Life Uncut - LOVE ON THE SPECTRUM

Episode Date: June 28, 2021

Happy Tuesday Lifers!You all know that here at life uncut, we love love; and we also love Love on the Spectrum!It’s the show where young adults on the autism spectrum navigate the unpredictable and complicated world of dating and relationships. Joining us today on the ep are: the wonderful Kassandra, who is one of the participants on Love on the Spectrum, as well as Jodi Rodgers who is a relationship expert with an extensive history working with people of mixed abilities. In this episode, it’s made clear to us that Love on the Spectrum isn’t a show for autistic people; it’s a show for neurotypical people to better understand how autistic people live and see the world a little differently.Kassandra tells us how and when she was diagnosed, and how different it can be for boys and girls, & breaks down a lot of the misconceptions about autism.We also talk about how it’s really hard to look forward to anything at the moment because of how easily it can all be whisked away, the lockdown and the woman who married a dolphin that *very sadly has passed away. If you loved the episode please hit subscribe, 5 stars, leave a review and share the love, because, well, be love love xSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura and I'm Brittany and I am coming to you from the deep, dark and seedy place that is Sydney in lockdown. Oh, here we are. Hang on, hang on a hot second. You are literally in my lounge room. Are you saying that that is deep, dark and seedy? Because I cleaned that.

I'm coming to you from the deep, dark and seedy place that is Brittany's apartment. Thank God that you gave me keys though, because, okay, so obviously you guys know Britt's overseas. Britt gave me keys to her apartment and I have been sneaking up here, which is fine because it is very COVID safe. There is nobody here at the moment. I'm all by myself, but I've been coming up here to record. There is no way that we would have been able to continue to bring you this podcast. If it meant me recording in the house with the two kids and Matt and a dog, it's chaos. Everything is chaos. The floor is lava. I knew that you'd need a safe place. So yeah, I've been telling Matt, Hey, I've just got to go up and do some work. And I've literally just

been sitting here on the couch in the serene silence. No, but I did. I very likely gave keys to two friends that I said you can come and go as you please if you need a safe place if you need a bed so also just water my plants and look after everything thanks love you bye guys you don't come here for us to be sad you come here for the uplifting content however we cannot avoid the fact that one half of us is very much in Sydney lockdown at the moment so for anybody else who's experiencing it we just want to say that our thoughts and our feelings and our love and everything is with you and for everybody who is in Melbourne who's thinking oh it was about time that sydney got their turn of this we're all in this together guys no and what laura said is right

you don't come here to listen to the dark gloomy stuff but we do just want to say like our thoughts are with you my thoughts are really with you over here and i mean i lived it last year as well we're very lucky we didn't do it for a long time but just make sure that you guys stay really connected with each other you reach out to each other you have your zooms you you can play online games like just try and find a way to stay connected because we know how much mental health can suffer in this time. And there was somebody who actually wrote on our Facebook discussion group. So if you haven't joined the discussion group, jump on. It's Life Uncut Discussion Group on Facebook. But somebody who has lived and breathed and done the Melbourne lockdowns actually did a post the other day and I

love this. It was her 10-point plan for how she survived Melbourne lockdown. And I just want to read off some of these because I took a screenshot of it today and I was like, this is what I'm going to do for the next two weeks. Number one, change your room around. It's like having a little mini holiday. Two, start a project. I started a dot painting and it took me weeks, but it's something that you can accomplish easily. Number three, I YouTubed and learned how to knit. I love this. I'm not that self-motivated to learn how to knit, but like, I really appreciate this. Maybe I'll get some more plants. Four, the freezer is your best friend. Number five, use Amazon Prime for next day delivery. Number six, make sure you mix it up. One day eat in your bedroom. Maybe one day eat on the

couch maybe one day eat on the balcony really keep yourself guessing here guys number seven declutter while you can pick a room each day and just go for it number eight plan a date night with your friends on zoom where you all order food from the same restaurant and then you sit down at the same time and eat it together it feels like you're actually catching up with friends properly number nine make the most of not having to wash your hair okay i've embraced this one make the most of not having to wash your hair if you're trying to retrain your hair to only wash it once every x amount of days this is the perfect time because you can look like crap and no one is going to see number 10 if you can have fresh flowers in your house and I love this and I wanted to say thank

you to the person who wrote this and shared it with all y'all in Sydney I love all of those I particularly love and I think this was really good like this was a suggestion we did for dating during COVID was the I think it was number eight Laura call your friends make sure you order from the same restaurant sit down have a dinner I really love that but when I think about my lockdown I just remember I just let everything go wild like I didn't shave my legs for a month it was pretty scary times back then I've been doing that since I had kids yeah so like 2021's really set me backwards but I'm here for it but also I did want to say one thing and like we said we're not going to harp on about the fact that we're in lockdown like we've all heard it before we've all read the

news but there is one thing that I think we can all appreciate and relate to and that is that with the current climate it makes it so hard to actually look forward to stuff I mean for me it was that we had a holiday plan to go to New Zealand. It was that we were supposed to be planning our wedding this weekend and all of those plans have now been cancelled and put on hold and it just makes it really difficult to get excited about stuff. So if there's anybody else who's had some big things cancelled or maybe you're going to catch up with your family, whatever it was that you were looking forward to that's been taken away from you, I just want to let you know that we are very much thinking of you and we hope that you're able to find a little bit of happiness in this

lockdown period as well. Guys, I am so excited about today's episode. This is one, if you follow along on my Instagram for the last little while, I have been hyping on this TV show, Love on the Spectrum. It's better than The Bachelor. I'm obsessed with it. I love it. I love how real and raw it is. You know, it's a window into another world that we don't really get to see, that we don't really know about. I think that we're not as educated on as we could probably be. Anyway, I fell head over heels in love with the show so I reached out to the ABC and was like yo I'm obsessed please can I speak to some of the contestants and we were lucky enough to speak to Cassandra from Love on the Spectrum she's on season two which is airing at the moment

and she's absolutely brilliant so she's coming to join us just to talk about all things love life what it's like to date on the spectrum what it's like to have autism day-to-day things that she deals with and things, I guess, misconceptions, myths. She's really open and honest about life on the spectrum. So that's really, really brilliant. I'm looking forward to that. But then we also got Jodie Rogers on. Now, Jodie is the specialist on Love on the Spectrum. So she's the woman that she comes in and she helps to coach all the, I don't know if we can call them contestants. It's like, I'm talking about like it's a bachelor, Laura. I guess all the participants on the show she comes in and she teaches them different social skills different

dating skills some of them are more high functioning some of them are more low functioning so she comes in and she teaches them what they need to know she helps coach them through so she comes on the podcast today as well so we have Cassandra and Jodie coming up. So before we get into that and I honestly am so excited by this interview I learned so much and it just there was one thing that was said by Cassandra and I really loved this about the show and the purpose of the show so one of the things that Cassandra said to us just before we started the interview she said Love on the Spectrum is not really a dating show for people who have autism she was like people who have autism already know what it's like to have autism. Love on the Spectrum is a tv show that

has been designed for people who are neurotypical so they can better understand what it is that we deal with on a day-to-day and how we show up to the world and I just love that so much because I think that you know we can watch this and we can kind of almost think like oh like it's so beautiful it's so wholesome but there was something really quite powerful in the way that she was able to explain that now before we get into that conversation of course there's a few things that we want to talk about first and before we do that I also have a little bit of housekeeping that we want to do so if you listen to Ask Uncut and you listen to Thursday's episode you would know that we did a big discussion around Victoria's Secret and how they are changing from having the

