Um, I'm trying to disrupt the systems that are barriers for inclusion, uh, and particularly for neuro inclusion. I have a very personal stake in, in that game. Um, but really given my outsized artistic sense of justice, I need to disrupt anything that's just not fair.

So I, um, I did a, a master's in, uh, applied positive psychology and I was, um, formally identified as autistic and A DHD at around that same time. Um, and we were talking about. Positive business practices and one of the lecturers redefined disruption for us as modifying a system that's, that's not working to be better. And I think the veterinary sector is full of systems that can be improved for both. For, for both, um, ease of being human, and specifically for ease of being a neurodivergent human. And we have some preliminary data from all around the world that tells us that veterinary sector is filled with neurodivergent people at at least twice the rate of general population.

Scientists

And I love, I'm a data nerd. I love, I love data. Um, or data as you guys might say. Um,

Okay. Cool Data. So, um, so I was really excited by that too. And we started some preliminary polling in Australia through the veterinary Kaleidoscope, which is our, um, peak diversity, equity, and inclusion body for the veterinary sector. Um, and our initial polling is sitting around 40% neurodivergence. So, um, which I think is probably accurate and I have a strong suspicion from spending quite a lot of time as an emergency and critical care vet that in emergency and possibly specialty practice, we might be sitting at around 70% neurodivergence.

Yeah, look, when you've, when you've, um. When you're aware of what you're looking for and you stand on the hospital floor in an emergency practice, um, it's very, very easy to, um, do a peer review of the room and, and, um, make a whole heap of, of, I guess, um, educated guesses as to the traits of Neurodivergence that you're seeing. Um, and I think I'm probably being conservative with the 70%.

Although I have had my fair share of emergency, itchy dogs say it's usually an emergency 'cause the owner can't sleep more than anything else.

yeah. Hold, hold, hold on the podcast right.

I think this is an all too

familiar story for, for neuro divergent team members, um, in any veterinary setting is that. We are traumatized into thinking that we are the problem, that we are too much or we are not enough, that we show too much emotion or not enough emotion that we um, uh. Need all the attention or we shy away from social situations and all of those things, including the things that are opposite ends of a spectrum of behavior. Um, I've been told I was the problem because of during, during the early part of my career, and I guess the idea that, that a person can be a problem for asking too many questions and asking not enough questions. It doesn't make logical sense. And I think that's where the trauma comes, especially for autistic brains that need logic to flow. Um, and given that many neurodivergent, people are very direct communicators, there's more trauma around that when you're told, oh, if you don't dunno, just ask. And then when you ask, you are told that you're making people uncomfortable because you're asking too many questions. So all of those experiences, I guess, um. As a relatively recent grad, drove me out of working for somebody else and I started my own practice six years after I graduated and ran that practice for, you know, just over a decade. Um, loved it. Got to do things the way I wanted. Got to explain PE to people what I wanted them to understand. Um, and. was a really good experience until I just burnt out. Um, and as I understand it now, it was autistic burnout. It wasn't, um, compassion fatigue or, or veterinary burnout. Um, but I just couldn't people anymore. So I actually sold my practice and went and got a job stacking shelves in a supermarket. Um, during the middle of the night, and I did that for a whole year. And if anybody who has a brain like mine ever needs a working holiday, it was so good. It was like my chaos gremlin got to come out and play 'cause there were boxes to tear up. And, and then also my lovely ordered autistic brain got to line things up beautifully on a shelf. So it was like, and I got to wear my headphones because the store was closed. It was, it was a really nice. A nice break and it wasn't feasible long term. Um, and after that, I went into emergency practice because I discovered that I was a night owl and I liked getting up in the middle of, of the night and I actually did my best work in the middle of the night. And that's not uncommon for neuro urgent people. We often have really delayed sleep wake cycles and there's good data about that. Um, and what I discovered from that experience was that. If I stop trying to comply, if I stop trying to be who I think other people want me to be, I'm much better at all the things I do. And so the idea that I was the problem isn't true. And it's not true for any of the neuro divergent people who are listening. I want you to know you are not the problem. The systems that exclude us and ask us to act in inauthentic ways are the problem.

