Bestselling ADHD author reveals dangers of late AuDHD diagnosis | Pete Wharmby

0:00The stakes of masking autism is way higher in my experience than ADHD. I can get away with being a bit overzealous and overenthusiastic in a conversation and interrupting or, you know, being forgetful, being disorganized. I can get away with that without really bad things happening. Whereas openly stimming, you can't get away with that. Peter Wharmby is a bestselling author and ADHD specialist.

0:22Pete Wharmby:An award-winning expert in the field. He's on a mission to raise awareness for the struggles experienced by those with ADHD and autism. now. Autism and ADHD are perhaps two sides of the same coin. So we know they're related, but we don't know exactly how. Now, it might be that monotropism is the coin. Non-autistic, neurotypical people are polytropic. They can pay attention to multiple things at once without any real hassle. Whereas monotropic people like autistic people have a tendency or are wired to pay attention to one thing at a time. A great depth. Do you think there's a risk that problem solving ability of people with 4DHD could make them vulnerable when they're depressed.

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2:03Pete, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. Welcome to the ADHD Chatter Studio. Thank you so much for making the trip down. Yeah, it's brilliant. It's a very colourful and cheerful space, which makes me very happy, actually. It's really nice. All of the previous guests' items are on display behind us, and I'm excited to unravel and reveal yours later on. But first, Pete, just to set the foundation for the episode, what is your mission in the world of neurodiversity? It's always been the same, really. Ever since I was diagnosed and I found the community online and realized just how many of us were struggling.

2:43You know, I'm autistic and ADHD, and many people I know are as well. and you know the rates of depression anxiety unemployment i mean not that employment is the be-all and end-all but it it does help um all those kind of things suicidality you know i don't want to get too heavy too quickly but they're all really high but you know and then they have been for a very long time we've been let down i think as a population uh generally speaking and so i I kind of, as a teacher, I got it into my head that what I wanted to do was to get people to understand that this existed. You know, that people share a world with people who have brains that work in a really different way, but who the world is not calibrated for at all.

3:30You know, everything in the world that we see, society and structures and systems, they're all calibrated for this very particular type of brain. and if you don't fit in with that then you're gonna find it really hard so i took it upon myself i guess over a period of about five years or so to just try and get that information out there you know just just like a voice kind of barking into the world you know please listen you know there are so many different types of brain and we need your help so you know ever since then i you know social media started on twitter and instagram and facebook and written a couple of books and I do talks and speeches at people these days and it's all there my mission to just try and get this information out there because like I guess I fundamentally naively believe that people if they knew about this would want to help hopefully um and so I naively kind of hope that if I tell people this then they'll be like oh oh okay you know and just amend things slightly or change things a bit so yeah that that's that's it really it's fascinating i mean you said you don't want to get too deep too fast and you mentioned suicide but i think it's i speak to people in the community who have sometimes adhd sometimes autism a lot of the time both they're all dhd and and even though they don't go as far as to saying or broaching that topic you can sense this this this sadness within them yes you can see through the mask you can see the hopelessness sometimes in their eyes what do you think is the connection between feeling different and having potentially intrusive thoughts like that i think it's cumulative i i think that when you're neurodivergent generally i mean we'll focus on autism and adhd here of course but i think from a very very very early age you recognize how different you are um or or different you realize how little you fit in with the majority you know you feel alien you feel other we know this because we know that autistic people for example start masking very early on you know nursery school you know early primary school you know five six years old i mean that in itself makes my skin crawl you know that we are we are forced to pretend to be normal you know from from the when you should just be able to just do what you like you should as a six-year-old you should just be able to explore the world in your own way but instead they're feeling this pressure to conform in this in a way that is extremely tiring extremely uh exhausting debilitating and and i think cumulatively as years and years go by of experiencing that along with the other things that come with being othered bullying uh being misunderstood uh being misinterpreted being misrepresented you know by by people around you it it just builds up and builds up and builds up and you feel yeah hopeless like i'm gonna have to expend enormous amounts of energy i think you know we kind of think to ourselves perhaps every day of my life and it's always going to be this difficult and i'm only like 12 or i'm only 19 or i'm only 32 or whatever and and oh god like oh no more of the same yeah this is going to be rough this is going to be really hard and and you know that naturally leads to at least intrusive thoughts if not unfortunately worse depression is that a feeling that is connected to our inner self, our inner child.

7:15And we're very good at hiding that inner self and putting on a smile, putting on a mask, presenting ourselves in a particular way, looking happy, being a chameleon, pretending to be. Do you think if you are someone who has been forced to mask from a young age because you feel different and othered, you will therefore struggle to articulate deep feelings of insecurity and depression when you're older? i think i think so yeah you know you're already a a master at masking you know if you if you're autistic for example by the time you're a teenager so finding yourselves now having to mask depression which we all do as well because depression of course is taboo we're not allowed to talk about it it's not okay you know somebody says oh how are you doing you can't say well actually i'm really depressed um because you know you get looked at you know you'd be struck off the list of Christmas cards, wouldn't you?

