DIY, Mutual Aid, and Human-Centered Learning for Neurodivergent and Disabled People

Speaker 1 I came to know my own neurodivergence, my own autistic ways by seeing others try to crush the autistic ways of being in my kids. And I felt that crush. I felt that that soul restriction. I felt it viscerally. And it was like I was like, this is fundamentally misguided. This is not compatible. This is wrong.

Speaker 2 Hello, and welcome to episode 172 of the Human Restoration Project podcast. My name is Nick Covington. Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that this episode is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Simeon Frang, Leah Kelly, and Brandon Peters. Thank you all so much for your ongoing support. We are a community affair. We're autistic, ADHD, OCD, PTSD, Tourette's, schizophrenic, bipolar, apraxic, dyslexic, dyspraxic, dyscalculic, non speaking, and more. We've collectively experienced rare diseases, organ transplants, various cancers, many surgeries and therapies, and lots of ableism and sped. We've experienced medical ableism, medical misogyny, medical racism, medical trauma, and medical gaslighting. We understand chronic pain, chronic illness, and the no end in sight void. We know what it's like to be disabled and different in our systems. We know what it is like to live with barriers and what it means to not fit in and have to forge our own community. Disabled and neurodivergent people are always edge cases, and edge cases are stress cases. We can help you design for the edges because we live at the edges. We are the canaries. We are the fish that must fight the current to swim upstream. And that's just the opening statement on stimpunks.org. Stimpunks has been among HRP's closest allies over the years, and I'm so grateful to be joined by an amazing cross section of Stimpunks today. Ryan Boren, Chelsea Adams, Nora Hobbs, and Helen Edgar, who also runs Autistic Realms, to speak to their roll your own DIY mutual aid and human centered learning for neurodivergent and disabled people. Chelsea had to step away during recording so you'll hear her voice just in the first half, But this episode was such a long time coming, and I really hope you enjoy it. You can connect with Stimpunks and find all of their resources mentioned in this episode at stimpunks.org.

Speaker 1 I'm Ryan Boren. I'm cofounder and cocreative director at Stimpunks. Co manager in Dripping Springs, Texas near Austin, a gathering place for the empowered people who were here before us. Do a lot of the website work at Stimpanx along with with Helen and the rest of her team contributing. And it's where I I love to be and where I live is on the website. Check it out.

Speaker 3 My name is Chelsea Adams and I am the executive director at Stempunks Foundation. I am located in Morrison, Colorado, which is just outside the Denver area. I moved here two years ago with my wife and pup and have absolutely loved living in the mountains.

Speaker 4 I'm Nora Hobbs. I'm the program director for Simpunks, and I'm located in Driftwood, Texas just about half an hour away from Ryan.

Speaker 5 Hi. I'm Helen Edgar. I'm a volunteer with Stimpunks. I think I joined the team maybe officially around around a year ago, but I've I've been around Stimpunks for the past two and a half years ish, I think, probably. And I'm I work as a co creative director, collating lots of resources and inputting into the the website with everybody. So it's an epic team to be involved with. I feel really honored to be a part of it all. It's it's a really exciting space to be in.

Speaker 2 What was it about your life experiences that both led you to form Stimpunks if you were part of that original crew, or to find Stimpunks? How did you all become collaborators in this effort together?

Speaker 1 I can start this story, we were born from behaviorism, our family and others experienced a ton of behaviorism as we navigated our children through education and healthcare. And when your child is diagnosed as neurodivergent everything you're told is steeped in behaviorism, deficit ideology, the pathology paradigm, the medical model, everything you hear is from that. We were born from that framing to counter that framing. Something that comes up and when you're applying for grants, folks will often ask, what was your moment of obligation? When did you feel the call? And STEMpunks was created to forge the way for educational inclusion and to give our community the means to survive and to thrive. Because we as disabled and neurodivergent people had to roll our own education, because even the all means all of public education failed to include us, failed to include us spectacularly because of the behaviorism, the deficit ideology, the pathology paradigm, none of these are good frames for seeing human actuality. Whether it be neurodivergent people or or the full spectrum of neurodiversity of humanity, I think our public systems, especially education and healthcare, kind of completely fail to see us, to understand us, to hear us, to respect our voice, and respect our actual ways of being. And beyond that, we also realize we need to create our own care systems because we realize that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation, excuse me, are us. We're the only people willing to do that work. And it was a recognition that responsibility for the survival of entire communities lies with us. And we can't we can't forsake that obligation. And so that was our moment of obligation where we realized we had to do this thing, had to create STEM punks, and we started gathering fellow neurodivergent disabled people to help us build this thing. And you've got three of the main builders here with me today. And if any of you all would like to add to this origin story, please feel free.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I'll go ahead and chime in since I've been there since the get go. So I actually met Ryan and Ina doing home renovation work on their house. So that's how I met them. And then on the weekends, I would actually do respite care for their son Ronan. And so that's kinda how we met each other, and I actually got injured when I was doing the renovation work, so I couldn't really go back to it. And that's where I kinda started working with Ryan a lot and we would just like hole up in his little casita and just like do a ton of research. And I don't know. He turned to me one day and was like, so do you wanna be a part of this? And I was actually really do. So I've just had a lot of self discovery on this whole journey. I myself am Audi HD. So I've just learned a lot about myself and about the community, and I'm really proud to be a part of it.

