Join Amanda Werner and her good friend Jessica Martin in this insightful episode as they dive deep into navigating life with autism and other neurodivergent conditions in adulthood. Jess shares personal experiences about her sensory sensitivities and struggles with social anxiety, while Amanda discusses the process and importance of receiving an autism diagnosis later in life. They explore how self-awareness can improve entrepreneurial endeavors and offer resources for self-assessment through a website called Embrace Autism. Stay tuned for a candid conversation filled with humor, personal anecdotes, and valuable insights for managing a neurodivergent life in adulthood
00:00 Welcome and Introduction
00:36 Amanda’s Autism Diagnosis Journey
02:04 Jess’s Sensory Sensitivities
05:11 The Cost and Process of Adult Autism Diagnosis
06:07 Self-Diagnosis and Understanding Neurodivergence
07:19 Impact of Diagnosis on Personal and Professional Life
14:21 Resources and Assessments for Autism
19:08 Sharing the Diagnosis with Family
21:13 Conclusion and Farewell
Resources:
Embrace Autism
Two Wacky Teacherpreneurs Tell All Podcast
Transcript:
Jess: [00:00:00] Welcome back to two wacky TI. That was so horrible. I’m sorry. I have, I have a toy accordion. Uh, I just realized that you probably can’t see it at home, but anyway, it’s something that my husband, one year for Christmas, he said he wanted one thing, he wanted a toy accordion. And he even made me take a picture of it.
Jess: We were shopping one day, he’s like, this is what I want for Christmas. Take a picture of it now. And he like, he’s actually really good on this. He’s pretty good on the accordion. Anyway, we, we decided to come back and do a little part two. Our part one episode was all about Amanda receiving an official diagnosis that she is autistic.
Jess: And then at the end of the episode we were, we said we were gonna come back and talk about. What does getting, uh, an autistic diagnosis later in life or [00:01:00] middle age, right, like in your forties or your thirties or your fifties, what does that mean for you when you already are in a career, you have your life kind of set up?
Jess: Like, what, what would be the purpose of, of doing that? Because I’m sure a Amanda thinks that I’m autistic. Probably most people that meet me think I’m autistic. I’m so glad you said that.
Tim Mchugh: Welcome to the Wacky Teacherpreneur Podcast. Your hosts, Jess and Amanda, have been friends and teacherpreneur for years.
Tim Mchugh: Along with their successes, they’ve had lots of failures. Foibles and fumbles, and now they’re here to share it all with you. Stay tuned for some funny times and awesome business insights. Let’s go behind the scenes of their teacher businesses now, raw, unfiltered, real. Let’s get started.[00:02:00]
Jess: Um, Amanda is not the first person to say I’m autistic, right. I do have social anxiety disorder and a an avoidance disorder. And, um, probably a lot. I have a sensory problem where I’m really sensitive to feelings. Like I can’t wear a scarf, necklace, jewelry. I can’t wear socks with seams in a certain way.
Jess: Um, I have to go to bed at night in certain color clothes or I feel tormented by the universe. There’s some things I’m telling Amanda that she’s probably never heard before. Certain colors.
Amanda: I didn’t know that.
Jess: If I don’t wear a black t-shirt when I go to bed, I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and rip it off because I’m so upset and I’ll sit and think about how it’s not black.
Jess: And there were years before. Probably in my twenties where I had to wear a white t-shirt when I went to bed, and then suddenly [00:03:00] in my thirties I had to wear a certain kind of black T-shirt and it has to be a certain weight of the shirt matters. I mean, it’s just like, oh my gosh. Yeah. The, the most annoying parts are really when my sunglasses or glasses are too tight on my head, I start throwing up.
Jess: Like, it, it, it sparks something inside of me. Like if anything touches my temples in a weird way, like a hat, a brim of a hat. Or sunglasses. I start gagging like uncontrollably. And that’s why I used to wear a necklace all the time in my twenties. And by the time I got to my thirties, I couldn’t stand a necklace on my neck anymore.
Jess: And then I used to wear bracelets and I can’t stand bracelets. The only thing I can tolerate is an Apple watch. And sometimes it makes me sick and I have to take it off. Like I’ll just feel the pressure of the watch on my wrist and I’ll just feel like I’m [00:04:00] gonna. Basically crumble into a ball and die.
