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  • Sharing Our Autism Story EP 6

    Sharing Our Autism Story EP 6
    2024/11/01

    There is more than one way to share our autism story! In this episode of Autistic POV, I talk about my experience sharing my own story through memoir writing and online media—with a focus on what did and didn't work for me and why.

    I also chat about my substack blog, my special interest blog and other resources. I promised to provide links these, so here they are:

    • Metaphysical blog (special interest blog) MysticReview.com
    • Substack blog (some special interest posts plus autism podcast episodes and articles) BarbaraGraver.substack.com
    • My article Autism and the Narrative Process (barbaragraver.substack.com/p/autism-and-the-narrative-process) touches on Julie Brown's book Writers on the Spectrum. The book is more geared toward fiction, but I found it helpful.
    • Link for my Podbean website (as mentioned in the episode): AutisticPOV.com
    • My autism diagnosis / bipolar misdiagnosis episode is EP 3 in app or online at https://www.autisticpov.com/e/late-autism-diagnosis-bipolar-misdiagnosis-and-being-vulnerable/

    Please consider following and / or sharing the podcast!

    If you need closed captioning, please listen via the podbean app or through my site: AutisticPOV.com

    ________________

    Theme music by the Caffeine Creek Band
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    19 分
  • Job vs. Calling: An Autistic Perspective EP 5

    Job vs. Calling: An Autistic Perspective EP 5
    2024/10/08
    My experience with working a job vs. following my calling and how this relates to autism. As a late diagnosed autistic, I now feel that my original job choice was actually a form of masking that interfered with my ability to engage in my true calling. In this episode, I talk a bit about how that happened and why I think it's so important for autistic people to embrace their special interests, honor their true selves and follow their unique calling. #autismacceptance #autistic #autism If you like this content please follow and / or share! Episode Transcript: 0:06 Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hi everybody, this is Barbara Graver. Thank you for joining me on this episode of Autistic POV. Today we're going to be talking about work versus calling. 0:31 In other words, a job versus what you were born to do. And the reason I wanted to do this, well, two reasons. The first was that when I did our last episode, the Autistic Reading Roundup, I talked about several books that I'd read, science fiction books, several memoirs. And these were all books written by autistic authors. 0:54 And all of these authors or their characters struggled to find what it is that they were meant to do. And I think that's a struggle that is pretty much universal, certainly not confined to the neurodiverse. But in all the memoirs I read, autistic people had a lot of trouble with work. They had trouble fitting in at work. 1:16 They had trouble finding the right place to work. They had trouble dealing with colleagues. And I certainly have experienced that too all my life. So I think work is a big issue for a lot of autistic people. Certainly has been for me. 1:30 And I think the key to all that is the kind of work that we choose to do. That's my theory. So a job, it's the even exchange. You give a certain amount of yourself and you get compensated. And what you're giving may not be who you are. It may not move you. 1:51 You may not feel passionate about it. You might not enjoy giving it, but you do it to get the compensation. And sometimes this is okay. This can be okay. I've had jobs where it was okay. But I think a calling, on the other hand, is something you would do even if nobody paid you. 2:08 You would still show up because you love it, because you're not just making an exchange. You're sharing something of yourself that you need to share, that you feel called to share, that you want to share, and that you love to share. And I think this is huge. Particularly for me, 2:27 my special interest was always had to do with, I guess you would say communication, which is a little ironic because I'm very bad at face-to-face communication. But I loved communicating through story. I would draw a series of pictures that told stories. I would stay awake all night pretending and constructing these elaborate worlds in my mind and characters. 2:54 And I would escape into that all the time. And I loved it. I would write the stories down. I would illustrate them. I would make little books. I just loved it. And I always had social problems. But when I was younger, 3:08 I was kind of able to fit in with the neighborhood kids because I grew up in the 60s and 70s. So That was when playing pretend was a big deal because we didn't have a lot of the stuff that kids have now. Like we had to create our own worlds. And I was always really good at that. 3:26 I was the idea person when we would. want to create a pretend scenario, I was the one who did it and did it well and had the ideas and kind of kept things going. And so that was an outlet for me. It was a way I could interact with other kids for a time. 3:45 I mean, obviously, as I got older, that no longer worked. The point is, story was always huge to me. I loved to read. I loved to watch TV. I loved media. I loved to draw. I was very creative and it all kind of revolved around the idea of story. But as I got older, 4:05 I began to look at more and more, look at other people and how other people were living and how other people were acting. And as I experienced more and more social setbacks and social troubles, I decided to model myself more and more after other people. In grade school, I even changed my handwriting. 4:26 I still have two completely different kinds of handwriting because there was a girl who was very popular, and I would actually copy her handwriting. I started to write like her because I wanted to be like her. And I fell into this, this is my dog shaking her collar. I began to mask. 4:47 I began to want to behave like other people because that was safer than behaving like me because I didn't want to target on my back. I didn't want to be different. Even if it meant not being creative, even if it meant not doing the things I loved, I wanted to be like other people. 5:01 I wanted to blend in. So I worked really, really hard at that all through high school. I worked super hard at ...
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    17 分
  • First Autistic POV Reading Roundup (books by autistic authors) EP 4