Speaker 4 I started almost two years ago. It'll be two years in September. I saw they were looking for some help on a local Dripping Springs Facebook group that Ryan's wife, Ina, had posted and responded, and they were really prompt and friendly in getting back to me. And I just thought it'd be really interesting to join the team and work from home and do something better with my life than just direct care. And I was in, like, a lot of health care positions, and I wanted to try something new.

Speaker 5 My background was I'm late identified autistic myself with two neurodivergent children in The UK. I was previously a primary school teacher working in special needs settings for those with profound and multiple learning disabilities. This is a bit of a long a long backstory here. I I basically had to resign from my work, my classroom work of twenty years and working in early years in primary schools to look after my own children. And then over lockdown, I set up my own website and platform of autistic realms purely as a kind of space for blogging and sharing information and advocating for a neuro affirming approach to support families and children having kind of experiencing barriers to education and experiencing burnout. Through my own personal burnout, I've been online prolifically. It helps me kind of recover and engage with with other people online. I find it really kind of rejuvenating and inspiring meeting other people. And I kept crossing paths with stimpunks in various online spaces through Discords, and I think it was Twitter at the time and Facebook and various others other spaces. And I work at crisscrossing paths all over the place. And, yeah, I think I reached out to Ryan initially saying what amazing website they've got, and I was basically living in their website most days just kind of exploring it all. It was like a great big rabbit warren, like going down into kind of Alice in Wonderland's adventures, really, just constantly discovering new things. Yeah. And then we all just started Ryan invited me to Stimpunks, we all started kind of working together and sharing our stories and information. Things have evolved since. So it's, yeah, really nice to be able to be connected with everybody.

Speaker 2 And it sounds like that's definitely a common theme because I think Human Restoration Project found stimpunks in much the same way as through Ryan's prolificness that all that time and investment on the website really pays off as far as finding new people and connections. And you know, back in 2022 when we were first launching our virtual conference to restore humanity, I think is when that partnership really picked up. And Ryan and Chelsea, I think you joined us for this as well. But the virtual learning track that we hosted on Discord for DIY at the edges, surviving the bipartisanship of behaviorism by rolling our own, I think was just such a hit and a great way to inaugurate a vision of inclusive education conferences that we're now in the fourth iteration of, which I never would have imagined was possible. And I think Stimpunk's support and the alignment and mutual collaboration of our visions is is one of those reasons. So I'm just I'm I'm so grateful for that and I'm I love to hear that this is how Ryan gets this is how he he gets people involved by just being himself and building those rabbit warrens.

Speaker 5 Yeah. I think people naturally kind of come together as Stimpunks kind of evolves and through my all my connections with autistic violence as well. More and more people are just kinda connecting with what's being shared there, and the community just keeps growing then. It just keeps expanding. There's a kind of shared shared experiences of us of lots of neurodivergent and disabled people coming together and kind of getting each other unlike any other space, really, I I guess. It's it's really validating being in the community like this.

Speaker 2 To own this too, I think this podcast format in a sense is also just sort of exclusive, you know, to people who can and prefer to communicate verbally, orally, who have the capacity, you know, to do that, to know that like there's a whole other group of people who aren't represented in this conversation just because they have different means of communication. I think that's one of the things that the virtual conference, that flipped model or using Discord is so powerful for because it's so much more inclusive of different communication styles, different abilities, accommodations for a bunch of different ranges of participation. Thinking of, you know, the issues and experiences that led you all to form StimPunks and to get involved there to now look ahead to 2025. How has that work grown and changed over time? I mean, what are some of the most pressing issues you work on today? Are they different than the ones that you had, you know, when you first got going on this?

Speaker 1 I'll kick things off again. Behaviorism is a kind of through line through all of our work because as I mentioned earlier, we're kind of born from behaviorism and behaviorism has just exploded in ed tech and big tech as well. Behaviorism and opera conditioning are everywhere, and it's just exploded more and more. And the current administration in The US has made it so that our we have this little tagline we say, we live in a time of mass behaviorism and unvarnished eugenics. And I first felt that fifteen years ago when I was navigating my neurodivergent kids and our neurodivergent family. By the way, all of us here from Simpunks are multiply neurodivergent and those of us that have kids have multiply neurodivergent kids. And navigating these systems, had to just constantly face against behaviorism, ableism, and eugenics. And those forces are all the more powerful right now for anyone who follows the news. I don't want to bring that too much into this discussion.

Speaker 2 It's impossible not to, right, because it's so in your face. Ryan, could you provide an example? Because I know when you say behaviorism and eugenics, I think, like, I can think of examples of what that looks like in classroom practice and in politics and in society. Are there some concrete examples that for people who aren't familiar with those labels might connect with?

