E122 - Why is an ADHD diagnosis helpful? (w/ Robin Ince)

Robin Ince is a comedian, author, broadcaster and a populariser of scientific ideas. He is best known as the co-host of the BBC Radio 4 series The Infinite Monkey Cage with Professor Brian Cox. His new book Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal: My adventures in neurodiversity is out now. 

Interviewed by Dr. Anya Borissova and Dr. Alex Curmi - Give feedback here - thinkingmindpodcast@gmail.com Follow us here: Twitter @thinkingmindpod Instagram @thinkingmindpodcast

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Transcript

Welcome back. Today, Anya and I are very excited to welcome back, author, comedian, and broadcaster Robin ins to the podcast when we first had him on. Robin was in the middle of writing his book, which has now been released, and that is normally weird and weirdly normal. My Adventures in Neurodiversity, and this is a book Robin wrote about his experiences getting a diagnosis of A DHD, what that means for him, how it was helpful.

So today we have a conversation all about A DHD. Robin tells us why it was helpful to understand himself with this diagnosis, but also why Robin did not actually enjoy the formal diagnostic process, which is interesting. We discussed some of the controversy around the A DHD diagnosis that takes place in the public discourse.

Some of the flaws and limitations of the A DHD diagnosis from a more clinical, scientific perspective. And how [00:01:00] psychiatry could potentially move towards a more pragmatic problems based approach. Before we get into today's conversation, I just wanted to mention I was really pleased to be invited to speak at the London Business School TEDx Conference this week.

There were a lot of really interesting talks like Sarah de Lagar, the first woman in the world to summit Mount Kilimanjaro with two prosthetic limbs. Professor Tim Mitchell was there. He's the professor of innovation at Cambridge, and he was speaking about his new book, your Life is Manufactured, and I also got to see Professor Adam Zeman and neurologist who talked about his book, the Shape of Things, unseen and New Science of Imagination.

I got to do my talk about intuition and decision making and whether or not people should follow their gut instinct. All of these talks are gonna be out on YouTube later this year, so I will let you guys know when it's out. If you're interested, I would definitely recommend going to the TEDx Conference at London [00:02:00] Business School next year.

And I personally would like to give a huge thank you to the team there for inviting me and for all the support they gave me in helping me to put my talk together. This is The Thinking Mind, a podcast all about psychiatry, psychology, therapy, self-development, and related topics. As always, thank you very much for listening.

And now here's today's conversation with Robin Ins. Thank you so much for joining us today. It's lovely to see you again. Was it two years ago? We did, or even longer. It was a year and a half ago, I think. Whatever book I'd written when I saw you then. Uh, nearly everything got thrown away again in about January of this year, and then I started all over again.

Writing is brutal. I. I should say I am with my co-host, Dr. Anya Bova as well. And we're delighted to get, have some time to speak to you about your book today. Brilliant. I'm looking forward to it. Tell us a little bit about what initially motivated you [00:03:00] to to write the book. How did it come about? Well, originally I was gonna write a book, uh, called Anxiety for Everyone.

'cause I went through, after I wrote a book when I'm a joke. And so are you, uh, one of the therapists I interviewed, Josh Cohen said, uh, I think you should go into therapy. And uh, so I tried it for a little bit. Very good therapist as well. Her name is Juliette. Uh, and um, the thing that I realized was that an enormous number of different issues were all the same.

They were all anxiety. So, so what I'd been seeing as there and there and there, and that was this one big ball of stuff, uh, you know, whether it was, was physical complaints, whether it was kind of neurosis, whether it was, you know, sometimes depressive thoughts, all of that kind of stuff. So I started writing that and then I realized I didn't think it was just that.

And I was very, very lucky because a young man got in contact with me when, uh, I followed him on Twitter and he just said, can we have a talk about, um, uh, neurodivergence? And he was the person who [00:04:00] basically explained why, uh, he thought I was a DHD. And it's interesting to me because like many people, I was, I was definitely avoiding it because I had lots of friends with A DHD.

I thought, how come everyone's got a DHD nowadays? And, and I think that's a very typical thing, which is that you, you kind of, you, you think, but isn't this just being human? And I don't think you can sometimes realize the exhaustion when you don't really understand your mind. And with that lack of understanding comes a lot of, you know, great big weight of, of other, you know, but what, what I was talking about today with someone actually, but what I would call, you know, the, the, uh, perpetually negative inner voice, you know, that, that, that constant, uh, negative in a voice.

So it was, it was, I was very lucky because if, if Jamie, Jamie and Lyon hadn't got in contact with me, then uh, we wouldn't be doing this podcast. We wouldn't have done the previous podcast. I would've, uh, because I can't remember if we talked about it before. One of my, I think it's Sarah Hendricks, who's um, uh, an [00:05:00] expert on autism.

And she, I think, had written three or four books on autism before she decided she'd write a book about what it was like for her as a neurotypical woman to live with an autistic man. And it was only when she announced that, that everyone went, oh, we thought you knew Sarah. You are not neurotypical. And she's very interesting, I think, in, again, showing how we can with no judgment on other people, very much accept other people's, you know, neurodivergence, mental health, whatever it might be.