Jess: And so I have to take my, my watch off and also my wedding ring. Is the thinnest band I could find, because having a chunky rings and even when I see people wearing chunky rings, I start to get nauseous. So I mean, a lot of people have come up to me, but at this point I’m like, well, what’s the point? I mean, I’m like 44 years old.
Jess: I’ve learned to deal with myself. I have a happy marriage and a house, and I’m mid-career. So what would be the point of me finding out that I was like officially autistic when I’ve just learned to deal with myself and my weirdness all these years? What do you think, Amanda? What are your thoughts on that?
Jess: Well, should I put my hand down?
Amanda: You’re accordion, you’re making me wanna go get my, an instrument. I have some instruments, but I’m gonna try not to, to get off [00:05:00] topic too bad here. Um, so, ’cause I, I do have one, like a ukulele.
Jess: Oh, maybe you can bring it out for next episode.
Amanda: Okay. So, um. Getting a diagnosis as an adult, especially of autism, is very costly, and it takes a long time.
Amanda: It took six months. It was a six month long drawn out process, and it, it cost a lot of money, like over a thousand dollars. I spent, um, uh, to, to. To have a doctor that is very knowledgeable about autism, specifically autism in women, um, and girls because a lot of doctors are not, um, knowledgeable about that research.
Amanda: Um, and so I, I, I don’t, I don’t. Not everyone has those resources. You know, not everyone [00:06:00] has the time, um, or the money to spend on getting a formal diagnosis. And so that’s why I do think, um, self-diagnosis is, is relevant here. Like I feel like it should be more accepted. Um, and. But not, I think that like autistic people, they deep dive into research.
Amanda: I mean, a lot of them, I’m not saying all of them, I can’t ever say all of them, but me specifically, I am very driven to learn. I, I mean, you know that about me. I’m voracious. I read. I probably read a book a week, and when I say read, some people disagree that listening to books is not reading, but I fight with them all the time about that.
Amanda: I’m like, what? How is that not reading? Like I have all the knowledge in my head that I heard from these books. So a lot of the reading [00:07:00] I do is, is listening, uh, to audio books. But I also read actual books. I try to, but that’s hard sometimes with a DHD too. But you asked like. How, how, why would I do this?
Amanda: You know, like I’m a successful adult. Uh, well adjusted, I guess. I don’t, maybe I’m not, uh, um, to me, well, one of the main reasons that I did this is because I wanted to understand myself better and the. Health issues that I have. Um, I’ve always struggled with eating. I’ve always struggled with overworking, um, with this voracious need to learn.
Amanda: Um, being over passionate overdriven, um, and yeah, and with people, with, with relationships, with friendships, [00:08:00] um, with. And, and, and even, you know, being a mom, of course, and I, and I do think that a lot of people, they don’t realize how neurodivergent they are until they become parents. And until the pressures of life have gotten so extreme, you know, that, and, and during the pandemic things were just chaotic and, and unpredictable.
Amanda: And, and I think there’s a lot of people who realized. That they were different, um, during the pandemic. I think that that caused a lot of people to start understanding themselves more. Uh. Also, and there is this whole phenomenon of middle-aged women getting diagnosed with A DHD. But whenever I hear about someone, especially a woman being diagnosed with A DHD, and they start talking about, you know, emotional regulation issues [00:09:00] and RSD rejection, sensitivity dysphoria, and, and I, I just always, I’m like, do they, are they aware that.
Amanda: That 40% of people with a DHD also have autism. Like have they considered, you know, like this at all? Um, so I’m always questioning like women with a DHD, like, have they thought about autism as well? Um, there’s also OCD, uh, I have that too. I was diagnosed with OOCD, um, by the same doctor. Mild to moderate OCD and then also, uh, alexathymia, which is, um, like this, it’s a, there’s a spectrum with all of this, but you know, like mild, moderate, severe, and Alexathymia is just this inability to identify how you’re feeling.
Amanda: Um, and yeah, I don’t know, like, to me it helps. Me understand all the problems I’ve [00:10:00] had in the past, and it helps me feel like, okay, you have issues with rigid thinking. Like you have issues with black and white thinking, and that, that has been my issue with food a lot, um, is feeling like I have to be perfect, like I have to eat.
