July 25, 2024 • 39 mins
The number one question Rachel gets asked isIs she neurodivergent?
The answer is yes, and she's ready to discuss.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
This is Rachel Go's Rogue. Welcome back to another episode
of Rachel Goes Rogue with your host Rachel Savannah Levis. Today,
I'm excited to dive deeper into a topic I actually
get asked about frequently, and I've opened up a little
bit about in the past. That is my diagnosis with
(00:29):
ADHD and living with neurodiversity. So growing up school was
very difficult for me, and I did not realize that
my brain was structured in a different way. I always
just thought I was stupid because I couldn't pass my
(00:49):
multiplication tables test, and I couldn't read as well as
the other kids in class, and I just thought I
wasn't intelligent. And it wasn't until college that I was
diagnosed with an attentive ADHD more commonly known as ADD.
(01:11):
I realized that I had been living with an invisible
disability my whole life. Once I was diagnosed, I was
able to take control of my life a little bit
more and to get the accommodations that I needed for
me to succeed in school. That truly was life changing
(01:32):
for me. But there's also like this deeper social construct
that living with neurodiversity has impacted my daily life and
how I interact with the world, and a big part
of that has been masking, which we'll get into later
(01:53):
in this episode. The purpose in today's episode is in
no way, shape or form excuse for any behavior. I
hope to provide an open dialogue with my guest, Page Layel,
to provide more context for people, and to connect with
those who have also dealt with similar challenges to know
(02:17):
that you're not alone. My goal with this episode is
to provide a reason and not an excuse, So please
proceed with compassion and an open mind, and I hope
to connect with those who can relate. And this is
(02:38):
a vulnerable one. This is a This is a vulnerable
share for both Page and me, so let's just be kind. Okay.
Today I am being joined by my guest, who has
built an amazing online community due to her own business
(03:00):
with her own ADHD and autism diagnosis. Page is an
ADHD and autism acceptance activist posting on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube,
and an author of her book, but everyone feels this way.
How an Autism Diagnosis Saved My Life Page gives those
(03:21):
with an autism diagnosis or ADHD diagnosis or those wanting
to learn more place to find information, perspective, and community.
Please welcome Page Layel. Thank you so much for joining
me today. Page. I'm so so happy to have you
here on the podcast. So basically, I love to have
(03:46):
experts on to give more context into the things that
really resonate with me. And I could have, you know,
a psychologist come on to talk about autism or what
SO divergency may look like in somebody or ADHD, but
I figured I'd rather interview somebody who has experienced it
(04:09):
firsthand and can actually speak from experience. So thank you
for coming on. And I am just like I admire
you so much for being in a public arena and
speaking openly about your diagnosis and all of that.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
So thank you, thank you, yeah no, thank you so
much for having me, and thank you for reading my
book too.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Your book, it was so it was pretty intense. There
were a few trigger warnings, and you talk a lot
about your suicidal ideation and your experience with navigating life
with the way that your brain was hardwired and figuring
out that you had autism. What age were you when
(04:54):
you first diagnosed.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
I was fifteen, it was like two weeks after my
fifteenth birthday, so it was right before I went into
grade ten, and I had a boyfriend at the time
who I just it was my first boyfriend, like a
week before or something, so silly. I was so little,
but at the time I felt like so old. I
mean it was the oldest I'd ever been, so yeah, fifteen.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yeah. And in your book, the setting is very much
in the classroom and being able to start reading at
such an early age and diving into books, but then
having this pivot point in your life where you realized
that people were interpreting books a little bit differently than
(05:38):
you were. What was that experience like for you and
can you describe it in a way for the listeners
tuning in to know what that was like.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Yeah, I honestly have wondered if or how people learned
to read, and if I learned to read the same
way that everyone else does, but maybe just a little
bit quicker. But at a very young age, I was
given access to a lot of books, and I think
(06:12):
that coupled with how my brain works, and also just
like the setting that I was in my environment, I
was reading so many books and at the time, as
a kid growing up. I think to be reading was
a lot more of learning how words are written and
how to say them and what they need. For such
(06:34):
a long time that I really was missing the meaning
behind probably every single book that wasn't something that mattered
to me at the time, and I don't think that
was something that I could interpret. The world was so
complex and I wanted to understand it, and reading was
the only way that I could. It answered so many questions.
(06:56):
But then it was around grade seven ish and we
started diving into texts in English class and being like
what is this? What does this mean? And what is
she saying?
Speaker 3 (07:08):
And other people were answering like this is what she
meant and.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
It was not written in the text, and I was like,
where is that written? And they were like, you don't
need to have it written page, it's it's written in
between the lots. And I'm like, well, that does gonna
make my chense to me personally. So it was a
bit to realize that I was kind of although it
(07:31):
seemed ahead of everybody in the grade wise, I was
actually way behind in just the thoughts coming together. And
it really made upset and I have a hard time
reading books still to this day, I'm like, I don't
know what this is about. I think I have to
(07:52):
look it up to see if I'm if I'm actually
interpreting this correctly, and I never am, and I always
think I got it, and I'm like, oh man, there's
something else going on. I didn't know that. But which
is cool to have other people to be able to
like have video essays and explain what things mean. But yeah,
that's just one of the things that's tough for me,
(08:15):
and it's like tough for a lot of autistic people.
So I'm kind of normal in that way. Feels good.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Can you describe what being on the spectrum means? The
way that you describe it is just so beautiful.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Hu of percent. I've taken a while to try to
like get it into good words. My favorite way of
explaining what autism spectrum disorder looks like is you can
look at it like the pathology way how they diagnose
it in the DSM five, but that doesn't tell you
too much about why and how the experience shows up.
(08:48):
So my favorite way of explaining autism is by explaining
the connectivity theory, which is a big theory about how
autism develops and so it's determine by our genes. It's genetic,
it was from someone in the family, and it's a
whole bunch of genes that are involved in the process.
(09:09):
And so before birth it's determined if you're going to
be autistic or not. And then from the time that
you're in uteral to the time where you're around two
years old, your brain is growing. It's creating so many neurons,
like burst neurons, a lot of things going on. And
then once you're around like two years old, your brain
(09:30):
starts to rune certain synapses. So as you learn things,
certain pathways are going to get stronger as you keep
doing them, and then you get better at them, and
certain pathways that the brain made when it was in
its fast, fast, fast growing stage aren't needed. So the
brain does a little chop chop chop, like you're pruning
(09:51):
a hedge, and in autistic brains, for some reason, that
doesn't happen as much. So we have we have a
lot more connections, We have a lot more branches than
other people do. We also have less long term connections,
(10:13):
so it's kind of like you know when you prune
a plant and then it grows like taller and stronger
and straighter because there's more energy in whatever being to
the plant. If you don't prune a plant, then there's
like a bunch of leaves and there's they're smaller or
whatever you got, like vegetables, they're not as big. So
that's kind of like what an autistic brain looks like.
