Personal Safety on the Autism Spectrum, with Robyn Steward | Spectrumly Speaking ep. 157
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IN THIS EPISODE:
In this episode, hosts Haley Moss and Dr. Lori Butts speak with autism self-advocate, author, speaker, and musician Robyn Steward. Robyn is autistic and has been delivering fun, informative, and practical training to professionals, parents, and support groups for over 15 years. She has written 3 books: The Independent Woman’s Handbook for Super Safe Living on the Autistic Spectrum, The Autism Friendly Guide to Periods and The Autism Friendly Guide to Self Employment. Robyn is the co-host of BBC Sound’s 1800 Seconds on Autism podcast. She is also a musician and multi-media artist who has performed around the world.
For more about Robyn’s book and advocacy work, visit: https://www.robynsteward.com/
For more about Robyn’s music, visit: https://www.robynrocket.com/
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
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:
Note: the following transcription was automatically generated. Some imperfections may exist.
HALEY MOSS (HM):
Hello, and welcome to Spectrumly Speaking. I’m Haley Moss, an author, artist, attorney, and I’m autistic. Today, we have an awesome show in store for you. And to get us started, I am joined here by my one and only co host, who will now take the wheel and introduce yourself.
DR LORI BUTTS (LB):
Hi, I’m Dr. Lori Butts. I’m an attorney and a psychologist.
HM:
You know, usually we start off by asking how each other is doing. And I just wanted to say that when your routine gets thrown off, it is so stressful and my routine got thrown off today. No, yeah, I was supposed to have an appointment this morning. And they canceled. And of course, making those appointments is always kind of scary, right? And it takes a lot of energy out of you. And then you finally get that appointment. It takes like a month for you to see this doctor health care, whatever, what have you and then boom, there’s a reason that it gets canceled, and you plan your whole day around it. And then you don’t know what to do with the rest of your day. You’re left to mentally work yourself up to call them back to reschedule because they try to reschedule it after throwing this new wrench in your like disruption and routine. And you’re like, I’m overwhelmed at the thought of rescheduling and pulling up my calendar and all this right now. But then I’m thinking, Oh, no, I have to call them back. So I guess I just wanted to say that, you know, routines are hard. I know that’s not our topic of discussion for the episode. But that’s how my life is going right now. And I just thought that our listeners might be able to empathize and vibe with the fact that routine disruptions are kind of the worst, especially for the autistic folk out there.
LB:
Yeah, it is especially, I mean, all the planning and everything. And then, you know, it’s just it’s difficult, but you’ve managed to get through it. And we’re here and we’re going to do a great show and an all will move forward. But yes, absolutely.
HM:
Thank you for making me feel better about that. But like you said, we do have a great show in store for you. We have a fantastic guest who I personally am very excited to meet and learn more from. She is an author and I know so much about her books, and I get excited about books. Of course you know this, we know that whenever we do talks with authors, we get to meet people who’ve written books or I’ve read books, I always want to talk about that. So today is no exception. We are welcoming Robyn Steward. Robyn is autistic and has been delivering fun, informative, and practical training to professionals, parents, and support groups for over 15 years. She has written 3 books: The Independent Woman’s Handbook for Super Safe Living on the Autistic Spectrum, The Autism Friendly Guide to Periods and The Autism Friendly Guide to Self Employment. Robyn is the co-host of BBC Sound’s 1800 Seconds on Autism podcast. She is also a musician and multi-media artist who has performed around the world. . Welcome to the show, Robyn.
ROBYN STEWARD (RS):
Hi, thanks for having me.
HM:
Thank you for being here. And you are absolutely fantastic. So just to get our audience up to speed, would you mind sharing with us how you became involved in the autism community?
