Unmasking to Heal: Neurodivergent Living with Dr. Craig Wells, D.O.

Episode Transcript
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Paul Cruz (00:04):
Hello, my name is Paul Cruz. Welcome to the
Neurodiversity Voices podcast,where we celebrate and amplify
the unique perspectives andexperiences of neurodiverse
individuals. I'm thrilled tohave you join us on this journey
of exploration, advocacy, andcelebration of neurodiversity.

Gino Akbari (00:24):
I'm Gino Akbari, your co host. Together, we'll
have meaningful conversation,share inspiring stories, and
challenge misconception aboutneurodiversity.

Paul Cruz (00:34):
This podcast is for everyone, whether you're
neurodivergent yourself, aneducator, a parent, or just
someone curious to learn more.Our goal is to amplify voices,
foster understanding, and sparkchange in the way we view and
support neurodiversity.

We're so excited to have you with us as we celebrate
the beauty of diverse minds andwork toward a more inclusive
future.

Paul Cruz (00:57):
So sit back, relax, and let's get started. Welcome
to the Neurodiversity Voicespodcast.

Doctor. Craig Wells is a neurodivergent physician
and educator specializing inempowering individuals to
embrace their true selves andthrive. As a late diagnosed ADHD
and autistic professional, hecreated programs like Connection
Craft and Inner EssenceActivation to help
neurodivergent individuals heal,optimize the nervous system, and

(01:29):
build meaningful connections.Doctor. Wells is passionate
about fostering self acceptanceand advocating for
neurodivergent affirmation.
So without further ado, let'swelcome Doctor. Craig Wells.

Dr. Craig Wells (01:40):
Hi, Geno. Hi, Paul. It's a pleasure to be here
this afternoon.

Paul Cruz (01:44):
How did your journey of self acceptance as a
neurodivergent individualinfluence your ability to design
a lifestyle that accommodatesyour needs?

So for me, I guess I'm always looking to
strike a balance between highperformance and achieving and
doing the things that I want todo with what is reasonable for
my nervous system. I mean, toreally accepting my
neurodivergence and prior toaccepting who I was and what I

(02:20):
needed, I pushed through. And Ithink that's what a lot of us do
is we push through until we havea crash and then we deal with
the crash. I kinda went througha phase where I would schedule
the crashes. And I guess for memore, it's more now about
scheduling rest and schedulingperiods of intense focus because
it's really where I'm mostproductive.

(02:40):
I'm I'm I can be wickedlyproductive for about two and a
half hours. And then after thatI want a nap. I'm and I think
this is true of of a lot ofautistics and a lot of ADHD
people is I'm a sprinter. I geta lot done in a short amount of
time. And then I want time forthe brain to rewire.
So I have like differenttechniques for reading. Paul

(03:02):
Shealy, that photo reading greatsystem. And so I'll, you know,
in an hour and a half, like Ican digest two or three
different books. But then thatinformation has to go somewhere.
So it's, you know, it's loadedinto the hippocampus and then
it's gotta be parceled out tothe long term storage and it has
to integrate with what I alreadyknow.
So I think kind of the biggestthing in terms of really

(03:24):
performance and achieving ismaking sure that I have rest
periods and making sure that Ihave the different rejuvenation
rituals and things that I built.And some of it's just how I
sleep. So like sleeparchitecture is like a big thing
for ADHD individuals, autisticindividuals, ADHD individuals.
We tend to have disrupted sleeparchitecture. So what are things
that I can do?

(03:45):
How can I eat? What diet can Ihave? One thing I use is
binaural beats at night toactually stabilize for about
four or five hours, deep slowwave sleep. Because I found that
I was I was having reallyerratic sleep or I wasn't being
in slow wave sleep enough. And Ithat out because I use an Oura
rang and some other sleeptrackers.
So that is fundamentally howreally accepting who and what

(04:09):
you are. Right? You can doanything but you can't do
everything all at once. And youmay need certain accommodations
and scheduling and a differentlifestyle that supports what
your nervous system likes to doinherently.

You mentioned starting meditation and energy
practices at a young age. Howdid these practices shape your
ability to manageneurodivergence before your
diagnosis?

So I recently have seen a lot of the things
that they do in kind of PT andOT and some of the like
primitive reflex type stuff withkids with autism and ADHD. And a
lot of it's full bodysynchronized cross body motion,
a lot of mirroring. And I mean Ihad a ton of martial arts
training. And that's if youthink about the different kicks

(04:55):
and punches and moves and theforms and things. I mean in some
ways it was a hyper focus but itwas a hyper focus that actually
integrated my body and mycoordination.
And it really wired the brainstem and the cerebellum and the
cortex together because therewas also emotional control
components and there's alsofocus components. I mean if
you're sparring and you're inthe ring and you start zoning

(05:16):
off, then you're gonna get hit.You get a very potent reminder
to pay attention. And I starteddoing basic energy work and
mindfulness practices to augmentmy ability to perform in that
arena. And it had a lot ofspillover in the rest of my
life.
One of the things that I don'tthink that we talk about from a

