¶ Introducing Sam Mitchell
Hello everyone and welcome to today's episode of On the Spectrum with Sonia podcast , where we discuss autism spectrum , mental health challenges and anybody who's overcome any adversity . That will leave our audience feeling inspired , hopeful , connected and filled with love and support , especially in a world that tries to disconnect us on a daily .
As many of you may know by now , april is International Autism Awareness and Acceptance Month , and what many people don't think about is what it is like to be diagnosed on the autism spectrum , what it's like to have a kid , perhaps , who may be on the autism spectrum , because a lot of people , when they're young and carefree , right Like they don't .
They're not thinking about oh , you know , do I have to be ? You know , am I different from everyone else ? Or , you know , if I have a family , will my kid be different from everyone else ?
Everybody has their own expectations of life and what it needs to look like , but just imagine being a child and you know feeling different , having parents be concerned about you because they noticed something was different about you that was different from other peers of that kid's age .
Today , to discuss experiences of being on the autism spectrum , we have Sam Mitchell , who was diagnosed at age four . He has a podcast , autism Rocks and Rolls , and he's worked with nonprofit organizations to help give back to families of kids on the autism spectrum .
He has used his diagnosis also as a way to become a motivational speaker for many , many different audiences . He's spoken in front of business leaders . He's spoken in front of various different audiences to engage in different perspectives . He's also had very prominent people on his own podcast because of just how inspiring Sam is .
So please , without further ado , sam , please , thank you . Thank you so much for being here today and welcome to the show .
Well , thank you for having me . It's good to be here , Bob .
Love this , all right . So , sam , tell us a little bit now . You said you had been diagnosed when you were four . Well , sam , tell us a little bit now . You said you had been diagnosed when you were four . Why don't you give us a little bit of a perspective of what was going on at four years old that led your parents to get ?
That led us , your parents , to be like OK , let's go get him evaluated , let's see what's going on here .
¶ Early Diagnosis and Childhood Challenges
As far as I know , just showing the classic textbook symptoms . I had repetitive behaviors . I did restricted interest and was mainly professional wrestling and I wouldn't stop talking about it for the life of me . But those were some of the behaviors I showed . I think also too , I would have meltdowns if something was too loud at the time span .
Now loud noises don't bother me as much as they once upon a time did so what kind of loud would do you remember like standing out to you ?
that would be really bothersome .
Thunder . I think thunder and lightning was one of them .
Right , those are loud Sure , and so thunder lightning . What else do you remember ?
That's all I can remember .
Okay , so you got diagnosed at four . You said your parents took you to a school psychologist , correct ?
Well , I think the parents . Well , my mother taught at the same school I did and also had suspicious I was on the autism spectrum . So what they did , from what I understand , is they got a school psychologist to diagnose me .
The school psychologist did test on me , put me , observed me in the classroom , and unfortunately I cannot remember those tests , what they were .
And when did you start realizing then that you were on the spectrum ? Because at four I can only imagine that must have been a difficult age to really kind of understand . Wait a minute , I'm on the autism spectrum . So when did it kind of hit for you that , okay , I'm on the autism spectrum ?
And how did it make you feel when you finally understood what it meant to be on the spectrum ?
Because it was at six years old and I pretty much understood it through a book . I was read a book called Understanding Sam , and that was when my life made much more sense , because I knew why I was getting excluded . I knew why no one else was talking about professional wrestling . I think there was a legit reason why I was getting excluded .
I knew why no one else was talking about professional wrestling . I think there was a legit reason why I'm doing this . I'm not trying to use autism as an excuse . It's just that there's part of autism , part of autism , parts of autism that is going to happen .
We're going to have meltdowns some days as a young child and then we're going to have restriction inches . That's how our brain is wired . We can't help that .
And what was it like for you then when you finally understood that you're on the spectrum ? You read this book , you know . Then you started making sense of everything in your life book , you know . Then you started making sense of everything in your life .
How do you feel like it impacted you then when you went and were around your peers when you were in school .
It pretty much affected me because I didn't like school when it came to the students because of how I would interact . It just didn't make sense to them . I wasn't bullied , I was at points . I was mainly excluded and sadly you can't send a kid to the office for exclusion because they didn't know how to take me .