Amanda: Perfectly. And that has caused me a lot of problems, uh, in my life. Uh, a lot of like swinging back and forth on extremes, like extremely healthy eating and then swinging all the way back to extremely unhealthy eating. And so now that I know why. Why, why have I struggled so hard with that? It’s because of A DHD and autism.
Amanda: You know, it’s emotional regulation issues. It’s like being extremely sensitive to food and it giving me a lot of pleasure, maybe too much pleasure. And so like I feel like it’s helping me understand why like, it’s not my. Fault. It’s my [00:11:00] brain and how it works. And so it’s helping me like on it. Like Jess, I just downloaded this app called, um, MyFitnessPal, and in the past I would’ve used this app to be perfect, right?
Amanda: To like. Track all my food and nutrition, but now I’m using it and I’m even putting, you know, all the junk I’m eating and I’m using it to identify where are the nutrients that I’m going to far above. Where am I not getting enough of these nutrients? And I’ve learned, you know, like I actually, I always thought I ate too much sugar and this app is helping me limit like a little more like, like I used to just eat like a giant bag of chips.
Amanda: I’m sure a lot of people can identify with this, like even neurotypical people, I would just eat chip out of the big chip bag and I didn’t know how much I was eating, you know, like how much salt or any of that. [00:12:00] And now with this app. I’ve started to, um, and maybe this is sort of perfectionistic, but like, I’ve been counting my chips and then I put ’em in a bowl, but I, I give myself a lot of chips.
Amanda: Like I give myself like 25 chips. What? Okay, you gotta tell me what you’re thinking right now and Well, I was just thinking,
Jess: I was just thinking that you got this diagnosis of being OCD and that’s like the definition of being OCD is like counting things that you do. Right. Yeah.
Amanda: Well, and I know I was diagnosed with A DHD, and like I never, I always rejected that because I’m like, I’m so organized.
Amanda: Like, it’s always what I’m doing, like organizing things and, and I, I still think I have a DI know I have a DHD. The, the doctor also tested me for all of that and gave me all those, um, assessments for that too. And I definitely have combination Type A, D, H, D, but I, I don’t know, I just, [00:13:00] I, I’m just much more self-aware I guess.
Amanda: And like, um, and there’s part of me that’s like, you know. Really like, okay, you don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to eat perfect. You just need to know what you’re putting in your body. And the reason I’m doing this ’cause it is ’cause I struggle so much with health, like chronic pain and that’s another thing that’s associated with being autistic.
Amanda: Um, and A DHD is chronic pain. Um, and it can manifest in a lot of different ways. Like you get migraines all the time. Um, and I know you have chronic. Health issues as well. And so it, it also helps me understand why, like, why have I had these my whole life? Like I’ve, my whole life I’ve had these head to toe, um, rashes and I’ve seen a lot of doctors about it and it just happens like suddenly I have hives and it’s happened since I was like six.
Amanda: I have pictures of myself with head to [00:14:00] toe hives and they didn’t know back then why. And there, there’s a lot of research that’s come out recently that it is related with Neurodivergence and being like just hypersensitive to your environment and to stress. And so it ex, it just explains a lot of things to me.
Amanda: And, but if you don’t have the money to get a diagnosis and you wanna really deep dive into this, there are people out there, like the doctor that diagnosed me is from Embrace Autism, so I highly recommend that web website because this doctor has all of the assessments for free. So like you could go and take all of these assessments and she even puts her own scores.
Amanda: In like the doctor is a DHD as well, and OCD. And so this doctor, like has, has a lived experience of all of this. [00:15:00] And so like if you’re not someone who can spend money on a diagnosis, you could go to embrace autism.com and take all these assessments and just, you know, just to self-identify and, and understand yourself better.
Jess: But could you tell people a little bit about what the assessments were like? ’cause I just remember you telling me that there were a lot of essay questions, sort of like, and I, I’m thinking about people at home that are teacher entrepreneurs and they already feel like they don’t have enough time for anything.
Jess: So like how long did all of the questionnaires take you? Do you remember?
Amanda: Well, okay, so there’s the first part is you go through. A screening. So you do a screening process and that actually is not that expensive. Um, I forget how much I paid for that. Um, but the screening process, I think there were like five tests.