(10:35):
Short term or in like the short small spaces, there's
a lot of activity going on, but over different parts
of the brain, like talking to each other. That's where
autistic people struggle because we don't have those fast highway connections,
but we've got a lot of small towns, so we've
got a lot of different parts.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
That are really really working, Like our senses.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
A lot of autistic people, I think probably all are
sensitive to thinks, to light, to sound, to texture, to
being touched. We like to wear different clothes or have
our body be felt a different way. We can be
really good at patterns and routine and remembering routine and
(11:23):
saying on routine and making lists and coordinating and categorizing,
and all those parts take up one part of the brain.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
But then parts that take up multiple parts of the brain.
For example, are.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Reading a book and figuring out what it actually means
without it telling you what it actually means. That takes
a bunch of parts of the brain together. And so
every autistic person is so different because our brains, although
the same kind of coding like this is going to happen.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
How the proud and happens and how.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
The connections happen are so different for every single person.
Maybe some brains prim a little bit more or a
little bit less, and there's also like some other gene
factors that go into it. But in general, I think
that that gives a good overview of autism and how
it shows that.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Yeah, and for each person, it's so individualized. Like some
people have non verbal autism where they don't have the
ability to speak, but they're able to function in other ways.
So it's just so individualized and unique for the person.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yeah, everyone struggles with something different and everyone also has
different situations, so we're already accommodated in different ways.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Yeah, when you were diagnosed, what was your initial reaction
(13:11):
and were you able to make sense of things in
your mind? And then also what was your family's reaction
and your your boyfriend's reaction at that time?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
At the time when I was diagnosed, so I was
sitting in that office with the doctor for like three hours,
and so when he said the words like autism, I
had no idea what autism was or what it meant.
And I just was like trying to think about like
anything I could grab that i'd heard of the media,
(13:41):
and it really was not much. And so as he
was explaining it, everything he said it like lit a
fire inside of me. It let my nervousness some on fire.
I'm like, that's it, that's it, that's it.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
All of these feelings and thoughts and rituals that I
did that I didn't summon, like I didn't even notice
that I did because I hadn't got that far. I
haven't got that far of self awareness about myself. And
it felt the most validating in the world. And everything
he said made the most sense, every single thing. And
(14:17):
my mom said the same thing.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
I asked her because she was with me, and I
asked her in the truck on the way home what
she thought of it, and She's like, every single thing
like boom bo boom, that's page. There's no that just
explained you so well. We told my or she told
my brother and my dad and my brother a don't
think said any words like my brother's like, okay, it's fine.
(14:40):
But my dad he didn't say anything to me. He
didn't do that a lot of the time. But apparently
my dad started thinking that he might be autistic. Apparently
my dad sees a lot of him and me and
I know that he's really stressed out a lot of
the time, and so he started to think that maybe
he's audistic. But it took me a long time to
(15:03):
understand it too and figure it out, and at the time,
there really wasn't much to go off of. So that
was from that was I was fifteen, because there wasn't
a lot on social media about autism at all. Four
years later is when I started advocating on social media
and becoming like an autism influencer.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Do you feel like you've come a long way? It's
more authenticity.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
I feel like I'm a I'm a complete different person,
not only from when I was fifteen, like from when
I was nineteen. I'm a complete different person completely, and
I think that I'm a lot more of myself and
I know who I am more so, and I'm not
afraid to be who I am and I'm not afraid
of what my life is and what I do in
(15:50):
my life. I'm like more accepting of myself and the
friends that I do have are like real, you know,
like people that like me, they like me for real,
for me, and that's it's the first time having that,
you know, I didn't always have that, and it feels
really good.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
A big part of struggling with neurodivergency is masking, and
when you mask you're unable to be authentically yourself. And
you've done an incredible job of explaining masking in your
book without naming it until after I was like reading
it listening to it, and I was like, oh, she's
(16:31):
describing masking right there. And then right after you're like,
and that's masking, and I was like, yes, yes, I
know it. And I did know the moment when you
were diagnosed by your psychiatrist. This is from your book.
He said, have you ever seen the Big Bang Theory page?
(16:53):
And you said, that's my favorite show page. The doctor said,
you're like Sheldon Cooper. But I scoffed a little bit
because Sheldon Cooper was a physicist and I was just
fifteen and didn't know anything really about physics or anything else.
He said, You're smarter than Sheldon Cooper, he continued, because
(17:14):
you know so much about humans, you tricked everyone around
you for years as safely as possible. Tell me, have
you ever thought that everyone else seemed to be able
to speak to each other in ways that you couldn't
understand or be involved in. Did you feel they understood
a lot about what you didn't without explanation, Almost like
(17:35):
you missed a lesson in class or something before being
born about how to be human. I stared at the
floor trying to process. It must have been exhausting for you,
he continued. You spent your whole life observing other people
and judging yourself and trying to create a persona that
will be accepted in society. That's why people know Sheldon
(17:57):
Cooper as autistic but don't know that you were, because
you developed a trick that will camouflage you. So you
blend in as much as possible with everyone else. That's
called masking.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
It's enough.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Yes, it's emotional, and it must have been such a
relief to hear this coming from the doctor and realizing
that you know there isn't something wrong with you. You're
just you process things a different way and you've worked
(18:35):
your whole life taking in data from other people and
figuring out what the social norms are, and you know,
shifting things inside of yourself to present a certain way
so that you could survive socially. And when you do that,
it does keep you safe, but it also takes away
(18:58):
your authenticity. Yes, and you become lost and like you're
presenting yourself in the way that you think other people
need to perceive you as.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Yes, yeah, one hundred percent, and like to be safe,
I needed to not be myself whoever that person was.
I'll just be what it looks like everyone wants me
to be. Then how could I not be safe?
Speaker 3 (19:24):
But then I had so many connections that weren't real
at all.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Because I wasn't real.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
How were you able to come back to your true self?
Speaker 2 (19:52):
I think at the time, I didn't think that I
had a true self. I felt like I was empty
and was starting from scratch.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
But now it's been almost nine years since.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
I've been diagnosed, I have learned that there was a
true me in there. And she might have got lost
when she was a kid. Somewhere like around eight nine
years old. She started getting smashed away. But I am
still that eight nine year old, and I do like
pink and purple, and I'm gonna paint my house to
(20:29):
those colors if I want to. I'm not gonna paint
them beige and blah. So the next seller likes them,
I'm gonna. I'm living in this house, so I'm gonna
paint it how I like it. But at the time,
I knew nothing about myself, and it felt really tough
because I thought I knew everything, and so I was
(20:51):
grasping at these thoughts that I thought I had, and
I thought I knew the feelings that I thought I had,
and I had to think, and I kept do you
actually feel that? Do you feel that? Or do you
just think that? Did someone make you think that? Is
that someone else's thought that's not yours? And I just
spiraled because yeah, for pretty much everything of my life
(21:16):
was not everything, I guess, but a lot of things
I was doing and I did not want to do.