(05:36):
Western medical perspective isactually the function of- or the
energetic function of differentchemicals. So if you look at a
lot of the ADHD treatments froman energetic perspective, from a
like a traditional Chinesemedicine perspective, they
actually draw energy into thecentral channel. So into the
deep brain structures. And onething that I've found is that

(05:57):
even just bringing energy intothe center of the brain or in
the deep energy channels, it isvery centering and it increases
focus and it decreases scatter,very similar to how the
stimulants do. So I think one ofthe more energetic drivers of
autistic and ADHD symptoms isactually decreased energetic
pressure and not enough energyin the deep channels of the body

(06:18):
stimulating the deep structuresof the brain.
I think we were meant for a moreenergy rich environment like you
would get if you were living innature. A little bit of an ADHD
squirrel note, but there's alsosome evidence that the magnetic
field of the earth has actuallybeen decreasing. I mean that may
be actually be driving some ofthe symptomatology because that
was actually relatively recentevolutionarily. But basically,

(06:41):
the martial arts and themeditation that I did gave a lot
of energetic patterning and alot of neurologic patterning
that allowed me to prevent a lotof the neurologic fragmentation
and disintegration thattypically happens.

Paul Cruz (06:56):
How has your experience as a neurodivergent
parent influenced your approachto raising neurodivergent
children?

So from a personal perspective, from a
developmental perspective, Imean, you think you have your
triggers out and you think youhave your shit together until
you're responsible for anotherlittle ADHD gremlin. And so it
really tested my development.And sometimes I rose to the
occasion and sometimes I did notrise to the occasion. But it did
expose the weaknesses in my ownnervous system and places where

(07:28):
I needed to grow and integrateand heal. I mean, my parents did
the best they could.
And I love them dearly. They'vecontinued to become better
people. But their upbringingwasn't the best and they came
from a very sort ofauthoritarian model and that's
what I got. And it just itdoesn't work for anybody and it
works for us least. So I foundmyself kind of running the

(07:49):
authoritarian tapes, especiallyfor the first couple of years
where I was kinda having toremind myself, hey, maybe I
should try to connect.
Maybe I should focus on nervoussystem regulation. A big problem
that I see in a lot of theparenting coaching and a lot of
the parenting education is itreally needs to be parent first.
You can't expect your child tolearn emotional regulation and
to learn nervous systemintegration and to learn all of

(08:12):
these things if you were holdingdown all of the shit in your
system and you're two crossedwires away from exploding. So
the quickest way to make yourparenting easier is to clean up
your own brain, clean up yourown energy. And from that place,
it gets so much more easier tomanage.
I know my wife and I, and thisis unfortunately a vicious

(08:33):
feedback loop, there is a directcorrelation between how good
we're feeling and how regulatedour nervous system is and how
the kids behave. And I meanthey're just kind of bebopping
around. They're responding toour energy. They're responding
to our nervous system patterns.They're responding to our
conscious and unconsciousbehavior.
And they're learning andpatterning that. So the other

(08:55):
thing that I think I've reallytried to incorporate, just sort
of emphasizing self improvementand emphasizing connection and
nervous system regulation overpunishment. I think the other
big thing is, I mean Iintellectually understand
hierarchies. But at a core levelI'm like, I'm a person, you're a
person, you're not better thanme. And I think that's a very

(09:17):
autistic thing where there's aninherent sense of equality.
And my kids, even my 19 old hasthat. There is an inherent sort
of equality of self and just alack of internalization of
hierarchy. And I think that'ssomething they have to remember
with ADHD kids or autistic kidsthat they they see themselves as

(09:40):
equal to you. And you're gonnachange it. And that's why
basically the connection basedparenting and giving respect and
choice and having all of thehypnotic and the neurolinguistic
tools to direct them.
Because they're not gonna take aheavy hand. They're gonna dig in
their heels. They're gonnaproverbially raise their middle
fingers and get reactive.

What specific techniques or strategies have
you found most effective inimproving communication between
neurodivergent and neurotypicalindividuals?

So to answer that question, we have to think
about the nature ofcommunication and what's being
communicated. And the number onething that kind of fucks people
up is they pay attention to thewords and they over explain. So
if you look at all of thedifferent studies of
communication, body language isnumber one. Tone and tonality is
number two. And then the actualwords that we say is a very

(10:34):
small part of the communication.
So when we're communicating withanother individual, how they are
emotionally perceiving us, evenif they are not conscious of it,
is flavoring everything that wedo. So the first thing is
actually having your nervoussystem cleared out enough that
you can get in sync with theperson's nervous system that you
are talking to, that you'reconnecting with, so that you can

(10:56):
start to approximate theirworldview and their filters at
an unconscious level. And thatalso creates a, even if it's
transient, a sense of likingthat positively frames
everything that we're saying.Because your communication has
to go in their ear through allof their filters and then their
response has to come up throughall of their filters and out. So

