Connection Before Correction: Autism Understanding & Support

Complex trauma, developmental trauma, relational trauma apply very, very well to neurodivergent people. People with a lot of trauma also have very fragile nervous systems. And there's a lot of overlap. Neurodivergent people are both more sensitive to things and more likely to be traumatized by things.

That's David Smith, a late diagnosed autistic therapist and licensed clinical social worker. What does it look like to approach therapy with curiosity and humility instead of expertise? How does a late autism diagnosis? reshape the way a clinician understands both themselves and their clients. And what truly distinguishes neurodiversity affirming care from the models that many therapists were originally trained in.

I'm Emily Kircher Morris. A conversation with David Smith is ahead on episode 302. What this world means. The Neurodiversity Podcast. One quick reminder for clinicians before we go. Our live continuing education training, adapting cognitive behavioral therapy for autistic and Pediatric clients is happening on Friday, January 23rd. This training is led by Emily King from Learn with Dr. Emily. Approved for both APA and NBA.

Continuing Education Credit. If you're listening right as this episode drops and have been meaning to register, there is still time. And if you're catching this after the live The self study version will be available at neuro. dot university, so you won't miss out either. Just check out the link in the show notes to get all the details. David Smith is next. Previously on the next

You know, when I was a kid, oftentimes you didn't find what you were really good at until you were like 14, 15, 16, even older. But now we expect excellence when they're really quite young. And the way they tell us that they're not ready for that is by looking like they're unmotivated. unwilling to try new things because they're afraid they're not going to be successful. And we tend to... Who we want that kid to be.

As opposed to the kid who was right in front of us telling us what they already love to do. Episode 171. Find it wherever you get your podcasts.

Today I'm talking with David Smith, a licensed clinical social worker who brings a personal and affirming approach to supporting autistic and other neurodivergent people and their families. His telehealth practice in 2023 and now works with clients across five states from his home in southern Oregon.

David was diagnosed as autistic in 2024, and that experience has really deepened how he understands and connects with the people he works with. He also provides clinical supervision to other therapists, helping to expand affirming care across the field. So David, thank you so much for being with me today. Thank you, Emily. I'm really excited to be here. Been listening to your podcast for quite a while.

I think we have a lot of parallels in some of our experiences and kind of the work that we do. So yeah, I'm excited to talk to you too.

And I kind of actually want to start our conversation today on the topic of the balance for affirming therapists. Between curiosity and humility. I feel like those are just really important pieces to the work that we do. And I feel like that balancing of the curiosity and humility kind of takes on a whole new depth after being diagnosed later in life.

So can you share a little bit about how discovering your own autistic identity has influenced that balance, like how you approach therapy and learn from your clients and show up for them? Yeah, that's a good question. Um I was, as you mentioned, diagnosed very late. And ironically I'd been working with neurodiversion clients as a therapist for about seven years by the time I actually went to seek a diagnosis myself.

My wife, uh, who I met about six years ago, had been saying ever since she met me, uh, that she thought I was probably autistic, and I just kept saying, No, it's probably trauma. I thought I knew what autism looked like'cause I'd worked with a lot of autistic children and their families. And I'd been working as a private practice therapist, uh, specializing in neurodiversity affirming care for about a year and a half. And my clients were the ones who started calling me out and saying

You know, this is the tism, dude. You gotta start paying attention to this. Maybe you should go get it checked out. And the first question that potential clients would ask me often was, are you autistic yourself? Mm-hmm. Which makes sense. It's a way of saying, Will you understand me? Mm-hmm. Is there a way that you can hold space for my experience? Are you are you yet another therapist who's going to try to label me, diagnose me?

See this as a disorder, and all I could say was, Well, I don't know, but my wife thinks so. And that started to feel more and more inauthentic. They had been through this long process of discovery themselves, and I had not yet pursued that.

So I decided to start taking it more seriously. And so I went for an assessment. And at that point I was fifty six years old. I thought I knew a lot about autism and ADHD. And decided to do a sort of two for package. Uh get both checked out at once. uh the psychologist Benjamin Neely in um I think he's in s Vancouver, Washington, who was absolutely excellent.

