The Blindboy Podcast - Intrapersonally Speaking

Episode Date: April 12, 2022

I just found out that I am Autistic. I speak about my experience of learning this about myself  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Breakfast Christ dangles on the Weetabix Crucifix. Take a bite from his thigh, you Clemmie Anthonys. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. If you're a brand new listener, go back and listen to some earlier podcasts to familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. And if you're a regular listener, if you're a weeping Sheila, you know the crack. Welcome back. Thank you for the lovely feedback for last week's podcast it was a mental health podcast we spoke about the psychology of core beliefs via the metaphor of the Wizard of Oz and whenever I do a mental health episode

that uses like a device from popular culture like the Wizard of Oz or I did ones on Aesop's Fables anytime I do that I get quite a positive response so I'm going to try and continue threading that theme into any mental health episodes. I think using storytelling, in particular stories that we're already familiar with, using those type of things as a device to speak about mental health health to have mental health

conversations is quite effective because i don't think we have a cultural literacy when it comes to speaking about our internal world like if you mental health is mentioned quite a bit on the media the past few years which is a good thing but often it's spoken about in via platitudes that are quite behavior based be kind open up talk to someone and that's very useful and it's certainly better than it not being spoken about at all but i can't remember the last time i turned on the television or the radio and I heard someone speaking in depth about the emotion of anger or what it's like to experience jealousy or what it's like to experience having low self-esteem

and believing that other people are better than you or the experience of contempt where you believe yourself to be better than others are the words that we use and the beliefs that we have internally when we experience anxiety. Internal dialogue. The things we say to ourselves in our own heads in private. Because you'll know if you've ever experienced anxiety or depression. That's kind of where it starts.

It's the things you say to yourself. I'm incapable. I'm useless. I will never be able to overcome this thing that I'm scared of. If only I was better at this, better at that. You're a piece of shit. These are very painful internal conversations. And when you're in the throes of crisis that's the inside of your head all day long all the time and for me my daily goal

is through mindfulness through self-awareness through self-compassion is to replace that internal dialogue that negative rigid internal dialogue with something that's a bit more self-forgiving

and flexible so that I then have the head space to think about the things I want to think about my interests my passions the things that give me a sense of meaning and happiness so we tend not to discuss that internality

not in the media and not really in conversations with each other out loud. Because we attach a lot of shame to it. Speaking about our negative internal self-talk out loud is quite scary. You have to learn to be comfortable with vulnerability in order to do that. It feels like taking off a layer of clothes a little bit. in order to do that. It feels like taking off a layer of clothes a little bit.

For a lot of people, consciously thinking about or even mentioning private internal dialogue tends to really only happen if you're lucky enough to attend counselling or psychotherapy. And then the counsellor says to you, you know, what phrases or words are going around your head when you're feeling depressed let's speak about some of that so i think using storytelling metaphors familiar stories like the wizard of oz and the tin man who thought he was stupid using these things that we we already understand to then have a conversation about internal dialogue i think that's it's proven to be really effective on this podcast and it's only something i've realized in the past year based on your feedback because when i do a mental health episode and it's about asap's fables or the

story with the lion and the thorn in his paw i'm speaking about fucking psychology that's what I'm speaking about I'm speaking about cognitive psychology specifically but I just noticed that ye really seem to pick up on it and take something from it when it's told via a familiar story so I'm going to continue doing that going forward if I can so I think this week's podcast

is going to be a little bit chaotic because I had something planned and then that got to be a little bit chaotic because I had something planned and then that got derailed a little bit and the reason is um if you've been listening to this podcast for the past few weeks you'll know that I'm I currently am undergoing an assessment for autism because I have lots of autistic listeners to this podcast. Not just autistic listeners, people who are neurodivergent. They might be ADHD. So anyway, quite a few listeners over the years have flagged with me that certain aspects of how I speak about things

or how I relate to the world reminds them of themselves and their autism. So I got my diagnosis at the weekend. And I am in fact autistic. Which is it's quite a lot to take on board to be honest. Because. Well first off the weird thing about it is. You know I receive a diagnosis.

Which is quite medicalised. And it's getting my head around it is odd because finding out that I'm autistic is a real challenge to my sense of identity if you get what I'm saying I started off this podcast speaking about internal dialogue how we speak to ourselves, well, how I form

my sense of self and my sense of identity and who I am, which I've been dealing with my whole life, that is now challenged because now I've learned that I'm autistic. Now the odd thing with that is, the thing with diagnosis diagnosis there's this irrational part of my brain that feels like I'm after getting autism do you get me when in fact what's happened is someone has just given me a new word to describe how I've been my entire life so I have been autistic my whole life since I was born I'm just finding it out now in my 30s which is quite challenging that's very challenging to receive new information like that because I kind of had my sense of self figured out or I felt I did and I had the history of my existence figured out and now I'm looking back at my entire life and who I am now with kind of a new lens

so I would like to speak about it because I can't not speak about it I think if I try if I just learned that I'm autistic and then tried to do a podcast about something different I wouldn't be emotionally present in the theme of that podcast I need to speak about this because that's this is the only thing that's on my mind like I haven't squared it with myself yet even saying out loud I'm autistic I can't congruently connect with that word from my head to my heart do you get me? because it's too new I've just found out a few fucking days ago

and it's a it's now a challenge to my identity I'm reappraising my whole sense of self and it shouldn't because as I mentioned I haven't suddenly become autistic. I've been autistic my whole life but my internal script of who I am I now have to go back and edit it. So before I even begin I'm only going to speak about my experience as an autistic person having just learned that I'm autistic I'm not going to

speak about anyone else's fucking experience because here's the other mad thing I just found out I'm autistic but to be honest I don't know a hell of a lot about autism and the one thing I can tell is that the space of autism is a bit of a minefield at the moment. It's because we're learning so much about it recently, is my guess. I'll give you an example recently. I had Keith Duffy on the podcast a few weeks back. We had an amazing podcast, wonderful crack. Keith is a lovely person. And Keith has been a large voice in autism awareness

in Ireland going back 20 years and a lot of autistic people and parents of autistic kids contacted me to thank Keith for the work he's done around autism awareness but one thing Keith promoted was a treatment for autism known as ABA I I'd never heard of it, I hadn't a clue. But this treatment is very controversial in autistic circles and a huge amount of autistic people are not happy with ABA as a treatment. So that's one thing I want to say because I learned that recently. And I will have experts, autism experts, on this podcast in the coming year when I get my head around it.

And I'll make sure that these people are rigorous, respected, qualified people. And that whoever I have on this podcast to speak about autism, if I do, that they will be doing it from a position of best practice, professionalism and compassion the same degree of safety that i put in place when i have someone come on here and speak about mental illness or mental health i'll be doing the same if i have someone on speaking about autism so i'm an autistic person and i'm going to speak about me and my experience and that's it and if i fuck up and i say something wrong, I promise you that would be from a position of ignorance and not knowing rather than me being willfully irresponsible. And if I do say something wrong, please give me a DM, shoot me a DM and explain to me what I said wrong and point me in the direction of where I can learn. And then I'll take accountability for it. But please don't do a big

Twitter call out if I get something wrong I don't have the fucking headspace for that and big giant Twitter call outs they often don't work because what happens is that you might be well intentioned and then it gets misinterpreted

and willfully taken out of context and because that's what Twitter is Twitter isn't a social justice platform like it's a terrible thing misinterpreted and willfully taken out of context and because that's what twitter is twitter twitter isn't a social justice platform like it's a terrible thing that twitter has become the platform for social justice it's not even a social media platform twitter is a video game where people compete to have the best complaint and it's designed specifically to elicit only the most angry, fearful, combative responses so that billionaires can get rich off the data of your reactionary emotions.