Speaker 1 Yeah. For one, the first the first time I met behaviorism in our current systems was with public sticker charts for my for my kids in preschool and and and kindergarten and first grade and the lower grades, the early years, sticker charts. And since my kids were the multi neurodivergent, can't sit still, can't provide nor normative ways of being, they were bad on the chart. And going in every day knowing that you're an orange or whatever it was, I just that really rubbed me the wrong way as a parent. And then where we started getting every therapy that you're suggested is behaviorist to its core, most especially applied behavior analysis, ABA. And that's what we subjected our kids to in the early years of their lives before we knew better. But as we figured out what was being done to our kids, we realized how very against our own natures it was. And that was part of my path to getting my autism diagnosis. As part of getting your kids diagnosed, they do, you know, family history. And in my family, there's this born men archetype that's pretty much a list of autism traits. And I came to know my own neurodivergence, my own autistic ways by seeing seeing others try to crush the autistic ways of being in my kids. And I felt that crush. I felt that that soul restriction. I felt it viscerally. And it was like I was like, this is fundamentally misguided. This is not compatible. This is wrong. And that led me to to considering the question that should be obvious at some point. What do autistic adults think? So I went to autistic adults and they have a whole different view of the universe. They're in the neurodiversity paradigm, not the pathology paradigm. They're in the bio psycho social model, not the medical model. They have different framing and different language for everything, and I found it to be so much more real to my own lived experience, so much more authentic, so much more progressive and informed and human centered. And that experience with behaviorism, these concrete examples of sticker charts and then applied behavior analysis, which by the way ABA has history the same bad actors has history with the same bad actors that formed conversion therapy. And it just recently came out that Ole Ivar Lovas I'm probably harming that name. But he's the founder of ABA and conversion therapy, gay and autistic conversion therapy. And he recently was outed as having Nazi ties back during his his youth, the same as Hans Asperger. So we have two two popular figures who helped define autism and the interventions that that are used against us have Nazi eugenicists backgrounds. That bears that bears taking pause if you're in the behaviorism industry. If you're a teacher with behaviorism running your classroom, you should take pause. You should go see what the people who are most subjected to these therapies are saying about it because they're calling it abuse. They're calling it fundamentally misguided. They're they're calling it incompatible with human dignity and human rights. And I personally agree. As a parent who subjected my child to that, I agree. As someone who just feels the chafing of that worldview upon my soul, upon my being, I'm a 100% in the neurodiversity paradigm as a way of shifting shifting away from this.

Speaker 5 I think what you were saying that, Ryan, about for me personally, finding out about the neurodiversity paradigm has been instrumental in my own personal life and and my professional life. My own teaching background was rooted in behaviorism. I did my teacher training, like, in the early two thousands, and it's what we did, it's it's how how most teacher training is is in England. You know, behavior charts, stick sticker charts, using PECS as a form of communication for for children when when needed, using rewards and withholding things as as motivators for children. And I've had to do a lot of unlearning over the past few years, and it's been yeah. It's a huge amount of unlearning and then relearning. And most of that has been done through connecting with the community in various different spaces, listening to other people. And I've learned probably more in the past few years and unlearned more than than I've ever kind of managed in in in my own teacher training. It's it's been invaluable, and it's inspired all of my work. And I think that's what's yeah. The basis of Stimpaks is is neuro affirming community and and believing in autistic people's voices, disabled, neurodivergent people's voices, and and other marginalized communities. Everybody's voice needs to be heard in the space for those voices to be heard. So I've only kind of I wasn't with stimpunks at the very, very beginning when they were first established. But I think the main things that people that draw people towards stimpunks or and general kind of new reaffirming spaces like human restoration projects and all these other spaces and via set of autistic grounds is that we've been unheard for so long. As parents, we're often not not believed about the needs of our own children. As late identified autistic people, there's a lot ton of kind of internalized ableism often, which which comes with kind of discovering that you may be autistic yourself. That in maybe your children have been identified. That seems to be a really common theme that people experience. And then readdressing all of that internalized ableism and my professional life as a teacher and my own parenting techniques and strategies from when my children were toddlers and rethinking how things could be done in in different ways has been really I've I've learned all of that basically through community. I'm I'm an avid reader. I've I've read prolifically. Tons of academic research. But more importantly, I think it's it's the it's community voices and learning from from others and from other families that are experiencing the same thing. It's it can be really, as I really validating and empowering to feel that you're with people that understand you. And that's led to lots of projects. I I keep creating projects with lots of different people in lots of different spaces, but it specifically led to the newer queer learning spaces project that we've done at Stimpunks opening up and thinking how learning can be more accessible for everybody. A new queer learning space is it's providing space for everybody, not just autistic and neurodivergent people. And that's been really fun to explore, so we might maybe talk about things like that later.