8:10You know, nobody would want to talk to you. So we are primed, really, to be able to mask that stuff too, and mask it very well. I mean, I remember, I went to the doctors a couple of years back when I was really low. You know, this was before, I think it was before my diagnosis. So I'm kind of looking back retrospectively now. And I went there because I was deeply depressed. I was really scared, you know, and I wanted help. I wanted the doctor to take it seriously. It's always a bit of a battle, you know. And I remember vividly, I walked into the surgery, and the doctor was like, oh, you know, hi, Mr.

8:45Warmbi, how are you? And I just said, oh, I'm fine, thanks, how are you? Like a knee-jerk reaction. Yeah, I went into my script. You know, my, I mean, we were talking about scripts before the show, weren't we? And, you know, I just went into my standard small talk script, and that completely scuppered the whole appointment. because immediately the doctor was you know i don't know he seems fine you know it's a cheerful demeanor you know kind of thing um and yeah you you hide it you you even from yourself you don't even realize you're hiding until you know until it gets really bad until too late perhaps i see stories of people taking their own life and you see images of them literally the day before sometimes it's the family member saying he was so happy we didn't see it coming i think the chester the lead chester bennington there's a picture of him the day before he took his life at a dinner table laughing looking like he's the happiest person in the world surrounded by his family but obviously inside he was in torment um tormented absolutely yeah it's a haunting picture i think i mean it was it was a shock you know it was the same with robin williams obviously with Williams we found out there were health issues underlying it weren't there with the Lewy body issue that you had but again you know this this larger than life person that you know always seemed to exude joy and then yeah one day gone and and you know I mentioned earlier when I when I went online when I was first diagnosed and discovered the community that was kind of what I discovered I mean well I didn't discover it wasn't like it wasn't known but I found it out for myself that there are so many neurodivergent people out there who really are hurting a great deal you know it's very difficult focus you on your own personal story p do you have any early memories of feeling different uh yeah i do yeah yeah it's i i'm masked from a very early age i think looking back i always felt like there's a few bits to it really i never felt like i knew what was going on if that makes sense yes it totally does yeah i i never you know i'm not a foolish person i don't think you know i'm relatively quick and you know quick on the uptake and if somebody is clear with me i will understand the deal pretty swiftly you know but for some reason all the way through school and even in work as an adult you know when i had a normal job um i would so often find myself feeling like i had no idea what was going on what am i meant to do where i'm meant to go i don't know what to do you know the anxiety build i i never felt like i had a full grasp of what the people around me were doing what they were going to do how they worked people were very confusing to me even as a very young child i found them very unpredictable and quite scary you know children and adults you know teachers who would just snap suddenly and be really angry and i'd you know what's going on and and kids who would you know there'd be a best friend one minute and then the next minute you know deepest enemies i don't know what's happening here um so i never felt like i had the rule book for the social world that everyone else seemed to have kind of ingrained within them i always felt like i was you know like like you know back in the 90s when you'd hire a video game and if you were lucky you get the instruction booklet yes and that would you know you'd be like yeah yeah from nostalgia yeah the local video shop yes and you get the instruction book you read it through if you're anything like me and you know okay so that's how you do that but sometimes you get it and there'd be no no booklet you know it's been lost to time or whatever you know somebody's nicked it um and it felt like that for me that i didn't have this instruction booklet that everyone else seemed to have and everything was there for even the simplest things were enormously confusing and everyone else just seemed to be fine.

12:38You know, just seemed to get on okay. I mean, obviously they might not have been, you know, you never see what's really going on inside people, but genuinely people did seem to be pretty okay most of the time. Yeah, you're feeling like everyone else is playing the game of life on easy mode. Yeah, yeah. Why are you stuck on hard? You're playing on hard in a different language. Without the instruction manual. Yeah, exactly. And you've got no idea what's going on, yeah. I mean, the one thing about that is, though, that once you do start to get it, a bit like if anyone's ever been in that situation with a video game, I think you actually become weirdly better at it as a result of that because you've had to really work for it.

13:20Whereas for people for whom it's a bit more automatic, you know, can just bumble through. And I think a lot of autistic people, because of our masking, and we learn habits and we learn behaviors very manually, and we monitor people and we watch people and we try and figure out what's going on and i think as a result of that paradoxically we then become very like some of the autistic people i know are some of the most charismatic people you can meet because they nailed it you know and then if you get them away from other people they'll kind of crumble into a more kind of like you know maybe quite introverted state and you know you'll see kind of what they're what they might be kind of like underneath the mask but i do see that a lot you know very very socially capable autistic people for whom it's hard won you know they've really had to work on that and they can only do it for a little while before not after this today you know i'm maybe coming across quite you know chatty and you know after on the drive home i'm gonna be you know a nervous wreck thinking about everything i've said i say that interview yeah yeah oh god did i you know say anything terrible did i use any bad language or god you know like that and you know that that's that's often how it is i think yeah well i can reassure you you're you're you're coming across absolutely perfectly thank you thank you what chapter of your life pete did the diagnoses come what that is there a story there there yeah it was it was parenthood right as it's soft and is in various different ways.