Victoria's Secret Angels to having the Victoria's Secret Collective. And now the Victoria's Secret Collective is all based on diversity. And we really unpacked that on Thursday's Ask Uncut episode. However, I made an error in something that I said, and I just want to correct that. We talked about some of the influential women who are making up the Victoria's Secret Collective. And I incorrectly said that Megan Rapinoe is somebody who is transgender and identifies as being transgender. Now Megan Rapinoe is an LGBTQI activist. She's also a very famous soccer player and she does not identify as being transgender. So I want to say thank you to every single person who messaged and corrected me on that. We always want to bring you the best content that we possibly

can and it's important to us that the content that we bring you is correct. But Brittany you did send me an article that you wanted to touch on before we got into the episode. Please look take the microphone I just landed in London I landed in England from Spain obviously it's Wimbledon next week so I'm very excited about that it's one of the big grand slams and I absolutely just can't wait to watch Jordan play but what I do every single morning and especially in another country I've always done this since I was like 13 years old I wake up and I read the news I'm obsessed with the news anyway there was one article in England when I woke up this morning that really grabbed my attention the headline was that a woman mourns the loss of her husband only a few

months after marrying him I was like fucking hell like that is horrific I couldn't even imagine that okay I'm laughing I'm laughing for good reason guys don't think that I'm a fucking evil person no I was like I just couldn't imagine what that's like so obviously I read the article and this woman had been dating on her husband on and off for 10 years finally married him in her ceremony in Israel and he died only a couple months later of stomach cancer now the reason this is funny and I shouldn't even say it's funny but her husband was a dolphin her husband was adult she married a dolphin now I didn't know that was a thing it's not funny because it's not funny that a dolphin passed away I'm just gonna say that to start with

the funny part is is that it took me a little while to actually realize what this was talking about and then I was like this is so sad and I was like I'm sorry she married a who she married a what well the only reason it gets funny is and it's I mean like this is a real thing guys I googled it okay there's people that marry I googled it so it must be true there's something called objectum sexuality but that's more people that marry objects so what this went into I just went into the depths of the internet on this I mean to finish her story she met this dolphin on a trip 10 years ago and she said she literally just said it was love at first sight like she knew that this was the person she was supposed to be with so they dated on and off for 10 years

I know she finally married him so she would fly back to Israel to visit him on the dates and stuff she finally married him and he died and I mean like it's horrific ultimately a dolphin died I want to know like how does a dolphin consent and opt into dating because like I could say that like I've dated a guy for 10 years on and off they have to consider like how does a dolphin say yes I want to continue to date you well she has wedding she's put her wedding pictures up I'm looking at them right now she's in this like beautiful white dress she has a floral headpiece on it's the wedding and the dolphin is in the air like its belly's kind of come up onto the platform and it's kissing her it's unbelievable it's a proper it actually looks like a beautiful ceremony to be

honest well basically she said it's not a perverted thing i do love this dolphin he's the love of my life it's not a bad thing it's just something that we did because i love him but not in a way that you love a man it's just pure love that i have for this animal so she wanted to marry him she also said she'll never marry again she is a one dolphin woman can I just say in this article as well that Brittany sent to me meanwhile a woman in Devon married her own duvet claiming it was the most intimate and reliable relationship she has ever had same objective sexuality and when I went into it there are so many there's a woman that married the Eiffel Tower she changed her last name to Eiffel there are people that have married the bridges there's one woman that married

her chandelier so it's actually a thing i do remember there being a guy in the states who married his sex doll which like there's a lot of issues tied up into that but anyway okay with that out of the way all the really important stuff it is time for our very favorite part of every episode and that is accidentally unfiltered this one laura gave me very very heavy laura vibes i feel like okay you literally you say that every single time and every single time it's something wildly inappropriate it's like oh this person shat themselves in a supermarket line then you're like hey laura this is something you would do hey this person got blackout drunk and vomited on their boyfriend's penis hey laura this is something that you would do okay you'll

understand why when i read i'm not okay with this i'm really not okay this isn't something that you did though it's something that happened to this girl that reminded me heavily of you okay okay Hit me. I was seeing this guy a little while ago. He was most certainly a rebound for me. I was over at his friend's place and they were all weed smokers. Now I was only 21. I hadn't been around many people that did weed. No judgment. I just must've lived under a rock and I didn't really know how people acted when they were on weed. Anyway, as the night went on, everyone had a lot to drink. We all decided to stay there the night. The guy I was seeing and I went onto the couch. We were all alone and things started to get pretty hot and heavy. Pants were off and kissing

was going on and I knew we were going to do the deed. Now somehow his penis made its way between my thighs but I'm not talking about my vagina just sort of like in the crease of my groin and all of a sudden he started convulsing like a jackrabbit. He was going hard. Thankfully it was dark and I had this really weird look of confusion on my face but he couldn't see it. I have never experienced anyone on weed before so I was like maybe this is a reaction from it maybe he's having a seizure but then in minutes he whispers I'm going to come this took me by surprise here I am thinking he's having a fit and he's coming and fucking my leg maybe he thought he was in maybe he was so off his chops or maybe he's also like my ex and just would like to have sex with

all of her he goes oh my god I'm gonna come and she goes what you're not even in he came in my thighs he wasn't even near a vagina I'm debating this I reckon he was so cooked he thought he was in girl I don't know I've been touching the signs no I don't care how much weed you've had I feel like you know where the vagina is okay well I mean some guys don't some guy doesn't need a roadmap and they need an x marks the spot and they need to be shown I wonder how many people are like that I wonder how many people have had this happen where they've in an intimate situation and the guy has very obviously thought it was somewhere that it's not I reckon it's probably pretty common I've definitely had a guy think that they knew where my clit was and it certainly was not it

why are you furiously rubbing that that is not helping anyone I feel like that has happened to everyone that has definitely happened to me I have a really really good one all right strap yourselves in strap on your undies ladies I've been talking to this guy online for a couple of weeks and we had been on a coffee date and he was really really handsome a little alternative with long hair and not my normal type but you know what they say date outside your box so he said he was really into yoga and being the yeah sure I'll give anything a try kind of girl that I am I suggested that maybe I could come to a yoga class with him and he could show me the ropes so anyway fast forward to our next date he invites me to do a yoga class with him I haven't really

done a lot of yoga before a couple of classes here and there I'm generally pretty fit though and I'm pretty flexible so I thought well what could possibly go wrong we were about 20 minutes into the class and there had been a lot of side glances and smiling and making eye contact lots of cute stuff like that this had all been happening kind of between yoga poses so here I am about to get into my new pose that the woman at the front is doing like I said I'm pretty flexible and I was really feeling myself so I've locked eyes with the guy and at the same time I hinge myself forward and into the move and simultaneously a ginormous queef echoes out of me oh girl i thought i was gonna die there was no hiding that it came from me the look on my face of shock and horror would

have been enough to give it away now anyway i thought i was in the clear you would think that the story would end here but no i continued the move thinking that everything was okay and another two consecutive queefs followed by this point by this point the woman behind me was pissing herself laughing and then the instructor says aloud to the entire class it's okay we all make some unusual noises sometime i know don't make it worse lately i was so upset i started to cry girl number one rule never queef and cry you never queef and cry i was like i had to text her and i was like what happened like where did this go she was like I never spoke to him again a fucking cut okay firstly firstly firstly queefing is normal we've all been there don't fret if you queef it

like so many people are like if that happens to you during sex it's so embarrassing it's not embarrassing just tell him it means it's good or something like I think it's different when it happens during sex like when it happens during sex you can just have a giggle and be like oh whoops that happened like we've all been we've all been in a compromising position where we've and having really great sex, and then it's happened. I think the worst part about this story is, like, you know what? Just let the woman queef and everyone just pretend it didn't happen. Don't be the person at the front that calls it out and it makes it even worse.

Like, don't worry, sweetheart, we all make those sounds. No, just, like, let that slide. I used to have a friend who could queef on demand. Like, she could do it as a party trick. You know what? If she was living her best life queefing after a few wives, you're going to be fine doing it in a yoga room. And if he doesn't want to see you again because you're queefing,

than that is his lost girl. All right, on that note, I think it's time to get into the episode. Autism spectrum disorder affects one in 68 children, and we all know, or maybe we all don't know, but boys are nearly five times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with ASD. And that is why we decided to get a woman in. So we have the very lovely, very beautiful Cassandra from Love on the Spectrum. And I am so excited because I'm just like a super fan of the show. So welcome to Life Uncut, Cassandra. Thank you for having me on. It's great to be you.

Okay, so I got Laura into the show. We, just so you know our background, because I don't think you do know, but we were on The Bachelor. We love, love, we love dating. And I just fell in love with Love on the Spectrum. Love on the Spectrum is like the much more wholesome version of The Bachelor. So much more wholesome. I was, I remember putting it on my Instagram going, this shit's all over The Bachelor.