That's what Twitter is. But I'm going to hopefully avoid saying anything incorrect or wrong this week because I'm going to speak only about my experience as someone who just found out they're autistic. One thing I have learned is the importance of using person first language. So I'm not going to say I have autism or I got autism. I'm going to say I'm autistic. So it's not a thing that I have. It's who I am. This podcast is going to be a little bit self-indulgent because I need to do it. If you're a long-time listener to this podcast, you know whenever I speak about mental health, I also do it for me.

When I speak about the internality of my emotional world on this podcast and I speak about my mental health regime, it's also a form of self-therapy, it's a form of self-talk, it's also a form of self-therapy it's a form of self-talk it's almost a form of journaling and when I speak about my experiences on this podcast it helps me and if I'm sufficiently emotionally congruent which means that my feelings and my thoughts are one then it kind of vicariously helps other people too so that's why I do it I'll probably have a hot take next week, but this week I just need to be emotionally authentic with myself and process shit.

I'm going to speak about my autism in two parts. There was the first part of my life, mainly school, where I experienced great difficulty. And then the second part of my life, from my early twenties up until now, where I've done fucking fantastically. I've been mentally healthy. I've achieved a shit ton of goals. I am happy with who I am. I love and

enjoy life. The mental health problems that arose for me which I now have to reframe and understand that they may have been driven by autism but the mental health difficulties and the sadness and the barriers that I experienced in the first part of my life they weren't caused by me they were caused by the structures and systems that I had to fit into and then when I started to live my own life and pursue the current career that I have. There are no barriers. If something in my environment isn't working for me, I flexibly change to make it work for me. And the consequence of that is that 95% of the time, I'm a happy person with a decent sense of self-esteem,

a good mental health, and achieving what I would like to achieve in my life for a sense of self-esteem, a good mental health and achieving what I would like to achieve in my life for a sense of personal meaning. And to be honest, that's kind of all I want. I don't have a strong desire to be really successful. I don't have a strong desire to be famous. What I want is, can I earn a living doing the thing that I love every day? Can I do that? And if I can do that, then I enjoy being alive. The experience of existing is pleasurable.

So before I begin, so with my autism diagnosis, the area where I've had the most difficulty is social interaction with other humans. Things like small talk in particular, maintaining eye contact, stuff like that, which is instinctual to people who are neurotypical, for me, has always been a bit difficult. It doesn't mean I can't do it. I do do it, and I do it really well. But doing that requires effort for me, so I tend to not do a lot do it. I do do it and I do it really well but doing that requires effort for me so I tend to not do a lot of it. I tend to not put myself into a lot of situations where I'm having small talk or interacting with large groups of people. I've always been that way and up until now I just

used the word introvert to describe it. I have an introverted personality. I enjoy my own company and being with other people, it's not intolerable, it's just not my comfort zone. But having spoken to a psychologist and been assessed, it's actually autism. The problem with this is that it increases the likelihood of social rejection, bullying, fitting in comfortably in something like the school system, which is designed

for neurotypical people. So over time this resulted in social anxiety, a fear of society itself. Another issue for me is what's called executive functioning. I would have had difficulty paying attention in school. I would have had difficulty planning. I would have had difficulty doing things like homework, having the initiative to do homework by myself. I haven't been formally assessed for dyscalculia, but I do believe I have dyscalculia and that I had dyscalculia throughout school because my capacity to do maths is incredibly poor.

I have difficulty still reading the time I can read the time but when I read the time I don't look at a clock and know what time it is it takes a short moment for me to figure out the time but that's every time I look at a clock so things like

adhering to deadlines planning things out being on time for appointments, that requires quite a good deal of effort from me. I'd do it, but it requires a good deal of effort. I would have had difficulty around inhibition. So I would behave in ways that would be inappropriate. The kind of basic skills that you learn to function independently in society these things for me

were difficult and when you're in school put all that shit together and on the outside it looks like a very disruptive misbehaved bald child but the other thing with my autism is I frequently experience what's called hyper focus. So I don't need to tell you this. You listen to this podcast. I've made a fucking career out of it. I'm nonstop all the time thinking about ideas, art, creativity, music, history, whatever the fuck it is. 90% of my day is spent focusing intensely on the thing that interests me most at that moment

if I'm focused on something I can operate at about 10 times the normal speed that someone else can do that's my own assessment of that if I enter a state of creative flow in particular I'm like a laser beam. It's like a fucking race car. I have to literally remove myself from other people

because my brain is going so fast. And it feels fucking amazing. I love it. That's the feeling that I live for. It's so much crack. I have an ability to see connections where other people don't see connections. Like, my creativity and my artistic

abilities these aren't because of my autism but my capacity to focus on them so intensely for so long and shutting everything else out that's been a massive help to me and I've built a career out of it and I love it but in school that was not a good thing because I might be focused on something that has nothing to fucking do with school also in my social interactions with people throughout my life I got better at it now as I'm getting older but I if if I'm not properly grounded before a conversation with somebody I have to be very careful because what will happen is, I will speak only about the thing that I'm interested in at that moment, regardless of what's going on in the rest of the conversation,

now, I watch myself around this, I've learned to do what's known as masking, around this, because if you do that too much, people call you mental, people call you eccentric, people call you mad,

and I don't really like that, like I might bump into I might bump into someone in the street who I haven't seen in five years I'll say hello before they get a chance to talk I'm going into a tirade about how Kellogg's cornflakes were invented as an anti-masturbation aid in the 1800s then I stop talking and I might leave the conversation without saying goodbye and then the person is left going, Jesus Christ, he's mad. Like as part of my diagnosis, I was asked to speak a bit about family history because, I don't know, I honestly don't know is autism genetic or is it environmental, I don't know that information, but I was asked about family history

and I had a great grandfather in West Cork I'm talking about the year 1900 here from the stories I've heard he was seen as a lunatic he used to he was obsessed with reading he used to read everything he could get his hands on he used to love information about the world but on at the end of his farm at his gate it was the only road to the creamery and he used to stand at the end of his gate every day and stop every single person on the road so he could read out his poetry or so he could tell them facts about the world

but the thing is that all of these farmers who needed to go to the creamery they'd go to the creamery with a milk churn on their horse's back and then they'd come back from the creamery with that milk being made into butter. But when they came back they used to have to avoid the road. They used to have to go along the fields because if they stopped on the road and my great-grandfather stopped them to speak about his poetry or to give them facts about the world, the butter would melt,

on their horses backs, and all the horses would leave, with buttery legs, and buttery shoulders, which I think is a beautiful image, but that same great grandfather, he let his farm go to shit, like he'd be so obsessed,

with writing his poetry, or reading his books, that not only was he not, bringing his milk to the fucking creamery, he was destroying all the butter in west cork when he wasn't liked for that but all his sons were in the ira and they helped to get the brits out of west cork so that kind of made up for it and thinking back at that that sounds like a man who may have been on the autistic spectrum i mean that's what i'd be doing if i was in the 1900s and didn't have a fucking podcast but mindfulness checking in at my body

self-talk grounding myself learning to listen is something I do that requires effort so that I don't go into a big tirade and I prefer operating that way it's nicer to exist in society that way I get to engage empathy that way so I can pick and choose when I decide to go on a big rant about whatever it is that I'm passionate about at that time. And I have control around it through mindfulness and grounding. I've just figured that out over the years. But one thing that's a bit of a, it can be seen as a negative consequence of all this is I don't really have friends and I've never really had friends and I don't really have much of a social life. I've got tons of acquaintances. I've got tons of people who maybe once or twice a year