that's so true.

and, and me too. And once again, I agree that, that sometimes it's not safe. And masking and unmasking needs to be something that we both, that we feel safe to do. Um, given our assessment of the environment. Most of us are trained very early on that there is no safe place to unmask. And learning how to recognize that you can do that and when you can do that, is a whole skillset. And we often need to be taught how to do that. And finding, um, a therapist who's a neurodivergence affirming therapist, and especially if they have lived experience of neurodivergence themselves, can be so incredibly helpful to learn. What's actually you? What's the mask and how do I assess whether it's safe to take that mask off even a little in the context that I'm currently operating in?

Yeah. 'cause it's hard. It's, it's not something, I guess, you know, we, we think we, if we think about it in terms of, of, you know, the science of behavior, we've been conditioned into a state of learned helplessness that says it's never safe to be yourself. Um, and we know from the animal studies about learned helplessness, uh. That it's very difficult to retrain, to overcome that, and animals need support to do it, and people need support to do it. And that support can be absolutely life changing and lifesaving.

absolutely. And it's, it's an impossible question to answer sometimes. Uh, I think though, coming to that understanding that. It is sometimes an impossible question to ask, and that's okay. Is a really important step towards self-acceptance, and we know that self-acceptance precedes self-compassion and self-compassion is essential to thriving in the world. I.

Look, it, it was a process of small increases in understanding until, until one day that final piece sort of clicked into place and, and. Allowed me to understand that authentically me was less traumatic than trying to be all the things to all the people. Um, and I think it happened act, I think it actually happened during, um, uh. An emergency, um, consultation when I was still in veterinary practice. Um, and a client came in with, uh, dog Inc. Congestive heart failure that wasn't oxygenating well. Um, and so we, we whipped it out the back, got oxygen therapy. I came back to talk to, um, to the owner. I had my proudly neurodivergent badge on, I had blue hair, uh, I had tattoos on display. You know, all the, all the things that are considered unprofessional in so many contexts. And that's a whole nother conversation too. I am a professional because I have a professional degree. That's the end of it. How I look is nothing to do with that. But, um, I think that the idea that I could do my job better as my authentic self was cemented that night because. The odor was really nervous. Um, and I explained to him what was going on and explained to him that we could try a rescue, but we were never gonna fix this problem. Um, and he was like, can I call my wife? And I'm like, yes. 'cause that's a really common thing after hours, right? Somebody races the animal in and the rest of the family catches up when they can. And he rang his wife and he said, I think you should come down. And I could only hear one side of the conversation. Um. But the, the, it clicked for me when I heard him say, it's okay. The vet will understand. She's autistic and she has blue hair. His wife was autistic. She was afraid to come in because she wasn't sure that her emotional regulation would be acceptable if they got bad news about the dog. Um, and so understanding that, that I could be authentically myself. And that could help me do a better job with patients and clients was the moment that I decided that, um, maybe my ongoing non-compliance was for a reason and, and I could be deliberately non-compliant with those sociocultural norms that told me I was doing things wrong.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think I've seen the same thing in myself across, across sort of a career that's nearly 30 years now. Is that that, um, my rigidity of thought around gold standard being the best option. Um, changed when I had my own practice and I got to know my clients a little bit more. And so I often knew what was going on in the background that was contributing to the decisions that they were were making. Um, and so I think when I went into emergency, um, even though in emergency and critical care, gold standard is our aim. We were practicing contextualized care from the very moment we stepped through that door. Um, and one of the things that we tried to, to do in terms of, um, modifying approach to be more inclusive was to remind people that we can replace judgment with curiosity. And that often curiosity can lead us to understanding. And that will allow us to help make a treatment plan for the patient that also serves the family and me as the veterinarian because. It is really important that I don't have vicarious trauma from, from the situations where people are being traumatized by my needs to do more and their inability to do more. So I think curiosity over judgment is actually, um, in an exam room, is an act of radical self-compassion.