RS:
Sure. When I was 17, I was in a further education college. So I come from the UK. And here in the UK. When you get to 16 Well, you don’t have to stay in school. Do you have more options, and one of them is further education college. And traditionally, further education colleges have been waiting to do vocational training on trends being mechanic or an IT technician, that kind of thing. And many of them do do the sort of general school things as well. But the nice thing about it is that you’re treated as an adult, and you can leave when you want to do that stay on campus, you can take your time and things and also it’s a mix of age ranges from 14 in some cases, up until people you know who are past retirement age. So like a real big range of people. So you generally get a wider range of people and I had had a very successful year in college and an unreal to a different one to do different calls. And I started to get bullied. And luckily there was a cheetah that Nisha and she had started an autism support group. And she invited me along and what one of the things that we all learn from each other is we were all having similar problems that seemed to revolve around non autistic people not understanding autistic people, but equally I felt like oh, but as autistic people I’m not sure we always really understand the non autistic be believer, like this communication, understanding thing works both ways. And at the time I was being like, they were saying that I was bringing bullying on myself, and I really didn’t understand what they meant. And so a group of us decided that thing we could do is to do staff training and danisha supported us to do that. And after the first session, did you she said, “Oh, Robyn, this could be the start of your career.”
And I really just thought she was just being nice and, and, you know, supporting. But it turns out, she was right. And, you know, almost 20 years later, now, I’m still traveling in giving talks, I do more sort of creative work. Now, partly because I had the opportunity to do that. But that is basically how I started working in autism. And the way I started doing research was I was at a conference and there was a psychiatrist, and he was talking about stimming. And he asked a question that he didn’t want an answer to. He said, When have you ever met an autistic person who likes to stim? And I put my hand up, and I’m like, Well, I liked them. Sometimes everyone is, of course different. But there are many autistic people who like to stand up. And he was like, Oh, well, it’s the only time people who are autistic like to stem this because when they’ve been told not to, and I was just like, that is mostly the opposite for most autistic people, most autistic people like following rules. So, you know, everyone is different. But it made me realize that this guy who would need your typical and, you know, as a psychiatrist with a medical degree, he had all the power and everyone was listening to him. But there wasn’t any representation of autistic people. And yeah, sure, I was putting my hand up and saying my experience and saying, Well, you know, but also everyone is different. But he wasn’t presenting anything based on a wide range of autistic people’s experiences. And I really felt that was wrong. But I also felt like what he’s saying is a load of rubbish. And I started a survey to ask autistic people about stimming. And within nine hours, I had 100 responses, it was quite incredible. And so I started working as Risa and chair, but the only reason that I was interested in doing was research, it would benefit the autism community. So like, in that case, I felt like this guy was not benefiting the autism community, potentially, by telling people these things about stimming, though, that could do damage to somebody’s self confidence and self esteem. And I felt like, you know, it would be of service to the autism community. If I could tell him why I asked 100 autistic people did you ask 100 autistic people? Well, when you’ve asked 100 autistic people, why don’t you come back? And then we can have this conversation again. So it was kind of in a way, like a, like an intellectual protest, I suppose. And that, that is kind of why I wanted to do research. It wasn’t like I’d say I’m a community researcher, rather an academic researcher.
LB:
So that kind of leads in to, to my question about kind of the transition between your early advocacy with your own teachers, educating them about your autism to now going around the world, educating people all over the world about autism, and you kind of tell us that whole transition that you’ve experienced?
RS:
Well, I was always interested in how other people experienced the world. And other people that there were three of us doing that original training, training the teachers, but the other two people wanting to talk about law, one of them wanted to talk about special school, and why that wasn’t a great experience with someone else was talking about their sort of daily life experience of going into college. And I want it I really wanted to do this training, and I needed to find my niche. And I was like, wow, someone’s got to explain what autism is, like, our honor, like to, to kind of frame the information that they’re getting, so that, you know, they’ve got the context of that, I suppose. And so I started to do research about autism. And I learned about theory of mind, which, I guess in a nutshell, is being able to imagine how somebody else might think or feel. And autistic people can really find that difficult when they’re thinking about non autistic people, but many autistic people find it much easier to predict other autistic people. And I think that works vice versa. I think non autistic people could find it hard to imagine how an autistic person might feel but find it easy to imagine how a normal autistic person might feel.
