What did you make of the retirement announcement that came out yesterday? Did it come as a surprise to you considering what, he's only 29, 30?

Oh, mate, to be brutally honest with you, I thought he was extending.

Like, I was like, oh, yes, we're going on again.

Like, all the boys are looking around.

We're all pretty happy, excited.

And then, yeah, when he broke the news, there was a, yeah, it kind of stunned the room, to be honest, a bit of shock.

And, yeah, you couldn't hear a pin drop, really.

How impressed have you been with the locals down at Peel this year? You obviously know what you're going to get from the Freo boys, but guys like Jack Sears, Scott Tuia, Corey Tregenza, et cetera, et cetera.

What did you make of the retirement announcement that came out yesterday? Did it come as a surprise to you considering what, he's only 29, 30?

Oh, mate, to be brutally honest with you, I thought he was extending.

Like, I was like, oh, yes, we're going on again.

Like, all the boys are looking around.

We're all pretty happy, excited.

And then, yeah, when he broke the news, there was a, yeah, it kind of stunned the room, to be honest, a bit of shock.

And, yeah, you couldn't hear a pin drop, really.

How impressed have you been with the locals down at Peel this year? You obviously know what you're going to get from the Freo boys, but guys like Jack Sears, Scott Tuia, Corey Tregenza, et cetera, et cetera.

So I'd love to maybe just start the conversation asking you, how did this topic first come to your attention? As someone who has spent a lot of time thinking a lot about assessments and how clinicians make diagnostic decisions, what made the masking and the camouflaging feel like something that really needed a closer look?

Yeah, so I had the experience that I th- I would guess a lot of clinicians who, who do assessment are having over the last five to 10 years in particular, where, you know, we're seeing a lot more clients coming our direction who were maybe self-identifying with, you know, with an autism diagnosis or, you know, identifying some autistic traits or potentially autistic traits, um, from many different sources.

You know, largely, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of information out on the Internet, right? And so folks are kinda doing research on themselves and then coming to our practice.

And a term that kept coming up over and over and over is masking.

Camouflaging to a lesser degree.

You know, it seems like most people call it masking, but, you know, we're kind of in the same ballpark with, with both of those.

And, um, we ended up having a lot of discussions among our clinicians, like, during our consultation meetings ab- about, you know, what is going on here? Um, what does it actually mean to be masking if you, you know, potentially have autism or are autistic? Um, how could someone mask so well when the diagnosis itself is kind of defined by difficulty navigating social interactions? Um, so I- all these questions started to come up and kept coming up and, uh, Finally, you know, I should have probably done it a lot sooner, but, you know, finally did a, a deep dive just to, to try to dig in and figure out what is going on here from all the different facets because I personally y- really wrestled with this, you know? I really wrestled with the reality, I suppose, or the possibility that someone, um, an autistic individual, which is again defined by challenges with social interaction primarily, could presumably navigate or read social situations so well that they could then mask well enough to not receive the diagnosis, if that makes sense.

[laughs]