(11:17):
if they're- even if you say thesame thing with the same exact
tone, it can be completelydifferent to someone based on
the emotional state that they'rein.
So the number one thing isbecause our nervous system is
usually so frazzled as anautistic, if we don't have tools
to manage our nervous system, weactually don't have the nervous
system flexibility to reallysync up with someone. Which

(11:40):
means that the big main areas ofcommunication are mismatching
our words. So we're not gettinga good connection at a body
level, at a nervous systemlevel. And then the other thing
is actually softening language.So a lot of autistic or ADHD
communication is it's blunt.
It's a little impulsive. It'swhy did you do that without a
lot of tonality or connection.And if you're in rapport, if

(12:03):
you're connected and you addsofteners, just so that I
understand, you know, what didyou mean by this? Or just so I
understand and create the bestoutcome, what is your
expectation for thisconversation? These things are
incredibly useful.
But it actually comes from beingable to synchronize at a
neurologic, at a body basedlevel. And then the language is
amazing. Sometimes you don'teven have to have the language

(12:26):
if there's enough unconsciouspredisposition towards liking
you. And this has been kind of ahot topic of study where there's
been numerous studies that haveshown that neurotypical people
generally without realizing itdon't like or have feelings of
discomfort around neurodivergentindividuals, especially autistic
individuals.

You discussed the concept of complex PTSD in
neurodivergent individuals. Whatsteps can someone take to begin
rewiring their brain and healingfrom emotional trauma?

So there's a number of recommendations that I
would make. Unfortunatelythere's nothing that's sort of
color by the numbers becausewe're all different individuals
with different traumas anddifferent triggers. The research
is clear. If you'reneurodivergent, especially
autistic, you're better at oneshot learning. You learn faster
but you also learn trauma andfear better.
And the signal of that tends tobe louder so it predisposes to

(13:24):
the CPTSD. So the number onething that I would really
recommend is that you findsomeone who is using a
neurologically based method thathas a positive focus to work
with. And once you've workedwith someone for a period of
time, it becomes much easier toapply the tools on yourself. But
it is much less likely that youwill actualize deep resolution

(13:45):
by yourself without anotherperson to anchor and hold your
nervous system and to basicallybe the catalyst for you. So the
other thing is having nervoussystem based tools, especially
ones that create positivefeelings at safety.
Some people can't use safetyjust because they've never
internally felt safe.Everybody's felt some kind of
pleasure. So pleasure derivedtechniques. I in a lot of the

(14:07):
work that I do, I actually,before I really go tackling a
lot of cooties, I actually buildup a positive core. So I build
up positive self image throughusing different hypnotic
regressive and energy techniquesto start putting together the
neur- the positively anchoredneural networks.
And once those are integratedand patched together, and
sometimes that can happen in onesession, you can actually start

(14:28):
to bring in chunks of neuralnetworks and neurology and
memories and emotions that areless than positive and start
discharging the emotionalcontent and integrating those
parts of the neurology so thatyou have access to it. So what I
would say is especially for aneurodivergent, a lot of the re
experiencing methods where youvividly re experience all of
your shit are not gonna be allthat effective and they're

(14:50):
actually have a fairly highlikelihood of re traumatizing
you. Working from a positiveplace, working with safety,
working with pleasure, andworking on getting the nervous
system a little bit more healthybefore you tackle all the
cooties, I think is superimportant. And that was one of
the big criticisms of a lot ofthe old school hypnotic
regression techniques where youfully immerse someone in a past

(15:12):
event. It can be amazinglyuseful, But you can usually only
do one of those in a session.
And for someone who is autistic,they have a bunch of micro
traumas. They might have agestalt of a trauma around
talking to people that evenfrom, you know, one lifetime,
we're not talking about anyweird spiritual past lifetime
stuff. But one lifetime, theymay have thousands of negative
memories at an unconscious levelof going up and doing a hi, how

(15:37):
are you conversational approach.So you have to have things that
sort of holographicallygeneralize and write a new
pattern and write a newexpectation.

Paul Cruz (15:47):
How can neurodivergent individuals
consciously develop masks thatfit both their personal identity
and the environment they are in?

So the first thing really for that is
becoming deeply aware of theircore. So a lot of this come
actually comes from some Russianpsychology research. This is one
of the things that they actuallydid for the 1970s Olympics where
they like, the Russians justkinda swept everything and and
won a bunch of gold medals. Oneof the things that they found is
anything that you identify withcontrols your behavior, and is

(16:20):
relatively fixed. And anythingthat you disidentify from that
you don't accept as identitybecomes much more malleable.
The first step is gettingacquainted with something deeper
than the mask and thepersonality. From that place,
you can start recognizing thatyou're basically just wearing a
bunch of clothes and most ofthem don't fit. It's basically
psychologically all the masksthat we acquire is like we

