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April 4, 2025 16 mins

How does dysregulation impact creativity and our special interests? And what does this mean to autistic individuals (like me) who might already be struggling to identify their emotional states and stressors?

In this episode, I discuss my own experience with dysregulation and creativity and share insights from autistic blogger and therapist Karen Sheriff and podcaster and neuropsychologist Dr. Theresa Regan

The specific media resources mentioned in this episode are:

To read about the changes I made as a direct result of my dysregulation event please see What Writing on the Spectrum Means to Me

To get all of my media via email please subscribe to Writing on the Spectrum (always free) to get follow the podcast only, please follow in your favorite podcast app.

Please note:  If you need closed captioning, please listen via the podbean app or through my site: AutisticPOV.com

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EPISODE 8 TRANSCRIPT:

If your podcast provider cuts off the transcript, you can see the full transcript for this episode at AutisticPOV.com

Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hi everybody, this is Barbara Graver. Thank you for joining me today on Autistic POV. Today we're going to talk about dysregulation and creativity because this is

0:32 something that has been an issue for me and I think it's an issue for a lot of autistic people who are creative. And some of this I'm going to base on a recent series by Teresa Regan, who is a neuropsychologist who has a podcast called Autism in the Adult. Dr. Regan is not autistic, 0:58 but she does have a really strong background in autism and neurobiology and a son who's autistic. And I like her podcast. So she did a series on self-care, actually, that I thought was relevant to our topic of dysregulation in relationship to creativity. And she talked a lot about escape as a coping mechanism. And essentially, 1:23 she was talking about special interests, but also other escape behaviors, such as a comforting environment or person, things along that line. And she had a kind of different take on that, I think, than I do. She said that engaging in these kind of coping mechanisms tend to make us smaller. 1:44 And I'm not sure that she means that across the board. I mean, she did say they're not detrimental necessarily, but she does, she personally feels they're limiting. I don't always agree with that. And the reason I don't agree with that is because I personally feel that my own special interests are actually expansive. 2:08 I feel that my world has expanded through my special interests. So we're not exactly on the same page, I don't think, with the nature of the escape. But she did make some good points about it, and she listed some interesting strategies. And she talked about how autistics might not know 2:33 what's going on inside of us which is certainly true and it seems kind of counterintuitive because we are very sensitive but at the same time we don't notice certain things we might not notice when physical things for example like
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Transcript

Episode Transcript

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(00:00):
[Music]

(00:06):
welcome to Autistic POV my name is
Barbara Graver and I started this
podcast to share a bit of my journey as
a late diagnosed
autistic hi everybody this is Barbara
Graver thank you for joining me today on
Autistic POV today we're going to talk

(00:27):
about
dysregulation and creativity because
this is this is something that has been
an issue for me and I think it's issue
for a lot of autistic people who are
creative and some of this I'm going to
base on a recent series by Teresa Rean
who is a

(00:49):
neurossychologist who has a pod podcast
called Autism in the Adult dr regan is
not autistic but she does have a really
strong background in autism and
neurobiology and a son who's autistic
and I like her
podcast so she did a series on self-care

(01:10):
actually that that I thought was
relevant to our topic of dysregulation
in relationship to
creativity and she talked a lot
about escape as a coping me mechanism
and essentially she was talking about
special interests but also other escape
behaviors such as a comforting
environment or person things along that

(01:33):
line and she had a kind of different
take on that I think than I do she said
that engaging in these kind of coping
mechanisms tend to make us smaller and
I'm not sure that she means that across
the board i mean she did say they're not
uh detrimental necessarily but she does
she personally feels they're limiting i

(01:55):
I don't always agree with that and the
reason I don't agree with that is
because I personally feel that my own
special interests are actually
expansive i feel that I my world has
expanded through my special interests
so we're not exactly on the same page I

(02:17):
don't think with the with the nature of
the escape but she did make some good
points about it and she listed some
interesting
strategies and she talked about how
autistics might not know what's going on
inside of us which is certainly true and

(02:38):
it seems kind of counterintuitive
because we are very sensitive but at the
same time uh we don't notice certain
things we might not notice when physical
things for example like when we're cold
or hungry and and we also have a hard
time or at least in my case I have a
hard time
identifying uh emotional states so Dr

(03:02):
regan talks about
recognizing when we are about to be put
into a fight flight or freeze kind of
situation and she looks at special
interests or these kind of escape
mechanisms as a flight reaction and and