14:54Parenthood is a big pipeline to diagnosis. Often, of course, it's because your child gets diagnosed. That's a really common thing that we see all the time. You know, your kid's diagnosed at school, and then you go through that process with them, and you're like, hang on a minute, this sounds an awful lot like me. I do that too. Yeah, and I know a lot of people who have been diagnosed via that route. But for me, it was, you know, right at the very beginning of parenthood, you know when my daughter was born um and i just collapsed you know i just i just could not cope um i thought it was postpartum you know father you know paternal postpartum depression for a time but it went on too long and it was too severe for to maybe be that so we were casting around and i think it was um i think it was my my partner who who said to me have you considered autism and i kind of had i'd looked into autism before i'd i taught a lot of autistic students you know at school um and i knew some autistic family members of colleagues and friends and things like that and i'd always kind of thought almost semi-jokingly to myself you know i relate to that you know i can kind of see a lot of that in myself but because i'd been in a band and because i'd you know as a teacher and because i you know i had a very old-fashioned view of what autism was at that point i didn't really understand it i just assumed i couldn't be but when that kind of seed was dropped into my head and i started looking into it and i started reading more modern thoughts on what autism was it all started to make a bit more sense and then it was a very straightforward case of going to the doctors i mean this was 2017 pre-covid so for me to get a diagnosis on the nhs was relatively easy you know i feel kind of bad for saying it because the waiting list now is you know a million years sure um but back in 2017 it was six months i think between um being what's the word you know uh when the doctor you know gives you off to a consultant refers refers that's the one um to to diagnosis it was it was really streamlined it was pretty good um and and you know looking back i i tend to make a joke of this when i talk about it in public but But, you know, ultimately, I'm a very routine-based person.

17:13My stress levels are so high, I need to have a really strict daily routine, you know, really have things very, very similar every single day, like many autistic people do. And, of course, you become a parent. That's gone. You can't do that anymore. And also, my sensory sensitivity is very much based around, And I mean, temperature is one, but two of the big ones are sound and smell. And, you know, don't be too crass, but a new baby. Yeah. You can see where that goes. And I just found it overwhelming in the worst possible way. You know, it was rough. It was a rough time. Having ADHD and autism, being all ADHD, how could those two conditions clash within somebody?

18:03Yeah, in so many ways. Well, sometimes they clash. Sometimes I feel that they really complement each other. It just seems to depend on the day and the situation. I've read a lot on this, and I've thought about it a lot myself, you know, ever since my ADHD diagnosis. I think in some ways, they do clash. They do, yes, because my autistic brain, if you like, you know, the autistic side or portion or cells or however it works. They want to do things this way. That part of me really does want things to be very set down, very clear, very unambiguous. I want to know what I'm doing before time. I want to check on Google Maps to know that I'm going exactly the right direction, that it's going to start at this point and finish at this point.

18:51I want everything set. But then the other side, like this morning, for example, i had my tube journey from my hotel absolutely set in stone i knew exactly what i was doing where i was going and then at the last minute i thought i'm gonna drive never driven in central london in my entire life but part of me just thought no i need i need i need something different now i don't know why and to me i think what happened there was an adhd part of me in some way that i can't really explain took over and wanted an adventure yeah yeah and and won it won and i drove and it was fine but it was a gamble it was a risk you know i mean it's scary i had no idea where to park but but for some reason that that that thrill seeking and spur of the moment you know let's just change our plans all at once just took over and yeah sure today it worked but Other days, it doesn't.

19:53Other days, it causes all kinds of problems. So I find myself walking this fine line between absolute predictability and total unpredictability. And it's like, whichever way I go, I don't win. I can't win because the other part of me is going to be upset. I suppose there's sort of the ADHD impulsivity, wanted adventure, wanted to have fun driving. Was there a bit of pushback or resistance to the tube as well because that, was a sensitivity the heat the noise there was against your autism probably yes pushing the adhd to to to act on that impulsivity to drive i think so i think that was probably the thing that sparked it you know the catalyst of it all because um it is pretty hot today um the hotel room where i was staying had very poor air conditioning so you know woke up thinking i've got it's too hot and and the thought of going on the central line which is famously the hottest jude line of all um just didn't appeal and because you know as an autistic person who's got heat sensitivity you know it's bad you know it's really bad when you're too hot i i genuinely started to fear that i wouldn't be able to do this but i get here in such a state you know i'll be so kind of close to meltdown that i just kind of turn up and burst into tears or something um so yeah that that did kind of spur on well i could drive but i think the adhd in me you know that that's that yearning from predictability and new things pick that up yeah go on then let's do that yeah yeah yeah good idea uh against perhaps my better judgment i don't know yeah very relatable you you talk a lot pete on social media about autism and depression um your audi hd autism and adhd do you think someone with audhd how they combat depression do you think that's a unique challenge for them i think it could be yeah i i think i think when you talk about autism alone with depression that to me it makes quite a lot of sense i can kind of see the pattern i mean we talked about it earlier you know the feeling of othering the feeling of being misunderstood a lot that sensory overwhelm constantly getting you down that makes sense when you put adhd into the pot it all becomes a little bit more complicated i think because in some ways the adhd can almost hide or cancel out the autism and vice versa i think that's why so many people are late diagnosed with both because they've because autism and adhd have kind of worked together to almost smooth off the rough edges a little bit it's been less noticeable you know your adhd kind of neuters the autism a bit the autism neuters the abhd a little bit too so you get through life without realizing and then you're diagnosed in your 30s or your 40s you know when things start to fall apart a little bit maybe um and for that reason perhaps depression might i don't know might be less forthcoming i'm not sure about i mean it certainly didn't work for me because i i get depressed an awful lot i i think when it's when when there's both interacting i think that feeling that I alluded to earlier of never being able to please all of your brain probably feeds into it like a feeling like part of you is always compromising in a way that it really doesn't want to either your autisticness or ADHDness is having to kind of bend over and be like okay fine you know and I I think I think that that that can be very hard on a daily basis because you're always going to feel some part of your soul kind of is always going to feel unhappy if that makes sense it's a difficult it's a difficult thing to think about i i think that the um the adhd side as well interacting with the autistic side is constantly um maybe feeling a bit smothered as well by like in my case my adhd impulsivities which i think could actually often be quite a good thing like it proved today for example driving here rather than or you know like just the impulse to get get up and do some drawing or get up and do something a bit different you know i'm not going to do my routine today you know i'm going to change things i'm going to go and eat in a restaurant i'm going to go to the pub i'm going to do something a bit different is so often crushed by my need for order and predictability so i don't end up doing things that could actually probably do me a lot good you know like a walk out or a trip somewhere new or or just a quiet pint in a nice country pub which i could easily do but i don't find myself doing it because the the other part of my brain has said no no no no no no no we're not doing that you don't normally do that so you're not doing that today and i think that that makes it hard to escape bad patterns that you might get yourself into you know because one thing about depression is you don't have to be quite active to escape it.