    First Autistic POV Reading Roundup (books by autistic authors) EP 4
    2024/09/23
    In my first reading roundup I talk about a wonderful Sci-Fi series and three incredible memoirs. All of the books covered are written by autistic authors. The memoirs detail the lived experience of three amazing late-diagnosed autistic women. And the Sci-Fi series features an autistic protagonist central to the adventure. Just as interesting, in my opinion, the theme of finding our true autistic calling is central to each of these books. All of the books featured are available in ebook. They are: Xandri Corelel Series (affiliate link) by Kaia Sønderby : 0. Testing Pandora, 1. Failure to Communicate, 2. Tone of VoiceDrama Queen (affiliate link) by Sara GibbsLabel Me (affiliate link) by Francesca BairdU Don't Seem Autistic (affiliate link) by Kathleen Schubert If you like this content please follow and / or share! Episode Transcript 0:00 This is Barbara Graver of Autistic POV and today we're going to be talking about four books by autistic authors. Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hi, this is Barbara Graver. 0:29 I'm so happy you could join me for my very first autistic POV reading roundup. So we're going to be talking about four different books, actually one series and three memoirs. And the reason I chose these books is because they all kind of center on a common theme. And 0:48 this is the theme I want to explore probably in our next episode, but I'm going to talk about the books in this one. The first one is a sci-fi series, and this series is written by Kaya Sounderby, and it's the Zandri Corello series. series, and it begins with a fantastic book called Failure to Communicate. 1:13 The second book I'm going to be talking about is Drama Queen, written by Sarah Gibbs, and this is an amazing memoir. It's my favorite autistic memoir I have read to date. It's fantastic. And then I'm going to talk about two other memoirs a little more briefly, primarily because they go along with the same theme, 1:32 and one is called You Don't Look Autistic, and you in this is spelled with a u, Actually, You Don't Seem Autistic is the name. And the last one is Label Me. So we're going to talk about all these books. And I'm going to try to explain why I like them and why I think they're, 1:50 they're all have a lot of value. And I do want to say with memoir, like I've heard people say, there's so many autism memoirs out there and that's true. There are, but I feel like all of them have value. Like every autistic memoir I read, 2:07 I resonate with or pick up on something different and I find them all helpful. They're helpful on multiple levels. I think they're helpful in terms of making you feel a little less alone. They're helpful in giving you insight. And they're helpful in terms of learning and support. I think they serve multiple purposes. And these books, 2:29 all of these books, and I just want you to kind of keep in mind as we talk about them, all deal with the importance of our calling. So the first series I wanted to talk about, the first book I want to talk about is the Zandri Corello series. And this is a sci-fi series. 2:49 It's set in just an amazing world. It's just a wonderful world. And the characters are great. And one of the things I loved about the world was the diversity of the world. And it shows... quote alien species as not all humanoids not they're not all guys in suits and i 3:08 understand why i i watch a lot of sci-fi and i read sci-fi and i like sci-fi and i understand why say star trek like all the quote aliens had to be able to be an actor in a suit and understand why the humanoid ideal is always or often represented in sci-fi, 3:29 and that every species encountered is a variation on the human ideal. But I really like the fact that this author, that Kara Sounderby, treated the various races throughout the galaxy as being capable of evolving from different types of life forms, different species. So there might be a species that's like dolphins. 3:56 There might be one that's very like various kinds of mammals. There might be others that are humanoid. And I thought this was a really cool way to present this. And the book was really, really well constructed. It was plotted out very well. It was suspenseful. The characters were engaging. The main character, Zandri, is autistic. 4:18 And I thought the author did a really good job of that, of portraying the challenges and the strengths of autism really well. And she is the heroine of the series. She's not a peripheral character. She's the heroine. And she has unique abilities to communicate, which seems kind of ironic, but really the way it's presented in the series, 4:41 it isn't, to communicate with different types of cultures and different languages and different kinds of people throughout the galaxy because of how she'd had to learn to do that as an autistic. And it's really well done. It's really suspenseful. It's a really great series...
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    17 分
  • Autism Diagnosis, Bipolar Misdiagnosis and Podcast Update EP 3