And I think it's just because if anyone hasn't seen it, it's so real and it's so raw. and there's really not a lot of mask in your emotions which I think when we see other dating shows we're just not getting that authenticity so I think that's why I fell in love but also I think there is still so much stigma and mystery around autism spectrum disorder and what it is and I think looking in love on the spectrum gives us a better understanding and I think that that was a big part of this I'm really interested in how you got onto the show in the first place and why you signed up for it. So this is a few years back before COVID. My mother was looking for ways for me to get out into the world amongst people my own age. I'm quite a very young minded

person. I'm still into like anime and cosplay and all the kind of teen interests. And my mum wanted me to kind of get out there amongst my own peers. So she was looking into all these different things and she found Employable Me, I think it was called, which was like one of the first shows about autistic individuals. I did apply for that. I didn't get on. I'm a bit too employable. It was more about to show lower spectrum needs to get into workforce.

So she continued looking. She found season one of Love on the Spectrum and applied for me. And I didn't get through. Obviously, I'm not on season one. But when season two came around, they kind of gave us a call and were like, are you still interested? And I was like, yes, get me somebody. So yeah, I jumped on that chance and yeah, that's how I got into season two.

Let's like sort of go back to your childhood, your diagnosis, how old you were, etc. And like walk us through what those early years were like for you. So I didn't get diagnosed till I was in grade seven, about 13 years old. Like most other girls on the spectrum, we're not diagnosed early at all. It's an average of eight years or older and governmental help runs out at the age of eight. So we got no help. My mum sent me to a girls' school for high school, like my sister went to before me, and the school figured it out.

They were like, she's got some traits we've seen before. Have you ever heard of autism? And nobody back then wanted to hear that word, especially because nobody really understood it and my mum wasn't anything different. She didn't understand it either. So my mum being my mum researched it to heaven and back. And it sounds scary. I think like when you hear that as a parent, the instant fear is worst case scenario.

you hear horror stories. Yeah my mum was terrified and she got me in to see a psychologist and that psychologist spoke to me for five minutes. She said I was just too smart. I should have gone to a really brainy person's school. She didn't read the notes from my school. She didn't really talk to me. I was in the room for about five minutes and she kind of dismissed us as having nothing to worry about and my mum was like no. She's smart but no. So she did more research and she found Julie Peterson embracing the other half psychology clinic and it was at the time the leading psychology clinic for autistic children so she got me in to see her which was one really not easy and two quite expensive we had no government funding for it and Julie spoke to me for two and

a half hours and she did test after test and they didn't seem like tests at the time like she'd showed me a picture of a boy crying and a girl with two ice creams and asked me to interpret it and I would get it completely wrong. Do you remember what you thought when you looked at those? I thought she was just happy that she has two ice creams and he was sad that it was hot or something. I'm not 100% sure what I thought back then. And Julie was like, I'm 98% sure she's on the spectrum.

Here's a program we can run with. Let's see how this works for you. Come back in six weeks. And I've been seeing her constantly since then until COVID. But yeah, every six to eight weeks, I'd have a meeting and she would train me in social etiquette. I had to learn what a conversation is. So you were not a very verbal child?

Oh, I was extremely verbal, but I would talk at people. So I had to have it explained to me like a game of tennis. The ball is the conversation. So you hit it over with a question, they answer it, they hit it back. What I was doing was like those tennis ball machines. They just shoot them out? That's what I would do. I would talk at people.

That's a great analogy. Yeah, she was brilliant. Could you explain to everyone sort of what the breakdown is for how they diagnose or where people sit on the spectrum whether it's mild or high functioning how is the breakdown done and where do you sit on that spectrum so my personal diagnosis is high functioning mild autism which means I function well in society which is the high functioning the mild means that you not you guys but neurotypicals in general will experience my autism mildly I can moderate my behavior well enough that it doesn't socially affect me too

much but I still have autism which means my social learning was delayed I experienced things in a different way where there are people that are on the other end which would have low functioning severe autism which would mean they don't function well out in society on their own and their autistic traits are extremely obvious you can sit anywhere on there like you could have low functioning but mild you could have high functioning but severe and it really depends on the person's individual diagnosis where they end up you said something that was really profound to me before we started recording and that was that it is mild as in the way that neurotypical people perceive your autism is mild however it's not mild to you absolutely I experience all the hypersensitivities the

anxieties the internal repercussions of being in the neurotypical world extremely like I am constantly moderating my behavior checking in with my own stress levels I have to be constantly aware of where I am mentally and physically so that my perception remains mild it's that exhausting for you hearing that makes me really sad because you should never have to moderate who you are to fit with the rest of us idiots yeah and I think the same thing like surely there must come a point where you feel like you don't get to be your authentic self and you're constantly showing up to the world to fit in with what other people expect in a perfect world I wouldn't have to but we don't live in a perfect world we live in a neurotypical society we live in a world based

off of I guess the average so we live in a world that's not built for people in wheelchairs because they're not the average we're built for people with vision not the blind because that's the average just the same our societal social constructs are built for the average the average person can go nine to five work hours and then go out for dinner still get maybe a hobby done and then go to bed and continue that where autistic people especially me we suffer from burnout so because we're also moderating our mental behavior our social behavior trying to make sure we're not showing our tics and our stims which are like short physical movements that help kind of get us back into our social comfort zone like they help relax you a little bit yeah we're constantly

doing that and I do mean constantly we suffer from mental burnout a lot quicker I myself cannot work nine to five I have a job that is evening hours about five hours and that's about maybe maximum seven and that's on the days I can do I cannot work more than that I've tried and I immediately burn out and I am in a mental place that is no good I feel you I can only work for five hours too and I burn out for very different reasons can you tell me how have you found your relationships and your connections with people has been affected by having autism so over the years of my social training with Julie I also had to become aware of other people's social I guess habits so I'm hyper aware of not only myself but also of other people this isn't for all autistics it's maybe

it's just for me maybe it's just for a few of us but I don't read body language naturally like you guys would breathe and be like oh she's happy she's sad I have to read your eyes read your lips read your shoulders think about the words you just said which means when I'm dating I am very I guess cautious and fearful that I'm being manipulated I'm very worried that I'm one not reading them properly or they're purposely giving me other signals so that I'll become more comfortable we're all worried about those things when it comes to dating do you know what that's one thing is like no matter where you sit on the spectrum I think it's in the dating world especially in the start, so fucking hard to know what the other person is thinking or feeling or

doing. I'm extremely genuine. I don't lie. I'm very forward with everything about me. Like I tell people straight off the bat, I'm autistic. So when you meet somebody, you mentioned to us before that in the first five minutes, you'll always tell someone that you are autistic. Why is that? Is that because you feel like people might judge you for something or that you might misunderstand something and you just want to make it clear absolutely I one will tell them I'm autistic and to ask them like if I ever do something odd please just fill me in because I'm still learning but also it gives me a reason why I sometimes ask like I'm not currently sure about your emotion can you explain it to me and people if I hadn't explained I'm autistic would

be like what why yeah where's that coming from where I've already explained I'm autistic I don't understand it all 100% me asking for explanations is kind of normal natural neutral and do you find that having that conversation up front allows for a greater level of empathy from the person that you're talking to do you find that like most people receive that information in a way that's really helpful to you being able to better have these conversations and better engage absolutely if they're um negative about it I will kind of ease my way out and be like okay this is not going to be a situation that I'm going to continue but 98% of the time people are like oh okay cool if I have questions can I ask and I'm like that's great I can educate more people and continue

furthering our awareness well I guess that's why we wanted a big reason why we wanted you on the podcast is because I just think there is a lot of miseducation out there and and like you said earlier when you were diagnosed as a child and I think there was always this really negative connotation to someone with autism or someone on the spectrum because no one knew about it so everyone was like oh they're on the spectrum like they're so different and I can't relate to them and I can never be friends with them I can never have a relationship with them which is so far from the truth and I have people in my life that are on the spectrum everyone receives these characteristics differently on the spectrum but I know my friend is very stimulated by sounds and

