So I'm happy that we could make this work. Would you just tell us a bit about you, who you are, the kind of work that you do? How did you get into this work?

So I studied social psychology, which for people who don't know is basically, most people when they hear psychology, they think of clinical psychology. So mental illnesses, therapy, that kind of stuff. And social psychology is more interested in the social dynamics. So not necessarily just what's inside of a person's head, but how is your behavior influenced by your culture, by whether there's another person in the room looking at what you're going to do, by what you're wearing, by what you've been told is normal, all of those kind of external social factors. And I was really interested in studying that stuff from a young age, from my teenage years, because I was autistic and I didn't know it yet. So I just thought everybody made no sense to me. And I wanted to understand why people were doing such weird kind of conformist, irrational in my mind things all the time. I studied social psychology. I got my PhD in it. I did a lot of experimental research on people, trying to understand what makes people work. And then after I finished my PhD, I had a bunch of health issues and burnout. And that coincided with finding out that I was autistic and kind of reevaluating everything that I'd been taught about psychology because I did not learn much about autism at all in my formal training and also my understanding of myself and the world. And so then I just started doing a lot of research that is all about questioning what gets called normal in society, whether that's the normal 40-hour work week or that's what neurotypicality is, how it's normal to sit, how it's normal to speak and think and all of those things. And so that's where a lot of my research comes from and my writing and the person that I am today. I'm

relating to what you're saying in a sort of parallel way. I only realized my own sexuality, my own queerness when I was nearly 30. So I'm relating to what you're saying about kind of having a revelation, a new understanding about yourself and then looking back over your life and kind of re-experiencing or having to create new understandings about your memories and your history and kind of the way that your life has gone. Can you say more about that experience for you and the autism diagnosis?

Yeah, I'm glad you made that connection because it was also a queer awakening for me at the same time that was happening. I liken a lot of my writing neurodivergency to queerness. I think we can't even really untangle the two. They go together in so many ways because they both involve being told from a very young age that there is a way you need to be and that everybody is just naturally that way. And eventually coming to realize that you are not naturally that way. And you've been trying to trick yourself into thinking you're that way or trying to make yourself fit those social rules. And actually, maybe nobody really fits those rules. These rules are very socially constructed and very heavily enforced on us. And then, you know, it's like the floor has kind of dropped out from under you and you have to really think about authoring yourself because you've been kind of just following the guidebook that others have written up to that point.

Oh, that was beautiful.

know, what it means to be normal or sane or healthy, all of that stuff. And I think that's a really common through line, whether you're queer, autistic, ADHD, most of us are multiple of these things, you know? And so there's a lot to figure out and reconfixualize.

Intersections. Absolutely.

Yeah. So it's

almost like you're naming comphet, but for neurodivergence, is there a term like comphet that fits the neurodivergent experience? So

I think the term that people use the most often now is something like neuronormativity, that there's a way that you're supposed to think and feel and behave and that that's how people are meant to be. And it should be easy for you. And if it's not easy for you to be that way, you have to fake it. And that's the same thing that certainly I was going through when I was pretending to be a cis woman or a straight woman instead of a gay man, like all of those things, as unpacking that, oh, wait a second, it's okay to not want to make eye contact or to want to wriggle around in your chair and, you know, act in ways that look strange to other people. Queer people and neurodivergent people, we both have this realization of, oh, I am not what the world was trying to make me into. And so then, who am I? And who do I want to be? And there's a lot of unlearning to do there. And as you mentioned, just kind of recontextualizing your past. It

sounds like you're kind of hinting at or touching on masking and the idea of unlearning, unmasking, trying to fit yourself into what is expected of you. Can we start from the beginning? What is masking in neurodivergence?

Masking refers to usually a set of strategies that neurodivergent people use to pass as more neurotypical, to avoid being ostracized and things like that. And in the literature, they normally divide it up into two sets of strategies, camouflage and compensation. So camouflage is something like, okay, I know it's normal to make eye contact, so I'm going to look in between someone's eyes or I'm going to force myself to make eye contact, even though it's painful, because I know that'll make people feel less creeped out by me and make them see me as honest. Whereas compensation could be something like, I know that I can't work a full-time job because there's so much socializing you have to do. So I'm going to just have to be a freelancer all my life and live really, really cheap to make that tenable because I just cannot survive doing the jobs that are expected of neurotypical people. So compensating being, finding little hacks and ways to work around the fact that the world doesn't accommodate you. But I would also just kind of say that masking is a lot like being closeted, right? Like you don't choose as a queer person to enter the closet. You're put in the closet at birth. Yeah. Because of the assumptions people make about you. So I think a lot of neurodivergent people, it's not like we're choosing to hide anything about us that's deviant from the norm. We're just not ever even told that there's that option, that there are other ways to be. And so we don't even know ourselves. We're masking to ourselves on a core level as