Obviously, everyone’s different, but I read that and I was like, oh, that’s why they’re telling me that I was bringing bullying on myself. I need to kind of be more Tactical to make the bullies leave me alone. And so that was like very eye opening to me. And then I did try to work in normal jobs, like I worked in a PC, like a computer store and various things. But I kind of never found, I found that very stressful, I found having to do it sounds weird, but having to do work that where I had to like do six or 12 hours, and then have 12 hours or 14 hours off, and then be back again, like that kind of things very exhausting for me. But somehow doing three or four hours of very intense work, even eight hours of very intense work, and then, you know, a day or two break that kind of work for me. So, in a way, I became a trainer out of necessity of that I needed to earn money, but normal sort of typical employment, I don’t really like what normal but you know, like sort of their nine to five kind of situations just was not working for me. And so I was like, oh, okay, I could maybe do more training. And I just started ringing colleges up, and just saying, I, I’ve done some training at this college pattern and come and train your college. And a few people said, Yes, and I did the same schools. And then over time, I just build that up. And then when I was I did a one year at university, and university didn’t really work out for me.
But one thing I did start doing is mentoring young people. And I was working with autistic people. Actually, when I did the training, there were two of us who are autistic. And I noticed in the group feedback that the other guy who’s autistic, when he was also working with an autistic young person that he was taking, yeah, if the young person didn’t want to work with him that day, he was taking it very personally. Whereas for me, I was like, if my young person doesn’t want to work with me, or they’re very angry, or you know, that I’m there to serve their needs, they are not here to serve my own. And so may be one, it might, I might need to reflect on my practice, but also, this reaction might have absolutely nothing to do with me whatsoever. Because the context and the situations to be considered. And so I but I also saw that the teachers would say, you know, those doing a good job, and that I kind of found that, yeah, I just I don’t know. I mean, to me, it just seemed like are just, I was listening to these young people and just treating them to humanity. And it seemed like kind of, well, emotionally stay in a draining. But, you know, kind of what I needed to do to be a mentor kind to me seemed straightforward. I just kind of some people might say I had a knack for it, I suppose.
So I did that. And through that, I started, obviously learning about more artistic people and learning on a deeper level, because I was working one to one young people. And then I started working with adults as a mentor. And then when my first book came out, I kind of I wanted to try and give people the second slot every week, because I know that, like you were saying, hey, about schedule changes can be difficult. And once the first book came out, I couldn’t do that anymore. So I stopped mentoring. But I continued to do research and run workshops. And some of the workshops I’ve run are with autistic people. And obviously, the research that I do is, you know, aimed at being both a community rather than something being done to the community.
HM:
I really love that approach. And thank you for sharing your story with us and everything too. So kind of you’ve met started touching on writing your books, and something that I really love about your work is that your books tackle topics that aren’t often talked about or written a lot about, for the automotive community. So what made you decide to tackle topics such as safety and periods and things in self employment, things that just don’t often get talked about?
RS:
Well, so the safety book came about cause basically, I experienced sexual abuse, and then I saw it happening to someone else. And I reported it to the police and I helped the best I could to support the other person to leave the situation. After I had managed to leave the situation, really, there was a pretty stressful time. But I just felt like this, that yes, there was a system, you know, like, there are refugees and there are social services and safeguarding teams and things like that, but in terms of actually saying something to a person like — people have been through these similar things, and you’re not alone and giving you practical strategies. I just felt like, there wasn’t a lot out there. And I felt particularly around sexual abuse, people didn’t want to talk about it. And I totally understand why I totally get it. But I really think that it’s, it’s sadly very common in the autism community for people to be sexually abused. And I think it’s really important that we talk about it, and that people are able to heal, because I think sometimes, sometimes people are given therapy, and that that works for them. But obviously, if you don’t have a therapist who knows about autism, then it might be that therapy is less than sectors, and it would be for non autistic person, just because your therapist doesn’t understand autism. Well. And I mean, if you get lucky, and they understand you, that’s great.
