Late Diagnosis Of Autism With Purple Ella

[Music] good day my lovely listeners you are listening to the fortiorty podcast tune in every week to explore inspiring stories and insightful information that dive headfirst into the world of autism and mental health with all those tantalizing tongue twisters out of the way let's get into the show [Music] good day my wonderful people and welcome back again to the fortiot podcast with your hosts today mr thomas henley as usual it's a it's a bit of a glum day today in in good good old uk or at least up north i i have recently come down with a bit of sickness um i think there's a bug going around in my local area because it seems that my both my girlfriend and brother have both got pretty sick from it but i am all good so uh don't worry about me today we have a podcast with none other than purple ella and we're going to be talking about late diagnosis of autism what it looks like the kind of things that you can expect the things that perhaps may be holding you back from going and getting a diagnosis ella is an amazing person to talk to and um i won't talk too much so ella how are you doing today yeah i'm okay i'm a little bit tired to be honest um but feeling good about life in general i think good so it's really great to hear would you like to give everybody a little bit of a a background into the the kind of work that you do who am i um yeah so uh yeah i i am a late diagnosed autistic adult i was diagnosed in my mid-30s and i'm also the mother to two autistic children and another child who isn't autistic who i always feel like i need to mention because i'm like two autistic children but i actually have three children um and when i got my autism diagnosis i have a background as a performer i was actually a circus artist in my former life really yeah yeah so uh yeah so i used to do acrobatics and juggling and you know street performing stage performing i guess i just like performing i always have done so when i got my diagnosis i i guess i started making youtube videos as a way partly to kind of process i'm a verbal processor so partly as a way to process my experience that i was having but also partly to share my experience thinking like it might benefit other people in a similar situation because at that time it wasn't an unusual thing to be the mother of an autistic child realizing that you yourself were also autistic right um so that was seven years ago that'll be seven years ago in june and since then it's kind of become my job which is wild uh so i make content on a variety of social platforms now youtube mostly youtube and tick tock but also a little bit on instagram um and i also make content for other people so i i made a video for the nhs recently for um people who are training in supporting autistic people in crisis so crisis services in patient services they commissioned me to make a video for them to use as part of their training so that i can actually tell all those doctors and nurses in those situations what we actually need them to do which is amazing you need that yeah it's great to be able to do stuff like that where you feel like you're actually maybe even affecting systemic change you know um and i made some content recently for clinical partners uh i'm not entirely sure how they're gonna use it i think it's going to be on youtube i'll keep people posted but that was a super fun experience where i got to not do any of the you'll know as a podcast host you're the promoter you're the artist you're the scripter you're the editor in this case i was able to just turn up and say things and someone else is doing all the rest of the work that's the dream living the dream yeah so i also do consultancy public speaking basically i've got my fingers in a lot of pots but i suppose i'm specifically interested in mental health and autism uh gender experience and autism because my eldest autistic child is trans and i am non-binary and i'd also really like to get my finger into the pot of the justice system at some point because i feel like there's a lot of adhd's sitting in the justice system and i'd like to understand why and what i can do to help there so i'm just i'm just doing everything that i can really to support autistic people um as part of my own journey learning about my own you know neurodivergence well from from what you from what you're telling me it sounds like we're quite similar in our in our focuses because mental health and autism tends to be like the the top thing for me to kind of tackle it so it's a really big issue isn't it in the in the in the autistic community one thing i wanted to to ask you about because um on instagram your name is purple ella and coco and before before we got here to chat i had a look at your youtube channel and your video about autism assistance dogs would you like to tell everybody a little bit about what it is like to have a coco in your life yeah i mean i can talk about dogs all day long so happy to dive into that one yeah so i've had coco since she was a puppy and um have owner trained her as my assistant's dog with the support of an organization that supports with things like um trainers and insurance and stuff to help you do that with in a kind of supported way did that make any sense um yeah so i would say working with coco is has been life-changing for me in that i'm now able to like attend hospital appointments and go shopping and stuff on my own where previously i would have had to have made my husband take the day off work and come and do it with me um but it but it isn't without its challenges so i always like to say that like on the one hand i've got this amazing support and relationship with this animal that i absolutely adore and who is the most uncomplicated relationship that i have in the i'm never worrying you know you're autistic i'm never worrying does she like me did i say the wrong thing what does that facial expression mean you know she's just like solidly consistently the way she is and she doesn't answer back and she never disagrees with me which i loved yeah yeah exactly but on the other hand especially if your own a training and assistance dog and especially if you're quite a black and white thinker they're not perfect not even guide dogs for the blind are perfectly behaved all the time and i think i kind of thought they were before i became an assistant's dog handler i kind of thought an assistance dog was just almost like a robot that never had a bad day right but they do they have bad days and sometimes the training doesn't work and that can be really frustrating and no matter how i'm feeling i've got to walk her and i've got to care for her you know which can be a good thing because it kind of keeps you motivated but can also be a bit of a challenge um but for me i i absolutely love working with coco and i'm also the ambassador one of the ambassadors for dogs for autism who are a charity in the uk who provide fully trained assistant dogs to autistic people of all ages which is awesome because actually all the other charities are doing brilliant work but no one's working with autistic adults apart from these guys in the uk yeah i i kind of i kind of really care about this yeah i think the the looking after and the walking and the the feeding is um because i i've you know thought about getting an assistance dog because throughout my life i've had i mean my my big brother was a dog lovely lovely mom girl from the from the kennel called bob called him bobby dog great dog name and um he uh i think he i think he lived up until he was about 14 or 15 and um he was he was definitely like a massive emotional sport for me i think the the issue the issue for me comes in that i still haven't sorted out all the executive functioning issues that i have and you know even getting myself to eat and getting myself out to a walk would be difficult one one thing that i that i sort of picked up when you you were talking about um autism assistance dogs is that you've had a lot of difficulties with accessing venues places that you know should should be accessible and i think you said in the video that there's you know denying someone who has an assistance dog into into a venue is you know against the law it's it's a reasonable adjustment have you had have you had many experiences like that or is it more of an isolated yeah no unfortunately it does happen regularly and i kind of thought it was maybe happening regularly to me because i work with a dog that doesn't look like most assistants dogs you see kind of black labs or golden retrievers right whereas coco is a small fluffy dog so i thought maybe it's that maybe people aren't used to seeing that but i've been following um youtuber molly burke who is um blind and she works with a guide dog and she has access problems and i'm like if someone with the most well-known most obviously working dog is having problems with access we all are right yeah um so what i've started to do is i have i found it really stressful for the first year or so of working with coco having to explain every time actually we are covered by the equality law actually you do have to let us in and you know dealing with that was like almost more anxiety provoking than not having the dog in some instances yeah i think there was one particular memorable instance when i wasn't allowed to do a covered pcr test with her they just wouldn't let me in and only would they not let me in but they were quite aggressive in their manner with me so that was quite stressful