Autistic Pride, with Zoe Darazsdi | Spectrumly Speaking ep. 161

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IN THIS EPISODE:

In this episode, hosts Haley Moss and Dr. Lori Butts speak with Zoe Darazsdi.

Zoe is a therapist, researcher, and autistic self-advocate who specializes in empowering teens and adults with ADHD, autism, trauma disorders, and other neurodivergence. Her private practice, Counseling Services of Zoe Darazsdi, centers a neurodiversity framework that depathologizes neurodivergent brains and decolonizes the counseling process. 

For more about Zoe’s work:

https://www.zoedarazsdi.com/

https://www.instagram.com/zoedarazsdicounseling/ 

 

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Spectrumly Speaking is the podcast dedicated to women on the autism spectrum, produced by Different Brains®. Every other week, join our hosts Haley Moss (an autism self-advocate, attorney, artist, and author) and Dr. Lori Butts (a licensed clinical and forensic psychologist, and licensed attorney) as they discuss topics and news stories, share personal stories, and interview some of the most fascinating voices from the autism community.

For more about Haley, check out her website: haleymoss.net And look for her on Twitter: twitter.com/haleymossart For more about Dr. Butts, check out her website: cfiexperts.com

Have a question or story for us? E-mail us at SpectrumlySpeaking@gmail.com

 

CLICK HERE FOR PREVIOUS EPISODES

 

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:  

Note: the following transcription was automatically generated. Some imperfections may exist.  

 

HM:  

Hello and welcome to Spectrumly Speaking. I’m Haley Moss, an author, artist, attorney, advocate, and I’m also autistic. And as usual, I am joined here by my co host, the one, the only, the legend herself…

LB:  

Dr Lori Butts, hi. I’m a psychologist and an attorney. I love my intro. Thank you. Haley.

HM:  

Of course. I feel like every time I have to come up with something new and exciting for you. We need to change the format, just to mess with everybody. And then you can be the one who starts us off. And then, you know, you have to come up with something for me.

LB:  

See, I’m not the creative one. So I think this works out really well.

HM:  

I was originally going for “the man, the myth, the legend”, but I’m like “the woman, the myth, the legend”, it doesn’t it lacks the same pizzazz and that’s not sexist, I promise. It just doesn’t roll off the tongue in the same way.

LB:  

No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t. We’ll have to figure it out.

HM:  

We sure will. We have many, many more intros to go, because somehow, and I think you’ve noticed this, but we’ve been doing this together for like, five years.

LB:  

Really? I’m always shocked. It’s been so long. It seems very short. I don’t know.

HM:  

We have been the dynamic duo around here since 2019.

LB:  

Wow.

HM:  

Look at that last time I checked, does indeed take us to about five years. 

LB:  

Wow.

HM:  

What a long, strange trip it’s been. 

LB:  

Yes it has been.

HM:  

But it’s a very fun one nonetheless.

LB:  

It’s so much fun. It’s always the highlight of my week, that’s for sure.

HM:  

I also enjoy it, especially because we could just get to meet cool people and introduce our listeners to new friends and old friends alike. But today, we have a new friend. Are you ready?

LB:  

I’m really looking forward to it absolutely.

HM:

So today, our new friend that we are welcoming is Zoe Darazsdi. And Zoe is a therapist, researcher and autistic self advocate who specializes in empowering teens and adults with ADHD, autism, trauma disorders and other neurodivergence her private practice, Counseling Services of Zoe Darazsdi, centers a neurodiversity framework that de pathologizes neurodivergent brains and decolonizes the counseling process. Welcome to the show.

ZD:  

Thank you. I’m so excited to be here. 

HM:

I’m excited that you’re here too, and to help kick us off. Can you share with our audience a little bit about your journey to receiving an autism diagnosis? 

ZD:  