well. I can hear the social psychologist coming out. Yes. The lecturer. The educator. Yeah. This is the system. It's a systemic issue. It's not a, as a queer person, I didn't put myself in the closet, heteronormativity and all of these things did. You spoke about not even realizing to ourselves, right? Whether that's queerness, neurodivergence, not even realizing within ourselves that we are masking or trying to fit into some norm or behaving in a way that's not aligned with who we are. How do you discover what's true for you when we're living in these systems? I

think because of the term masking, people think of it as this, I need to throw the curtain back. I need to take the mask off and see this true self that exists within. And that can be really, really challenging for people because if you have just all of these like conditioned reactions of, if I know there's another person in the room, I'm going to try and act normal. It can be really hard to find something underneath the surface of that. It can feel like there's nothing even left there that you've just become the mask. But here again, I think is another place where we can really think about queerness as an analog and how do you first realize that you're queer? And I think most of us, it's social, right? We have that ring of keys moment where we see someone doing their own thing, very visibly queer, and we realize, okay, it's actually okay for me to be me. I can try some of these things this person is doing. There are other people like me and I can exist in that entire queer culture that is made for people to explore that. So I think ultimately unmasking, coming out of the closet, all of those things, those are all very fundamentally social and community-based experiences. You can't just realize, okay, I'm autistic and I've been hiding it or any other disability and just go through that process of self-discovery in a vacuum. You have to kind of put yourself around your people who aren't going to judge you, where you're going to feel a little bit more comfortable dressing how you want to dress, moving your body the way you want to move, talking the way you want to talk, having whatever problems and struggles you have. In just the same way that when we queer people get together, how we talk changes, how we carry ourselves changes, how we dress changes because we're free. We're like birds putting on our plumage for the first time or something.

So

I think it's finding and building those communities where you can really envision and experiment with a new way of being. I think that's so essential to unmasking, to coming out of the closet, to actually accepting yourself. It's

like you're saying that the problem is social, the problem is societal, the kind of being masked. The answer is also societal, community. The answer is also other people. Yeah,

I think we're fundamentally social beings. Even if, as an autistic, like socializing is hard for me. How I connect to people is different from how many others do. And we can get into our heads and think that there is no place for us and that the only way we can be safe is through escape and through hiding away from people. I think a lot of queer people feel the same way, too. But it really is only through an accepting community where we're safe to be ourselves that we can actually, I think, do the work of living who we are. I think being queer, being autistic, that is always an inherently social thing. It's about how you relate to others and how you see yourself and who you want to have desiring you and how you want people to look at you, all of that stuff. And so that's where the trauma comes from, but that's where the healing can come from too. So

do you have any advice for folks who are listening to this and they're going, okay, yeah, the problem is social or I have trouble relating to people or I haven't found my community yet, or maybe I want to start dating. I want to find a relationship. I also think that I'm autistic or neurodivergent. Where do you start? Do you have advice, tips, tricks, thoughts?

Yes. I have so much to say about it because it's something I hear about a lot from a lot of neurodivergent people. And a lot of them are also people who are just figuring out, you know, in the same way that when I found out I was autistic, that's also when I figured out I was trans. A lot of people have that same double whammy of like, oh, I've been faking my personality all the time and I'm a lesbian or, and I'm bisexual, whatever it is. Oh no. How am I going to go out into the world? So, and I have a book coming out next year that has a whole bunch to do with where do you go from there. But one of the first things you have to do is get back in touch with your actual feelings. Because if you've been that repressed, you usually have an emotion, a feeling of desire, say, or attraction. And then you immediately have this meta emotion, a feeling about your feeling that immediately comes right on top of it. So that can be something like, oh, I'm attracted to this person, but I feel ashamed because they're going to think I'm a predator. It's gross. I don't want them to catch me being attracted to them, those kinds of things. And so then you can't even really actually experience the pleasure of finding someone attractive. Or, oh, I want to do this thing, this kinky, fun, exciting, wild thing. Oh, but it seems totally impossible for me. I don't even know how to meet people. I'm too autistic. I'm too awkward. Nobody's ever going to accept me. I should just dismiss ever having that fantasy or whatever it is. That's one of the first steps, I think, is doing some really deep work, sitting with your actual emotions, thinking about the things that you're interested in and letting yourself actually feel those feelings and noticing what kind of resistance comes up. And I think it is good to work through that stuff with other people who have been through the same thing, whether that's a support group, a discussion group, just hanging out with other queer people, other neurodivergent people and venting, having some communal exercising of that demon I think is good. And that can take a long time, um, as our lives, I think can attest to after you've done a little bit of that, then you have to do the work, the really like tedious work of, okay, I'm going to go to a gay bar. I'm going to go to a silent book club for other queer people. I'm going to show up to these events and I'm going to feel mortified and I'm going to want to leave, but I'm not going to leave. And then I'm going to go again. And then maybe the next time I'll be able to actually talk to somebody and say hello to them and just keep plugging away at it. It really takes a really long time to build community and start developing relationships from a place of authenticity. But it's completely worth it. It's just, I think we have to have that expectation starting out that, okay, I'm dealing with a lot of barriers here, a lot of internal resistance and struggle. And so, yeah, I'm going to need to make the dating app profile, or I'm going to need to talk to someone that I think is cute at a party and ask them if they want to go get coffee. And I'm going to fail sometimes and I'm going to embarrass myself a bunch and I'm going to feel bad sometimes doing it. And I'm going to maybe volunteer at a queer community center or do something to meet other queer people. I