so after that particular incidents with a big kind of beefy bouncy guy yeah yeah it was a lot it was a lot after that i realized that what i could do was and this is kind of anyone that's got a dog assistance dog you can do this is i got from etsy a card that has a qr code that i can literally just go just scan this and it takes them to a place where all the law around assistance dogs is explained and since i've been using that it's gotten a lot easier because i'm just like here's my card just do and half the time they don't even scan it they're just like all right okay then but it saves i think as an autistic person anything that saves the need to do more communication than i have to is a helpful thing yeah especially with bouncers i um i have a particular aversion to any security or security staff or bouncers because i'm very heavily pda and i find it really difficult there's been sometimes that sometimes when i've gone to like the pub with my friends or or something and if and it's uh i i always find i always find myself getting very on age and very annoyed whenever around the security stuff yeah well i'm not going to say that i walked away shouting words that i wouldn't use in this podcast of the sky in the end that might have been what happened oh they're just so i could go i could go on about it forever but yeah he basically treated me like i was a precious karen and i think that's i think as a as a white female presenting middle-aged person the karen kind of meme or however you would describe it has not been helpful for me because for example like a couple of days ago i was having to say to someone why don't you have a blue badge parking space a disabled parking space i needed one you don't have one you've got a 20 10 20 car cart you've got a 20 car 20 car car park you should have it and the way they treated me was like i was being the karen and i wasn't saying mate my coffee isn't the right temperature i was saying i have an access need that you're not meeting but i feel like i get that vibe a lot and this security guard was definitely giving me that i just think you're a precious you know karen type i can't i can't i can imagine that you you have to you have to deal with those circumstances where people don't let you in because of because of coco a lot so i imagine that it's quite like oh here we go again like honestly i think the biggest problem is not so much that because at least in that situation i know that the laura's on my side i've talked about it enough now to know that the law is on my side and i can handle it the biggest problem is people who want to pet her yes i get so every single time i leave the house with my assistant's dog 50 of the people we come across will want to pet her or interact with her and that's really difficult because i've spent a long time training her to ignore people when we're working so if they're trying to do that that's a really mixed message for her and so then i'm having to say to people sometimes like really cute elderly people or people with children you know so you feel awful like actually can you just ignore her and i don't know how to say it in a way and because i'm autistic i don't know how i'm i'm struggling to say in a way that doesn't sound mean and i find that that's probably the biggest problem more than the kind of access thing so if anyone listening to this podcast takes anything away from what i'm saying it's if you see a service dog or an assistant dog working don't even look at them just ignore them i suppose there's a lot of unexpected and unwanted social interaction when you're just kind of wanting to go out for any day but dog dogs are definitely a magnet to a lot of people yeah i mean it can be good i don't want to leave on an entirely negative it can be a positive it can mean that i have a nice little social interaction with someone with a very scripted easy you know topic but in general if you see me about with my dog if you could just ignore us that'd be brilliant brilliant i'm thinking now might be a good time to to get into the meat of the podcast to talk about a late diagnosis sure as a person who is diagnosed at the age of 10 i don't have a lot of experience with i can sort of imagine what what it what it may be like because when i got diagnosed i didn't have access to all the resources that i have today like the the knowledge and the experiential um knowledge from other people and so it was only until in my 20s that i really started to kind of process what autism was and how it made me different and you know all of that kind of stuff so i want to know is what was your life experience like up until the point you realized that you were autistic and what changed yeah okay that is a big it is a big question yeah and i don't want to be entirely negative because obviously you know life is a series of emotions and ups and downs and there were good bits you know but it did i'd say i don't i don't really remember my childhood a huge amount which apparently is quite common in autistic people or so my therapist tells me um but i would say from my teenage years i definitely had a real strong feeling that i wasn't good enough that whatever i was doing wasn't working and that my main aim was to try and be more like the people who were winning at life right so i spent kind of my teens and my twenties trying to be somebody else or trying to build an acceptable personality that would stop people from like taking an instant disliking to me you know i would often feel that not everybody of course i had friends and you know i met i married my husband during that time but um i just they would there would just too regularly be times when people would just like bit like within five minutes be like oh my god this person is so annoying or so whatever and i just felt like i was getting it wrong and that was really depressing and so at the same time i guess i started experiencing mental health problems in my late teens early 20s you know depression anxiety um it just felt like life was a struggle and my main aim in life was to figure out what on earth was wrong with me so that i could be better and happier um and during that time i also had three children and so i went through pregnancy and childbirth and postnatal um postnatal experience without the knowledge that i'm autistic and that was really really hard because now that i look back on that and i think you know of the struggles that i had because when you have a baby your whole routine is just like gone there is no routine there is nothing in your life that looks the same as it did yesterday when you were still pregnant you know um and going through that not knowing i was autistic and so just experiencing the way that as i'm sure you can imagine you would freak out if that happened to you without the knowledge of why this was happening to my brain why i was kind of having that these experiences was really really hard um and the other thing that i'd say was really hard was i i'm a meltdowner you don't need many adult meltdowners so it's a little bit i'm i'm happy to put my hand up i'm i am an adult meltdowner as well amazing most people are like oh yeah i don't really melt down i shut down and i'm like no you'll know about it when i go so but like having meltdowns but having no idea there were meltdowns makes you feel like maybe you're just a bad person who loses their you know loses their i'm trying to find words that aren't swear words and loses their sense of like rationality on a regular basis and so i would be looking at other people and being like why can't i keep it together like everyone else i would be taking my children to birthday parties getting lost on the way there and then ending up having meltdowns because i couldn't find out where i was going and we were going to be late and and not knowing why you know i imagine that then it could could sort of produce a lot of thoughts in your brain like i'm am i crazy like is this a seizure that i'm having or like yeah or am i just like a really bad person or you know yeah i just didn't know why and i also would end up getting so like i ended up not being able to access mental health services because i had a meltdown and they decided that that was like unacceptable behavior so they wouldn't work with me anymore really you know like stuff like that happens really that happens yeah that happens it really really does yeah this is why i'm so keen to work in mental health services these days um so yeah that was really hard um and then um getting that diagnosis you know after my eldest child was diagnosed i thought when i when i realized i was autistic but before i'd been assessed and been diagnosed it was a bit of a relief and like i think often late diagnosed autistics when you first have that realization it becomes this like obsession like all i could think about talk about was autism and whether i might be autistic and it was like almost like a new fun special interest um and then i got the actual diagnosis and i thought i was going to be thrilled and actually i wasn't i felt i think i felt i think part of me before i got the diagnosis thought i'd made the whole thing up in my head and i was going to see a doctor and they were going to be like well go away they were like this is really an easy diagnosis i was like oh my goodness and not only am i autistic but apparently i'm quite obviously autistic um so yeah there was like this like well this isn't fair i'm 36 like all these things i've failed at university i've failed