Sure. So I grew up in the early 2000s in northeastern Pennsylvania, this sort of like remote part of Northeast PA. Well, all northeast PA is pretty remote, and growing up, I had a lot of differences from my classmates, and none of those were ever suspected to be autism or ADHD. So a lot of them were suspected to be behavioral, as if I was attention seeking, which was hilarious, because the last thing I wanted was for people to stare at me and generally considered to be just me being sort of difficult, if I even allowed those signs or indicators of autism to be noticed. Much of the time I was aggressively, sort of hiding things, not even intentionally, just with the understanding that, you know, I had to fit in and get along somehow, and I didn’t want to be in trouble, so I started working at this camp that was run by a local disability organization when I was in high school, and I found that I got along seamlessly with the autistic campers there, and it was like I was capable of predicting anything they wanted or needed or or what they were feeling or anything like that. And people would be like, How are you so good with them? And I would think to myself, well, because it’s like, what I would want or need, and I’m kind of just treating them like they’re me, and it’s going weirdly well. So then, when I was 19, and I was diagnosed with autism and ADHD in college, it was not surprising, but it made a ton of sense. And at that point, I really delved into trying to orient myself in the Autistic community, and that is very quickly when I realized that much of the dialog around autism in our popular society is controlled by non autistic people who seem to view autism as an aberration and inferiority, and that a lot of the. It. We have all these huge questions about autism that aren’t being answered, and we have huge portions of the autistic population, especially teens and adults, who are not being supported, who are being underserved. So that kind of guided my entire career. From that point on, I became a researcher to answer those unanswered questions, an advocate to put in an autistic voice and craft a lot of that ableist narrative, and a therapist to try and provide that support that I felt like was lacking for a lot of a lot of my autistic peers.

LB:  

Can you tell us a little more about your research and counseling?

ZD:  

Sure, so my research often focuses on autistic people’s experiences of anti autistic bias within their therapeutic alliance. So anti autistic bias, just meaning, essentially a dislike of autistic people or dislike of autistic traits. You could also regard it as an aggressive like pathologization of those traits. And generally, in my findings, what I found is that there are some people who Some clinicians who are openly hostile or cruel, you know, and then, for the most part, there are a lot of clinicians that don’t really know anything about autism. And this is also supported by other recent research that has come out that just don’t know anything about autism, but they do have these narratives in our society that they’re working off of, and these narratives are often stereotypes that are essentially like harmful in the way that they treat autistic people one dimensionally. But you know, nonetheless, therapists like if you don’t know any better, right, you’re gonna work off the information that you do know, even if it’s not accurate. So for example, a lot of it is like just insisting to clients that they couldn’t be autistic because, you know, you can’t be autistic, you have a job, or you can’t be autistic, you’re married, like as if those things are mutually exclusive, and then if they’re willing to acknowledge that somebody is autistic, a lot of the times, it can boil down to things like just Maybe not understanding the autistic experience or perspective. And really sort of treating autistic people like they might not be the authority on their own lived experience. So, yeah, that is a lot of what my research centers and then also and currently working on some exciting new projects with other counselors around the idea of decolonizing counseling. So for me, it’s really decolonizing counseling for autistic people by sort of de pathologizing autism and decentralizing the neurotypical, non autistic perspective on autism, right?

LB:  

What does that mean, like, can you? Can you explain a little more, what that what that would look like, what that means?

ZD:  

Yeah. So specifically the decolonization? 

LB:  

Yeah. 

ZD:  

Yeah. So it is not a secret, let’s say that the counseling field has colonial like it has colonizing roots, right? This is something that is well understood about in general the field of mental health care, in regards to the Autistic community, I see a lot of that colonization functioning in the way that we have this idea that to be non autistic is to be supreme, and that when we’re working with autistic people, we want to get them to be as similar to a non autistic person as possible, that that’s the treatment goal, and that, you know, the non autistic people should be leading the autistic person and all of their choices, including their therapeutic choices, and that essentially, our goal is to force the autistic person to be as good at as possible, at seamlessly blending or masking in the neurotypical society. And I think because of that, there might be, perhaps at times, a. Do focus on things like behaviorism or compliance, or, you know, a lot of different things that actually kind of leave autistic people feeling very much not heard right in therapy, which is the kind of the exact opposite of what we want you, you know.

HM:

I think that’s so interesting when you bring all that up too, and it also leads me to think about autistic people’s relationships with therapy. And for those who might not understand, can you share a little bit about holistic and trauma informed counseling and the basics on that, since I know so many autistic people are traumatized in some way, especially when you’re talking about things like masking and how we’re essentially being taught to conform and all this stuff. I know that there’s some overlap there, so I’m curious to know a little bit more. 

