AuDHD Expert: 5 Symptoms/Traits of AuDHD in Adults

32:03Peter Wharmby:It causes significant problems. So relatable, Pete. I can laugh and have certain emotions in my head, and I forget that they don't automatically cross over into my facial expressions. Laughing at a funeral. And then you put it on. That's the example, isn't it? that you have to force the smile or force the laugh, and then you know that they've picked up on your cheeks being slightly tense because it's a fake artificial smile. Yeah, or your eyes not matching. Exactly, yeah. The eyes just looking completely deadpan and not matching up. But you sense when they see that. Yeah, you notice it. You know they've noticed you.

32:34So do you think because of that RSD, rejection-sensitive dysphoria, which is spoken about a lot, in this context, can there be an objective reason for picking up on criticism and rejection?

32:47Peter Wharmby:Look, I personally think that RSD is totally justifiable. You know, I know that some people talk about it like it's a mental condition. You know, it's like it's irrational or whatever. And I think it can appear irrational because basically we're overcorrecting constantly because of the actual experiences we've definitely had. I think RSD is a perfectly natural response to the kind of lives that neurodivergent people lead and the way we are treated and viewed by others. we get treated differently in this way that we're talking about, this inherent unlikeability, that's going to breed RSD. Of course it is.

33:24Peter Wharmby:You know, you're feeling constantly on edge, like you're upsetting and offending people without even meaning to. You know, there's one thing about offending people knowing you're doing it, you know, like an internet troll or a bully or something. That's one thing. It's a whole other thing to be doing it purely by accident when you are at heart a relatively gentle person who would never really wish his harm on anyone, but you're still somehow upsetting and offending all the people around you, that's going to do something to you, isn't it? That's going to affect the way you manage and perceive threats and rejection because you are primed to expect it.

34:02Peter Wharmby:And when you're primed to expect rejection, you'll see it everywhere. And that's what RSD is. You know, like I say, a lot of people still talk about RSD like it's a mental condition that is, you know, very fundamentally irrational and we need some kind of therapy to get our way out of it. But I think that's missing the point. I think what we need is, if we need therapy at all, we need therapy to help us with the inevitability of the criticism that we will receive for being neurodivergent. Autistic, ADHD, dyspraxic, dyslexic, whatever form of neurodivergence you have or are. And yeah, for that reason, RSD to me is perfectly rational, totally rational, much like school refusal is rational, but they're not viewed as such by society.

34:52Peter Wharmby:People view autistic kids not wanting to go to school as an issue, a problem with them. They're not resilient enough. They're not able to cope. We've got to make them go into school. We've got to force them, you know? And it's actually, no, no, no, no, no, no. They don't want to go to school because, well, you wouldn't want to if you were them. Because of what they deal with every day there, how hostile it is to them, how horrible the experience is every single day. No rational person would want to attend in those circumstances. But it's not viewed like that. An RSD is the same. you know having heightened fear and heightened radar for criticism is not irrational when you're autistic for example it's perfectly rational you've been criticized since birth for things you've never intended to do wrong you know autistic kids get criticized i say this a lot but autistic kids get criticized for playing with their toys wrong you know if people are willing to criticize a child for lining up their toy trains and not playing with them correctly, then you can imagine what else they're willing to criticize them for.

36:06Peter Wharmby:And of course, then we end up hypersensitive to criticism, hypersensitive to rejection, expecting it at every turn. Where's the next criticism going to come from? I don't know. It's always a surprise when it comes. I never predict it, so I may as well just fear it constantly. to me that makes sense you know it's logical that we would end up in that way is it possible for a child or somebody who isn't diagnosed to be confused by this concept of neurodivergent unlikeability because on the one hand they might think because of that because they're masking so well they might think that they are like everyone else but on the other hand really struggle to maintain friendships yeah i think they will be i mean on two levels if they hear about it you know if they hear people like me or you talking about it they might misconstrue it and think oh god i'm actually a bad person and that's not what we mean you know it's not that at all it's more the way we're kind of reacted to but in terms of how they might deal with on a daily basis yeah they're going to be confused by it because as you say they'll be masking they'll be doing everything they can to fit in without realizing that actually a lot of the weird vibes for want of a better term and please do remember i'm not accusing autistic people of being bad here you know that's not the point you know this is this is autistic people just the way we act you know we act differently but if we're giving off these weird vibes much of that is because we're masking because masking is weird i don't i don't know any autistic people who can mask so successfully that we are totally undetectable you know like if i mask i often use the example when i give talks and speeches when i mask eye contact like i'm doing with you now because i have to because i've learned that over over the years what one thing i realized about the way that i mask eye contact you know force myself to make eye contact even though i don't want to is when i've got an audience i pan around very mechanically like this and then back again looking at everybody's eyes no one escapes everyone gets a you know a laser bolt of it and then back again and then back again and whenever i point that out to people some of them have already noticed it and it's already freaked them out a little bit like this is kind of the terminator like what's the deal here and other people that hadn't noticed it can't unsee it and they watch me reminds me of that big squid that big head and squid yeah squid game yeah exactly yeah just scanning like this i can't help it that's how i've learned to mask it but the a mask is not as realistic as the real thing.