24:57It's almost like a planet's gravity. You've got to reach escape velocity to get out of its grasp. And to do that, you have to maybe go for a walk or do some mindfulness or do things very actively. You've got to decide to do things and follow them through. And maybe my autistic desire to stick with the same stuff can make that very, very difficult. I feel like it goes without saying, I think communication is so important to tackle depression. And I guess Ned Hallowell said with all of these things that many of the topics on this podcast is never worry alone, open up, share the load. I mean, it's a common ground in terms of advice.

25:38But I feel like with someone with ADHD, you can impulsively in moments perhaps open up to someone. But then you can go away from that social encounter and almost overthink it. I don't know if that's the autistic flaring up and then making you anxious. Could that create sort of a toxic avoidance loop of not wanting to open up because you're so fearful of the overthinking that follows? I think so. Yeah, I think so. Very much so, actually. You know, rumination, as we call it, is such a key facet of being autistic. But the interesting thing about that overthinking is often described as just being a kind of inherent ingredient of autism.

26:19You know, it just is. a bit like routine when actually it's not there's a reason for it you know there's a very clear reason why we ruminate and that's because of the fact that autistic communication is genuinely different to non-autistic you know there's a very different communicative culture that comes along with being an autistic person you know we are and i'm generalizing here so anyone listening to this are watching this to whom this doesn't apply remember the spectrum is broad we're all very different but generally speaking autistic people are often you know very blunt you know very to the point often to the point of being described as rude we might not make eye contact we might prefer to speak in longer utterances you know that's a big thing we might like to focus our attention on transaction or like getting things done you know we like to talk to achieve things rather than any other purpose.

27:14These are all things that I think can be, you know, described as a different culture. This means that there are cultural clashes, though, where our type of communication clashes with the majority non-autistic type. And who comes out worse from that? Well, it's the minority. It's us. You know, we were historically described as being poor communicators because we didn't communicate in that very particular way. We do it our own way. and I think that that feeds that rumination because you feel like you're having to you know imagine going to France imagine that you spend a holiday in France and you don't only want to learn the language but you want to act fully French you want to absorb every cultural quirk and difference and you know variation that French communication has as opposed to English so differences in body language differences in frequency of swearing differences in gesture differences in facial expression you want to try and do all of that imagine how stressed you'd be constantly you know if you really want to like a like a spy you really wanted to fit in you know there's that wonderful moment in inglorious bastards yeah the film where um the english spy is in the beer keller yeah he does and he asks for he asks for three yeah yeah that's what he looks at him and knows immediately because that is the correct thing to be to be autistic is a bit like that we want to naturally do that and we're constantly judged because we don't do that and so we're having to monitor our behavior all the time to try and fit in with what's acceptable this is what leads to rumination because you're looking back afterwards thinking god did i do their thing i can't have done my things i'm not allowed to do that i'm not allowed to communicate in my own way i have to do it their way and did i succeed i don't know and you're waiting for the feedback you're waiting for the why did you do that why did you say that why why on earth did you ask them that question you know from loved ones or friends or whoever who who give you that you know i call it the um the debrief after a social event where you get all this you know criticism about all the stuff you did wrong no wonder we ruminate of course we ruminate who wouldn't you know like it's perfectly natural if you are exposed to that to be constantly anxious and that then feeds into the rumination into the depression into the anxiety um and adhd i think can open that up a little bit it can perhaps help with that a tad because it can you know for me for example i can sometimes just decide i'm not going to even think about that i'm not going to ruminate anymore i'm going to do something else you know my brain just shoots off in a different direction but equally sometimes it can make it even worse because your impulsivity in the moment makes you say and do things that are definitely going to be picked up on and you're going to get criticized for so it's just this kind of tumult this this chaos of of communication that i think all the hd people honestly need a medal for getting through any kind of conversation with a judgmental neurotypical person without also sensing a little change in tone of voice and being triggered by rsd which i want to talk about later on yeah um with adhd i always feel like because what you said earlier people we have had to mask all our lives in order to fit in we're very good at problem solving same applies with autism do you think there's a risk that the problem solving ability of people with or dhd could make them vulnerable when they're depressed because the autistic side of their brain might see the solution to the problem of depression and the impulsivity that comes with adhd might make them act on it in that moment yeah i think that that is, I think it's actually an increasingly well understood mechanic that does happen, yeah, which is incredibly dangerous for obvious reasons.