light and she has told me that that is you know something that is particular to most people on the spectrum at different levels but if she'll look into the light she's too sensitive she can't see for the next two minutes if she hears a baby crying where we all are annoyed by a baby screaming in our ear but she will get off a plane or she will have to leave a cafe because it does something to her that it doesn't do to other people can you explain that so hypersensory is a kind of side effect of I guess most autistic spectrum disorders I myself have light sound and touch imagine you're driving at night with a foggy windscreen the kind of the light kind of stars out like blurs that's how light is to me all the time so driving at night I have to wear driving glasses otherwise

the light is just blinding and I cannot physically see past headlights so the sun is like that too yes very much I pretty much go nowhere without sunglasses I in like university or in high school would wear sunglasses in hallways only take them off in classrooms when I had additional needs for exams I would be in a room that was lit by natural light not fluorescent light when you have fluorescent lights and they're starting to break down you can see them blink we see that much earlier with sound it's very similar like I did a small discussion of this on the show about the dog barking and there was a very long discussion that they cut out most of it but our brains get kind of stuck on the irritation and it becomes like a loop in our head we can't get it out have you ever had a song stuck

in your head and it's like baby shark do do do do and it's like just that short bit and you don't know the rest of the song but that one little bit keeps looping I guess as well like the way that I'm interpreting this is if there was some sort of distracting noise that was happening like someone clicking a pen or you know my kid crying in the room next door that for me I might be able to dial that down and i might be to dial it back and pay attention to whatever's happening in front of me whereas for us it's amplified our brains link onto it and stick onto it and we can't not pay attention to it what do you think is some of the most prolific misconceptions that surround autism probably when we most people call it a meltdown but when we break down because we can no longer

a mask masking is where we consciously change our behavior to hide our autistic traits or non-neurotypical traits so sort of before when you explained that it's exhausting for you because you're constantly trying to not be your authentic self that's masking where you're like I'm just trying to fit in with you guys look yeah I don't have a tick so when I'm extremely stressed I might stim which is um for me playing with my fingers which usually I can do in my pocket so that's a bit of masking but it could also be like some people have echololia where they repeat sounds that they've heard so baby shark and the do-do-do's and you'll have one autistic child just doing the do-do-do's for the rest of the day it's an echololic habit where for masking we realize

we're doing it we have to physically stop ourselves from doing it sometimes we do it where we can't be seen like if I was doing it right now I'd be doing the do-do's inside my mouth without noise a big misconception that I know of in the autism world is that I and I hear it all the time and we put just so you know we put some questions out on our Instagram page the podcast Instagram page we had so many people with questions which we will never get through them all but one of the ones that sort of just kept popping up recurrently was and like I hate to even say it but I'm just going to say it do people on the spectrum feel anything do they have emotions and like, I mean, I know this answer, but it's a common misconception. I don't think it was just

feel anything. I think the big one was feel empathy. I think that was the real one. That is a conversation I've had so many times. We do have empathy in a way. So if you fall over, skin your knee, we are the first person there with band-aids to check on you, dry your tears. We have that type of empathy. The empathy we usually lack is when we're playing a game, it's my way or the highway. Do it my way or go away. That's the empathy we kind of lack. when it's a set thing that we know has to be done one way that is it it is stuck on that one way you cannot change it easily regardless of whether someone feels because you know I guess like even if there is one specific way of doing something or the right way of doing something

if it means that it hurts someone's feelings we might sometimes bend the rules to cater for that person's feelings but quite often we are so we being the autistic people are so bound by our mental rules and structures that that's the empathy we lack so I can love like anybody else that was a big one can they love and I'm like of course they can absolutely we can love but we love in our own way quite a few of us are touch sensitive we don't like being physically touched funny story in year seven my friend hugged me every day of the year until I stopped being touch sensitive to our group so now with our group I'm comfortable being touched which is great but quite a few people on the spectrum are like no don't touch me I love her so much for it because

it showed me that the fear I was having of this person touch me was for me irrational and also you know that she's someone who you're in a safe space with it wasn't just like a stranger making you hug them like I know that someone will listen to this and be like you should never be forced to hug someone she was very aware I was touch starved as well right because the only people I would touch on my family. So I feel everything you guys do. Like I will feel fear. I will feel pain. I will feel grief. Like heaven knows I've had to grieve in my time. It's our expression is completely different. We do feel it. We don't convey it in the same way. I dated a long time ago. I dated someone for a while that was on the spectrum and it was like, it was a beautiful relationship,

but I always felt like he wasn't interested in me or he didn't love me or he didn't care about my feelings all the time and it was a constant battle and he would always be like you know I love you like how could you possibly not know that I'm like because you don't do anything to show me this crops up in my social circles as well love languages and the language of autism it's like if you were sitting here in Australia and you decided to teleport to Japan into a rural area they don't speak English you're not going to complain that they don't speak English you're going to be like oh I have to learn their language it's the same you need to learn the language of the person in front of you so over time I've learned the language of neurotypicals also like

love language like your love language might be shows of affection physical affection where theirs might be acts of service so they might have made you tea or coffee in the mornings they might have made the bed they might have remembered you said you wanted to get something and they get it on their next shopping trip things like that so understanding their love language and their autistic language bridges that gap when you talk about love languages for people who sit on the autism spectrum disorder do they still perceive the same love languages that we perceive could you sit down with someone and be like here do this love languages test and would that give you a better idea of the things that they like or don't like i personally think yes okay because you will

find probably 90 or something do not have physical touch as a love language like zero so our one was yeah he was really great with physical touch that was not the problem it was like conveying anything in his brain that was the problem so that would be a communication so words of affirmation because we did the love language there you go and i guess maybe even as well if you if you're sitting down and doing that love languages test with somebody who is on the spectrum i know as well like when we did a whole episode on it and the thing i found really interesting is that you sit as a percentage like you're not 100% one, 0% of something else. Very rarely is that the case. Whereas I feel like somebody who maybe is on the spectrum could be 0% touch or could be 0% gifts or whatever it is.

There may be a difference between what somebody perceives as this is my love language and how they show it. Absolutely. Learning the love language or the autistic language of the person, it extremely helps with it. We did have a lot of people writing that their partners are on the spectrum and they sort of wanted to know what can they do better as a neurotypical partner. what advice do you have for someone like that? And I guess like, before we get into the show, brief us on your dating history as well. Okay. So I am a person who doesn't like to be constantly masking, obviously. So I don't like having to talk to someone that I've only just started dating every hour of every day. The thing I hate most is when they send me a good morning

and a good night message. Most of us are like, why haven't you messaged me good morning yet? Exactly. So I'm the complete opposite. So the best thing to do with an autistic partner or partner on the spectrum in any capacity is to sit down with them and communicate. I show my affection by doing this. How does that make you feel? So I show affection by making a cup of coffee. I like hearing you look good today. I don't like hearing I missed you. Don't know why, but it just makes me feel uncomfortable discussing things like that this is how I show my affection how does that make you feel what can I do to change it if it makes you feel uncomfortable and I guess that's the only thing you can do and we preach that in every relationship it's

communication you can't I mean we all know that the word assumption is making an ass out of you and me you're not going to know unless you sit down and ask and that could be a family member that could be your romantic partner that could be anyone in your life talk to me about love on the spectrum what was that experience like because like I think from our experience on The Bachelor there was some really stressful pinch points with producers and actually with the whole environment how did you find the environment of shooting or how did you find it going on dates and having cameras in your face so it was excellent I'm really surprised to say it was absolutely excellent I love that they gave us a liaison I had Alex I still love her she's great and they would take

care of us they had two or three people to take care of and that's it they wouldn't help the other groups and when it came to dates she was like are you going to be stressed driving in yes i will drive you for free i will drive you they were there to make you comfortable we'd be at the date and they would constantly like what path and check in are you okay do you need anything and it wasn't like condescending either it was you look a little stressed can i help oh it's a bit too cold i'll change the air conditioning it was very very welcoming our interviewer keenan he would ask a question and then later on be like you didn't seem comfortable answering that one do you want us to take it out we won't air it and they were always very accommodating of anything and everything

you needed this is the most special reality tv show i have never heard anybody speak of their experience on a reality tv show with such like wonderful accolades but it's so great to hear that on my first date when i had the panic attack on the episode one i myself had to say can i have a break but Keenan was like ready to ask do you need a break and he was like okay I was about to ask do you need to go outside so did you have that panic attack if you guys haven't seen it this is season two and Cassandra was on a date and was just very uncomfortable and had to leave did you have the panic attack what was that due to was that due to being on a date with someone you didn't know was it due to the pressures of camera people that because you know everyone's around so it's a

mixture his anxiety was obvious to me so my body was feeding on it I was becoming more anxious because he was anxious it was a part of the city I didn't know so getting there made me anxious and my social life at the time was not a hundred percent COVID was happening things were happening at the studio that was making me stressed I had other things that I was thinking about and it had been a very very long week I just I shouldn't have gone on the date in the first place because I was mentally not available. If I had a day to rest myself and be like, I'm okay, I'm safe, I have time, I would have been fine. I probably would have made it to the end of that date. But because I'd rushed from one thing to the next thing to the next thing to this date, it was just too much.