I can meet up and have a pint but I don't have close friendships. I've got people who are family that I'm close with but I don't really have close friendships and I've never had close friendships and I've never understood close friendships or And I've never understood close friendships. Or even really wanted them. Now on the outside that can look lonely. But I don't experience it as lonely at all. Because all I want to do is be alone with my thoughts. Because that's where my happiness is.

Now not all the time. Maybe 90% of the time. I do require a certain amount of social interaction. Covid lockdown was not good for me. The mental health impacts of COVID for me were so detrimental and led to such executive dysfunction. I spoke about this. I difficulty responded to emails. I wasn't able to tidy up after myself.

I was becoming forgetful. I wasn't able to tidy up after myself. I was becoming forgetful. I wasn't able to go to bed on time. That's executive dysfunction, which flared up because of COVID lockdown. So being a complete hermit like I had in COVID, that does not benefit my mental health in one bit. And it was that COVID experience also which drove me towards searching for an autism diagnosis

because I kind of just said to myself fuck me you've been trying the same mental health techniques now for a long time and nothing's really getting better it's just you're managing it so maybe there's something else here but like I said the main thing I'm dealing with this week is finding out that I'm autistic is like I said it's challenging my sense of self and my sense of identity, which is quite overwhelming. In particular, it's I'm having to reappraise my past, my experience of school.

Like I mentioned last week, the difficult time I had in school, failing my leave in cert cert being unable to do maths and I had a terrible time in school I did have a bit of crack I had a lot of crack because I knew

how to have fun but I was very very heavily excluded in school very heavily from the youngest age possible

and this happened at all points of my education in school very heavily from the youngest age possible. And this happened at all points of my education. From play school to primary school to secondary school. At all points. I was punished heavily by teachers and by the system and by the education system itself. And what's making me angry is I'd kind of squared

this myself I knew school wasn't for me I knew that I just thought look I'm just really creative I really like art and music and these things and I was so interested in these things that I just wasn't interested in doing school work and I was also very disruptive and I was so interested in these things that I just wasn't interested in doing school work and I was also very disruptive and I was bold so I think of these things and I go fuck it look you're an adult now things can change but looking back in it now and going holy shit I was an autistic child who received no support whatsoever now I realized that my education was effectively fucking stolen from me by successive generations of adults who should have flagged something like my first ever ever day of school when I was about four years of age.

Like I'll never forget it because it stuck with me as a traumatic memory but I was four years of age. I don't think I knew I was going to school. All of a sudden I was just arrived into this fucking classroom. And the level of anxiety that I felt at

the sheer unpreparedness of it. Just all of a sudden going from being a child at home and I had my little books and my ties and then all of a sudden now I'm wearing a uniform and I'm in a class of 30 kids the same age as me, all four or five years of age. And I remember looking around and just wondering how the fuck are all of you okay with just being here what's going on and that's when I had my first ever like extreme I suppose you'd call it a panic attack at four years of age I just couldn't deal with being in the classroom with all those kids now I wasn't the only kid who was upset because I do remember scanning the room and looking to see who else is crying.

And I remember being, one little girl was crying and one little boy was crying. And when I saw them, it made me feel okay because I went, right, okay, I'm not the only one. But the difference with me,

because I remember it, they stopped crying after about 15 minutes and got with the flow. And I remember it they stopped crying after about 15 minutes and got with the flow and I remember the teacher trying to sing songs, trying to do everything crayons were out this was like an introductory day

but for me nothing worked nothing worked and I cried so much it hurt and then I kept crying and crying and crying until I puked up I puked all over a young fella beside me by the name of Raymond

because I remember it he's a guard now and after about an hour they had to ring home and say your young fella's still crying he's puking up everywhere he's crying there's nothing we can do to get him calm, nothing, so my brother came in, and my brother, he'd have been about,

jeez, he might have been 19, I'd say, and my brother brought with him, because he knew, he brought with him a tape of T-Rex, which when I was four, T-Rex was my favourite band. All I would do all day is listen to that T-Rex tape, Mark Bolan. And T-Rex was my favourite band because T-Rex was also my favourite dinosaur. And my brother came to the classroom and the teacher was a nun. And my brother said, here, just, you've a tape player up at the top of the classroom, take this tape, play it, play that music, and I promise you he will stop crying, he'll calm the fuck down. And I remember I felt okay that my brother was there, I knew I felt happy that I was about to hear T-Rex,

and then the fucking bollocks of a nun wouldn't play it, because she said that's adult music, that's not music for children. And she refused to play it because she said that's adult music that's not music for children and she refused to play it and then tried to bring me up and get me to listen to fucking some bullshit children's music they were playing which I had no interest in because I was very very very into music at the age of four like advanced obsession with T-Rex andid bowie so then i just started bawling crying and puking again until i had to be taken home early and i'll never forget the shame of it the shame of it and then looking around at all the other kids and going there's something with

me is different i'm different why couldn't i just sit in that classroom like all the rest of them and I couldn't go back so I missed my first week of school there was no way my parents could send me back not after that reaction not after this wasn't simple anxiety on the first day of school this was an exceptional overwhelming bodily reaction that resulted in me puking so i missed my first week of school but what was it that made me finally go so my ma took me to there was a pond where we used to look at ducks and my ma took me to this pond where i'd see the ducks and i was under i understood this pond and at the pond she was able to point and said see that building over there that's the school and only when in my mind I could map out the journey of ah okay well I'm familiar with the

duck pond and if I can see the school from the duck pond then the school mustn't be that far away so now it's less scary and then I just started going to school. But I tell you why I remember that day so vividly. Because four is a young age to be fucking remembering a day as perfectly as that. And the reason I remember that so vividly is as an adult of 19 or 20, when I first started to get extreme panic attacks. And extreme social anxiety.

And agoraphobia. And a fear of socialising. Being in public places. Which I lived with for about maybe 2 or 3 years. When I was getting intense panic attacks. As an adult. The theme of my panic attack was. What happens if I'm in a public space.