at this i've got no career all these things that i could have had and could have done has been taken away from me because i wasn't born 20 years later when somebody would have noticed i was autistic at you know your age or at 10 or whatever so i went through a bit of a period of both grief and disbelief like grief of what i've said and disbelief of like um maybe they were wrong maybe i'm just really good at conv i'm quite convincing maybe just convince them that i'm autistic somehow by being really like convincing um or like i think it's weird isn't it when you get a diagnosis that isn't based on like a blood test or whatever and it's like someone's opinion based on things that they've seen exactly it's it's it's a really weird thing autism and and how it's because it's it's basically it's all about behavior isn't it so it's like you know it it really stands out to me um as as a misconception that people have about like oh i'm a little bit autistic because i have um some some behaviors that are related to an autism diagnosis and you know quite often it's you know these this diagnostic procedure is is meant to only pick up on signs that you may be autistic um not not give you autism like when you get diagnosed um it's really complex like idea to kind of wrap your head around i think yeah it really is so like wrapping my head around that and also believing that i would say took like a good three or four years it was quite a process and during this time i'm like speaking at nas conferences and putting that stuff on the internet um so yeah but it it has in the long term it's been the start of a process which is which has enabled me to feel better about who i am it's enabled me to obviously develop a career that i'm proud of um i think it's enabled me to be a better mother to my autistic children because i have that understanding of who i am and therefore the experiences they're likely to have i guess um and i think yeah it's not an excuse for bad behavior i would never say that but i think it's kind of helped me to understand why i've made some of the mistakes that i've made and how i need my life to look and how i need what needs i have in order to bring out my strengths and be the best yeah and the and the happiest that i can be so it's it's a bunch of like there's a lot of sort of steps after you get a diagnosis like diagnosis is just confirmation that that you're autistic and like there's there's lots of different things that you have to work on this you know like i said before about so only really getting into what autism was past the sensory social issues in my 20s it definitely took me probably about i mean to be honest i still feel like i'm still learning about it and learning about myself but it did take me a long time there was a lot of barriers like mental barriers that i had to kind of overcome in order to kind of conceptualize what what autism meant to me and how it how it influenced the the different perceptions i have of other people all of that kind of stuff and processing trauma was was like a massive part you know yeah i think that's a really big one and it's one that i've become really interested in lately actually is the fact that so many autistic people are also traumatized people and what that means for us in terms of how we cope with relationships and how we feel about ourselves and so yeah trauma's been trauma's been my like the last six months trauma has been my obsession if you look at my content in the last six months probably say trauma more times than i did in the entire six years prior to that um because i'm realizing things like you know when i feel deeply rejected by someone doing something relatively minor i'm actually feeling deeply rejected by all the rejection that i've experienced in my lifetime and that that's just triggering that feeling you know i am fine with that yeah it's a really useful thing and then there's even the small stuff since since getting my diagnosis like when i before i was diagnosed i dressed how the other mums around me dress because i felt like that's what i was supposed to do and when i was diagnosed i would i like reva wore what i wanted to wear did what i wanted to do you know like stopped defining myself by trying to be someone else essentially so i stopped like doing things like going out for coffee you know because i don't want to sit in a cafe and chat to someone it was just they're usually like really noisy as well aren't they with the the coffee grinders and stuff and yeah you know i'd much rather meet someone for a board game or yes i i definitely agree with you um most coffee shops i don't go to but there's this one coffee shop um psycho under there it's cafe nero but it's like it's got like two floors to it and one is like the the base floor where most people kind of go and chat to each other and it's always the noisiest but then upstairs you have this like whole open sort of rustic appeal kind of place with loads of really comfy sofas and like a window that you can you can people watch through and oh it's um it's a lovely place for me to go to i like to to go there when i'm like writing and stuff yeah quite like a cafe on my own i think one of the big realizations for me was like so i think one of the things that i did to cope with being an undiagnosed autistic was become a performer like if nobody will like me generally at least when i'm on stage people will clap you know it sounds really pathetic when i say it like that but i guess it was that like need for acceptance right it's really really open of you to to say that because it's you know it's not an easy thing to say that you you know you find that you pick up on small small changes and you hyper focusing on on people's body language and facial expressions and differences and and then something's different in your mood and i can sense it and i need to know one way so yeah so at that time and up until kind of up until the pandemic probably i was always surrounded by people i always had lots of friends i always had lots of people over to lots of socializing i've come to realize i don't really like it that much i quite like being on my own and that's actually okay because honestly i think my story is one of what is it to mask nearly 24 7 for nearly 40 years and what impact does that have on your mental health and your well-being and i can tell you it's very negative and what i'm having to do right now is pull back from that and find spaces where i can be on my own because that's when i'm most likely to unmask because i find it really really hard to unmask um in order to heal my body and my mind as a result of all that extra adrenaline and all that extra trauma that i've been dealing with over those years well thank you for sharing them sorry that got heavy quick no no no we're all about heavy over here like oh that's good i'm you guys have your heaviness is not your girl heaviness is um it's it's it's an integral part of the podcast so don't don't worry about it so the second question that i have for you is for some people you know getting diagnosed is a massive step of of courage you know you've got all that stigma around the label and you've got this this identity that you've built up over the years and you know autism comes along and you it kind of puts that into question and it's it's quite a scary thing and it seems that to me there are some shared steps that autistic people take like we talked about with the process processing trauma so in your autism journey do you have times or situations that really stood out as being transformative for your life yeah i would say i would say so i'd say the first one was like when i first got the diagnosis and i think the biggest change at that point was the was the decision to find out who i really was so i didn't know who i was and i wasn't necessarily unmasked or or in any way healed but it was the point at which i went i'm throwing out everything that i've been doing in order to fit in out of the window and i'm gonna figure out what i want my life to look like and and that was a point at which i kind of actually got a lot of new friends around that time because because i was talking openly about autism people who would like got children that were autistic or whatever in my social world but that weren't necessarily close to me were coming to me and becoming a part of my world in a way that meant it was about my autism which was what i needed at that time i think to feel safe yeah so that was really useful and then i would say the next kind of big step i would say is was the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown i think that was really really massive for me i think before that i was looking at autism in a more like step-by-step way like so i'm autistic so that must mean that i need to wear ear defenders and i probably ought to be into comic books right i was almost like almost like not trying to mask an autistic cousin what do i do to fit in here then i think especially because at that time and i'm gonna be really honest there were a lot of content creators around and i never felt part of that world because i wasn't young and i wasn't male um and so i was like yeah trying to try to put that on how do i be sheldon is that what i'm doing now and then the pandemic happened and i like reached out to my community really as my way of coping and said you know by which i mean you know primarily my youtube subscriber base which was like quite a relatively low number i think i've got like five or