And I was having a really tough time, and I
was slowly realizing who I am, and then after that
came slowly realizing how I can be myself in real
(21:36):
life in public with other people. Process two steps.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, yeah, but I mean yeah, that's something that I
can relate to being neuro divergent and not being diagnosed.
Until college, I basically was in a psychology one on
one class and we were.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Learning oh so scared.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
We were learning, Yes, we were learning about ADHD. And
we were told to memorize the symptoms of an attentive ADHD.
And I was like, hmm, that sounds like me. I
definitely do that, like hard time remembering and all of
(22:21):
all of the things. And I was like, maybe I
have this thing. So I went to a psychiatrist and
took a few tests, had an interview, and she was like, yeah,
you definitely have ADHD. We'll put you on this medication
and you can try it out. And they put me
on adderall at first, and it definitely was like it helped,
(22:46):
But I noticed that my personality wasn't the same, Like
I was very jumpy and I became super impatient and
that's so unlike me. I'm like the most patient person
you ever. And I was getting frustrated and just aggravated.
And so we switched my medication to riddle in and
(23:08):
that helped so so much. And then I also got
testing accommodation, so I was able to test in a
separate room and have time and a half to complete
my tests, and that super That reduced my anxiety like exponentially,
and then I started getting good grades for the first time.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
In my mind, I funk, who would have thunk, I'm.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Like, I'm actually intelligent, Like I never I always thought
I was stupid, you know. So it really was life changing.
And you know, a part of me wish is that
I was diagnosed with ADHD sooner because learning would have
been so much easier for me growing up. But I'm
(23:53):
I'm thankful for the experiences that I had because I
feel like I'm more empathetic to people who have been
diagnosed with some sort of neurodivergency later in life, who
had to struggle with school and not quite knowing what
it was that made them different than everyone else.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Yeah, it's a different ballgame, for sure. There's a lot
of different struggles, especially being diagnosed earlier. There are a
lot of kids that get diagnosed with ADHD and then
they're put on adderall and that's fun like with being
even younger, and especially like ADHD medications are a different
(24:38):
level of medications than just SSRIs. I take my dance.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
That's the one.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
I think it was the first one they gave me.
In it, I feel good, I'm actually doing things. I'm like,
this is what it feels to do things.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
That's wild when you're.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
In school or whatever. I find that a lot of
teachers get annoyed at kids with ADHD. And they get
annoyed because it like bothers their ego, because they have
a whole idea.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
Of the day and this is how they want to
do it, and they're just.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Like ah and being negative. It's easier and like quicker
to get what you want. And I saw them like,
that's lazy. You don't have the patience as I and
I see that. However, the teachers teach the kids. However,
the teachers treat kids with ADHD. However, the teachers treat
(25:33):
kids that are interrupting and that keep moving and that
keep talking, and that keep fidgeting in that needbor time
and whatever. That is how the class treats the kids.
And I think that a lot of kids with ADHD
feel like judged and alienated by a lot of the class,
because it's true there are lots of like why can't
(25:56):
they stop talking? Why can't they just sit down? And
why can't they just but it's because.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
That's what the teacher's saying. Sit down, stop talking.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
As a dance teacher and as a neuro divergent dance teacher,
it is one of my biggest foundations to not be
that teacher and understand ADHD and autism and a lot
of other neurodivergent spaces and kids and be able to
(26:28):
if a kid is like I say, okay, here's your spot,
but they keep like moving around, I acknowledge that and go,
all right, well here's you can you can stay right there.
That can be your spot if you want to stay
there there and you can spit on your spot. I
don't care if that helps you listen to me. Or
if a kid like keeps talking and I have to
keep saying to them, come back on track, come back
on track. I don't say it that things like that,
(26:50):
but I'll go like, I'm I'm sorry that like I
have to call you back in. I hope that's a like, No,
I hope that's okay. I'm not trying to bug you
and all work on being less boring so that you're
more interested. Or maybe next week we'll do some different
and that'll be exciting for you, and it definitely changes
the way that the class is perceived and how the
(27:12):
students feel about themselves. And they're able to to thrive
so much in their zones that they're supposed to thrive in,
and it's so beautiful to do.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Also, girls don't get diagnosed just often as boys with
ADHD and with autism. I think a big part of
that is boys are probably more disruptive in class than
girls are, because girls learned from a young age that
certain social cues like being quiet and not being disruptive
(27:47):
in class is how you should behave And so for me,
that's how I was able to survive being the good
kid and being attentive to the best of my ability,
even though I wasn't quite understanding the information, and therefore
I wasn't diagnosed with anything because I wasn't a problem
(28:08):
in the classroom, whereas boys are more likely to be
disruptive and like, oh, there's a problem there that needs
to be addressed, and then they get a diagnosis.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
So I love that you said that it's the girls
and the learned behaviors. Things that are taught to little
girls and things that are taught to little boys. Because
that's so true, because a lot of the time a
meltdown looks like the same between a little girl and
a little boy, but it depends on where.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
They are and how they are who they're.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
With sometimes and a lot of the times a little
boy crying and screaming and throwing things that is also
seen as more violent or more aggressive or more of
a problem. Then if a little girl screams and cries
and throws things, they're like, Oh, that's.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
What, That's what girls do.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
A little cry baby girl.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
You know, that's fun.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
That whatever, because girls again of you on girls like
they're just small, little dainty moon they cry, Well, they're sad,
that's just grillly things.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Can we switch gears a little bit and talk about
your dating life if you're okay with that?
Speaker 4 (29:18):
Yeah, okay, fun, okay, Because I was listening to your
book and you talk about Max and this is like
your first love and he was very supportive of your
autism diagnosis.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
After you were diagnosed, did you tell him about it?
And then what was his reaction? And then where did
you go from there?
Speaker 3 (29:39):
I told him, I think it was the day after.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
It was really quick. After I had to tell somebody
and he was someone he was most he knew a
lot about me. I'm like, this is gonna make sense.
