Jessica:

Welcome to Once Upon an Upset interviews. On today's episode, I interviewed Lyric Holmans, an autistic self-advocate from Texas who runs the neurodiversity lifestyle blog Neurodivergent Rebel. They are also the founder of NeuroDivergent Consulting. Lyric is known as the pioneer of the #AskingAutistics hashtag, where simple questions prompt open-ended responses that Autistic people can easily chime in with, and invites participants to engage each other in conversations related to the topic. This hashtag connects NeuroDiverse people who would not otherwise have a reason to engage with each other, and fosters collective understanding of the Autistic Experience.

Today. I'm very excited to be speaking with Lyric, the Neurodivergent Rebel.

Thank you so much for being willing to talk with me. I really am excited to talk with you.

Lyric:
Thank you for the invite. I'm looking forward to it.

Jessica:
Yes, and if you don't mind, I'd just like to start by thanking you because I come from an environment where any neurodivergence was pathologized. I come from a mother who was like, she had a mask made of iron, and this woman was just fiercely dedicated to her mask. She was never accepted or approved for the dynamic, wild, flowery woman who she was. She always felt, I used to say about her, she didn't leave home without her wallet, her keys, or her mask. She was fierce out in the world, and then she... I think the best way to describe it is how you described something in one of your Instagram posts that I was just so moved by, and I want to hear you talk about it some more if you wouldn't mind... but that sensory sensitivity, that people who are naturally neuro divergent face in the world and the things we do to cope with that. My mother wound up coping with substances.

Jessica:
I mean, vodka and Xanax, she's gone with the don't F with me combo. Because it was the only time where she felt like she deserved, or could access peace. Then when you talked about some of those others, I don't do substances, but I have had vertigo and I've had tinnitus and I've had so many different things. When I heard you talk about sensitive people, suddenly I was thinking, gosh, how many of us are sensory overloaded and struggling and suffering with these symptoms and don't exactly know why, except to think that we're deficient in some way? So I'd love to hear your story, or anything you're willing to share about how you discovered these things and what it was like before you discovered some of this stuff, and how you had a paradigm shift. That's a lot.

Lyric:
Well, before having the language describe myself and my experience, I would say I was very much lost, because when you are not neurotypical, I'm autistic, I'm ADHD, sensory processing, anxiety disorder... There's a lot of things going on in my brain that are not "typical," whatever typical is for our modern society and time and place and where we are. But so when you have a brain that isn't typical, even if you don't have a language for what makes you different, you know you're different. I knew I was different. I felt myself struggling to do things that neurotypical people, other people around me, I didn't know why. They took these things that were so hard for me for granted, and then I was constantly being scolded for not trying hard enough, not applying myself. "This is easy. Why can't you do this? This is so easy. You can do that other really hard thing. This should be so easy for you. You're just so lazy. You never apply yourself."

Lyric:
It's like, I'm trying harder than everyone else to do the same things with not as much results. You start to believe that you are defective or you are a broken person. You're a broken neurotypical, even without knowing what neurotypical is. You think you're one of them and that you're a broken one. It's my own ugly duckling story. I didn't realize I was a swan. I thought I was an ugly, broken duckling that couldn't swim well or something. I didn't know that there was a difference and that there was a reason for my differences.

Lyric:
So in school, with the sensory issues, when I would go and complain to the teacher or the nurse that I was in pain and having my head hurt and my eyes hurt from the lighting, from fluorescent lighting in the classroom, I kept going to the nurse every day since it was hurting every day and the nurse just thought I was trying to get out of school because they thought I just didn't like the classroom.

Lyric:
Well, yeah, I didn't like the classroom. It was physically painful for me to be in there because the light. Of course I didn't like it, yeah. But the nurse was like, "Well, everyone else has to stay in class. You have to stay in class, too. You can't come to the nurse every day. You don't have a fever. You're not sick." And so I didn't know we had different brains, right? This is me in first grade. Everybody else, teacher says, "Everybody else can handle it." Okay, everybody else must be in pain too and I'm the only one complaining. So I need to learn to suck it up, tough it up, go back to class, and deal with it. Then I had migraines for the next 20 years of my life until I was 29, and diagnosed autistic.

