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  • My Autistic Traits: Differences Not Deficits! EP 13

    My Autistic Traits: Differences Not Deficits! EP 13
    2025/06/24
    In the episode I share how I rated my own autistic traits on a 1-10 scale and how I'm learning to think of these characteristics as differences, not deficits. Check out the blog post on charting my autistic traits here: https://barbaragraver.substack.com/p/charting-my-autistic-traits Check out my blog Writing On The Spectrum here: BarbaraGraver.substack.com If you like my content, please follow the podcast! Full transcript below. If you need closed captioning (or the transcript is cut off), please listen via the podbean app or at AutisticPOV.com (https://www.autisticpov.com/). Episode 13 Transcript Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hi everybody, this is Barbara Graver. Thank you for joining me today on Autistic POV. Today I wanted to talk a little bit about autistic characteristics and I'm going to 0:32 be doing this through the lens of the characteristics I've identified in myself. I just try to steer away from speaking for other people because there's such a a wide range of experience and abilities in autism that I feel whenever I try to speak for anyone else, I always feel like I'm getting it wrong. 0:57 So this is purely from my perspective. The disclaimer is these traits are not necessarily going to present the way they aren't going to present the same way across the spectrum as they present in me because we're all different. So I talked a little bit during my autism and psychic ability series, 1:19 I talked a little bit about the idea of a linear spectrum, a spectrum from high to low, as is suggested by the DSM-5. And I talked about why I have problems with that. I think ranking across the board is problematic, although I do think autism is a constellation of traits. 1:39 And I do think it could be useful to do specific individual ranking in terms of trait by trait. I think that's helpful. It gives you a better picture of yourself and what your abilities and what your challenges might be. Ranking people as a whole, to me, I feel that's a little problematic for various reasons, 2:01 such as the many different comorbidities, apraxia, for example, anxiety. all kinds of comorbidities come into play, as well as inherent differences like talents and abilities and intellect. It's just there's so much at play that I think ranking from low to high is problematic. And it's also, 2:26 it causes people to fall into a way of thinking that I don't feel is very helpful. I don't think it's helpful to to think of people as more or less autistic or more or less challenged or more or less worthwhile. I don't think that's a good way to think. 2:44 And I think when you're ranking individuals from low to high, you're always going to kind of suggest that or lead people into that kind of thinking, which I don't like. So I did discuss this before, but I just wanted to put it out there kind of as a disclaimer. 2:59 So what I did, and I have a blog post on this that I'll link to. What I did for myself was I looked at the DSM-5. I don't like the DSM-5. I don't like that it calls autism a disorder. I don't like that it ranks people. 3:14 But I do think it does a fair job of describing observable traits in autistics. I don't find it totally useless, even though I have issues with it. So what I kind of did is I took the traits that were listed in the DSM-5 and sort of adapted them to better reflect me. 3:35 And I used those traits to come up with categories for myself. And I made various charts and put them in my blog, which people seem to like. I'll link to that. And the chart showed my different characteristics. And this is not an idea that's specific to me. 3:57 You could see a lot of people will be looking at autism in this way. It's a spectrum, but it's not a linear spectrum. It's more of like a radial spectrum, which I think is interesting. You know, it's kind of interesting in terms of dimensionality. 4:11 We think of a spectrum as high to low, and technically that's what it is. But that's a linear 2D kind of dimensionality, where if you want to think of it more 3D, kind of as a radial sort of thing, you could do that too. So what I did is I came up with 10 categories. 4:31 One of my things had 10 categories. One had 12 because it just worked better for the type of charts I used. But the categories I used were hypersensitivity, hyposensitivity, hyper fixations, special interests, nonverbal communication. I don't like that word nonverbal, but I didn't know what else to use. 4:54 Some people will call it social cues, but I find that confusing too. But that's basically your ability. It should probably be called non-speaking communication, your ability to communicate and to read cues without speaking. Conversation. I use conversation. So instead of Expressive communication. I just kind of lumped conversation together. Relationships, transitions, echolalia, repetitive motor, and pattern recognition. 5:28 And then I ...