(16:41):
rolled around in a goodwilldumpster and came out. Kinda
like Dobby the hell self. Sothat's the first step.
Once we recognize that, we canbegin to shed things. One of the
big issues that people have withunmasking is a lot of our
neurology, our skills, ourmemories, our abilities are
architecturally tied to thoseneural networks that the masks
associate with or that areassociated with the mask. So

(17:03):
that basically is what causesthe skill regression is when you
move into your identity, there'syour core self. There's so
little of you that's actuallyassociated neurologically with
that, that people are like, Idon't know how to tie my shoes.
And I actually I actuallyremember doing this when I
started unmasking.
I basically I kept my doctormask active but like I had

(17:24):
trouble tying my shoes. Icouldn't cook. Like, it was like
real basic stuff. And I was,like, struggling with it for two
or three weeks until I figuredout how to actually take the
information out of the masks andand and wire it back in. And
that's a really common problemthat that people have.
So once you learn how tobasically reclaim the neural
networks and the energy and theinformation from the masks, you
start using them like blankcloth. And you start actually

(17:47):
developing the ability to takethem on and take them off in
different contexts and not havethem be randomly triggered. For
me a lot of it's actually tiedto clothes because I wear
different styles of clothes indifferent venues. And that's
kind of a big psychologictrigger for me. So I actually
think about all of the differentbehaviors and thought processes
and things that are tied towearing a bow tie, that are tied

(18:07):
to wearing a suit jacket, thatare tied to, you know, the polo
shirt and jeans and dad shoes.
So the first part is touching-the first step really is
touching something deeper. Thesecond step is starting- is
simultaneously shedding andreclaiming. And then the third
step really is consciouscrafting. And a lot of that is
done via mimicry because itworks very well. You can

(18:30):
actually- there's a bunch ofdifferent technique- technique
names for deep trenchidentification, the Rykov
technique.
You're using the Russianversions of it, where you're
actually embodying a personathat you have seen or perceived,
even if it's fictional. Yourother than conscious mind will
fill in details and if you giveyourself the right prompts
around it about, you know, beinguseful for you, only taking the

(18:51):
good parts, you can actuallypretty rapidly craft something
that's really elegant and fitswell with you, fits well with
your core and still lets you dothe things that you need to do
without kind of having kind ofthe weird, I saw a red dog or I
saw a dog with a red collar. Iget happy and I saw a Doberman
retriever and I get scared. Andevery time I eat ice cream, my

(19:12):
left footages and like otherweird kind of wiring that we
get.

I'm going to ask a question with regards to all
this. For somebody like me,let's say, does have no idea
about all this, can you explainwhat masking is and why is it
necessary to have that forneurodivergence?

So neurotypicals kind of have a
more fluid mask that they justcall their personality. So I
think the best definition ofmask that I can think of is a
selective presentation of self.So we are selectively presenting
a part of ourself. We areselectively activating a
neurology. Mhmm.
So the mask in and of itselfisn't bad. You wouldn't wear a

(19:57):
tuxedo in the rainforest. Youwouldn't wear a parka in the
Sahara. And we, especiallyautistics, they tend to become
stuck in the mask.

And Is the purpose of it to fit into society, is
that the idea behind it?

The purpose is survival. It seems to be a
survival trait. Survivaladaptation. Watching my children
and watching other children ofpeople that I know are either
autistic or ADHD, I see wildlyvarying amounts of behavior at a
young age, as young as eightmonths, between someone that
they know is safe versus someonethat they know is not safe.

(20:36):
Right.
So it's occurring very, veryyoung. And that's one of the
reasons why I think some of themajor divisions of mask in a
person are so commonlyunconscious.

So I suppose part of what you do with your
patients is to consolidate thosemasks into a more healthy
approach.

Right. Right. Because there's bits of memory
and there's bits of mask andthings that are healthy, that
are already functioning. So thatis what I use with their
intuition and their innerwisdom. I basically hopscotch
through those, connect themtogether, and then connect them
into their core sense of selfbeyond the personality.
And then I'm building andcrafting from there.

Paul Cruz (21:21):
What are some practical steps neurodivergent
individuals can take to recoverfrom burnout without needing
extended periods of rest?

And that one's kind of a tricky concept. It
depends on how far they are in aburnout. Because what happens is
most people will get into kindof a functional burnout where
they're kind of kick startingthemselves in the morning.
They're going into a hypersympathetic sort of stressed out
state and they kinda usedopamine and norepinephrine and
adrenaline and stuff to getthrough. And then they'll crash

(21:53):
at some point usually after theycome home and the brawl and the
social mask come off.
You know, they take their normalpeople suit off and they just go
and they're basically a lump onthe couch and then they're in
like a functional freeze. Sothat is kind of the hovering
cycle that a lot ofneurodivergence get into. At
that point, they're already in athey're already in burnout or

(22:14):
pre burnout. So from that place,implementing sleep quality is
huge, scheduling recoveryperiods is huge, and actually
wiring the brain together andmaking the neurologic processes
more efficient. So one of thethings that tends to happen with
the nerve divergence because thebrain circuitry fragments and
the volume gets really loudbecause we make more glutamate
and we actually have moreexcitatory receptors than

