December 6, 2022 • 36 mins
Katherine May is a bestselling author who writes of coming to terms with her Asperger’s diagnosis in her memoir The Electricity of Every Living Thing. As a newly diagnosed autistic woman, Lauren asks her for some advice.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Around month nine or ten of the pandemic, I
noticed that a bunch of my friends and Internet associates
had started to read the same book. It was called Wintering,
The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. Of course,
(00:36):
I had to get myself a copy, and imagine my
delight at discovering that the author of this internationally best
selling book, Katherine May, was an autistic woman roughly my age.
Not only that, but her first book, The Electricity of
Every Living Thing, was all about her autistic journey of
(00:56):
self discovery. I can't say enough about Catherine's autism memoir.
As I consumed it, I felt like I was reading
about myself, which is both unsettling and thrilling. I dog
eared so many pages and sung the books praises to
everyone I knew. So how could I not try everything
(01:16):
in my power to get Katherine on the horn. Luckily
she answered, Hello, I'm Katherine May. I'm the author of
Wintering and the Electricity of Every Living Thing, and I've
known I'm autistic for about five years now. You know
one thing you wrote that you know when you were
(01:38):
sort of in these early stages, that you felt like
you were trying to perform some kind of acrobatic act
of understanding and seeing yourself from the outside. And I wonder, like,
I'm not such a beautiful way of describing it, but like,
tell me more about what that means, about that experience
(01:59):
of really trying to like turn yourself over and look
at it from a different from look at yourself from
a different perspective, and things that were maybe invisible to me. Yeah,
And that's because so many of the accounts of autism, again,
particularly at the time, we're all from the outside. They
were all like, what does an autistic person look like
(02:22):
to a neurotypical person? You know, what are the signs? Like,
what are the symptoms, which is, you know, a word
that I'm very very uncomfortable with using of autism, you know.
And so it's like it looks like this, they will
seem socially awkward. They will you know, they will not
be making eye contact. Da da da da da. And
so what I had to do was think, well, do
(02:43):
I fit those descriptions, you know, do I refuse to
make eye contact? And then that opens up this whole
personal archaeology because actually, yes, I can remember being very
very uncomfortable with eye contact when I was younger and
being told off for it, you know, being told off
for not paying attention and not looking at someone while
(03:05):
they were addressing me, you know, my teachers and stuff
like that. But I'd buried so much because I had
no consistent narrative of self available to me that would
have integrated all that I was. Like, there was no
(03:25):
story that I could have told myself in which I
was a kind of valued, accepted, autistic person, and so
I'd constructed a self in my mind that was like
a kind of slightly one key eurotypical who seemed traumatized
but couldn't remember what the trauma, you know, that I
had no access to knowing what this trauma was supposed
(03:46):
to be, and that I if I could only find
the right answer, you know. So I was always like
reading self help books and going to workshops, you know,
and taking up new things that would sort me out,
that would finally make me operate in the same way
as the people around me did. And in the meantime,
(04:07):
I was engaged in a big project, often ending I
was just like them, and in fact that I was
a hyper normal one like them, you know. And so
I mean, I don't know if it's the same for you.
But it becomes this huge mission to unravel all that
you thought you knew about yourself and to actually get
back to contact with how you feel in the world.
(04:30):
You know, And I've suppressed a lot of sensory stuff
that I didn't think I had the right to feel,
and so I had to reacquaint with all of that.
It was it was slow, and it was painful. Yeah, yeah, no,
I mean I, like I said, you know, we started
been everything that I was reading in your book. I
was like, yes, yes, yes, yes, that's me. That's me.
(04:51):
I've always you know, it's like Lauren, you know, dances
to the beat of her own drummer. You know, it's
like that type of person, right, And it's like, but
the way that you talked about your your childhood, I
mean I felt very very much the same, like you're
a handful, you're difficult. You. I wanted to talk to
(05:14):
you about your temper as a kid, and and I guess,
like what that looked like when you were a child.
And I mean I think probably now what I was
going through would have been described as meltdowns. But again,
because there was no access to that language, I was,
you know, seen as a yeah, a child with a
(05:36):
temper who could kind of fly off the handle, who
you know, was naughty and difficult. And what I remember
is being disapproved of by adults for losing control and
feeling very different in that sense, like very very much
like a like somebody who was who did not have
(05:58):
control of their behavior in the way that other children did,
and wondering how other children managed to pull off this
amazing feet of control. Yeah, right right. The issue is,
I mean, do you think that your parents had an
inkling like, oh, there is something beyond just Catherine being
difficult or sensitive? And do you know what I think
(06:20):
because I was brought up by my mum because my
parents were divorced, But I would say that my mum
was absolutely clear that there was something going on she
I mean, and she's as soon as I told her
as an adult, she was like, ah, yes, that's it,
you know, and she'd she'd felt battles to try and
get it understood. You know, she she saw loads of
(06:42):
things that were running differently to me and other kids,
and you know, there was a there was a while
when my school kind of suggested that I was what
would have been called hyperactive at the time. You know,
I would now talk about ADHD, but you know, I
was a hyperactive child, but that didn't particularly fit and
it didn't fit my academic profile necessarily as well, because
(07:03):
it was really obvious that I, you know, could concentrate
very deeply on academic things, but that my more erratic
behavior was often around sport and social events and that
and you know, those those things that I found really difficult.
So yeah, like my mum, My mum knew there was something,
but there was She had nothing. And she actually ran
(07:23):
me after the book came out and to say there
was no there was nothing that could have led me
to to this. You know, do you forgive me? I
was like, of course I do. I totally understand. You know,
that's beautiful. She wanted to help and she knew I
needed it, and yeah, you know, there was nothing. There
was nothing that she could have ever found that would
have told her. Here's the explanation that will make everything
(07:47):
makes sense to you, right right, you know I just
told my parents, um, like last week and did well.
So I was diagnosed a year ago, um, and I
have it was a It was an enormous fear of mine.
Because my relationship with them has you know, been jagged
(08:09):
over the years, and I was really terrified, and I
texted the producers. I was like, I can't do it,
Like I just can't. I can't tell them like I can't.
I don't know how to do it. I don't know how.