Lyric:
Then I realized I don't have to have migraines. There is a trigger from the migraines, the fluorescent lighting, and the sensory overwhelm. If I avoid the sensory triggers, I don't have migraines anymore. Now I haven't had a migraine in years, but I was having them multiple times a week, regularly. Every time I went to the physical office I was working in, I was having a migraine. That was just my normal, because it had my normal since first grade. Everybody has to deal with this, you have to deal with it, too. It's so much pain in my life that could have been avoided by knowing I was autistic by respecting the sensory differences that we all have. Just how much noise canceling headphones have changed my life, going into public, like, why was I freaking out in the grocery store? Why does the grocery store make me feel like I need to run screaming and punch someone in the face? Why? I'm not an angry person, but why was I getting these certain feelings of agitation, just rage and angst? Because I was constantly in fight/flight because my anxiety was being triggered by sensory, hostile environment.

Lyric:
So it's like, I really felt like I was in danger because of the environment, and I was in danger because of the environment, because if I exposed myself to those triggers regularly, they caused me to have other flareups and some other chronic health problems I have, in addition to being autistic. I have the migraines, the vertigo that we mentioned, seizures. If I keep exposing myself to these triggers, I'm not getting enough sleep, I'm not taking care of myself, drinking too many substances, like alcohol, coffee, those things can have an impact on neurological function. I'm very mindful of what I put into my body, because I know it has a big impact on my sensory processing in those differences.

Jessica:
Absolutely.

Lyric:
You mentioned briefly, so many autistic people are looking for a solution to numb that and build that down. That's why substance abuse is a really big problem with autistic people, because it's like, you just want to recalibrate that. You want to tune that down. A lot of us are self-medicating, or self-medicating sensory processing. Just turn off the world, make it stop. Just give me a minute of peace. We're ADHD, a lot of us, so we're trying to self-medicate the ADHD because we're expected to perform neurotypically in the world, and we're just like looking for answers. If we don't have the diagnosis or the language to understand what's going on with us, we're just looking for any bandaid we can find because the world is so unforgiving and it's not suited for us. So we're just like, please help me survive this unsuited place that makes me feel like I'm the problem.

Jessica:
Absolutely. It's just so interesting how it's taken so long for the conversation to switch from the individual to the environment. Just like, and how different people handle that sensory overload differently, because I had learned from my mother who was so fiercely, it was kind of like we were behind the scenes and she would say, "I know that we're this way." She had a relationship where she survived by feeling like she was in on a practical joke, like the world is the way it is, but we know that's a little bit phony and we're going to operate and say, "Oh my God," what they're doing behind the scene, but then when we're in the world, like my mother couldn't function in the world. She could never get a break. Another topic that I wanted mention is diagnosis in a second, but she didn't have, she would never have wanted a diagnosis from the others in the world, because she felt who are they to tell me who I am? That was the kind of vibe that I grew up with.

Jessica:
I grew up doing the fawning thing in school all along. I totally fit the ADHD model. I hyper focused on my projects. I went to school and I couldn't understand what I was doing there. I wasn't able to hyper focus on my projects anymore. Everyone took them away and gave me projects to do that I wasn't interested in and told me that I was wrong. So I figured, well, I'm going to have to go behind the scenes like I've learned from my mother. If there was a test to take, I figured I had to cheat so I could just get the grade. I did a lot of the going to the nurse's office and I became very close with the nurse, and she would try to give me little special jobs to do so I could sneak out of class.

Jessica:
I became the, I figured out how to have relationships with different people to get out of being tortured, because I could not sit at a desk. I would do cartoons instead of the tests. I could never understand why the teachers didn't think I was so creative. Why would you want to fail me for that? Then the only option in my culture growing up, you either joined the theater group or you joined the drug addicts. Back then, so then I did experiment as a teenager with drugs, because I was like, oh my God, this other stuff is so boring. I would much rather just feel that wild sense of myself doing this other stuff, because I just am being executive functioned to death in these classes and in my home. That's a whole nother story of the dysfunction there, but nobody ever thought, well, let's talk about environments. Let's talk about maybe there's different kinds of brains who are seeing things from behind the scenes who could actually help create new environments.

Jessica:
When I started watching your Instagram videos and your Facebook stuff, suddenly I was like, oh my gosh, this person is so themselves, so all about being them. It was just so beautiful to see you, just totally embrace you. Then I started feeling sad about the pathologizing of so many people masking and people pleasing. For what?

Lyric:
Oh yeah.