Speaker 2 Helen, similar to how Ryan spoke about experiencing as a parent, the sticker chart and the sticker shock that came with the use of that as a behaviorist intervention, speaking to your experience decades as a educator in The UK, are there certain things that you know, you looked back on now that were part of that system and say like, oh, with the lens you have today recognizing, well, this is clearly in that behavior's paradigm as well? Or

Speaker 5 Yeah. Well, I think it's just so ingrained in teacher training. Like, it wasn't even something that I I questioned for many years because it's just what we did. And we we thought we were doing it, and obviously, I worked in early years. I've I've I've thought of myself as quite a compassionate teacher and and and parent. We tried to make all of those kind of games and activities fun. I I I think positive behavior support strategies, PBS, as it's kind of known over here in England, is is really sugar coated. And I think a lot of professionals and teachers don't realize the harm it's doing for for young people, not letting them be their authentic self and essentially saying that they're not good enough as an autistic person as they are, and that they need to make eye contact. They need to sit in a certain way and do good sitting, good listening. They need to turn take in a certain way, play with their toys in a certain way just based on neuroinormative expectations and how things should be done. And there's a lot of pressure on teachers to keep that up as class. You know, as as teachers, you're, you know, you're observed as a teacher within a kind of behaviourist framework as well. And, yeah, I I don't think people understand the harm of it. It takes a lot of unlearning to realize actually, the harm that behaviors can cause to people's well-being and mental mental health over the long term. As I said, a lot of these kind of social social stories and things, they can be packaged really nicely, and they all look really fun and engaging for young young people to do. And I think teachers can think that they're doing and they are doing their best job at the time. Unless you know better, you can't kind of do better.

Speaker 2 Nora, I'd love to give you a shot too to come back to that original question, you know, asking follow ups of Ryan's experiences and Helen's. Considering those issues and experiences that, you know, led you to Stimpunks, how has that work changed? What are the pressing issues that you work on today?

Speaker 4 I have not had the same experiences as Ryan and Helen. With my neurodivergent kids, they do go to public school. I feel they are taken care of pretty well. I've had kind of the opposite experience, and I'm pretty proud of our school district for the changes that they have made. So it's unfortunate that you know, because Ryan's kids would be in the same school district. So but his are significantly older. So I think in the last, you know, ten, fifteen years, they've made some changes, a lot of changes, and and that has not been our experience. So I can't speak for every district, but I I think ours is doing better or at least the schools that we've experienced are. Is there an example of something, you know, that's changed or

Speaker 2 in what areas aren't you seeing those same sort of behaviorist things that Ryan's kids experienced however many, you know, dozen years earlier?

Speaker 4 A few examples that come to mind like they're not to do sticker charts or any kind of, you know, you don't get an orange, like you don't you don't get a color for your behavior. They don't do that kind of thing anymore. The only thing I can think of is like they they try to keep them quiet in the cafeteria. So sometimes they'll give, you know, if the whole lunch room is being loud, they'll like hold up a card to remind them that they're being loud, but it's more of like this is your volume level. You're at a 10. Let's try to bring it to a four. So I've I've never experienced them giving stickers or singling out like one child for their behavior or or noise level. What's another example? They they have Amazon wishlist now and the teachers are pretty good about when when you go in, they have caves, campfires, and watering holes set up to where my daughter's allowed to leave her desk and sit under a teepee with some string lights if she wants or she can work in a corner by the window with others. So, generally, the teachers don't have the overhead lighting on with the fluorescents. They have either covers over it or they just have lamps. So it's very I feel like the classrooms feel more cozy than they probably used to. And like my daughter wears her loops all day to to keep herself regulated and and calm, but she can still hear the teacher and she's allowed to do that. Like no one questions if she needs like headphones or loops or she can have thinking putty in her purse to fidget with if she needs to and no one takes their toys from them and, you know, they're allowed to have that. So that's just a few examples, but I feel like they are doing better or at least trying to do better. I haven't noticed anything that was alarming on my end in that sense.

Speaker 2 Wow. Yeah. That that caves, campfires, and watering holes paradigm is something that I'm only familiar with through Stimpunk. So it sounds like that advocacy work at least locally has taken root in some form even though they may not be super aware of it or if it's intentional, the outcome there was positive it sounds like. I wonder, we had mentioned behaviorism as probably the anchor that we're that the systems are sort of tied to, these education systems, healthcare systems, all these other things. I know Ryan mentioned ABA as well. But what are some of the other big ideas that people should know to understand stimpunks and the work? And I'm glad to have Ryan expand on caves, campfires, and watering holes as well, in case people don't know. Such a cool concept.