He'll help me make sense of it. And I told
him and he was really chill about it. He was like,
all right, cool, what does that mean? And then after
I told stuff, he's like, yeah, that's you. That sounds
(30:02):
like you.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Alrighty, you're autistic. Good good work, Like, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
And he really the funky thing about him was he
really understood what other people wanted to see, like what
was supposed to be good and normal and what the
pretty picture was. And so he was really good at
helping me try to be that in the ways, like
(30:28):
he was accommodating me.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
And the more accommodations that you.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Have, the more chill you are, the happier you are,
the less you're likely to freak out and cry. And
so he was he was I don't like, maybe the
intentions were whatever they were, but it was also being kids,
I guess when we were just both had like we
both had parents and our households were however they were,
(30:55):
and so we were both just like two kids that
really were kind of like obsessed with how other people
viewed us and it kind of it definitely like saved
me for that bit. I didn't think much about autism
for the whole I was with him for like another
(31:15):
year and a bit, and I didn't really think much
about it at all. I just was still focusing on
being trying to be normal, whatever that was. But during
that time, I realized that I'm not being myself and
I'm not happy.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
In your book two, if I remember correctly, he told you,
maybe don't tell anyone else, yea as of right now,
like figure out what that means for you before you
tell other people because they're not ready to hear it yet. Yeah.
What was that like hearing that from him? And did
you take that advice?
Speaker 2 (31:55):
I felt like he was saying that because he didn't
want people to view me like in a negative way.
Whatever stereotypes about autism that they have in their head
and whatever negative ones, they're going to think that about you.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
And I felt like at the time, like, oh, you're
so right.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
They will do that. They will, and then I'll be
dealing with two things. I'll be dealing with being even
more socially isolated and people just saying things because it's
not like I can give them a speech on what
autism is.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
It changed everyone's minds right away.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
That's what I did later on. But so I was like,
you're right, I do need to do that first. And
it felt at the time for my just fifteen year
old self, newly fifteen year old self, it felt like protection,
like I think he was sincere and trying to in
whatever way protect me. But and it did in some
ways like it would have been a whole different ballgame
(33:00):
if I had told anybody at the time, because who
to known, where, would have when or what would have happened.
It was good to chill and figure it out on
myself because I didn't know how to explain it.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
I just think it's incredible what you've created online in
this community. Why was it so important for you to
create your online community?
Speaker 2 (33:26):
It wasn't at first. I really wanted to just educate
people and kind of like a like, what the heck,
you don't know anything about this? This is wild I
thought the internet would. And after my first few videos
about autism, and I was getting so much hate and
so much negativity. But in it, through it all, I
(33:49):
was getting messages and I was getting letters. Oh my gosh,
let letters in the mail are my favorite thing ever
from real life human people, real life people that were
like me. Like the first letter I got was from
a girl who was like fourteen fifteen, sixteen, around like
the age I was at my diagnosis, saying that she
(34:12):
is definitely autistic and she's been struggling for so long
and she's been diagnosed with anxiety and blah blah blah,
and if she had come across my video, she wouldn't
think it was a thing for her. And now she
then she got a diagnosis and she's autistic and she's
so happy she knows. And I had such a big
cry because I can only imagine if someone was that
(34:33):
for me. If I was scrolling online one day and
I came across something about autism and read it like
I'd never heard anything about autism before ever, and if
I did, if people say anything about autism, I would appieced,
you know, I would have put two and two together.
So understanding that and hearing like especially like kids being
(34:55):
like you saved my life. I'm like, this is the
most important thing ever because this is what I needed
when I was a kid, and ever since I heard
the like the quote be who you needed when you
were younger. I'm like, well, that's done. That's done. That's
my thing. That's my thing forever is I'm going to
find all the undiagnosed children and get them help and
(35:17):
get them accommodations. It's so important to me and ever since.
And I don't think I was the very first, but
I definitely was one of the one of the people
that helped make autism online mainstream. And there's so many now,
(35:39):
there's so many autistic creators, so many that talk about
their story and share their things, and there's people that
like learn from them and learn that they're autistic from them,
or like learn how to help their autistic child or themselves.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
And it's such a huge now it's it's huge.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
I mean, like myself, I have like three million followers,
and I obviously they're not all autistic, but that's three
million more people than I had in twenty nineteen that
wanted to learn about autism and stuff. And that just
is so cool because that matters so much and impacts
real lives, and that's like the coolest.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
The best thing ever.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
I can't imagine, Like, there's so many people like me
out there. I just want to help them.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
You know you're doing a great job.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
You really Yeah, it's fun. I'm having more fun now.
There was a time where I was not having fun online.
It still is like online is a difficult space, but
there are times where I can find pockets of joy.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
I can relate to that for sure.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Yay Internet.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
It's a double edged sword because as much as you
want to be representation for other people and speak openly
about your experience and to be that beacon of light
to others who connect to you, and then hearing that
feedback from them, it keeps you going and it gives
you purpose in life to continue to speak out on
(37:04):
your experiences. There's also the other side of that sword
where people don't understand and they don't get it, and
they think that by speaking about your struggles and you're
overcoming something, and some people view a diagnosis as an
excuse for something, and it gets frustrating because they just
(37:29):
don't understand. But then I have to have empathy for
those people because they don't understand. You can only understand
someone to the capacity that you've experienced yourself. So I
you know, like it's hard. There's a lot of judgment,
there's a lot of criticism, there's a lot of hate,
but I think that in the grand scheme of things,
(37:52):
there is more positive and you are impacting other people
in a way that you would have wanted to have
that resource when you were younger, and you're able to
provide that for other people, and that is everything.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
Yeah, I'm a million percent. I'm totally with you. I
try to meet people where they're at and go, Okay,
your anger is coming from a place that's not my business.
But I am going to keep doing me and you'll
learn if you want to, and you'll learn at your
own pace, and then we'll be friends once you learn things.
Because I don't expect people to know everything, so I
(38:29):
just don't want them to be a dick. But if, like,
if you're like kind of a dick, I'm like, okay,
you have potential. If people are like, just lose it,
I'm like, okay, dude, you need to back up for
a second and think about why you're here.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
M Well, thank you so much, Paige. I really enjoyed
interviewing you, and thank you for being so open and
honest about your life and your experience and publishing a
book for those who would like to check out Page's book.
It's called but Everyone Feels this Way How an autism
(39:02):
diagnosis Saved My life. And you can also follow her
on Instagram and on TikTok. She has a huge social
media following and if you relate to any of the
things that we talked about, I highly recommend giving her
a follow and just continuing along with her journey.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
Yeah, it's at Paige LEL Pretty sure, Instagram at Paigelel,
TikTok at Paige Leyl YouTube. I'm at real page leol.
Someone took my at Paige Lel for something Paige le
al p A I g E l A y elie.
Thank you so much. I had a great time today.
Thank you for hanging out and asking me things.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Thank you so much for listening to Rachel Goes Rogue.