ZD:  

Yeah, I think that there is a tremendous amount of trauma that autistic people incur because they live in a world that is just not designed for them. And like a lot of the times, we have this understanding of trauma as what you know, what is sometimes referred to as big T trauma, right? So, like you were in a war, you were in a terrible accident, stuff like that. What we often see with autistic people is this, like complex layering of many different situations in which a person’s nervous system and their brain is absolutely overwhelmed by the stuff they’re subjected to, and they feel like they can’t escape it, and and that, in and of itself, is really quite traumatizing. It’s like a really great example of that is when we take an autistic kid and we put them in a school system that expects them to behave just like all the non autistic kids, right? And that kid is just every day subjected to horrendously overwhelming sensory experiences. A lot of bullying from peers and even from teachers. A lot of feeling lost and alone and left out and tremendously stressed out and overwhelmed, starting even when this kid is, you know, maybe in kindergarten or even preschool. Preschool, for me, was actually really, really challenging, um, and left me genuinely with, like a some, some psychological scars, yeah, so that’s an example of sort of how autistic people can incur that trauma. I think an important part of counseling for autistic people is recognizing that that is valid, that you don’t have to downplay your experiences or deny your right to have feelings about that stuff and also being in therapeutic relationships where your perspective is honored, even if it isn’t the predominant perspective. So a lot of the times, clients will say to me that prior in other types of therapy, they worked with someone who, you know, they said to them like, I don’t, I don’t think my teacher likes me. I mean, my teacher, it feels like it’s kind of making fun of me all the time, and, you know, she’s really critical of me, and I just don’t get what’s going on. But this is really upsetting to me. It’s really stressful. And the therapist had something like, well, is that really true? You know, trying to, like, really cognitively reframe things for the person, and that Scott can be really invalidating. Right to have your perspective as an autistic person always challenged, or even like you know myself as an autistic person, I think that being forced to be in a place with fluorescent lighting for like, eight hours a day. He’s hell to me, it really is, and it, yeah, it’s awful. Um, that is my perspective. I think it would be easy for a therapist to say, you know,oh, well, are you sure you just don’t like avoiding work, right? I mean, or is that really the case? You know? How can we figure out how to deal with this a little better stuff like that, rather than saying, like, yeah, you know, florencent lighting is horrendously over stimulating to you, and if you have to be in it every. Every single day for like a job that would be so bad for your brain like you know, so even just validating another person’s feelings is so important to helping them, even just feel safe to process a lot of the trauma that just collects in you as an autistic person in this society.

LB:  

if you were going to give advice to future counselors that want to give good care to clients who are are autistic what would that be?

ZD:  

Yeah, there’s, there’s so much to say. One is to kind of grow your awareness of what the popular societal narratives are about autistic people and self reflect on the extent to which you are making assumptions or perpetuating those because when we make assumptions about a person. We’re not really seeing them, right? We’re just seeing like what we what we assume they are. So for instance, a lot of the times there’s the assumption that autistic people don’t want friends, that we are asexual, which some of us are, but the assumption that all of us are asexual is actually inaccurate, and kind of like this assumption that we are lacking empathy, which is also inaccurate, that we are sort of robotic, that we can’t understand certain things at all, like we have no capacity to comprehend those things, the idea that autistic people are mostly met, which is a big part of how autistic women’s experiences get mislabeled, misunderstood, labeled as depression, anxiety or personality disorder, bipolar, etc, what it’s clearly autism, but it just doesn’t look like autism, because it’s a girl, things like that that are really like, oh. And also just this idea that autistic people are not very competent. I think that that insistence that we are incompetent has been tremendously damaging to a lot of us, because it results in nobody in our life believing in us or supporting us enough to help us get the kind of life we really want, you know, yeah, and those are certainly not things that we as therapists would want to perpetuate and to hear them spoken like that. It’s like, oh my god, yeah, duh. Like, hey, you know, don’t, don’t assume your client is an incompetent human being like, okay, that felt like basic advice, right? But it’s not a thing that I don’t think it’s a thing that most therapists are consciously doing. I just think that it is part of how human beings accidentally follow oppressive narratives to a point where the people that they’re interacting with aren’t actually being treated very well.

HM:

That makes a lot of sense. Your clients are lucky to have you

ZD:  

Thank you.

HM:

You sound like you are awesome at advocating with and for them. 

ZD:

Yes, I try. This is, yeah, I and, you know, nobody gets it right all the time. One of the most important things, I think, is like, especially for autistic people, that we feel comfortable saying, No, you misunderstand me, right, and not immediately being regarded as we’re being difficult. Because there’s plenty of times right, even like when we look at one of the most common techniques in therapy, is that the therapist is going to try to reflect back to what you said and reflect back the emotion that you’re talking about, right? It’s a, you know? It’s a it’s a common one, a common technique being used. There is nothing I love more than when someone says, No, it wasn’t that exactly. It was this, right? Right. Like, because that shows that the person is able to be comfortable enough telling me I’m wrong and helping me to understand them better, and also, like, critically, not just like saying, oh, okay, I’m gonna take this person’s narrative about me and just accept it. Like, oh yeah, that’s. Have been what I was feeling, but rather to to, like, think critically about what they’re actually feeling, which is one of those things that as autistic people, we’re often not really encouraged to, you know, I feel like, as autistic people, we’re always being told we’ll go with the flow and well, you know, you have, you have a lot of challenges with this or this skill. So just like that’s what you have to work on. Instead of really being invited to self reflect on what we feel.