Amanda: Um, and then it just a few short answer [00:16:00] questions. Um. And she doesn’t have the short answer questions available on her website, I don’t think. But she has the tests available and one of them, uh, is called the Rads, R-R-A-A-D-S. And I’ll put a link to it in the show notes. Um, that one. You could take for free and it only, I think it takes like 10, 15 minutes.
Amanda: Um, the AQ is another one, autism quotient. Uh, and I’m not quite sure what the RADS stands for. I could look it up. Um, RADS are test. Uh, yeah. Actually, when I search Rads r Test, the first link that comes up is from Embrace Autism. And it takes, it’s a, you could read this, it takes 15 minutes to read it. Uh, to take the test.
Amanda: It’s 10 to 30 [00:17:00] minutes.
Jess: Okay.
Amanda: Um,
Jess: that’s not that long then.
Amanda: Yeah. Then you can take the test right on our website, but the doctor also gives you a rating or gives each test a rating. So she rates it on appropriate and respectful wording, uh, clarity and lack of ambi ambiguity. ’cause autistic people, you know, they struggle with the ambiguity, right?
Amanda: Like they struggle with like kind of abstract. Um, thinking, you know, I’m very literal. I’m the last person to get a joke. Uh, and so she rates it on tho that, ’cause sometimes test questions are very hard to answer for autistic people ’cause they’re like very contextual, like. You know, would you rather watch a movie at home or go to a friend’s house to have dinner?
Amanda: And it’s like, well, it depends on what friend, you know what I mean? Like, how do I answer this question? Um, and then she also rates it on the accuracy of the [00:18:00] test. And the rads are, is very accurate. Apparently four out of five stars she gave it. Um, so anyways, you could go search these. Sort of 10, and most of ’em are about 10, 15, 30 minute.
Amanda: Tests you can take.
Jess: So what I’m hearing from you is, one, one thing that people could do if they were interested in finding out more about this, they could go to embrace autism and they could take these tests. Um, and also like why would they wanna find out? It would just be more on their journey to self-actualization, right?
Jess: Like just self-awareness, understanding what makes you, you, and then. You know, having a greater self-awareness might help your business, right? Because like if you, the more you know about you and how you work and how you’re productive and what works for you, and really discovering what works for you and why that will help you in your journey on being an entrepreneur.
Jess: Because [00:19:00] like the more you understand about yourself, the more you can probably help other people.
Amanda: Yeah, I agree. And also. I wanted to get this diagnosis to go public about it. Like I wanted to have more authority in saying, yes, I am autistic, and I wanted to be able to tell my kid that too, like I wanted to be able to say.
Amanda: This is not caused by Tylenol. This is not caused by vaccinations. This is caused by genetics, my child.
Jess: But Amanda, did you ask your mom if she took Tylenol while she was pregnant with you?
Amanda: Um, I did not, and I, I, oh my God, I have so much to say about that. But my mom and my dad are just as weird as I am. I, I, I get, I, [00:20:00] I get a lot of these traits from them.
Amanda: Um. And I have a secret to tell you. I actually haven’t told my parents yet. They don’t listen to this, they don’t listen to this podcast. I’m, that’s like, I mean I just got this diagnosis like two weeks ago. There’s people I have not told yet, so you wacky teacherpreneur. You must be a special group because you know, before my parents.
Jess: When are you gonna tell them? Do you have a timeline?
Amanda: I don’t know. It’s so hard. ’cause I don’t wanna impact them negatively. Like I don’t want them to feel guilty. I don’t want them to feel like, I don’t want them to be dismissive, which they’ve been really great about everything with my kid, so I don’t think they’re gonna be dismissive.
Amanda: Actually, it was my dad that was like. Have you considered autism? Um, when my kid was having all these struggles when they were, you know, in preschool and kindergarten and that, at that point I was like, what, what is autism? Like, I didn’t even really know what it [00:21:00] was. And so a lot has changed, you know, in the last five years.
Amanda: It’s pretty wild, but, and wacky.
Jess: Well, you’ll have to keep us updated on, uh, how that journey goes. For sure.
Amanda: I will. Thank you for listening. Namaste.
Jess: Goodbye. Goodbye.
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