(22:36):
neurotypicals.
You wanna make sure the energyconsumption is very efficient.
And you wanna avoid energyconsuming things. So sometimes
that can be allowed and it'sdifferent for different people.
So if you're in a functionalspace and you start and you
still have the resources tostart to actually bring things
together and to create a coreand to start lessening the

(22:58):
amount of random emotionaldischarge and excitation that
you have and basically tuning upthe machine and making it more
helpful. That in addition tolimiting stressors.
So if you can try to find a jobthat has flexible work, you
know, work from home, gig work,anything where somebody really
owns your time, there is I don'tknow if it's conscious, I don't

(23:18):
know if it's unconscious, butthere's a bias in the Western
workforce to exploitneurodivergence because we do so
well at stress under pressurefor the most part, especially
ADHD individuals. You put alittle heat under us and we will
perform. And there's a lot ofrhetoric and things about, you
know, doing your 100% and reallygiving your all for a work and

(23:40):
job. That's part of the westernmythos and the western worth
ethic and that kind of thing.And a neurotypical nervous
system interprets that as about65 of your maximum effort.
Whereas we will interpret thatas a 110% of maximum effort and
we will work ourselves to death.So some of that's actually
recalibrating expectations. Noweverybody else is actually
working to about 65%. They'reworking till they feel it a

(24:01):
little bit and then, you know,that's it. If someone is in a
deeper state, if someone iscatatonic, that's very hard to
come out of yourself unless youalready have the skill set for
it.
So once you're to the pointwhere you can't kick start your
system, you actually have tohave somebody to work with where
you're where they're actuallybuilding resources for you and

(24:21):
you're gonna need a little bitmore time for recovery. And not
an official recommendation. Alot of neurodivergent
individuals have found a lot ofuse in either microdosing or
macrodosing psychedelics. And wecan have like a whole two hour
discussion on that. As anemergency measure, I'm not

(24:42):
condoning anyone do anythingillegal, it's something to think
about.

So Doctor. Wells, you've created a program called
Connection Craft. What has beenthe most rewarding feedback or
outcome you've seen fromindividuals who have
participated in that program?

Kinda close to home. But the- what became
Inneressence Activation andConnection Craft in a lot of my
materials is actually how mywife and I recovered from our
burnout and from our childhoodtrauma and medical training
trauma. And so that has set thestage for us to have a really
amazing juicy life and juicyrelationship. And yeah,

(25:22):
sometimes we have bad days andsometimes we get in bad loops.
But very selfishly, I created itto kind of maximize our joy and
our pleasure and kind of all thegood parts of our relationship.
The other thing that I findreally rewarding is the
transformation. We were actuallytalking about this a little bit
before the interview. One of thebig problems that I have in

(25:47):
marketing is I really have totitrate to not what I can
actually do and achieve withpeople but what they think is
possible, which is usually muchmuch lower. One, I guess the
moment that I love the most isreally when somebody hits that
point where they're not justtrying to get out of suffering.

(26:10):
They're not just trying to beremedial.
They're not trying to make theirlife suck less. But they're
actually making- they actuallyget into the mindset of the
space of where they're trying tocreate more passion, more joy,
more pleasure. They're trying toconnect more with people.
They're trying to connect morewith their kids. They're trying
to bring the warm fuzzies backinto their relationship.

(26:30):
A lot of individuals, a lot ofaudiologists actually, it's
pretty much everybody. Once thephenylethylalanine from a new
relationship wears off, that'skind of the puppy love, feel
good, obsessive chemical thatkick starts long term
neurologically based oxytocinbonding. Once the phenylalanine
wears off in two to six months,most people's relationship

(26:52):
quality kind of plummets. Andgetting people in the mindset
where they're really in a juicyway like enjoying food, enjoying
sensory experiences, enjoyingrelationship experiences. That's
really what I've found to be themost rewarding.
And sometimes it's kindasurprising because people come
to me for, you know, becausethey wanna be better in business

(27:13):
or they wanna connect with theirkids a little bit more. Then
suddenly they're not poundingsix cups of coffee a day or
they're not having to smoke weedall the time or they realized
that they started to socialize.I mean, are all really wonderful
things.

Paul Cruz (27:33):
How can neurodivergent individuals
balance the process of unmaskingwith the need to adapt to
societal expectations?

Say, ideally this is done in a setting where
you have flexible work thatdoesn't require a lot of social
interaction. And that's kind ofthe ideal. So there's a lot of
different strategies andelements that would be important
to it. And one is just having aefficient process. So if you
look at a lot of the unmaskingmaterials, it's like find your
true self, let go of all themask which is great.

