Episode 5
[Laura]
Hi, you're listening to In the Kaleidoscope, a podcast where parent Laura and child Carrie talk about family dynamics when the parent is neurodivergent and the child is neurotypical. Welcome. So, we're going to jump in kind of to start off of where we sort of left things in the last episode, episode four.
We got into talking about feelings, versus thinking in the two different kinds of brains, and how does that impact expectations when we're talking to each other or thinking or interacting. So yeah, would you have any thoughts on that initially, Carrie, to get us started?
[Carrie]
I mean, I'm thinking about that a lot right now because, I am finding out that I actually have a lot of my anxiety is wrapped up in not thinking, like being around people when I can't think clearly is very, very difficult. It's scary for me.
[Laura]
Give me an example of like, what's that?
[Carrie]
You know, like the thing is that thinking, the way we talk about thinking, typically what people mean is that your prefrontal cortex is online, right? And you're using it and you have access to your verbal centers and you're able to use your verbal prefrontal cortex to track logic, right? But as soon as something is scary or your body is having a somatic physiological reaction to something, blood will leave that area and go to other places, amygdala, muscles, like it'll just go everywhere else.
And it also happens when you're experiencing pleasure, like your body, if blood leaves that part of your brain, you are in the feeling state. You're more at one with stimulus, right? And sharing, I mean, none of that is, I'm not a scientist, you know, that's just like what I remember from what I understand, right?
I'm sure that like a couple of those things are slightly over-generalized, but being in those states, I'm learning in therapy is something I don't like doing with others. So, what that means is most people get me only in my thinky mind, like very intellectual. I'm very socially intellectual and I'm trying to learn to be more physically social.
[Laura]
Do you think that's a natural programming of your brain or is that conditioning from how you grew up?
[Carrie]
I'm sure it's both, sure it's both. Probably right now, what I'm trying to tackle is the conditioning from when I grew up, you know, like just trying to, I'm trying to bond with people physically, you know, like I want, I want to be in love and have a family and start a family and all of that is physical, you know, and like, there's a lot of intellectual alignment that you need, like values alignment and being able to like trust each other's decisions.
But then when people talk about like chemistry, I think that that's more like, that's kind of vibronic that I said, I think in that moment, [laughter] but I think that's more like a physical connection.
[Laura]
Well, so I feel like there's three things actually that we're talking about. There's the prefrontal cortex, which I would call the forebrain because of my music teacher who uses these terms in her music teaching, the forebrain intellectual informational center. And then, the hindbrain to me is the physical, you know, the back of the brain, physical stuff, you know, which is the thing that allows you to move and touch and have a physical sensation and the physical thing.
But then there's the midbrain where the amygdala lives, which is where the emotions are. So, when I say feelings, I guess I'm meaning emotions, but it sounds like you're thinking physical sensation.
[Carrie]
Because my nerd out on this stuff was through the lens of the nervous system. So, and yet too, you've got the parasympathetic and sympathetic, there isn't a huge differentiator between the emotional system and the physical system. Because like a lot of even like saying that something is an emotion is truly like a verbal label put on something that is usually just sensational.
And you can kind of do that thing where, you know, like there was nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so, right? You can have a feeling---
[Laura]
Shakespeare and by the way.
[Carrie]
Yeah. You can experience the feeling and your body, in the nervous system, and the system can't tell if that state---basically like your body's going to be hyper, it's going to be dormant, it's going to be neutral. Right? Like that's kind of the nervous system will rev up or it will go to sleep, and you can get revved up and the system itself doesn't know why, you're just revved up. So, then you are, you as the consciousness, the thinky part are labeling that revved up-ness as good or bad, right?
Like I'm excited because I'm about to act into play or I'm terrified because my job's on the line. It's actually the same physiological response in the body. And your story is affecting the interpretation.
[Laura]
Well, the amygdala, I mean, it seems like it's different. The sheer physical---cause I'm talking about it in the context of learning to play piano, right?
[Carrie]
Yeah.
[Laura]
Which is where in the front, I learned the names of all the notes and the prefrontal cortex. And I know I learned the theory and the intervals and the, you know, what I need to know about Beethoven to play this piece and blah, blah, blah. In the hindbrain, I'm training my fingers to make certain movements to elicit certain sounds.
And so, my forebrain and my hindbrain have to work together in, you know, my fingers have got to be able to do the thing so that at a certain point I am so like, they call it the conscious competence where like you're playing it so fluently without thinking. It's unconscious competence, I guess, where you're just playing it easily and then you can start to access, okay, how does this make me feel? You know, it's not until you have the total skill of being able to execute with the hindbrain that you're feeling the stuff of the amygdala, you know, where I can say, okay, today I'm sad. So, I'm going to play this in a sad way. And it's going to help me process my sadness, but you have to have the skill first, the physical skill to do that.