(03:23):
I think she's absolutely right in this i
think that's absolutely
true again I think that there's a value
to it but I also think it can be
problematic and and I've had that that
issue myself i
recently and I talk about this a little
on the blog I I

(03:44):
recently finished my fiction story my
vampire story and I sent it to Kindle to
read it on Kindle and it's when I did I
hated it it was kind of the equivalent
when I was a kid my father almost
everybody in my family were artists and
my father whenever I'd finish something
he'd look at it and he'd say "Turn it

(04:05):
upside down." And so you turn it upside
down and you automatically see it just
jogs your brain so that you
automatically see everything that's
wrong with it it it works i don't know
why but it does work and the same is
true of writing if you write something
and then you print it out or read it on

(04:27):
another device you automatically see
things that your mind was just kind of
skipping over before so I sent this
story to Kindle and I was not happy with
it and I thought it was done and it was
kind of upsetting and I decided you know
I don't think I really want to write
fiction at all i thought I just want to

(04:48):
write about spiritual topics because I
did that in the mystic review and I was
successful with it and I should just
write a book a book about dreams and do
the mystic review and that's it and I
decided why am I even doing a podcast on
autism and creativity if this is the
direction I'm going so I actually took
the episodes and this podcast down i

(05:11):
redid the site i put up some old old
media I had on metaphysical topics and
and I decided this was what I was going
to do so it's an interesting reaction
and I think in this case this is
absolutely a stressed induced flight
reaction and a lot of creative people

(05:34):
not only autistic creatives but a lot of
creative people in general I think
subuccumb to this but as autistics we're
more likely uh to fall into this pattern
because we do many of us do routinely
escape escape from stress through our
special interests for me ever since I

(05:55):
was a little kid projects were my coping
mechanism and continues into adulthood
and I'm grateful for this trade it's
it's helped me to to do things like the
blog and writing and things in my home
that I probably wouldn't have
accomplished without this drive to

(06:16):
always be engaged in a project but there
is a flip side to it because it's not
always
logical and when I decided to completely
stop writing fiction and talking about
it and talking about autism and
everything around that I tore it down
and tearing things down is

(06:38):
not that's that's not a good thing
usually that's Clarissa Piccola Estes in
her book women who run with the wolves
talks about the goddess media who when
she was disappointed in love killed her
children and Dr estee says that a lot of

(06:59):
women are like that with their creative
projects when they go wrong they destroy
them so that's what I did but I wasn't
just doing that only i was doing that
because I wanted to escape into a new
creative project and luckily I came to
my senses and I reversed all that i mean

(07:22):
I I lost couple days of my life doing
that but luckily I did but my point here
is that
it's an escape mechanism that could be
good or bad i don't think it makes us
smaller i don't think it's necessarily a
limitation i think it can be expansive i

(07:44):
think it could open up the world i think
it can take us wonderful places but I do
acknowledge that it can be destructive
too so I launched into this brand new
project i escaped my stress and my
disappointment by launching myself into
this new project that was going to be
all about metaphysics and dream work
which is a special interest of mine and

(08:05):
always will be but it's not it's not the
central thing it's not what I want to be
the central thing so but I did it and it
was interesting because I read a really
good blog article about that and I will
put I will put the name of the
author in the show notes but her name is

(08:28):
Karen Sheriff and she has a blog on
Substack that I read and she expanded on
something Dr rean said dr regan said
"When we escape like this we should look
at it for clues clues about what is
going on in our inner states." And I
thought that that Karen took it a little

(08:49):
further because she said how she looks
at it is in terms of let's investigate
and I love that and she had had an
experience where she had put a post on
Tik Tok I believe and it had gone viral
so she was constantly getting pinged
about this post and trying to keep up
with responding and and dealing with all

(09:10):
that and it was disregulating for her
she got very stressed and she took down
all her social media and she started
thinking about how she wanted to move I
think to Devon she wanted to move
essentially to the country and she was
actually like thinking about this so
this she was in a flight reaction she
was trying to escape and she said when

(09:32):
she kind of came to her senses she
thought well let's investigate and I
love that approach and she she looked at
what she was going to do almost the way
you would look at a dream which which I
think is brilliant and and it's along
the lines of what Dr regan was saying
but in a in a little more expansive way
I thought and so she said to herself

(09:54):
"Well what does Devon or wherever she
was going to move represent?" Like it
represents peace and freedom and
solitude and and all these things that
she was lacking all these things that
this situation with the social media
blowing up and not being able to handle
it uh she needed these things so it made
sense to escape to that and I thought