Yeah, absolutely. And we often have these underlying schemas of, of. That we're unaware of, that we don't know what is underneath our decision making and our, our thinking. Um, and most of them for, for, um, people who are neuro diversion and who are trying to comply with whatever socio-cultural expectation we're trying to comply with. Most of those, you know, it comes from internalized ableism and we don't even know about it because we don't know that there's a different way to do it. And I think. Understanding that there's a different way to do it is, is probably that first step. Um, and it's interesting, the, the whole, my parents told me I should be a vet, so I was, the reason I'm a vet is 'cause my dad told me it was no job for a woman. Always did a little

Now he's a vet. Um, and he was wrong. But anyway.

And that's it, right? It's a puzzle. It's play. It lets our brains just, I guess, um, experiment with ideas and examine them from all the different views and, and that the understanding that comes from that means that even when we still don't agree with the, the position that we're, we're advocating for as devil's advocate. We might understand it more, and that usually gives us more insight into how to come to a resolution, right? Yeah.

yeah, and I think that's actually one of the, um, underrated benefits of learning how to mask card. Um, we can put ourselves in someone else's shoes and we can be curious about what that looks and feels like, because often we've spent, you know, the first 20, 30, 40, 50 decades of our lives. that without knowing that's what we are doing. And once we realize that's what we're doing, the idea of walking a mile in someone else's shoes becomes suddenly much easier because we are aware that we can do it. Um, and I think it's really important that when, when we are looking at conflicts within veterinary practices that we remember, there are two sides to the story and there's often bi-directional issues. It's not just one person. It's often going in multiple directions. Uh, and that's something really, really was brought home to me from a, uh, during the, the coding of the data for a paper we recently published, um, that was about autistic adults experiences, um, seeking support for, for mental health. And the idea that, that the double empathy problem spread further than we think. It's not simply we don't understand what empathy looks like from, from a neurotypical person, and a neurotypical person doesn't understand what empathy looks like from an autistic person. It was that we actually have different experiences of the world, including different experiences of the same interactions, but because of, of the bias that we have, that everybody experiences the world the same way that we do. assume that other people are having the same experience if they're in the same room. Uh, and we know there's really good data to show that that neuro divergent people experience the world differently from those with neuro majority style brains. Um, and understanding that, that both of you can be right and both of you can be wrong at the same time, is really freeing when it comes to solving problems.

So, um, we, we tend to see two real styles of communication that are polar opposite. So, and one is low context communication. That's literal communication that's explicit and direct. And the other is high context communication that includes, um, subtext, um, and includes, um, things that need to be inferred from body language and tone. context communication is the communication that neurodivergent people often struggle with, um, because we're not set up to. To really, um, take in this data the same way as somebody with a neuro majority style brain is. Um, we don't have the same filters. We don't prune neurons. We don't, we don't have brains that automate things in the same way that neuro majority brains do. So everything that we do requires cognitive load, including reading facial expressions and body language. Um, and for, you know. I, I'm assuming most, most people listening are probably familiar with Spoon theory, but if not, have a look. It's a wonderful explanation of, of resources and cognitive resources and energy resources. But if you've used all your spoons up simply getting to work that day, reading body language and facial expression deliberately, and then trying to integrate it with what you're hearing. And in further subtext and give an answer that's appropriately. Also, high context communication is literally impossible. Um, the good news is that if we can convince people to take the literal meaning of our words when we speak, um, everything gets a whole heap easier.

Right. Yeah.

And that's the perfect example.