38:41Peter Wharmby:I know that a non-autistic person who can make eye contact with no difficulty will be doing it basically randomly, I assume. They'll just be like shooting their eyes at people just who knows when, you know, whenever the mood takes them. I can't do that. I haven't got the mental capacity to do that, to mask. I can't mask that accurately. So I do this kind of facsimile version, this flawed facsimile of eye contact, which gives people the ick, makes people go, even subconsciously, they'll just be like, something off here, something weird here that I can't put my finger on, but I don't like it. And that's what I'm doing to them without meaning to, you know.

39:29Peter Wharmby:And I think we all experienced elements of that in our day in many ways i wonder whether if we just acted perfectly normal you know like truly autistic without any masking at all we might actually have a better time of it weirdly paradoxically because rather than giving people a kind of uncertain feeling of oh what's going on here we'd just be so obviously different that the emotions will be different you know they'd probably just be annoyed with us i don't know it's interesting to think about. But yeah, I think it's very confusing for kids who are trying their best to fit in, but the more they try, the more they're possibly experiencing this feeling of not being accepted and of people recoiling at them through confusion and feeling unnerved.

40:18Peter Wharmby:It's that whole uncanny valley thing that we seem to fill as neurodivergent people. So if we display behavior that is perhaps misunderstood or even disliked by neurotypical people in a room and they pick up on that but how does that make us feel the neurodivergent person indeed yeah because i think we notice it i do you know if i've accidentally weirded somebody out or freaked somebody out or made someone feel a bit uncomfortable with i don't know a poorly timed joke or weird eye contact or different way of doing things yeah i noticed their response i noticed their reaction i noticed them recoil or look away or desperately look for somebody new to talk to you know you do pick up on it you know because what there's one thing that we can say for a lot of neurodivergent people we you know we're not unperceptive you know we might not perceive things the same way as neurotypical people but we are often many of us are highly perceptive people um and you know yeah i notice it straight away the moment i have caused inadvertently that person to feel a bit uncomfortable or a bit unhappy or whatever yeah i've picked up on it straight away and that fuels then a kind of vicious feedback loop where I will then be like, oh, you know, are you okay?

41:49Peter Wharmby:Or, you know, I will like increase my attempt to mask and to be more like what I perceive they want me to be like. But in the process of doing that, I may very well be inadvertently making the situation worse, you know, and it becomes this vicious spiral then that you can't escape from. So many people in the community, Pete, they feel broken. Yes. And do you think interactions like you're describing there adds fuel to that feeling? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. We're social animals. You know, autistic people, for example, we often get this reputation of being antisocial. You know, people like to think, you know, that autistic people would all be happier if we could all just live in a cave alone.

42:31Peter Wharmby:And I've fueled that myself because I have gone on record many times stating that I wish I could do that. You know, if I could go and live in a little hut, on sky or in the outer hebrides and just have no human contact i'd be very happy but it's misunderstood you see people take that to mean that we're anti-social that we are happier alone that we are instinctively anti-human misanthropic even and it's like no no no no you misunderstand this is a response this is a long-term response to this problem of miscommunication and making neurotypical people feel uncomfortable and realizing we're doing that we get exhausted by it we get depressed by it and anxious about it we don't want it to happen but it keeps happening you know we i just want to be able to talk to somebody normally and it will be fine but it won't happen because i will inadvertently freak them out in some way and i will notice that and they will notice that and it will spiral and it will spiral and yeah i'm 42 now and yeah the reason I want to go and live in a cave in the Hebrides is because I can't do that anymore.

43:42Peter Wharmby:I'm tired. It was, you know, when I was 15, I guess I'd still had some energy left in the tank, you know, to power through and to give it another crack, you know, but at 42, I keep giving it another crack and it still doesn't work. You know, I'm still falling into the same pitfalls. People still respond in the same way. And I feel it all the time. I mean, just a few anecdotes. I travel a lot for my work, you know, to give talks and things like that. And many of the people that greet me and that show me around places and that host me in these events or whatever, conferences, etc., will themselves probably be neurotypical, but they will know very well that I'm neurodivergent, you know?