But I think a lot of people, you know, I think, for example, cognitive behavioral therapy can work for autistic people. But I’ve heard a non autistic people say no negative things about it. But I’ve also then had people talk about it and be like, well, actually, for autistic people, it’s probably better if you focus more on the behavior than the condition part of CBT, for example. And also, obviously, the way that autistic people communicate and process information might be different. And so if you don’t have therapists understands that, that can be an issue. So I really safety for me was like, I want to write something for people, like me and this other person that have had this experience, because they shouldn’t be, they shouldn’t feel alone, I want people to know there’s other people out there and try and give practical information, but also to those supporting them. Because I just thought like, the a lot of these services are not autism specific. And they don’t have a lot of knowledge about autism. And maybe if they had some tools, so they could use, they might be able to support people better. Because along that journey, we met some lovely people. I mean, some people they were doing their job. And, you know, that was what they were there for. But other people genuinely cared. And we’re really wanted to help them best they could.
So I think that it, yeah, it seemed like if I could do anything, or like, like I learned a lot from from working with young people. So I could do anything that could help in those situations, any tools or you know, and I did quite a lot of research for that book. And even just highlighting the issues, I mean, to me, that was very important. So I hope that is helpful to people that that was my main name, the period book, I have to say when Jessica Kingsley publishers, my my publisher, sometimes they’re shown to jkp, when they said they wanted me to write a book about periods after say, I wasn’t that enthusiastic, because I was like, oh, but periods that’s like biology, like just because you’re my room is probably no different to another person’s womb, just because I’m autistic. I don’t think my room was autistic particularly. I mean, I don’t know, I’ve never seen my worry. But I’m getting the my room because it doesn’t have a brain. And obviously being autistic is is, you know, your brain develops differently. If my room doesn’t have a brain, I don’t think it can be autistic. So that’s then. But then I did a survey and I’d start most of my projects with a survey of 100 autistic people and 100 non autistic people. Because I want to know, what is it that autistic people are experiencing that’s different in all autistic people so that when I write the book, I focus on those things. So in a way, the non autistic group is sort of telling me almost what not to focus on. And like, so obviously, when periods Yes, it is a biological function. So I will obviously have to explain that because that is universal to all people that have periods. But the autistic group, it was always kind of like there were two main groups within the autistic group. There are people that had life hacks, and the people that did them.
So there were people who really experienced a lot of sensory issues around periods, and didn’t really were really struggling with it. And then there were these other people whose same issue, but they had found like menstrual cups and period pants and bluff pads, and that they had found those very effective for managing many sensory issues that come with periods. And I was like, Oh, so this book could bring that knowledge that those people who’ve got those life hacks, it could bring that knowledge to more people and that would benefit everybody. And also, when I was looking at the books are about periods, most of them had cartoons. And I was like, there is this idea, I think it’s called the literary, I think it might be called the literary continuum, but it’s about how it’s kind of about the simplest ways of communicating. So if written text is the hardest way from, you know, is the most far from reality. And then spoken language might be the next one down. And, you know, and then the the, the, like, the simplest way to explain to someone is to physically show someone. And obviously, with a period and a book, you can’t really do that. The next one is photos. And so I wanted to use botones. But I also wanted it not to be, I wanted them to be the right way around, if you had a book on the floor, and you were sat on the toilet, basically, because I know that many autistic people struggle to flip images in their head. So the idea of having step by step of how we use a tampon, or how we use a pad or whatever, having that the right way round. So you could have the book on the floor, but also having flap systems so that you could cover the squares that all the images are all on grids. And so you can, there’s a page of flaps you can cut out, and then you can lay the flaps over the grid. And that way, then you can just, you know, pull up the flat when you want to look at an image or not. And so that way you haven’t control. And then also I wanted to have, I made some photos of what periods actually look like. Because it’s really important to people, like know that. Otherwise, it could be a massive shock, and we’re in frightening. and the Self Employed book that came because I’m self employed. And I I wouldn’t be I don’t think I could have a jump jump, like a nine to five, Monday to Friday kind of job. And I have tried in lots of different professions to sort of be normal in the quotes, but it’s just now has never worked for me. And so I, I think self employment is very important to me, but I think it could also help a lot of other autistic people. And I think it’s often seen as, as being like, an all or nothing like as if you have to just be self employed or employed. But there’s many people that have both. So if someone is employed, and it’s not working for them, they can do a bit of self employment on the side, and gradually transitioned to being self employed.