Test to be for ADHD, he said, uh I can't completely rule it out, but I could say that you'd be the first person in the history of my practice to score zero off the screening tools and still get the diagnosis. So I think I can conclusively say that I don't have ADHD. But he said it's clear you've got autism. And at that point, it was both a complete shock and no surprise at all to hear those words come out of his mouth.

And it was only forty five minutes into the the actual interview, done a lot of screening tests, but I said, Don't you want to do some differential diagnosis? Trauma, depression, you know, other things? He said, No, I mean those might be there, but it's clearly autism. So I left the room and my wife and my mother-in-law were waiting next door to hear the result.

And they said, So what did he say? And I said, Well, looks like I'm autistic. My wife stood up and she said, Of course you are and came over and gave me a big hug.

And at that point it changed my journey as an autistic therapist, working with neurodivergent people primarily, uh, in a really dramatic way. I I take my work very seriously. So of course I'd gotten a lot of training, I'd done a lot of research, I had learned as much as I possibly could. Including from my clients, uh, because it's largely a a journey of mutual discovery when you're working with neurodivergent people. Everyone is unique.

But at that point it became much more personal. So I did the autistic thing, started doing a lot of deep dives. Every conversation with my wife turned out to be about neurodiversity and autism. Got very annoying for her very quickly, I'm sure. And I started absorbing the information that I was getting and not much More rich, unnuanced way.

And started trying to understand more about my own experience and then how it applied to my the the people I work with. I don't know I don't like to call them clients or patients. They're part of the family. And often we are fellow travelers exploring uncharted territory. I think about it like the explorers who went out into the world and unmapped areas.

And came back with sketches of what they had found for people who hadn't been there yet. That's a lot of what we're doing as neurodivergent people trying to understand this unique experience. So in some cases I'm a couple steps ahead of the people I'm working with, in some cases I'm several steps behind because they've lived with this a lot longer. So it has definitely uh been humbling. And

I make it very clear when I'm working with people that I'm I'm not some sort of white coated expert here to teach them how to live their lives. We're just trying to navigate the space together and it's so complicated. And so individual. Yeah. So we work with a lot of different areas in therapy. Yeah.

I can appreciate that. I know for me, having written some books and doing the podcast, like people will refer to me as an expert, which always feels very uncomfortable to me. I feel like especially when I'm with my clients. I always frame it as you have your experiences. I don't have all the answers, but I'm pretty good at listening and brainstorming, like you were talking about, like kind of that mapping things out.

and take the experiences that I have with other clients, you know, and see if there's anything that we can learn from those that might also be helpful. But as a clinician, It's so important to be alongside somebody as opposed to, I don't know, spoon feeding them the answer or telling them this is the magic fix because often there are no magic fixes. And so just recognizing it as that type of a process.

that we have this similar viewpoint. We're looking at things and we're just trying to figure out what works. And

I think sometimes that's dissatisfying though. I think sometimes people want just the answer. Do you run into that? Yeah. They want things that they can actually do. Mm-hmm. They've been through usually by the time people come to me, they've seen a number of different therapists before. I think the record that I Of a seventy five year old client. was about thirty different therapists in her lifetime. Wow.

And many of them have gone through some very dissatisfying experiences in therapy with people trying to use just generic CBT or other traditional approaches that therapists typically use. And they gain more and more insight into why they have the struggles they do, but the struggles don't change. So when people come to me, they want actionable steps that they can take. And they also want someone who can really hold space for the difficulties of their journey.

'Cause when you are neurodivergent, you're living with a very complicated and often fragile nervous system. And all the things that come along with that, chronic health issues, uh chronic fatigue, sometimes pain. A lot of people have hypermobility and Kellos Donlos. Often they have never had a good night's sleep. This is true for me. They struggle with digestive issues almost universally, especially with autism.