44:27Peter Wharmby:And because that's why I'm there. That's why they booked me. And to begin with, everything will be fine because they will presumably be expecting eccentricity, let's just say. Something a bit different. And to begin with, things are fine. But always, every single time, within about maybe half an hour or so, that's when I notice the first, you know, where their maybe overconfidence at dealing with a neurodivergent person who's relatively openly neurodivergent may have been exposed. But they went into the intervention thinking, okay, so he's autistic, he's ADHD, I can deal with that, I can deal with that, it's fine.

45:14Peter Wharmby:No matter what he does, I can deal with that. And honestly, after half an hour, nearly every single time, I will notice that they're already, you know, a bit weirded out, a bit freaked out. and I haven't done anything. It will be tiny things like, with me, it's usually my choice of small talk because even though I try not to engage in that game of small talk because I don't want to, I invariably will, but it will be on my terms. So I'll be talking, God, I talk to them nearly always about the building that we're in because I like architecture. That's your go-to. I don't talk about the weather. i'm not like oh you know it's wet out isn't it i'll be like so 19th century nice pediments you know you know the corbeling's very i don't mean to i do it because it's comfortable and safe for me it's something that i find interesting and people at least generally have at least something to say about it but i notice every single time within a certain amount you know half an hour 20 minutes they're already starting to have that reaction of what the hell is this you know who what is the deal with this guy this is weird i'm not used to this normal people don't talk about architecture you know even though they're ready for me even though they're prepared i still manage i think to freak them out gently is there like an expiration on their patience towards how they Yes, I think.

46:44How they're dealing with the neurodivergent person, and eventually the tolerance runs out.

46:48Peter Wharmby:I think so, yeah. And you pick up on it, and then do you feel like a burden? Yeah. That's quite emotional, actually. It's related to compassion fatigue, isn't it? When I did a lot of work with the NHS over the last couple of years with Anna Freud, based in London, did a lot of training of NHS professionals on this stuff. And what came up a lot there was compassion fatigue, you know of nurses in particular ward nurses for example eventually just collapsing under the weight of pressure and not being able to show compassion anymore and apparently it's such a big recognized thing that they actually have schedules built around it now where you know if you feel that you're getting compassion fatigue you can actually go to a colleague and say look it's happening it's happening i need a break you know i need a break and they step in which i think is wonderful i and that's really good we need that but on a smaller scale in you know interpersonal relationships you get something very similar which is this kind of patience running out with your quirks your differences your neurodivergent behaviors you start off with in credit you know and everything's fine and they're prepared and they're ready but you're already starting to become overdrawn you know it drops so quickly and you can i don't know you know people watching this people listening to this maybe this is something you can really relate with but i feel like you can watch it happening in real time you know like you can just watch it dropping their patience with you their ability to deal with you in your ways the way you behave i read a study that if your partner becomes terminally ill this this pattern follows there's this heightened compassion when the news is broke yes and then over time as you become more of a carer the tolerance goes down and actually there's quite a high risk of adultery at that stage apparently so yes and divorces are very common yeah i guess you have they're human as well right they have a level of tolerance and patience that is going to wear down and this doesn't mean they're a bad person it's just they're tired so it's like respite care you know um parents who have got terminally ill children or or you know very disabled kids or partners of very disabled individuals or people who are terminally ill they need something called respite care don't they where they just get a break they get like a little i mean i don't want to say holiday because that's got the wrong connotations but just a bit of time away so that they can rebalance themselves and just recuperate themselves a little bit and then go back into the situation so it's a known phenomenon absolutely yeah you know human beings are human we can only manage for so long but it's interesting for me that this thing that we tend to only talk about when it comes to you know terminal illness and considerable disability is somehow pertinent to dealing simply just with an autistic or an ADHD person you know that the lack the the decline in patience the collapse of compassion can happen so quickly in a similar way it's like how bad are we like how tiring are we and it makes me realize we must be very tiring without meaning to be.

49:57Peter Wharmby:You know, I don't want to be a burden on someone, but you feel it at your core when you watch that energy level drop. And you just feel it so deeply that you are, you know, primarily you are exhausting this person. You don't want to. It's a hard thing to live with. Does this apply to relationships as well? This tolerance to difference wearing thin, does that mean that essentially a neurodivergent person dating a neurotypical person is ultimately destined to fail? Who knows? Possibly. Ultimately destined, maybe not. Maybe there are ways around it, but I think it's certainly a way that things can go south very, very quickly in those circumstances.