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    20 分
  • 4 Issues with the Telepathy Tapes Podcast EP 12 (3rd in my Autism and Psychic Abilities series)

    4 Issues with the Telepathy Tapes Podcast EP 12 (3rd in my Autism and Psychic Abilities series)
    2025/06/06
    In this episode, I talk about 4 possible issues with the Telepathy Tapes podcast AND share a great resource for further reading. I hope I've offered a more nuanced look at the Telepathy Tapes podcast in this episode (which is the 3rd in what has become my Autism and Psychic Abilities series) than I did in my previous episodes! The first two episodes are: Autism and Psychic Experience EP 10 (#1 in series)Autistic Traits and Psychic Abilities EP 11 (#2 in series) The resource I mentioned in the podcast is: SarahCook.substack.com/p/for-the-birds-radical-empathy This is an excellent article and a really good Substack to follow. You can also follow my Substack if you're so inclined at: BarbaraGraver.substack.com If you like my content, please follow the podcast! Full transcript follows. If you need closed captioning (or the transcript is cut off), please listen via the podbean app or at AutisticPOV.com (https://www.autisticpov.com/). Full Transcript for EP 12 0:01 Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hey everybody, this is Barbara Graver. Thank you for joining me today on Autistic POV. This is our third episode in what has kind of become a series on psychic ability. 0:31 I recorded episode one after I discovered the telepathy tapes far later than everybody else on the internet, and we'll talk a bit about that. And then I recorded episode two once I learned a little bit more about the podcast. And I talked about a lot of other things in these episodes. I talked about 0:49 my own experiences and I talked about parapsychology and a little bit about the ruling scientific paradigm in our society. But I talked about the telepathy tapes a lot too. And so I wanted to speak just a little bit on that in this episode because when I did the first episode, I was really excited to discover the podcast. 1:12 And then when I did the second episode and I was a little more aware of some of the controversy around it, I was a little more dialed back. But if you're not familiar with the podcast, it's a podcast about telepathy. and in it they feature several different non-speaking autistic individuals who are demonstrating telepathic abilities. 1:35 And it's really compelling, compelling podcast, but a lot of people have had a problem with it. And looking at it a little more critically than I maybe did initially, I could appreciate that. I think there are a few issues around it. So I wanted to just kind of share my take on that. 1:52 And I think the one problem is that we have a very materialistic mindset. There's a lot of prejudice against anything that is in any way immaterial, non-local, psychic. That's always, always, always going to be challenged. So talked about that, I think, in the first episode. I'll link to all of them. Number two, 2:16 which I talked about in the second episode in this series, I think there's just kind of a general disregard for the lived experience of autistic people. That's very pervasive in our society. So that's another issue that has played a part in generating controversy around this podcast. Number three, 2:35 I think that some people have raised concerns about the potential for exploitation and of non-speaking autistics and their families. And I think that's valid. I think that's something that's worth discussing. And also there is a lot of confusion around augmented and alternative communication and facilitated communication, which is somewhat different. 2:58 So there are a lot of things that kind of come into play. And this All of this was a lot for me to take on. I'm not sure I would have taken it on if I'd realized how much there was to it. But I am glad I did. 3:12 I'm glad I did because exploring this helped me increase my understanding of autism as a spectrum, which I think I'll talk about a little more in the next episode. It helped me kind of come to terms with some of my own experience. It helped me organize my thoughts. 3:29 But I was a little bit all over the place when I did it. So kind of want to try to sum it up a little. As far as the first and second points, the scientific community and the prejudice against the lived experience of autistic people, I think I've discussed that enough. Number four, 3:47 talking about augmented and assisted communication, I think it's absolutely valid, but not everyone understands it. And more relevantly, the more variables you put into research and the more complex it becomes. And when you're trying to research anything to do with psi, telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, whatever it may be, 4:11 it's already difficult and it's already going to be challenged like crazy. So having that extra variable of the communication devices does make this more complex, definitely. So those are the four things I kind of see with issues with the podcast. However, I don't mean to say that I discount it. I found it very convincing. 4:37 I found it very ...