There's a such a host of things that they're dealing with, sensory sensitivities, social struggles, a lot of issues with having stable relationships or being able to hold a stable job. It's a full person experience. So they want help and they want accompaniment. One of my first supervisors when I was still an intern, uh, Alan Schrader, a very, very experienced therapist who'd been working with children.

for many years and had autistic people within his family. I was struggling to figure out what to do with a a Clyde who was very complicated and I was trying to get guidance from him and he said, David Sometimes the answers you need are not anything you learned at school. They're not in a textbook. They're not in a research paper. Sometimes the best intervention is just to come in with a smile in a dark place.

Mm. And I've held that close to my heart ever since. The people that I work with want concrete things that they can do. 'Cause they're they're struggling and they want to make life better. And I told them from the beginning that this will work only as well as the effort that you're willing to put in. I cannot fix things for you. It's your life.

And you're the one who has to learn to drive this complicated custom made car that you got that has no user's manual, has no diagrams. It was created by some mad inventor who just rue Goldberg the whole thing. And then threw away the manual and died. So how do you develop a wiring diagram for your being? How do you map out a user's manual that will work for you to make this complicated mind, body, spirit? that you've been given function more of the time.

And so we embark on that journey together. And I combine it's it's it's a very non traditional therapy approach. I combine some of the traditional tools, C B T, D Bt, the and so on. But more often than not, I'm using a lot of psychoeducation just to say, look, this is It may be weird for the average person what you're experiencing, but for the population I work with, this is very normal. And this is why.

And I can give them a lot of research and information to help them understand what is happening with their neurotransmitters, with their digestive system, with their nervous system, with their sensory inputs. Why is this happening? And what can I do about it? And a lot of it comes down to stress management. Mm-hmm. Stress is a very destabilizing thing for any mammal. But for neurodivergent people in particular, it is

something we have to manage very carefully. Our window of tolerance for stress is much narrower than the so called normal person, if there was such a thing. Right. And we are destabilized more quickly and stay destabilized longer. So managing stress is really key. And stress is not necessarily the way we think about it, it's this negative thing that comes from bad experiences in our lives. Stress could be excitement. It could be joy. Mm-hmm. Think about a roller coaster.

It's the same exact experience on a neurological level, whether you label it f terrifying or exciting, it's still destabilizing.

You mentioned some of those kind of traditional types of therapy. You also mentioned earlier parallels sometimes between neurodivergence and trauma. I always feel like trauma informed therapy and neurodiversity affirming strategies are very closely aligned. They're not exactly the same, but very closely aligned. Can you talk a little bit about that overlap? Yeah, I started out as uh

someone who specialized in complex trauma. That was my academic background. That was my passion. That's what drew me into this work in the first place. Mm. A lot of the tools that I learned in working with people who had complex trauma, developmental trauma, relational trauma. apply very, very well to neurodivergent people. People with a lot of trauma also have very fragile nervous systems. And there's a lot of overlap.

Neurodivergent people are both more sensitive to things and more likely to be traumatized by things that a person who was not neurodivergent might not experience as traumatic, and they are more likely to experience full on trauma. Because sometimes we are difficult people to deal with. And we attract a lot of unpleasant experiences through no fault of our own, bullying in schools. Abuse from caregivers, academic trauma in the in the school systems, all kinds of things that

just accumulate wounds that are very difficult to heal. So often when I'm working with neurodivergent neurodivergent people, there's a huge overlap. They have a lot of complex trauma as well. And people who have complex trauma also are very sensitive to stress. They're very sensitive to their environment. They are hyper-vigilant. Uh neurodivergent people are all those things also.

Although the reasons may be different, the etiology, as we would call it in therapy, may not be the same. But the way that you approach that person, the way that you the kind of interventions you use has a lot of similarity. doctor Megan Anna Knaff, who's one of my the people I admire the most, has a lot of Venn diagrams. It's kind of her jam. Mm-hmm. And one of my favorites is where she maps out the overlap between autism and complex trauma.

And the c the overlap is huge. Mm-hmm. And she's got a lot of great material on why that is. So the interventions are very similar and the background and training that I got in working with complex trauma has served me well in working with dyspopulation.