Jessica:
I had a stepmother in high school who used labels to punish me. "Well, you must be such and such thing because there's something wrong with you." My relationship with diagnoses is very tainted. Well, I am never going to get a diagnosis, because that doesn't fit on me because of my trauma with that woman. But at the same, I feel like for me personally, I just embrace what anyone tells me they are.

Lyric:
Oh yeah.

Jessica:
And just so excited that people like you are creating environments for people to find themselves inside of, and relate with, and just seeing you with your pink, fluffy things that you spin around. I mean, that's just beautiful.

Lyric:
And having fun again. When I first started the blog in the fall after I had been diagnosed autistic, I was almost 30. It was just this big shock in my life. I don't know if I've even gone to get that diagnosis, especially a similar feelings. It was like, who is this medical definition of me? How dare they say those things about me, kind of a thing. I didn't like it. I hated it so much, but that I needed accomodation. It became very obvious. I had a job I thought was my dream job, but really it was my nightmare job. I know that now, but I thought I was like, I need this job. This is my dream job. This is it. I made it. I must keep this job. But I knew I needed a accommodation, and I knew without legal protection or some kind of diagnosis or proof, it was going to be really hard to get the accommodation I needed. I went through this diagnostic process, because my health had been falling apart. I had been getting really sick. I'd been wasting away. I'd been going through like all these other GP appointments with the general practitioner doctor, trying to figure out what was going on with my health and they couldn't find an answer for it. They're like, "Your stomach's fine. This is fine. Everything's fine. We don't know. We think maybe it's anxiety, have a mental health assessment, here."

Lyric:
Then it was like mental health assessment, oh yes, anxiety, but also, did you know you're autistic? Which I kind of knew was happening, because I did ask if I could see someone that had experienced autism, because I had stumbled across an autistic person's voice maybe about six months prior to that. But then when I Googled autism, the medical language came up. I was like, I read the autistic book that I had stumbled across by accident. Then I was like, oh, this is like me. That's really weird. Does that mean I'm autistic? And then Google autism... no, no, no. I don't think so, because I couldn't see myself that way, because it's even my strengths, like my obsessive nature, I think it is a pain in the butt sometimes if I'm obsessed with something that has no solution, but it also is my biggest strength, because it's why I'm a good problem solver. I can't let stuff go. I cannot let it go.

Lyric:
I'm an obsessed thing until I solve the problem, and people only knowing autism stereotypes and not understanding autistic masking and so many autistic people and neurodivergent people out there in the world who may not even realize in their lifetime that their brains work differently, and that means if they don't figure that out, they can't start to recover from the trauma and all of that internalized ableism that we all have if we grow up in this world that is not nice to us. They can't start that recovery and that healing journey, if they don't find out about their neurodivergent brains. Just like I can't stop until that problem is solved. And then it's like, then I see a new problem. Oh look, we're all underemployed. We're all unemployed. Oh no, another problem. Now I've been obsessed with all these problems for the last, almost six years in the fall.

Jessica:
You're getting diagnosed has opened up so many spaces for so many people, myself included, because it's been the bridge to seeing neurodivergence as a culture of its own rather than a pathology. I feel like neurodivergent thought and neurodivergent perspectives haven't had a chance to share themselves in an open forum. When I was growing up, if you heard about someone who was autistic or ADHD, well they said ADD, like oh, I feel so sad. Oh, and that, I can't tell you how that triggers me. Someone feeling sad for someone else is just such a [inaudible 00:17:17] thing.

Jessica:
That's why I love this emergence of another kind of reality processing, another kind of conversation to have, because these closed, listening to authoritarian voices, and executing task after task, I feel like it's kept so many things from blossoming in our society. Now that just these spaces are opening up and you, and there's a couple other people I've been really super inspired by with you, and it's made a difference not only for me, but for my son, because I was starting to do with him, not quite what I had gone through because I had gone a step up. I didn't want him to suffer. So, but instead I put him in the best Waldorf school thinking [inaudible 00:18:13] those guys.

Jessica:
But really in that Waldorf school, it was about the group. It was about being in silence in the lunchroom, and if someone's making noise, you have to figure out how to have empathy and... Well, my son, he was not having that. He was traumatized by the noise in the lunchroom. He was traumatized by having to sit at a art class and not paint monsters if he wanted to paint monsters and having his artwork taken away. I kept saying, he would tell me these stories, and I kept saying, "Well, let's give it some more time," because I didn't think I could homeschool.