And when I'm in this public space and when I'm in this public space I puke and everyone stares at me so I know that my panic attacks came from that first experience because obviously the shame of being in that classroom when I was four years of age and puking on someone and all the other kids staring and going that one's different and then me getting the strong feeling of I'm different I'm not like them I can't do what you can do I can't just go to school I know that that led to my panic attacks when I was older because that was the theme of them but now having just received the autism diagnosis I know that the trigger for that experience was my autism that extreme social anxiety that sense of being different the inability to do what other people instinctually consider to be normal which is to gather together in a group for me the intensity

of having to be in such a massively social situation with other four year olds triggered intense anxiety that I wasn't prepared for and somebody should have flagged it as that's quite an exceptional reaction there were one or two other kids

who were anxious too but this young fella's reaction lasted the entire day nothing stopped it absolutely nothing, this was something extra, maybe this young fella needs supports or some description but that was the early 90s

and those supports probably didn't fucking exist, I think I'll do a little ocarina pause now before I continue I'm going to play the ocarina which is a clay whistle and I'm going to do this so thatina which is a clay whistle and I'm going to do this so that you don't get startled by a sudden advert. So when I play this ocarina

you're going to hear an advert. On April 5th, you must be very careful Margaret. It's a girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil. It's all for. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil. It's all for you. No, no, don't. The first omen.

I believe the girl is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real.

What's not real? Who said that? The first omen. Only in theaters April 5th. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care.

From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. playing only the low notes there because I know people's dogs are getting upset by the ocarina when I play the high notes and I don't want to be upsetting any dogs support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the Patreon page

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twitch.tv forward slash the blind by podcast Thursday at half 8 now let's get back to the podcast and if you were expecting a hot take this week, I do apologise because this is quite a self-indulgent podcast.

But I really needed to do it. I really need to speak about this shit so that I can move forward with the hot takes. I need to get this stuff off my chest. But that was a theme throughout school from as long as I can remember, the sense of not fitting in with other kids, not having the same interests as other kids,

not feeling like I can speak to other kids. I was actually a bit more comfortable speaking to adults. I wasn't interested in the games that the kids were playing. Literally nothing the other kids liked was what I liked. I had my own very very specific interests and my interests were music which I adored

um dinosaurs was a big thing when I was a kid but basically encyclopedias there was a set of world book encyclopedias in my house which I was very lucky to have and I taught myself to read from those books but I would just spend all day going through these encyclopedias in my house which I was very lucky to have and I taught myself to read from those books but I would just spend all day going through these encyclopedias reading and learning about absolutely everything under the sun passionately focused on this and also of course art but these

interests definitely set me apart from other kids made me not want to interact to have friends because I felt like I was on a different level I couldn't like by the time I was about five I'd become obsessed with Guns N' Roses and I couldn't go to anyone in the fucking schoolyard and speak to them about Guns N' Roses because they didn't know who the fuck Guns N' Roses were but I always explained this to myself as I was born into a house of adults so all my siblings were way way older than me my youngest brother was 13 years older than me everyone was a teenager or young adult when I was born so up until last week I used to say to myself I was a child born into a house of adults of course I'm going to have different interests to other kids of course I'm going to be more comfortable

speaking with adults than other kids this is probably what my parents said to themselves too I know this is what my parents would have said to teachers because my

from about the age of 5 my parents were consistently being brought down to the school because I was so disruptive I used to cursing was a big problem

I used to curse all the time out loud when I was a child. This was not good in a fucking, a convent school, effectively. One thing that used to consistently get me in trouble, as a child, like all the time, and I mean bad trouble. I didn't understand that you had to speak to adults differently. I would speak to adults as if I was an adult as well. And a lot of adults found this intensely

cheeky. Now when I received my autism diagnosis my psychologist said to me that an area I have difficulty around is recognising social hierarchies so I don't see when a person is supposed to be important. Like if I was to walk into a job tomorrow and you said that person's the boss, I will walk up and speak to the boss the same way I would one of my colleagues. I don't understand the rules of this person is important so you have to speak to him differently.

Now I quite like that about myself, but that shit will get you into trouble very quickly. One of the most traumatic instances of my fucking childhood and again this fucking autism diagnosis the thing that I'm saying about it threatening my identity it's causing me to go back through all horrible shit that happened to me in my childhood and now I'm reappraising it from a different lens which is overwhelming when I was about six I'm reappraising it from a different lens. Which is overwhelming. When I was about six. I'm trying to remember this now. I was in a playground. And I'd become obsessed.

With learning about the universe. I'd been reading all about the solar system and the universe in my encyclopedias. Obsessing. This is all I was talking about. Didn't give a fuck about anything else. I just wanted to talk about Pluto and Neptune and the sun and the whole shebang. Which is something that should be rewarded. And in fairness, in my house,

if I'm at six years of age cracking open an encyclopedia and speaking about the solar system and learning this shit myself I was lucky enough to have parents and siblings to say that's a good thing, fair play to you so I felt good about it and then one day I went up to the playground when I was about 6 and I was on my own and there was a woman there

could be about the same age that I am now and she was with her daughter and her daughter was the age that I was then so two 6 year olds and an adult mother. And I went up to the both of them. Out of nowhere. And I just said to the daughter and to the mother. Did you know that one day the sun is going to expand.

And the universe will end. And this is definitely going to happen. And I think the daughter started crying because that was scary information then the mother started disagreeing with me going that's not true stop talking stop talking that's not true and I probably got really pissed off because it is true I read it in an encyclopedia the sun is going to expand and the universe is going to end now I was six and obviously the fact that I

first off I made the daughter cry by speaking about the sun expanding I'm fucking six I don't know the difference I think it's amazing and then the ma obviously got pissed off

that I talked back to her but she grabbed me by the fucking hair and beat the shit out of me like left me unable to talk for about an hour or two afterwards of the sheer shock of an adult like giving me an adult beating like slapping kids isn't good but she didn't slap me she fucking beat me I can't remember the fucking woman unfortunately because if I did if I knew who the fuck that woman was, I have an idea of where she lives

if I knew who the fuck that woman was I would go to her now and say do you remember when you were my age and you kicked the living fuck out of a six year old in front of your daughter and I only stopped blaming myself for that in my fucking early thirties. When you get to the age

that the person was when they did it you really really start to see how wildly unacceptable it is like I'm like the same age as that woman now and the idea that I would even raise my voice to a six year old

let alone kick the fuck out of one it's I really see how wrong that was now I really really see how deeply wrong that was that's fucking abuse she should go to jail that's a going to jail thing beating the shit out of a six year old

in a playground in your thirties is a going to jail thing but I had to relive that moment with my psychologist during my autism diagnosis because that's a moment for me that I remember. That I really shut off. Firstly it's.