50:43Peter Wharmby:You know, being in a mixed neurotype relationship, let's say, could be a little bit like getting a new job like you're as a neurodivergent person you can mask to begin with you know you've just got a new job you're just settling in so you're masking really well and no one's got a problem with it and everything's fine and then the cracks start to show and things start to go wrong and i think it basically the same structure you know starts off well but then over time you begin to show your true self which might be differences in communication styles differences in how you perceive things differences in how you resolve conflict or how you manage your time together just organizational stuff you know all kinds of little bits and bobs can start to go wrong um and the core of all this could be that double empathy gap that exists there between the neurodivergent person and the neurotypical person where basically neither side truly understands the other and when you don't truly understand something it's very difficult to have patience for it it's much easier to get irritable angry fed up and so on so yeah i mean i would say that those circumstances can be very very difficult what about two neurodivergent people because a lot of our conversation has been how a neurodivergent person is going to potentially be unlikable to a neurotypical person but i guess every neurodivergent person will mask slightly differently their coping strategies will be slightly differently.

52:15So even one neurodivergent person could be very different to another neurodivergent person.

52:21Peter Wharmby:Yes, absolutely. There's a lot said about this. And I actually, interestingly, responded to a Facebook comment just this morning on this. I'd done a video on this very topic a while back, and somebody had commented on it, ah, but autistic people to autistic people is fine. We don't have this problem. And I was like, well, a lot of people do say that, that somehow autistic people, when they get together, are just fine and dandy you know there's never a problem and like i replied to them ideally yes there is evidence to suggest for example that autistic people's communication styles do tend to synchronize quite nicely so yeah there's fewer communication issues however first of all like you said we're all really different and some people are just difficult anyway you know you You can be autistic and still a bit of an arsehole.

53:10Peter Wharmby:That's perfectly plausible. But more interestingly, what you can find is that, especially once you're in your 20s, 30s, 40s, because you're an autistic person that's lived in this world and had to mask for so long, that you end up kind of responding to other autistic people in the way that neurotypical people would. Because you've tried so hard to be neurotypical and to act neurotypically, that then if you meet somebody who doesn't bother to do that or does act genuinely differently to you you become just as freaked out by them as a neurotypical person would because we're all human at the end of the day and no humans seem to be able to deal with difference very well we just struggle with it as a species so actually in reality i think it's a nice idea that all autistic people get on like house on fire but i think in practice in reality it's not necessarily given at all you know it's it's not guaranteed to always work because yeah i mean just in conversation for example one way that autistic people learn to mask in the uk in communication is we learn to do that whole implicit communication thing because the uk is very heavily a low demand communicative culture which means that we don't like to demand much of each other at all you know in the uk our whole system of politeness is built around if it's not too much bother could you possibly do this and oh if it's okay might you be able to do this no worries if you can't you know that that whole thing is is is how we tend to communicate in this country and that's very different how an autistic person would naturally communicate because we tend to be more straight direct down the line but as an autistic person who's naturally direct down the line that's grown up in the UK all my life, I've become that very thing.

55:01Peter Wharmby:I am now very, oh, you know, no bother if not. I hint at things. I suggest things. I don't want to, but I do. And therefore, if I meet another autistic person, well, I'm basically acting neurotypically. You see what I mean? So, and it will take me a while to break that down and to get rid of that and to realize oh i can actually lose that and be more myself with this person that can take ages if it ever happens and it can you know really take time so it's a it's actually really complicated i think that the damage that masking does to autistic people's psyche means that we you know we can end up struggling with other autistic people just as much as we end up struggling with non-autistic people which is so upsetting and so depressing but just simply because of living and growing up in a world where we've been forced to act differently can it be the case that an autistic person might meet another autistic person and that other autistic person appears to be not masking at all or very much because i've met some people that i suspect are autistic and they're not putting on the fake smile they're not bothering with that load yeah And I sort of have a level of admiration and respect for them.

56:21Like I'm putting in all this effort to try and pretend to be neurotypical to fit in and it's exhausting and they seem to have the confidence to not bother. Can that be a situation where there is like a level of admiration to a fellow autistic person and it's almost like, teach me how to not be this exhausted all the time?