31:27You know, I've often heard it said, and I'm trying to think of some examples, there are studies on this, I think,

31:36University of Nottingham, Dr. Sarah Cassidy, I think, I'm not very good with names off the top my head has done some great work into autism and uh and suicidality and and yeah the the kind of yeah the problem solving of autism too as well as adhd you know looking for what looks like the most logical the most sensible solution can obviously lead you down that very dark avenue and then if you throw in the impulsivity of an adhd person who might just think actually you know what yep let's do it i mean it's a dangerous cocktail um and i don't think it's well understood by healthcare um in fact i know it's not well understood by healthcare having worked with the nhs now for a number of years um you know doctors nurses clinicians do not understand this mechanic they do not get it uh they don't realize how fragile or how how um how primed that tinder box is you know to just going up in smoke and they they go through the usual motions you know just the usual kind of you know following the pattern of treatment you know the flow chart or whatever without realizing that actually in this case this person is in tremendous danger um hence you know what we talked about at the beginning about my mission i just want people to know this stuff you know because then if you go to a you know emergency care as an aldhd individual you'll be actually understood because often what what happens if you are really in in trouble you know if you're really ill you know mentally with mental health uh depression etc and as an autistic person in particular you go to the health system the likelihood is that you will end up being institutionalized and this rubbish with statistics but i think it's something like the average length of stay for an autistic person in inpatient care is something like a hundred times longer than a non-autistic person i think it racks up into the years on average because once an autistic person is in institutionalized care they are no longer they no longer have autonomy so they can't manage their sensory experience they can't manage their special interests or their monotropism you You know, they can't, and, you know, they might have their phone taken away.

34:00They might not have a tablet to play around with. You know, they might have nothing to calm themselves down. They might be told off for stimming. They might be forced to eat food they don't like, you know, forced into wards that are too bright, too hot, too cold, too noisy. And it just spirals. You know, you end up worse than you were when you went in. And the whole time, the medical establishment is throwing its hands in the air, saying, we don't know what to do with these people. And it's like, come on. it's not rocket science um you know they just need a bit of autonomy they need some calm they need a place to hide they need a way to engage in their interest give them a blooming phone for goodness sake you know or switch or something you know give them something to do um so so yeah you know the the situation when you are mentally ill as an all dhd person can be really dangerous really fraught and yeah there's not enough general understanding of that at this time a quick word from our sponsors to address a big adhd issue the notebook fallacy we all convince ourselves that buying that one magic notebook will solve all of our problems but it never does nor does the second one or the third or the tenth well teemo app is more useful than having all the notebooks in the world and what use are notebooks if you keep losing your pen anyway teemo app has hugely helped me organize my chaotic life by offering the most user-friendly interface an organizational app has to offer.

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36:04No more decision paralysis. The new AI planning assistant makes it so quick and easy to insert information. You can do it before you've forgotten or been distracted. Give it a go and use the link in my bio for 30 % off. Just a note though, this code is only applicable on the web browser, not on the smartphone. Then when Timo solves all of your problems, go ahead and use your notebooks for something useful, like propping up a wobbly table leg or mopping up a spilt coffee. Back to the episode. Do you think people with all DHD navigate the landscape of jealousy and relationship endings and breakups differently?

36:42if you are obsessed with someone if someone is your special interest and the thought of that coming to an end plus somebody else spending time with your ex can that be magnified in the mind of someone with audi hd and potentially put that person in a very vulnerable position i think so i think so absolutely yeah yeah i mean in my life i've experienced that a number of times on both sides you know as both the person who's been left and also the person that has left and and yeah the the the the pathways that your brain can go down in those times can be really scary it's interesting what you said about you know a person becoming a special interest because that is a very distinct thing i think you know i mean it's one thing having your special interest be like you know sonnet the hedgehog or thomas the tank engine or quarries or knitting or whatever you know that's one thing that's that's that's fine but if your special interest is very much a person and then that person is gone you're you've lost not only have you lost a relationship which in itself obviously is harrowing and painful and nearly every human being watching this will know that very well but you've lost a regulation thing you've lost a means of self-care because that's what special interests are they help us stay grounded they help us stay calm and they help us stay relatively happy, for one for a better word.

38:09So if that's tied in with a person and then that's gone, then you've lost two massive things. And I think that that can be truly devastating, absolutely devastating. And again, people won't understand why. You know, you'll get the usual, oh, plenty more fish in the sea or whatever people say. and that won't cut it because you've lost too much. You've lost more than you ever thought you were likely to. And yeah, and that puts an awful lot of pressure on you and it puts, you know, a lot of pressure on the other person too, you know, because they're finding themselves in a situation where you can feel very, you know, you're going to feel very guilty, aren't you, if you know that this is happening but you have to go.