It's an example of my autism. Because part of the assessment is you have to. You have to look back into your childhood and go. Look have you felt this way recently. Or is this your entire life. And instances like that are. You know being six. And reading encyclopedias. Because you have an obsessive interest about the solar system

and then speaking to adults like they're adults and not understanding the social rules of hierarchy or understanding the appropriate way to speak to adults to the point that it was obviously so cheeky I got a beating

that's the stuff that I would have brought up in my assessment but that's the moment I began doing what's known as masking consciously changing my behavior suppressing who I am to become normal as such so my energy shifted from having my lovely interests that I adored my music my art all my lovely interests that I adored, my music, my art, all of these things that I adored now became dangerous and I began to hide them. And I hid these things and I tried not to speak about them because when I spoke up about things that I was very enthusiastic about, it got me in trouble. it got me in trouble I started to develop the opinion that my obsessions staying at home

reading encyclopedias, learning about information, learning about the world all of this shit that I loved, that I was obsessed with, could potentially get me a beating from adults so I started to shut the fuck up and play dumb

and then I remember another fucking moment soon after that, which was important. It was a teacher. I can't remember her name. We would have been seven or eight. Whatever the fuck was being spoken about in class, I decided I needed to go on a monologue about the Beatles and the Beatles music and the shooting of John Lennon. And I remember the teacher stopping the class,

because obviously we're not learning about the fucking Beatles when we're eight. She made me go up to the top of the class and say what I'd just said about the Beatles, about John Lennon. I remember saying that John Lennon was shot by Mark David Chapman. And after I said it, she said, can everyone give a round of applause for all of that useless information? So the whole class had to clap

because I was talking about the Beatles and the adult teacher had framed it not as me being interested in the Beatles, but as me, eight years of age now, looking for attention. He's looking for attention and he's showing off how much he knows

about the Beatles everyone clap and shame him so I just made my mind up to shut the fuck up and obviously then I was relentlessly bullied in the schoolyard

because the adult teacher just told everybody it was okay to bully me because the other thing though is children don't like the one child who's

going on unsolicited monologues about the solar system and the shooting of John Lennon so they reject you pretty quickly but one thing, because kids are smart some of the other kids then about 8 or 9 would have noticed holy fuck

that fella doesn't give a shit what he says to teachers, he'd walk up to any adult and he would say whatever the fuck comes into his mind so I used to get kind of manipulated I suppose you'd say by other kids who would whisper into my ear and say walk up to that nun and say this walk up to that teacher and say that leave the school gates go out there outside the school gates and pick up a rock and throw it at that car. And you see, I'd do it

because it felt like social acceptance. When the kids would say to me, go and do that mad thing, you're the mad cunt who'll do it, you don't give a shit, go and do that, I'd do it. Everyone would laugh, they're laughing at me of course, and I would perceive this as being socially accepted

this is the closest I could get to feeling normal, if you get me but then of course I'm getting threatened with expulsion at the age of fucking 9 earlier, so by the time I got into secondary school, my record was terrible, I was incredibly disruptive

I was a lunatic and at 13 in first year, into secondary school, my record was terrible, I was incredibly disruptive I was a lunatic and at 13 in first year, in secondary school I got fucked into the worst class in the school, this class was the worst of the worst people with behavioural issues, people

with, would have had learning difficulties, you would have had kids from. Incredibly traumatic environments. All of us fucked into this class. Not because we were receiving support. They hadn't like identified. Because 13 is still kids.

That's children. So. They hadn't identified a bunch of students. And said. These children need fucking help even though they're acting out they need help they didn't, you just got who they perceived to be the worst possible students and put us into a classroom

and the teachers would walk in and call us gorriers to our faces and when the other classes were getting career guidance we didn't get career guidance we had the vice principal come in and tell us why we should quit school after the junior cert that school isn't the place for us and we shouldn't come back I told the story of that before but in that class basically I went into survival mode because there were some hard cunts in that class and to survive in that class you were either very hard

and able to fight and I don't mean just regular teenage boy fighting I mean asserting dominance through the spectacle of violence so the hardest lad in the class was the one who would

draw blood smash someone's face off a desk or a wall and I'm not judging those lads because they were 13 and they would have come from quite traumatic environments where there could have been abuse or addiction at home. So I wasn't going to gain any approval in any hardness competitions because I wasn't hard at all or no interest in fighting. So I learned how to become an absolute fucking mad bastard. I gained social approval by being the worst behaved young fella in the school.

I would do literally anything. I'd be unbelievably cheeky to teachers, rolling joints at the back of class, abusing solvents at the back of class. Not even because I wanted to abuse solvents but to show off to everybody that I was mad enough to abuse solvents at the back of class. Pretending I didn't give a fuck about my education, deliberately behaving and acting stupid, gaining the approval of my peers and wearing the mask of normality by behaving in the normal of that class,

which was to be disruptive. And then I'd go home and secretly read all my encyclopedias and secretly have my love of music and secretly have my love of music, and secretly have my love of art. Being smart and having all these passions and things that I love doing, and having no way to express them in school whatsoever. And at that point, teachers didn't want to help me,

because they hated me. I was the worst behaved student in the school. I was so poorly behaved in school, that kids in other schools knew about me. Which at the time I thought that made me a fucking legend. And it felt good because it felt like social acceptance. Now I'm kind of fucking embarrassed by it. I experienced that embarrassment recently.

When. I was on a podcast. About six months ago. There was a band from Limerick called Hermitage Green. And one of the singers, Dan Murphy, has a podcast called The Chat. And Dan is from Limerick. He's around the same age as me. And Dan brought me on the podcast to speak about... To speak about fucking Limerick, to speak about the Rubber Bandits, to speak about my podcast, whatever.

And I didn't know Dan when I was a kid because he was in a different school. But he brought up on the podcast that he remembers hearing about me and this was before the rubber bandits or anything like that. He remembers hearing about me in school

and saying, did you hear about that mad cunt? Did you hear about him? He's making bombs. And that was the rumour that was going around about me when I was a teenager that I was up in school making fucking bombs. And that was the rumour that was going around about me when I was a teenager, that I was up in school making fucking bombs. And when Dan said this to me about six months ago,

I got awful kind of fucking embarrassed by it, going, oh Jesus Christ. And I was thinking back, going, I wasn't making bombs. I never tried to make a bomb. The fuck, where the fuck did that come from? And then I remembered, and it made me quite sad. When I was in fifth year I think it was I'd started to develop a private obsession with chemistry and biology. Things I should have been studying in school but I wasn't allowed into those classes because my my grades were so fucking shit for the junior cert that I didn't really get to choose my leaving cert subjects. But I developed

an intense obsession and desire to learn everything about chemistry and biology. And I was doing this at home, privately, in secret, with my own books, learning about all this shit, and learning a lot about it. And one of the things with my autism, I have difficulty sometimes with conversation. When I'm speaking to a person,

sometimes I will steer the conversation towards whatever it is I'm obsessed about at that point. Whatever specific interest that I'm focused on and thinking about all the time, I will steer a conversation in that direction if I'm not grounded. As an adult, I don't anymore now. I ground myself and I listen instead instead rather than going on a monologue but when I was a teenager obviously during this period in 50er all I wanted

to talk about if anyone asked was fucking chemistry and biology that was it but I was hanging around with the ball boys and all we would do really is just smoke joints and act the bollocks so any speak of fucking chemistry or biology was, that was nerd talk. You didn't do that. That was social exclusion.

So I remembered back. I used to learn how to grow hash and how to make explosives. Specifically from a book called The Anarchist Cookbook. So what I was doing is within my peer group. I would be allowed to go on big long monologues. About bomb making. And growing cannabis. And the lads would listen.