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    12 分
  • Autistic Traits and Psychic Ability EP 11 (2nd in series)

    Autistic Traits and Psychic Ability EP 11 (2nd in series)
    2025/05/17
    Is there a relationship between autistic traits and psychic ability? Join me for a discussion of how autistic traits like hyper-sensitivity, hyper-connectivity and pattern recognition might relate to psychic abilities. The blog post and autism trait charts I mentioned in the video can be found on my blog at: https://barbaragraver.substack.com/p/charting-my-autistic-traits If you like my content, please follow the podcast! Visit my blog at Writing On The Spectrum (https://barbaragraver.substack.com/) Full transcript follows. If you need closed captioning, please listen via the podbean app or at AutisticPOV.com (https://www.autisticpov.com/). EPISODE 11 TRANSCRIPT If your podcast provider cuts off the transcript, you can see the full transcript for this episode at AutisticPOV.com Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graber and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hi everybody, this is Barbara Graver. 0:21 Welcome to Autistic POV. In this episode, we're going to be continuing to talk about autism and psychic abilities. In our last episode, we talked about autism and psychic abilities, particularly in the realm of some of the research and controversy around nonverbal autistic people and their telepathic abilities. 0:45 And one of the interesting things for me that came out of that was it kind of changed my thinking on the whole concept of the spectrum. And this happened actually as I was doing the podcast. I was thinking about how I have some intuitive abilities and here are these people who... 1:02 that have these strong, apparently strong, telepathic abilities. And I was thinking, you know, it really is a spectrum. But the more I thought about it after, that one trait is on a spectrum. So to me, you can't put one autistic person... at one end of the spectrum and another autistic person at the other. 1:25 And I know people say, oh, it's not that kind of a spectrum. But the definition of a spectrum really is something that goes from one extreme to another. Like even with color, you might say, oh, red's not in any way inferior to violet. But yet red is, if you look at the wavelength of red, 1:44 you will see it has a slower, larger pattern where violet has a very pattern so it is a rating system a spectrum is a rating system and I just don't like that because the more I learn about autism the more I realize there are specific quote autistic traits and people have a constellation of these traits we 2:08 may not have all of them we may not have all the same traits but but a lot of us have a gradient of traits. For example, and I'm going to share a link to this. After this podcast, I did actually a blog post on the traits in autism, and I listed 10 traits. 2:29 I kind of loosely adapted from the DSM-5, and I rated myself 1 to 10 on those traits. So some traits like repetitive motor, I was very low. Other traits like hyper fixation. I gave myself a 10. Maybe that was too much, but I'm very, very high on that. So that's, I think that's true of everyone. 2:50 And there's other things that complicate it, obviously, like apraxia and different intellectual capacities. But I just think that whole idea of low to high that's perpetuated by the DSM-5 is very misleading. So I'm not using that word spectrum anymore. I even changed my blog. It was writing on the spectrum. 3:09 I changed it back to writing after dark because I just don't buy into that spectrum idea, that ranking anymore. However, when it comes to individual traits, we certainly can rank people. And If being psychic is an autistic trait or not, I think is debatable. But it is a human trait. 3:29 And I do think it can come under the greater heading of sensitivity. And the reason I think that is because I had a lot of experience, a lot of different psychic experiences. I've had precognitive dreams. I've had visions. I've had a lot of experiences. I do not consider myself... overtly psychic. 3:49 These are just things that have happened to me in kind of an episodic way over the course of my life. And these things have informed my belief system. I believe in certain things like the paranormal, the supernatural, because of my psychic experiences. And I use my intuition all the time in understanding things and understanding people. 4:11 It's a huge help to me. So I To me, it's a trait that falls under the greater heading of hypersensitivity and possibly hyperconnectivity too. One of the things I was thinking about over the last two weeks since I did the podcast is the idea of the brain as a receiver. 4:31 And that's an analogy the biophysicist Rupert Sheldrake uses. He says, imagine a radio. And if you took a piece out of a radio, you would no longer hear music. And you would think that the radio could no longer produce music. If you didn't understand a radio at all, you might think that this radio is broken. 4:51 It can't produce music. But that's not actually how a radio works. What's happened is that...