six thousand subscribers at that point and i kind of went i'm gonna do a weekly live stream and i'm just gonna be here that's how many subscribers i have oh gosh i'm so sorry it's okay you're like an olympian so you never have to feel bad about yourself right like if i'd got an olympic medal i'd just be like i'd be holding it right now if i were you and like and like rubbing if you've got an actual you've got a medal right it's not an olympic medal it's a commonwealth um i mean that's still pretty amazing do you want to see it so yeah i want to see your medal there you go oh wow is it gold did you get gold i did i did get a gold wow that's amazing well done that's that's really impressive way more impressive than a bunch of youtube subscribers for sure anyway i've ever dug myself out yeah you i think you've sufficiently dug yourself out of it so yeah so i started doing these weekly live streams and i spent and at the same time i guess like everyone else was spending a lot of time on my own without having to like dress up for the world if you know what i mean and that was a really transformative time for me because i kind of was i was given a chance to sit with myself i guess in a way that you're not in the regular world because you're busy with work and children in life and i was given a chance to really really think about who i am and then i think being given this like responsibility of this community of people that came around me because of doing these live streams and they were all listening to me so i was like well you know i probably ought to be saying and doing sensible things if i'm inspiring other people um and that really gave me like partly gave me a confidence like oh gosh i'm actually useful you know something about me is useful people are appreciating me and it gave me the chance to really like come out is the word that i would use even though it's not about sexuality or gender but come out as like i don't need to perform anymore i don't need like i'm enough as i am kind of thing so that that i'd say that period of lockdown particularly the first lockdown but you know the period since then was the point at which i have become more holistic and whatever in my approach to autism less like less like here's a bunch of facts about autism that i want to tell you and more like here here's how it actually feels and here's what it actually means that we all carry i don't know whether that's making no no i get what you mean it's like um it's like it's like a shift from fact-based content to more of a have having more of the experiential aspects to it is that yeah and then taking and then taking that and running with it in like what can i do for my community and for myself and then i also did some therapy i'm seeing a therapist now um and for the first time i'm seeing a therapist who specializes in working with autistic people and people with adhd so that's been really helpful indeed yeah it's been very helpful that's been really really helpful so i think i think i'm optimistic i hope that in five years time i'm going to look back on this period and say this is the period at time in which of time in which i healed myself so it's like a new adolescence isn't it is um finding your place in the world and your identity and yeah i do i do think that you're right and saying coming out about it because it's it's coming out with your you're coming out as in as you rather than a mask you know um it's quite and also not not like looking for external i think you know if you're on social media making content whether you want to admit to it or not to some extent you're looking for external validation aren't you like right um and i certainly definitely was in the early days and i think in the last year i've reached the point where i'm genuinely not i am genuinely not when i put out content i'm not like how's this going to be received i'm like what do i actually have to say that is of value and how do i want to do it and screw however many views it gets or whatever and that feels like a really healthy place to be in sure no i i completely agree with you with that it's it's it's easy it's easy to because because it's such a um a personal thing and it's it's very autism is very different person to person it can sometimes feel like am i am i telling people about what autism is or am i telling people about me or you know telling me about my experience of being autistic or so i often have that sort of mental barrier in my head that i'm like should i really be talking about this is this something that that everyone experiences or am i just you know just talking about me it's um i feel like i want to get to the point do you ever feel like this i feel like i almost don't want to put autism as a label in the conversation i feel like i almost just want to be going this is what i'm experiencing anyone else yeah i get that so one of one of the things that is is a very big topic and has been for a while is unmasking how do you how do you unmask what what what what is the process of of unmasking yeah i mean that's another huge question isn't it because uh i think my answer would have been different on every year that you asked me this year the answer is for me personally uh learning to stim has been a big part of unmasking because as a child i definitely stimmed i remember stimming i remember i remember walking around supermarkets doing stuff with my arms and my mom being like stop it at like the age of like 13 we're not talking small child you know and i definitely learn not to stim and then what's been beautiful and i think we're unfortunate in having autistic children who i have never ever encouraged to mask or or not stim is watching them stim and see how that benefits them and then i started to stim with particularly my youngest child because she doesn't go to school so we spend a lot of time together um and yeah and she has some really cute stims that are quite reminiscent of the ones that i had when i was little it was such a beautiful thing stimming with your autistic child with your child there's actually a tick tock video of us stimming it might even be on instagram of us stimming together and i do love it i watch it makes me smile every time i watch it because she doesn't look like i've gone oh stand for camera she just looks like she's in heaven and i managed to capture it and that's beautiful um so learning to stim and i think the first time i realized i was in a difficult situation in the world something had happened and i was stimming and i hadn't noticed i was doing it you know and i was like oh okay that's good i've actually reclaimed that brilliant that's been a big part of it because i think stimming is such an important part of how we regulate that when you're not stimming in public that's a big part of that mask isn't it um and then i think the next part of it for me has been turning off the entertainer like because i am an i'm a born entertainer i do love it but like i don't like it's not normal to be entertaining while sitting around the dinner table or making breakfast or you know like in regular life and i think i'd reach the point where because i've always been like that because that's part of my mask i felt like people expected that from me because it was what people liked about me that i'm funny that i'm entertaining and like if i don't do that will people still like me and so i'm really like in a very very early stages of trying to do that and i can really only do it around my my family and my very very closest friends like just losing the face and you know like all of this it's an act it's all an act underneath it i'm quite dull really um it's just it's an exaggeration of your personality and it's just what you have to do when you're when you're on the internet um and then the other thing i would say that i've done that's been really important i think would be useful for other people is i have made like i've journaled and i've made art around uh how do i see myself physically how do i perceive myself what do i genuinely love as opposed to what have i been saying that i love because i felt like i was supposed to love it um like even stupid stuff like i absolutely do love doctor who with all of my heart and all of my soul you know there's no lie there so like really figuring out what are those things that make up my life that make me happy that are who i am and then finally working out what my values are because i think when we mask it's not just the mask of how do we actually present ourselves in the world it's also the mask of what do we say we believe politically what do we say we love in order to feel like we're fitting in with everybody else you know um and so kind of like i actually made a value statement what are my values what is important to me who do i want to be in the world and so that's what i've been doing and it's really really been very helpful i would definitely recommend it that is a really great point like honest honestly like um i got really excited when you were talking about values and meaning because it's it's um it's something that i i've looked and looked into a lot um especially around like coping with mental health and things like that and i do i do think you're right i think that you know we actively try and you know when we're in that that state of trying to fit in and be a part of the world and be successful and we do take on board other people you know people that we see and like oh i want to be like this person you know what what do they value