Follow us on Instagram and TikTok for exclusive video content
at Rachel Goes Rogue Podcast
This is Rachel Go's Rogue. Welcome back to another episode
of Rachel Goes Rogue with your host Rachel Savannah Levis. Today,
I'm excited to dive deeper into a topic I actually
get asked about frequently, and I've opened up a little
bit about in the past. That is my diagnosis with
(00:29):
ADHD and living with neurodiversity. So growing up school was
very difficult for me, and I did not realize that
my brain was structured in a different way. I always
just thought I was stupid because I couldn't pass my
(00:49):
multiplication tables test, and I couldn't read as well as
the other kids in class, and I just thought I
wasn't intelligent. And it wasn't until college that I was
diagnosed with an attentive ADHD more commonly known as ADD.
(01:11):
I realized that I had been living with an invisible
disability my whole life. Once I was diagnosed, I was
able to take control of my life a little bit
more and to get the accommodations that I needed for
me to succeed in school. That truly was life changing
(01:32):
for me. But there's also like this deeper social construct
that living with neurodiversity has impacted my daily life and
how I interact with the world, and a big part
of that has been masking, which we'll get into later
(01:53):
in this episode. The purpose in today's episode is in
no way, shape or form excuse for any behavior. I
hope to provide an open dialogue with my guest, Page Layel,
to provide more context for people, and to connect with
those who have also dealt with similar challenges to know
(02:17):
that you're not alone. My goal with this episode is
to provide a reason and not an excuse, So please
proceed with compassion and an open mind, and I hope
to connect with those who can relate. And this is
(02:38):
a vulnerable one. This is a This is a vulnerable
share for both Page and me, so let's just be kind. Okay.
Today I am being joined by my guest, who has
built an amazing online community due to her own business
(03:00):
with her own ADHD and autism diagnosis. Page is an
ADHD and autism acceptance activist posting on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube,
and an author of her book, but everyone feels this way.
How an Autism Diagnosis Saved My Life Page gives those
(03:21):
with an autism diagnosis or ADHD diagnosis or those wanting
to learn more place to find information, perspective, and community.
Please welcome Page Layel. Thank you so much for joining
me today. Page. I'm so so happy to have you
here on the podcast. So basically, I love to have
(03:46):
experts on to give more context into the things that
really resonate with me. And I could have, you know,
a psychologist come on to talk about autism or what
SO divergency may look like in somebody or ADHD, but
I figured I'd rather interview somebody who has experienced it
(04:09):
firsthand and can actually speak from experience. So thank you
for coming on. And I am just like I admire
you so much for being in a public arena and
speaking openly about your diagnosis and all of that.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
So thank you, thank you, yeah no, thank you so
much for having me, and thank you for reading my
book too.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Your book, it was so it was pretty intense. There
were a few trigger warnings, and you talk a lot
about your suicidal ideation and your experience with navigating life
with the way that your brain was hardwired and figuring
out that you had autism. What age were you when
(04:54):
you first diagnosed.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
I was fifteen, it was like two weeks after my
fifteenth birthday, so it was right before I went into
grade ten, and I had a boyfriend at the time
who I just it was my first boyfriend, like a
week before or something, so silly. I was so little,
but at the time I felt like so old. I
mean it was the oldest I'd ever been, so yeah, fifteen.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yeah. And in your book, the setting is very much
in the classroom and being able to start reading at
such an early age and diving into books, but then
having this pivot point in your life where you realized
that people were interpreting books a little bit differently than
(05:38):
you were. What was that experience like for you and
can you describe it in a way for the listeners
tuning in to know what that was like.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Yeah, I honestly have wondered if or how people learned
to read, and if I learned to read the same
way that everyone else does, but maybe just a little
bit quicker. But at a very young age, I was
given access to a lot of books, and I think
(06:12):
that coupled with how my brain works, and also just
like the setting that I was in my environment, I
was reading so many books and at the time, as
a kid growing up. I think to be reading was
a lot more of learning how words are written and
how to say them and what they need. For such
(06:34):
a long time that I really was missing the meaning
behind probably every single book that wasn't something that mattered
to me at the time, and I don't think that
was something that I could interpret. The world was so
complex and I wanted to understand it, and reading was
the only way that I could. It answered so many questions.
(06:56):
But then it was around grade seven ish and we
started diving into texts in English class and being like
what is this? What does this mean? And what is
she saying?
Speaker 3 (07:08):
And other people were answering like this is what she
meant and.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
It was not written in the text, and I was like,
where is that written? And they were like, you don't
need to have it written page, it's it's written in
between the lots. And I'm like, well, that does gonna
make my chense to me personally. So it was a
bit to realize that I was kind of although it
(07:31):
seemed ahead of everybody in the grade wise, I was
actually way behind in just the thoughts coming together. And
it really made upset and I have a hard time
reading books still to this day, I'm like, I don't
know what this is about. I think I have to
(07:52):
look it up to see if I'm if I'm actually
interpreting this correctly, and I never am, and I always
think I got it, and I'm like, oh man, there's
something else going on. I didn't know that. But which
is cool to have other people to be able to
like have video essays and explain what things mean. But yeah,
that's just one of the things that's tough for me,
(08:15):
and it's like tough for a lot of autistic people.
So I'm kind of normal in that way. Feels good.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Can you describe what being on the spectrum means? The
way that you describe it is just so beautiful.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Hu of percent. I've taken a while to try to
like get it into good words. My favorite way of
explaining what autism spectrum disorder looks like is you can
look at it like the pathology way how they diagnose
it in the DSM five, but that doesn't tell you
too much about why and how the experience shows up.
(08:48):
So my favorite way of explaining autism is by explaining
the connectivity theory, which is a big theory about how
autism develops and so it's determine by our genes. It's genetic,
it was from someone in the family, and it's a
whole bunch of genes that are involved in the process.
(09:09):
And so before birth it's determined if you're going to
be autistic or not. And then from the time that
you're in uteral to the time where you're around two
years old, your brain is growing. It's creating so many neurons,
like burst neurons, a lot of things going on. And
then once you're around like two years old, your brain
(09:30):
starts to rune certain synapses. So as you learn things,
certain pathways are going to get stronger as you keep
doing them, and then you get better at them, and
certain pathways that the brain made when it was in
its fast, fast, fast growing stage aren't needed. So the
brain does a little chop chop chop, like you're pruning
(09:51):
a hedge, and in autistic brains, for some reason, that
doesn't happen as much. So we have we have a
lot more connections, We have a lot more branches than
other people do. We also have less long term connections,
(10:13):
so it's kind of like you know when you prune
a plant and then it grows like taller and stronger
and straighter because there's more energy in whatever being to
the plant. If you don't prune a plant, then there's
like a bunch of leaves and there's they're smaller or
whatever you got, like vegetables, they're not as big. So
that's kind of like what an autistic brain looks like.