56:38Peter Wharmby:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can relate to that. I've met some autistic people who wear their autisticness, you know, even more on their sleeve than I do. And yeah, you know, they haven't gone down the path of people-pleasing, let's say, that maybe I have as a trauma response. you know ultimately if we accept that all autistic people are basically traumatized by just being alive which is you know if you don't want to accept that fair enough but let's just accept that for the purposes of the argument then you you can go different paths when you're traumatized you can become a people pleaser a fauna like me or you can become kind of angry you know and that's not really the same as confidence it's more just a kind of bullish i'm not playing your blooming games you know i'm not doing this anymore i'm just gonna be you know and that they're two very different paths i very definitely went down the fawning path some people go down the fighting path you know of you know i'm gonna be me no matter what and yeah i've got respect for that i wish i could have done that i i don't think i have the strength of character to do that.

57:45Peter Wharmby:I think if they do, then that's great. However, what I would say is that the story behind that honesty that they might be showing could be very varied. There could be all kinds of things going on there. You know, traumatic experiences that go way beyond anything that we've experienced. Really deeply traumatizing events, perhaps, that we could only dream of, that we would not want to have experienced, could have led them to that place, you know, of being really just openly different. Or it could just be that, yeah, they've just decided at a young age, I'm not going to play that game. I'm just going to be me.

58:24Peter Wharmby:And we are going to see more of that. I think that's worth saying. As neurodiversity becomes more and more mainstream and people talk about it more, and there is this increased push to just accept, hopefully, you know, accept neurodivergent people for who they are, we are going to presumably begin to see, gradually, gradually, gradually, a slow reduction in how much people are masking because presumably we won't need to as much because society is slowly becoming more accepting of our differences so i think we can expect over the next 10 20 years to start to see young people in particular who just aren't masking like we did who are far more open who are far and it's interesting you know the the when you think about the the the how much that echoes other diversities if you like you know like a new generation coming along and just being open with it and it being normal and just yeah this is who i am this is how i work you know i mean so similar to you know like the uh the lgbt bt lgbtq experience you know where 40 50 years ago people were still very much having to live on the down low, you know, and keep it secret and all that kind of thing.

59:37Peter Wharmby:And now, you know, people who are in Generation Alpha, you know, people who are just entering their teens now are living in a world where, well, hopefully it will continue, where they can be open and they can just be themselves and there won't be any need to hide who you are. And I think the same thing's happening potentially with neurodiversity, but maybe a little bit behind the times. So yeah, we can maybe expect to see that. could it be a difference in insight in the mind of the autistic person the autistic person who is heavily masking and is clearly putting on a character compared to an autistic person who is noticeably different but doesn't seem to care i had someone on the podcast who said an example where there could be for example a schizophrenic person on the back of a bus screaming out noises like you see that rarely and they're doing that with confidence and they don't seem to care they're certainly not hiding it because he said they have a lack of insight into the fact of just how different they are is it possible that some autistic people just they don't have the insight to recognize that they are different therefore they don't need to mask i think it's possible yeah i think it's it's it's possible certainly i mean it's it's different measures of lack of insight because often the differences that autistic people display will be very subtle they won't be quite so obvious and grandiose as you know a person sitting at the back of a bus and shouting it will be you know more small scale things that to be honest you probably wouldn't even expect somebody to have much insight into because they're so tiny these little differences you know like me scanning a room like this i it didn't occur to me that i was doing that for ages i finally clicked one day that's what i was doing i guess i eventually had insight into it but it took a while because it was so relatively small so i think it's possible that you could have autistic people who are more openly autistic simply because they have no insight into what what they're doing but to be honest with you my lived experience of talking and working and you know speaking with so many autistic people is that generally speaking even those of us that are very open and very non-masking half the problem is the amount of insight we do have into what's going on again we can't necessarily put our fingers on it but we know it's happening and it makes us miserable.

1:02:11Peter Wharmby:So many autistic people I know are mortified the moment they realize that they are doing the equivalent of shouting at the back of the bus. When you say to them, can you just tone your voice down a bit? Oh God, really, was I shouting? Oh God, I'm so sorry. That kind of thing. Or like a real sense of shame and embarrassment for doing something a little bit different and a bit quirky or weird or odd or whatever adjective you want to use to describe it. So I think, yeah, oftentimes, actually, we've got too much insight into it, but no real power to do anything about it. Because ultimately, you know, how do you teach someone to do these things?

1:02:54Peter Wharmby:They are, you know, we were talking about it a little while ago. How on earth do you sit down and teach an autistic person the exact right length of time you're meant to laugh at something for. Because that's not written down anywhere. There's no rule book. There seems to be, from an outsider's perspective, there seems to be. There seems to be a hard and fast rule of how long you're meant to laugh at a lame joke, you know, at a poor quality joke. You're meant to laugh for like, I don't know, three seconds. But we didn't get that memo. and I will probably laugh for too long or not long enough. How on earth do you teach these myriad, tiny little subtle things for somebody?