I don't have the words, like I don't have that
relationship with them, I don't want to feel vulnerable around them,
I don't feel safe around them. And then, you know,
(08:30):
I feel like there's a part when you're telling you know,
your family it depending on the relationship you have with them,
that like you are indicting them in some way that
they were bad parents or something like that. And that
was absolutely not what I wanted to do because even
if I had issues with parts of their parenting, what
I know to be true is that autism was absolutely
(08:54):
not talked about in America in those times, and certainly
not with girls who are high achieving. I mean, I
was wondering, you know, as you were talking before one
thing I've been kind of grappling with, or one thing
that sort of led me to this. There was a
particular incident that kept coming up for me and in therapy,
like an incident that happened to me when I was
(09:14):
a kid that I feel like sort of said in
motion a lot of ways that I felt about myself
or whatever. And I wonder it's sort of how it
impacted you as a child, or if you can think
about how it impacted you to be sort of you know,
the naughtied one, the difficult one, like how did it
make you feel about yourself as an adult or as
(09:34):
a Yeah, no, absolutely terrible. I mean I felt I mean,
I you know, I felt different, but also I felt
like somebody who was less good. I mean I don't
mean like good at stuff, I mean goodhearted than other people,
because I've been told often that I was like arrogant
(09:55):
or aloof or abrupt or like my mum's phrase about
me was always that I didn't suffer fools gladly, which
may be true. I was not, you know, front of
the line when patients were handed out. But you get
this really direct feedback about yourself that is always couched
(10:18):
in negative terms, and then you get the indirect feedback.
You know that you're not invited to parties that you
know the other girls are. You know they're getting together
and they have interests that they share and you can't
access them, they don't make any sense to you, and
you feel rejected. And yeah, like my self esteem was horrible.
(10:39):
And when I had when I had a complete breakdown
when I was seventeen and I had to come out
of school for a year and I just absolutely couldn't function.
It was following like an instant where I'd been bullied
by some other girls over some stupid school magazine that
you know, we're all supposed to be working on, and
i'd you know, i'd come off wrong, like i'd i'd
(11:02):
upset everybody, and it tipped over into me being like
singled out and targeted over over again. And my self
esteem was always, you know, it was already so low.
I couldn't handle it anymore. Like I absolutely hated myself
and I was suicidal, and I was suicidal for a
long long time. Yeah, And it's you know, I'm saying
(11:24):
that really openly because I know exactly how common that
is amongst you know, autistic people, whether or not they know.
It's it's that continual rejection that breaks you down. Yeah, yeah,
I you know, as you're talking, I'm thinking that the
saving grace that I had was sport, and I was
(11:46):
very good at sports. But also that was where you
could find worth because it was very black and white.
You either win or you lose, and you can always
keep improving and you could always get positive attention because
if you won, it just comes with the territory. Right.
But I remember my coach very clearly saying to me
(12:08):
in one year in college, like, you seek out negative attention,
And I was like, I don't know what you mean.
And I was thinking, like, oh, that's because for so
much of the time in school, that's the only attention
that you got. You know, that's the only attention that
I got was negative attention. And the only way that
people would pay attention to you, you know, is like
(12:32):
for being naughty. You know that, um, you're not getting
the attention for the things that you feel you should be,
which is like you're smart, or you're clever, or you're
interesting or you're interested in this thing or whatever. It's like, oh,
you're you don't suffer fools like that. Like the narrative
in your own family of origin is like, you know,
(12:55):
mine was like, oh I'm loud and obnoxious, and it's like, oh, well,
I'm other things too, guys, Like I always found that
I was I was not aiming for that at all,
you know, like I was going out there trying to
be really charming and lively and fun, and then that
would get read as obnoxious and overbearing and yeah, loud
(13:19):
or whatever, erratic, I don't know, and you'd be like, well,
how how do I bridge that gap between how I'm
trying to behave and how it's always received? And I
actually still feel like that quite often now. I still
sometimes get reactions and I think, wow, that is that
is not how I read this situation. That is not Yeah.
(13:41):
I remember my career's teacher, like I would feeled in
a little questionnaire and I've tipped you know, always tries
to please people, and she, you know, in front of
the whole class, said I would not have had you
down as someone that was trying to do that. Catherine,
Like I always thought, you know, you were deliberately trying
to be different and yeah, and I was like, oh god,
that was and it was devastating. I felt really, yes,
(14:03):
wounded by that, you know, this idea that I was
deliberately trying to annoy them all. But then I, you know,
I think that people's way of putting it on you
rather than them, like you have tried to upset them,
rather than them not accepting you being a bit different
to the mainstream. I mean, I don't know about you,
but getting my diagnosis and understanding more about myself has
(14:26):
made me more generous to other people because actually I
have made some of the same assumptions in the past,
and I would be lying if I said I've always
been saintly about it. And you know, like now I'm
much more likely than I was previously to think. Okay,
Lauren's talking really loudly? Is it? Maybe she has a
hearing difficulty, Maybe she's really excited, Maybe she's near a
(14:48):
divergent like me. You know, maybe you know, maybe she's
had quite a lot of coffee. I'm not going to
judge it. And it's it's actually really easy to step
back and to desenter yourself from it, like this is
not about Lauren attacking me. This is about Lauren being
something that I wasn't quite expecting. But okay, let's go
with that. I mean, it it's actually quite simple when
(15:10):
you start to practice it, but it takes a bit together, right,
there's some amount of grace I think that can kind
of come not just towards the world around you, but
also to yourself. I mean, you know, did you find
after the diagnosis like you were gentler, kinder, you know,
more forgiving with yourself? Oh? Absolutely. And I always say that,
(15:35):
you know, Wintering is the book that I could only
write after I'd gone through the period of discovery that
I document in Electricity, because yeah, like reevaluating myself to
kinder Eyes was I mean absolutely life changing. And it
meant that a I stopped thinking that I was a
(15:57):
terrible person, and I started having an explanation for the
times when I failed in public or whatever, but also
that I could just start adapting to meet my own needs,
and that quite often when stuff went really badly for me,
I could see that it was because I'd pushed myself
(16:17):
past what was comfortable or what was manageable for me,
you know, like I'd put myself in a very noisy environment,
or I'd worked for too long and had too many
conversations in the day, or there was one incident that
I keep remembering where I lost my temper at work
and at the time I had a really itchy label
in the back of my dress and I'd always yeah,
(16:39):
because that's huge when it sounds tiny, but it's massive.
And I remember being in this quite tense conversation and
feeling this label and feeling this label and feeling this
label it felt like it was burning through my skin,
and I reached back and as I was talking, I
ripped it out of my dress, just at the time
when I was like offending someone. And it was this
(17:01):
moment of this complete loss of control that I felt
so humiliated for afterwards, because it looked like I'd got
so angry I'd torn my own thing, and it was
actually the other way round, that I was so overwhelmed
by this really really itchy label that I couldn't control,
I couldn't self regulate. And that's I mean, that's such
(17:22):
a distillation of what it is to be autistic, like
losing your self regulation because you're totally overwhelmed by something
that other people will think is minute, and like getting
my diagnosis, that was the thing that was one of
the first things I kept going back to that moment.
It was so telling for me suddenly, but as I
got older, I got better at suppressing those disregulated moments,
(17:45):
but it meant that I got sick instead, you know,
so it meant that I would suddenly get an absolutely
terrible headache, or I would have to take to my
bed the next day, or you know, like it internalized
it and of course affecting my mental health very badly.