It's like a thermometer. So for everybody else, the temperature of their stress increases, that night they go to sleep, it decreases. For us, it doesn't. It kind of sits where it was. and then the next day it builds up more the next day it builds up more until you just pop the top off and you have your breakdown because you just haven't been able to bring yourself back down like did you meet anyone on the show or did you meet anyone in that experience who you'll you were like yes I can have a connection with this person the second date with Sam I went on a second date with him off the show we went to the aquarium which was lovely but we've decided to remain friends since then I've spoken to quite a few people that have seen me on the show and

like you were so amazing but I'm kind of keeping to myself did you get anyone sliding to your dms oh so many my favorite ones are like the mums who are like my son saw you on tv he's so excited my daughter saw you on tv I just got goosebumps could we like match make also it's amazing because this is this representation that people don't see you know it's so incredible love on the spectrum is not for autistic people it's for neurotypical people we know what it's like to live on the spectrum we know what it's like to try to date we don't need a tv show to tell us how we feel how we know things are this show is for everybody else to inform you guys it's an education program so you guys see our world at least a glimpse of it and there are so many variations on the

spectrum we're not going to show everybody's form of autism which is unfortunate I wish we could so yes there are going to be people like saying that's not how I experience autism that is fine because you already know how you experience it it's for everybody else and I love that so much because it really is so eye-opening I guess I want to ask you do you think it was a really good representation of autism I was extremely happy with how they represented me and the people I got to meet on the show my autism is different to Michael's mine's different to Teo the way they represent us is individualized they get to know us they learn how we see and feel at the world and then they use the best parts of what they've recorded to represent us individually and they do

have I mean like we see people everybody fell in love with Michael we see people that you know they're high functioning they're low functioning they're mild they're severe and there really is a whole range there are people there are couples that are dating one gets engaged I'm not going to spoil it in case anyone I well oh my god that engagement I was crying I was so happy it was it was the best thing I've ever seen I found out about it maybe a week before it went to air there's another secret I have to keep a lot of other people on the show a lot of the other contestants I'm just gonna use Michael as an example because I have that in my head now I can see him saying it a lot of them say they prefer to date people on the spectrum it's not

the be all and end all but when asked and interviewed they're like yeah I would prefer to date someone on the spectrum how do you feel about that and does that make it easier for you So it is, again, person to person different. I've dated both sides and there is always going to be something that happens that's going to make something difficult. If it's another autistic person, their traits might conflict with mine. When I have a meltdown, I retreat. Some people will have a meltdown and they will explode. That might be a part of the relationship that doesn't work. Where with a neurotypical, it could be they've learned how to deal with it over time and they're not used to me just suddenly being out of the picture I'm happy to date either I'm

not I guess picky I say that but I'm very picky to me it's neither here nor there if they're on the spectrum it's how our personalities interact where a lot of people on the spectrum they only really know how to I guess connect on a different level to people also on the spectrum because they can share experiences what did you learn from the show like are you happy that you did it what you took from it and what if you can leave our audience with something that you wish people knew or could understand better what is your message to them what do you want to say to them I guess okay so before I went on the show I was almost self-assured that there was something wrong with how I was dating there had to be something I was doing wrong there was something that I was doing that

was stopping me from getting the one forever after being on the show it was good to see that no I'm doing it right and there's nothing wrong it's just dating is hard you just haven't met yourself dating is so hard that's literally the crux of this entire podcast and we say it every single week dating is hard and um I guess what I want to leave people with is you cannot trust your own brain your brain will tell you you're failing your brain will tell you there's something wrong with you there's the brain will tell you that my one likes to tell me i'm a freak and back when i was a child that was a word you didn't use because you can't call my daughter a freak she's autistic these days i revel in it like i am weird i am a freak i am unusual and that is the best

thing about me what i want to leave people with is you cannot trust that part of your brain that tells you there's something wrong with you because you are perfect the way you are 24 trillion you are one in 24 trillion chance of existing all right that is us out there's never been anything more profound said on this entire podcast it's my favorite quote to say is out of 24 trillion possibilities you exist the way you exist now and one thing that we always say and i think that this is like just to flow on from your statement is that thoughts are not facts just because you think something and they're fluid, you know, like you might think something or feel something one day, and that may not be a very positive thought or feeling, but those things

are dynamic and they change. And in six months time or a year's time or a day's time, you may feel very, very differently about the same situation. Cassandra, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and for being a part of this. It's been such a, I'm just like a fan girl. And it's, it really is. It's a conversation. We really want to work towards destigmatizing a whole variety of conversations on this podcast and being able to talk to you and hear it from your own lived experience is something really, truly special for us. Thank you so much, Cassandra. You've been the best. Thank you. It's been great being on here. So we spoke to Cassandra earlier on, and now we're going to speak to Jodie Rogers. Now,

Jodie is a specialist on Love on the Spectrum. Now, Jodie is on this show so that she can help the participants with the little things with dating, with relationships and with social skills. Jodie has a degree in sexual health and she possesses extensive experience working with people with disabilities. So Jodie, welcome to Life Uncut. Ah, thanks for having me. We are so excited to talk to you. So just so you know, we did speak to Cassandra earlier on and you guys will be sharing the episode, which is really great because we did want to have, I guess, two perspectives we wanted to speak to somebody that is experiencing asd that can tell us firsthand what that's like what it was like to be on the show but we wanted to also speak to someone that

is helping these people navigate life on the day-to-day and helping the families of these people and obviously you are on the show you are coaching them through the dating and the day-to-day how did you end up in the specialty you are and then how did you end up on love on the spectrum life isn't it sometimes you never know how you get there but I started my well I've always worked with people with disabilities my whole life even when I was doing my undergraduate in teaching I was still working as a support worker so I think since I've been about 15 or 16 I've been hanging out with people with disabilities well originally I was a teacher I actually have four degrees I'm just a bit of a nerd that's all I really love learning so originally I started teaching and then

I did a postgraduate in special ed so that sort of took me into the world of working in education and disability but then I sort of broke out of being a teacher I'm not really good with bells I'm not really good with time systems so I then went into sort of working within the community in early intervention so kids under five worked in adult areas but what I found along the way was that particularly working in high school when people would transition out of high school there was a lot of emphasis put on to people with a disability getting a job like employment and independent living skills and how to catch a bus or something like that but the most important thing in my life is relationships you know I think it's the thing that we all seek to have connection with

other people and I found that as people were getting older there was less emphasis put onto you know friendship was really important teaching people skills to have friendship when they were young but once it got into sort of the more intimate relationships that we know happen in your late teens and into your 20s and 30s and 40s blah blah blah rest of our life there was no emphasis so I worked for family planning associations in Australia so I was working with them to support people with disabilities around sexuality and yeah finally just put my money where my mouth was and got a master's degree in sexual health counselling and my whole life every single day of my life is based around giving people who sometimes don't have access to really