and what do they you know and it's it's sometimes really really positive to kind of sit down and go what do what do i actually value like what brings me meaning in my life and joy and things things i would actually highly recommend i'm just thinking as you're saying that i'm thinking you know how like we're living in like extremely woke times in cancer culture and all that you know how like neurotypical people are all like oh my god it feels like you can't speak freely anymore are they like experiencing autistic masks maybe maybe like that they've got to be a certain way or they're going to get cancelled because that is exactly how we felt right oh i'm gonna make a video about that that's a whole topic there in it that's a juicy topic yeah yeah so i'd also really recommend i've been doing uh stoic journal i don't know whether you know about stoicism yeah so i've been doing like a daily stoic journal since the start of the year and that's a lot about that as well figuring out what your values are what's important to you and i found that really helpful one of the other things that i was interested in so we talked to talked about unmasking and like processing trauma and stuff did you did you at all in your journey go go for a stage of denial or aversion to to to go in and get in a diagnosis no i didn't know because i think because i'd already processed maybe because my child was diagnosed ahead of me you know only months ahead of me only about four or five months ahead of me but because i maybe went through that with them whether i'd already done that like by proxy if you like like should i be doing this should i be labeling them should i what does this mean i think because i'd like firmly concluded in my mind that all that we were talking about was a descriptor yeah you know that it was that it was okay but my child they went through my eldest went through i don't think i'm autistic actually it's just fun well these states it's a weird faking autism and teenagers because you don't want to hear anything that your parents are talking about to do with you and who you are because you're kind of in that stage where you're trying to break off and like trying to assert some some level of independence and you know i i definitely i i'm not ashamed to say that i definitely did that when i was younger around men i think i would say my my middle child is doing that my middle child is 13 and they're definitely doing what you're describing my eldest i don't think it's been like that but that's perhaps because because she's trans and because she's autistic and because i've been the main support in that we are really really close and and i don't feel like there is that resistance so maybe that's one of the silver linings to her challenge her life struggles cool so i mean not not not cool about the life struggle i know what you meant i know what you meant sorry i won't cancel you if you don't know me i won't cancel you so what i want to ask you next is what are some common misconceptions or comments you've received about your late diagnosis by people either in your eye in your life or online i think i would say i think i've been from what i've heard from other people i think i've been quite fortunate in that most of the people in my actual life either embrace the fact that i am autistic and what that means for our relationship moving forward or at least pretended to do so so i didn't receive any like negative feedback or any judgment from the people in like in my real life in my in my non-online life and even online compared to what some i know some people have gone through on the whole i don't deal with too much discourse but of course of course i get the comments that i'm not really autistic and that i'm high functioning and that i'm somehow just doing this for money i'd really like to know where the money for being autistic comes from because have you had it yet did you get sent the payment um that i'm doing it for money that i'm taking resources that other people shouldn't take you know yeah like a little bit but it's been quite minimal minimal i feel like i've been quite fortunate and i've always had this approach as well yeah of just deleting it yeah so i just i i sort of decided quite early on in my youtube career that i was not going to let these idiots get to me um or or impact how i felt and that the second con comment was negative or bullying not negative like someone can disagree with me in a respectful way as soon as it crossed the line into being disrespectful or bullying or unacceptable behavior i would just delete it straight away so now i've become quite good at just and it almost satisfies me like i got a comment recently that was like three full paragraphs on why i'm not autistic three four paragraphs a good 600 words yeah on why i'm not really autistic and when i deleted it it was like almost joyful like oh my god you must have spent so long writing this mean comment it's gonna really annoy you but it's just gone you know um but i just don't i think like i've kind of decided that other people's opinions are none of my business of me and none of my business and i can't be concerned with them so i really just genuinely don't give it a huge amount of thought you know i recently had some massive backlash and a lot of really negative comments about my gender identity and i know we're not here to talk about that today but it was very very harsh and people said some very very unkind things about me um including that i am not fit to be a mother which is the kind of one of the biggest insults you can give to a parent yeah it doesn't make any sense because i'm non-binary and because i talk about it on the internet i'm essentially grooming teenagers apparently yeah i know um and that that was hard but it taught me a really important lesson in that no matter what i do no matter what i say there are going to be people in the world who don't like me or don't believe my experience for whatever reason they have for doing so and that if i give them any power or any space in my head then they're winning and i won't let them win so i won't let them in very well said i've definitely had my my first fair share of um negative comments in the past really as you as you can probably tell from from my name i i tend to get a lot of um eugenics geogenesis and a nazi and you know like things like that i'm not making the link why would your name that's because i use asperger's growth oh the aspie thing yeah but but but and i would ask you i've got two questions for you i know it's your podcast i'm hosting just for a minute um firstly would you be using that name if you were to name it now um i'm not saying you shouldn't i'm not like i don't have an agenda i'm just curious i think i think it definitely served me well you know to to have that name i think the the only issue that i have with my name is that i don't like it i don't like how it sounds it just doesn't seem like a very um punchy kind of title you know i can't just say to someone like if i'm doing some networking like asperger's growth and they'll be like oh how do i spell that and like yeah yeah i get that i mean my name doesn't even connect me to autism so i'm not sure i did did a great job of naming things sure um and would you say that i actually have three questions as it turns out would you say that your diet were you diagnosed with asperger's i was that was your diagnosis still on my still on my records it hasn't been changed so personally although i don't tend to use the word asperger's because of its links to hans asperger i would always caveat that with if that is what you were diagnosed with and identified as as a very young child right and that feels like a part of your identity i would never i would never say you shouldn't use that word because it is connected with him but it is also something that's connected with you now because you've carried it for so long right well i mean so that makes sense to me you know we can always we can always debate language and uh i i've made i've made many posts in the past which is along the lines of like it's it's okay to have to have an opinion on on using it but when someone's if someone goes out and says like everyone should use asperger's you should just use it like why are you not using it then i i would have an issue with that i think if it was if it was just me saying look this is this is why i use asperger's and you know someone else was like oh this is this is why i call myself autistic and like i wouldn't have any any any issues with that because it's just a personal preference i think the problem is is that it's celebrating so like an interesting parallel i guess would be i don't know whether you know but i'm in bristol where the carlston statue got taken down during the black lives matter march did you hear about that so colston was a slave trader who built a lot of bristol and during the black lives matter march they took down a prominent statue of him in the center of the city and they stuck it in the river and we all cheered and i cheered and i fully stand by that and in the time since then a lot of things that were named after colston like colston hall and colston girl school have been renamed because essentially in using that name what we were doing was celebrating a slave trader sure and giving his name an integral part of our city yeah and so i suppose there are some parallels between that and the word asperger's in that i don't actually know a huge amount about it but my