Speaker #0Welcome to NeuroDivergent Spot. I'm your host, Sam Marion. My pronouns are he, him, and I am a multiply neurodivergent therapist, speaker, and creator. My work focuses on all things neurodiversity, but my particular interests are in autism, ADHD, learning differences, and learning disabilities. Today, it's going to be a solo episode. I've got some updates for you, and honestly, I just want the chance to talk a little bit about what's been going on. behind the scenes a little bit that I don't talk about or haven't talked much about in social media or here. And also, I just want to talk a little bit about what's going on in the world and here in our country, the United States specifically. Before we continue, I've got a quick disclaimer. This podcast is for information purposes only and should not be seen as a replacement for therapy, healthcare, or legal advice. And so my first update is that I'm going to be shifting from releasing shows every week but split into seasons and instead I'm going to start releasing shows every other week and it's just going to be ongoing. I think this is going to help me with time management if I'm honest. Sometimes I do get a little bit stressed and overwhelmed and putting out shows every week I try to get ahead and so every so often my life will be busy if I have one or two cancellations for interviews or reschedules which because life happens, then I feel a stress a little bit. So I'm going to make this shift. I think that it's going to be a really good thing. I want the opportunity to also with this weave in probably more so episodes where I do talk about some things that are happening in the world around us that kind of give me my perspective, because I've realized that I do sort of exist at an interesting cross-section. Um, my background is as a trauma therapist. So I approach my work sort of first and foremost through those lenses of, of a trauma therapist. Uh, I, I think first about regulation. I think about the things that might be activated for the nervous system. And that's a little bit different than a lot of therapists in the neurodivergent spaces that really approach things from a behavioral perspective, or they're shifting from. the behavioral approach that they learned more towards a regulation approach. And that is a little bit different. It gives me the opportunity to collaborate and connect with different groups because of my background. And so that's some of what I'm going to tell you more about, okay? Some of the spring that had me busy is there are a couple conferences that I present at, and I have the last few years. First one is National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference. This is, the history is more of an educators conference, but they've really expanded to others that work with young people. And it's a really interesting environment because so much of my passion is not just around talking to other therapists. I like talking and interacting with multiple disciplines, with a variety of backgrounds. So there, I get the chance to talk to general education teachers. special education teachers, school social workers, school psychologists, administrators. It's phenomenal. I get great questions. I find that the people that show up to my workshops there to learn about neurodiversity or autism or strategies in the classroom that they can use, these are people who are really thirsty for the knowledge. And it's exciting. Do I wish more people would show up? Absolutely. Because I know that there are still roots. in the behaviorist approaches that exist throughout the school systems but still people show up to listen and to learn and it's exciting uh so really i've i've loved that environment i've presented there for several years now um and then the other one that i presented at the last few years that i have a really great experience with it's the international symposium on child abuse and but by the way both these conferences are probably the 1400 1500 attendees range um They're both similar to that, I think. The second one may be a little bit bigger. But the audiences are truly national and international. So supposing my child abuse, that one, I have people in my workshops that have included medical directors for child advocacy centers, right? Nurses that do evaluations. forensic evaluators. I've had trauma therapists there, caseworkers from child protective agencies. I've had prosecutors. It's, again, a wide cross-section of professionals. And I love that opportunity. I love that I get the chance to talk about neurodiversity affirming support within spaces that have been focused on trauma. And part of the point that I make to people is Actually, a lot of trauma-informed approaches work really, really well with, let's say, the autistic community, right? Being sensory aware, being aware of things that might startle somebody. Well, that's trauma-informed. That's also neurodiversity-informed. And so that's part of what I've had going on this spring. I take both those experiences very seriously. Now, I present at a lot of conferences, probably four or five a year, something like that. I can go back and count. I think last spring alone. Actually, I presented at four conferences for a total of like 10 conference presentations. I went a little big there. But I do try to keep a balance, and I love these audiences. And part of what I love about it is that through the experiences of presenting, I get to network, and I get to meet people, and I've been working on building more sort of strategic partnerships and collaborations. I have a lot of conversations happening right now behind the scenes. With people sort of honestly across the country trying to find more and more ways to collaborate, people that have work going on that I have expertise or I have a background that I can be supportive. I'm doing different kind of clinical work than maybe they are used to seeing, and it provides value. As I show up with my own lived experience, that also offers up some value in these conversations. So... Um, I'm not quite ready to talk about all of those yet because they are, I said in process, but some of the, you know, I, I, it has shown up on social media. Some, some things that I've done, um, with some national organizations. So that's all really exciting for me. I think that there's a lot of potential for growth and audio advocacy because I, I do see where, um, you know people sort of exist in different spaces and in different levels and my goal is to exist in as many of those as possible so and part of that is because let's talk about some things that are happening in uh in our country right now okay first i want to talk about victor perez and i'm going to say his name autistic adolescent and he's not speaking also had cerebral palsy had an intellectual disability, and he was shot by police officers. And there's a lot of discussion of this, and I see a lot in social media spaces where I exist, that what we saw was a young person who was dysregulated who officers showed up and they used weapons that they didn't need to use, and he lost his life. They took it. Now, a couple things that play into this. One is the risk that people