Yeah, I think that sometimes it gets overlooked just the fact that being neurodivergent on its own is a risk factor for trauma and all of those other pieces that kind of go into that, even if you're in a supportive environment.

you mentioned educational or academic trauma. You spent time working in elementary schools and working with students. So that's one of the things for me as well, that I spent time working in the schools and it really kind of gave a front row seat to how neurodivergent kids experience those systems day to day beyond what my own experiences had been when I was a kid. Um, is there a story or a moment from your time working in the schools that sticks with you about how maybe it shifted like

How you support kids or how you approach your work with neurodivergent adults and families? Yeah. Over and over again I had a similar experience. But so I work mostly in elementary schools. And they each of the three that I worked in before I left for private practice just happened to be the magnet school for that district for neurodivergent kids, those with learning differences, those with sensory processing differences.

So I had an unusual percentage of my caseload that consisted of those kids and their families. And often, especially for those who were functional enough to work to be able to to function in a mainstream classroom, the experience that I had over and over again was These kids having major behavioral problems with meltdowns in the classroom setting.

Not necessarily through any fault of their own, but because the adults around them did not know how to work with them and how to adapt to their particular need. So there was one young man, young boy, third grader, so eight, nine years old. who experienced the world through touch. It was just his way of checking things out and getting comfortable.

his teacher do this, and he was the only student in her classroom who was allowed to touch the things on her desk. Everybody else, that was forbidden, but she knew this about him. And so it was okay if he came up and held things, touched things, just explored. One day he went to the maker's lab in the school and the teacher there wasn't as familiar with him.

And there was a project laid out and he did his thing. He went around and started touching things. And she told him to stop. She didn't want him touching the tools or the materials or anything else. That was just not allowed. And it turned into a full-on confrontation. He didn't understand this. It made no sense. This is just the way that he is.

And this teacher was trying to enforce a code of conduct that literally did not compute for him. Mm-hmm. And he wound up out in the hallway kicking trash cans and slamming doors and doing the things that a dysregulated autistic kid will do. And a big part of my intervention was not with him. It was with the school staff to go and talk to them and help them understand what it is to provide neurodiversity affirming support.

to kids who may or may not have the label, but they clearly have some differences in their sensory system and the way that they process the world. and over and over again try to educate the staff about how to be more supportive. Often it was the adults provoking the problem. And if they didn't understand this about these children and has some cognitive flexibility about the expectations they had. and be willing to adapt their approach to the unique needs of that child.

That kid would wind up not just in therapy, but often in remote learning. Had several who wound up basically expelled from the school and has to stay home for the last six to eight weeks of the school year because spring is really dysregulating for a lot of neurodivergent people.

changes of the seasons. It uh there's a lot of research that shows that it dysregulates us more than the average person. And over and over again I'd have to try to work with the school staff to say this kid is not defiant. They are not a troublemaker. They are different. And they need a different approach. And they deserve your respect. And they don't deserve your care. And to have you adapt your approach to their unique needs. Otherwise there will be a problem in your classroom.

You don't know another way. It's so interesting. One of the mantras that I go back to when I work with educators is this idea that rewards and consequences may help you get short term compliance, but they have not solved any problems. And just recently I was in a district doing a training and I was talking about Communication based interpretation of behavior versus compliance based interpretation of behavior.

Right. So the example I use is like um a kid who rushes to be at the front of the line and sometimes cuts in front of other kids and maybe even bumps into some students and causes a problem and but just has to be first. Right. And so then the compliance-based interpretation of that is the rule is that you walk to the line and you don't cut in front of others and you made a choice not to follow that rule. And so now there's a consequence to that.

And only because this comes from a client that I worked with It's like a space in a lot of anxiety about being on time. I also knew this about the client because they would show up twenty to twenty five minutes early for their sessions because he had this anxiety about this. We spent the better part of one session.

talking about the differences between walking versus running. And then we had a whole conversation about the spirit of the law versus the letter of the law, about what what that really meant. But if you don't resolve that anxiety for him, if you don't solve that problem.