38:59You know, the guilt is going to be all-consuming. So yeah, it's not a topic that I tend to talk about because my lifetime of experience in that particular field is not great. You know, it's always been a real challenge for me. But yeah, you know, it is a very interesting double whammy, I think, when it happens, for sure. You think post-breakup, the idea, the hyper-focus and the way to, maybe the autistic ability to repeat a thought like the thought of somebody else spending time with your ex can that be significantly more challenging for someone who is or dhd than perhaps just a neurotypical person yeah i think so you know if you've got the adhd kind of you know repeated you know thoughts kind of repeatedly going you know not being able to quiet it down not being able to get rid of it and move on to something different that's going to obviously be very difficult because a whole part of moving on from a breakup and a whole part of moving on from any kind of grief you know like losing a family member for example or a friend um is that lessened frequency of thinking about them that's what happens isn't it it's what's meant to happen you're meant to gradually think about them less and less not to the point of nothing but you know the idea is that you're meant to start to you know focus on other things they say you don't you know that that day when you don't realize you haven't thought about them once is the day that you're maybe recovered from your grief or from your breakup experience or from losing a grandparent or whatever.

40:34I have a suspicion, though, that when you're all ADHD, or even just ADHD alone, that moment may never come. Or at least it'll be massively elongated because those thoughts are just churning constantly. Your brain is so busy. And that thing, that person will constantly come to the forefront. for much longer than it maybe would for a neurotypical person so you know whereas one person might be over over it or you know past their grief after a year or two you might be five years later and still it's there unbidden thoughts you know they're coming into your head you're remembering them and yeah i think that's that's a very real thing and again it's it's not something you see talked about much i don't certainly not in the kind of spheres that i exist in you know we all tend to try to avoid the topic um but i think that it is very much a uh i've talked about grief before in this this idea i i i think that autistic people for example grieve differently in my own experience i think that our initial grief might be less because so many autistic people i know have been kind of criticized for not being upset enough if that makes sense but I think the grief lasts longer yeah so I've spoken to so many people with autism and they've purported described being told that they don't have a heart sometimes yes that we don't have any emotions it's like no actually I am hurting but it's not like all consuming but it's there like you know like radioactive it's just there underlying everything and it lasts and it lasts you know I mean I like to talk about you know the loss of my granddad you know a person who was very important to me.

42:18He died when I was 17. And quite honestly, I feel exactly the same now as I did in 2000, 25 years ago. I feel the same level of grief. Sure, I'm not like, you know, clawing at the curtains and, you know, wearing black every day. But it's the same level of, you know, still there in my head. I'm still thinking about him pretty much every day. Still pops in there, you know. Still feel very sad about it. It's never changed. It's been this kind of constant for the whole time. I suppose you can have days where you're absolutely fine and you're maybe not thinking about them to a level that's almost derailing you, but something can snap you back into it, like a memory, a smell, a song, a sound, and your mood changes to such a drastic extent that people around you even label you as like Dr.

43:09Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or even suggest, have you got BPD perhaps? Oh, yeah. I mean, very common misdiagnosis, isn't it, BPD, especially for autistic women. I think that's true. I mean, when you factor in the sensory sensitivity that autistic people have, for example, you know, to smells, sounds, tastes, whatever, then, yeah, that's going to be a huge factor. You know, it'll take a smell to set me off. You know, like smells that remind me of my granddad's home, you know, or the cigars he used to smoke, which, to be fair, you don't smell that often these days. but you know they take you straight back and same with songs from a particular era you know they're all very evocative and i think for autistic people in particular with our sensory sense and with how important our senses are to us because i think we get a bit over over fixated you know on focusing on the negatives of sensory sensitivity yeah sure it is difficult you know being too hot being too bright being too noisy but there's a huge positive aspect to it you know if you are truly that sensitive to stuff well that can be good you know like being sensitive to music being sensitive to nice smells being sensitive to um colors and brightness in a way that's pleasing can be enormously powerful um and it's maybe a reason why so many autistic people are creative you know and very creatively minded you know because we're so tuned in with our sensory world you know so So yeah, I think there's a lot to be said about Audie HD and loss and grief and relationships generally.

44:46Absolutely. Pete, has RSD been a big feature in your life? It has, yeah. Yeah, rejection sensitivity. It's one of the most defining features of my life, I would say, because I really, really struggle with it. It's really difficult for me. Any kind of... critique, criticism, rejection itself, of course, real or perceived. My brain will go completely wild with it. At work, that was a big thing for me. In interpersonal relationships, it's a huge problem. As an author, it's a nightmare. I can't even look at my reviews anymore because it doesn't matter how many good ones you get. That has no impact whatsoever.