who experience disabilities experience this risk all the time, okay? That we know that law enforcement is not prepared across the board to support. We know the history of law enforcement. Like, I don't live in the South. Where truly the history of law enforcement goes back, or the organized law enforcement goes back to capturing runaway slaves. That's the history. Law enforcement here in the South, and Victor Perez was not in the South, but where I live, law enforcement has a history of fighting vehemently against the civil rights movement. It's what I grew up around. Not the civil rights movement. I'm younger than that. But growing up around this, that history, and that's ingrained in this system. Now, the way I like to illustrate that, there's a story that I tell that I have never talked to my parents about this. Because when I was 16, I was scared to death. Okay? I was 16 years old. I'd been driving about a month, and I got pulled over by a sheriff's deputy in a small town in south Georgia. and i had a couple friends in the car i don't think i actually ever broke the law but i got pulled over he gets me out of the car takes me kind of pulled me back behind the car not physically pulled me just hey let's step back here i viewed it as he was getting me away from my friends and then i got this lecture about you know acting more mature or something like that you know being safe and I've always viewed it as like, that was a great way for an officer to handle an adolescent. I was scared the whole time because I was afraid that if somebody saw me, they would tell my parents, small town, and I would be in a lot of trouble. I was not afraid for my life. Now, this officer or the sheriff's deputy, the large black man and smaller. white adolescent. If all we do is we change the race of the two people in this, it feels much scarier. If suddenly we have a large white deputy and we have small black adolescent, it feels different. it is much scarier and i don't know that everybody would see that way but i think a lot would and that's real okay i've worked with a lot of bipoc families in my career we used to work in women's trauma a lot of bipoc moms and they would talk about giving the talk to their adolescent especially male kids and the talk was about how to behave around law enforcement in order to be safe, in order to protect one's life. That's not a talk that I had. It's not a talk that anybody saw that I needed. But it's different when we talk about people of color. That isn't a necessary talk. So then we add in the neurodivergence. We add in... the non-speaking, autism, the cerebral palsy, and this person didn't know how. They didn't know they were supposed to play a game a certain way. They were dysregulated, and they lost their life. It's a problem in the system. But the system is now led, and that's the law enforcement system, but health care still has problems. Now we're led by RFK Jr., who, as I'm recording this, within the last week has been on the record of saying some pretty horrible things about autism. Autism is not a disease, no matter what he says. It's not an epidemic. The prevalence numbers increasing are a result of greater understanding. And let's go back to the issues around race for just a moment. Because if we look at the greatest increases in the autism diagnoses, it is people who have previously been overlooked. It is people of color. It is those assigned female at birth. That's where the steady increase in prevalence has shown up is not as much in the stereotypical middle class white boys. And so when he is talking about the epidemic that he sees, he's talking not about your stereotypical white boy. Right. Because that's not where the increase exists, not compared to other areas. and so it is dangerous to have that that's what this is part of why you're not hearing from me in so many places right now is because everything happening in culture and society around autism and neurodivergence more generally is all really scary and i know for listeners so many of my of my listeners that I heard from are impacted, their families are impacted by this. The idea of a registry is scary for many, many people. It feels like we've gone back almost 100 years. That's how people are perceiving it. And these little steps that across the board, what I'm seeing is in so many areas, we have the dehumanization of so many people. And it's such a focus in the wrong place. It's a great distraction away from supporting people who need support. And it's heartbreaking. It is heavy. More families that I've been working with for years have been having a hard time over the last few months. Than any stretch of my career kind of higher percentage of my caseload and that's true with every therapist that I've talked to about Sort of everything happened in the world that everything happening has people feeling much more stress than ever so my hope for this podcast is that We'll continue to have guests who can talk about their lived experiences in ways that They're acknowledging their challenges and struggles, yet they're living real life. And I hope that you find that maybe inspiring, maybe validating. If listening to somebody share their experience helps you feel more seen, then that's amazing. And I hope that's what happens for you. Okay? I truly do. I want this podcast to be something that continues. I do want to show up and talk about, you know. All kinds of things. And periodically, I'm going to do solo episodes. I've been avoiding that a little bit up until this point, but I'm going to keep that going. The longer form for me works well. This podcast was started because I needed a creative outlet for my own stress one day, and I created it. And I hope it adds value for your life. I'm going to keep showing up. I'm going to keep talking about things. And just know that this podcast is a very small part of what I do. I like showing up in physical spaces. I like showing up to talk to groups, to advocate for neurodiversity-affirming approaches. I write proposals for conferences sometimes that will tell me to use things like person-first language, and I will then add a footnote to my proposal of why I didn't and explain some of that. Advocacy shows up in so many places, and we've all got to keep it going. I really appreciate that you choose to listen, that you've been here for this episode. I hope that you share this with anybody who you think could benefit any of the episodes. Engage with me on social media. Give me a follow there. Either my personal kind of practice page or the podcast page if you just want updates there. Either one of them, both of them, they're in the show notes. Okay? Give it a like. I'll tell you, if you want to do something really meaningful, it would be to go in to wherever you listen to podcasts and give a review. that would have a big impact on more people finding the show. But I appreciate each and every one of you. If you have questions you'd like me to answer in a solo episode, please reach out and let me know. I'd love to hear from you. If you have feedback, please reach out. If you want to be a guest on the pod, reach out and let me know. I appreciate each and every one of you.