good counselling and education around relationships and sexuality. So all day long, all I do is talk about relationships and sex. So do we, Jodie. Literally what we do as well. You know, there's a lot of myths around autism or what the general population perceive autism to be isn't how it is at all. You know, I stumbled onto the show because no one's paid to be on that show. There was no casting agents. There was nothing like that. They just sort of put a call out to people saying who wanted to be on the show and at that point I received this early in 2019 I got an email saying oh you know we're looking for autistic people to be on this show I printed this flyer out stuck it up in my office and they just didn't think anything else about it at all and then later that year

a friend of a friend of a friend was talking to somebody about producing this show and they said have you heard of Jodie Rogers and I literally was presenting at a sexology conference in Sydney and Northern Pictures found out I was there, called me and I thought, because I'm just like this, I thought that they just needed more help to find other autistic people to be on the show. So I rocked up to meet them to talk about that and then they sent me a message pretty soon afterwards

to say, would I be on the show? I know nothing about television. So to start with, I was like, no way. And also it's the vulnerability of it. You put yourself in a very vulnerable position and this is my profession. This is my job. I'm a counsellor and a therapist so a family member said to me you've got to think about the

greater good you know what is it that this show could offer I just knew if this was done well and it was done right then it would allow people to actually understand how diverse and how absolutely incredible autism is and how much we can learn from autistic people. Can you just tell us what exactly is autism like give us a bit of a definition because we spoke to Cassandra about it And she described what it's like for her. But can you give us an actual definition? Yeah, it's very complex and hard to define. And if you ask any autistic person, they can give you their understanding of autism.

But their experience of autism is very different for different people. So the simplest and best way I can explain it is it's neurological and it's a lifelong neurological. People don't say disorder, but if people are looking at diagnosis, then they still call it a disorder. I like to call it a difference. so it's a neurologically different way of seeing and perceiving the world but diagnostically what the people that do the diagnosis they're looking for sort of differences in two distinct areas so they're looking for differences in the way that people socially interact with one another and they're also looking for an area what they call repetitive and restricted interest and behavior

so every single person who has a diagnosis of autism must have some kind of complexity or difficulty in the way that they interact with other people so you can imagine how diverse that is but then every single person has to have repetitive and restricted interests they might have a really special interest or they may really need to have sameness and routine or they may have difficulties with sensory processing but every autistic person has both of these difficulties and then I think the other thing that people need to also understand about autism is that you can be the most intelligent person on the planet it's not about somebody's IQ so you can be really really intelligent and have autism or you can also have a profound intellectual disability and have

autism so then if you put those two things together then it shows the complexity and diversity of it so you mentioned earlier on that the understanding of it is so poor you know I think that we especially because of tv shows and not love on the spectrum I'm talking about like how it's misrepresented in sort of more like your Hollywood TV shows. There's this huge gap in like the understanding between what it is and how it actually presents itself. And what do you think some of the biggest misrepresentations are for autism? There's this perception because there's shows that show people with sort of high level skill, that one thing is that people believe that if you're autistic, then you're going to be really skilled in one area. And often that's to do with,

maths and science and things like that, that's not how it presents in any shape or form. So that's a misrepresentation of it. There's a misrepresentation that autistic people are actually all loners and really want to be by themselves and actually, that old classic stuff that autistic people don't like to be touched and they have no empathy. All of those things have needed to be broken down. And because we do see Hollywood representations of autism, when they're doing that, or you read a book about autism they're only presenting one character but it is sometimes a characterization of autism rather than looking at the multiple of many many ways that it presents so what are some of the reasons that people on the spectrum employ you employ your services to help them is

it more social day-to-day things is it specific to relationships and dating and coaching into that world is it trying to learn how to have conversations to touch to care so people come to me for anything to do with sexuality and that's you can imagine how diverse sexuality is as well you know I will have many many people that will rock up and say I really want a boyfriend or I really want a girlfriend but they have no idea absolutely no idea about even basic skills of that so even today I'll give you an example today a woman who I've been working with for three years quoted me back to myself because she's just met somebody but she met somebody online and I said to her oh it's so great she's actually met two fellas online and both of these have been successful

relationships and I was saying to her you know people are looking for partners online all the time and where are you getting these skills from and she said to me oh you taught me the three text rule so the three text rule I say to people is that because part of autism is not understanding reciprocal nature what we do with reciprocity and that if we're first getting to know someone often, we all do it. I've just got to put it out there. You know, when you kind of get those first feelings going, oh my God, this is so exciting. And then you hammer somebody, bombard them with the text. Text me. I'll send another one. Rock up at his house. Look at your phone 37 times in three minutes, you know, that sort of stuff. But so she has learnt a really simple technique

of I am only allowed to send three texts and then I've got to stop. Because people with autism sometimes don't understand the reciprocal nature of back and forth in a relationship and so can get into trouble and they can drive another person away by just being really insistent with expressing their devotion or their desire so that's one example i work with i do couples counseling so i can work with couples where one person's autistic and the other's neurotypical or both are autistic and sort of navigating sometimes that can be navigating even things like you know sensuality within sexuality or being able to compromise or understand but one of the diagnostic criteria for autism is actually about social and emotional reciprocity it's

actually understanding that if every single second of a day that we're with another person it's actually about finding the balance of i'll give to you you give to me i'll give to you you'll give to me and negotiation of that is really complex you don't realize how neurotypically how clever we are at this because we never ever sit back and just think where the hell did I learn to do that it's such an incredible thing and this is one of the things when we were speaking to Cassandra that like I felt so naive to the fact that yes we learn these social cues just from living our everyday life I mean we go to school we learn algebra no one teaches you how to navigate a relationship no one teaches you how to have a conversation but we observe other people doing it

and we that's how we kind of learn I had never even really thought about the fact that somebody who does have autism has to be taught how to maybe interact with those social cues and this idea that they have to show up in a world where we all act and behave in a certain way or people who are neurotypical act and behave in a certain way and then they have to mask what is natural to them to be able to fully function and fully be received in what is you know our way of kind of navigating this world i just found it like a little part of me was like it must be so exhausting to someone to have to constantly front up in the world and be very conscious of the way they're communicating the way that they're interacting and have to check in with themselves to go okay

am i doing this the way that that person wants to be received that's why i explain it to neurotypical people is if I said to you two, tonight, you have to go out to a big function. But you can't go with each other because then you've got your wingman, then you've got your support system. So you have to go completely by yourself. And most of us experience this. You have to go by yourself. You're going to walk into a room. There's going to be 300 people there. And it's going to be out of your comfort zone. So it's not going to be your tracky pants, Ugg boots night. It's going to be you have to put on the clothes you wouldn't normally wear. You're going to have to walk into this space where you know absolutely nobody and we actually prepare ourselves to do this we

actually before we go out to these think about conversations that we can hold with somebody that we've never met how do you interact with somebody how do you greet somebody how do you keep a conversation going and we also can pick up when we're talking in these areas is this person into me or should i be is there somebody else or should be talking to when we go to those nights it is exhausting because you can spend the whole night you're not relaxing into yourself it's almost like you're playing a caricature of what you think you should be doing in that and you put on a sort of frontal you say and you can feel it in yourself sometimes you're like oh my god this is the worst experience you know it's really hard that's why we often have one or two many glasses of wine when

we're at those things all right but it's also one of the reasons why we say like oh small talk is so hard like i had to turn it on tonight like it's that exact sentiment right yeah it is and so if you think about how exhausted we are after doing that imagine if you had to do that every single day and every moment in your life in a social interaction with another person outside of your own home that's exhausting to think about it's exhausting is it because it takes so much mental power to have to constantly think am i saying the right thing how are they perceiving me there are typical people we've got innate priority and we learn by watching other people so from the moment we're born one of our highest priorities is to be with other people to socially

engage with another person the fact that both of you are nodding your heads at me to encourage me to speak no one ever taught you to nod your head at another person you learnt that by this amazing ability that you as a child would have had somebody nodding their head at you and somewhere in your little heart you would have been going oh it feels so nice when that person's nodding and then we mimic each other we mimic those social skills and this is what we're learning a lot about because we have so many great people autistic people and if you listen to autistic people they teach you what autism is this is the fact that we don't listen because we came from this really patriarchal medical model

of we know what autism is. When she talks about masking, Cassandra has mimicked other people. She sat back and many women talk about it, that they desperately want to fit in. They really want this. And so what they do in their life is that they copy another person and they learn to sort of... Cassandra talks a lot about she gets into character