Jessica:
But then I thought, well, now I'm going to go visit the school. So they let me go and visit. I spent three days at that school, and I don't mean to sound inappropriate or rude, but I felt like I needed to start smoking and drinking.

Lyric:
Oh, wow. Imagine how the kids feel. Yeah.

Jessica:
It was just, they were so kind and loving there, really. I didn't have a problem with who they were, but the structure, it just hit home. This is why I didn't function well in a traditional school, because I liked to engage and I liked projects, and I like to be project led my myself. So I took him out of school, and we been...

Lyric:
Awesome.

Jessica:
... healing in... we still have tons of problems, but we are healing in our own way. I'm learning from people like you and embracing different ways of looking at environments and how...

Lyric:
Yay.

Jessica:
Yes, yes.

Lyric:
Love it.

Jessica:
So I would be curious, in your experience of talking to so many people, I mean, where do you think the future of schooling is going? There's so many kids now who are just suffering and the conversation is just in its infancy, at least in my world. Maybe other people have been involved in it, but what's going to happen, I wonder?

Lyric:
Well, what will happen and what needs to happen are potentially two different outcomes, unfortunately. But something I know I've noticed in the workplace is we need neurodivergent people to thrive in the current system, whether it's the workplace system, the education system, or any other system we've got in place now. The neurodivergent people have to be able to flex the systems to our needs because the systems that are currently set up, unless we scrap them and create fully new systems, which I'm down for, they were set up without us. We didn't have input in these systems, in development of them. The education system being one of the ones that is the most flawed when it comes to neurodivergent people, in my opinion, and one of the most traumatizing experiences of my life was the public education system. We're going to have to do some major changes. We're going to have to scrap things.

Lyric:
So many of our programs, whether they're workplace or education, are segregated programs. They're separate programs. It's you go to your separate classroom, you have your separate things, all these things. As someone who's been pushed into separate pipelines in the education system, because I was in special education in elementary school, and I was in gifted and talented education at different times in my life, and I was in mainstream education, and I've been in private Christian academy education, trying to straighten me out because most of my struggles were labeled as behavioral issues. So more discipline, more punishment, more punitive measures were often applied to me trying to punish the autism and ADHD out of me, which does not work no, by the way. It was only very traumatizing.

Lyric:
But so the attitudes have to change from currently in the different systems, especially the education system, the attitude is not that the system is broken. It's that the student is broken and the student is the problem. It's like, no, actually, you're not teaching the student the way the student learns. That is not the student's fault. That is the education system's problem. It's in workplaces and in schools both. Neurodivergent people are often, what I would say, comparable to the canary and the coal mine, kind of thing, where we really are harmed by and cannot thrive in these systems as they are. It's very obvious when we are struggling, because we literally cannot get through these systems because they don't accommodate our needs. It would be like asking someone from another planet, or us to go to another planet, and be on the planet without an oxygen mask. It's not suited to us. We need an oxygen mask if we're on a planet that doesn't have air, because we need oxygen.

Lyric:
Well, the planet as it is now, the systems, aren't set up for neurodivergent brains, so we need to accommodate them and change them to adapt so we can live in these systems that weren't designed for us. We have to do that shift, but meeting the individual person where they are, whether they're autistic, ADHD, neurodivergent, or neurotypical, meeting the individual person saying, "What are your learning needs? How do you learn? How do you process information? How do you share information?" Meet the person where they are. Is this environment too loud for you, too noisy, too bright, too cold? How can we help you customize it so you can be your best version of your best self, and letting people, really, everybody, diagnosis or not, tailor the environments around them so that it is suited to their own individual needs.

Lyric:
Everyone, not just someone with a disability has different individualized needs. When you go through a separate channel and you have to out yourself, or it looks like special treatment, workplace or school, other people around you that want what you have are like, "Why do they get that? Why do they get to go for that? Why do they get this? I want that. Why do they get more time to stand up and jump around? Why do they get fidget toys in the classroom? Why do they get extra breaks at work? Why do they get to start late? I want that." That's the point, if it's things that everyone else potentially wants or could benefit from, why are we gate keeping these things that would make everybody else's lives easier or better? When you gate keep them and say, you have to have this thing to get it, it then like puts an unfortunate light on you.