1:03:39Peter Wharmby:You can't. You sort of observe, don't you? And then it's lots of trial and error. Yeah, lots of trial and error. Why did you not find that funny? And you collaborate. Yeah. And then you eventually get there, but you never quite get there. You never quite get there because it's too subjective. It's too vague. It's too ambiguous. It's impossible. The same reason why you can't pin this down is the same reason you can't get 100 % in an English test. It's too subjective. It's too open to interpretation. It's too varied in terms of who you're talking to. So yeah, autistic people who don't seem to get this automatically will always be at a disadvantage and struggling.

1:04:24And when someone gets a diagnosis, at whatever stage of their life that happens, who do you think that helps the most? Do you think it helps the person who gets the diagnosis, or do you think it helps the people around them?

1:04:36Peter Wharmby:I think it helps the person themselves the most. It can help the people around them, if they are willing to do the legwork of learning what it really means. um you know if if if a non-autistic family member looks at that diagnosis and thinks to themselves ah okay well that's great now that explains why christmases are so tricky i will be kinder to this person in future and i will be you know less judgmental or whatever then yeah sure that's helped everybody that's helped the families help the individual but it's still fundamentally help the autistic person who's been diagnosed but no i think generally speaking that the beneficiary the beneficiary of it all is mostly the autistic person themselves, the neurodivergent person themselves, because they have that missing piece of the puzzle, to use imagery that isn't great, that might finally explain so much to them about themselves, which has been lacking, which I think is far more valuable to them than it is to others, because fundamentally the others can just ignore that if they wish.

1:05:42Peter Wharmby:It won't mean as much to them. but to the individual who now knows this is why I do these things, this is why I do this, this is why I do that, this is why I struggle with this, or I'm weirdly good at that, it's a level of self-understanding and self-knowledge which is incredibly valuable. You know, I mean, it saved my life. I don't mind saying that. It really did save my life. You know, finding out what I found out about how my brain works, and I'm not alone in that by any stretch you know the number of people that have said to me you know just sent me messages saying you know i've read your book or books and you know now i've got a diagnosis and you know it's it's it saved my life and i never know how to respond to that because it feels too enormous you know feels too big to respond to it's so scary that the you know so many people out there are struggling so much so yeah diagnosis i think is is inherently most most powerful for for the individual but um But to people around them who do a bit of work on it and use that new information themselves to do a bit of research, maybe they know a little bit more about ADHD, know a little bit more about autism.

1:06:54Peter Wharmby:That's highly beneficial too. So yeah, I mean, you know, they do benefit a bit, but it benefits society, I think. The more people there are that know about this stuff. the more people there are out there who when they get that feeling of when they meet an autistic person but who know what that means who can then think oh oh oh i remember i did that course on autism i read that book on autism oh that's probably what's going on here ah okay right okay well in that case do you know they can actually do something about it that they can respond to their own prejudice they can respond to their own judgment that they've done inadvertently and try to not do that you know and try to accept and be like okay in that case then this person might just be autistic in which case i am going to try extra hard not to be you know unnerved by anything a bit different that they do truly fascinating pete i want to move on to my favorite part of the show, which is your second ADHD item, perhaps all the HD item.

1:08:00Peter Wharmby:All the HD, absolutely. Yeah. There's a big old slice of autism in this one. Yes. It's really small. It is really small. It's been waiting underneath that cloth. Yeah. Just about. We'll work it out. I'm going to reveal it now. Yes, please do. Yay. That is a little key ring of Sonic the Hedgehog. Lego Sonic the Hedgehog. Lego Sonic the Hedgehog. Why does a little Sonic represent all the HD? for me it's the combination of the lego and the sonic it's the for me when i was a kid when i was growing up video games were my respite they were my safe place they were where i would go to recover from a day at school to recover from a um difficult time you know the childhood wasn't always easy you know we didn't have a huge amount of money when i was growing up and you know great It was tough.

1:08:52Peter Wharmby:It was tough at times. So, you know, the ability to just go and turn on my Mega Drive and play a bit of Sonic, it just, it rescued me an awful lot. And the thing that was so good about Sonic was that it, I look back now and I realize it really scratched the ADHD itch because it was so fast paced and so easy to dip in and out of. You know, there were other games at the time where you had to really kind of commit, and sit down and be like, I'm going to slog through this now, like Zelda or something like that, or even Mario to an extent. But with Sonic, you just pick it up, you might whack the cheat in so you could play any level you liked, and you'd just do it.

