something that I'm really grateful for. And some of you're going to think this is really corny, but I feel really really happy. I had a little moment with Matt today where we were, you know, kind of like unpacking, like what's changed, and the fact that we're going to be in lockdown and like, you know, we don't have any daycare at the moment, it's going

Oh they're really I mean, they're both really great suck and sweet, like your suck is very sucky. And I think everyone in Sydney at the moment, and I mean yeah, like we said, Melbourne knows, everyone in Sydney I think is gonna have the same suck. It's fucking just shit. There's not another word for it.

And there are definitely worse people to be stuck in lockdown with than Matthew Johnson.

So there you go, he's a sweet. Okay, my suck, Look, my suck is going to be that. I have gone overseas obviously to see Jordan and join him on the tour and do our thing, and I have just had nothing. Really, I shouldn't say nothing. I have had so much love and support from a lot of your life as but god, I have gotten some hate. My Instagram has been non stop hate in the dms, in the comments because I am overseas, which I totally understand. I feel so lucky

Even the random elderly grandma on the plane said, though I love that you're sweet. You're sweet is like taking the pierce out of Jordan. That's you're sweet and you're sweet. That right, And he did shave. Yeah, he will never let me. He'll never let me be right.

So I feel like for me, for him to for that to have happened, it just couldn't have been any better timing. So that's my sweet. And on that note, guys, I reckon. That's around.

Well, if you have loved this episode, you guys know the drill, go subscribe, Tell your mom, tell your dad, tell.

Your friends, tell your kids, just tell everyone.

And if you are stuck at home with your kids because your kids can't get to take care, I'm sorry.

And share the love because we love, we love love. They're not Contora, They're.

They're not cuttor gay, they're bunny, They're not cuttora, that's not that day.

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