How did people used to react to you when you would go and talk to them or try to be around them Like how did people respond ? Did anybody ever kind of give you any blowback , any kind of like get away from us kind of thing ?
it was get away from us mainly . I got big eyes once , I think it was in eighth grade . The same year my mother was a teacher . I said something that I thought fit . I didn't see this , but as I turned my back she looked at her friend and she gave her big eyes , like the bug eyes , like what the heck was that all about ?
Hmm , so were you able to make any friends in school
¶ Finding Friends as an Outcast
growing up ?
Not growing up . When I grew up , let's put it that way At the age of 16 16 I decided that I was going to stop people pleasing if you didn't like me . The door was right there . Okay , and that worked out so well because at 16 years old , I finally made some friends . That wasn't the friend I had since kindergarten how did you get into then ?
now , like you're the motivational speaking and um starting your podcast , you know how did you take what you have and you know , use it to give back the way I give back is I try to help other people who have been in my shoes because I don't want anyone to go through what I went through . It can be really torturous on the brain what is the one thing ?
you're afraid of people going through that ? You went through that . You really just want to protect people from at all costs , if you can they want to socialize , but just don't know how to .
Or they are trying to make friends but they see , oh , it's going down the pothole and that's one of the biggest challenges of being on the autism spectrum is somebody who's on the spectrum herself . I get it in that .
You know it is very difficult to make friends when you're on the autism spectrum , and it's very difficult to keep friends too , and it's hard to be around people a lot of times too for long periods of time .
You know it really is . It is really hard to deal with people . It can be exhausting because it's an overlap of how to deal with these social cues that people do and people don't understand .
that is so exhausting all day , right , being in crowds that can also get overwhelming , even though , don't get me wrong , I'll still do things socially . Like you know , I'll go to conferences , we'll go to concerts every now and again , right , you do those things Right . I run races .
I'm very much a big runner , so I run races , but like it's different to you know , but it's .
It's different , I guess , when you have an activity versus like just social , when you're just kind of forced to be , you know , on on cue in some ways , right , and you don't have like a script or anything in front of you , and just when you're around people for periods , long , long , long periods of time , it's like , okay , well , what do you talk about after
a while ?
Right , Right , yeah . After a while it's like oh , this is so social awkwardness , it's so uncomfortable . I don't know what else to do other than just leave and be disrespectful , which is something I don't want to do . I mean , as odd as it is , it is disrespectful
¶ From Wrestling Fan to Podcast Host
to just be like bye-bye and walk out .
Did you ever feel drained when you were in school ? Because you were around people all day .
Oh yeah , probably I would say , senior year , when I was about to graduate , is when . That's why , after I would eat lunch , I would literally sit in a what would you say , what was it called ? Kind of by a wall toward the bathroom .
Wasn't in the bathroom , trust me , the bathroom smelled there , but it was toward the bathroom and I would literally sit there and be on my phone to get away from people and so the friends that you ended up making when you were 16 , how did you , how are you able to kind of crack that code from having , from not being able to socialize well when you were
younger to then younger than 16 , to then turning 16 and being able to make some friends ?
Well , I came to the conclusion that if this change didn't work , I would have said okay , and I probably would have been mad at a lot of people , but I would still have people on my back because I still had two people at the time span versus zero . And I met some people where they've had zero . They don't know what it's like to have a friend .
Well , I'll be the guy to show them that .
So how did you make friends then ? How were you able to connect to those two people and what worked for you ?
What really worked for me was I think there's a lot of people out there who are not on the spectrum but are just outcasts to the world . I fit in with the outcasts and the world more than the poster boys for success , because they don't judge , they didn't care if your social skills sucked they didn't care if your social skills sucked .
So when you , just when you were talking about outcasts , what particularly are you like ? Describing what traits like , what are things that made them outcasts ?
well , I hate to use this term , but there's no other way to describe it emos people who are just different from the high school jock to use this term , but there's no other way to describe it emos people who are just different from the high school jock and you felt like those people were a lot more compassionate to you because they could understand that correct .
You know what you went through . You know that is one thing . I was an outcast . That's why , like my book called it's called dropped in a maze my life on the spectrum from outcast to outstanding . I was one of those outcast people with no friends .
So it's very interesting we're having this conversation , because I was one of those who didn't know what it was like to have a friend growing up , really so until unless it was like family friends .