You're not solving anything else. The reason I bring this up though is because there was a teacher there who was kind of questioning this and said, Well, what if it's been like ten times and they keep doing it? What's the consequence? What's the consequence? And I was like, Well,

I don't work in the school district. I don't know exactly what your code of conduct or you know, whatever. I I suspect that what she really wanted was like, send them to the office or, you know, I I don't really know what she was looking for, but I just kind of kept going back and I'm like, what are you hoping to accomplish with a consequence?

Because whatever consequence that is, you're probably just getting further from what's actually going to solve that problem. But there is this mindset that's based in just behaviorism that's kind of baked into our schools. I think educators They don't know what they don't know and then e even if they do, they don't know what to do with it.

And I'm wondering how you kind of relate to that or with your experiences as well. It sounds like it resonates with what you were sharing earlier. Yeah, absolutely. Even the best intention teachers that I've worked with have told me

I've had several that have said if I wanted to be a therapist I would have gotten a different degree. Yes, I've heard the same. Yes. They did not go to school to learn how to work with this complex sort of behavior and all the emotional and regulatory and nervous system issues behind it.

I don't know if it's necessarily communication. I would say connection. Yeah. That matters. I agree. Connection before correction. I agree. You cannot offer a correction to a child until you've connected with them. if you want it to actually change anything. Yes, there will be kids who respond well to punishment, correction, consequences, whatever you call it. There are also kids who will respond well to rewards.

When you're dealing with neurodivergent kids, especially those who have the demand avoidant profile. There's nothing that you can offer them as a reward that is going to motivate them because they don't care about anything except their special interests. Uh-huh. Unless you're gonna hand out Pokemon cards like candy.

And there's no consequence that you can give them that you can legally give them that's gonna make any difference. It's all it's gonna do is instill fear and more resentment and avoidance. And it may actually backfire. You know, you send them to the principal's office. Ironically, for many kids, you're just giving them a reward a reward. Mm-hmm. They don't want to be in class.

So if you send them out, that's a actually a a positive reinforcement for that behavior. So you have to have a relationship with those kids and understand what drives them. What it is that provokes anxiety? what it is that helps calm them down, what will keep them within their window of tolerance for stress, so that their learning mind is online more often. Anytime you offer a reward, For many kids that is offering the anxiety of not getting that reward.

Because they've had so much experience of failure in the past. Mm-hmm. And anytime you give them a consequence, it also increases anxiety. Either way, you're driving them out of their window of tolerance and you're going to have either a meltdown or a shutdown, one or the other. hyper arousal or hypo arousal. Those are the only choices. So you've just created a problem with that that behavioral chart. your token economy, whatever it is that you're trying to use, that will work.

for, you know, the sixty or seventy kids in the middle of the bell curve. Yeah. For the outliers, it's gonna backfire every time. Every time. Same at home. The same thing with parents. Yeah. A lot of parents of neurodivergent children. I've been told, including by the authorities, the school system, child protective services, whoever. Grandparents, neighbors, friends,

You're not giving this kid any consequences. Where are their limits? Where's the punishment? Where's the discipline? Most of these parents know from extensive experience that what they're being told to do is going to backfire and that's just going to create more problems. So if they're smart, they move to low demand parenting, peaceful parenting, strategies that actually work to avoid conflict and maintain connection. Because if you break the connection, you have no lever.

Right. To work with that child. Especially in the school setting, it's so difficult to get it back once it's lost. Yes. Because you don't have the same history. When I get that feedback from educators, like, well, I'm not a counselor, I don't know what to do. the way I kind of reframe it is like you may not be a counselor or a therapist, but you are a first responder. Like you're the person who's there to help and take whatever first steps need to be taken, you know, to help that young person.

You mentioned demand avoidance too though, and I'd love to dig into that a little bit, not only about what it is, although I would love to talk a little bit more about what it is both when it shows up outwardly and when it's internalized. But I'd also love to think about what that looks like in adults, if you can talk about that a little bit, because I think we talk about it a lot with kids.

But kids become adults. And so it's not like it just goes away, like, oh, you hit 18. So now you you no longer experience this. Yeah. Autistic kids grow up into aut autistic adults. Kids with demand avoidance grow up to be adults who have demand avoidance. It's not clear from the science whether this is uh a feature of autism.