    Autism Diagnosis, Bipolar Misdiagnosis and Podcast Update EP 3
    2024/09/02
    In this episode, I talk a bit about being misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder for 20 years, prior to getting my (correct autism diagnosis) and why I've switched gears with the podcast. The memoir I mentioned in the episode is Drama Queen (affiliate link) by Sara Gibbs. #autism #late-diagnosis #misdiagnosis If you like this content, please follow and / or share! Episode Transcript 0:06 Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hi everybody, this is Barbara Graver and I'd like to welcome you to the show. Today I wanted to talk a little bit about late diagnosis and particularly my late diagnosis and 0:32 And you may have noticed that I changed the intro to the show a little bit, and that was because I listened to my first couple episodes, and the first episode was kind of just me talking, and the second episode was more informational. And I thought it's nice to share information, 0:52 but that's not really what I had in mind when I started the podcast. What I had in mind was just sharing my experience, my point of view, hence the name. So I redid the intro to be a little more reflective of that. And I also changed my plans for this episode a little bit too. 1:15 Initially, I was going to present facts and some of my experience, but facts too. And I decided that you guys could get that anywhere. And what I would like to share is my experience. I've been reading a lot of autism memoir and books by autistic writers and one 1:40 thing that I find particularly helpful is when I resonate with something someone says and I never resonate with all of it because we're all different. We're all different people and different people have different issues and different talents and different abilities and different ways of looking at things. But there are commonalities. 2:00 And I think after a lifetime of feeling alienated and alone, when I read something by someone who we share a commonality, it's helpful to me. So that's where I'm going with the podcast. And I wanted to talk just a little bit today about my own diagnosis. I got diagnosed very late in life. 2:25 I grew up in the 60s and 70s when people didn't really even know what autism was and if there was any concept of it at all it was Hans Asperger and his work and the idea that mostly mostly boys were autistic or only boys were 2:45 autistic so there was nothing to fall back on and my parents I think like all parents of that era felt that the best thing they could do for their kid was to make sure you could function in society. And just like everybody else, no matter how hard that was, that really didn't matter. 3:06 They thought they were doing you a favor if they forced you to be able to function as seamlessly as possible in society. So there's a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure to do that. My mother used to make excuses for me. 3:23 She'd say things like I was the youngest kid in the class and I was an only child and these things were supposed to explain some of my problems, but they really didn't. And I got other explanations, too, that were not so positive. And, you know, 3:43 I was often told that I was selfish and uncaring and just like my father who may have been autistic. And I was made to feel very defective growing up. And I tried very, very hard to fit in. And I never really succeeded. And it's kind of funny looking back. I look back and I think, 4:06 grade school was horrible but I think in high school I was actually able to do it I was reading this really really good book by autistic writer and I'll link to it in the comments and she kept talking about her fresh starts like all her fresh starts 4:23 and that was what high school was for me and I turned myself inside out at a very high cost to fit in and quote be popular And it was kind of funny because I actually thought I fooled everyone. And now, looking back, I think popular girls, they get a pretty bad rap, and oftentimes it's deserved. 4:46 But I think looking back on my experience in high school, I think people felt sorry for me. And I think people were, some of the girls I hung out with were just plain gracious about And it wasn't necessarily that I fooled them, but I tried. And the effort, the Herculean effort to do that caused me, I think, 5:09 to have my first probably autistic burnout when I was still in high school. And that was really severe. And there were a lot of other problems that went with that. Maybe I could talk about that at some other time. But I can't say that I knew I was different because 5:25 because I didn't know when I was young that someone could be different. I thought I was just defective. I thought my difference was that I thought life was that hard for everyone. I thought I didn't try hard enough, and I just didn't really understand why things were so hard for me. I thought I was selfish, 5:43 and I thought I was lazy, and I thought I was all kinds of things, but it ...
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    18 分
  • An Autistic POV on the Benefits of Freewriting EP 2