So you kind of don't win either way until you're
able to take control of your own self regulation, really,
(18:08):
and that's that's your game. Ra. But yeah, I look
back on some moments in my life and I think
I understand that now. But wow, I was as baffled
as everyone else was by that behavior in that moment.
I didn't have any way of explaining it right, right,
I think. For for you know, when I started thinking
about autism, I was like, my gosh, if I do
an accounting of all of the outsized reactions that I've
(18:31):
had to things, it should have been obvious, but no
one thinks of it. As you have big feelings or
you have that you have a challenge regulating your big feelings,
it's that like you're being obstreperous, that you're being difficult
or you know, racalcitrant or whatever. It's just like it's
(18:54):
always on a on you as opposed to you know,
having some empathy around like, Okay, clearly this isn't typical behavior,
and so this person is clearly going through something. And
it's interesting. I mean, do you find that now that
you have been diagnosed, so you've been public about your diagnosis,
(19:16):
that people around you are like, oh, okay, I get
it now, or are they still like, like, what is
her problem? I mean half and half honestly, And I
think a lot depends on the individual's understanding of autism,
you know, because for some people it makes them really
(19:37):
angry because as far as they're concerned, what autism is
is like a non speaking child who they would consider
to be like intellectually disabled and like unable to communicate
or to do any work. And you know that's a
it's an inaccurate understanding of autism for so many reasons anyway,
(19:59):
But what they you know, so then when they hear
me sound autistic, they think it's some bizarre play for attention,
and you know, find it offensive almost you know that
I'm trying to steal oxygen from yes, people who need it,
right right, I mean, I've I've noticed that, like so,
I mean, I had the experience of coming out as
(20:21):
as gay and out pretty it was pretty easy. Well,
it was pretty easy. I mean except with my parents.
Like when I told my mom that I was gay,
she said whatever, and that wasn't like the best response.
But everybody generally in my life has been like fine.
I mean my brother, like I told my brother first,
like he doesn't care, or like my parents just generally
like I'm friends, I mean whatever. Now my most of
(20:43):
my friends or queer people or queer adjacent people, you know,
and so it's not a big deal. But I think that,
but everybody knows what it means to be gay. If
you say I'm gay, people get it. I mean, people
don't know what it means to be autistic. But I wonder,
like how you have both dealt with you know, your
(21:04):
own personal revelation and your own personal truth, but then
also educating people about what that means more globally. Yeah,
I mean it's such a massive issue because, yeah, you're
absolutely right, Like, if you say you're gay, people understand
what gaining is. If you say you have schizophrenia, there's
a stable definition of that. But with autism, there isn't
(21:28):
even a stable definition in the psychological literature at the moment.
I mean, it's not even just like that folk understanding
diverges from you know, medical understanding or psychiatric understanding or
psychological understanding or how you want to put it. It's actually,
if you ask people working in the field at the moment,
they feel like the definition is thrown up in the
(21:49):
air as well, because they're under beginning to understand that
they were working on the wrong paradigms before, and they
were working on these external observation modalities that were based
on you know, like the research was done on eight
year old white boys, middle class boys in particular as well,
and the assumption was they were likely to be non verbal.
(22:10):
And it's so it's so hard to be part of
remaking that definition because I do feel like I'm part
of that in a very kind of crowdsource way. And
so I mean, like I would love to say that
I'm going out there boldly and explaining my autism to everyone,
but I still mask it a lot in situations where
(22:32):
it doesn't feel safe and where I can't Yeah, you know,
I can't trust that understanding to be there. But I
have been. I mean, I've been working on a page
on my website recently. I thought about it and I
thought I need to write my own definition of autism
as I understand it right now, because there's no one
source that I can even turn to to quote. And
(22:55):
that's where we are right now, and it's a it's
a difficult place to be, but it's also quite an
exciting place to be. You know that the debate is
is happening, and finally we are we are being part
of that debate. And yeah, there's we're learning and it's
(23:17):
you know, what we understand as autism now will not
be the same in twenty years time. We need to
know that, you know, we need to know that we
do not fully get this yet, and there's much more
to discover and there's much more to pin down and
to unpick. And so yeah, I think sometimes I do
(23:38):
sit down and explain to people, but I do find
it exhausting, and I am increasingly kind to myself about
not feeling like I've got to be responsible for every
ignorant person's understanding of what autism is, you know. But
I also wanted to contribute my own definition as I
(24:01):
understand it at the moment and to you know, like
I equally feel compassion for people who have come in
has stumbled into this world. And don't understand it. So
where does that leave them? Like how can I help
them to come to a more generous realization about what
autism actually is. It's that's a lot, that's very that's
(24:23):
a lot of weight because it's hard because I mean,
I know this, I keep comparing it to like gayness
or whatever. But in the early days, like I mean
and probably like two thousand, you know, when I was
in a workplace and I people knew that I was gay,
Like the comments that I would get real be like
shocking even then, even like just twenty years ago, Like
(24:45):
you know, people just were so weird, and I thought,
you know, is it my job to fix your homophobia?
Like is it my job? Or can I just like
live my life? Can I just like, can I just
show up as my authentic self? And in that way,
(25:05):
that is my advocacy. In that way, that is the
way that I'm helping is by just being open about
who I am but not having to like fix everyone else.
I don't know, It's it's really tricky. It is tricky,
and I you know, like I think you have to
remind yourself that you are not the homophobe whisperer, like
(25:26):
it's not your job to coax them into I wish
I was. I wish I was the homophobe puncher. I
wish I was the homophobe kicker, you know. But yeah, no, no,
it's true, Yeah that it's too much. But like I
also so, yeah, so I let myself off and I
try and be part of the bigger debate rather than
the micro debate, because it's those micro debates that's exhausting.
(25:50):
But I also, um, well, I suppose two things. One
is that I refuse to do press that is going
to be about, you know, like challenging my right to exist,
you know. And I won't do press with people who
are and access, for example, because in a very real sense,
(26:12):
they want me eradicated from the gene pool, and I
am not. I don't have to sit at a table
with those people. It's not reasonable for my mental health
to do that. But I also flip it back on
myself a little and try and remind myself of the
gaps in my knowledge and understanding, you know, like absolutely,
do I understand what it is to be black and autistic?
(26:35):
You know? Do I understand what it is to be
trans an autistic? That's a that's a really common combination.
Do I understand what it is to be non verbal autistic?
You know? So I try and remind myself with the
ways that I need to listen harder to in the
way that I want people to listen to me. Right, right, Well,
I've been sort of thinking a lot about my own
(26:56):
ableism and how in my mind, like when I was
first thinking about artism, I was like, I can't be artistic.
I own a home and I have a house. Yes,
I own a home, and I have a job, and
like I have a partner, and like I'm totally normal.
And it's like, why do you think that those things
don't go along with a disability? Like what are you?