You know what I mean , like parent involvement or something you know , but you know what I mean right , I was lucky to have that in the family and then , luckily , I was having to make it , but that was before the judgment started .
Because , let's be honest , when you're in kindergarten you don't care , you're happy about the world and you're just like oh person , friends . But then when you get older you start seeing these social cues .
So I'm lucky to make to a made one before the people identities started to get revealed what grade were you in when you noticed more identities started to get revealed ? Sophomore year . That was when I made friends . That's when I saw people . Actually , there are some out there who don't mind being around you .
Mm-hmm . So what was it like for you then , when you finally were able to make friends ? How did that feel for you to be able to crack that code a little bit ?
um , it felt pretty good . It felt pretty good that people understood what I was worth of , and it also felt good to understand what other people are worth of .
And I finally found a group which , when at five years old , it was unimaginable and did your interest in wrestling still remain or did it kind of start to change over ?
oh , it still is . I'm still
¶ Motivational Speaking and Advocacy
interested in it . I'm'm going to try to watch WrestleMania next weekend , but I got a friend who's interested in wrestling . That's half the time is our conversations .
Have you ever taken a class before in like grappling and mixed MMA ? Have you ever done any of those ?
No , it's not really wrestling . Wrestling it's more of the professional wrestling . Yeah , I tried once with our school , but the wrestling team faded out . I think it came to the conclusion we couldn't afford it .
Oh , okay , gotcha , and did you have a favorite wrestler ?
Still have a favorite wrestler . I got to meet him , mick Foley . I had the privilege of meeting him I think I was on another wrestling podcast and they helped me make a boyhood dream come true . But I met several others .
I've had Jake the Snake on the show , I've had Kane on the show , I've had Buff Bagwell on the show , I've had Victoria on the show , I've had Al Snow on the show and I've also had RVD on the show .
Oh , wow . So you had a whole lot of people from there on your show . Yep , I have . That's so great . How did you ?
come across that opportunity to meet them . Well , it depends on what you're talking about . Half of them was so . Al Snow there's different stories . In particular , al Snow was literally through a wrestling event in Bloomington . There was a local wrestling event . He was going to be a guest . Rvd was just a simple Facebook messenger .
Kane was literally asking his scheduling people . I had to do a little bit of phone calls on that one , but then ones that , like Buff , bagwell and Victoria , I will go to a wrestling convention called the Squared Circle Expo . They're going to be actually in town in a couple of weeks .
So wrestling convention , and what I've done is I literally asked those two to be on the show and they agreed .
Oh , that's awesome . Good for you . So tell us a little bit more about your show . You have a podcast Autism podcast , autism roles . When did that start ? Um , what motivated you to start that ?
well , it started after I joined my high school's media clone . I fell , loved it so much in 2016 no , I'm sorry , 2018 that's why I started to go to some of our school's podcasts called thundercast . But then I loved it so much I started deciding not wait till college to expand my media skills and start my own podcast .
And that was when Autism , rocks and Rolls was born . But it grew really quickly because 20 turned to 40 , 40 turned to 100 , 100 turned to 200 . A couple of people who helped me out decided to enhance my um , enhance my thank you , enhance my podcast by having a non-profit , having a board doing events and any answers .
Where I'm from , I also do motivational speaking services , but that was through Oklahoma . That was my first big speaking gig and then everything else was through the nonprofit .
Okay , and so you fell in love with podcasting . When your high school had their podcast and you fell in love with that idea . You made one into your own . You have people help you along the way to build it up . Um , do you uh , do any live uh shows for your podcast ?
well , not until recently I had I started . I started this new series called the autism rocks worlds podcast hijack series . That's where guests come on the show . They literally hijack the show by telling their story and what having autism means to them or what services they offer . Okay , it was an idea , because I realized I needed more content .
That and that's where the idea came from okay and um , so it sounds like you really did something , remarkable , though you know it's like you really used your voice to give back through your podcasting . Now I kind of want to ask too , what about the motivational speaking ? How did you get more into doing that ?
Because you've spoken in front of impressive audiences such as , like , business leaders , such as all sorts of different , various kinds of people from all various kinds of backgrounds . So I want to know , like , how did you get into that ?
You repeat the question . My headphones died on me and it switched on technology .
Oh , ok , no , no worries . I wanted to know , like , how did you like switched into , get into motivational speaking ? How did you switch and get into motivational speaking ? Because you've spoken in front of very impressive audiences and all the diverse audiences , you've spoken in front of leaders before .