Estimates are that twenty-five to forty percent of autistic people have this profile, pathological demand avoidance, pervasive, drive for autonomy, whatever you choose to call it. I just go with demand avoidance. Or if it's its own neurotype.

that has a lot of overlap. It's not not clear from the research. Most of which is being done in the UK these days. It's still not very well known in the US. Mm-hmm. People who had demand avoidance experience any sort of expectation, whether from the outside or even from the inside, their own goals, their own hunger or thirst or need for sleep, any sort of expectation or demand as a source of anxiety and stress. And if pushed, they will have a full on fight flight response.

to the sort of demands or expectations that are being placed on them, even if it's by themselves. This is in children you see this as kids who just will not brush their teeth. Mm-hmm. Anytime you want them to get dressed for school, it provokes a a fight. You're trying to get them out the door into school on time, and it's a full on battle every single time. The first answer to any request is no.

That's the externalized version. That's the one that's easier to see. There is an internalized version as well. Those who are able to mask this demand avoidance. And try to meet the expectations and be perfect in order to avoid disappointing people. Mm-hmm. It's sort of the difference between externalized behavior, the sort of kid or adult who just makes problems in their environment because they're dysregulated. versus internalized issues, depression.

anxiety, people who are trying to function, they don't melt down, they don't visibly shut down, but they're struggling on the inside. They're able to mask it. Right. This idea of internalized demand avoidance is new to me. I only came across it about six or eight months ago. When I was trying to create a handout for the people I work with about what demand avoidance is, one of the parents said

Can you tell me more about the externalized versus internalized versions of this? Because I've heard about that in my discussion group of parents, and I had not heard about that, so I did some research. And as I read it, I think About what internalized demand avoidance looks like, it brings really true from my own experience.

Whenever there's some sort of an expectation that's placed on me by others, or even when I feel hungry or tired and need to take care of myself, I experience a lot of anxiety. A lot of pressure. Now my way of responding to that is try to try to overperform. Uh this is how I did so well in school. I would try to basically exceed the teacher's expectations so that I would not attract attract negative attention.

And that did very well for me. I graduated very high in my class in high school. I got an honors degree from Harvard. I have two masters degrees. You know, that it can be a drive to perform. It's also extremely difficult on the nervous system. So people who have the internalized version of PDA, whether they're children or adults, tend to push themselves extremely hard.

To avoid attracting unwanted attention and disappointing other people, mm-hmm, letting down those expectations, attracting punishment or consequences. push harder and harder and harder until you just can't anymore. And then have a collapse. And this can happen anywhere from the classic periods or preschool or kindergarten

third or fourth grade, when academic and social demands get really high. Middle school is brutal. A lot of people collapse there. Usually if you make it through middle school, high school may have a lot of social issues, but it's not quite as all encompassing as middle school. And then if you go to college sometimes, that's what I had my first full on autistic burnout episode. That'll take a year off of school.

A lot of people these days, especially in this economy, in this generation, when once they graduate from high school or college. Just go into full on collapse because they have no idea what to do. Their life is not structured anymore. They don't have anyone telling them what they should be how they should be spending their time. And so they really struggle to figure out how to do this adulting thing.

One of my favorite clients has a t-shirt that it's like a like a Yelp rating, has five stars. Only one of which is filled in. It says adulting, not recommended. Yeah. I resonate with that. And you're right. I mean I think the research is just still so emergent on all of the demand avoidance. stuff. I mean, I'm open to new information always and I'm anticipating learning more about that as, you know, is it technically part of the autism profile? Is it something outside of that?

You know, David, I I've really loved having this conversation with you today. We've covered a lot of different topics. As we wrap up, I have one last question for you.

If you were speaking to someone who is really just coming to terms with their neurodivergence in adulthood, what would you say to them? What is it that you would really want them to hear? Hmm. Such a great question. I think one thing that's important to understand and is fundamental to the way that I think about neurodivergence, is that the labels that are used in the mental health field and elsewhere are misleading, way out of date. and highly inaccurate. Autism is not a disorder.