and sometimes being in character is easier than being herself. it's because she has spent her whole life copying what other people are doing around her because she thinks that that's what's socially acceptable you know that's the masking and masking can be really hard because you're playing a role it's like you're acting every single day it doesn't feel innate and sometimes it's really confusing for your identity to do that they know that men who are diagnosed don't do that as much as women do interestingly because I think that's just the way. Many, many women are really wanting to fit in. A lot of the men sort of learn their social skills in a different manner, but not through copying another person. I think that's evident

even with neurotypicals. Social media, you see women and we all do it. We copy each other. We see something that we like. We see something that looks good. We see something that's trending and all of a sudden every second person has to go and have that handbag. Everyone has to have that outfit. Everyone has to be doing this thing. I don't think you see that as much in men in neurotypicals either so I don't think that's even just an autism thing I think it's just no across the board but Jodie we did want to ask you we wanted to make sure we were giving the listeners you know the information that they wanted so we did put some questions out there and I'm just going to read a few out my partner is on the spectrum actually we got a lot of people

that wrote in that had a part that one was a neurotypical and one was on the spectrum yeah my partner is on the spectrum and he has trouble communicating his feelings I feel like he never supports me when i need him to and doesn't understand when i'm upset i know that this isn't his fault but as a couple what can we do and what can i do to help him understand better so there's two parts to that one is that people don't recognize that the way that we learn to give words to feelings is by somebody teaching us that so when you guys were children if you were really frustrated and you know they know the difference between anger and frustration and being a little bit irritable somebody puts those words in their mouth so somebody would see you being

frustrated and when you were really little they would have said oh you're frustrated and we then take on the feelings of our body and we have a word for it so sometimes autistic people have difficulty feeling their bodies having enough body awareness and then being able to articulate a word to that so sometimes autistic people don't have enough emotional words so that could be that her partner's experience number one that he doesn't have words to express emotion and the other one is that it's quite complex but it's a thing called theory of mind which is the ability to look at somebody else remember we're talking about emotional reciprocity as well we want our partner to know what we're wanting and feeling without communicating it but the number one thing

with autistic people is they just need it said straight out they need it really clearly and bluntly communicated to them so if that person is upset they need to actually say I am upset so that the partner can actually hear the word of what they're feeling they may look at that person and not understand that person's non-verbal. People can be bawling their eyes out and crying and an autistic person may go, oh, what's going on there? So the best answer I can give is, number one, if you're feeling a certain way, say it. Say it really clearly and bluntly and it doesn't hurt an autistic person's feelings. They like it. They like it if you say, I'm angry, I'm upset even to be that blunt to say I need some affection I need tenderness you know but

you have to sometimes say it because autistic people are not reading us all the time in that way so that's that first one and the other one is to really support autistic people to be able to have emotional words themselves so if you see your autistic partner expressing an emotion then help either asking them what are you feeling tell me the word like help them get the word out of their mouth there's a lot of miscommunication that goes on with all couples and when you have one person who's neurotypical and they're wanting neurotypical interaction and the other person's autistic it's finding a common language between those two and the language has to be really up front and really blunt and saying emotions out loud well you answered the next question too which was oh yeah

I mean you answered it in it because we got a lot of the same kind of questions so it's obvious that people are experiencing the same kind of problems in these relationships and I think something to take away from that what you just said then is there's no subtlety there's no subtle cues there's no hints in these relationships there's no like leaving a ring out with a circle around it hoping that your partner walks past and thinks you want an engagement ring you need to be like you need to propose this is the ring I want yeah but why I guess do people assume that people on the spectrum them don't love and don't have feelings but i think you sort of just answered it by saying they do but they don't know how to communicate it sometimes autistic people some autistic people i

work with are so empathic and feel so much of another person's feelings that it's overwhelming for them and so they actually retreat away from it because it's so overwhelming so if you've got a very emotional person in front of you and you as an autistic person don't know how to support you don't know you know their emotion is so big and so overwhelming and you haven't learned how to comfort and console somebody or don't know how to do that in a way that is just natural and that can be really confusing as well but i think this is what i'm talking about neurotypical people can learn from this because sometimes we have really high expectations of a partner that we think that partner is going to read our mind and they are going to know exactly what we want and

exactly how we're feeling and then sometimes we get pissed off with them when they don't do what we want them to do but we haven't actually communicated we haven't said I'm feeling like this and I need you to do this so I feel better we sometimes don't say it and when our partner doesn't give us what we need then we get cranky at them but then the poor person doesn't know what we're cranky at them for that's not normal but it's so true and I reckon there's so many people listening to this who do the same thing because like a part of you is like I don't want to have the same conversation again or I don't want to seem like I'm needy or you know maybe it's a bit confrontational whatever it is but one of the things that we advocate for on this podcast

and pretty much on every episode it comes back to this idea of like communication you can't expect that people can mind read it's really unfair to do that to your partner as well because they've got their own stuff then maybe they had a busy day at work maybe there's other things that's happened in their life that have impacted the way that they're thinking and feeling and I think having this like expectation that you should be so in sync that someone can read your mind regardless of where you sit on the spectrum is like it's such an unfair way of approaching a relationship it is it's complex and so then if you if you're walking along at least a similar path that your neurology is similar then that's helpful but if your neurology

is so different then if you don't have good communication skills between you if you don't develop these communication skills and the whole thing can just fall to pieces we don't want to leave out the parents in this conversation because we had a lot of people writing saying it can be a really lonely experience for the family members and for the parents of people on the spectrum some of their questions were around how do you know or what are the early signs to look for in their kids at any age from like toddlers to your primary school and onwards and then I guess what they can do once they've figured out that there could be something that's not quite right how do they seek help what resources do they have so we sort of want to

go down that so I guess let's start with what are some signs that your child may have autism so the first thing I say about diagnostically what they talk about with autism is that it is when somebody's skills are not matching what's a developmental milestone so often what will happen is that we will see autism and we can see early indicators of autism before a child's even three when a child's really young even prior to three you would actually want to see some of the body language skills that i'm talking about you want to see that a child will turn towards a caregiver to get security from them so if you introduce something new a typically developing child will actually turn to a caregiver with their body that's called body orientation they can actually

pick up this incredible research like this they can look at a primary caregiver mother or father and they can look at them and that person doesn't even have to give them a big smile they can just almost show them with their eyes or give them like a really subtle nod that everything's okay and that will give that child the security some autistic kids prior to speech don't have those early indicators they may not be interacting in the same way they may find it's funny lots of parents say they kind of know before they know. They know something's just not quite right. So some kids are given very, very early diagnosis. They can see these repetitive behaviours that it's not a typically developing thing for a child to be given a set of blocks and just line them up

and lie on the floor and look at them. You know, that's not a typical, they learn to play differently. But then we see different steps. So a child may have all of those skills, but then we also go through other steps socially and emotionally so sometimes then people get a diagnosis when they're five or six because we actually or seven we go through another developmental milestone at that age where we stop being an eye and you've got to remember all little people just a big eye they think their parents think the same as they do they're just walking but when we get to about six or seven what starts happening is we start changing our behavior to become part of a gang we go to school and they start talking about us being an us and a we and, you know, class A,

and we follow each other as a group. And we actually start imitating the behaviour of people around us. So if the teacher says, you know, everybody go to the mat, then everybody goes to the mat. But if there's little Johnny out there standing, who's not participating in any group activity or can't follow the lead of anybody else, that's a next. So we actually see different stages we see early diagnosis we often see diagnosis when kids enter school then we see another step where there might be social skills that are not they're not keeping up we see diagnosis in high school and then we see very very late diagnosis where people even in their 20s and 30s you know i've got people that get diagnosis in their 50s because they've just been able to

manage to get through the world they've always felt a bit different but they've managed to get through the world in a specific way that has meant that until somebody says hey have you ever heard of autism or you know I've got a mate that is autistic and he learned he was autistic by listening to a podcast while he was riding his bike because he heard people talking about autism as they talked about him what that's me that's what I do every day when you're talking about parents parenting is really really hard and i'm not just talking about parenting a child that has a neurological difference parenting's hard and so we all go and buy these big books you know like how to be the best parent on the planet books if you have a child that's autistic those books