volunteered at a queer community center and was like, oh no, this is me actually. I'm actually one of you. So

you were one of those overly invested allies at first. Yes,

I was an overly invested ally. Then I thought that I recognized some level of queerness in me. And I thought that I was bi, I identified as bi for many years. Then I started volunteering at the Queer Community Center and only took a couple of years from there, COVID hit, TikTok happened. Oh,

Lord.

Yes. You know, the domino effect, they fell one by one. So the first step that you mentioned was recognizing or paying attention to your true feelings, what's happening for you, and then maybe those meta feelings on top. Perhaps naming those feelings can be helpful. taking the steps of actually doing the things that would be required for you to get what you want out of life or

meet your needs or your goals. Absolutely. And translating what you want into words is a really hard process. I think especially for a lot of queer people, I think especially queer women in particular feel a lot of shame ever wanting something or self-advocating because of misogyny, because of comphet, things like that. So that's a group that I've seen especially a lot of really hard resistance because it's just a group of people that's been silenced so much. And so, so much of the writing that I ended up doing for that kind of audience is about like, you need to just say the thing. Nobody is going to materialize out of the ground who's like your perfect partner who wants exactly what you want from them and just gives it to you without you saying it. And you're not hurting anybody by saying, I'm interested in you. I'm interested in this kind of thing. This is what turns me on. That is not damaging. It's a good thing. And in fact, even fumbling and getting shot down is a good thing. I've been telling people lately that if you get turned down because you asked somebody out or something like that, that's not a failure. That's a sign that consent has successfully happened. That is how

these things are done. There's

no harm in putting it out there.

When I polled my audience and I said, hey, I'm talking to an expert on neurodivergence, on autism, what are some questions? A question that I got repeatedly relates to say the thing. Essentially, the question is, okay, I think I'm neurodivergent or I know I am. How do I say the thing to a partner, to a potential partner, to friends, family? How do I say the thing?

is legitimate and that it's been signed off on. That's, I think, the starting place. A lot of times, especially with neurodivergency, people are really afraid that they're going to come out to a family member and the family member is going to want to see the diagnosis. It needs to have all this proof. The truth is, if they don't want to believe you, they're still not going to believe you even if you do have a letter from a psychiatrist. I think it's useful to look at the relationship and really say, okay, what is realistic to expect here? Is this a person who actually listens to me and trusts me and believes me when I say things? And if it's a relative who has never really shown a track record of doing that, you're not in control of whether they're convinced. You have to decide for yourself, these are the conditions that I'm going to set for our relationship. And if they don't meet those conditions, I'm in charge of deciding what I am going to do about that. It's

a lot of work, but also it's moving the locus of control in a way, right? It might sound frightening in the sense that, oh no, I really can't control how this person is going to react. I can't convince this person as much as I want them to believe me and I want them to know this about me. It's out of my hands. But then on the other side of that, how empowering to be like, but actually I'm in control of what I need from this relationship and I'm in control of setting those parameters.

It takes a lot of work to let go of the sense that you are supposed to control how other people feel and make them feel okay and get them on board with the idea. There's another

piece. That

is not your job. You will never have power over that. It's not good for you or the other person to try and control how they feel. That is their own whole deal. And if they want to work on that on their own, maybe they'll go read a book. Maybe they'll go watch a YouTube video about neurodivergency. Maybe they won't. Maybe they'll just have a tantrum. You get to decide, okay, I have seen the pattern and how they behave. And what do I want in my life? And how am I going to set those terms? And so a lot of times that can be as simple as, because boundary setting is usually some kind of request and some kind of consequence if that request is not met. So if they keep telling you to be a way that you are never going to be, are you going to leave the room? Are you going to hang up the phone? Are you going to just repeat yourself until they are so tired of hearing it that they stop needling you? It does give you a little bit more of a position of power once you realize that you're only in control of what you do and you can change how much you put yourself around people who don't respect things. A lot of people just need a little time once you do lead from that kind of position of power. It's not all fighting. It's not all hopelessness and ostracism or anything. Right.