HM:

I’m just processing, I feel like I’m learning a lot from this. So I appreciate you for that. 

ZD:  

Thank you. 

HM:  

So how can people learn more about you and the work that you’re doing?

ZD:

Sure, so I, I have a couple of different platforms that I’m on. I have a Tiktok and in Instagram, and I try to post on those relatively regularly. And my Tiktok and Instagram is just like Zoe Darazsdi Counseling. I have a very hard to spell name. I funny story. I had an idea for what I wanted my private practice to be called. And I had a couple ideas, and I thought these were really unique ideas, right? Like, I was like, no one’s gonna have this one. Then I googled it and, like, some random place in, like Canada would have it, but it was too late, like they took the name, right? Like they took the website, and it happened, like, two times, three times. And I was like, How is this possible? These like names are taken up. I said, you know who? It could not nobody else could have this name. Zoe Darazsdi, for a fact, having Googled my own name a bunch of times, there are really no other Zoe Darazsdi  on the planet. It’s a very unique name. The reality is, I

HM:  

It really is, I just Googled your name.

ZD:

No, no, yeah, um. So I was like, oh, okay, genius move Counseling Services of Zoe Darazsdi , that’s what it’s being called, short and sweet. Love it. And then, um, afterwards, I was like, but no one can spell it. Can they? So, um, so anyway, if you’re trying to find my Tiktok or my Instagram, you could probably look in the show notes or the description of the show’s title and find my name in there. And but yeah, so that’s those are two platforms I tend to be on the lot, and I have a website. It’s, you know, just a website with information about me and my practice. Yeah, so I really I foresee a lot of the future of like autism advocacy being led by autistic people. And something that I’m really passionate about is how autistic people can build community with other autistic people, right? Which is one of the reasons that I love listening to the show, is I feel like you guys promote that really well, and you do that really well, and you kind of like share these stories of like, I would say autistic joy or autistic excellence. So yeah, one of the the main things that I’m working on right now, in addition to, you know, just as always, seeing my usual clients that I see for individual counseling or for coaching, especially if they’re an out of state client, I’ll see them for coaching, is building, like, support groups of autistic peers run by autistic people. Um, that has been really fun. So far, I have a couple of those, and they’re, like, very low to no cost to be part of. So that is also something I wanted to put out there, in case anybody was interested.

HM:  

You are so cool.

ZD:

Thank you. You’re so cool. 

HM:  

We’re gonna do a little bit of transition so we can get to know well, not just get to know each other a little bit better, but also to get to talk a little bit about having this pride and positive self esteem within the Autistic community. So you mentioned a little bit about the support groups, and I was kind of wondering, how is it hard so or, why is it so hard for us to kind of, you know, have this sense of autistic pride and feel good about us as human beings, and not that something is inherently wrong and flawed like there’s so much I want to unpack here, but I really want to think about how, as clinicians, as human beings, how can we just, you know, be better at being autistic people and having this sort of pride and positive self esteem about it.

ZD:  

Yeah, you know, it is a tricky thing, because I think it involves holding two truths at once, right, like it is both true, for instance, that I as an autistic person like that, there is nothing wrong with the fact that I stim right, like, there just isn’t, like, it’s fine. I’m not hurting anybody. I’m helping myself tremendously. It’s usually a sign that I’m having a good time, like when I’m stimming. So that’s true, and also it’s true that in our society, when we see somebody acting differently, especially like as an adult, like somebody who we expect to be behaving a certain way, there is, like, a lot of judgment that happens there. So it’s hard, because it’s a survival instinct. Autistic people learn, Hey, be less autistic, right? Like we learn, like, tone it down, hide it, put it away. Um, every autistic person I’ve met can point to a time when at least one of their symptoms was met with, like, shaming and rejection. I don’t know if you if you guys feel like that’s relatable for your side. I want to talk for you guys, but no, of course, yeah, yeah. And so to say to autistic people like, just be super openly autistic in a world that we know is relatively hostile to autistic people. You know, understandably, autistic people will will give some pushback to that, you know, like, even for you guys, you know, do you feel like there’s anything that you feel often prevents you from sort of unmasking or or feeling more comfortable in your autistic identity.

