Devon Price

Very good.

And, um, Devon Price, I believe?

Devon Price, yeah.

Yeah, I believe is the name.

So we're reading this book, and it's great, and I'm learning a lot, but the thing that has really helped me is I f- I stumbled upon a Threads recently where this teacher was like, "Oh, I fixed an issue I had in my classroom where one of my students, she just talks and talks and talks, and I, I, everywhere I moved her, she just t- she just, it disrupts every child."

And so I think if I was gonna add one more ingredient myself, it would actually be discomfort.

I think delusion is actually quite uncomfortable, and you have to have a capacity and a tolerance for discomfort to be innovative, to be, um, to be outwardly... 'Cause, like, basically, I'm, I'm just having a conversation right previous to this with, um, Devon Price, uh, who is a social psychologist, and we were talking about how it had actually, like, um, like, s- i- it is a, it- it's an autistic human being, a, an autistic person who entered academia and discovered that academia was, like, full of falsehood around autism, and so decided to build, like, this revolution around creating resources for people, not for academia, that force- that then forced academia to change the way that it approaches autism.

So we were talking about, like, revolutionary, um, like, nature, and what you're both describing is actually inherently revolutionary.

Like, to be innovative in the face of a world that, that wants you to comply is extraordinarily revolutionary and radical.

And then, yeah, I studied that for, like, 10 years and specialized in that as a therapist and as an assessor for a while.

Um, and it never occurred to me I could be twice exceptional [chuckles] until I was reading, um, the book Unmasking Autism by Dr. Devon Price, um, to help me understand some of my clients better, and I had an aha moment that helped me, like, just, you know, reanalyze my entire life and realize I was autistic.

And so it's really interesting looking back on the way my mom used giftedness, you know, kind of as, like, a helpful neurodivergent concept to understand, like, yeah, your brain is different, your experience is different.

She used to talk about how sensitive I was, and I think, you know, just we had no idea I was also autistic, but a lot of those experiences that were attributed to giftedness were also related to being autistic at- ...

How interesting.

Thank you for sharing.

For folks who missed it, Dr. Devon Price has been on the podcast twice.

Um, so go back and listen to those episodes, or just read his books.

... pretty much, um, because I just didn't think that was-- I didn't think it really fit.

Um, but I've been really grateful for the work of Devon Price and others who talk about...

You know, his book, Unmasking Autism, was extremely helpful to me, and I know to so many.

So, so yeah, I feel like it was really cool to, um, understand that part of what, what I get to do instead of feeling that I'm-- instead of feeling that tremendous embarrassment-

And then, of course, through these interviews that I've been doing with others, I've also looked at the contribution of systemic shame as well onto imposter syndrome.

So I spoke with Dr. Devon Price, who's written a book called Unlearning Shame.

And it's about this idea that if we do occupy a marginal position, whether it be because we're a woman or because we are a person of color or because we have a disability or neurodivergence, then we're already due to the inequalities in society, we're already an imposter.

So there's the societal contribution to imposter syndrome and then there's also the personal contribution to imposter syndrome due to relational trauma.

But there's this interesting period when people stop pushing themselves through pure adrenaline anxiety.

When I've had clients experimenting during this time, they often start asking something like, "What's the line between me just being lazy and actual self-care?" Now, I won't even get into how I believe laziness does not exist, and we'll just link Devon Price's excellent article about it in the show notes.

I deeply, deeply understand and resonate with the question, though, because when you're used to pushing your body beyond what it can bear over and over and over, doing less feels absolutely unhinged.

It brings up a whole new set of anxieties.