understanding is that hanzatz virgil was a nazi sympathizer but that is just my understanding of the situation so i suppose that when we use asperger's as a term that gets used widely we are like keeping alive the name of someone who potentially wasn't a good person i guess that's why people might have an issue with it i i completely get that said if i'd named my channel in 2016 something i might have included the word asperger's because at that time i didn't know that and and i might feel that it's difficult for me to rebrand something that i've been known as for a really long time although ask the princess chloe hayden did recently do just that which i thought was quite interesting it's it's funny that you say that because i am i'm wanting to rebrand at the moment firstly because i don't like asperger's growth the name i just it doesn't roll off the tongue for me and um another one is i don't want it to stop people from reading my stuff or listening to me or you know and if if i can it's it's i i can deal with like the the hate from it and i can deal with the mess the painful messages and things of that nature but why do people have to deal with it like that why can't they just be like i don't love your name but great content yeah something oh well exactly and i would be fine with that it's it's just it's it's it's immediately they put me into a box because they're like oh he's a male he he looks like he goes to the gym he must be a straight straight white cis cis male and um all of that and then i immediately got all of these different labels that for quite frankly most of them don't other than cis male and white like they don't apply to me but i just get put in there in the box um because i don't yeah that must be really hard i don't sort of uh lend myself to the the popular idea that i should not use asperger's but it's i think that's the problem though i think we do really live in like mob mentality at the moment don't we like i don't know about you but i'm terrified of saying on the internet these days in a way that i wasn't when we first started yeah you know you've been around for a while as well haven't you it's like i haven't yet said the wrong thing on the internet to my knowledge but i am someone who just says what i think so it could very easily happen and it like doesn't give anybody any room for growth or learning because it's like if i'm scared to say anything if i'm silenced by the fear of saying the wrong thing or if i'm silenced by having conversations in which i would learn how do i learn how do i grow i find it really worrying it's like pick a side and hunker down isn't it at the moment and i don't love that no i i'm very i'm very firmly on on no side yeah me too just i keep a little bit of an eye on you know how things maybe may be perceived but like i it just it inhibits my ability to create content because i'm like oh i did did i say this or then start questioning myself and then after a while like i've been silent for like five seconds and i'm you know how do i speak about this i think that's a really good book by brene brown have you come across brene brown brene brown she's awesome so she speaks about what does she speak about i mean just like personal development stuff really and she's written this book called uh into the wilderness braving the wilderness braving the wilderness that i read at some point during the pandemic and it talks about this like being vulnerable and holding your truth even in a world where you can get cancelled for it and one of the things that really struck me in that book was she was talking about look you might be a left-wing you know uh you might be left-wing you might be like really opposed to voting conservatives you might have a neighbor who is like a massive tory supporter but also this neighbor when you were unwell brought you food and when you needed a lift somewhere gave you that lift and if we stop having so yes i wouldn't personally use asperger's in my work these days but i'm not going to let that stop me from potentially building a relationship with like you who i've only just met in terms of like networking and knowing someone because you use that in your name because it is one facet of who you are and we are never going to find what do we want to do live in a world where everyone is exactly like us with exactly the same opinions that sounds really dull to me oh i love that well thank you thank you for the questions i i actually really enjoy taking questions that's like it's the main thing that i do outside outside the um the podcast to go on going over people's stuff so i've got one more question and then we'll do a couple of uh interview questions from from instagram at asperger's grave if any anybody who's listening if you want to ask a question what advice would you give to people who are considering a diagnosis but are hesitant to commit for various reasons i would say in reality i would always want to caveat anything that i say around this that we don't live in a world where the diagnostic procedure is really perfect we don't live in a world where the referral process is perfect so there are people going for assessment who are autistic but are not receiving that diagnosis because of gender biases or race biases you know that's that's a fact and i think we need to say that if we ever speak about access and diagnosis but if you want to go for it anyway and give it a try keep that in mind don't let the experience invalidate your experience i would say my uh first piece of advice would be like practical stuff like make a list of the reasons you think you might be autistic to take with you to the gp so that you have that to reference or even give to them if you find yourself a little bit tongue-tied don't take no for an answer they might say you don't need an assessment you're fine you've got a job whatever don't take no for an answer you have a right to be referred for an autism assessment use that right kind of like i would say throughout that diagnostic process learning to be your own best advocate and not feeling bad about that is really important learning to guard your boundaries and know what you have a right to so that you can confidently say i did everything that i could to support myself to access this assessment um and outside of that i would say give yourself time to process what you're experiencing and what you're learning about yourself and look after yourself like you would your very best friend because this is heavy stuff it's life-changing stuff and you're going to need to eat a lot of cake and watch a lot of your favorite tv show in order to kind of like regulate and cope with that experience brilliant thank you ella i think i think in in my minds i i when when someone would say that you know that they're hesitant to go for a diagnosis i think about my dad and i think about people in my life who are quite obviously autistic like i i know it's it you know it's it's it's a thing to say that you know like i'm pretty sure that someone's autistic without having diagnosed them or anything like that but it's just very apparent sometimes and um i was talking to this this man called peter bainbridge as part of my documentary asperges and society and he he mediates between autistic people and like the law or like housing accommodation thing things of that nature or within families and the thing that he said is that most most autistic people will go go through their life sort of trying to ignore that that part of them up until the point where they need to pay attention to it and you know some sometimes that's at the point where they've experienced like a really negative um bad life experience or trauma you know for me a part of that was um being lonely at university and not not knowing how to to make friends and and recently broken up with my long-term partner you know i was quite in a place of quite heavy isolation and that's that's what encouraged me to start my youtube channel and try and try and learn more about autism and try and verbally process it myself do you think there's any way to get around that for people like do you do you think that we could change something about society or about the processes of the way that people view autism that would make it easier for for people to you know not not feel such an aversion to getting diagnosed but there's a very long question um yeah i'm just processing it i'm just not masking and giving myself time to process it rather than just blurting out whatever comes into my head first um yeah i would say that the more one of the things i think that's really helpful is the more kind of high-profile people that get diagnosed with autism talk about it so like i'm talking about people like anthony hopkins right i love the fact that auntie hopkins was he in his 70s when he was diagnosed wow um and so you know people because of the age that i am uh i get a lot of audience you know in their 50s and their 60s even and many of them are saying oh is it too late is it too late to do this do i need to do this oh hang on i just need to let my dog in okay sorry are we going to be able to see coco come on stinks come on oh come on you should go here she is hello hi coco yeah she's a girl yeah she's beautiful um so like i always sort of say it's great to have people like people in the public eye are really useful when i'm reassuring people about getting diagnoses because i could say well look anthony hopkins obviously felt it was worth doing in his 70s so you know that