(10:35):
Short term or in like the short small spaces, there's
a lot of activity going on, but over different parts
of the brain, like talking to each other. That's where
autistic people struggle because we don't have those fast highway connections,
but we've got a lot of small towns, so we've
got a lot of different parts.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
That are really really working, Like our senses.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
A lot of autistic people, I think probably all are
sensitive to thinks, to light, to sound, to texture, to
being touched. We like to wear different clothes or have
our body be felt a different way. We can be
really good at patterns and routine and remembering routine and
(11:23):
saying on routine and making lists and coordinating and categorizing,
and all those parts take up one part of the brain.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
But then parts that take up multiple parts of the brain.
For example, are.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Reading a book and figuring out what it actually means
without it telling you what it actually means. That takes
a bunch of parts of the brain together. And so
every autistic person is so different because our brains, although
the same kind of coding like this is going to happen.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
How the proud and happens and how.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
The connections happen are so different for every single person.
Maybe some brains prim a little bit more or a
little bit less, and there's also like some other gene
factors that go into it. But in general, I think
that that gives a good overview of autism and how
it shows that.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Yeah, and for each person, it's so individualized. Like some
people have non verbal autism where they don't have the
ability to speak, but they're able to function in other ways.
So it's just so individualized and unique for the person.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yeah, everyone struggles with something different and everyone also has
different situations, so we're already accommodated in different ways.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Yeah, when you were diagnosed, what was your initial reaction
(13:11):
and were you able to make sense of things in
your mind? And then also what was your family's reaction
and your your boyfriend's reaction at that time?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
At the time when I was diagnosed, so I was
sitting in that office with the doctor for like three hours,
and so when he said the words like autism, I
had no idea what autism was or what it meant.
And I just was like trying to think about like
anything I could grab that i'd heard of the media,
(13:41):
and it really was not much. And so as he
was explaining it, everything he said it like lit a
fire inside of me. It let my nervousness some on fire.
I'm like, that's it, that's it, that's it.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
All of these feelings and thoughts and rituals that I
did that I didn't summon, like I didn't even notice
that I did because I hadn't got that far. I
haven't got that far of self awareness about myself. And
it felt the most validating in the world. And everything
he said made the most sense, every single thing. And
(14:17):
my mom said the same thing.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
I asked her because she was with me, and I
asked her in the truck on the way home what
she thought of it, and She's like, every single thing
like boom bo boom, that's page. There's no that just
explained you so well. We told my or she told
my brother and my dad and my brother a don't
think said any words like my brother's like, okay, it's fine.
(14:40):
But my dad he didn't say anything to me. He
didn't do that a lot of the time. But apparently
my dad started thinking that he might be autistic. Apparently
my dad sees a lot of him and me and
I know that he's really stressed out a lot of
the time, and so he started to think that maybe
he's audistic. But it took me a long time to
(15:03):
understand it too and figure it out, and at the time,
there really wasn't much to go off of. So that
was from that was I was fifteen, because there wasn't
a lot on social media about autism at all. Four
years later is when I started advocating on social media
and becoming like an autism influencer.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Do you feel like you've come a long way? It's
more authenticity.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
I feel like I'm a I'm a complete different person,
not only from when I was fifteen, like from when
I was nineteen. I'm a complete different person completely, and
I think that I'm a lot more of myself and
I know who I am more so, and I'm not
afraid to be who I am and I'm not afraid
of what my life is and what I do in
(15:50):
my life. I'm like more accepting of myself and the
friends that I do have are like real, you know,
like people that like me, they like me for real,
for me, and that's it's the first time having that,
you know, I didn't always have that, and it feels
really good.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
A big part of struggling with neurodivergency is masking, and
when you mask you're unable to be authentically yourself. And
you've done an incredible job of explaining masking in your
book without naming it until after I was like reading
it listening to it, and I was like, oh, she's
(16:31):
describing masking right there. And then right after you're like,
and that's masking, and I was like, yes, yes, I
know it. And I did know the moment when you
were diagnosed by your psychiatrist. This is from your book.
He said, have you ever seen the Big Bang Theory page?
(16:53):
And you said, that's my favorite show page. The doctor said,
you're like Sheldon Cooper. But I scoffed a little bit
because Sheldon Cooper was a physicist and I was just
fifteen and didn't know anything really about physics or anything else.
He said, You're smarter than Sheldon Cooper, he continued, because
(17:14):
you know so much about humans, you tricked everyone around
you for years as safely as possible. Tell me, have
you ever thought that everyone else seemed to be able
to speak to each other in ways that you couldn't
understand or be involved in. Did you feel they understood
a lot about what you didn't without explanation, Almost like
(17:35):
you missed a lesson in class or something before being
born about how to be human. I stared at the
floor trying to process. It must have been exhausting for you,
he continued. You spent your whole life observing other people
and judging yourself and trying to create a persona that
will be accepted in society. That's why people know Sheldon
(17:57):
Cooper as autistic but don't know that you were, because
you developed a trick that will camouflage you. So you
blend in as much as possible with everyone else. That's
called masking.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
It's enough.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Yes, it's emotional, and it must have been such a
relief to hear this coming from the doctor and realizing
that you know there isn't something wrong with you. You're
just you process things a different way and you've worked
(18:35):
your whole life taking in data from other people and
figuring out what the social norms are, and you know,
shifting things inside of yourself to present a certain way
so that you could survive socially. And when you do that,
it does keep you safe, but it also takes away
(18:58):
your authenticity. Yes, and you become lost and like you're
presenting yourself in the way that you think other people
need to perceive you as.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Yes, yeah, one hundred percent, and like to be safe,
I needed to not be myself whoever that person was.
I'll just be what it looks like everyone wants me
to be. Then how could I not be safe?
Speaker 3 (19:24):
But then I had so many connections that weren't real
at all.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Because I wasn't real.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
How were you able to come back to your true self?
Speaker 2 (19:52):
I think at the time, I didn't think that I
had a true self. I felt like I was empty
and was starting from scratch.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
But now it's been almost nine years since.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
I've been diagnosed, I have learned that there was a
true me in there. And she might have got lost
when she was a kid. Somewhere like around eight nine
years old. She started getting smashed away. But I am
still that eight nine year old, and I do like
pink and purple, and I'm gonna paint my house to
(20:29):
those colors if I want to. I'm not gonna paint
them beige and blah. So the next seller likes them,
I'm gonna. I'm living in this house, so I'm gonna
paint it how I like it. But at the time,
I knew nothing about myself, and it felt really tough
because I thought I knew everything, and so I was
(20:51):
grasping at these thoughts that I thought I had, and
I thought I knew the feelings that I thought I had,
and I had to think, and I kept do you
actually feel that? Do you feel that? Or do you
just think that? Did someone make you think that? Is
that someone else's thought that's not yours? And I just
spiraled because yeah, for pretty much everything of my life
(21:16):
was not everything, I guess, but a lot of things
I was doing and I did not want to do.