Because this is bullshit. Hold on listen now he's talking about making bombs. Be quiet. He's talking about cannabis. What a mad bastard. He's going to grow up to be a big drug dealer he is. Listen then, be quiet. And I'd just be going on big tirades about chemistry and fucking botany and plant biology, because that's what I was interested in, but I framed it as bombs and cannabis. Now I wasn't making bombs. I didn't give a fuck about making bombs. I wasn't growing

hash either. But when Dan said that to me recently, that he remembered, fuck it, I remember a lad saying that you were making bombs in school years ago. It made me fucking sad because I had the brain to be doing chemistry. I had the brain to be doing biology, to be passionate about these things, to be excelling academically. But because that I now realise issues related to my undiagnosed autism, all that confusion and lack of understanding of myself and being chastised from teachers and being told that I was bald, being told that I was disruptive, wrong, being told that I was stupid. I even have to check myself with the language I'm using now.

I said the word tirade there about six times in this podcast to refer to when I go on a monologue. And a tirade, a tirade is like a big, angry, aggressive speech. I'm using the word tirade because that's what obviously was used against me when I was growing up. Teachers saying, shut up with your tirade. I don what obviously was used against me when I was growing up. Teachers saying shut up with your tirade. I don't go on tirades. I go into monologues speaking about something I care about deeply because I love it. That's not a tirade. All of that robbed me of a fucking

education and I had squared that with myself. Over the years I'd said to myself look you were really bald in school forgive yourself and move on now it's different I was autistic and I was acting up and that doesn't feel very fair and I am happy now being an artist like I love what I do now but I do believe if I'd have had the access to something like studying science something to do with science in college I could have brought my creativity and my capacity to think laterally to that and done something completely differently with my life now maybe I would have hated it and ended up back at art but the point is the opportunity was taken from me that's what I don't like and that's what I'm having to reappraise right now so So that was my experience in school.

Which I now realise was the experience of an autistic person. And that feels kind of unfair. I have to open up an ugly chapter again. And look at it from a different lens. Which is tough going. And I had a lot of sensory issues. In school. Like I wouldn't wear my uniform.

And the reason I wouldn't wear my uniform and the reason I wouldn't wear my uniform was because of how it felt on my body. It would feel itchy. Now I'm sure other people's uniforms felt itchy as well but when my uniform felt itchy I couldn't think about anything else so I stopped wearing it. I'd wear tracksuits, I'd wear things that were comfortable. If I told the teachers it feels uncomfortable they'd just say fuck off and go home and don't come back until you've got your uniform back on. Oversensitivity to fabrics is part of my autism. So that experience there being in school that's not very pleasant. That's not a very pleasant school experience. I did have tons of crack. I had loads of crack with all the messing and making people laugh that was enjoyable but it also would have been quite

nice to have been given the opportunity to be as academic as I know I could have been, and then had more options for careers. But even then, with that school experience, the problem wasn't necessarily me. The problem was that the entire school system is designed for neurotypical people, which is the majority of the population.

It's not designed for people who have different needs. I'm assuming things are better now. I'll be honest, I don't know. I found out I was autistic this weekend. There's a lot of learning I have to do. If a doctor came to me tomorrow and said, here's a pill, if you take this pill, you won't be autistic anymore. Would I take it?

No, absolutely not. I love my brain. I love no absolutely not i love my brain i love the thing i love my personality i love the way that i think about things i love the fact that i'm rarely bored so long as i have the tools to keep my mental health in check which means that i'm not drifting towards anxiety, depression, social anxiety isn't coming back, then I love life and I wouldn't change a thing about me. And the specific diagnosis I was given is autism spectrum disorder. It would have been called Asperger's about 10 years ago. I would have been diagnosed with Asperger's, but that's not a diagnosis anymore. So now it's called autism spectrum disorder and I don't even like the fact that it's called disorder

because I don't feel I really don't feel it as a disorder I feel it as when the environment doesn't suit me then it becomes a fucking disorder but the problem isn't with me now that's where I want to be very clear that I'm speaking about my experience because there could be other autistic people and they do experience it as a disorder and they have much different difficulties or much harder experience at living than I do so I'm not speaking for anyone else but I'm just saying for me I don't experience it as a disorder when I got out of school and I had to experience the the intense shame of failing my leave insert and I was thrust into adulthood and I was expected to all of a sudden be able to function as an adult confronted with the fear of you're no longer in the routine of school now you must get a job now you must pay bills you must pay taxes then it was

a fucking disorder because i got extreme social anxiety to the point that it developed into agoraphobia and i couldn't function at all and i was utterly helpless but thankfully i went to a psychotherapist when i was 19 or 20 and it became free because I was in art college. And this therapist. Therapist didn't know I was autistic. Didn't flag that I was autistic. The therapist was just. Oh you're someone with pretty bad anxiety.

Let's work on that with some CBT. And I did. And it helped. And step by step. My self esteem improved. Things that I was terrified of. Such as. Preparing my own food making dinner for myself

dressing myself going to a pub being comfortable in situations where there's a large group of people I did it gradually using CBT and each time I did it I would prove to myself that I was capable of doing it

and I became a healthy functioning person and then I loved that so much that I decided I fucking adore psychology now I think I want to train to be a psychotherapist so I did when I was a mature student and I became obsessed with psychology

and I became obsessed with CBT and transaction analysis and mindfulness and attachment theory and every single possible psychological theory to do with the human mind that I could find and I lapped it up and I adored it.

And what this did is it allowed my neurodivergent brain to almost read the manual of what people are. I could read about why people get anxiety, why are some people angry, why people get anxiety, why are some people angry, how things from people's childhood can influence their personality and how they are as an adult. I could read about what is the anger of emotion, what is the anger of fear, what is the anger of envy and I had it all down now on paper to pour over and understand and obsess and that gave me the tools and confidence to not be afraid, to not feel helpless. If I'd become fearful about what clothes should I wear when I'm going out?

What if I go to the hairdressers and the hairdresser only wants to talk about soccer, but I don't know anything about soccer and then I'm forced to talk to him about soccer? What if that happens? And I would use mindfulness and CBT around these things and I'd say, well, what's the worst that can happen? You might have to sit for a half an hour and listen to somebody speak to you about soccer and you're going to have to pretend you're interested. And you know what? It's not going to be pleasant, but it'll be grand. What if I go to a party and someone starts speaking to me and then I get nervous about my eye contact?

