Summary

This week I'm joined by Steph Robertson, a neurodivergent occupational therapist, speaker and advocate whose work centres trauma-responsive, neurodiversity-affirming care. Steph is autistic, ADHD, complex PTSD and a plural system, and brings their professional, research and lived experience to everything they do.

We dig into the overlap between joy and monotropism: why a monotropic flow state and autistic joy can be such a beautiful recipe together, and how the people around us so often interrupt that flow without meaning to. Steph shares the refrain that came to her while building a presentation on this topic ("not all meaningful occupations are joyful, but all joyful occupations are meaningful"), unpacks the tendril theory in a powerful way, and offers genuinely useful ways to work with a monotropic brain instead of against it, from getting through the hard self-care tasks to giving yourself proper transition time. This one really did light us both up.

Takeaways

• Joy is foundational, not a bonus. It's not a reward at the end of a session or an added extra, it's an evidence-based way of supporting wellbeing and the actual therapeutic work.
• A monotropic flow state doesn't have to feel joyful to be valuable. It can be deeply satisfying and grounding even when it isn't "fun."
• Joy and monotropism can amplify each other. If we're not interrupting someone's flow, we increase the likelihood of joy, and both joy and flow boost learning capacity.
• We so often interrupt joy without realising. Polytropic environments like schools and busy workplaces ask monotropic minds to task-switch fast, which can "rip the tendrils out" and cause real distress.
• Work with monotropism, not against it. Often it's less about facilitating flow and more about not getting in the way, plus giving gentle time to transition.
• Couple hard tasks with something joyful. Steph starts a podcast before she's even out of bed so she can "auto-drive" through the morning routine.
• Transition time isn't wasted time. Monotropism and transitions are deeply linked, and giving yourself space between tasks may protect you from burnout down the line.
• Stop policing how joy looks. Stimming, routines, rituals and "childlike" joy at any age all count. Challenging neuronormativity means letting joy be whatever it needs to be for the individual.

Resources mentioned

• Tendril theory credited to Erin Human. Read more here.

You can find Steph on Instagram at @sgroccupationaltherapy.

Content warning:

If you don't like swearing, scroll on by

Summary:

This week I'm joined by Joanne Hatchard: award-winning neurodivergent therapist, social worker, parent and founder of Better Being Me (and host of the wonderful Talking Twaddle). I'll be honest, when Joanne first pitched this topic I said "heck yes" and then immediately thought "wait, I have no idea what that means." So this episode is me asking a lot of genuine questions while Joanne generously info-dumps a framework that turns out to be one of the most useful reframes I've come across in ages.

Here's the big idea. When you go fishing you can't see the fish, because they're underwater. But you can see the birds circling overhead, and the birds tell you where the fish are. Our internal cues (the "fish") are notoriously unreliable when we're AuDHD, especially when we're stressed, and our interoception has quietly left the building. But the external cues (the "birds") are right there for us, and for the people around us, to spot.

We get into the seven areas Joanne watches: decision-making and the dreaded dithering, outsourcing your choices to other people's opinions, executive functioning weaknesses like a working memory that ghosts you mid-sentence, stress behaviours mapped through the OCEAN traits, attachment that shifts depending on whether it's your mum or your mates at the door, masking as a safety tool rather than a knee-jerk, and connection through the lens of polyvagal safety. There's also a penguin that made Joanne cry, which turns out to be a perfectly valid bird.

The thread tying it together is language. This stuff doesn't work alone in your own head. It works when you and a trusted person build a shared vocabulary for what your stress looks like from the outside, so someone can gently flag it before the meltdown that supposedly "came out of nowhere."

Takeaways

• Your internal radar is the least reliable thing to lean on when you're stressed, because stress is exactly when it stops working. The external cues are easier to catch, and other people often see them first.

• A "bird" is anything observable that flags your capacity is dropping: dithering over a simple decision, losing your words, crying at a penguin, suddenly hearing the electrical hum, chewing your cheek, looping on the same sentence. Once you can name them, you can act on them.

• Naming the birds out loud changes everything. It moves you from "life is happening to me" to "I'm stressed and I can do something about that," and it gives the people who love you a kind way to flag it instead of slowly drifting away confused.

• You don't have one attachment style, you have a different one for nearly every relationship. Mum at the door versus friends at the door can produce two completely different versions of you.

• Masking isn't the enemy. Used intentionally, when you've got the reserves for it, it's a powerful tool. The problem is when it's a default instead of a choice, and you've got nothing left by the time you get home.

• The trusted person matters more than the perfect system. It can be a friend, a partner, or a professional you pay to be honest with you. What you need is someone willing to tell you the truth.

• And the gentlest one to finish on: it doesn't need to be fucking hard. The supports that actually stick are usually the simplest ones, and you're allowed to cherry-pick the bits that work for you and leave the rest.

You can find Joanne on Instagram at @betterbeingme_bbme.

This episode is for my fellow PDAers (and the people who love us and are quietly very confused by us). Sharmayne and I had never met before we hit record, which felt weirdly perfect for an episode about nervous systems that do their own thing in real time. What followed was the info dump I have been waiting for.

Sharmayne Bennett is a non-binary, neuroqueer, 2E, AuDHD PDA-er and psychologist, founder of Wonderfully Wired Psychology and co-creator of ND AffirmEd. Her glimmers include squirrels, Lego and Shrek, which honestly tells you everything you need to know about why this chat was so good. Her puppy also made a cameo and then point-blank refused to be perceived, which is the most PDA thing I have ever witnessed on camera.

We get into what PDA actually is, beyond the tired "rejects every demand" myth, and why the P in pathological has a lot to answer for. Sharmayne walks us through a morning in a PDA brain, where opening your eyes is a demand, moving the bedsheet is a demand, and brushing your teeth is roughly nine demands in a trench coat. We talk about why behaviour is communication but never the whole story, why regulating is itself a demand (rude), and why meltdowns are not the enemy. Picture a shaken Coke bottle: you let the lid off, or it goes flat and fizzes inside anyway.

Then we go where it really lands. The 2E perfectionism that makes asking for help feel like failure. The myth that independence is the goal. Self-compassion for a capacity that changes daily, because disability is dynamic, not something you nailed yesterday so must nail today. And co-regulation as adults, including the gift and the weight of being someone's safe person.

I could have kept going for three more hours. PDA 2.0 is officially on the cards.

Takeaways

• PDA is a spectrum, not a switch. Some days the demand is doable, some days it absolutely is not, and both are valid.
• Every step is a demand. A meltdown is never about that one moment, it is the hours of demands stacked underneath it.
• "Take it off your plate, or is that worse?" Sometimes removing a task helps. Sometimes it just hands you the demand of remembering it later.
• You cannot manipulate a PDAer. That nervous system clocks everything, so collaboration beats clever tricks every single time.
• Regulated does not mean calm. You can feel big feelings and still be grounded.
• If someone says they are PDA, believe them. No research card, no "but maybe you are just demand avoidant." Believe them.

Find Sharmayne on Insta at @wonderfullywiredpsychology and through @nd_affirmed.