[Carrie]
So, assuming, I mean, there's a big assumption that you're trying to use the skill, right? Because you could also sit in meditation and you're really, everybody's like good enough at breathing that you could participate in your breathing and see how you feel.
[Laura]
That's true. Yeah. So, you don't have to train your hindbrain to breathe.
So, you're kind of skipping that step when you're doing it. Okay. So that's the part of the thing.
So, to me then, if I can generalize, you're talking about the forebrain and the midbrain, which is the midbrain---
[Carrie]
I mean, I believe you, that sounds about right. I think that there's something about the---I haven't really thought much about the amygdala outside of being activated because something is going wrong. Whereas like, you're kind of talking about it more.
It sounds like this framework you're talking about from the music standpoint is exploring--- like using the amygdala in many different types of states, no?
[Laura]
Oh yeah. So that's where we're just having our feelings is in this brain environment. And I'm going to say something different, which was kind of a--- cause I'm trying to get in touch with my---who am I as an autistic person. And I went to an aquarium lately a few months ago for some Christmas thing and you know, I also think very deeply about water and the water cycle. It's kind of one of my special interests and I'm into how water moves and what that means for us as far as climate. And I feel like climate is all about water and blah, blah.
So, I go to this aquarium and I see these fish just living their life in the water, like just floating. And I can actually feel it right now in my brain. My brain is actually having a reaction to even remembering it because I was moved to tears.
I'm just watching the school of fish like swim around and, or the jellyfish or some jellyfish. To me, I was connecting and seeing something visually. And it wasn't like I was empathizing with the fish.
It wasn't conscious or anything. It was just, I'm seeing something so beautiful, like so perfect. So that it gave me a physical response that I embraced.
And I stood there probably looking kind of weird. If anyone was looking at me, I mean, I was at this tank, just staring at this fish and sobbing, like, what is this all about? Not out loud sobbing, but I was definitely having a moment.
I couldn't talk to anybody. I didn't want anyone else to interact with me. And I was allowing myself to feel the full overwhelm of the sensory information I was getting through my eyes, but feeling it and the smell too, that kind of aquarium smell.
And I'm, I'm aware that most of my life, I have not thought that that journey was valid--
[Carrie]
What journey?
[Laura]
The journey of letting yourself feel that much.
[Carrie]
Oh! Not the fish.
[Laura]
Not the fish. [laughter] The journey I thought was valid was, I’m in an aquarium to learn about fish. And I’m going to take in data, I'm going to become smarter and know more stuff, and I'm going to get an “A” on whatever project we're going to do about it or whatever. But this was kind of free from all that. And I was kind of surprised at my own connection to that.
So, I guess, just to bring this into our thing that we talk about, I mean, are we approaching this differently or the same or, is there a difference in our you know---
[Carrie]
I've been thinking since yesterday, cause we had like a little chat, just us yesterday. And I've been thinking about how, in an effort to relate and to connect to others more recently, probably more recently, as I've been attempting to embrace my own typical side, my neurotypicalness, I err on the side of trying to communicate that we are all much more the same than we realize. And I think that that's like very important. And I think sometimes you make jokes about how socializing is really about agreeing with each other. So, we all know we're safe and we're all the same and we all feel connected. And to that end, it's like, when differentiating, I used to take a lot of pride in being different, I guess. It was like, that was definitely a learned value system to be different, be different all the time. Right.
[Laura]
That was part of my intentional parenting. I'll talk about in a second. So.
[Carrie]
Yeah. And so, like now I'm kind of like, it's all in question. You know what I mean?
Because the truth is, every individual perspective in the world will always be a hundred percent unique. That's just the way it is. But we all walk around in similar machines. You know, I've had lots of friends of all different capacities and emotional development states, and we pretty much all need to be calmed down in the same way. You know, like no matter who you are, you need like a certain kind of presence and support. I mean, I don't mean like literally like the technique you use, like in this moment, we hug in this moment we don't, that's not what I mean. More like to feel safe. We need our people, and we need our awareness of the world.
I think like the fact that everybody experiences emotions, like in some ways, personifying stimulus. I'm experiencing, I'm witnessing something visual. I'm, I'm breathing or experiencing something and it's creating an emotional response, which is like a personal, like you're telling me a story about how you're looking at fish.
Technically that's the story, right? You're looking at fish, you're perceiving water, right? And then that stimulus in your consciousness is creating this like personal experience that rocks your body as an emotion, which I do think is very relatable. I think that might even be somewhat the same. It might not be like that fish in that time for me, but I don't know, that was a long-winded way to say, I'm afraid to say it's the same, but I feel like it's the same.