Speaker 1 On our education pathway on our website, which is at stimpunks.org/pathway/education, we summarize three takeaways that we want people to come away with after they browse our education pathway, and that is the neurodiversity paradigm, monotropism, and the double empathy problem. And those three things I think are fundamental for teachers to understand right now. And I'm gonna look up a quote from Fergus Murray that says it very well. Let me look, I'm gonna load up our education pathway right now. All right, here are three things we'd to take away from this page. This is on our RShoes page, which is like a, it's simpunk.org/rshoes. It talks about what it's like to navigate education and healthcare in our shoes. And at the end of this, we have this section called Autistics on Autism, in which we talk about the three things we really want people to take away. Fergus has this to say, neurodiversity describes the place of autistic people and others in society and the human population at large. The double empathy problem describes how empathy breaks down between people with different perspectives. Monotropism describes autistic processing from the inside in the context of the model of the mind as a system of interests. I think that's jam packed full of good learning that you can jump off into all kinds of stuff from. And that's why I think these three paradigms, these three insights are so fundamental to understanding. I think they're fundamental to being a teacher because neurodiversity is a biological fact and always has been even though we don't treat it as such, but if we want to serve human actuality as we actually exist or authentic ways of being, we must understand neurodiversity, monotropism, and the double empathy problem. I'll take a moment to expand on each of those three real quick because they are so important, And this is also a quote from Fergus Murray's piece, Autistic on Autism. And Fergus says, once autistic people had the means to start finding each other, the autistic community collective worked out the details of the idea that soon became known as neurodiversity. Autism is a healthy part of the variability of humans, disability depends on the environment, autistic thriving is worth pursuing, most autistic people don't want to be cured, listen to autistic people's insights on autism. Those five bullet points I think are a good call to action for understanding neurodiversity in human actuality. And now moving on to monotropism. Monotropism is a tendency towards intense interest, which may be lifelong or fleeting, but either way they tend to be all consuming in the moment. To look at it another way, monotropic people tend to have fewer interests aroused at any given time. They tend to be aroused more strongly, pulling in more of our attention, leaving relatively few processing resources for other things. Monotropy people tend to enter attention tunnels, which can be sources of great joy when engaging with things we are passionate about, or unpleasant rumination when we get stuck on things that we that have gone wrong. Entering and exiting attention tunnels takes time and energy. A big part of the reason for autistic inertia, and what is described as executive dysfunction. Being wrenched out of an attention tunnel can be acutely distressing. And I think that's a fine summation, two paragraph summation of monotropism and attention tunnels, and how dysregulating it can be when we can't exist in a happy flow state, a happy attention tunnel. Now moving on to the double empathy problem. Here's this quote. Empathy is not magic. Recognizing the emotions of other people requires an understanding of the cues that tell you how they're feeling and the internal experiences behind them. If those cues match up with what you're used to seeing, and especially if cues and feelings match up with what you would do and feel, empathy is much more likely to be effective and accurate. It follows that people with very different experiences and ways of expressing themselves are likely to have difficulty empathizing with each other. This is perhaps a conclusion that anyone could have reached with a bit of thought, and Jim Sinclair made a similar observation back in 1988. But for whatever reason, autism researchers and psychiatrists seem to have ignored this glaring flaw in their conclusion that autistic people lack empathy for decades. Autistic scholar Damian Milton described this issue as the double empathy problem in 2012. Empathy goes in two directions, and non autistic people regularly struggle to empathize with autistic people. In the decade in the decade after, a whole series of experiments clearly demonstrated this in action, end quote. And though those experience continue experiments continue today that show that autistic people relate to each other, they have a higher rapport with each other than they do with non autistic people and vice versa. Different neurotypes, broadly speaking, have some different ways of being that are authentic and need to be recognized. And someone has said that the double empathy problem effectively invalidates a huge amount of autism research. Any autism research that assumes that they that that it knows what people are are are thinking and feeling from the outside, this this the double empathy problem pretty much puts the nail in the coffin of those that research framing. Because the double empathy problem says that you're, you know, you're not getting it, and you're you're blaming the double empathy problem on us as opposed to recognizing that it is a double empathy problem. It's a two way street. So to summarize, those three things, neurodiversity, monotropism, double empathy problem, those are two things that we we spend a lot of time working on at Stimpunks. We have our map of monotropic experiences that the monotropism and ways of being. And we've we've helped popularize the monotropism questionnaire, which has helped a lot of people understand themselves at a fundamental level, the monotropism questionnaire, you can just type that into a search engine and the top hits will be community entries that are worth following and they'll take you to this online self scoring questionnaire where you can see how monotropic you are according to this questionnaire. This questionnaire is still being developed, so typical caveats. And it should be said that this questionnaire should not be used to invalidate identity in any way. It's touted as a it's been called an autism test by autistic people, and it's not really what it is. It's not an autism test. We can't be so bold yet. You know, not everyone relates strongly to monotropism even though they're autistic. So we don't want we don't want people to feel like they're being invalidated by this so called autism test by autistic people. That's not what we're billing it as. It's a monotropism questionnaire. It's a measure of how monotropic you are, and there's a lot of overlap with monotropism with autistic and ADHD and ADHD, but not everyone not everyone relates. I know some notable folks in our community who just do not relate to monotropism. So we don't want it to be an invalidating thing. But we also wanna recognize that it's probably one of our best our best models for autism. We've gone through so many that were describing us from the outside in. Now we have one from the inside out, and it's just so much better. And the questions in the questionnaire are so much better. And and you can tell they're written by someone who understands what it's like to be yourself if you're monotropic. And I will leave it there, I haven't talked in a while.

Speaker 5 Yeah. For for me personally, one of the biggest kind of reframing I've done is finding out about the theory of monotropism, which was a theory developed by Diana Murray, Wen Lawson, and Mike Lesser back in the nineties, and they formulated their their paper in 2005. And the reframing of of autism in a neurofaming way has just transformed every aspect of my life. I feel deeply connected to the theory of monotropism. I'd describe myself as as a monotropic person. The theory of monotropism runs through all all of my own work. I think Ryan would agree that he's also a highly monotropic person, and that's how that's how Stimpunks is is getting so much work work output as well. Just a huge a huge info dump. But being able to kind of reframe some of the things that were seen as deficits in in the past, such as people seeing autistic people as having kind of restricted interests and repetitive movements and reframe that as as autistic passions and and the understanding the benefits of stimming and understanding your sensory system more and how your attentional resources are used in a in a different way. If if you're autistic or or ADHD helps reframe everything, and when you understand that, I think you can under you can start looking at how you manage your how families work work together, how classrooms are set up for autistic students in particular, more interest led learning, more time spent for recovery and kind of re engage re engaging lots more time to kind of move between attention tunnels. I could invite them for about my mother here monotropism all day, but that that's been, like, instrumental for for myself, definitely.