    An Autistic POV on the Benefits of Freewriting EP 2
    2024/07/16
    An autistic perspective on freewriting and how it can help us improve creativity, explore identity, and even improve physical and emotional health. This episode was a bit of an experiment. While it was fun sharing information, future episodes will be more conversation and based mostly on my personal experience (as opposed to research). I wanted to share the following resources that I used to prep for this episode: Psychological Benefits of Free Writing.Therapeutic Journaling PDF I also referred to Expressive Writing by James W. Pennebaker and John Frank Evans. And Tony Attwood's book The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome. Both should be available from your local library or elsewhere via interlibrary loan. #autism #creativity If you like this content, please follow and / or share! Episode Transcript 0:03 Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver. I am a late diagnosed autistic, and I hope you'll join me as we talk about life, identity, and self-acceptance from an autistic point of view. Today, I wanted to talk about free writing. And free writing is to essentially just start writing and to keep writing. 0:29 And it's a stream of consciousness thing where you jot down whatever comes into your head. And one of the reasons I want to talk about this is because I'm doing it right now. And I've been toying with the idea of writing like an autism memoir for a long time, and it's very hard for me to do. 0:46 So I thought maybe the free writing would help. And I think it is. It's early days, but I think it is. So the main things I wanted to cover about free writing, I have three points I'd like to make about free writing. And I do have references for each of these. 1:01 Those will be in the show notes because this is a short podcast. I'm not going to be taking a real deep dive. So if you want to learn more, I'm going to give you the references that I used and hopefully they would answer 1:13 some of your questions or at least get you started on your own research if this resonates. So the first, the three topics I want to talk about are free writing and increased creativity. Free writing as a way to explore identity and and free writing and the potential for healing. 1:32 And you could do a whole podcast probably on each of these, but I just want to give a little bit of an overview. So increased creativity. There was a study that was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology on free writing and creativity. I actually couldn't read the study because it was paywalled, 1:51 but I did find a website that talked about it. So that's what I'll be linking to in the description. But the gist of it is that the study showed that people who did free writing had increased innovation and creativity. And this is something that I think a lot of people already know. 2:09 I mean, there's the artist's way, there's various things about journaling and how it helps. But I think a lot of people haven't actually tried it. I mean, we know it'll probably work, but we don't really want to put the time in. And that's understandable. I mean, I kind of feel that way too. 2:26 So one of the things I've done is I've limited it to 20 minutes. I have a timer and I recommend, I love my timer. I have a timer that when you turn it, it's actually, I'm not sure how to describe this, but as you turn it, it's a colored timer. 2:43 It shows a colored wedge of how much time you have left. So every time you look at it, you could see that time going down. And it's very helpful. I find it very helpful. So one of the strategies is to just do a set amount of time. And with free writing, 2:59 a lot of times people think free writing is just writing whatever comes into your head. And it's not necessarily. You can pick a topic. Particularly if you're, and we'll discuss a couple different kinds of topics, but if you're dealing with a creative issue, you could start writing something about that, definitely. 3:18 Or, you know, you could write something unrelated and just see what kind of pops in. And autistic people tend to be very, very creative. But we also tend to have a lot of issues around creativity. And I'm going to talk about that, just that, in another episode. But I think if you're autistic, you're probably creative. 3:39 And if you're autistic and creative, you probably already know this. And we can get in a loop with our creativity. And there are a lot of negative things that could come in, like perfectionism and self-censoring and judging ourselves that can really get us all tangled up. Or at least that's been my experience with writing. 4:02 Been writing all my life, but I've never published anything. I've rarely even showed my writing to people. And so it's not surprising that we have reservations and feel conflicted. And I think that journaling can be a way to recover from this. It's a way that we can kind of regain our center with our creativity. 4:25 And if you've read The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, she was essentially ...
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    17 分
  • Autistic POV Intro, My Autism Diagnosis & Caveats EP 1