Lyric:
As a kid, it drew attention to me when I was separated out and went to the separate special education room, the sped room, it was like the other kids made fun of me for that and mocked me for that and teased me for that, because I was being segregated and singled out. Anything that like singles you out, it's separate, it's putting you apart from the other people. You aren't really being included. It's not true inclusion.

Jessica:
That's so many profound things you've just said. Thank you so much.

Lyric:
I was like, uh oh I have a lot on this one.

Jessica:
I love that so much. While you were talking, I just, I kept visualizing myself, and there was a bunch of kids growing up in my high school where, it's like the kids who were always by themselves wandering around and kind of masked that outcast and kind of wore that as their badge. When I think about what you're saying, I think about how sad that is, because underneath that badge, underneath that coping strategy, was this blossoming, excited child and young adult, wanting to burst out of themselves on the scene, but there were no outlets. Then those pipelines you're talking about, people being separated. I mean, it's just like whoever thought of that idea was thinking about numbers and statistics, and not about humanity, because that is just the absolute opposite of thriving.

Jessica:
Not to say that people can't make beautiful connections in those spaces, but what a missing to not have what you were talking about, people being able to share what style of learning they have, what do they want to share? How would they like to express themselves and learn about the world together? I mean, that's like if I had that and growing up, it would just have lit me up and I wouldn't have wouldn't have needed all those unhealthy resources.

Lyric:
Oh, right.

Jessica:
It's just very delayed in terms of our... people talk about individuals having missed milestones. My God, the education system has missed so many milestones. This whole system is delayed.

Lyric:
Archaic.

Jessica:
Yeah. Archaic, and just with so many blocks to open those structures up to building new spaces. So I just hope that more and more people will listen to what you and other neurodivergent people have to say. I think little changes are happening, but not enough.

Lyric:
It's starting. I feel there's been a lot of progress in the last five or six years since I found out I was autistic. I will say it is better. When I was first diagnosed, you very seldom could find or hear autistic perspectives, which is why I went to the internet and started my blog because I wanted more and I couldn't find it. Then I was like, I want a way to find, or hear, information on autism from an autistic voice. I don't want to read these pathological mom autistic perspectives. They're observing us like ants with a magnifying glass. "The autistic person goes over and does this thing, and sometimes they do this, and we don't know what it means." It's like, you can ask us what it means and we can tell you.

Lyric:
I just, I have had enough of that. I wanted to hear autistic and neurodivergent perspectives. Now there's a lot more, even the major news outlets amplifying autistic voices. Because when I first started, anytime you saw a news story was usually a parent talking about their child being interviewed. You never heard from the autistic person themselves, and it was like everything was about autistic children. Now I feel like there's a much larger focus on autistic adults than there used to be, or the fact that... I know there's a big focus on late discovery right now. You see it in the media. People are like, late diagnosed autism, late diagnosed, late diagnosed. ADHD too, is having a boom. COVID, I think everyone at home stuck with the internet was monumental for so many people with all kinds of various forms of self discovery, whether it's coming out LGBTQA+ or coming out neurodivergent, I've seen so much of that over the past two years now. Gosh, it's been that long. Oh my, make it can stop.

Lyric:
But I've seen a lot of that. That's been, I think a good thing is, people have been having these realizations and the conversation shifting to it's not all children and there are autistic adults and we can share our own perspectives on what it's like to actually live as an autistic person, not just what it's like to live with an autistic person in your house.

Jessica:
Yes, and that is just so huge, because you're so right. In my past, when I heard about autism, it was somebody who didn't have autism or wasn't identifying as autistic, talking about those people. And now this whole emergence has happened, and for me personally, like with the ADHD stuff, it was the first time I'd ever heard the words, hyper focus, hyper fixate, and the coping strategies. I have been a picker my whole life, because if I'm not hyper focusing, I'm hyper fixating. I always tried to keep it to myself as a secret, because I feared what those people who talk about people, and not with people, I feared that I would somehow be less viable as a human being. When I started reading, because I love when you share what's it like for you. I'd love to hear what your experience is like.