Right. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's just the way neuro majority brains, uh, have as a default style of communication. Just like we have a default style of communication that's often very literal and low context. Um, and in our household, um, my wife's the only person without an autism diagnosis. Out of, out of the, there's six of us. Um. You know, so I have three adult daughters. I have a 7-year-old son who just this week has joined the Cool Kids Club and got the official, official A SD diagnosis. Um, and he's very excited about that because we talk a lot about brains and brain styles and, um, and how if you have a neurodivergent brain, then. We can start to understand our brains and ourselves better. Um, and so he's quite, quite a good self-advocate and will tell teachers when they ask him to do something that that is challenging. That brains are all different and some people's brains don't do well at some things. This is one of the things my brain doesn't do well, um, and I love that he has that level of self-advocacy as a little kid. And I'm really looking forward to seeing how he develops as both somebody who has a formal identification in early childhood and who lives in a neuro affirming household, where we're allowed to self-advocate and we're allowed to unmask and we're allowed to have, have needs that aren't considered normal for the rest of the world.

Yeah, so we've normalized positive failure in our house because it's the same for us. We, we are deliberately neuro affirming, and sometimes my mother's voice comes out of my mouth when I'm not paying attention. Um, so as a positive failure practitioner, I acknowledge the mistake as soon as I made it. Well, Asher, I'm so sorry I shouted at you. That was really inappropriate. I didn't think before I spoke what I should have said. Um, and I, I love that he started doing that too. That, that he's taking on that idea of positive failure and that we can learn from anything that doesn't go quite to plan or that we didn't mean to do, and we can change our approach for, for next time. Um. Iteration is the love language of inclusion. That's one of my favorite inclusion ideas. And that means that we try and we get it wrong and we try again and we get it a little bit less wrong and we just keep going. And until, you know, I think as far as being neuro affirming goes, especially as neuro affirming parent, I think. We just need to try and our kids seeing us try and seeing us acknowledge mistakes when we don't get it right is a wonderful gift that we can give them.

Yep. And it's hard, right? 'cause we're used to not be like used to being afraid of mistakes because that's what we've been conditioned to be.

look, we have noise canceling headphones in almost every room of the house because I'm sensory avoidant and, uh, my son's sensory seeking. So, so same thing. Absolutely clash of sensory needs, particularly around noise. Um, unfortunately we have a pinball machine in our house because my partner loves it and Asha loves it, and I hate it with the passion. But we accommodate each other if they wanna play. I put the noise canceling headphones in and, um, understanding that it's okay to do things that are, I guess it, it's probably considered rude in most households to wander around with noise canceling headphones in. So someone has to tap you on the shoulder to get your attention just to, you know, have a conversation with you except it's not rude when we talk about meeting needs and we explain what we're doing and why we're doing it, and we normalize that self care that's so important.