[Laura]
It's the same about something else. Like you might feel that about something else. And I think one of my assumptions as a parent was that we were going to feel the same about the same things. And that was kind of a thing. So that, yeah, yeah. Before, when I was talking about like making you feel different or unusual, because I was different or unusual enough as a child and as an adult and like moving through the world, very early on, I had the choice of, am I going to be, you know, am I going to internalize this as I'm bad or am I going to internalize this as I'm awesome? And obviously I took the, I'm awesome choice.
[Carrie]
Well, it was wise.
[Laura]
It was wise until, maybe until I had kids. And I was like, I thought of myself as awesome to the point of feeling, uh, in many cases superior because, people were picking on me or whatever. The only way I could deal with them was to think in my heart, think in my heart, how would I say that? Feel in my head, you know, whatever, that I was superior to them.
[Carrie]
All valid.
[Laura]
Yeah. So, I was--- your bullying doesn't affect me because I'm better than you anyway. You know, that kind of was my protection. So, then I get to having kids and you guys were super smart. It was clear you were super intelligent. There was no doubt about that. There wasn't necessarily the same strategy that I had getting through school of just massively treating it like a game and getting an A in everything, because that's just, that was my game. So, I was like, okay, they're not doing that, but they're still super smart.
So, I'm still going to give them the exceptional speech. Like you're amazing. You're always amazing.
Look at this cool thing you did. It's like beyond the pale. And you legit did, you personally did legit things when you were five with pastel paints that I could look at this pastel.
She did this, you know, I'll tell you listener, she did this. It was not just one of those like newsprint sheets of paper you get in kindergarten. And she had just splashed all these pastel colors all over it, but there was balance and there was completion.
She, she filled it in evenly through the whole thing. She's five, you know, and the colors she used were balanced across the page. They were harmonious with each other.
She took it home and I mean, I remember just being so impressed. This, this is amazing. And I'm showing it to you, Carrie.
And I don't know how that makes you feel. I don't know. I assumed it would make you feel good, but a lot of times too, that can just put a lot of pressure on a kid to, to make them feel like you have to be constantly performing at this level, or you won't get praise from mom.
You know, you don't know like how the kid is responding necessarily. And I was very---I think I was very logical as a parent and very...not being in touch with my own feelings, I was not really at all equipped to talk to you about yours and to open the door for you to talk about it. So now you and I are both on this journey to figure out our feelings.
And maybe that's not even related to being autistic per se, but it's related to how I tried to feel good about myself in the world. You're thinking, you're thinking thoughts. We can see each other.
That's why I'm saying this. You look like you're thinking thoughts. [laughter]
[Carrie]
Yeah, yes. I think I'm just like reflecting on it.
Okay. My understanding of my own emotions is there's always a physical message that my body is trying to express with the emotion. And it doesn't always mean it is appropriate to the situation.
It's just something my body wants to express like boundary; anger. Or, danger; fear, or I'm losing something; grief, you know? And I guess the ones that we struggle with the most are the negative interpretations of them because like the negative stories become such the forefront of one's mind. But there's also super positive versions of all that, like I want to be engaged. Like I want to go. So, it's actually, for me, kind of feels the same as anger. Like I'm going, here I go.
You know, like it's like the same physical oomph. I think that if I were going to say like a difference, I've noticed is that maybe I'd want to talk about something about like the autistic meltdown, like the concept of the autistic meltdown that may or may not have been the thing that was happening every six months or so when I was younger.
[Laura]
With me, like I was doing, that I was doing.
[Carrie]
Yeah. I do that kind of thing sometimes. I don't experience it.
Like it comes out as like a grief laden panic attack. And if it's instead of grief, it's anger, it will be like, you know, it's strong. Like these are going to be like strong big moments where the body is just in charge. Nobody likes it. You know what I mean?
[Laura]
Right.
[Carrie]
That's not fun. But again, I've been tested so many times and it's not, it doesn't hit the same. It's considered more of a panic attack.
You know, when I go and I talk to the doctors or the professionals or the therapists.
[Laura]
Right. Right. Right.
I mean, I think I can remember a couple of instances where my meltdowns are generally sparked by just extreme frustration, whatever's going on with me. I'm extremely frustrated about something. And that frustration takes the form of me becoming this towering infernal rage.
And it's unrelated to the people that are sitting in front of me. I'll take it out on the people sitting in front of me and I will start making irrational demands on their capacity to like---
[Carrie]
I do the same thing. See, I feel like that's universal. You know what I mean? I don’t know.
[Laura]
Well, and it's also kind of part of the addictive brain where you actually just lose your brain, you lose your mind. You know, you are not thinking at all. Your body is a hundred percent. I mean, what can make that happen more frequently for an autistic person if, you know, is like higher sensitivity to physical data?
[Carrie]
Yeah. Yeah.