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    16 分
  • Autism and Psychic Experience EP 10 (1st in series)

    Autism and Psychic Experience EP 10 (1st in series)
    2025/05/02
    Is there a relationship between autism and psychic experience? A connection between autism and telepathy has been reported by the families of some nonverbal autistic people. As a late diagnosed autistic this interests me because intuition has been a guiding force in my life. Like all many areas of parapsychology, more research is needed, but I think it’s a topic worth discussing. In this episode I talk about my own person experience, what other people have to say, the idea of psychic ability as a spectrum trait and a bit about parapsychology (from what I have learned at the Rhine Institute). This is my first time talking about this topic, I’m going to be talking about it more in the next couple of podcasts! Resources for this episode include: Autism and the God Connection by William StillmanThe Telepathy Tapes Podcast (https://thetelepathytapes.com/)The Rhine Institute (https://www.rhineonline.org/what-is-parapsychology)Dr. Diane Hennacy/Powell (https://drdianehennacy.com/telepathy/)Psychology Today article on the Telepathy Tapes by Jeff Tarant PhD (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/choosing-your-meditation-style/202503/science-skepticism-and-the-telepathy-tapes)Dr. Hennacy/Powell's Response to Jonathan Jarry (https://thetelepathytapes.com/dr-powell-defense)Sharing Our Autism Story (https://www.autisticpov.com/e/sharing-our-autistic-story-ep-6/) If you like my content, please follow the podcast! Visit my blog at Writing On The Spectrum (https://barbaragraver.substack.com/) Full transcript follows. If you need closed captioning, please listen via the podbean app or at AutisticPOV.com (https://www.autisticpov.com/). EPISODE 10 TRANSCRIPT If your podcast provider cuts off the transcript, you can see the full transcript for this episode at AutisticPOV.com Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. everybody this is barbara graver thank you for joining me today on autistic pov today we're going to be talking about autism and psychic experience as most of you 0:30 know i tried to write an autism memoir and i talk about this in an episode i'll link to it telling our autism story but i tried to write this memoir And I realized that I kind of couldn't stay in the autism lane. I was talking about autism, but I was talking a lot about the paranormal, 0:51 my psychic experience, past spiritual experience, metaphysical topics, all this stuff that to my mind then, didn't have anything to do with autism. And I thought, I can't do this. This is supposed to be an autism memoir. And nobody's going to want to read all this if they're looking for autism memoir. 1:13 So I set it on the side, but it kind of kept pulling at me. So Not long ago, actually a few weeks ago, I decided, you know what, I'm just going to write it. I'm just going to do it. I mean, it's actually written. I thought I'm just going to edit it and finish it and do it. 1:32 And after I made that decision, I thought maybe I should do a little research on this topic, this topic. Is there any connection between autism and psychic ability? And I had never really thought that there was. To me, the metaphysical, actually parapsychological is the correct term, was always a special interest. It was just a special interest. 1:56 It didn't really have anything to do with being autistic. And maybe it doesn't. I don't know that for sure. But I do know that when I started to research, I found a book. by this guy named William Stillman. It's called Autism and the God Connection. And this was an interesting book to me. 2:14 There's some pros and cons on it, which I'll talk about in another episode, but it was a really interesting book to me because it addressed this idea that there's a relationship between telepathy and autism. And in particular, William Stillman, who is on the spectrum and does have psychic ability, I think has worked as a medium. 2:36 But William Stillman worked primarily with nonverbal autistic children and teenagers, maybe adults, but nonverbal autistic people and their mothers. And a lot of these moms were saying, my kid could read my mind. And of course, everyone's like, That's ridiculous. People are even saying really mean things, like horrible, cruel things. 3:02 And that's like part of the culture of just dismissing what is essentially at its core the inner experience of the autistic, which we'll talk about more. But William Stillman didn't dismiss it. He wrote a book about it, and it's a really interesting book, and he's an interesting guy, and he shares a lot of anecdotes about 3:23 And he mentions in the book this podcast called The Telepathy Tapes, which I listen to. And that also is about telepathy and nonverbal autistic people. And it's really compelling. It's super compelling. And it is based on and around the work of this, actually, she's a medical doctor, neuroscientist, Diane Hennessy. 3:46 And she got interested in autism and ...