Speaker 2 If listeners just search for map of monotropism, for me, simpunks was the first thing that popped up. I don't know if that's just my algorithm or if you'll find it elsewhere, but that seems to be one of those you know, big rocks in in y'all's work. So definitely if if you're listening, feel free to check that out. Helen or Nora, did you want to speak any of that? Or Helen, did you want to speak to double empathy?

Speaker 5 Yeah. So I think obviously the understanding of exactly what neurodiversity is and embracing neurodiversity and the beauty of the differences between everybody, you know, not just autistic people, we're talking about all of human humankind. And as Ryan's mentioned, I personally found the theory of monotropism to be very, very validating. Understanding and realising the concept of the double empathy has helped me understand a lot of the difficulties that I've experienced personally through my own life and also, you know, as a professional and as as a parent. And I think it helps us when we're in a community space, a neurodivergent led space or disabled space with people that kind of have similar lived experience to yourself. So when we're talking about double empathy we're talking about there being a difference between lived experiences, so that can be an autistic person and a non autistic person. But obviously intersectionality comes into that, so we're talking about the intersectionality differences between people, maybe neurodivergent and race and age and gender. All of that comes into the double empathy problem and it all overlaps in multiple ways. But what I find personally really valuable and what's drawn me towards Stimpunks and some other community spaces like Human Restoration Project as well is that understanding that we are all different and communicating in different ways. And there's almost, I think one of the most popular pages on on stympunks is the five neurodivergent love languages, the love locutions. And that, for me, that ties everything that Ryan and Nora and Chelsea and yourself have kind of talked about so far brings it brings it all together. So the five neurodivergent love locutions, I can briefly go over what those five Yeah. Please. Are. If yeah. So first of all, we've got info dumping, which is which is what I'm currently doing here, I guess, which is something that a lot of neurodivergent people, they find when they're engaged with their passions that their communication becomes easier when they're with maybe like minded people sharing a topic. I generally don't do very many webinars. This is my very first ever podcast because I I find talking online quite stressful normally. And most nearly all all my work is is basically written. But I I do enjoy also info dumping about one of my favorite subjects, which includes monotropism and neurodiversity as well. The other one of the five neurodivergent love locations is the benefits of understanding how neurodivergent people work and play differently in parallel play and through things like support swapping and and body doubling. And I think it's it's certainly it's kind of multilayered, but certainly as as a team, I found the way when I first met Nora and and Chelsea and Ryan, the way they worked as a team was completely new to me. It was really refreshing being able to work collaboratively on projects and events and to share work ideas kind of asynchronously through multiple diff different channels, like sometimes text based channels. Sometimes we've got a body doubling channel within our Discord as well, which is open to for everybody to use, not just the team. It's it's a community space as well. But being able to to work in in different ways like like that has been really refreshing, and people to understand that everybody's got fluctuating energy needs. Some days you need more support than other days, and sometimes, you know, you can work work together in different ways, and it's been really beneficial. And the other parts of the five neurodivergent kind of love languages is the importance of understanding your sensory system, whether that's through stimming and deep pressure, movements, you know, just learning to understand your sense of needs and supporting other people and validating their own needs as well. And then lastly, we're coming on to penguin pebbling, which is my personal favorite aspects of this. It's kind there's a a well known quote. I think it's penguin pebbling is penguins, when to show care for for each other, they exchange pebbles between themselves, and penguin pebbling is a way of showing people that you care about them. So it could be like you found a a cool rock or a button or a leaf or a stick. That that's a quote from somebody, isn't it, Ryan? I've forgotten who initially said that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. That's Brains and Spoons is the one who came up with as far as I know, they're the originator of Penguin Pebbling, and here's their here's their description. It's our way of saying, I thought about you today. I remember this thing about you. Here's something I want to share specifically with you. Send a a little thinking of you, Pebble. It helps.

Speaker 5 Yeah. And I I think it's just such a lovely concept. It's something that I've kind of embraced myself, like, through through my own work, and I see it a lot of the volunteer work that I do. Like, the stimpunks is kind of like passing penguin pebbles around to the communities as well, like little web pages, little nuggets of research, little infographics, sharing music, and just kind of, yeah, tagging people all over social media as as you know that I do, And if I find something that I think might be relevant for somebody's work or projects or might be of interest with their own community, that's my kind of form of penguin pebbling as as as well, and it's nice to be able to to share that with people.

Speaker 2 It's the best, honestly. It just is such a good little reminder because, you know, in an Internet age where you're so flooded with notifications and emails and anything else to see, you know, from a collaborator to actually be tagged in something interesting and then bring that to the forefront of your attention, know, is is I think, yeah, I love locution. I I love that framing of it. Nora, I thought we'd definitely give you a shot Nora here. What do you think is the the biggest idea that's drawn you to Stimpuncture that you've drawn from your work in this space?