(28:03):
I'm all for that. The problem isthey let go of all of their
neurology and their skills andabilities that are associated
with the mask. And they don'thave tools to basically make it
efficient. The other thanconscious mind only has two
speeds when it comes to changework. So it has warp drive and
it has turtle.
And basically the turtle ismaking micro changes at warp

(28:23):
speed because the other thanconscious mind gets bored. It
does. So if you have anefficient effective process
where you're moving from onesort of phase of stability
through the instability ofchange to another stable place
within a short amount of time,you know, a few hours. And then,
you know, a few more hours forrecovery or a good night's sleep

(28:44):
for recovery. That's how you canmake pretty massive incremental
changes while still being ableto kind of reforge or reshape a
personality mask to go out anddo the things that you need to
do.
I mean it would be lovely ifevery gender identity and
neurotype and way of thinkingwas supported and everybody made

(29:08):
an effort to accept andcommunicate with everybody. But
by and large the masks arenecessary because how people
feel about us and how theyperceive us directly affect our
income. They directly affectwhat opportunities they have.
They directly affect pretty muchevery quality of aspect of our
life. So the more skill that wecan bring to the mask, the

(29:29):
better for us.
And the more that we canactually- and the more that we
can create opportunities to workless, to have more time to
ourself. I mean, you're workingsixty, seventy hours a week at a
public facing job, you'respending most of your time in
your mask. So you have kind of afew hours each day where you're
not masked unless you have towear the mask of a parent or
caregiver which is kind of thesandwich generation. And

(29:51):
parenting is a mask. So you mayend up with a very small amount
of unmask time.
And one of the things that I'venoticed especially about
autistics, and I don't thinkthis is true of ADHD, but when
autistics unmask, a lot of timestheir facial expressions go like
completely flat. And there's avery little movement around the
eyes, very little movementaround a lot of the facial
muscles. And I think thatexpression in the face, I think

(30:15):
a lot of that's learned. So thebig thing is have a good method.
If you can, plan for space inthe life to do it.
Plan for extra rest. Plan forintegration periods. Take as
much demand off of you as youcan. And then mean, the other
thing is then do whatever amountof change and transformation
that you can do in a sitting, doit fast. The other than

(30:36):
conscious mind likes fast.
The body always has to playcatch up. The brain, the wiring,
the nervous system has to playcatch up. But the change itself
actually happens pretty quickly.

How can neurodivergent individuals use
spirituality to strengthen theirsense of self and navigate
suicidal challenges?

Suicidal or societal? Societal. Both of
those would be big topics. Andthere's a lot of research on
sort of the suicidal challengesthing. I'm just gonna kinda let
that go.
Maybe you can hand me back foranother podcast. Yeah. But I
think it's important to have adeeper sense of identity that's
beyond the personality that'sbeyond our neurology. Because I

(31:19):
don't feel like there's autisticsouls or un autistic souls. Just
like I don't think there'sgendered souls.
At some level there is auniversality of polarity and
spectrum. And being able to feelthat, I think it connects you
with people that are different.Tends to give you more grace,
more compassion not only withyourself but also with other
people. There's something verypractical about being able to

(31:42):
feel a deepness to your humanitythat's beyond your shape and
form and neurology and beingable to feel and perceive that
in other people. And also partof my spirituality is inherently
tied up into the flow of energythrough nature and myself.
And I mean there's directcorrelations between neurologic
function and the amount ofenergy flow and the awareness in

(32:05):
different energy channels andenergy centers. So that's one of
the earliest ways that Iactually learned how to shift
gears in my own brain was bydirecting energy in these
different locations. Kind of ata basic level, you want a basic
example, is if you bringawareness and energy from the
tip of your tongue down to yourperineum, kind of in between the

(32:27):
genitals and the anus, and youlet that space expand and
breathe, that is your conceptionvessel that's tied in with the
parasympathetic nervous system.That's the rest and digest
setting. And really relaxingthat helps you enter into a
vegetative slow state.
And if you bring awareness fromkind of the roof of your mouth
up around the head to the backand you let that breathe, expand

(32:49):
and energize and maybe even coneforward a little bit, that's
your active channel. That'saware of the environment. That's
processing. That's movingforward. And I didn't learn at
it as the Hakalau state, that'swhat they call it in Huna.
But kind of the other thingthat's real big is it's really
hard to be inside your head andhearing voices and beating

(33:10):
yourself up if you have adiffuse open focus awareness
where your visual informationand your proprioceptive
information are kind ofsynesthetically blending And
you're very aware of theenvironment. In NLP, call it the
uptime trance. I learned it Ilearned it from my martial arts
instructor when I was youngbecause it's what he taught us
to fight in. I've heard thatthey teach police this. So

(33:34):
that's those are all spiritualtechniques that have been really
useful.
And it was something that I kindof I realized when I was growing
up that I needed to stay in thisstate because otherwise I would
get kind of off into internalmonologues and head loops and
stuff that wasn't healthy. Andit also helped me pay attention
to people. So it increased mysensory acuity and my

(33:54):
observational ability of peoplesignificantly. The paper that we
were talking about before, oneof the really interesting
conclusions that the authorscame to, and this is the Intense
World Theory review paper fromDecember 2010. One of the things
that they actually concluded isthat a lot of the communication
difficulties that autistics faceis they hyper attend to a very

(34:18):
small amount of signals thatcome from people and then
usually associate positive orusually associate less than
positive connotations to them.
So instead of actually beingaware of all the body language,
all the gestures, all theenergy, they focus on one
element and then decide thatit's bad. They might like focus
on somebody's eyebrows or theymight focus on and become
reactive to certain pitches andtones of voice and that kind of

(34:41):
thing.