ADHD is not a deficit, much less a disorder. These are differences. These neurotypes have always existed. We have a lot of evidence that it goes back a very, very long time in human evolution. And autistic people and ADHDs have been an asset to humanity for a very long time. Which doesn't mean it isn't incredibly difficult to live with, especially if you don't just have a light dusting of the spice mix like I do, you've got a really heavy dose.

It could be incredibly challenging and it can become disabling, especially if the environment around you is not supportive and doesn't meet your needs. It is a process of discovery. You don't necessarily need a formal diagnosis. There's still a lot of barriers to getting that and it can be very expensive and very time consuming. It's very difficult for people who are providing formal diagnosis to recognize some of the ways that it appears in marginalized populations.

In people of color, in especially we still have trouble recognizing neurodivergence to women. The science is still just catching up. It is entirely acceptable within the neurodivergent community to self-diagnose or self-identify, to explore your own experience and see how much of it fits. If you have a lot of resonance with the information that you are gathering about what it's like to be neurodivergent, and it feels like it fits, there's a good chance it does.

And there's a good chance that the things that help neurodivergent people would also help you. It is not a once and done thing. You get your diagnosis and then you've got your label and you just go on with life and, you know, you reframe your whole experience and it's all beautiful and the angels sing and all that stuff. No, it's the beginning of a journey. And it goes through many phases. There are a lot of complicated emotions that come with identification as a neurodivergent person.

Whether it's autism or ADHD, both have a lot of challenges involved. And yeah, it can destigmatize a lot of things that you may have experienced in the past. You can realize that you were never a broken human, as you may have thought of yourself before. You were just a different type of human. There's a lot of grief around that for many people. If only I had known this sooner, if only someone had spotted it early, if only I'd gotten support as a child.

If only I had not gone through so much stigma, and so much self doubt and self loathing, thinking that I was just a failed person. There's also a lot of empowerment in that. And there's a whole journey of identity shifting that happens because it changes fundamentally the way you think about yourself or can for many people. A lot of people resist the information. They it's it's one of those things about being autistic. You want a black and white answer. Either it all fits or none of it fits.

And there are aspects of it that just don't resonate for some people. For me, it's been a complicated journey. And there's a lot of emotion behind it. There's a lot of adjustment of your relationship. And a lot of decisions to make about who you tell and when. How much do you want to continue masking? It's not whether you mask or not, it's in what situations, in what environments, how safe do you feel being your authentic self in this given setting? It's very complicated.

A lot of the work that I do is helping recently identified neurodivergent people navigate this territory because it's super complicated. But it gives them the tools to work with someone like me to say, okay, how do I live a better life? Knowing this now about myself? How do I make the struggles that I've experienced all these years less painful? And how do I reorient my life and my environment, my relationships, my surroundings, my sensory conditions? All the rest of it.

so that I am more supported and I'm more stable. and I can go from surviving to thriving. It can be a beautiful journey. It's just complicated. So be patient with yourself. yourself, be compassionate with yourself, and please reach out for support, because this is not something you need to do alone. David Smith, licensed clinical social worker, thanks so much for talking to me today.

A late diagnosis doesn't rewrite your life. It gives you language for experiences you've been carrying all along. Learning you're neurodivergent doesn't mean something about you suddenly changed, but it does mean you finally have a more accurate explanation. For so many adults,

It doesn't erase the past, but it does change how those experiences are understood. And when people finally have a framework that fits, self-compassion often follows. And that opens the door to a much gentler relationship. themselves and a clearer sense of what they actually need going forward. I'm Emily Kirchhamorris. I'll see you next time on the Neurodiversity Podcast. Thanks to David Smith for joining us. There are links in the show notes to learn more about David Smith.

Also, if you haven't checked out our social media pages, we'd love for you to do it. I hang out there a lot and I can say with a lot of confidence that it's not the same. Our host is Emily Kircher Morris. Corey Oric is our office manager and production assistant. I'm the executive producer Dave Morris for all of us. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time. This is a service of the Neurodiversity Alliance.