Jessica:
Then you get to read all these different people's experience. It's so exciting to just hear, "Oh my gosh, I have that. Those are my two behaviors, hyper focus, hyper fixate, in the ADHD paradigm or whatever, and just tearing that in that concept. So many of my behaviors growing up, just the masking and the fawning, and just having words to that and having humor to just commiserate and be like, oh my gosh, I've been having this perception in here about there. My perception in here, it's like my main stage is in here. Then I go out there and try to navigate. Then some people's main stage seems out there, and then they don't know how to navigate so much in there.

Jessica:
I don't know, I try to figure out the difference between different operating systems, but all of these thinkings came out of people like you who are sharing what's real for you. That's why I was so excited to get to share with you and speak with you, because you are doing a huge, huge service to so many people everywhere. So I'm just...

Lyric:
Well, thank you. I try. I'm glad you enjoy the conversation starters because that's really my big thing. That was my one of my first, and continues to be one of my biggest passion projects. When I started the asking autistic hashtag, it was literally because what really bothered me at the core of everything when I was diagnosed autistic, was the stereotypes and the way people describe the autistic experience. I wanted to see autistic experience described by autistic people. But also I didn't want more stereotypes, or I didn't want more... I didn't want to become a stereotype. If I'm only sharing my own experience, which is all I can share. I can only share my own experience. I can't speak from anyone else's experience, and every single autistic person out there has a very different experience of autistic, of being autistic, or being ADHD, or both. A lot of us are both.

Lyric:
It's not a uniform thing. My partner and I, we're both autistic, but we both have very different sensory needs. We have different strengths and weaknesses. We're different, even though we're both autistic. I wanted, and I still have those conversations where I ask questions, even if I share some of my own experience, I often will close it out by asking a question about what it's like for other autistic people, because I want to see other perspectives that are, especially if they're different from mine. I want to see those represented, because I don't want to be another stereotype. I don't want to become the new autism stereotype. I want the differences. I love hearing how things were the same, because it was really cool to hear like, oh, this thing I thought nobody could possibly relate to, all these other autism people relate to it. Wow. It's really cool. Or most of them do Most people relate. Oh, wow, I'm not such a weirdo. I'm not so alone. That's great. But I'd really love to hear how all the autistic people are different from one another. That's so interesting to me. It's like, oh, my sensory nightmare is cold. Mine is heat, or I really love heat, I really love cold. Or, I think in pictures, I don't think in pictures. It's neat to see that we're not all the same.

Jessica:
Yes.

Lyric:
That's always going to be, I think one of my big goals, is to keep starting conversations so that we can learn from each other and not just me. I never want it to be just my voice, even though I'm using my experience to guess tell stories. Because I'm a theater kid, too. I'm a theater kid, so a theater kid and I'm a writer. So it's like, I tell stories and I've just been using my own personal stories to teach for the past few years.

Jessica:
I really get what you're saying, and when you were just saying that about celebrating, or just giving the space for all autistic experiences, I could just visualize you continuing to open up those spaces so everyone can share their own unique experience. I really like that, to just continue growing perspectives. Do you mind if I ask you, since we're running out time...

Lyric:
Oh, wow. Yeah.

Jessica:
I know. I've having such a good time talking with you.

Lyric:
It's been great. It goes by quick.

Jessica:
It does go by quick. But I'm thinking about the people who may hesitate to investigate neurodivergence for themselves. Maybe they feel like they'll be outed like we were talking about before, or they'll somehow feel less viable, or their mask will lose its value. I was wondering if you have any words to say, or any ideas to share with people who might be listening, who are in that context?

Lyric:
Yeah. Well, if you're neurodivergent, whether you really understand what that means for yourself or not, your brain's still going to be different, whether you choose to investigate and understand. For me, finding out I was autistic late in life was like being handed a guidebook to my life. I realized before I knew I was autistic, before I knew I was ADHD before I understood anxiety and what the panic attacks were doing to me, and understood how my brain worked, it was like I had the wrong users manual. So it's like I thought I was a Windows computer, and I had this Windows user manual and I'm trying to like operate my life using the Windows user manual for my Mac computer and it's not working very well. And I don't know why my Windows user manual's not working well for my Mac computer.

Lyric:
Then I found out I'm autistic. I'm like, oh, I'm a Mac. Here's the Mac user's manual. Now life is so much more simple. I'm glad to know. It changed my life, but you know, it also depends, too, what do you want to do with the information? I was at a point where if I was going to continue to operate in the workplace and work for other people, I needed to be accommodated to stay in the workforce. Although now I'm working for myself, so it doesn't matter anymore because I eventually just ended up in that direction because it's the way things happened during COVID. But I needed accommodation if I was going to stay in the job I was in, couldn't get the accommodation and end up leaving anyway, so it still didn't help with that.