And I was having a really tough time, and I
was slowly realizing who I am, and then after that
came slowly realizing how I can be myself in real
(21:36):
life in public with other people. Process two steps.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, yeah, but I mean yeah, that's something that I
can relate to being neuro divergent and not being diagnosed.
Until college, I basically was in a psychology one on
one class and we were.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Learning oh so scared.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
We were learning, Yes, we were learning about ADHD. And
we were told to memorize the symptoms of an attentive ADHD.
And I was like, hmm, that sounds like me. I
definitely do that, like hard time remembering and all of
(22:21):
all of the things. And I was like, maybe I
have this thing. So I went to a psychiatrist and
took a few tests, had an interview, and she was like, yeah,
you definitely have ADHD. We'll put you on this medication
and you can try it out. And they put me
on adderall at first, and it definitely was like it helped,
(22:46):
But I noticed that my personality wasn't the same, Like
I was very jumpy and I became super impatient and
that's so unlike me. I'm like the most patient person
you ever. And I was getting frustrated and just aggravated.
And so we switched my medication to riddle in and
(23:08):
that helped so so much. And then I also got
testing accommodation, so I was able to test in a
separate room and have time and a half to complete
my tests, and that super That reduced my anxiety like exponentially,
and then I started getting good grades for the first time.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
In my mind, I funk, who would have thunk, I'm.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Like, I'm actually intelligent, Like I never I always thought
I was stupid, you know. So it really was life changing.
And you know, a part of me wish is that
I was diagnosed with ADHD sooner because learning would have
been so much easier for me growing up. But I'm
(23:53):
I'm thankful for the experiences that I had because I
feel like I'm more empathetic to people who have been
diagnosed with some sort of neurodivergency later in life, who
had to struggle with school and not quite knowing what
it was that made them different than everyone else.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Yeah, it's a different ballgame, for sure. There's a lot
of different struggles, especially being diagnosed earlier. There are a
lot of kids that get diagnosed with ADHD and then
they're put on adderall and that's fun like with being
even younger, and especially like ADHD medications are a different
(24:38):
level of medications than just SSRIs. I take my dance.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
That's the one.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
I think it was the first one they gave me.
In it, I feel good, I'm actually doing things. I'm like,
this is what it feels to do things.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
That's wild when you're.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
In school or whatever. I find that a lot of
teachers get annoyed at kids with ADHD. And they get
annoyed because it like bothers their ego, because they have
a whole idea.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
Of the day and this is how they want to
do it, and they're just.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Like ah and being negative. It's easier and like quicker
to get what you want. And I saw them like,
that's lazy. You don't have the patience as I and
I see that. However, the teachers teach the kids. However,
the teachers treat kids with ADHD. However, the teachers treat
(25:33):
kids that are interrupting and that keep moving and that
keep talking, and that keep fidgeting in that needbor time
and whatever. That is how the class treats the kids.
And I think that a lot of kids with ADHD
feel like judged and alienated by a lot of the class,
because it's true there are lots of like why can't
(25:56):
they stop talking? Why can't they just sit down? And
why can't they just but it's because.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
That's what the teacher's saying. Sit down, stop talking.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
As a dance teacher and as a neuro divergent dance teacher,
it is one of my biggest foundations to not be
that teacher and understand ADHD and autism and a lot
of other neurodivergent spaces and kids and be able to
(26:28):
if a kid is like I say, okay, here's your spot,
but they keep like moving around, I acknowledge that and go,
all right, well here's you can you can stay right there.
That can be your spot if you want to stay
there there and you can spit on your spot. I
don't care if that helps you listen to me. Or
if a kid like keeps talking and I have to
keep saying to them, come back on track, come back
on track. I don't say it that things like that,
(26:50):
but I'll go like, I'm I'm sorry that like I
have to call you back in. I hope that's a like, No,
I hope that's okay. I'm not trying to bug you
and all work on being less boring so that you're
more interested. Or maybe next week we'll do some different
and that'll be exciting for you, and it definitely changes
the way that the class is perceived and how the
(27:12):
students feel about themselves. And they're able to to thrive
so much in their zones that they're supposed to thrive in,
and it's so beautiful to do.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Also, girls don't get diagnosed just often as boys with
ADHD and with autism. I think a big part of
that is boys are probably more disruptive in class than
girls are, because girls learned from a young age that
certain social cues like being quiet and not being disruptive
(27:47):
in class is how you should behave And so for me,
that's how I was able to survive being the good
kid and being attentive to the best of my ability,
even though I wasn't quite understanding the information, and therefore
I wasn't diagnosed with anything because I wasn't a problem
(28:08):
in the classroom, whereas boys are more likely to be
disruptive and like, oh, there's a problem there that needs
to be addressed, and then they get a diagnosis.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
So I love that you said that it's the girls
and the learned behaviors. Things that are taught to little
girls and things that are taught to little boys. Because
that's so true, because a lot of the time a
meltdown looks like the same between a little girl and
a little boy, but it depends on where.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
They are and how they are who they're.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
With sometimes and a lot of the times a little
boy crying and screaming and throwing things that is also
seen as more violent or more aggressive or more of
a problem. Then if a little girl screams and cries
and throws things, they're like, Oh, that's.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
What, That's what girls do.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
A little cry baby girl.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
You know, that's fun.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
That whatever, because girls again of you on girls like
they're just small, little dainty moon they cry, Well, they're sad,
that's just grillly things.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Can we switch gears a little bit and talk about
your dating life if you're okay with that?
Speaker 4 (29:18):
Yeah, okay, fun, okay, Because I was listening to your
book and you talk about Max and this is like
your first love and he was very supportive of your
autism diagnosis.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
After you were diagnosed, did you tell him about it?
And then what was his reaction? And then where did
you go from there?
Speaker 3 (29:39):
I told him, I think it was the day after.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
It was really quick. After I had to tell somebody
and he was someone he was most he knew a
lot about me. I'm like, this is gonna make sense.