But I think a lot of people when they think of self employment, they see it as being very scary. But because so basically, my dad was self employed from when I was about about 15 or something, maybe 16. And so I grew up with a parent who was self employed. And to me that was perfectly normal. And so it wasn’t scary. And actually, it was something that my parents encouraged me to do because they said that I would really struggle to have a thing they said, I’d struggle to have a boss I don’t actually think I struggle to have a boss. But what I struggle with is getting overwhelmed and it taking the time to process things and that certain situation seem to cost me a lot more energy than other people that seems to be because actually I get on well with people and I don’t really when I’m in working in a team there is a an obvious obvious hierarchy. I don’t find that I sure will out with the person who’s in charge or anything. And maybe because I’m in environment, that understanding I’m not sure but I felt like self employment, it would be something that would help a lot of people.
LB:
Robyn you’re so scientific in your approach to all these things. It’s, it’s fascinating that I mean, it just it makes logical sense. But the fact that you know, you do these, you know, survey 100 people, autistic and not and get the feedback. I mean, that’s like, you know, you’re doing your own research and you’re scientist but and then you also have this other interest in music and the arts. So how do you how did you go from science to music and the arts?
RS:
Um, I mean, to me they’re very linked. I guess the way it became something that paid me money was, I was I came across this arts organization, there are knots pocket called Heart n Soul. There’s no and between the heart and soul, it’s just the letter n – Heart n Soul. They’re based in southeast London in Deptford and I believe in power or power and talents are people who learn disabilities and autistic people and when they say learning disabilities in the UK, the UK well intellectual disabilities is learning disability or the UK term. So I guess it’s two words. But anyway, so that’s what they mean. And I just found I started going to Heart n Soul events. And I just found that I really fitted in there. They basically that they had some funding from the Wellcome Trust, which is one of the biggest funders of health research in Europe. And this funding was to do this project called Heart n Soul at the Hump. And it was a two year project, and it was mixed thing, research, and people learning disabilities and autistic people. And I got invited to be part of the team. And Heart n Soul, yeah, I think they just really appreciate having me around. And I started running music jams there. And yeah, they just kept asking me to do stuff. And so now I work with them a day a week. And I think, yeah, that’s honestly it’s like, changed my life, it’s the first time ever had a stable income, and, and a predictable income, but also doing a job that doesn’t cost too many spoons. That’s kind of how it started to earn me money.
Through this, I was wanting to help a friend to go to the big band had expressed an interest in joining a big band, which is a big band is kind of like 1940s, sort of Jazz Orchestra music and there was a local one shot adults that are further education college called Morley college and that I wanted to encourage a friend to go on and off I go, maybe, then they’ll go because I can do with them, because I’ll know what it’s like. I can, you know, sort of be, you know, blood, the lookout. They never went, but I actually really loved it. And I really got into it. And the teacher really helped me to learn music and using my ears, I have a eye condition. That means my eyes are constantly moving up and down. And it makes reading music hard because music is written on five lines. And it Yeah, I started doing that. And then I saw this band called Space heads. And there’s a guy there. He plays trumpet through guitar pedals. And I was like, wow, I want to do that. And then I like really got into doing that. And I just want to do that more. And then and went to a workshop. And I learnt how to improvise. And then I’ve just learned to improvise with people. So then I started going to Janssen improvising, and making a whole new network of friends. And I suppose that yeah, like it grew out that.