(27:17):
And I think you're right. It's like the combinations and
the intersectionality of all of this is, you know, much
more complicated than you know, just some some some white
ladies who think differently. Yeah, so true. And not to minimize,
not to minimize, but we can do this in relative safety, right.
We can have these conversations because of the kinds of
(27:39):
jobs that we're in and because we're white, and you know,
because we're relatively middle class or what you know, whatever.
It is like it's it's a privilege to be able
to have these conversations and other people out there wouldn't
feel safe to do this, you know. And that's yes,
that's something that I think we often need to bear
in mind because I think it's really easy for us
(28:00):
to raise other other people within this very very fragile community.
And I'm you know, I haven't always been as conscious
of that as I am at this point, and I
hope I get more conscious about it as I go along. Right,
I learned, I mean, I've learned so many things from
your book, but one thing was the Maori word for
(28:22):
autism takeo watana, the idea of your own time and space.
And you know, and you have this like you have
this beautiful line that like you learn for that place,
you know, without having ever known it yourself, and like
(28:43):
can you get there at this point in your life?
Can you find your own time and space now? Or
is it too late? And I wonder if you've you've
answered that for yourself a little more? Yeah, And I
think I am beginning. It's you know, like it it's
almost a bit like learning to take up the space
(29:04):
that you need. Like it all comes together for me
into this idea that I need to be allowed to
take up my shape of space in the world and
that might be a different shape to other people's. And
I'm getting better at it, and like I have to
enter into it quite mindfully to remind myself of what
(29:26):
I feel like I need, because having suppressed it for
so long, I'm not always aware of it myself, you know.
And I feel like I'm growing into it, and I
feel like I'm making more and more changes to my
life that mean I can live in exactly the way
that I want to and need to. But it's definitely
a work in progress, and I think it will be forever.
(29:49):
What are those changes, I'm curious. Well, you know, I've stopped.
I stopped working in the university that I was working
in when I was writing Electricity, and I began to
think about how I wanted to shape my days and
how often I wanted to be in silent, how often
I wanted to walk and get outside, like how often
(30:10):
I wanted to actually socialize, what the balance was in
the way that I even practiced my writing, you know,
because for me, it's not all about output. It's about
the pleasure of obsessing over certain things and inputting and
sort of drinking and information in that very autistic information
hungry way. But you know, also I increasingly try and
(30:35):
explain what I need in the moment to people, you know,
and say, I'm finding this really noisy right now, I'm
really sorry, I'm going to have to step outside, or
would you mind turning it down, or you know whatever
that that particular issue is at the time. And I
am getting better at just trying to simply state my needs,
(30:57):
but it's very imperfect still, and I still regularly find
myself suppressing that need because you know, I share embarrassment
or politeness, yes, yeah, and the embarrassment I mean, or
like somebody else is going to be put out. I mean,
I remember one time a lady was like bouncing her
(31:18):
foot up and down on this chair, like the leg
of a chair, and the chair with leg was broken
and it was making terrible, terrible scratching noises, but she
couldn't hear it because she had her headphones in, and
so I thought it was totally reasonable to just go
over and be like, hey, I'm not sure if you know,
but the chair's broken and it's making this noise. And
she looked at me like I had five eyeballs, and
(31:39):
she was like she was basically like with her eyes
saying like, go back to your seat right now. And
so I'm I've, you know, I feel like I've I'm
getting to this point where I'm there's a lot of
work to just like one recognize the trigger and two
fix it for yourself, because there is embarrassment because people
(32:03):
don't know. I mean, I often think like if I
get on an airplane and I get put in a
window seat which I can't sit in, and I say
to the flight attendant, like in in my fantasy autism land,
I say to the flight tenant, I'm not going to
be able to sit there because I'm autistic and I
have extreme panic around these particular spaces. And if you
(32:25):
could just move me to an aisle, and she would say,
oh absolutely, I'm so happy to help you back in
the real world, right right. And so one episode is
that autism fantasy land, Like what would your autistic fantasyland
look like, where like you could move through your day
without any hitches of any kind, Like for Catherine, what
(32:48):
would it look like like everywhere I would be quiet,
nobody'd be wearing slum perfume, nobody would touch me, like
barge into me in the street, or like tap me
on the shoulder to get my attention or I hate that.
But actually it would probably mostly take place in a
(33:09):
been in the woods, completely on my own, you know.
But like it's really interesting you raised that because I
do think that within the autistic community, we can get
into the headspace of thinking that that world is possible,
you know, like if only the world would adapt to us,
and I I think we have to question that a
(33:30):
little bit because I think there's like a halfway point
that we need to find. So, I mean, you're you're
some years out from your diagnosis. I'm like one year out.
I wonder, like where where you are now? You've written
a book, You've you've processed to see've written two books.
You had a massive hit, uh you know, which might
(33:52):
not have anything to do with you know, autism. I
mean it probably changed a lot of things for you.
But like where are you now? Well, I mean I
think like one of the things is I'm kind of
post obsession with it, Like I've I've absorbed a lot
about it and the obs where it has waned, Like
I've kind of I've got to the point where I
(34:13):
just want to live as the person I am and
not have to constantly reflect on it. And every now
and then I'm reminded of my differences in a way
that really surprises me. Like I've made so many changes
to my life now that it's often invisible to me
that I am, you know, different in any way at all.
(34:35):
Like I don't have to bang my head up against
it every day like I used to, and every now
and then, like my level of sort of disability in
the world really shocks me. I'm kind of really confronted
by it, and I find it almost quite upsetting all
over again, you know, like, oh wow, I can't deal
with this. Oh God. You know, I thought I was
(34:56):
kind of fine forever now, And like, in lots of ways,
that's kind of a nice place to be. It's nicer,
and it sounds because it means that most of the
time things are working, you know, I have to really
remind myself that I am in need of support sometimes
and that I deserve to access it. Electricity came out
(35:17):
in the UK I think twenty eighteen, so nearly four
years ago, and so it's been quite strange to return
to talking to it now. That the US edition has
been released, because I felt almost bodily reluctant to return
to talking about that stuff, if I'm honest. It felt
(35:38):
kind of exhausting to tool back there, and my brain
was very reluctant to go there. But it's actually been
really good for me to start talking about it again.
And like that feeling of how far you've traveled, and
that feeling of changes that you've cemented into you that
you hadn't noticed even happening, and the feeling that you
(36:01):
have something to pass on to the next generation of
people coming through. I think that's that's a really wonderful
place to be actually. So yeah, I'm proudly and happily autistic,
and I don't have the doubts that I once had
on the imposter syndrome certainly. Katherine May is the New
York Times best selling author of Wintering, The Power of
(36:22):
Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, and the Electricity of
Every Living Thing, a Woman's walk in the wild to
find her way home. She lives in Whitstable on the
Kentish coast of England. You can find her online at
Katherine hyphen May dot co dot uk. This episode was
(36:42):
produced by David Jah and edited by Sophie Crane mix
Engineering by Jake Gorsky. Special thanks to Lisa Dunn for
booking help, and thanks to your friend for listening.