He'll help me make sense of it. And I told
him and he was really chill about it. He was like,
all right, cool, what does that mean? And then after
I told stuff, he's like, yeah, that's you. That sounds
(30:02):
like you.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Alrighty, you're autistic. Good good work, Like, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
And he really the funky thing about him was he
really understood what other people wanted to see, like what
was supposed to be good and normal and what the
pretty picture was. And so he was really good at
helping me try to be that in the ways, like
(30:28):
he was accommodating me.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
And the more accommodations that you.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Have, the more chill you are, the happier you are,
the less you're likely to freak out and cry. And
so he was he was I don't like, maybe the
intentions were whatever they were, but it was also being kids,
I guess when we were just both had like we
both had parents and our households were however they were,
(30:55):
and so we were both just like two kids that
really were kind of like obsessed with how other people
viewed us and it kind of it definitely like saved
me for that bit. I didn't think much about autism
for the whole I was with him for like another
(31:15):
year and a bit, and I didn't really think much
about it at all. I just was still focusing on
being trying to be normal, whatever that was. But during
that time, I realized that I'm not being myself and
I'm not happy.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
In your book two, if I remember correctly, he told you,
maybe don't tell anyone else, yea as of right now,
like figure out what that means for you before you
tell other people because they're not ready to hear it yet. Yeah.
What was that like hearing that from him? And did
you take that advice?
Speaker 2 (31:55):
I felt like he was saying that because he didn't
want people to view me like in a negative way.
Whatever stereotypes about autism that they have in their head
and whatever negative ones, they're going to think that about you.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
And I felt like at the time, like, oh, you're
so right.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
They will do that. They will, and then I'll be
dealing with two things. I'll be dealing with being even
more socially isolated and people just saying things because it's
not like I can give them a speech on what
autism is.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
It changed everyone's minds right away.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
That's what I did later on. But so I was like,
you're right, I do need to do that first. And
it felt at the time for my just fifteen year
old self, newly fifteen year old self, it felt like protection,
like I think he was sincere and trying to in
whatever way protect me. But and it did in some
ways like it would have been a whole different ballgame
(33:00):
if I had told anybody at the time, because who
to known, where, would have when or what would have happened.
It was good to chill and figure it out on
myself because I didn't know how to explain it.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
I just think it's incredible what you've created online in
this community. Why was it so important for you to
create your online community?
Speaker 2 (33:26):
It wasn't at first. I really wanted to just educate
people and kind of like a like, what the heck,
you don't know anything about this? This is wild I
thought the internet would. And after my first few videos
about autism, and I was getting so much hate and
so much negativity. But in it, through it all, I
(33:49):
was getting messages and I was getting letters. Oh my gosh,
let letters in the mail are my favorite thing ever
from real life human people, real life people that were
like me. Like the first letter I got was from
a girl who was like fourteen fifteen, sixteen, around like
the age I was at my diagnosis, saying that she
(34:12):
is definitely autistic and she's been struggling for so long
and she's been diagnosed with anxiety and blah blah blah,
and if she had come across my video, she wouldn't
think it was a thing for her. And now she
then she got a diagnosis and she's autistic and she's
so happy she knows. And I had such a big
cry because I can only imagine if someone was that
(34:33):
for me. If I was scrolling online one day and
I came across something about autism and read it like
I'd never heard anything about autism before ever, and if
I did, if people say anything about autism, I would appieced,
you know, I would have put two and two together.
So understanding that and hearing like especially like kids being
(34:55):
like you saved my life. I'm like, this is the
most important thing ever because this is what I needed
when I was a kid, and ever since I heard
the like the quote be who you needed when you
were younger. I'm like, well, that's done. That's done. That's
my thing. That's my thing forever is I'm going to
find all the undiagnosed children and get them help and
(35:17):
get them accommodations. It's so important to me and ever since.
And I don't think I was the very first, but
I definitely was one of the one of the people
that helped make autism online mainstream. And there's so many now,
(35:39):
there's so many autistic creators, so many that talk about
their story and share their things, and there's people that
like learn from them and learn that they're autistic from them,
or like learn how to help their autistic child or themselves.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
And it's such a huge now it's it's huge.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
I mean, like myself, I have like three million followers,
and I obviously they're not all autistic, but that's three
million more people than I had in twenty nineteen that
wanted to learn about autism and stuff. And that just
is so cool because that matters so much and impacts
real lives, and that's like the coolest.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
The best thing ever.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
I can't imagine, Like, there's so many people like me
out there. I just want to help them.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
You know you're doing a great job.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
You really Yeah, it's fun. I'm having more fun now.
There was a time where I was not having fun online.
It still is like online is a difficult space, but
there are times where I can find pockets of joy.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
I can relate to that for sure.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Yay Internet.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
It's a double edged sword because as much as you
want to be representation for other people and speak openly
about your experience and to be that beacon of light
to others who connect to you, and then hearing that
feedback from them, it keeps you going and it gives
you purpose in life to continue to speak out on
(37:04):
your experiences. There's also the other side of that sword
where people don't understand and they don't get it, and
they think that by speaking about your struggles and you're
overcoming something, and some people view a diagnosis as an
excuse for something, and it gets frustrating because they just
(37:29):
don't understand. But then I have to have empathy for
those people because they don't understand. You can only understand
someone to the capacity that you've experienced yourself. So I
you know, like it's hard. There's a lot of judgment,
there's a lot of criticism, there's a lot of hate,
but I think that in the grand scheme of things,
(37:52):
there is more positive and you are impacting other people
in a way that you would have wanted to have
that resource when you were younger, and you're able to
provide that for other people, and that is everything.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
Yeah, I'm a million percent. I'm totally with you. I
try to meet people where they're at and go, Okay,
your anger is coming from a place that's not my business.
But I am going to keep doing me and you'll
learn if you want to, and you'll learn at your
own pace, and then we'll be friends once you learn things.
Because I don't expect people to know everything, so I
(38:29):
just don't want them to be a dick. But if, like,
if you're like kind of a dick, I'm like, okay,
you have potential. If people are like, just lose it,
I'm like, okay, dude, you need to back up for
a second and think about why you're here.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
M Well, thank you so much, Paige. I really enjoyed
interviewing you, and thank you for being so open and
honest about your life and your experience and publishing a
book for those who would like to check out Page's book.
It's called but Everyone Feels this Way How an autism
(39:02):
diagnosis Saved My life. And you can also follow her
on Instagram and on TikTok. She has a huge social
media following and if you relate to any of the
things that we talked about, I highly recommend giving her
a follow and just continuing along with her journey.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
Yeah, it's at Paige LEL Pretty sure, Instagram at Paigelel,
TikTok at Paige Leyl YouTube. I'm at real page leol.
Someone took my at Paige Lel for something Paige le
al p A I g E l A y elie.
Thank you so much. I had a great time today.
Thank you for hanging out and asking me things.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Thank you so much for listening to Rachel Goes Rogue.
Follow us on Instagram and TikTok for exclusive video content
at Rachel Goes Rogue Podcast
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