[Laura]
You know, there's that level of stuff too.
[Carrie]
And things are frustrating.
[Laura]
Yeah. Or like being unable to communicate something like here's---okay, so again, we're bouncing around a little and I apologize, audience. I hope you're finding this interesting. The feeling I remember most about having kids is this overwhelming feeling of love for these little babies, just to the point of, you know how when sometimes you've got something really cute in your hand, you just want to squeeze it? You know, I would have been a squeezy, squeezy, squeezy person like all the time.
Cause you both had---well, you had those round cheeks and you were so cute, but I had a kind of a gut feeling that actually showing that much love would be overwhelming to the little baby. So, then I was in a constant state of, am I showing too much or too little or whatever? I erred on the side of showing too little.
I think my erring went to the, I'm going to think about what I talked to them about and I'm going to tell them things rationally. And this has been a struggle in a lot of contexts in my life. How do you show love that you're feeling so hugely without pushing the other person away?
Because in my life history, it tends to have done that, that had happened with a lot of like love relationships with romantic relationships. And so, when I came to my little kids who I like adored, I mean...I can't even---I don't know how to put it into words. It's like this completely unvarnished, uncritical, you know, just complete view that this little being is perfect and is the best thing on the planet. And I just want to stare at them and hug them and squish them. And like, if I'd actually done everything I was feeling, you would have been like, wow, stop. I'm kind of convinced of that, you know.
[Carrie]
Well, you don't know if that's true.
[Laura]
I don't know if that's true. I don't know if that's true.
[Carrie]
I see that you are convinced of it. I also, I cannot confirm.
[Laura]
Well, but if I did it now, like, I mean, I have exactly--
[Carrie]
I'm already raised in an environment where I was not conditioned to experience that much affectionate stimulus. So, you don't know.
[Laura]
I don't know. I was pretty sure. And no one knows.
So, that's the thing. I came to my own conclusion about basically how to protect you from me. And because I knew there was some kind of disconnect between what I was experiencing and often what other people are experiencing. And I couldn't rely on my own judgment about what they would enjoy and what would be healthy for them. And so it was like, let's just, let's just turn that little spigot off. We'll just turn off that flow.
[Carrie]
So, I feel like that is...I feel like---so, amygdala would say that was maybe more like essentially a trauma assumption. Then maybe like, there was anything really that weird about you, but we don't know. I do feel in myself, a mirroring of like that, uh, self-consciousness of wanting to try to protect people from myself.
Like I have that. I definitely have that. As I've talked to like more people in the world, they seem to be like, I'll let you know. I will let you know, but obviously that's not how kids work, like kids can't really let you know. I get that. But I also think that since we're talking about this in the context of, yeah, we've been a very thinky forward family that maybe we, we could have been a little bit more emotional or a little bit more physical.
[Laura]
Well, and I wonder if that's why a lot of parents like me wait for the grandchildren, and the grandchildren come and you just go, bleehh, cause you just have all this love. It seemed like other parents were just a lot more, you know, they just sort of took their kids in stride. Yeah.
They're cool little people, but I'm not like, you know, maybe cause they had a partner or whatever. And I didn't, you know, I was so focused on y'all. I don't know.
I don't know quite what, what I'm trying to get here. if I could have been a better parent, you know, there's no way to like find out from the kid, how much love would you like to have before you start telling me to cut it out?
[Carrie]
You know, the thing that I've seen children do with the friends I have who have kids right now, they seem to just take whatever they can get. They'll just, they'll just take it. They'll take it.
They'll take it. And there's almost like a kid will push you to exhaustion if you don't know how to say, I'm good. I need some space. And that seems to be just what a child does is, they both are trying to ingratiate themselves always to their parents, like instinctually for their own survival. And they will take whatever is given, they will integrate it into their sense of self. You know, that is a chance. Children are a chance to express that much like that, what you're describing of like having all of that love to give. I've heard that as, that is how children feel. And that there is an inner childlike ability of yours to still feel that way, give that to people and children are proper receptacles for that much energy back and forth. You know? I think that it's a little too simplified to be like, oh, I chose to think instead of when you also consider like how much other management you were having to do day-to-day. Job, figuring out when to move, where to move, keeping a house over everybody's head, buying groceries, you know what I mean? Like figuring out meals, there's just so much else happening. That's not just I get to stare at my kids and think about how cute they are.
Like when you're in the parenting zone.
[Laura]
Yeah. You know, I just want to say we've actually already hit a half hour. I know, my God. So, I tell you what, we're happy to have you here for episode five, this was episode five. And I think we're gonna pick it right up in episode six, but we're gonna move to that. So, thank you for joining us today on in the kaleidoscope, the same old podcast, and we'll see you in a second on the next one. All right.
Thanks.
[Carrie]
Okay. Bye.