Or I want to start spinning on the spot when they're talking? Or I want to go on a monologue? And I just say to myself, if you want to do it, do it. But sometimes when you do it, that can result in social rejection. So I learned how to listen to people. I learned how to read people's emotions. I learned through mindfulness meditation and emotional intelligence how to correctly label my own emotions. How to know when what I'm feeling is anger

or what I'm feeling is sadness or what I'm feeling is fear. How to understand, know and sit with these feelings. And by understanding those in myself that made me better at empathy with other people and then social interaction because social interaction now it's not my comfort zone but I can do it I don't avoid it I just don't do loads of it and that's grand and something my psychologist said to me when I was getting my assessment was that I've been living with autism my whole life but when I started to go on my mental health journey in my early 20s I had kind of figured out in my own way the right

type of self-therapy that genuinely helped my individual experience of autism. And for me, that was cognitive behavioral therapy, which works wonderfully for me because it's so logical. Transactional analysis, because that explores in detail the nuances of human conversation. Emotional intelligence, because that helps me to label my emotions and the emotions of other people and then mindfulness and mindfulness meditation so that I can calmly

bring all of these things into my present awareness and apply them in difficult situations and then on top of all that exercise, exercise is fucking essential to me going to the gym running regularly these things are very very important to get me to live inside and feel my body and be present and my goal with how i navigate my artistic experience is

what i'm trying to avoid is executive dysfunction. I didn't know that that's what I was doing all along. I've spoken about it on this podcast three, four years ago, but I wasn't calling it executive dysfunction. When my mental health is bad, I start to experience a feeling of helplessness. And when I start to feel helpless and incapable then I start to not answer emails and then problems start to build up because I'm not

answering emails and then I forget to pay a bill and basically what happens is the regular functional things that I need to exist in society. Answering emails, doing my job, paying my bills, going to bed on time. Once these things spiral and roll into a ball, that's when I experience the executive dysfunction and I feel helpless and I'm not very good at helping myself. This happened over COVID in 2021 on COVID lockdown. I got into a pretty bad state of helplessness. It started because I let my studio get so untidy that I couldn't walk around in there. So that's when I got my office. Now I have my new office. I'm not, my senses aren't overloaded when I'm in there. It's a lovely clean space.

I go there every day with a sense of routine. That office is where I go to work and work only. And as soon as I did that, I'm able to answer emails again, I'm able to plan, I'm able to feel a sense of ambition, I wake up feeling positive, I enjoy being alive just by changing my environment. I now know that that's autistic behaviour and that's quite helpful because I've been experiencing executive dysfunction throughout my life and a year ago or two years ago, if I'd got myself into a situation where my studio is so untidy I can't walk around, I'm not answering emails, I'm not texting back, I'm not taking responsibility for my life. If I did that a year or two ago, I would have just called myself a lazy useless cunt over and over in

my head you useless lazy stupid bollocks every hurtful harmful thing that was said to me that was said to hold me back when I was a little child in school would now return to my head as an adult within my internal dialogue to myself and sure what's that doing only completely spiralling the situation more and more until I'm helpless so now I'm not doing that anymore because I'm not a lazy stupid bollocks I'm autistic

and this is an area where I have difficulty I mean I'm also asthmatic when I'm doing my 10km run the odd time at around 8km I might get a little bit out of breath and I reach into my pocket and I take my inhaler. I don't call myself a weak bastard with shitty lungs. When I do that I just go, ah yeah I'm asthmatic. My lungs struggle a little bit more than people who aren't asthmatic. I don't shame myself.

My lungs struggle a little bit more than people who aren't asthmatic. I don't shame myself. So I won't be shaming myself or chastising myself. For behaviours which are. As a result of autism. And. I'm going to start seeing a therapist again. Because I haven't seen a therapist in a long time.

But I'm going to start seeing a therapist. Who specialises in people who are neurodiverse. So that I can update my mental health toolbox. Effectively. gonna be i'm gonna start being a little bit more proud of the things i've achieved in my fucking career i've made a lot of tv shows i've written fucking best selling books i had a successful music career i've done a bunch of shit in all different disciplines and i've done this while being autistic and I'm proud of myself for doing that because the messaging and signals I got all the way through school is that I wouldn't be anything that I was defective and stupid and useless and the message I got from my peers through bullying was that I was weird eccentric and mad and one thing I'm definitely going to be doing is, like, I adore writing.

I love writing so much. My favourite part of my career is writing books. I love my two collections of short stories that I have. I really adored writing them. And I'm proud of them as pieces of work. And sometimes I get very upset when they get unfairly reviewed. Now, I don't mean if someone says they don't like it or someone says,

oh, I thought these were bad books, I don't enjoy them, they're not well written. That's fine, that's critique. But there's some reviews who just say, oh, his work is weird. He's trying too hard to be surreal, to be weird. He's trying too hard to be surreal to be weird he's trying too hard to be strange what does this book say about the human condition and that's very frustrating and it feels unfair because

and this is something I knew in my heart but now I have language for it I don't write from a neurotypical perspective I write from the perspective of neurodiversity. That's why my books appear mad. Because I'm exploring and playing with the rules of rationality in society that I struggle with. The rules of what is acceptable, what is normal behaviour, what is appropriate, what is mad and what is not mad, these are all things I navigate and think about and have had to think about my whole life.

So when I write a book and it's fucking bonkers and it's surreal, that's me having fun with that struggle that's me enjoying playing with and experimenting with the rules of the neurotypical world as a means of personal catharsis and that's why I love doing it so much and that's why it feels so amazing and so therapeutic

when I write and I end up reading these reviews and then beating myself up and thinking I'm doing something wrong with my writing and then I go off reading a lot of fucking Sally Rooney now I enjoy Sally Rooney's work but as I've said with Sally Rooney's work before while I enjoy reading Sally Rooney Sally Rooney doesn't make me want to write. Or not even Sally Rooney. Whatever literature at the moment is getting good reviews, I'll go off and I'll read it. And a lot of it to me just seems incredibly what we call neurotypical. I'm reading these books and it's about human relationships and it's about human conversation. And I'm right back at where I was in school trying

to understand those rules and I'm never going to write like that and when I try to write like that when I try to write a story which feels neurotypical we'll say it feels terrible it feels like trying to have a conversation with my barber about Aston Villa so instead I read writers that feel neurodiverse and I don't know if they are neurodiverse but I read writers that they the words that they create feel like how I experienced the world James Joyce Virginia Wool, a writer called Ted Chiang, Patricia Lockwood, Flann O'Brien, George Louis Borges, Mariana Enriquez. These writers, I can speak their language when I read their work. I can translate it, I understand it. It relates to my experience of the world.

So I want to write like that. I don't want to write very solemn stories about human relationships. I want to write about someone who gets addicted to wearing tweed and then the tweed fabric that they wear is so itchy and abrasive that when they walk

they accidentally rip the fabric a time and they turn into a half an hour that's what i want to write and that's what i did write that's a story in my last book and i now realize that does say something about the human condition it says something about my fucking human condition i'm undiagnosed autistic writing that you know and I remember my time in school with the fucking itchy school jumper and the school jumper being so fucking itchy

that I was being sent home and then I can't read the clock and I can't read the numbers on the clock and then I'm writing stories about someone who's addicted to wearing an itchy jumper and the itchiness of that rips the fabric of time and they turn into a half an hour I love the madness of that

I thoroughly enjoy writing like that I'm processing trauma when I write like that and I know from a neurotypical perspective it sounds utterly fucking mad and it is utterly mad but it's me having fun with that madness or even a rubber bandit song from 10 years ago called Spastic Hawk.

Which is a song, again, I love and is close to my heart. Because when I made it, I felt that deep catharsis. I felt that when I was writing that song, pain was leaving my body via creativity. Which is one of the most wonderful feelings in the world. And I knew Spastic Hawk was about me being bullied and being called a spastic when I was a child because in Limerick the word spastic

was used to police normality if you were odd or weird or strange you were called a spastic so Spastic Hawk is about that but now looking back at Spastic Hawk yes it's about me being bullied but it's about me being bullied, but it's about me being bullied for being autistic.