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    16 分
  • Masking in Autism: A Pro and Con Perspective EP 9

    Masking in Autism: A Pro and Con Perspective EP 9
    2025/04/17
    How masking can be helpful at times. How it can hurt. My experience with autistic masking and unmasking. My new unmasking autism workbook. I am planning future episodes on the topic. Thank you for listening! If you like this content please follow and / or share! You can get all my media and articles for free via my newsletter: BarbaraGraver.substack.comPost quoted in the article: "Why classic therapies don't work for autistic people?" by Pascale LarivierreWorkbook mentioned in the article "The Unmasking Workbook for Autistic Adults" by Jessica Penot, LPC-SIf you need closed captioning, please listen via the podbean app or through my site: AutisticPOV.com Episode 9 Transcript: If your podcast provider cuts off the transcript, you can see the full transcript for this episode at AutisticPOV.com 0:06 Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hey everybody, this is Barbara Graver. Thank you for joining me today on Autistic POV. Today I wanted to talk about masking. I'm just actually making a few observations on masking. 0:32 I do want to return to this topic at some point. But I just wanted to take kind of a pro and con approach to it today because this is something that's come up for me recently. So I have been using a workbook called the Unmasking Workbook for Autistic Adults. 0:50 It's written by Jessica Pinot, who is a licensed counselor and autistic person. And it's a great workbook. I love it. I like the way it's set up. I like the way it builds. It builds to this point kind of in the center where there are two charts that the author calls a template for change. 1:12 And I like the way the book is structured because the way it works is if you work through each section, by the time you get to this very important part of the book, you know what you want to say, which is great. So I think it's very well constructed. 1:27 And this part of the book, it basically has two sections to it. what what do you consider a gift of autism and what do you need help with and i like that i like that approach i filled it in but i found it necessary to create a 1:43 third category of things that i considered adaptive measures so they're not they're not necessarily things i want to change some some things around it i may want to change But they are adaptive measures. And one of the things I listed in this, along with some other things we'll talk about at some other time, was masking. 2:05 And I was kind of surprised. I kind of surprised myself that I put it there because unmasking has been a huge thing for me. I've suffered a lot. through masking but I did put it there and the reason I did is because masking can 2:23 have a benefit I mean masking can be a layer kind of a layer between you and the world and while it is a soul-crushing thing certainly not being able to mask is highly highly debilitating And it was interesting because I came across an article on Substack, and I'll link to it below. 2:47 The article was about two sisters, two women with autism. One was highly masking and the other couldn't mask at all. And I was surprised by my reaction to it because to me, it wasn't really an either or. To me, I could identify the experience of both of these people. 3:06 And that's because sometimes I can mask and sometimes I can't. I have had epic, epic meltdowns in public when unable to mask. And at other times I've endured difficult things without any kind of incident because of my ability to basically pretend I was okay. So, I mean, that's not good. Enduring things is not good usually, 3:30 but sometimes there isn't another choice and it is useful to be able to to step behind masking, like kind of seeing it as a shield where you can step behind it and you can interact. And, and I do this in my everyday life. I don't have a lot of contact with other people in my everyday life. 3:52 I basically spend time with my family and my pets and do media online and have a few online friends. and see an autism therapist. And that's pretty much the extent of my social involvement. But I do leave the house. I leave the house and I interact with people on a limited, kind of superficial basis. 4:14 And I have stock phrases that I can use when I'm walking my dog and someone says hello. I have certain things I'll say about the weather or certain responses I'll make. And they're not necessarily memorized, but they're things I use over and over again. And it's kind of my way of interacting. And that's masking. 4:34 And it doesn't hurt me to do that. It's not satisfying, but it doesn't hurt me. And I kind of feel proud of myself when I have like one of those little kind of ordinary exchanges with someone. And I feel like I handle it well. And it doesn't matter that nothing important is being communicated. 4:54 What matters is that I'm kind of proud of myself after I do this. And it allows me to present an aspect of myself that people can accept....