So you've had an opportunity obviously to go to
clinics and interact withmedical staff. Do you find
they're equipped to deal withneurodivergent or No. Okay. What
would you recommend? How wouldwe bring about that change or
that awareness in there?
Is that something they have toinclude in the programs or how

(35:06):
would you approach it?

So this is a big thing that I would actually
like the business of ConnectionCraft to do is actually to at
some point move into physiciantraining. I have kind of been
met with a lot of resistance toit. But basically, there's I
think two big factors that arereally preventing good
communication between providersand neurodivergent individuals.

(35:28):
And this is also true ofhealthcare providers and queer
individuals and other peoplethat are very different from
healthcare provider. Is numberone, they don't have a model of
connecting nervous system tonervous system.
They don't have good highquality language. So they they
don't get into rapport withpeople. And it's gotten worse

(35:49):
since we've gotten computers andkind of gone into paper charts
and everything is there's verylittle orientation and attention
to the patient when you're inthe room. And I think that is
that is the biggest thing, isactually being able to attend to
the person that's there,synchronize with them, and ask
the right questions in the rightway to get connection, to get
safety, to get the informationthat you need. The big, big

(36:13):
thing that I'm seeing isbasically just in general a lack
of connection.
It's also coupled with the factthat when we're in medical
school, I mean, it wasn't until2014, the medical community
accepted that you could haveboth autism and ADHD. They
thought that those werediagnoses of exclusion. So the
predominant model of medicaleducation, and I mean this is
some of the reason why Icouldn't accept that I was

(36:35):
autistic for a long time, isit's basically we look at the
disruptive white male child inthe back of a classroom. That is
most providers' model of autism.So poor eye contact, muted
voice, frequent outbursts,behavioral issues.
And those things might be commonin that population But it

(36:57):
doesn't really take into accountall of the expression of the
nonpathologic manifestations ofan autistic genetic brain and
core. Women seem to have less ofa problem with neural
fragmentation than their malecounterparts. So they're better
at masking. And it may bebecause there's kind of a boys
will be boys and there's a moretolerant attitude. Women, if

(37:17):
they are societally disruptive,get a lot worse treatment than
men.
And that's true also in the Westof people of color as well. So a
white kid's more likely to bediagnosed with Autistic Spectrum
Disorder whereas a black kid ismore likely to be diagnosed with
oppositional defiant disorder orany sort of sociopath associated

(37:39):
disorders even if the behavioris completely the same.

Paul Cruz (37:45):
What are your long term goals for expanding
programs like Connection Craftand Inner Essence Activation to
reach more neurodivergentindividuals?

Basically, I I have really four different areas
of training that I want to rollroll out with people. And I
really wanna focus on workingwith individuals who want to
move past just a remedial state.I really wanna work with people
that are not just not just wantto suffer less, but actually
want to generate positive thingsin their life. So I have the

(38:19):
empowerment track and I have arelationship track up now that
are two of my main areas offocus. And and basically the
empowerment one is more or lesshow you wire your brain up.
How you dissolve your masks. Howyou integrate all of that
material. How you consciouslycreate the mask. And then what
language and social skills doyou need to move skillfully
throughout the world. And thenkind of depending on how many

(38:41):
people I get and how far theywanna go, there's always more
that I can teach with that.
The other things that areimportant to me are
relationships and family andkids. So taking those skills
into those contexts of beingable to meld with people, being
able to reprogram your thoughts,your beliefs, your neurology, so
that you can be a more cohesivefamily unit. And ex you know,

(39:04):
within the setting of more ofthe adult relationship
education, how do you maximizepleasure? How do you maximize
connection? I don't know thatanyone can give their child a
completely trauma freeupbringing.
But how do you be the leasttraumatic parent possible? How
do you really craft anexperience for your children
where their neurology isblossoming on their agenda, not

(39:27):
just yours, but they're stillgetting the skills and the
abilities that they need tosurvive the world? So that's
probably the next thing is moreof a family edition of
connection craft and interactionactivation that I wanna roll
out. And the other thing ishealthcare providers. Being able
to train healthcare providersabout the nature of the autistic

(39:49):
mind.
And being able to train them inways of improving their own
neurology, helping with a lot oftheir medical training trauma
because we all have it, everysingle one of us. And bringing
their neurology back into astate of wholeness and
flexibility so that they candynamically with the people that
are in front of them. And thereare unfortunately there are a

(40:10):
lot of societal and structuralbarriers to that in place
because in medicine we've reallystarted to take a very
production driven model, a veryfactory. It's a weird hybrid of
sort of patient satisfaction,customer service, and
productivity where we're tryingto make people as happy as we
can as quickly as they can andshove them out the door. And

(40:33):
that's not really compatiblewith good communication or good
care.