And it's clear as day now. And I love that my unconscious mind had answers that my conscious mind wasn't aware of. I suppose I'm talking about that because one of the most heartbreaking things of the past year when I got the issue with the executive functioning is I got writer's block. I couldn't write.

I'm writing a new book at the moment. I spent a year not writing, lads. And when I can't write, that breaks my fucking heart. I'm very, very upset when I can't sit down at a page and go into my mind and explore and create. That creates mental health difficulties for me. and create that creates mental health difficulties for me so one of the reasons I got writer's block is I took a lot of bad reviews on board and that's not the fault of the reviewer I'm not blaming the reviewer but when my books got reviewed badly because they were so personal to me it brought me back to being criticized in school it brought me back to that playground

getting beaten up by that woman and that's not on the reviewer, that's my shit I have to take responsibility of that but getting diagnosed with autism has helped me process through that and has made me feel very excited about my next book if you get me

I'm going to be writing my next book from an unapologetically neurodiverse position and then the final thing I do want to talk about is my plastic bag I wear a plastic bag on my head and I have worn a plastic bag on my head for the entirety of my career

now at first with the rubber bandits it was you know kind of trying to stay anonymous even though I'm not anonymous hiding our identities it was a character thing it was funny to have a plastic bag on my head but then as I got more serious in my career and I started speaking about mental health

writing and doing this podcast and not doing the rubber bandits anymore I was still wearing the plastic bag and I used to say to people. I wear this plastic bag because. I've got social anxiety. An unfortunate consequence of my job is. If you write books.

Or you go on TV. Or you make podcasts. That also gets you a certain degree of notoriety. And quite a lot of attention. And it's attention that I definitely don't want I don't care about being famous what I care about is having the opportunity to create

and make work that I love and put it out that's what I care about I don't like the bit where you're well known so I wear the plastic bag to protect myself from that now I realise

and my psychologist agrees that's 100 autistic it's it's literal autistic masking i wouldn't be able to do this job if it meant the amount of small talk that i'd have to engage in on a daily basis like i'm not that well known i'm not that fucking famous i'd be most households in Ireland would have an idea of oh that fella with the plastic bag on his head but I've enough notoriety that I couldn't go to Dunn's or go to Aldi without at least one person stopping me and having a conversation and that to me is not pleasant because of my autism if you said to me you have to go to duns

and you have to get your dinner and you have to prepare yourself for that and you have to plan what you're going to get and you're going to be mindful when you go to duns but however possibly four people four strangers might stop you and try to have a conversation with you I wouldn't be able to do it. I'd have to quit the job. That would be too stressful for me. So my plastic bag protects me from that. I get to be blind by and do my podcast and go on stage and write my books and do all this shit.

And then when I don't want to be blind by, I'm not. I'm just fucking nobody. I'm just a boring man buying his carrots. Living a very, very quiet life that's as boring as humanly possible and all I want to do is run go to the gym make my dinner

and work and that's it and stay in contact with close family members and then meet my friends twice a year for pints and that's it

and that life keeps my keeps the mental health issues that could arise as a result of my autism in check and the plastic bag ensures that it protects it it's a it's an armor it's a weapon because i tell you what lads that fucking plastic bag that does not help my career in any way it might have done 15 fucking years ago with the rubber bandits when you're trying to get attention. But now I'm in my 30s.

I'm not really even doing comedy anymore. I'm doing podcasts about serious things. Trying to write serious literature. This does not help my career. Every single fucking TV. There's documentaries. I've lost so many fucking jobs because of this plastic bag I've had TV opportunities land on my

fucking lap and going we'd love for you to present this, how would you like to do a documentary series on this and then they go, we just can't have some cunt with a plastic bag presenting this is a really serious documentary you can't be doing this with a plastic bag in your head, and they don't understand when I won't

take it off, they just can't get their heads around it. Even to the point where they suggest, would you wear a more formal mask instead? And now I've got a better answer for them. I'm fucking autistic. And this is a unique, neurodiverse solution that I've come up with that allows me to be both famous and not famous

at the same time. And it's environmentally friendly because i'm getting single-use plastic bags and repurposing them into masks to help my autistic self navigate a hostile environment i'm gonna wrap i think i'll wrap it up now that was the rambliest podcast i've ever done i I don't think I've done anything as rambly as that. But I really did need to do it. And I needed to speak about that stuff. To process it for myself.

And also to share it with any of ye. Who might be neurodiverse. Or autistic or whatever. But one thing I will say is. For the second part of my life. For my adult life. Since about 23 onwards. Since I started to develop my mental health tools.

I've been genuinely thriving as an autistic person achieving goals being happy really enjoying my life the slight limitations such as not being hugely social I mean that doesn't matter when it's not something I really want. All I can do is measure my life in terms of how happy I feel on a day-to-day basis. And for 90% of the past decade or whatever,

I've been fucking very happy. Very, very happy. About a 7 out of 10. And any times I was unhappy, there was a reason for it. Such as lockdown, it's ok to be unhappy about lockdown, that was shit but I also want to point out

the reason I was happy and the reason I was thriving with my autism is because I without knowing it had managed to create an environment that suits me I'm self implied I have a job

and this job that I have and this is the most beautiful thing in my life this job that I have right now my job is to pursue the things that I'm passionate about and interested about whatever my obsession is on a weekly basis that's my fucking hot take

the way that I earn a living is also the way I want to operate. The way that keeps me mentally healthy and happy. And if I. Hadn't put the work in to get that. And if I hadn't had a few instances of luck. In order to get that. And I was someone instead.

The same person. Who was now stuck in a job that didn't suit me. In a job whereby... Where it'd be like fucking school. Where I have to focus every day on fitting in. Where I have to try and understand the politics of an office. Where I'm met every day with consistent barriers to my autism. Then I'd be a very different person.

And I mightn't even be here the autism there isn't the issue it would be the environment that doesn't suit the autism that's the issue and the driving force for me like I said I'm not driven by success I'm driven by never ever ever being in a situation where I have to work in a job.

That I might genuinely suffer in. Lots of people can have jobs that they don't like. That aren't pleasant. But they have a capacity to cope with it. And switch off. And go home. And enjoy what it is they enjoy. With my autism.

I wouldn't be able to do that. so I'm thankful for that every single fucking day very thankful and I want to highlight it because if you're not autistic and you're coming away from this podcast going blind boy said he had autism and he's getting on grand like

that's me, that's my experience that's a number of situations coupled with luck and my unique experience of autism i happen to be doing well but that's not the same for other people other adults who have autism who are not so please don't come away listening to my experience thinking oh that's grand and like I said because I've only just learned this I don't have a fucking clue what I'm talking about really I know how to speak about my experience and my experience only and that's it all right dog bless thank you very much for listening to that that was almost 90 minutes um I'm gonna be back next week with a hot take

and we'll be back to normal also it's i think it's autism awareness month so it's pretty nice to find this out on autism awareness month you rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m you can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game, and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com.