Lyric:
But there are instances where getting that formal diagnosis may or may not be helpful. There are job and career fields for having a neurodevelopmental difference on your diagnosis might mean you're ineligible for that job, depending on the type of job it is. If you are a parent or guardian and you are going through any kind of family court or custodial situation, whether it's divorce or foster care or adoption or anything like that, there have been cases where having a diagnosis like autism, ADHD has been used against someone in family court...

Jessica:
That's terrible.

Lyric:
... to say that means they're unqualified, which is totally not true, because neurodivergent people make fantastic parents, especially for neurodivergent children, because we get them. That's a thing of consideration. Is it going to help you, or is it going to potentially make your life better, or could it be hazardous to have that diagnosis if you're going to go down the official diagnosis route? All of those things have to be considered on for the individual circumstance, because I feel like I'm in a place of privilege to where having that diagnosis, I was able to access it because it is... insurance a lot of times doesn't cover it for adults and so it can be very expensive here in America, especially. I was able to access it and had insurance and then it didn't even cover it with the insurance anyway, but you know, it's like I was able to get a diagnosis and I had that access, and it was more helpful than harmful for me, but that's not the case for everyone. Some people might not even have what they need to get the diagnosis, since it's like they're evaluating childhood.

Jessica:
Thank you for that. What about people who just want to embrace it without a formal diagnosis, as in a self diagnosis, would you say in your own experience or in the experience of people you've talked with, that having that knowledge that there's a different wiring in one's brain alleviates a lot of stress in terms of feeling unstuck?

Lyric:
Oh yeah.

Jessica:
Because that would be the word I would describe that you're the opposite of all the videos I've watched of you, you are not a stuck person.

Lyric:
Not anymore.

Jessica:
I feel, I'm wondering if that embracing or that being friends with that brain that you've been given and brains that I've been given and other people like that, embracing of one's natural operating system, like you were saying, provides a fluidity and like there's no longer this stuck in here and that stuck out there. There's a interacting that's less stuck. Do you find that?

Lyric:
Oh, absolutely. It's working with my mind instead of against it now. It's like, I know how to, like when I'm at my best and how to work when I'm at my best. I know how to chunk my tasks together. I know how to hack my brain now to get the most out of it. I know what's too much. I know the expectations don't have to be the same as they are for neurotypical people. And when I set my own expectations and in living a more autistic neurodivergent friendly lifestyle really tailoring to my needs, it has been the difference between barely surviving and being in burnout and not knowing how much more I was going to be able to take, to thriving and living my happiest, best life that I've lived in so many years. I can't think of another time in my life that I've been happier and more content.

Lyric:
A big part of that is knowing myself, knowing I'm neurodivergent and also saying, knowing that gave me some kind of strength to say, you know what? I don't care if I'm living life other people don't understand anymore. Darn them all. I don't care. I'm just going to live and do what I want to do, and I don't care what society thinks about it. I don't care anymore. I'm done. I spent too much of my life caring more about what other people thought than my own needs and not being true to myself. When I was stuck in that place, I didn't know my authentic self, and because I was not even sure who I was authentically, because I was just so people please-y and trying to be the perfect neurotypical, I couldn't even develop authentic relationships because nobody could even know the real me. I was really lonely and really miserable, and really tired and exhausted and burnt out and stressed and unhappy all the time. So it wasn't living. It was just existing.

Jessica:
Ah, so beautifully said. I really am grateful for you sharing that. That means a lot to hear. I have a feeling there's a lot of people who are really going to have that hit home for them. Thank you so, so much Lyric.

Lyric:
Yeah, thank you

Jessica:
So much fun talking with you. It's just really filled my heart just to hear your ideas and your experiences. I just honor you and thank you.

Lyric:
Oh, thank you. Thank you. This it's been a wonderful conversation and I'm honored that I got the invitation and we got to hang out and dive into this. So thank you, too.

Jessica:
Thank you Lyric, and I hope you have a beautiful rest of the day.

Lyric:
Yeah, you too. It should be nice out here at least.

Jessica:
Yes. All right, thank you again.

Lyric:
Yeah. Bye.

Jessica:
Bye.