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    23 分
  • Dysregulation, Creativity & Special Interests: An Autistic Perspective EP 8

    Dysregulation, Creativity & Special Interests: An Autistic Perspective EP 8
    2025/04/04
    How does dysregulation impact creativity and our special interests? And what does this mean to autistic individuals (like me) who might already be struggling to identify their emotional states and stressors? In this episode, I discuss my own experience with dysregulation and creativity and share insights from autistic blogger and therapist Karen Sheriff and podcaster and neuropsychologist Dr. Theresa Regan. The specific media resources mentioned in this episode are: The dichotomy of being an autistic creator (Sheriff)Powerful Self-Care: Awareness of the Internal (Reagan) To read about the changes I made as a direct result of my dysregulation event please see What Writing on the Spectrum Means to Me To get all of my media via email please subscribe to Writing on the Spectrum (always free) to get follow the podcast only, please follow in your favorite podcast app. Please note: If you need closed captioning, please listen via the podbean app or through my site: AutisticPOV.com And if you like this content please follow and / or share! EPISODE 8 TRANSCRIPT: If your podcast provider cuts off the transcript, you can see the full transcript for this episode at AutisticPOV.com Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hi everybody, this is Barbara Graver. Thank you for joining me today on Autistic POV. Today we're going to talk about dysregulation and creativity because this is 0:32 something that has been an issue for me and I think it's an issue for a lot of autistic people who are creative. And some of this I'm going to base on a recent series by Teresa Regan, who is a neuropsychologist who has a podcast called Autism in the Adult. Dr. Regan is not autistic, 0:58 but she does have a really strong background in autism and neurobiology and a son who's autistic. And I like her podcast. So she did a series on self-care, actually, that I thought was relevant to our topic of dysregulation in relationship to creativity. And she talked a lot about escape as a coping mechanism. And essentially, 1:23 she was talking about special interests, but also other escape behaviors, such as a comforting environment or person, things along that line. And she had a kind of different take on that, I think, than I do. She said that engaging in these kind of coping mechanisms tend to make us smaller. 1:44 And I'm not sure that she means that across the board. I mean, she did say they're not detrimental necessarily, but she does, she personally feels they're limiting. I don't always agree with that. And the reason I don't agree with that is because I personally feel that my own special interests are actually expansive. 2:08 I feel that my world has expanded through my special interests. So we're not exactly on the same page, I don't think, with the nature of the escape. But she did make some good points about it, and she listed some interesting strategies. And she talked about how autistics might not know 2:33 what's going on inside of us which is certainly true and it seems kind of counterintuitive because we are very sensitive but at the same time we don't notice certain things we might not notice when physical things for example like when we're 2:50 cold or hungry and and we also have a hard time or at least in my case I have a hard time identifying emotional states So Dr. Regan talks about recognizing when we are about to be put into a fight, flight, or freeze kind of situation. 3:13 And she looks at special interests or these kind of escape mechanisms as a flight reaction. And I think she's absolutely right in this. I think that's absolutely true. Again, I think that there's a value to it, but I also think it can be problematic. And I've had that issue myself. I recently, 3:40 and I talk about this a little on the blog, I recently finished my fiction story, my vampire story, and I sent it to Kindle to read it on Kindle. And when I did, I hated it. It was kind of the equivalent... When I was a kid, my father, almost everybody in my family were artists. 4:01 And my father, whenever I finished something, he'd look at it and he'd say, turn it upside down. And so you turn it upside down and you automatically see it just jogs your brain so that you automatically see everything that's wrong with it. It works. I don't know why, but it does work. 4:20 And the same is true of writing. If you write something, and then you print it out or read it on another device, you automatically see things that your mind was just kind of skipping over before. So I sent this story to Kindle, and I was not happy with it, and I thought it was done, 4:39 and it was kind of upsetting, and I decided, you know, I don't think I really want to write fiction at all. I thought, I just want to write about spiritual topics because I did that in the mystic review and I was successful with it. 4:54 And I should just write a book, a book about dreams and do the mystic ...