Pushkin. Around month nine or ten of the pandemic, I
noticed that a bunch of my friends and Internet associates
had started to read the same book. It was called Wintering,
The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. Of course,
(00:36):
I had to get myself a copy, and imagine my
delight at discovering that the author of this internationally best
selling book, Katherine May, was an autistic woman roughly my age.
Not only that, but her first book, The Electricity of
Every Living Thing, was all about her autistic journey of
(00:56):
self discovery. I can't say enough about Catherine's autism memoir.
As I consumed it, I felt like I was reading
about myself, which is both unsettling and thrilling. I dog
eared so many pages and sung the books praises to
everyone I knew. So how could I not try everything
(01:16):
in my power to get Katherine on the horn. Luckily
she answered, Hello, I'm Katherine May. I'm the author of
Wintering and the Electricity of Every Living Thing, and I've
known I'm autistic for about five years now. You know
one thing you wrote that you know when you were
(01:38):
sort of in these early stages, that you felt like
you were trying to perform some kind of acrobatic act
of understanding and seeing yourself from the outside. And I wonder, like,
I'm not such a beautiful way of describing it, but like,
tell me more about what that means, about that experience
(01:59):
of really trying to like turn yourself over and look
at it from a different from look at yourself from
a different perspective, and things that were maybe invisible to me. Yeah,
And that's because so many of the accounts of autism, again,
particularly at the time, we're all from the outside. They
were all like, what does an autistic person look like
(02:22):
to a neurotypical person? You know, what are the signs? Like,
what are the symptoms, which is, you know, a word
that I'm very very uncomfortable with using of autism, you know.
And so it's like it looks like this, they will
seem socially awkward. They will you know, they will not
be making eye contact. Da da da da da. And
so what I had to do was think, well, do
(02:43):
I fit those descriptions, you know, do I refuse to
make eye contact? And then that opens up this whole
personal archaeology because actually, yes, I can remember being very
very uncomfortable with eye contact when I was younger and
being told off for it, you know, being told off
for not paying attention and not looking at someone while
(03:05):
they were addressing me, you know, my teachers and stuff
like that. But I'd buried so much because I had
no consistent narrative of self available to me that would
have integrated all that I was. Like, there was no
(03:25):
story that I could have told myself in which I
was a kind of valued, accepted, autistic person, and so
I'd constructed a self in my mind that was like
a kind of slightly one key eurotypical who seemed traumatized
but couldn't remember what the trauma, you know, that I
had no access to knowing what this trauma was supposed
(03:46):
to be, and that I if I could only find
the right answer, you know. So I was always like
reading self help books and going to workshops, you know,
and taking up new things that would sort me out,
that would finally make me operate in the same way
as the people around me did. And in the meantime,
(04:07):
I was engaged in a big project, often ending I
was just like them, and in fact that I was
a hyper normal one like them, you know. And so
I mean, I don't know if it's the same for you.
But it becomes this huge mission to unravel all that
you thought you knew about yourself and to actually get
back to contact with how you feel in the world.
(04:30):
You know, And I've suppressed a lot of sensory stuff
that I didn't think I had the right to feel,
and so I had to reacquaint with all of that.
It was it was slow, and it was painful. Yeah, yeah, no,
I mean I, like I said, you know, we started
been everything that I was reading in your book. I
was like, yes, yes, yes, yes, that's me. That's me.
(04:51):
I've always you know, it's like Lauren, you know, dances
to the beat of her own drummer. You know, it's
like that type of person, right, And it's like, but
the way that you talked about your your childhood, I
mean I felt very very much the same, like you're
a handful, you're difficult. You. I wanted to talk to
(05:14):
you about your temper as a kid, and and I guess,
like what that looked like when you were a child.
And I mean I think probably now what I was
going through would have been described as meltdowns. But again,
because there was no access to that language, I was,
you know, seen as a yeah, a child with a
(05:36):
temper who could kind of fly off the handle, who
you know, was naughty and difficult. And what I remember
is being disapproved of by adults for losing control and
feeling very different in that sense, like very very much
like a like somebody who was who did not have
(05:58):
control of their behavior in the way that other children did,
and wondering how other children managed to pull off this
amazing feet of control. Yeah, right right. The issue is,
I mean, do you think that your parents had an
inkling like, oh, there is something beyond just Catherine being
difficult or sensitive? And do you know what I think
(06:20):
because I was brought up by my mum because my
parents were divorced, But I would say that my mum
was absolutely clear that there was something going on she
I mean, and she's as soon as I told her
as an adult, she was like, ah, yes, that's it,
you know, and she'd she'd felt battles to try and
get it understood. You know, she she saw loads of
(06:42):
things that were running differently to me and other kids,
and you know, there was a there was a while
when my school kind of suggested that I was what
would have been called hyperactive at the time. You know,
I would now talk about ADHD, but you know, I
was a hyperactive child, but that didn't particularly fit and
it didn't fit my academic profile necessarily as well, because
(07:03):
it was really obvious that I, you know, could concentrate
very deeply on academic things, but that my more erratic
behavior was often around sport and social events and that
and you know, those those things that I found really difficult.
So yeah, like my mum, My mum knew there was something,
but there was She had nothing. And she actually ran
(07:23):
me after the book came out and to say there
was no there was nothing that could have led me
to to this. You know, do you forgive me? I
was like, of course I do. I totally understand. You know,
that's beautiful. She wanted to help and she knew I
needed it, and yeah, you know, there was nothing. There
was nothing that she could have ever found that would
have told her. Here's the explanation that will make everything
(07:47):
makes sense to you, right right, you know I just
told my parents, um, like last week and did well.
So I was diagnosed a year ago, um, and I
have it was a It was an enormous fear of mine.
Because my relationship with them has you know, been jagged
(08:09):
over the years, and I was really terrified, and I
texted the producers. I was like, I can't do it,
Like I just can't. I can't tell them like I can't.
I don't know how to do it. I don't know how.
I don't have the words, like I don't have that
relationship with them, I don't want to feel vulnerable around them,
I don't feel safe around them. And then, you know,
(08:30):
I feel like there's a part when you're telling you know,
your family it depending on the relationship you have with them,
that like you are indicting them in some way that
they were bad parents or something like that. And that
was absolutely not what I wanted to do because even
if I had issues with parts of their parenting, what
I know to be true is that autism was absolutely
(08:54):
not talked about in America in those times, and certainly
not with girls who are high achieving. I mean, I
was wondering, you know, as you were talking before one
thing I've been kind of grappling with, or one thing
that sort of led me to this. There was a
particular incident that kept coming up for me and in therapy,
like an incident that happened to me when I was
(09:14):
a kid that I feel like sort of said in
motion a lot of ways that I felt about myself
or whatever. And I wonder it's sort of how it
impacted you as a child, or if you can think
about how it impacted you to be sort of you know,
the naughtied one, the difficult one, like how did it
make you feel about yourself as an adult or as
(09:34):
a Yeah, no, absolutely terrible. I mean I felt I mean,
I you know, I felt different, but also I felt
like somebody who was less good. I mean I don't
mean like good at stuff, I mean goodhearted than other people,
because I've been told often that I was like arrogant
(09:55):
or aloof or abrupt or like my mum's phrase about
me was always that I didn't suffer fools gladly, which
may be true. I was not, you know, front of
the line when patients were handed out. But you get
this really direct feedback about yourself that is always couched
(10:18):
in negative terms, and then you get the indirect feedback.