    Autistic POV Intro, My Autism Diagnosis & Caveats EP 1
    2024/06/13
    A bit about my autism diagnosis and my plans for my podcast, Autistic POV. I hope you'll check back and, if you're able, please consider following the show. This episode includes a few important caveats for the show, including my target audience. I'm planning on airing new episodes about twice a month. I do hope you'll check back! #autism #late-diagnosis If you like this content, please follow and / or share! Episode Transcript (If your podcast provider cuts off the transcript, you can read the full transcript by viewing this episode at AutisticPOV.com.) 0:03 Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver. I am a late diagnosed autistic and I hope you'll join me as we talk about life, identity, and self-acceptance from an autistic point of view. 0:18 Hi everybody, this is Barbara Graver and today I'd just like to share a little bit about what I'll be doing on the podcast and what I have planned going forward. And this is kind of hard for me a little bit because it's my first time really talking about autism in public. 0:39 And it's funny because I could talk about a lot of things online and have--personal spiritual experience, my work, my feelings, you know, personal stuff. But I've never really talked about this. So it's new. It's a little bit threatening, but I'm going to go ahead and try it. 0:58 So, part of the reason I think it's a challenge for me is because I wasn't diagnosed until 2022, which means that I've been kind of trying to fit into a world that I could never be totally comfortable with for decades. And it was a lot to process. 1:18 It kind of cast my whole history and experience in a new light. And it took me a while to To sort of get a handle on that, I mean, honestly, I wouldn't say that I have necessarily got a handle on it, but I think I've made progress. 1:36 So I got diagnosed in April of 2022, and now it's two years later, and it just so happened that Some of the issues I've been having lately with my writing kind of peaked and I thought, kind of like Joanna Penn says, maybe I should create the kind of content I need to hear. 1:57 So I was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder one. I was diagnosed by psychologists and autism spectrum disorder one is what used to be called Asperger's and to me it's sort of like the walking wounded version of autism people can function in society 2:17 more or less but there's cost to that or at least there has been for me there's been a cost and that cost has actually been pretty high I would say across the board but I do have mixed feelings about honestly about about talking about the challenges of autism. And part of the reason for this, I think, 2:39 is because I've known people, known a couple moms who've had nonverbal autistic children. So sharing that same diagnosis is weird to me. I wish they'd kept Asperger's, honestly, but they didn't. So this is the terminology we have. And I'm going to use it with the understanding that most of the stuff I talk about 2:59 in this podcast is probably going to be pretty autism spectrum disorder one specific, because that's what I know. And even within that demographic, I know there are a lot of differences in the way people process things. So I don't know if what I say is going to make sense to you necessarily, but 3:19 But I think that's always the way. And I think all we can really do is try. So I guess those are my caveats. But for me personally, my initial evaluation for autism was really comprehensive. And there was a lot of cognitive. I received a lot of cognitive information as part of that. 3:42 And I know not everybody can do the evaluation, but I think for anyone who can, it's worth it because a good evaluation will give you a wealth of information about your mind and the way you think. It's not just about checking the autism box. It's about everything else you learn. And, you know, 4:01 one of the things I learned was that there was a cognitive split, which is not uncommon with autism. And I think that's part of the reason why I find constructing novels and staying in my lane genre-wise kind of a challenge. but there's a lot more I want to learn about this and share. 4:20 I don't, this is just the introduction. I don't want to try to go into everything, but, but there are a lot of issues and they're different for different people. Also, there are a lot of really good resources out there and I'd like to share some of them. 4:34 And I think doing the podcast to kind of keep me a little bit on track with that. As far as the format for the show goes, um, Interviews are hard for me. I've been active online for a while. I have a kind of successful blog, mysticreview.com, and I've done a lot of media around that. 4:54 And I can do both sides of interview if I have to, but I do find it stressful. So I'm presently undecided about the interviews. I do definitely want to share information, but this might be in the form of a review or a resource or a topic or aspect of my own experience. But we'll ...
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    6 分