45:41You could have, I mean, I don't have this, but some presumably do. You can have like 1 ,000 five-star reviews and one one-star. Yes, that's the one you think about when you're lying in bed. Exactly. I mean, it's a cliche, but it's real. It really does haunt you. And for me, the ADHD aspect of RSD is not being able to stop thinking about it. like you know i wish that i could check amazon click on the reviews see there was a one star feel a bit glum about it be like oh god's sake and then move on with my day but i can't it would haunt me for what based on experience probably about a week or two and you create stories in your head to reaffirm the thing that's triggered your rsd you do that paragraph i wrote in chapter three it was terrible yeah it must have been that or it must have been that or you know god god yeah it must have been something i've done or and and yeah you do and sometimes and i remember writing about this in my second book uh untypical i sometimes your fears your paranoia about criticism are proven right and that for me is the real killer because what that does is it tells that little voice uh-huh you were right and that gives it confidence yes yeah um and as a teacher in particular i had several experiences of that where i was genuinely really nervous because i felt like something was wrong and i felt like somebody you know that people weren't happy or that you know criticism was coming and everyone's fine you know you're fine and then one day bang it had been all along you know and and that that that haunts you because you just you think oh you can never relax you never know when it's going to come and i think one reason that adhd and autistic people have rsd i'm a big proponent of the trauma theory of rsd because many people's response rsd response is very much a trauma response fight flight freeze form you know it's one of those and i think because when you're neurodivergent you are liable to be criticized throughout your life and not only that but not only the frequency of it which is very frequent but also the unexpectedness of it you know as an autistic person for example you will just be bumbling through your day and like i mentioned earlier you know you'll say something or you'll ask a question and you'll get you know attacked how dare you you know how dare you ask that or why can't you look me in the eye when you talk to me you know these criticisms come out of nowhere you're trying to be your best self you know as a kid you're trying to be really well behaved but people will still be really upset with you for some reason and i think over time you become hyper vigilant you know like where's the next criticism gonna come from you know i don't know it's like being in a war zone when there's a sniper someone you know and any minute it could happen and you just don't know when it's going to happen so you naturally become really paranoid really anxious very stressed because you know it's coming but you don't know where it's going to come from who it's going to come from or how severe it's going to be and and for me that's been yeah a major major part i mean it's it's it's impacted jobs it's impacted relationships it's ended relationships it's it's been a real problem for me and i've never found a way to mitigate it i've done therapy you know medication you know lots of things like that and nothing yet has managed to even touch the sides yeah that's incredibly relatable i think rsd is one of those things i've been down every google rabbit hole how to manage how to cure how to fix rsd because it's debilitating but i'm 36 and it's it's as raw today as it has been my entire life uh i think it was yesterday i got invited to a a social gathering and if you like was at the end of the the text in response to can i come yes you can come if you like and i zoomed in on those three words if you like and to me that sounded like I'm a burden to them they're just saying come because they don't want to upset me and you know it instantly triggered me instantly felt that tightening in my chest it's three little words if you like it's probably just social lubrication from their point of view but for me they probably never gave it a second thought I thought they hated me yeah absolutely same with full stops I don't know about whether you've noticed this but like texting messaging punctuation usage for me like triggers me massively like if people like this is a really weird one i don't know whether anyone will relate to this but if somebody asks me a question without a question mark at the end for some reason i associate that with them being angry with me i do not know why i don't know whether that's from experience that part of my brain is over time collated evidence for this i haven't got conscious access to but i have noticed it and therefore it's a thing there I don't know I've got no idea my mind would read that as to say I'm not important enough in their mind to finish the sentence properly that could be the source of it they wrote that in such a rush because I'm so meaningless to them that they didn't put the question mark at the end but the thing with RSD is I'm feeling it now that anyone listening to this now who hasn't experienced it will just be sitting there thinking oh for goodness sake grow up stop being so sensitive yeah grow up there or whatever horrible thing people say and it's like no no no you've got no idea yeah it's really bad we don't want this you know this isn't us wallowing in it i mean i would turn it off in an instant if i could it's awful but it's always there and and like i say when eventually you know you get evidence that actually you were right your paranoid thoughts were right that just makes it even worse and um and yeah yeah social gatherings social expectations the feeling of being a burden you mentioned that a moment ago god that's a big one that i think a lot of autistic people will probably relate to i mean it's i think in it's even in some nhs um documentation did you know um not in a good way not in like oh you know the patient may feel a burden it's actually written i remember saying this a few years ago actually written in some paperwork about how autistic people are a burden right you know that they're but their being a burden will impact their family, etc, etc.

52:31Awful, horrible stuff. And I think we feel that very deeply. We feel broken. We feel like we're, I mean, I have a genuine fear, and I'm going a little bit, you know, kind of, I'm doing my whole too much information thing now, but I have a genuine feeling, and I think a lot of autistic ADHD people do, that I don't bring anything good to anyone's life. That all I ever bring is more stress. you know to friends and family that you know it doesn't matter how nice i try to be or how helpful i try to be that ultimately the net you know the kind of the net gain is purely negative but you know i bring people down i make people stressed i make people tired you know people get fed up with me you know and i'm not saying that to be kind of self-pitying a little bit but mostly because I think that I'm probably not alone in that.