You know that you're not invited to parties that you
know the other girls are. You know they're getting together
and they have interests that they share and you can't
access them, they don't make any sense to you, and
you feel rejected. And yeah, like my self esteem was horrible.
(10:39):
And when I had when I had a complete breakdown
when I was seventeen and I had to come out
of school for a year and I just absolutely couldn't function.
It was following like an instant where I'd been bullied
by some other girls over some stupid school magazine that
you know, we're all supposed to be working on, and
i'd you know, i'd come off wrong, like i'd i'd
(11:02):
upset everybody, and it tipped over into me being like
singled out and targeted over over again. And my self
esteem was always, you know, it was already so low.
I couldn't handle it anymore. Like I absolutely hated myself
and I was suicidal, and I was suicidal for a
long long time. Yeah, And it's you know, I'm saying
(11:24):
that really openly because I know exactly how common that
is amongst you know, autistic people, whether or not they know.
It's it's that continual rejection that breaks you down. Yeah, yeah,
I you know, as you're talking, I'm thinking that the
saving grace that I had was sport, and I was
(11:46):
very good at sports. But also that was where you
could find worth because it was very black and white.
You either win or you lose, and you can always
keep improving and you could always get positive attention because
if you won, it just comes with the territory. Right.
But I remember my coach very clearly saying to me
(12:08):
in one year in college, like, you seek out negative attention,
And I was like, I don't know what you mean.
And I was thinking, like, oh, that's because for so
much of the time in school, that's the only attention
that you got. You know, that's the only attention that
I got was negative attention. And the only way that
people would pay attention to you, you know, is like
(12:32):
for being naughty. You know that, um, you're not getting
the attention for the things that you feel you should be,
which is like you're smart, or you're clever, or you're
interesting or you're interested in this thing or whatever. It's like, oh,
you're you don't suffer fools like that. Like the narrative
in your own family of origin is like, you know,
(12:55):
mine was like, oh I'm loud and obnoxious, and it's like, oh, well,
I'm other things too, guys, Like I always found that
I was I was not aiming for that at all,
you know, like I was going out there trying to
be really charming and lively and fun, and then that
would get read as obnoxious and overbearing and yeah, loud
(13:19):
or whatever, erratic, I don't know, and you'd be like, well,
how how do I bridge that gap between how I'm
trying to behave and how it's always received? And I
actually still feel like that quite often now. I still
sometimes get reactions and I think, wow, that is that
is not how I read this situation. That is not Yeah.
(13:41):
I remember my career's teacher, like I would feeled in
a little questionnaire and I've tipped you know, always tries
to please people, and she, you know, in front of
the whole class, said I would not have had you
down as someone that was trying to do that. Catherine,
Like I always thought, you know, you were deliberately trying
to be different and yeah, and I was like, oh god,
that was and it was devastating. I felt really, yes,
(14:03):
wounded by that, you know, this idea that I was
deliberately trying to annoy them all. But then I, you know,
I think that people's way of putting it on you
rather than them, like you have tried to upset them,
rather than them not accepting you being a bit different
to the mainstream. I mean, I don't know about you,
but getting my diagnosis and understanding more about myself has
(14:26):
made me more generous to other people because actually I
have made some of the same assumptions in the past,
and I would be lying if I said I've always
been saintly about it. And you know, like now I'm
much more likely than I was previously to think. Okay,
Lauren's talking really loudly? Is it? Maybe she has a
hearing difficulty, Maybe she's really excited, Maybe she's near a
(14:48):
divergent like me. You know, maybe you know, maybe she's
had quite a lot of coffee. I'm not going to
judge it. And it's it's actually really easy to step
back and to desenter yourself from it, like this is
not about Lauren attacking me. This is about Lauren being
something that I wasn't quite expecting. But okay, let's go
with that. I mean, it it's actually quite simple when
(15:10):
you start to practice it, but it takes a bit together, right,
there's some amount of grace I think that can kind
of come not just towards the world around you, but
also to yourself. I mean, you know, did you find
after the diagnosis like you were gentler, kinder, you know,
more forgiving with yourself? Oh? Absolutely. And I always say that,
(15:35):
you know, Wintering is the book that I could only
write after I'd gone through the period of discovery that
I document in Electricity, because yeah, like reevaluating myself to
kinder Eyes was I mean absolutely life changing. And it
meant that a I stopped thinking that I was a
(15:57):
terrible person, and I started having an explanation for the
times when I failed in public or whatever, but also
that I could just start adapting to meet my own needs,
and that quite often when stuff went really badly for me,
I could see that it was because I'd pushed myself
(16:17):
past what was comfortable or what was manageable for me,
you know, like I'd put myself in a very noisy environment,
or I'd worked for too long and had too many
conversations in the day, or there was one incident that
I keep remembering where I lost my temper at work
and at the time I had a really itchy label
in the back of my dress and I'd always yeah,
(16:39):
because that's huge when it sounds tiny, but it's massive.
And I remember being in this quite tense conversation and
feeling this label and feeling this label and feeling this
label it felt like it was burning through my skin,
and I reached back and as I was talking, I
ripped it out of my dress, just at the time
when I was like offending someone. And it was this
(17:01):
moment of this complete loss of control that I felt
so humiliated for afterwards, because it looked like I'd got
so angry I'd torn my own thing, and it was
actually the other way round, that I was so overwhelmed
by this really really itchy label that I couldn't control,
I couldn't self regulate. And that's I mean, that's such
(17:22):
a distillation of what it is to be autistic, like
losing your self regulation because you're totally overwhelmed by something
that other people will think is minute, and like getting
my diagnosis, that was the thing that was one of
the first things I kept going back to that moment.
It was so telling for me suddenly, but as I
got older, I got better at suppressing those disregulated moments,
(17:45):
but it meant that I got sick instead, you know,
so it meant that I would suddenly get an absolutely
terrible headache, or I would have to take to my
bed the next day, or you know, like it internalized
it and of course affecting my mental health very badly.
So you kind of don't win either way until you're
able to take control of your own self regulation, really,
(18:08):
and that's that's your game. Ra. But yeah, I look
back on some moments in my life and I think
I understand that now. But wow, I was as baffled
as everyone else was by that behavior in that moment.