means that it's it's worth doing for anyone and i think like just changing the stereotypes around autism generally like this idea that we're all cold and unfeeling and difficult to be around and that all autistic people are the same and that we're all really mathsy like just dispelling as many of those like myths and stereotypes until we reach a point where it's recognized that autistic people and you know people with all the like common comorbidities like adhd and dyslexia and dyspraxia are essentially just human beings with brains that work differently but that looks different on every single personality and if we just if we reach the point of starting to just see that as like in a more normal just a part of our world part of our culture then it won't be so scary to identify as that sure and people will be less scared to like go and access the diagnosis but i think i think honestly the main reason people are scared to go forward for diagnosis at this point is the fact that they know they'll be waiting a really long time and they'll likely be told that they're not autistic so i think diagnostic services need to improve and in that i think that we're doing it completely wrong anyway this is just my like non-professional opinion but like why are we diagnosing autism at this clinic and adhd over here and dyslexia over there you know like i mean do you have any co-morbidities is are there there are there aren't that many people that don't have an add-on many i've got dyslexia and adhd and exactly you know so like i really feel like it would be more useful at this point to be going right what is your neurodivergent profile what are your strengths what support needs do you have that enable you to like really reach those strengths and be the happiest you can be and just to like be getting information about that in one place rather than put trying to almost put us in these separate boxes fairies about does that make any sense of course long time and cos probably costing more money than if we did it all in one place looked at it more holistically right yeah no i i completely i completely understand that like i think it's it's really worth you know considering the the sort of stigma around being autistic as like it's not only that a lot of people think it's a negative thing just fully just completely negative thing it's also that i just i just don't think there's there's enough representation of you know the the whole the whole spectrum you know like a lot of different autistic people's voices it just seems to be a very it seems to be in the in the media that any stories that are around autism are always about trying thing despite despite your condition or despite being autistic rather than i like being some kind of a genius like the good doctor right where you've got a mind palace there's those kind of don't you think that's true of like representation generally yeah so i've been watching heartstopper have you watched heartstopper the big netflix you know i'm way too old to be watching art style probably with my kids and it's basically a great show with lgbtq plus representation brilliant brilliant but what i'd like to see moving forwards with all minority groups and representation in media is for their minority statuses to just be not the entire focus try not to be like this is a show about an autistic gay person you really focus on their gayness and their autism they've got no other personality that's their whole personality you know indeed like if we were just incidentally in shows you know with a disclosed diagnosis i think that is a useful thing because otherwise we get the sheldon situation where it's like well we can make a whole show where we mock an autistic person because we never actually said he was autistic you know but like if we can have like out autistic people characters in shows but that it's not the show about the autistic person and they're just like so if we're wondering what's the stats one in ten one what how many of us are there have you do you know i think it's uh increased to like one in 50 or some something like so if we're like one in 50 right in every show where there's 50 characters one of them should be autistic you know i think so yeah i do agree with you it just it's just always the highlight it's always the reason why the mainstream media takes some borders story it's like oh they're they're disabled they're autistic or something and so we'll get them on and you know it'll make their achievements seem even more better because you know it's they've got that all factor you know the yeah like the disability hero the disability porn kind of thing that i can't remember i always like to cite the lady the inspiration porn do you know what the lady was that that talked about that because i never liked to talk about something without crediting the person maybe you could put it in the show notes go for it i've got a growing list of tabs on my computer but basically her whole thing stella young i'm gonna say stella young but i could be wrong um and she talked about how like it's much more comfortable to be around disabled people if they are inspirational so it's like oh my god you got dressed how did you do that so amazing and it's like we don't want to be your inspiration we don't want to have magical gifts we don't want to have superpowers we're just people who have brains that work a little bit differently to the majority and and and i think when we get rid of that narrative that will be really useful as well like that like you're so amazing because you aren't curled up in a ball crying about your terrible brain you know the the listeners cannot see but i am scrunching my face like that well um that's that's the end of the the main sort of body of questions we got a couple from instagram how did you get instagram questions did you ask them yes yeah yeah you asked on like a a story i did it did it early in the week and people did actually want to ask me things they do not that i'm looking for external validation because i'm totally not no i'm sure i'm sure many people would would love to ask you any any number of questions because you do you do some amazing work on online like you do oh thank you um so the first one is what to do about the cost of getting a diagnosis and the wait times what can i do in the meantime of waiting what to do in the meantime while you're waiting i would say um that it is totally okay to treat yourself as if you are autistic while you are waiting to access an assessment whatever the barriers that might be and to learn from your own experience from advocates from wherever you want to learn about autism about things that might support you as an autistic person and to implement them and to see that they if they improve your life because they're certainly not going to make your life worse and even if at the end of the day you weren't diagnosed with autism for whatever reason if the strategies and the things you're doing to support yourself are helping they would still be valid so it's it's still a useful thing to do um and i would also use that time to like learn about myself and to learn about autism and i guess what i'm trying to say is that you don't need a doctor to tick a box to say you're allowed to look after yourself better now and that you're allowed to love yourself and that you like you're allowed to feel valid presenting into the world in the way that you feel that you do sure i don't think there's anything that i can add on to that one you've pretty much said it all i think um so got the second one here which says how do i get my partner to get a diagnosis oh i mean do they want to access an assessment i guess that's asking how do i persuade another person to want to find out something about themselves that i think is true but maybe they don't yeah i i get a lot of messages because i make a lot of stuff around relationships and dating and things and yeah i've had this question before neurotypical people asking about you know their partner like getting their diagnosis and you know being some negative things to not knowing how they function and stuff like that but yeah well interestingly i've got a little aside for you in that my husband when i was first diagnosed went to a group for parents parents partners of autistic people a support group and he only went twice because he was like i don't want to go and sit in a room and moan about you for two hours that seemed to be the main kind of motivation for the group and he was just like i don't really feel like it's true i've i've seen the facebook groups that i've i've i've infiltrated the partners of autistic people um ooh have you great did they say about that um it's a lot of complaining um and it's a lot of like talking about how they don't have any emotions and or anything so can we set up a partnership facebook group and talk about how they are really loud and spontaneous and talk about things that are not interesting so interestingly i'm bringing out a video this eve this this very evening so i guess at some point in the past when you're listening to this that i've made with my husband now we're talking about our marriage and it's the first time he's ever been on my channel so it's kind of a big deal i'm talking about our marriage and how that works and something that he said that i thought was really interesting when i said what are the challenges i i asked him what are the challenges of being married to an autistic person he was like i mean i don't really think of them