Speaker 4 There's not one in particular. One thing I really like is how Ryan is always promoting transparency. Like, most of our Discord is open to everyone. There's not really any secrets behind Stimpunks. Like, we do have, you know, like, a couple channels that are for, like, if we have to talk about, like, grantees or something to to make selections, but that was something new to me was was the idea that, you know, I I came from working in health care where everything's so locked down and you have to change your password frequently and you can't get into this server. And so Stimpanz is so opposite and and welcoming and encouraging in the sense that it's like, if you wanna pop into a meeting and see what we're doing, you totally can. Or, you know, just sharing how we run our events or runs of show. Like, he keeps most of even our weeks in review. He's very good about posting his, you know, so people can see, like, what he worked on this week. So everything's pretty transparent, and there's not, like, any hidden curtain or secret to it. It can help guide other nonprofits and other groups to maybe lead better and run theirs better. So that's one thing that I really like about stimpunks.

Speaker 2 At the beginning, I had mentioned stimpunks. I read the tagline mutual aid and human centered learning for neurodivergent and disabled people. And Helen is mentioning that you work a lot in that mutual aid space. Do you want to speak to what that looks like for mutual aid and STEM punks and your role in that?

Speaker 4 My role mostly is, you know, as the applications come in, we process them and read through them and put them in our pipeline. And then each month, we give out two mutual aid grants. They're 500 each. And we Chelsea and I generally make our notes and read back through everyone's. Just really reading through those applications and trying to put myself in their shoes and prioritize people who who truly need that grant. Is there an example, Nora? Because I'm thinking of listeners who hear this and hear you know, neurodivergence and disability mutual aid. I'll put a link so folks can can find that. Is there an example of somebody recently who stimpunks gave that mutual aid to that would be a good example? They do need to be in The United States. As of right now, we can't grant to other countries yet. Okay. They need to be 18 and up unless they have permission from a parent or guardian. And we can't pay for, like, tuition in particular for school, but we did have one grantee that needed money to travel for, like, a band trip for school. And so as long as, you know, his parents were fine with that, we were able to grant and help make that happen. People 18 can apply as long as they have parent permission to back them on that. They have to be able to eventually provide receipts for, like, creator grants and mutual aid just so we can kind of prove, you know, why we gave them the money. Some people use it for if they get behind on medication costs or hospital bills or if they're experiencing homelessness or about to, you know, the grant can provide relief for that. So, you know, even $500

Speaker 2 does a lot help a lot. No. That's incredible. And I'll I'll certainly include a link in the show notes for folks. I've got a lot of links queued up. Just my own my own monotropism here, just pulling up those links as as you all speak to them. That's incredible. Sort of on the flip side, you know, we've talked about the incredible work that Stimpunks does and the ideas that are driving it. And I love the neurodivergence reframe, the disability reframe away from, you know, such such an abled neurotypical center around which, you know, all of our systems revolve. So I guess I don't want to take it to like a negative or pessimistic place because it's been such a positive, uplifting conversation so far. But what do you think are those biggest barriers or myths? What are the biggest shifts that need to happen out there in the world that you're all out there working to try to tackle? What are the biggest barriers and myths about disability and neurodivergence that are obstacles to changing popular thought?

Speaker 1 Well, we just happen to have a blog post about this called 14 obstacles to DEI AB Okay. For a neurodiversity affirming practice. And so I'll quote briefly from this page and then list the our 14 obstacles. We're gonna get a listicle here, listicles are great. Getting human centered neurodiversity affirming progressive practices into education, health care, and other systems is a battle, a grueling and grinding battle through bad narratives and bad framing. Framing is equals the mental structures that shape the way we see the world. Our community of neurodivergent disabled people encounters the following narratives over and over with dreadful regularity. They are fundamental contributors to the double empathy extreme problem that we neurodivergent disabled people must attempt to bridge. We make the attempt and hope that once we do all the work of building a bridge, you will endeavor to meet us halfway. You know, are recognizing these frames in your own thinking. And then we've got this list of 14 things. These are narratives that we see over, over and again in health care, in education, in all facets of society, and they've only been amplified this year with the current administration leading heavily on this framing. Our 14 our 14 obstacles are the politics of resentment, sameness based fairness, minimal attribution error, from nowhere, toxic positivity, neurodiversity light, scientism, epistemic injustice, behaviorism, ableism, deficit ideology, better get used to it, the meritocracy myth, and lowering the bar.

Speaker 2 If I could just signpost real quick, I think as somebody who was also a classroom teacher for a solid decade, I find myself now sort of on the outside looking into schools and finding that my perspective and my language comes from the systemically ableist and exclusionary and, you know, those perspectives that I that the hat that I wore for so long. And so even as you're going through these the the sticky web of obstacles that obstruct neurodiversity affirming practice, I find myself, you know, falling back into old habits with my language and my thinking. And I think I appreciate these as a reframe and an off ramp, you know, from deficit ways of thinking about neurodiversity and disability in the context of schooling towards the model of, you know, true neurodiversity and disability in society. And so I think for listeners, I think resources like these are are hugely beneficial.