I didn't have any way of explaining it right, right,
I think. For for you know, when I started thinking
about autism, I was like, my gosh, if I do
an accounting of all of the outsized reactions that I've
(18:31):
had to things, it should have been obvious, but no
one thinks of it. As you have big feelings or
you have that you have a challenge regulating your big feelings,
it's that like you're being obstreperous, that you're being difficult
or you know, racalcitrant or whatever. It's just like it's
(18:54):
always on a on you as opposed to you know,
having some empathy around like, Okay, clearly this isn't typical behavior,
and so this person is clearly going through something. And
it's interesting. I mean, do you find that now that
you have been diagnosed, so you've been public about your diagnosis,
(19:16):
that people around you are like, oh, okay, I get
it now, or are they still like, like, what is
her problem? I mean half and half honestly, And I
think a lot depends on the individual's understanding of autism,
you know, because for some people it makes them really
(19:37):
angry because as far as they're concerned, what autism is
is like a non speaking child who they would consider
to be like intellectually disabled and like unable to communicate
or to do any work. And you know that's a
it's an inaccurate understanding of autism for so many reasons anyway,
(19:59):
But what they you know, so then when they hear
me sound autistic, they think it's some bizarre play for attention,
and you know, find it offensive almost you know that
I'm trying to steal oxygen from yes, people who need it,
right right, I mean, I've I've noticed that, like so,
I mean, I had the experience of coming out as
(20:21):
as gay and out pretty it was pretty easy. Well,
it was pretty easy. I mean except with my parents.
Like when I told my mom that I was gay,
she said whatever, and that wasn't like the best response.
But everybody generally in my life has been like fine.
I mean my brother, like I told my brother first,
like he doesn't care, or like my parents just generally
like I'm friends, I mean whatever. Now my most of
(20:43):
my friends or queer people or queer adjacent people, you know,
and so it's not a big deal. But I think that,
but everybody knows what it means to be gay. If
you say I'm gay, people get it. I mean, people
don't know what it means to be autistic. But I wonder,
like how you have both dealt with you know, your
(21:04):
own personal revelation and your own personal truth, but then
also educating people about what that means more globally. Yeah,
I mean it's such a massive issue because, yeah, you're
absolutely right, Like, if you say you're gay, people understand
what gaining is. If you say you have schizophrenia, there's
a stable definition of that. But with autism, there isn't
(21:28):
even a stable definition in the psychological literature at the moment.
I mean, it's not even just like that folk understanding
diverges from you know, medical understanding or psychiatric understanding or
psychological understanding or how you want to put it. It's actually,
if you ask people working in the field at the moment,
they feel like the definition is thrown up in the
(21:49):
air as well, because they're under beginning to understand that
they were working on the wrong paradigms before, and they
were working on these external observation modalities that were based
on you know, like the research was done on eight
year old white boys, middle class boys in particular as well,
and the assumption was they were likely to be non verbal.
(22:10):
And it's so it's so hard to be part of
remaking that definition because I do feel like I'm part
of that in a very kind of crowdsource way. And
so I mean, like I would love to say that
I'm going out there boldly and explaining my autism to everyone,
but I still mask it a lot in situations where
(22:32):
it doesn't feel safe and where I can't Yeah, you know,
I can't trust that understanding to be there. But I
have been. I mean, I've been working on a page
on my website recently. I thought about it and I
thought I need to write my own definition of autism
as I understand it right now, because there's no one
source that I can even turn to to quote. And
(22:55):
that's where we are right now, and it's a it's
a difficult place to be, but it's also quite an
exciting place to be. You know that the debate is
is happening, and finally we are we are being part
of that debate. And yeah, there's we're learning and it's
(23:17):
you know, what we understand as autism now will not
be the same in twenty years time. We need to
know that, you know, we need to know that we
do not fully get this yet, and there's much more
to discover and there's much more to pin down and
to unpick. And so yeah, I think sometimes I do
(23:38):
sit down and explain to people, but I do find
it exhausting, and I am increasingly kind to myself about
not feeling like I've got to be responsible for every
ignorant person's understanding of what autism is, you know. But
I also wanted to contribute my own definition as I
(24:01):
understand it at the moment and to you know, like
I equally feel compassion for people who have come in
has stumbled into this world. And don't understand it. So
where does that leave them? Like how can I help
them to come to a more generous realization about what
autism actually is. It's that's a lot, that's very that's
(24:23):
a lot of weight because it's hard because I mean,
I know this, I keep comparing it to like gayness
or whatever. But in the early days, like I mean
and probably like two thousand, you know, when I was
in a workplace and I people knew that I was gay,
Like the comments that I would get real be like
shocking even then, even like just twenty years ago, Like
(24:45):
you know, people just were so weird, and I thought,
you know, is it my job to fix your homophobia?
Like is it my job? Or can I just like
live my life? Can I just like, can I just
show up as my authentic self? And in that way,
(25:05):
that is my advocacy. In that way, that is the
way that I'm helping is by just being open about
who I am but not having to like fix everyone else.
I don't know, It's it's really tricky. It is tricky,
and I you know, like I think you have to
remind yourself that you are not the homophobe whisperer, like
(25:26):
it's not your job to coax them into I wish
I was. I wish I was the homophobe puncher. I
wish I was the homophobe kicker, you know. But yeah, no, no,
it's true, Yeah that it's too much. But like I
also so, yeah, so I let myself off and I
try and be part of the bigger debate rather than
the micro debate, because it's those micro debates that's exhausting.
(25:50):
But I also, um, well, I suppose two things. One
is that I refuse to do press that is going
to be about, you know, like challenging my right to exist,
you know. And I won't do press with people who
are and access, for example, because in a very real sense,
(26:12):
they want me eradicated from the gene pool, and I
am not. I don't have to sit at a table
with those people. It's not reasonable for my mental health
to do that. But I also flip it back on
myself a little and try and remind myself of the
gaps in my knowledge and understanding, you know, like absolutely,
do I understand what it is to be black and autistic?
(26:35):
You know? Do I understand what it is to be
trans an autistic? That's a that's a really common combination.
Do I understand what it is to be non verbal autistic?
You know? So I try and remind myself with the
ways that I need to listen harder to in the
way that I want people to listen to me. Right, right, Well,
I've been sort of thinking a lot about my own
(26:56):
ableism and how in my mind, like when I was
first thinking about artism, I was like, I can't be artistic.
I own a home and I have a house. Yes,
I own a home, and I have a job, and
like I have a partner, and like I'm totally normal.
And it's like, why do you think that those things
don't go along with a disability? Like what are you?
(27:17):
And I think you're right. It's like the combinations and
the intersectionality of all of this is, you know, much
more complicated than you know, just some some some white
ladies who think differently. Yeah, so true. And not to minimize,
not to minimize, but we can do this in relative safety, right.