1:09:32Peter Wharmby:For five minutes, you'd just be zooming around, dopamine everywhere as you're collecting all the little rings and bouncing off baddies and TV sets and things, and then you put it down when you got bored, which you invariably did. and and for me that was just it was a wonderful place of security and sanctuary and i still do it now you know i've got sonic one and two the original mega drive genesis whatever you want to call it games on my phone i've got sonic mania on my pc i've got on my switch you know there's there's sonic everywhere i've even got little pictures uh little screenshots of sonic that i've turn into canvases on my stairs so every time i go to the attic i pass these little little images of little 2d sonic in like various zones on the stairs because it just reminds me of that sanctuary that safe place that you that you represented and of course then when it came out in lego form that just sealed the deal you know because lego is my other major childhood obsession and focus you know that's always brought me joy and the lego side is certainly far more autistic you know there there's that whole thing of collecting and creativity and you know nurturing and holding and comparing and lining things up and setting things out and organizing all my little bricks and stuff but sonic represents the adhd sonic is himself almost certainly adhd you know like when you think about the old comics and everything the films even he's got that streak of impulsive you know not not really thinking too much about the outcome very obviously fast but also it flags up that thing about adhd where i think adhd often does come along with speed not necessarily physically i mean i can't run for anything but speed of thought you know real processing speed which for me is what adhd really is like a lot you know i've often said that for my you know my adhd is not i'm not hyperactive physically at all i'm really i mean apart from you know the occasional restless leg and a bit of stimming i'm hyperactive in my brain you know just you know it's like son of the hedgericks is zipping around in my head constantly and and for that reason i just think he he neatly represents that and uh the key ring simply because carry it around you know have it with you at all times and it makes it less likely to lose it which as an ADHD person is quite a big deal too because I lose everything eventually I've always liked computer games too Pete we were talking off camera about our love for various computer games Resident Evil yeah used to love getting home from school and I was on my computer games all night and I've spoken to many autistic people who have this in common they find complete solace in computer games why do you think that is do you think there's something about the you're bound by the parameters of the game the rules it's a you're going into this world of very strict rules there's no social norm to follow that's certainly true when it comes to these games where either there's no social rules at all because you know you don't have to ever say you know what sonic's going to say to another character you know you just run around bashing stuff um so yeah that is an element to it you know the the the rules are set, even on a game with lots of dialogue, like Red Dead Redemption or Final Fantasy, there are set rules and you kind of know what each response is likely to lead to, which I think is very soothing for an autistic brain.

1:13:00Peter Wharmby:You know, to have like these social interactions where, oh, you know, even The Sims, as much as it tries to pretend to be real life, it's not, it's all formulaic. You know, you can figure it out. I was watching a podcast, you know, Pierre Noveli and his Button Boys podcast. They were talking about The Sims on there a while back and how you just game the communication because you knew what you had to get the sims to do to get them to do whatever, like get married or woohoo or whatever, and it was dead easy. And I think that that really does appeal to autistic people who in the real world, conversation could just be this total mess of what the hell am I even meant to do?

1:13:38Peter Wharmby:In a video game, it's easy. It's straightforward. But the other reason I think autistic people like video games is because of monotropism, which is the way our brains are structured around an attention on a single thing. I think autistic brains in particular, but maybe ADHD ones too, they like to be in what we call a flow state where we are totally committed and focused on a thing in a way that makes us feel really relaxed and calm. And there's a number of ways you can achieve it. You might be able to achieve it in your job. You might be able to achieve it by writing a book or by going for a nice long walk, you know, and really being in the moment and being in that kind of flow mode.

1:14:21Peter Wharmby:But one guaranteed way to get into that state is to play a video game. Because, you know, the minute it hooks you and you're in, you're immediately in that monotropic flow. And because, as I suspect, autistic brains want to be in that state naturally, then it stands to reason we're going to like video games because they're like a shortcut. you know they're like a cheat code it's like i want to be in that really zen state that i really like oh i'll just play minecraft or whatever and i'll get there dead quick like after this when i get home um i will definitely be playing pokemon violet which i've just kind of got into and i will be in that state of total zen focus powering up my little critters you know i've got an applin that I really want to evolve.