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, there's a little bit of background I'll have to to give you, but I think it's probably worthwhile. Um. One of the things that, um, came up in, in the, some of my more recent research has been the idea that, um, that we need to extend cultural humility beyond. Health, human healthcare settings to all, all of our interactions where there's a power imbalance. Um, so cultural humility posits that everybody is the expert in their own life and experiences, and that people with power in relationships, um, have an obligation to take steps to share that power rather than using that power to get outcomes changed to suit them. Um, and cultural humility arose from an idea called cultural competence, which was a complete failure and a bit of a disaster. Um, and it arose in human healthcare settings as an idea that you had to become competent in your patient's culture so that you knew how to talk to them and what they needed. Um, however, the idea that. In the five minutes of, you know, in the opening five minutes of a veterinary exam, can you become competent in the culture of the client? No, human doctors couldn't either. And so it was basically what happened was that, um, that people sort of came up with some stereotyped idea of something around a culture that was vaguely similar to the patient's culture and applied that. So that would do. Um, and it was actually the opposite of inclusion. And I didn't really understand the, the what had happened when I, I was kidnapped by Turkish sailors. I didn't understand that that was a problem of explicit communication and a lack of cultural humility. Um, but it certainly brought it home when someone explained the idea of cultural humility to me. And what happened was that, uh, it was my first solo weekend on call in, in, uh, large animal practice in southwest western Australia. Big port in the, in the city. Um, my boss had gone to Perth for the weekend 'cause. It was his first weekend off in like a million years. And I was doing the after hours and I got a phone call from my boss that said, uh, port Authority have a goat for you to EU days. Um, grab the bag and meet them down at the port authority office. And then he hung up and didn't gimme a chance to ask any questions because he was one of the people who told me that I asked too many questions. So he avoided them at all costs. Um, so I'm like, I went and got my, my little kit and I got the large animal kit 'cause it was a goat. Um, and I went down to the Port Authority office, um, and I knocked on the door and there it said closed. And there was no one to be seen, but I heard someone shouting come in from the back. So I wandered in, um, and there were two people in there. One was. An ancient sailor. Um, and you could tell back this was in the nineties, so you could, you could tell 'cause he had like an anchor tattoo on his arm. Um, and right, but only sailors used to have tattoos. And um, and then there was a young fella who looked like he would be lucky to be a teenager, and he had this giant mop of curly hair that covered his face, so I couldn't see his face. Um. And as I walked in, I said, hi, I'm the vet. I'm here to, to euthanize a goat for you. And they handed me a life jacket. I was like, oh, no, thank you. I, I, I don't do boats. And they were like. The young fella said something and I just could not understand him. And at that stage I thought I had hearing problems. I wasn't aware that auditory processing could be delayed. I thought I was going deaf. Turns out he was from Glasgow and speaking with a Glaswegian accent so nobody could understand him. It wasn't just me. Um, but the ancient sailor understood him and, and he said to me, um. Oh, that's Colin. He's from Glasgow. Um, and your patient is on a boat, so you have to put on the life jacket. And I was like, no, no, I don't do boats. And they were like, here, take the life jacket. And sort of pushed me out the door. And so we got on the pilot vessel and um, we started heading out through the harbor and I'm like, okay, this is okay. It's a car quiet day. I wonder which of these boats has a goat on it. Um, and then we went out of the harbor headed straight out to the open ocean. Um, and I'm like, where's the goat? And he said, oh, we've gotta go out to international waters. 'cause you can't bring, couldn't bring live Hoofstock into Australia at that time into Australian waters. Had to be euthanized before it entered Australian waters. I'm like, how far out to sea? Uh, it's only gonna be about 30 minutes left. Just relax. So I was like, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And then I started vomiting over the side of the boat and I vomited for the next 30 minutes. Towards the end of my vomit, hon, we got to, um, sort of see a smudge on the horizon that gradually resolved into a giant container ship. And I looked up at the side of the container ship and thought, I wonder how they're gonna get the goat down to me from up there. Turns out they weren't. And so I got to climb three stories up a rope ladder. Um, onto the deck of this ship. And this, again, this was the nineties. Workplace health and safety wasn't actually a thing back then. So, um, up, up I went and at the top standing all around the railing that I had to climb through to get on the deck, um, where a whole heap of big, smelly, hairy men. Um, and I'm. You know, I'm not a giant person. I was even smaller back then as a, as a young person. And, um, it was a little bit intimidating, but Colin came up behind me, um, and I was like, oh, cool, someone's with me. It's fine. No one can understand him, but at least I'll understand me. And I said, oh, hi. I am Jody. I'm the vet. I'm, I'm here to euthanize the goat. Um, and. They all looked at each other. And then one of them looked at me and went, oh, no English. And I'm like, oh, cool. So Colin decided to communicate clearly for the first time in his entire life. Um, and he, he pointed at a bloke who was walking over with something in his arms, and then he pointed at me, and then he ran his finger across his throat. Um, to indicate that I was going to kill something. it turns out the thing the guy was carrying was a two week old baby kid that had been born on the boat, um, for the, from the last go that they'd, they'd bought, um, as food for the journey. And, um, it had been hand raised by them using a cloth, soaked in, in milk to feed it, and they'd been taking turns sleeping with it at night to keep it warm. And as soon as Colin indicated that I was going to murder their pet, they got very, very angry. And some of them started shouting at us and we were up against the rail, terrified. Some of them stormed off and we're like, no. Whoa, whoa. We, you Port authority says we have to do this. Don't blame me. Uh, no one understanding. And then we felt the ship's motor turn on and the ship started to move. And I looked at Colin, and Colin looked at me and I went, I think we're being kidnapped by Turkish sailors. Colin and Colin went. Yep. And that was the only word I've ever, ever heard from Colin that I understood. Um, anyway, the bloke who told us no English had had run off as soon as the shouting started and he came back on deck a little while later, um, seconds later probably, but it felt like several hours with another man who was wearing his pajamas, um, and bare feet and looked like he'd just woken up. Turns out the bloke who just turned up in the PJ's was the captain and he'd been up all night battling getting into, um, into port. 'cause it'd been really rough weather. Um, and he said, what's happening? And I told him and he spoke English, thank goodness. Um, and, and so he went, give me a minute. He went and stopped the ship from going back to Turkey. 'cause apparently if I was gonna kill their pet, we were all going to Turkey. Um, and then he translated for me. And what, what was a really frightening group of aggressive people turned into. A very sad group of quietly sobbing pet owners. Once that explanation happened and