HM:
That’s really incredible stuff. And you’ve mentioned a lot about Heart n Soul. And I’m wondering how can we learn more about what you’re doing and also what they’re doing? So how can we follow your work and everything as well?
RS:
Well, you can go to Heart n Soul’s website. And you can also follow them on social media. So it’s Heart n Soul. And I think on social media, they’re heart and soul art. And they also have a handle heart and soul discovery, which is where they post about the research. And I’m my creative stuff is Robin rocket. Robin ROBYN and my autism work is just Robin Stewart. I tend not to post so much about my autism work on social media. My art stuff is Robyn Rocket, and I’ve gone a night which you can tune into online. It’s called Robyn’s Rocket. I’ve been remember is spelled ROBYN. I’m on Instagram. But yeah, my website, RobynRocket.com. If you’re interested in autism stuff, RobynSteward.com. And there is like, you know, books and publications that have done that kind of thing. And also, like getting some videos and stuff.
HM:
Thank you so much for that. So we’re going to do a transition because we are having a theme here. And what we usually do in our segments is we try to talk about a topic that’s relevant to our guests knowledge and expertise. So we wanted to talk about safety for autistic women. And something that has come up as as we’re having this conversation, of course, is a lot of vulnerable things that have inspired and that have inspired Robin that have happened throughout many of our lives. And are there a few tips from your book that you would like to share with us to help us be safe and not an hopefully not to be as you know, afraid or perhaps empowered to live our lives as safely as possible?
RS:
Well, I think a lot of autistic people can get they anxious, which is very understandable. And and I think that thinking about if you’re feeling anxious about something and it’s holding you back, I think think about the worst thing that could possibly happen and what you would do if that thing happened, and how likely it is to actually happen. So for example, if you were feeling anxious about taking the subway, you Yeah, you know, like, an obvious anxiety might be if there was a terror attack. Well, that that is a you know, that does happen from time to time, however, you can learn, you know, where the you can learn what your local city or wherever you’re traveling, you know what their safety plan is like what you should do if you’re in that situation. But also, it really doesn’t happen that often. So it’s very unlikely. So and but also, you can be more specific around your plan of that, and really thought about that. Until I just said that, but like, if I was concerned about that, then maybe, for example, on a bus, I wouldn’t sit at the front or back in the bus, because it’s more blocks, I try and sit maybe on the window, and I’d have a bag on my lap. And I know that I could cover my face with a bag, because same, maybe a same subway, maybe I would base away from the windows. And maybe I’ll redo some research about what should be in the front carriage or the background, you know, things like that. So I think how you plan can help. I also think that if you really help to think about where that anxiety comes from, because it could just be you’re just an anxious person, and you worry about everything, which is totally, totally legitimate.
However, if that anxiety came from post traumatic stress disorder, for example, and sometimes the triggers for PTSD can be smaller for autistic people, then you then you might want to think about ways of, of treating that like, you know, because PTSD is an illness that can be trialed. So that might be a thing. And another thing aside from from that would be to make sure that you have a group of people that you talk to, that you trust, and that you can check things out with. And so sometimes when like that, particularly when you’re a young adult, and maybe your parents are trying to help them think of this list, they might want to be on this list. But if you don’t feel comfortable to talk to them about anything, then well, maybe they could be on the list, but you need to have people you really feel you can trust, but also people know that are trustworthy people. And that, you know, don’t don’t add some people can be related, but having non related non family, people within that nest is also important so that if something happens, or you’re not sure about situation, you can check out the few people and get a general consensus. And you can use that as as a bit of a guide. And I think that, you know, that being connected with people and being able to ask for help. And if you’re not connected to the people, are there local nonprofits, that you could connect with other local special interest groups, or intense interest groups, as Jamie says, like, you know, like just finding people that you feel safe with and that you trust? I think that that is, yeah, that that can be very important, because they can help guide you.