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    17 分
  • 7 Ways Fiction Writing Can Benefit Autistic People EP 7

    7 Ways Fiction Writing Can Benefit Autistic People EP 7
    2025/03/21
    In this episode of Autistic POV, I share 7 ways writing fiction has been helpful to me. Some of these benefits go all the way back to childhood. I discovered others as I wrote my upcoming vampire novel (Trancing Miranda). I wanted to share this info because I think that other autistic people might find this way of looking at storytelling helpful. Having said that, please note—these are my own personal perks. Not all autistic writers will have the same experience and I would love to hear any differences that might pop up on your list! Also, please note, these are interpersonal benefits that have nothing to do with building a business or making money. Check out my blog at barbaragraver.substack.com. You can read the blog without signing up for the free subscription, but if you subscribe, you'll get articles and media via email PLUS updates on my vampire novel (including discounts and freebies) If you like this content, please consider subscribing, liking, commenting or sharing—or all of the above! And thank you for listening!!! UPDATE: Regarding the blog name change. It seemed confusing to have the blog and podcast share a name, so I changed the blog name to Writing on the Spectrum! Please Note: If you need closed captioning, please listen via the podbean app or through my site: AutisticPOV.com And if you like this content please consider following the show! EPISODE 7 TRANSCRIPT: If your podcast provider cuts off the transcript, you can see the full transcript for this episode at AutisticPOV.com Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hi everybody, this is Barbara Graver. Thank you for joining me today on Autistic POV. Today we're going to be talking about my personal experience with fiction writing 0:33 and some of the benefits of fiction writing that I've encountered that I think would probably carry over to a lot of autistic people. And I wanted to do this now because I'm going to be publishing my first vampire novel hopefully this month. I kind of hoped I could get the book out there before I did the podcast. 0:55 It didn't turn out that way and that's okay. And I'll talk a little bit more about the book as we go. But I just want to go over fiction writing and why I think it's a good process for a lot of autistic people. I'm not saying everyone needs to write stories. 1:13 Certainly if you don't feel called to do it, you shouldn't feel that it's a necessary process. But for anyone who feels that call to tell a story and to live in their imagination and to share their experience through story. I strongly encourage you to do it and in this episode I'm going to try to give you 1:34 a couple reasons why I think it's beneficial for a lot of autistic people. So I do want to start with a couple of updates and the first is that I renamed my blog again. I was calling it Writing After Dark which was nice but kind of generic. So I've changed it to autistic POV, like the podcast. 1:58 And the reason I did that is because I really want to focus on the intersection between autism and creativity. And I will write other posts, certainly. I'll do a few book reviews. I'll do... Some straight stuff just about autism, just like I do here. But I do want that to be a theme with it. 2:20 I don't want it just to be another blog on Substack about writing. I want it to be more specific. So that's my first update. And I'll include a link for the blog in the description, certainly. And my second update has to do with the memoir that I talked about in our last episode. 2:41 And if you remember in the last episode, which was on nonfiction writing and memoir writing and sharing our story and various ways of sharing our story across various platforms, I talked about how I'd written this memoir and it had ended up really being more about spirituality. than it was about autism. And I didn't think that was appropriate. 3:04 And I still don't. I still don't think that's appropriate. But just sharing my autism story just didn't feel like enough to me. I think it's partially because of my identity as an autistic person. It's very difficult for me to divide my identity and from the things that interest me. And it's funny because I've been watching Elementary. 3:28 It's a show that's on Amazon Prime and I really like it. It's not perfect, but I like it. And there was one scene where Sherlock and Watson were talking and Watson was saying how she needed more. She needed her own life. She needed her own space. And she said, your whole life is what you do. 3:48 And I'm not like that. And that was a fact of the show. That's a fact of his character. He relates to people through what he does. And that's pretty much all he knows. And that's pretty much all I know, too. And so writing an autism story independent of a special interest was a big, big problem for me. 4:09 And I just realized suddenly I picked the wrong special interest. ...