we, we performed that euthanasia with as, as much care as we ever did any euthanasia, um, and we were. We were lucky that it was a good use because I'd grabbed the large animal bag and had to, um, had to do Im sedation and a heart stick because I didn't have anything smaller than a 14 gauge catheter in the bag. Um, but it, it went well. It was smooth. They were able to hold the goat while we euthanized that it was, you know, it was as good as it could be. But when I learned about cultural humility and I knew more about explicit communication, I was like, they were the two things that were missing in that story. That that explicit communication and cultural humility can make such a difference that if they'd been applied in that situation, I wouldn't have been kidnapped, however, briefly by Turkish sailors because I was killing their pet, and I think. One of the themes that I found really empowering and joyful about an adult diagnosis of autism and A DHD has been my ability to rewrite narratives that where I was the problem and I was the failure. And instead of me carrying that as, I dunno what I could have done, but I did bad, I was able to reframe it as right. So what we needed in that situation. Was cultural humility and explicit communication. And nowadays, if I was going out to see, I'd ask questions like, is there an, is there a native English speaker on the ship? If not, I'd need to take a translator. So, you know, those little things that, that we carry with us as traumas or our own creation. I did bad. I did wrong. I am, the problem can be rewritten in terms of. The system set me up to fail and knowing what I know now, I would do things differently and forgiving our past selves for the mistakes we've made where we were always The problem, I think, allows us to integrate neurodivergence into identity and we know from the research that if we can, if we can integrate our whole selves into social identity, we are much happier people and we are much more likely to flourish in the world.

Yeah, and it's empowering to do, to do that and to realize that you weren't bad at what you were doing, you were under-resourced, is like incredibly free.

Cool. Cool.

so it makes me think of being the overnight hospital vet in an emergency hospital, um, where I got to go around and change all the things so that, that, um. I got to dim the lights and I got to turn down volumes on drip pumps, and I got to ask everyone to use their inside voices, and I got to disrupt. I got to disrupt the world to make it more comfortable for me in a way that didn't hurt anybody else. In fact, it was probably beneficial for everybody, um,

but without being left unattended, I never would've got to play with, with that. That idea that small changes can make the world an easier place for me to exist. And I think that that was my first being left unattended was my first step towards disruption.

Uh, I think, I think. The most important thing for me and for every other neurodivergent person is if the world could understand that while most neuro majority brains are similar, every neurodivergent brain is different. And we know that autistic profiles are so heterogeneous that they are more individual than fingerprints. So the idea that, you know, one autistic person means, you know, one autistic person. You still have to be open to difference and use curiosity to find out what people's needs are.

Thank you so much, Ron. It was a pleasure to have a conversation.