HM:  

I feel pretty comfortable in being autistic, but I do think that there’s so much pressure to mask in certain situations. And I think even just feeling that our emotional reactions are valid, because I know that I feel things very deeply, and sometimes you’re like, Oh no, am I feeling too much? Or because I don’t have the right word for this. Is it invalid? Is it wrong? Is it this and realizing, you know, this is just how I experience life, yeah, good, bad or wrong. It’s just is.

ZD:

Yeah. And, you know, this like idea that we have to earn the validity of our emotions, emotions by having like, a good logical argument for why we deserve them. It’s like another aspect of like, the decolonization process, for a lot of people, is pushing back against that idea, and then also, like this idea of just sort of accepting that, like as autistic people, we can have big feelings, and feelings aren’t problems. You know, I think that’s another important part of being comfortable with the experience of being autistic, because if you always think of feelings as problems, for instance, like, that’s going to create a lot of internal struggle for you as an autistic person. You know.

LB:  

I think it creates problems for everyone. I think, I think it goes back to like, what you’re saying about, like the expectations, right? Like the other person’s expectation or, or the expectation placed on you over a lifetime. That’s where it gets so confusing, yeah, and, and so it’s just, it’s very important for, and hopefully we do this with the show is make sure that everybody feels good with exactly who they are, and that’s, you know, whatever that is for somebody’s experience that they feel, you know, happy and joyful and and positive about who they are and what they are and what they bring to the table, because everybody’s different, and everybody’s bringing something different to the table, and everybody has something really valuable to contribute.

ZD:  

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it is like often, I think, like when we think of unmasking as a binary, you’re masked or you’re not, right, it feels insurmountable to work through and truly like I don’t think that there’s anybody who is like privileged enough that they never have to mask, right? Because masking is tied to. Our safety, like our literal safety, a lot of the times, and it’s also tied to things like our ability to make money, like I often back when I before I worked for myself, I would refer to Job Interview use as the masking Olympics. I would just go in there and, man, I was working for it. I was trying to because I just knew that if I, if I, if they saw me as different, that this would possibly impede my ability to make money, when that was really scary. Um, like it would impede my ability to financially support myself. Um, so I think, like for a lot of autistic people, that’s part of why having a community of other people who understand you is so vital. Because we know that for the most part, like the world, has loads of expectations out of everybody. It has particular expectations from us that are, it’s easy to get caught up in them. It’s often literally unavoidable to adhere to them, and it’s exhausting to function under them. But having, like some people in our life, that we can just be ourselves around and they will accept us for that is so vitally important. One of my first like bosses and mentors that I ever had as a therapist opened like the first day of his training with me by asking me the question, Who is the person in your life who loved you? Just right, and that I was stuck with me because I was like, yeah, it wasn’t even it’s not even super important sometimes that everybody in the world treat you well or understand you. It’s not possible. You know, a lot of the systemic issues that we’re fighting against as autistic people likely won’t be resolved in our lifetime. I think we can make a tremendous amount of positive headway, but I think they’re kind of always going to be there a little bit, you know, or at least for the foreseeable future, for the next several decades. But if we could just have a few people who really understand us and who we feel really loved and supported by and like we don’t have to amend ourselves or even like constantly, oh my gosh. What’s the word for when people are interpret, like a prof languages translate, there we go. Oh, this idea of like, we don’t always have to translate ourselves with this person like that means so much, and it sucks that a lot of autistic people don’t have that. You know, I think that that is integral for many of us to feel a little bit more pride in ourselves as autistic people,

HM:

I think that’s great. I get excited and I get a little overwhelmed thinking about all this stuff too. Same. Yeah, maybe we shouldn’t burn ourselves out or get to that point, but I’m glad that we hopefully can develop these support systems community and really work on those things and realize that maybe something isn’t really wrong with us. So you know, one thing at a time. So thank you, Zoe, for being here and for talking with us.

ZD:

Yeah, thank you guys so much for having me. I have really enjoyed speaking with you. 

HM:  

Me too. So folks, be sure to check out Zoe doraskis work, and be sure to follow her on all the social media. Check out her counseling practice. We are huge fans around here. Obviously, as you can tell, as for the rest of us, don’t be afraid to check out differentbrains.org and check out their Twitter and Instagram @diffbrains, and don’t forget to look for them on Facebook. If you’re looking for me, you can find me at haleymoss.com or on all major social media. Looking forward to saying hey and keeping these conversations moving in the right direction.

LB:  

And I could be found at cfiexperts com. Please be sure to subscribe and rate us on your podcast app of choice, and don’t hesitate to send questions to spectrumlyspeaking@gmail.com. Let’s keep the conversation going.