I wanted to know how did you get into that aspect ? The way I got into that aspect was I literally got invited to the speaking game and I saw there was success down the path .
So I was like , oh okay , there's actually some hope in here and so how do you enjoy it though being , you know , public speaking ? How are you enjoying you know being on speaking ? How are you enjoying you know being on stages , speaking on stages ?
I enjoy it pretty good . I think there's no nervousness . I just get a little nervous with the time because I'm afraid I'm not going to get all my information in . But it's something I signed up for . Not much I can really do about it .
What topics do you tend to discuss when you are speaking ?
Well , I tend to speak on autism . Sometimes it depends on what the conference is . One time I spoke about my story , because that's what they wanted . One was about podcasting and what it means to me . One was about technology and how it can help those with autism . I have my own views on it , but I had to focus on the positive side .
One was a work conference on why you should hire people with autism . Actually , not one , a couple of those were . But then I've also done vendors for shows . I was a vendor once upon a time for a resource fair up in Huntingburg , indiana .
Okay , that sounds really , I mean . So that's very impressive . It seems like you really are . You've used you know , your diagnosis of being on the spectrum to really give back , to get to give a voice to others , to speak for others who may not be able to speak up at at the time . You know there are things that you are doing . That's you know .
You're putting remarkable work into the world and I want to just say thank you for all you are doing for those in the community and thank you for promoting the awareness and for spreading your knowledge and
¶ Fighting Autism Stereotypes
for advocating for inclusion .
Not a problem . I appreciate it for inclusion , not a problem I appreciate it .
What is one piece of inspiration you want to leave the audience with today ?
Well , I think it's not just a piece of information , it's a merge of wisdom . If the world could be nice and not act so stupid , I think we'd get along so much better . Don't you think stupid ?
I think we get along so much better , don't you think ? I , yeah , if the world wasn't wasn't so stupid , we would get along better . Yeah , I can get , I can , I can get behind that . Yeah , 100 , 100 , because you , what is the dumbest thing you've ever heard about ?
What is the most ignorant thing , rather you've ever heard someone say about autism oh , about autism .
Okay , that we're , that we can't do anything . Yet there's still people out there who have done millions of things . How can we , how can we not do something if there's someone on the spectrum who's literally one america's got talent ?
right . So somebody told you that , being on the spectrum , that you couldn't do anything . Oh , I hear it all the time from people , the the one I that really gets me is you don't look autistic . I get that one a lot , or I don't look autistic . I get that one a lot or I don't see it .
And I think you know , especially if you're a woman on the spectrum right , women get it , you know like that a lot , where they're told most often than not that they don't look autistic . I know for sure like well , I can speak for my experience at least , being a woman on the spectrum you know you don't look autistic , I don't see it .
I mean , but that's not something you see , it's neurological , it's not . There's no look to autism , right ? Have you ever been told those things too ?
I haven't told those things .
You have .
Mm-hmm .
It's just like . I mean , what do they expect us to look like ? Do you know ?
No , from what I've heard , there's some facial features , but you got to look real in-depth from them to see if they're autistic or not . But what are those features ? I don't know . I just saw that pop up on a YouTube video one day .
Well , I actually was in a conference online and because I'm a therapist , so we have to do our continuing ed for our license and I was doing this autism certification course and one of the speakers was talking about different facial features , different muscle tone and stuff like that .
But the thing is you really , like you said , going to your point , you'd have to look at it with a microscope .
Right , give me a second . Okay , all right , so yeah . With that being said , you know I want to thank you so ?
much for being on here today . Of course , anytime , bub , thank you . Keep inspiring , keep putting out the good work . I'm so proud of you and all what you're doing .
I appreciate it . Thank you for having me on . You can find me on your favorite media platforms .
I'm not a hard guy to find what is the best way people can reach out right . What is the best way people can reach out to you ?
um
¶ Closing Thoughts and Contact Information
. The best people can reach out to me is the website . I have a contact information page on there okay , what is the website ? Autism rocks and rollscom okay , thank you .
Thank you well today . This was all for today's episode of on the Spectrum with Sonia . If you enjoy this content , please rate , review and subscribe and share with your family and friends . And thank you for joining in , and please tune back in for more episodes . Thank you .