Speaker 5 Some of the biggest barriers that people have is when they they feel in in invalidated, and they we feel that we have to conform and and mask to to to fit in to fit into society and to be accepted. So we're having to, like, feel like we have to perform to kind of normative neuronormative standards and ex expectations in the way we speak, the way we dress, the way we communicate, how we present, when we present, where we present ourselves. And that can be really not only just invalidating, it can be really dysregulating. It can lead to it impacts your your your your well-being. It can lead to burnout over time. And a lot of these things are often seen as people don't don't don't see don't see see masking. They don't see the impact of masking, and it's almost like an in invisibility for a lot of people.

Speaker 4 Was there anything you wanted to expand on on that, Nora? Sorry. I guess it's just I was trying to make the point that kind of the ableist framing of, like, you know, people think you have to act a certain way to be autistic. And, you know, I've had people make comments before about, oh, you make such good eye contact or you you speak so well or you're able to handle loud noises. And it's like, but that, you know, I already have my loops in or if it catches me off guard, you know, it might be different. So it people react differently whether they know to expect something or, you know, like, like to go to loud concerts, but I don't necessarily like loud noise. But I know to take my loops along to accommodate and and regulate. So things like that where, you know, when I meet some of coworkers at my husband's events or things like that, and they'll say, oh, I, you know, I never would have thought you're autistic. You don't seem autistic. Are you sure? Like, things like that. And it's it's baffling to me that, you know, just because I'm not, like, rocking back and forth and having, like, visible struggling doesn't mean that I'm not struggling to get my words together kind of thing. Or, you know, especially with ADHD, I've learned that I have to stare at the person or else I will forget that I'm even talking to them. So I've learned to make really good eye contact, not staring directly at you almost in an aggressive way, then I won't hear you. So, you know, there's that misconception that we don't make good eye contact, things like that. So it's just bringing awareness to the fact that they're invisible disabilities and we never really know what anyone else is struggling with or or trying to regulate or or what they're trying to do. So we should just always be kind. So I always try to remind, like, my kids and stuff when we're in public that, you know, we would want people to be kind to us, of course. So we're always gonna be extra kind whether we know what's going on or not because you just never know what somebody is trying to deal with.

Speaker 5 Yeah. I think it's that kindness, isn't it? And that understanding and acceptance of people being different and everybody's got their own strengths and difficulties. And when we're talking about disability, it's often systems that are causing those disabilities a lot of the time. Autism itself is neutral, I'd say. And it's the barriers in society that are disabling people and causing all the problems and making life very difficult and inaccessible and just totally exhausting for many people to try and survive it. And going going back to the 14 obstacles that that Ryan was was going through, I think that brings us back to to the importance of us understanding and embracing neurodiversity, understanding the double empathy problem, validating lived experience and shared stories like what we're doing here and what human restoration projects and stimpunks do so well. It's just it's validating those stories, those lived experiences of people coming together, like, you know, solidarity sessions that we hold every Saturday on online. Just space for people to be themselves in in their own way and to share if they want to or to listen if they want to or just to have a space alongside other people and experience that those neurodivergent love languages that we we talked about of being in a in a in a shared space in a way that feels comfortable for you, sharing stories and pebbling and body doubling and validating each other's experiences together, offering support. And we've reframed the 14 obstacles just as a very brief summary. I won't go through every single one in detail, but those 14 obstacles that are in the way of neuro affirming practice, both, you know, in educational settings and society at large, We've gone through all of those 14 points, and I can drop a a link to you that there, Nick, about a reframing of toxic positivity and the politics of resentment and behaviorism and ableism, and how that can be looked at through a new affirmative lens so we can start talking and thinking about rigid ideas of fairness instead of, you know blaming the systems out of the child, validating lived experience, neuro affirming cultures in school, seeing differences rather than deficits and creating more space for co regulation and inclusion. Connection, understanding the importance of sensory safety, psychological safety, learner safety, empathy, and and flow. Flow and monotropism, if if that resonates with you as well, to bring people together and to, yeah, provide provide better support in a more meaningful way.

Speaker 2 So how can listeners who hear this conversation and hear themselves or their friends, their family members, their colleagues in it, how can they pick up the conversation? How can they get involved with Stimpunks?

Speaker 1 We have a community page at stimpunks.org/community where folks can request to join our Discord and that's where we spend most of our time hanging out. It's where we kind of run the show And we try to do so in as open a way as possible. And anyone can join by going to stimpbox.org/community and just filling out a brief form just to let us know who you are. And then we'll invite you into our Discord and point you at ways you can help.

Speaker 5 I'm prolifically online as anybody that may follow me on autistic realms knows. I'm online every single day pretty much sharing Stimpunk's work and other people's work around the place as well. So yeah, feel free to to tag us or or or reach out. It'd be lovely to connect with more people.

Speaker 2 That's awesome. Thank you all so much for taking the time to talk with me today.

Speaker 5 Cool. Yeah. Thank you. It's been lovely, Nick, so I'm glad we finally got a chance to, like, chat.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Me too. This was Yeah. This was long overdue. So thank you, guys.

Speaker 6 Thank you again for listening to our podcast at Human Restoration Project. I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to start making change. If you enjoyed listening, please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast player. Plus, find a whole host of free resources, writings, and other podcasts all for free on our website, humanrestorationproject.org. Thank you.