make no sense because they tell you how to do something but if your child's not neurotypical it doesn't work and so you're trying really hard as a parent to do the best you possibly can for your child and all these techniques that you're reading about in a book of give your kid one two three or you know you put up the star chart or all these different ideas parents try and then it doesn't work for them and so then they can start feeling like it's something that they're doing and before a diagnosis that can be really difficult for parents and that's why it can feel really isolating alone because they think they're not doing the right thing lots of families talk about and autistic people cassandra i think even talked about it in her lifetime sometimes when somebody

says oh no it's autism that's what it is it can be a really deep sense of relief as well for people your life changes in that moment but it's still the same person they were before the diagnosis but it actually can allow parents to say okay this is the reason that they're doing this and allows parents to then have a new guidebook a new guidebook to parenting that they didn't have before and I think the thing is that sometimes it can feel really isolating because if your child is doing things so differently to everybody else rather than us supporting each other and rather than us helping each other sometimes we're just really critical and judgmental of another person and so it can be isolating because their kid is doing things that the rest of the kids are not

doing and rather than having being surrounded by support they can actually feel like they're on the outer of all that. I also think as well and I had the privilege of interviewing a woman a little while ago whose son had severe cerebral palsy and she said one of the most challenging things that she found is that when she found out her son had cerebral palsy was that every other mother was like oh god that must be the worst thing in the world thank god that didn't happen to me and it was this real like pity almost and she said the pity came from not understanding and she's like and even myself she's like when I found out I felt like my world was over I felt like the mother that I thought I was going to be was gone and she's like even though my little boy

was the exact same little boy he was the day before but that diagnosis felt like a death sentence and Cassandra actually said that her mum felt like that at the very start as well and it's this lack of understanding and I think we always hear the worst case scenario we always hear like the worst case scenario as a parent and we and we say when we're pregnant oh so long as my child is healthy and like yes of course you want your child to be healthy but anything that then lies on the outside of that it's caught with a lot of criticism I think and and there's a lot of disappointment a lot of fear and all of the other feelings that are kind of tied up in finding out that there's something that's not necessarily neurotypical of your child and the more that we

have these conversations the more the people are able to watch things like love on the spectrum the more that that we have like very public platforms to talk about disabilities to talk about autism and to talk about the full spectrum of what people and how we all show up in the world I couldn't have said it any better Jodie thank you so much for coming and being a part of the podcast like Britt said she has been obsessed with love on the spectrum and she's gotten me well and truly in love with it as well and it's just such a beautiful wholesome take and I think like you said at the very beginning of this chat we do hear about all the different ways that people's lives are affected when it comes to different different disabilities but one of the

things that is often forgotten from that is how important love is to everybody and I love that that's what this show focuses on yeah me too I'm really glad too because I think that connection being connected that sense of belonging and connection and I'm loved everybody wants to have that feeling no matter who they are not what no matter where they live no matter what part of their life they are it's a universal feeling everybody everybody wants to feel that okay guys you know we never end an episode without our suck and our sweet our highlight and our low light the best and the worst sometimes it's big sometimes it's not it's called suck and sweet let's get into it laura do you want to go first well i feel like it's no surprise what my

suck of my sweet is so my suck I'm assuming it's lockdown yeah look I mean I know that everybody's affected so I don't want to go into like the real nitty-gritty of why I feel sad about it I had a holiday plan to go to New Zealand that's been cancelled Matt and I also were going to do our wedding planning this weekend we had booked I'm not going to tell you where the wedding's going to be guys I'm not going to slip up on that one but we had booked a weekend away where we're having our wedding and pretty much all of that's now being put on hold but that is my suck my sweet bow is something that I'm really grateful for and some of you are going to think this is really corny but I feel really really happy I had a little moment with Matt today where we were you

know kind of like unpacking like what's changed and the fact that we're going to be in lockdown and like you know we don't have any daycare at the moment it's going to be pretty full-on and then the really nice part of that is that we kind of sat there and we had a moment where we were like we're so lucky that we get to do this period together and we get to do lockdown and that we love each other so much and that we're so happy in our relationship and with our family because I can only imagine how hard it would be for some people who are maybe going through some difficult times in their relationships to then be stuck in lockdown with their partner without any sort of escapism I guess so I feel really grateful for Matt and also for my family they are my sweet

and the suck is sydney fuck you sydney oh they're really i mean they're both really great suck and sweet like your suck is very sucky and i think everyone in sydney at the moment and i mean yeah like we said melbourne knows everyone in sydney i think is going to have the same suck it's fucking just shit there's not another word for it and there are definitely worse people to be stuck in lockdown with than matthew johnson so there you go he's my sweet okay my suck look my suck is going to be that I have gone overseas obviously to see Jordan and join him on the tour and do our thing and I have just had nothing really I shouldn't say nothing I have had so much love and support from a lot of you lifers but god I have gotten some hate my Instagram has been non-stop

hate in the DMs in the comments because I am overseas which I totally understand I feel so lucky and grateful that I get to do this I feel so lucky that I have had a chance to have employment that allows me to travel with Jordan for a very short period of time and I know that that is lucky but it doesn't take away from the fact that people are really horrible and it's been really hard to just have people hate on me for I mean having the opportunity to leave it's just been really tricky because I've been so excited to come and obviously so excited to see Jordan and I just feel like that's been overshadowed by a little bit by the amount of hate that I've received and I again like I totally understand that and I understand there are so many people around the world that

at the moment don't have that opportunity and I would just hate to know that I have been the cause of anyone's pain or discomfort or anything like that because I would never ever in a million years want to hurt anybody's feelings and I feel like anybody that knows me would know that but yeah I just want to apologize if anyone has been offended or hurt by the fact that I have every week here is really different for us so I'm in a hard lockdown for a few days and then we might have an hour or two of freedom and every week that is different depending on the country that we go to so I don't know what the weeks look like until I get there and I didn't know that's what it would be until I was here so you know it's going to be interesting to see what happens we'll

have some time where we have some freedom there'll be days where we get a few days off between tournaments and we're not in a really strict bubble and there'll be other times where at the moment in England so this bubble is a bit different to Spain this one's a lot more strict so I can't go outside unless I go to the tennis so every week is going to be very very different and I don't know what that's going to look like until I'm there yeah that's my suck it's just really overshadowed me being happy and I'm also just feel really bad if I've hurt anyone's feelings by coming overseas I guess it's it's a hard one to to talk about my sweet okay guys now that that's out of the way now that I've you know I've had my tears for the week my sweet I think this is

really funny and I didn't know I was going to say this until now and I feel sorry I always throw Jordan under the bus but I think Jordan looks a bit scruffy right like I think he's he's growing his hair out and he's got his mustache and like got his little beard scrabble going on and he's just always wearing his sports clothes great love him to death but I'm always like you like a little scruff ball he's like no I'm not this is great and I'm like okay well I think you are we're sitting on the plane to get from Spain to England last night and there was a lady that was like diagonally across from Jordan now she was an older lady and she was holding up her phone texting someone and you know how you can change the font on your phone because she couldn't see because she was old she

changed it to like extra extra big like my grandma has so like you only need just like five words on at a time on a screen so Jordan looked over just happened to glance over as she was texting someone and she was like frothing this lady was like I could see it next to Jordan as well she was like oh my god there's these tennis players on the on the plane and she was listing off all these she was listing off all these good players but she was just calling them by their name like this name this name this name and then she goes oh you know that really scruffy looking thompson he's behind me and i was like fuck yes i told you you were scruffy even the random elderly grandma on the plane said so i love that anyway that was my sweet your sweet is like taking the piss out of

jordan that's your sweet your sweet is that you were right and he was wrong and he needs to shave yeah he'll never let me he'll never let me be right so i feel like for me for him to for that to have happened it just couldn't have been any better timing so that's my sweet and on that note guys i reckon that's a wrap well if you have loved this episode you guys know the drill go subscribe tell your mom tell your dad tell your friends tell your kids just tell everyone and if you are stuck at home with your kids because your kids can't go to daycare i'm sorry and share the love. Because we love love! We love love!

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