But I also think that sometimes autistic people can get in these situations that they kind of know aren’t good situations, but they feel like this is the only option. And I, I feel it sometimes as an autistic person, particularly if you’re under a lot of stress, that sometimes you can think in a binary way. And some people might describe as quite rigid way. And that can be definitely can be me. And obviously everyone’s different. But if that’s something that applies to you being aware that that can happen. And then being able to take a step back and being like, Oh, am I being rigid about this? Am I seeing this in, you know, just in a? Well, I’m either say I’m even friends with this person, or I don’t have any friends. Because actually, if I wasn’t friends with that person, actually, I would still be friends with all these other people. But you only know that by stepping back and having that perspective, or knowing that you cannot ask other people. So I think, yeah, obviously everyone is different. And I never want to say, obviously, I’ve not met every autistic person. And even if I had I’m only me, so I can’t talk gradual, but I think that that’s, that could be something that that could affect other autistic people.
LB:
I really, I really like how you start every kind of problem solving with with a little like scientific inquiry. Right? It’s like, the first step that you talk about is like doing some research like how realistic is it that you’re going to be injured in some kind of situation. And so you have It’s like foundational, scientific curiosity. That’s like, it goes into all of your problem solving the thinking and your work that you do. And it’s, I love that. It’s really, it’s, it’s really like a brilliant way to, to start, you know, the process of thinking things through.
RS:
Well, thank you. I think some of it comes from, I was always like that, as a kid, that I would always ask why. And my mom is a scientist, she’s a biologist. And so she thinks about things so deeply, and she would give me a chance to look things up in books, or, you know, like showing pictures and stuff. So I was always taken seriously when I had questions and was always interested, and asking about and understanding why I don’t think you can make good decisions in life, if you’re just led by your emotions, you need, I think, to really search things. And they, I mean, like, maybe you can make music based purely on emotions. But if it’s about making practical decisions about stuff, I think that you need to do a bit of research because otherwise your emotions can get ahead of you. And then then you’re being governed by emotions. And the emotions are really based on that. It’s a bit like, you know, unrequited love. And that unrequited bit is because the other person’s will feel that way about you. So you are having this big emotion loss for someone, but they feel that emotion for you. But if you will lead by just that emotion and not by your research, and his the other person actually felt that way about you, then, you know, that would be a disaster for everyone involved. So I think the whole like breaking things down small pieces, and like really investigating it and trying to practically look at things before we focus on the emotions. To me, that just seems logical.
HM:
I think that’s a great way to go and to look at it as a logical thing in order to stay safe and in order to plan things out. And I think that’s a great thing for us to keep in mind as well as that. Sometimes that anxiety can feel overpowering. But when we take a step back, and we look at it from a more rational scientific approach, as you often do, that maybe it’s not so bad, or maybe that we actually can have a great strategy. I think that’s a great place for us to end be sure to check out all of the amazing work that Robyn Steward is doing. Thank you again, Robyn for joining us today. And teaching us a little bit about you, and all of the amazing work that you do, be sure to check out all of Robyn’s work and as for the rest of us, be sure to check out differentbrains.org Check out their Twitter, X for that matter, excuse me, and Instagram @DiffBrains. And don’t forget to look for them on Facebook. If you’re looking for yours truly I can be found at Haleymoss.com or you can also say hello to me on Facebook X Instagram or your social media platform of choice.
LB:
I can be found at CFIexperts.com. Please be sure to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts or your podcast app of choice. And don’t hesitate to send questions to spectrumlyspeaking@gmail.com. Let’s keep the conversation going.
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.