(10:16):
wow that's kind of what happened to me
when I decided to take down all my
autism media and all my things about
creativity and fiction writing it was
because I wanted to launch myself into
completely focusing on
metaphysics and there's nothing wrong
with focusing on metaphysics i mean I

(10:38):
kept a metaphysical blog The Mystic
Review for since 2010 and I still write
in it and it's a special interest and it
always will be but since I got my autism
diagnosis spirituality is not the
overriding theme of my life and it's
kind of like and I've mentioned this
before but Sarah Gibbs in her book Drama

(10:59):
Queen talks about how relationships were
the overriding theme of her life until
she got her autism diagnosis and then
she realized that she was looking for
answers in relationships with men and
now she had the answer which was autism
so she didn't have to do that anymore
and a similar thing happened to me with
spirituality i'm still very interested

(11:22):
in metaphysics i still write down my
dreams i attend a dream group i'm really
into young and dreams and and it'll
always be a part of me but it's not it
doesn't define me anymore it's not who I
am it's not the place where I'm trying
to find the answers i mean dream
guidance yes I think it's it's a really
good compensating mechanism for
autistics well maybe do an episode on

(11:44):
that but it's not it's not who I am
anymore so going off to to chuck all my
old media and escape into this
metaphysical media was was an odd move
it was a dysfunctional disregulated
thing to do so I thought let's
investigate you know what does that mean

(12:05):
what does metaphysics mean and it
happened to mean the things that I
needed it and these were things this was
all about inner states this is about
doing things in the external world to
try to regulate our inner state and this
is something that most autistic people
have had to learn to do for themselves

(12:27):
because the the neurotypical world I I
think the neurotypical world is very
regulating for neurotypicals but it's
not very regulating for us so that's
part of the reason in my opinion we we
develop special interests and that we
have this really brilliant beautiful way
of escaping that can get out of hand and

(12:48):
I think it's good to be aware of that so
I I found all of this material really
interesting and and I think it's
something to be aware of as creatives i
have personally like cognitive therapy
it's great in theory but it's personally
and if you like it I don't want to
discourage you but it's personally never
worked for me i go from 0 to 60 in the

(13:12):
blink of an eye um my escape mechanism
of plunging into pro projects is
something that happens almost
instantaneously for me i don't think
I'll ever learn to like nip it in the
bud but that doesn't mean you can't wake
up and think what am I doing where am I

(13:33):
and why and I think it's the why that's
important so being creative is stressful
it's very stressful there's all kinds of
things mixed up in it like perfectionism
and being criticized and and fear of
being seen there's so many things that
particularly to autistic individuals who
may have history with being criticized

(13:55):
or bullied or dismissed or made to feel
all kinds of terrible things it's tough
for us it's tough to do things and to
put it out there and it it's not
anything that you should beat yourself
up for if you find it disregulating
because at times it will be it just will
and sometimes when you get disregulated
and you escape into like some crazy kind

(14:19):
of direction you didn't expect to go in
you discover something amazing and
that's happened to me before but
sometimes you're just kind of making a
mistake you're kind of leaving something
important behind and I think it's
important to be able to see that to pull
yourself back so that's what I wanted to
talk about today i'm sure there's more
to say on this and more to say on escape

(14:42):
mechanisms more to say on stress but
this is what just one small aspect of it
that I felt applied to me so I made the
decision that from now on when I find
myself changing directions
unexpectedly I'm going to just stop and
say "Let's investigate and and see what
might have precipitated it and see why I

(15:05):
might have chose that thing." And then
take that insight and kind of factor it
back into what I'm doing which I I think
is what I did i realized through that
episode I realized that I was pushing
myself too hard i needed to dial things
back i needed to adjust my expectations

(15:28):
and my own writing ability i I needed to
take steps that doesn't mean something
like that will never happen again
probably the first bad Amazon review I
get on this story I'm going to freak out
and take it off Amazon and but
eventually probably put it back up but
my point is there's insight to be had
from these things it's it's not a total

(15:50):
waste of time and I think it's important
that we look at it and there are times
it does hurt us i still don't think it
makes us smaller but I think it does
hurt us at times so that's what I wanted
to talk about today i know it's kind of
quick episode but I hope it was helpful
and I hope to see you again next time
i'm doing the podcast now on the first

(16:13):
and third Fridays of the month so I will
see you guys again in the third Friday
of April and until then this is Barbara
Graver of Autistic POV and thank you
very much for listening
[Music]
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