We can have these conversations because of the kinds of
(27:39):
jobs that we're in and because we're white, and you know,
because we're relatively middle class or what you know, whatever.
It is like it's it's a privilege to be able
to have these conversations and other people out there wouldn't
feel safe to do this, you know. And that's yes,
that's something that I think we often need to bear
in mind because I think it's really easy for us
(28:00):
to raise other other people within this very very fragile community.
And I'm you know, I haven't always been as conscious
of that as I am at this point, and I
hope I get more conscious about it as I go along. Right,
I learned, I mean, I've learned so many things from
your book, but one thing was the Maori word for
(28:22):
autism takeo watana, the idea of your own time and space.
And you know, and you have this like you have
this beautiful line that like you learn for that place,
you know, without having ever known it yourself, and like
(28:43):
can you get there at this point in your life?
Can you find your own time and space now? Or
is it too late? And I wonder if you've you've
answered that for yourself a little more? Yeah, And I
think I am beginning. It's you know, like it it's
almost a bit like learning to take up the space
(29:04):
that you need. Like it all comes together for me
into this idea that I need to be allowed to
take up my shape of space in the world and
that might be a different shape to other people's. And
I'm getting better at it, and like I have to
enter into it quite mindfully to remind myself of what
(29:26):
I feel like I need, because having suppressed it for
so long, I'm not always aware of it myself, you know.
And I feel like I'm growing into it, and I
feel like I'm making more and more changes to my
life that mean I can live in exactly the way
that I want to and need to. But it's definitely
a work in progress, and I think it will be forever.
(29:49):
What are those changes, I'm curious. Well, you know, I've stopped.
I stopped working in the university that I was working
in when I was writing Electricity, and I began to
think about how I wanted to shape my days and
how often I wanted to be in silent, how often
I wanted to walk and get outside, like how often
(30:10):
I wanted to actually socialize, what the balance was in
the way that I even practiced my writing, you know,
because for me, it's not all about output. It's about
the pleasure of obsessing over certain things and inputting and
sort of drinking and information in that very autistic information
hungry way. But you know, also I increasingly try and
(30:35):
explain what I need in the moment to people, you know,
and say, I'm finding this really noisy right now, I'm
really sorry, I'm going to have to step outside, or
would you mind turning it down, or you know whatever
that that particular issue is at the time. And I
am getting better at just trying to simply state my needs,
(30:57):
but it's very imperfect still, and I still regularly find
myself suppressing that need because you know, I share embarrassment
or politeness, yes, yeah, and the embarrassment I mean, or
like somebody else is going to be put out. I mean,
I remember one time a lady was like bouncing her
(31:18):
foot up and down on this chair, like the leg
of a chair, and the chair with leg was broken
and it was making terrible, terrible scratching noises, but she
couldn't hear it because she had her headphones in, and
so I thought it was totally reasonable to just go
over and be like, hey, I'm not sure if you know,
but the chair's broken and it's making this noise. And
she looked at me like I had five eyeballs, and
(31:39):
she was like she was basically like with her eyes
saying like, go back to your seat right now. And
so I'm I've, you know, I feel like I've I'm
getting to this point where I'm there's a lot of
work to just like one recognize the trigger and two
fix it for yourself, because there is embarrassment because people
(32:03):
don't know. I mean, I often think like if I
get on an airplane and I get put in a
window seat which I can't sit in, and I say
to the flight attendant, like in in my fantasy autism land,
I say to the flight tenant, I'm not going to
be able to sit there because I'm autistic and I
have extreme panic around these particular spaces. And if you
(32:25):
could just move me to an aisle, and she would say,
oh absolutely, I'm so happy to help you back in
the real world, right right. And so one episode is
that autism fantasy land, Like what would your autistic fantasyland
look like, where like you could move through your day
without any hitches of any kind, Like for Catherine, what
(32:48):
would it look like like everywhere I would be quiet,
nobody'd be wearing slum perfume, nobody would touch me, like
barge into me in the street, or like tap me
on the shoulder to get my attention or I hate that.
But actually it would probably mostly take place in a
(33:09):
been in the woods, completely on my own, you know.
But like it's really interesting you raised that because I
do think that within the autistic community, we can get
into the headspace of thinking that that world is possible,
you know, like if only the world would adapt to us,
and I I think we have to question that a
(33:30):
little bit because I think there's like a halfway point
that we need to find. So, I mean, you're you're
some years out from your diagnosis. I'm like one year out.
I wonder, like where where you are now? You've written
a book, You've you've processed to see've written two books.
You had a massive hit, uh you know, which might
(33:52):
not have anything to do with you know, autism. I
mean it probably changed a lot of things for you.
But like where are you now? Well, I mean I
think like one of the things is I'm kind of
post obsession with it, Like I've I've absorbed a lot
about it and the obs where it has waned, Like
I've kind of I've got to the point where I
(34:13):
just want to live as the person I am and
not have to constantly reflect on it. And every now
and then I'm reminded of my differences in a way
that really surprises me. Like I've made so many changes
to my life now that it's often invisible to me
that I am, you know, different in any way at all.
(34:35):
Like I don't have to bang my head up against
it every day like I used to, and every now
and then, like my level of sort of disability in
the world really shocks me. I'm kind of really confronted
by it, and I find it almost quite upsetting all
over again, you know, like, oh wow, I can't deal
with this. Oh God. You know, I thought I was
(34:56):
kind of fine forever now, And like, in lots of ways,
that's kind of a nice place to be. It's nicer,
and it sounds because it means that most of the
time things are working, you know, I have to really
remind myself that I am in need of support sometimes
and that I deserve to access it. Electricity came out
(35:17):
in the UK I think twenty eighteen, so nearly four
years ago, and so it's been quite strange to return
to talking to it now. That the US edition has
been released, because I felt almost bodily reluctant to return
to talking about that stuff, if I'm honest. It felt
(35:38):
kind of exhausting to tool back there, and my brain
was very reluctant to go there. But it's actually been
really good for me to start talking about it again.
And like that feeling of how far you've traveled, and
that feeling of changes that you've cemented into you that
you hadn't noticed even happening, and the feeling that you
(36:01):
have something to pass on to the next generation of
people coming through. I think that's that's a really wonderful
place to be actually. So yeah, I'm proudly and happily autistic,
and I don't have the doubts that I once had
on the imposter syndrome certainly. Katherine May is the New
York Times best selling author of Wintering, The Power of
(36:22):
Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, and the Electricity of
Every Living Thing, a Woman's walk in the wild to
find her way home. She lives in Whitstable on the
Kentish coast of England. You can find her online at
Katherine hyphen May dot co dot uk. This episode was
(36:42):
produced by David Jah and edited by Sophie Crane mix
Engineering by Jake Gorsky. Special thanks to Lisa Dunn for
booking help, and thanks to your friend for listening.
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