1:15:11Peter Wharmby:That's going to be my focus. And I'm going to be in this monotropic state of joy and calm and happiness doing that until it's bedtime. I'll be doing the same with Alien Isolation. Which is not the same. Plus fear. Very stressful. Very terrifying game. But yes, absolutely. It's just good. It's nice. I want to move on, Pete, to the audience question. The Agony Aunt, which is called The Washing Machine of Woes, because my ADHD item is a washing machine because I always leave my clothes in the laundry. As I did the other day, yeah, yeah. That's good. It makes me feel less alone. I've been using the Timo app, though, which is making me slightly better at remembering.

1:15:50Peter Wharmby:Nice, nice. This week, Pete, in the washing machine of woes, someone has written in and asked, my daughter is almost certainly or ADHD and she keeps getting bullied at school, returning in tears. What can I say to her to make her feel special and not broken? I mean, ultimately, what you want to hear in that situation is that you're not broken. It's exactly that. That it's not your fault. You've not done anything to deserve this. That you're okay the way you are. You find that you're good the way you are. It's just these people, for whatever reason, don't like you. How do you explain that to a kid?

1:16:36Peter Wharmby:I mean, I've had to have similar conversations at times with my daughter, and we always tend to just talk about, yeah, just that difference between neurodivergent and neurotypical, and how there is a gap there in understanding, and that neurotypical people struggle to understand where we're coming from. They struggle to understand why we do the things we do, and when people struggle to understand things, they often get nasty. That's not your fault. That's nothing you've done wrong. They're just trying to deal with difference, and they're not dealing with it very well. you know, they're dealing with it in a very childish and unhelpful manner.

1:17:11And that ultimately, you know, you being you is better for you.

1:17:17Peter Wharmby:You know, like you don't want to encourage any autistic or ADHD person to try to change or not be that way. Because that way leads mental illness and depression, anxiety and such. So we want to try and I think, you know, because I think, you know, it hits hard because it makes me think about my own parenting, you know my own daughter who touch wood wherever wood is so far that's that's big spoon is that wood that's wood yeah touch wood oh and now i'm gonna tip the spoon over um who touch wood so far hasn't dealt with too much along those lines although she has had to deal with some it's really scary because you're constantly thinking you know how on earth do i try and help this little person get through this as unscathed as possible, knowing full well that as a neurodivergent child moving on to teenager, they're going to get scathed to some extent.

1:18:12Peter Wharmby:I don't think that's avoidable, not realistically. So how do you make it as good as you possibly can? And I think being really open with them, talking to them about their neurotype, talking to them about why and how autistic people can struggle at school, why others might not deal with them well because they're autistic. Just openness. Clarify some things. Help them see what they're dealing with. So they've got the full deck of cards, so they know what to do. I think so much misery in the world comes about from the vacuum of information when you don't know what you're dealing with. When teachers don't know enough about neurodiversity and therefore they don't do the right thing.

1:19:01Peter Wharmby:When colleagues or other students don't know enough so they do the wrong thing. And when you yourself don't know enough so you do the wrong thing. That's where so many of our woes come from. so the more we can be really transparent and clear and you know there are loads of really good resources for kids about autism loads of really good books and videos and uh tv shows that really explore what it's like to be autistic and help explain some stuff i think that's a good place to go that's a good place to start so that the young person so your daughter might then have that missing part of the puzzle piece that I talked about, you know, that I got when I was diagnosed.

1:19:42Peter Wharmby:If they get that now while they're still young, that could be really valuable to them. And yeah, it won't necessarily help immediately with the bullying. All you can do with that is to reassure them and tell them that they're okay and it will all be okay, you know, and that they will, they will, they need to stay true to themselves. But in the long term, they will have this insight into themselves, which is so valuable. but it's a difficult question because you know bullying is so horrible people can be so vile you know with how they how they treat people especially at school age so my heart goes out to them but but yeah fill that information void with good quality information so that the young person knows what they're dealing with would be my advice amazing amazing advice pete thank you so much just finally yes i want to deliver you a letter oh yeah the thing it was written by the previous guest where they wrote themselves a letter to their younger self i'm going to deliver it to you okay there we go pete thank you very much if you could kindly read the previous guest's letter to their younger self okay to my younger self handwriting's just like my dad's how strange sorry um so you recognize yeah to have gone for too long being misunderstood by others stop feeling ashamed of being you you have struggled too long in life help is around the corner if you're struggling go out and seek it life does not and should not be so hard get the right help right now so you can be the best version of you and enjoy every moment of your precious life that's powerful thank you pete so much once again for coming back um brilliant again and on On behalf of everyone watching, listening, trying to understand themselves better, thank you so much.

1:21:33Peter Wharmby:Thank you. Thank you very much for having me.