Paul Cruz (40:39):
To wrap things up, we have introduced a new segment in
our podcast called theNeurodiversity Myth Busting
Segment. We hope to encourageour listeners to submit their
responses to the six myths foundon our website at
neurodiversityvoices.com and wemay feature you on our next
podcast episode. And so we willask our guest speaker to give us

(41:03):
his thoughts on one of the mythsas well. So Doctor. Wells, the
first myth is neurodiverseindividuals are less
intelligent.
Second, it's neurodiverseindividuals cannot succeed in
the workplace. Third, it'sneurodiverse individuals lack
social skills. Fourth,neurodiversity is a disorder
that needs to be cured. Fifth,neurodiverse individuals are all

(41:25):
the same. And sixth isneurodiverse individuals are
always introverted and prefer tobe alone.

I feel like I could talk about all of those. I
think probably the one that I'mthe most passionate about is
neurodiversity is a disorderthat needs to be cured. And if
we look at just the rates ofgenetics of neurodiversity in
different populations, it's toohigh to not have been a survival
function and good for tribalunits and good for the community

(41:53):
at some point. This is a littlebit dated of a book but there
was a ADHD researcher thatactually proposed that ADHD
individuals would make greathunters. Their senses are hyper
attuned, easily able to andimpulsively follow small bits of
information.
They can suppress their ownhunger signals. They tend to be

(42:14):
very hyper focused and can gofor hours and hours and hours.
And these are all things thatwould be great to have a
population in a tribal communitythat would do that. I think the
autistics were usually theshamans and the medicine people
and the people that studied thestars and the seasons and
recorded the information andsmoothed and regulated the
community. Because we do haveinherent justice, we try to make

(42:37):
things good for everyone.
So I haven't found the paper forthis. It makes sense. But they
were actually looking atcorrelations between the amounts
of autism in differentpopulations and kind of what
genetic markers ofneurodiversity were in
populations. And populationsthat were heavily fundamentalist
and had a high rate of burningwitches or burning or basically

(43:00):
killing people that weredifferent, they tended to have
lower rates of neurodiversitygenetics. They tended to have
higher rates of neuro typicalgenetics.
And I think fundamentally thatneurodiversity and especially
autism and maybe even some ofthe associated ones, having
people in your population withthose genetics actually was a

(43:21):
survival advantage for the tribebecause they bring different
powers of consciousness andawareness and processing to the
community. And they also tend toalso have different chronotypes.
So the ADHD tend to be yournight owls. Your autistics can
go either way where they eitherstay up super late or they're up
super early. And there is asurvival advantage even just in

(43:42):
that and just having differentchronotypes in a tribal setting
where there's always somebodyawake paying attention to stuff.
So I guess probably the thingthat I am most adamant about
expressing is that there isstrong and compelling evidence
that a lot of the pathology thatneurodivergent individuals
experience is a direct result ofWestern culture. And

(44:04):
neurodiversity ain't broke. Ourculture is. And it's even
causing neurotypical problem.It's even causing neurotypicals
issues at this point.

Thank you, Doctor. Wells, for sharing your story
and expertise with us today.Before we leave you, is there
anything you want to leave youraudience with?

So my number one thing would be don't settle.
You are wonderful. You arebrilliant. There's something
amazing inside you and you cando so much more than even you
believe in. And you just have togive that person a chance.
Thank you.

That was beautiful.

Paul Cruz (44:38):
Thank you. Doctor. Wells. Thank you for joining us
and gaining insight from Doctor.Craig Wells, a dedicated
advocate for the neurodivergentcommunity.
Through his expertise andinnovative programs like
Connection Craft and InnerEssence Doctor. Wells continues
to inspire individuals toembrace their true selves,

(45:01):
optimize their potential andbuild meaningful connections.
His work reminds us all to neversettle and to craft lives that
are truly extraordinary.

That's all for today's episode of
Neurodiversity Voices podcast.Thank you so much for tuning in
and being part of this importantconversation.

Paul Cruz (45:24):
We hope you found today's discussion insightful
and inspiring. Remember, everyvoice matters and together we
can create a more inclusive andunderstanding world for
neurodivergent individuals.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a
rating and review on yourpodcast platforms and share it
with your friends, family, oranyone who might benefit from
these conversations.

Paul Cruz (45:48):
If you have any questions, ideas, or stories
you'd like to share, please feelfree to fill out our listener
survey form or even apply to beour guest speaker on our
website. We'd love to hear fromyou.

Well, until next time, take care, stay curious,
and keep celebrating the beautyof diverse minds.

Paul Cruz (46:09):
Thanks for listening to the Neurodiversity Voices
podcast.

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