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    22 分
  • Sharing Our Autism Story EP 6

    Sharing Our Autism Story EP 6
    2025/03/07
    There is more than one way of sharing our autism story! In this episode of Autistic POV, I talk about my experience sharing my own story through memoir writing and online media—with a focus on what did and didn't work for me and why I also chat about my substack blog, my special interest blog and other resources. I promised to provide links these, so here they are: Metaphysical blog (special interest blog) MysticReview.comSubstack blog (some special interest posts plus autism podcast episodes and articles) BarbaraGraver.substack.comMy article Autism and the Narrative Process (barbaragraver.substack.com/p/autism-and-the-narrative-process) touches on Julie Brown's book Writers on the Spectrum. The book is more geared toward fiction, but I found it helpful. Link for my Podbean website (as mentioned in the episode): AutisticPOV.comMy autism diagnosis / bipolar misdiagnosis episode is EP 3 in app or online at https://www.autisticpov.com/e/late-autism-diagnosis-bipolar-misdiagnosis-and-being-vulnerable/ Please consider following and / or sharing the podcast! If you need closed captioning, please listen via the podbean app or through my site: AutisticPOV.com EPISODE 6 TRANSCRIPT: If your podcast provider cuts off the transcript, you can see the full transcript for this episode at AutisticPOV.com Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hi everybody, this is Barbara Graver. Thank you for joining me today on Autistic POV. Today we're going to be talking about sharing our story. 0:29 And I specifically called this episode sharing our story versus writing our memoir because I think it's important to acknowledge that there are a lot of different ways we can share our autistic experience. And writing a memoir is only one of those ways. So I love autistic memoirs. 0:50 I've read a bunch of them and I really, really enjoy them. And I decided that I should try to write one too. I wanted to talk about my experience growing up as an undiagnosed autistic and I started it. I actually wrote it. But I had a lot of trouble with it. 1:09 I had a lot of trouble with it for different reasons. And this is something that a lot of autistics struggle with. It's kind of ironic because I am a writer. I consider myself a writer. I've written a couple of novels, but I really, really struggle with writing novels. And there's a reason for this. 1:31 And writing the memoir was easier in a way because it's chronological. You don't have to struggle with structure to the same degree you do a novel. But there is still kind of a genre expectation, I think, with a standard memoir. And maybe this is something that needs to be challenged. 1:51 But the idea with a standard memoir is usually that there will be a theme. It's not an autobiography. A memoir is not an autobiography. It's not someone's story from birth to the point they write it. It's the story of a specific aspect of their life. 2:10 So with the autism memoir, the expectation is going to be that aspect is autism. And I think that's what made it hard for me because as an autistic person, Everything in my life is related to autism because my autistic way of looking at the world is global. There's no way I could step away from that. 2:34 Everything I've done in my life has been, and everything I've seen and experienced has been through an autistic lens. So I found when I tried to write a memoir about is that I just couldn't stay in my lane. And that's something, I read a book, and I think I mentioned it before, 2:52 but it was by a literary critic named Julie Brown, and the name of the book was Writers on the Spectrum. And in that book, she analyzed the writing of eight different very famous writers who are widely thought to be autistic. And she came up with these problems that all of them had, and they all had these problems. 3:11 And reading that was really helpful for me, Because at the time, I was struggling with writing fiction. And I saw a lot of those issues in my own writing. And it was helpful for me. I've written a couple novels. One is going to be coming out, I think, before the end of the year. 3:28 But they were so hard for me to write. And I actually think if I try another one, when I try, I've already got another fiction novel. story started, but I think the next time I might actually try a short story cycle because of issues I have around narration. 3:47 And this is common, and I'm not sharing this to discourage anyone. I mean, obviously a lot of people write autism memoirs. They write them brilliantly. I have an episode called autistic POV reading roundup where I talk about four books that I really love that 4:04 I read recently and three of them are autism memoirs and I love them and I think everyone should read them especially if you think you might want to write one you should definitely read a bunch that's the best thing you can do as a writer to prepare you to write...
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    19 分