53:23I think that many neurodivergent people will feel that we are just bothersome. And I suppose if you have that thought process, your mind will have a bias to turn a neutral comment into a negative. Into that, yes. You're always going to be looking for evidence for it. Yeah, so if you invite someone over and you say, do you want to come over? You text them and they reply with, sure. just sure no no emojis no kisses just sure like it's four letters for me that it's reinforcing that in a monologue that you just described perfectly that oh they're just coming over because i've asked them and they don't want to yeah they feel obligated they feel like they have to and i'm a burden to them um it's the it's the unpredictability of it like a simple sure can turn a good mood into the polar opposite and how that must look from other people around us as a community you can see why people say oh you've got drastic mood swings you're dr jekyll and mr hyde you were fine five minutes ago but also i but also on a personal level i resent it as well because for me it's so difficult to get in a good mood you know with a lifetime of anxiety and depression and all that kind of stuff you know hanging over me and you know sensory overwhelm and just being very tired and very stressed all the time you know being in a good mood for me is precious like my god you know when i find myself in that frame of mind oh i've got to I've got to keep this for as long as I can.

54:50And then something like that happens. And it's like, Oh God, you know, Oh, I was feeling okay. And now it's back again, you know? And that, that for me is it's, it's heartbreaking, but it also ends up breeding a totally unreasonable resentment against whoever or whatever the source of that was, which is so unhealthy and unhelpful because they didn't mean anything by it. They, they probably didn't even mean anything negative, but you've read something negative into it. it's trashed your mood and part of you is like i swear to rsd must be the cause of so many breakups because of that absolutely resentment which is really not even based off anything real but your partner is only going to have patience and empathy towards that for so long it can only go so far yeah yeah and then it then when that breaks that i think that then propagates the totally you know it's like a jenga tower you know you take that that tolerance and patience goes and then the whole structure tumbles and um yeah i i've you know personally seen a lot i've seen it in friends and family you know you see it a lot in the autistic community i think and it's it's heartbreaking because again like everything else it's not talked about so people don't know what they are dealing with you know they don't know that this is a thing even if you went out into the street and asked some random people down the road here what's rsd most of them would look at you blankly but they might find themselves in a relationship with a neurodivergent person who's got severe rsd and you know it could end up being quite difficult for both of them but if they at least knew about it maybe things might be a bit easier i don't know you know at least at least then you're playing with the full deck you know you know you know what you're getting yourself into which might help we're two men having an open conversation about rsd here today emotions heartbreak it feels quite unusual doesn't it it does i mean it really does but it is it's it's sad that it feels unusual because i feel like it's not something that i still am comfortable talking about i think many many men aren't also comfortable talking about what why do you think it's a big question but why do you think men aren't as comfortable to talk about emotions I mean toxic masculinity affects us all doesn't it whatever that means this idea of an idealized man whatever that would look like I think throughout many cultures over history has totally ignored the mental health side of things you know if you look at you know as a literature student you know you look you look back over stories over the years and you know the emotional well-being of male characters and heroes isn't usually at the top of the tree you know i mean just to be really crass about it no one cares all that much about how indiana jones is feeling right now you know maybe that there's that scene in raiders of the lost ark where he's been beaten up and karen allen is kind of gingerly patching him up on the ship you know it's very it's a lovely quite funny scene uh you know the physical pain is fine we can deal with that he's been beaten up his bruised you know daredevil covered in bruises bits of glass john mcclain with glass in his feet we can deal with that and we can empathize with that and that that story is okay the story of physical harm and recuperation is something we can all get behind we can all we're happy with that but the mental equivalent a male character or a male protagonist or whatever having emotional depth and feeling we're not okay with that i don't think as a society we don't value it we don't care about it all that much you know we're not all that in tuned with it um it is not something that i think we tend to foreground i think we tend to prefer to put it away we we don't as as men i don't think we want to admit to it because we don't want to admit weakness because the whole idea of masculinity is all forged around this concept of strength, strength and power and all this kind of nonsense.

59:08And I think that anything that goes against that will suggest that you might have a weakness or a frailty, a flaw even, is something that we are... I mean, I often wonder how much of it is really prehistoric, why we have a prehistoric um terror of being vulnerable because presumably at some point in our evolutionary history that was very dangerous you know like it would lead to death kind of thing um i don't know i mean i'm spitballing very much here but but it is a real problem i think that we still even in 2025 associate mental feet you know mental health and feelings and emotional states and sadness and grief and woe and all that stuff with some kind of perceived weakness.

59:58It's very impactful in the workplace, especially, I think. You know, the cutthroat nature of workplaces, even those workplaces that like to pretend that they're not cutthroat. You know, you've got like the city, which is openly, you know, competitive and cutthroat. But, God, you see it in schools. You see it in hospitals. They're all the same. They're all deeply competitive places where you've got to be on the ball all the time. And any kind of, you know, you take a few days off sick and, sorry, mate, you're out. You know, that's not going to fly here. That's the general gist of society. You know, you're not allowed these moments of vulnerability and frailty.

1:00:34You know, you're off on the scrap heap immediately. You put out to pasture, I think, either, you know, metaphorically or literally. So we all just hide it. We don't want to let that out. We don't want to talk about that. i'm in a position you presumably too where the nature of my work is paradoxically one where i'm allowed to open up you know i'm kind of almost expected to and but even then i feel really nervous about doing you know really kind of anxious about oh god you know who's gonna what people gonna think like um and and yeah i think that the societal traditions and societal expectations and things that have been that have crusted up over hundreds of years are are the main cause of this you know and we need to break through it we need to clean it off a little bit do you think men feel like there is this unspoken currency that defines their worth and that being respect you said strength but also respect and do you think they fear that if they are vulnerable and show their emotional side, they might lose that respect with women?