as challenges of being married to an autistic person i think of them as learning to live your life with another person and the challenges that come alongside that whoever that person is yeah and i think that's really useful thing is that we're not all the same and everybody's got stuff um but going back to the question that's been asked i would say you can't you can't make somebody go and have an assessment for something that they don't want to do you can encourage them by talking to them about the fact that you think that they might have autism you can leave around literature that might be helpful you can share resources videos podcasts with them that might kind of help them reach that realization but ultimately it's not okay to tell someone else how to define their brain definitely there was this one instance where someone someone messaged me about it's it's always very difficult to like offer people relationship and dating advice just from like just from a message about the situation like i don't know what you're like with them i don't know what the dynamic is or the events that have come up you know i don't only you know that um and uh there was this one instance where like their husband have had left them because they thought that they were toxic or something along those lines and they they think there's something to do with them being autistic and undiagnosed and not knowing how to regulate their emotions and things like it's such a complex question isn't it oh it really is because yeah this i get similar questions like i've had people emailing me really intimate details about their girlfriends because they're looking at me and going well you're autistic and i've got an autistic girlfriend so let me tell you about like all their deep personal stuff and then you can tell me how to fix my relationship um and i'm like firstly not a therapist uh secondly not really keen on unpaid labor and thirdly like it's it's possible to be autistic and an that's a fact is true so by which i mean if someone is treating you in abusive way their autism is almost irrelevant you should not be living with abuse um and if someone is treating you in an abusive way but you believe it's because of their autism that like like you said it's led to them having these issues which you know i carried some of that and i'm sure my husband dealt with some stuff that wasn't ideal because of that in the past but but you still need to hold them accountable and you still need to have your personal boundaries of what you will and won't accept within a relationship regardless of someone's neurology right yeah you know you're not the carer he you're a partner yeah it may be some some aspects of you know helping with certain things but for the most of it it's uh a romantic relationship you know that they're partner is it's it's important to treat it as that i'm responsible for me he's responsible for him but where he's willing to support me with stuff that i struggle with like he can calm me down when i've had a meltdown or you know he can help me if an unexpected change happens and i'm going i don't know what to do now and you can kind of go yeah here's the things that i would recommend but like if i would not want him to tolerate abusive behavior from me and say oh it's okay it's because she's autistic i would want him to say this behavior was unacceptable and i cannot live with it and you need to work you need to change that yeah i completely agree with that so um that's that's our our instagram q a cool why i want to ask you now which is perhaps a very difficult question for most people including myself what do you want people to take away from the podcast about from this podcast about lately late diagnosis we've talked about a lot of things diagnosis yeah specifically um let me think about this um i want people to take away compassion for themselves you know if you're someone who has lived with autism all your life without knowing that you are autistic you are probably also someone who has self-esteem issues and often feels like you aren't good enough and like who you are isn't acceptable and so i would like you to take away from this podcast that if i as an entirely intense person who really felt like that for a really long time i've reached a place where i can say i am enough as i am then you can too and that there's hope that that's a place that you can sit in in the future brilliant very well spoken so yeah as part of the the season two i have a couple of things uh one is your song of choice this i love this segment is all about me sharing a piece of music that means something to the topic or means something to you and you get to share the do you get to actually play it as well i i probably won't be able to get the licensing for that but yeah licensing go go to your music provider of choice and listen to this song my favorite song is a song by david bowie who is to begin with there's a massive hero of mine because as a young quirky teenager living in a very mainstream world i looked to him and i saw someone who also was different and i felt hope that there was a world that i could live in and be different as cheesy as that sounds it's true and the song is uh kooks which is a song in which the the kind of main lyric is if you stay with us you're going to be pretty kooky too which is a song that makes me think about the fact that as you know now as a mother you know just this idea of us as a family just in our kooky crazy world being who we are and it being okay it just makes me feel happy when i listen to that song that's beautiful so we also have our profile of the day which i have not i have not done what does that mean what is a profile just highlighting people who have done done something you know particularly particularly good social media people or people in general social media people on on instagram absolutely who do i who on instagram who do i think is well i was going to do it but you're very welcome oh you do it no no go for it because i don't i think i think today we're going to to highlight uh one of our future guests um autistic callum callum is a really great guy we're going to talk on the podcast soon about what's it called self-advocacy which i think is a is a is a good point you were talking about earlier about you know advocating for yourself in a diagnosis situation into doctors so well very important stuff he also you know he talks a lot about sort of like unwritten rules in the workplace he talks about a whole host of different things and he's a really great creator and he's he is well deserving of the following that he has so yeah that's that's our profile of the day oh cool yeah i've not come across callum before i'll check that that's really cool he makes some really great posts so this is coming to to the to the end of the podcast you can find the 40 ot podcast on pretty much every single podcasting platform that you can help find it apple google spotify all on there 40 audi podcast you can also visit my website where i offer an array of different things including uh doing anonymous interviews for instagram as well as modeling and public speaking and of course uh check out my my instagram and youtube account which is asperger's growth for a lot of stuff around dating mental health autism lots of different things and um yeah also something that i have not done before please like and rate my podcast because i have like no ratings and it's it's um especially an apple podcast that would be really great if you can give me a five stars i'm not going to say how many stars but five is five is the best one for me times are good enough yeah right it's just a nice comfortable number you know to only buy um of course thank you to all of my youtube members and my patreon supporters ella it's been lovely to speak to you i've you know i've been following you and stuff for a while and it's been it's been great to kind of have a chat um find out what what life is like for you and find out more about your your diagnosis journey have you enjoyed being on the podcast yeah i have really enjoyed it i think i really like maybe i should make a podcast i really like podcasts you're just kind of sitting around and having a chat which is one of my favorite things to do you definitely should you do have you do have talent for podcasting definitely i mean i'll just appear on everybody because i don't really have time there's a lot of them i you said it before about doctor who do you know about mason uh crohn's an autism advocate because he's doing a series on his podcast about doctor who oh i think he should talk to me about that [Laughter] so that's that's another link there but anyway um i really hope you have all got something value from this podcast i definitely have and um you know learning a bit more about what it's like to be diagnosed later in life the challenges the the benefits the ups and downs and um yeah it's been really great to talk to you ella and i hope you have a lovely day thank you goodbye see you later peeps

Channel: Thomas Henley

Views: 2,519

Keywords: Thomas Henley, Asperger's growth, Thomas Henley Interview, Thomas Henley Autism, Actually autistic, Purple Ella Interview, Purple Ella Autism, Late diagnosis autism, should I get an autism diagnosis?, Purple Ella podcast, Thomas Henley podcast, Thoughty autie podcast, Autism podcast, aspergers podcast, actually autistic podcast

Id: 2QfddbUQvbo

Length: 79min 42sec (4782 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 05 2022