But we can often set a, a totally different set of parameters for ourselves. So that's basically how it happened. And then because of that, I in particular knew I'd already since writing, I'm a joke and so are you, I'd, I'd met so many people who were going through their life, um, unhappily and, and had and were masking it.

And because I think by writing that in particular, and because I'm normally out and about after a gig, people can always talk to me. I'm always accessible, generally. Um, I was hearing so many [00:06:00] stories of how unhappy so many people were, but they were surviving. And as you know, in, in our society, there is this problem which basically says, look, if you're not getting in the way of the system itself, then just shut up.

Whereas, which, which very much puts, you know, the, so, so it's great for neoliberalism, capitalism, all that kind of thing, but it means that people are just getting on with their life, trying not to create any friction, but living deeply unhappy lives. And I really do want, I, because of the enormous transformation for me, I wanted to at least write something that had very open arms for people and write something that was very much about the story of our lived lives.

Not something that was, you know, heavily scientific or saying this is, you know, just looking at why this might happen. But looking at it as in, you know, actual experience, I wanted to make sure it was the book of stories. And it's very common for people to, to feel their experience of getting a diagnosis [00:07:00] like a DHD or autism seems to be transformative in some way.

Use the word transformation. What does the, what was the transformation for you? Well, it's just, it's a huge in like today, but we are recording this on, uh, on Good Friday, uh, which is also the, uh, would be my father's 95th birthday, and it's the second anniversary of his funeral as well. Uh, the funeral where I showed his signed copy of Penthouse Magazine, possibly the first time vintage erotica has been used in the pulpit.

And, uh, and I went for the, the one of the walks that I would regularly do with my dad and I still do that, walk a great deal. And I felt totally within that world in terms of looking at the bluebells in terms of, I mean, I have to stop all the time when I'm walking. I walk very far, but I, I just go, that's interesting.

That's interesting. That's interesting. I love that. I love that. I love that. I love that. It's like being in a very benevolent manic state, whereas before the antagonistic negative voice. Meant that I would, very often, I'd [00:08:00] be trying to look at things, but I was blinded by the, this, you know, the, the negative voice.

And so that's the first thing in terms of being there. Now, in terms of. Being just right. This is me. The, the disparity between who I appear to be and who I am is very, very thin now. Right. And I think to have that, and we may well have talked about that before, but I, I do think, you know, one of the biggest problems is the greater the disparity between who you appear to be and who you believe you are on the inside, the greater your unhappiness.

And of course our society places many pressures on people and many fears and people hide things. And the more that we hide, the more it damages us now. And I feel that there is very little hidden, and, and with my friends as well, people like Josie Long who's also diagnosed a DHD, my friend Joe Turbo, who, uh, like we always had a huge amount of energy in each other's company, but now we don't have the negative.

We might still go through periods of, of, you know, darker [00:09:00] thoughts and things like that, but it's, it's, it's even easier for all of us to carry each other and hold each other up. And I think things like that. So I also would just like to footnote that this is, I'm also very aware that my transformation is far easier than many other people might have.

Partly because of my, what I do for a living, my, I have predominantly control over what I do. Uh, I say that obviously that's a weird thing to say with a DHD. So I say I predominantly have control, but I don't mean that I in any way know what the next sentence is gonna be. But what I mean is that I, I can choose a lot of my work.

And I realized that a lot of other people are in far more restrictive environments. And of course, also I'm a white guy and middle-aged white guy who, you know that all of these things carry with them a huge amount of advantage. So for me, I was able to really, I I, I, I think, and, and, you know, I, I, I'm not on minimum wage.

You know, things like that do make a huge difference. I think it's really interesting. So you're, you're [00:10:00] talking a lot about self-acceptance, so there's less of a disparity between who you think you should be and who you are. I think I'm a huge advocate of self-acceptance. And if I could pose a question more kind of from a devil's advocate perspective.

Obviously for the listeners benefit, I do assess people for A-D-H-D-I do when I feel it's appropriate, diagnose A DHD. But just for the sake of argument, does one need a diagnosis in order to accept themselves? Could you have not gained more self-acceptance without something like a formal diagnosis? Well, of course I didn't have a formal diagnosis.

I had a diagnosis by someone who really knew what they were talking about by someone who had, uh, lived their lives, an autistic indivi. And I, and I think that helped a great deal. For some reason, no, for me, but I don't think that's true of everyone. I mean, I really think in the same way that the mind is so different as we know that when we place chemicals in the mind, that the huge difference we might find when we say anti-anxiety, antidepressants, whatever.

So I don't think there's a one way fix it, [00:11:00] but I, I mean in, in my own mind, I think especially with A DHD, if you have a broader corridor for us to pass through as human beings and we didn't have such a kind of restrictive rule-based society, then there's a lot of issues which wouldn't be issues. You know, the whole kind of like nine to five, I need this done by this time and this done by, so many of these are disabling for people who can actually deliver a huge amount.

Often very much more than what, and I don't really even like the term neurotypical, but you know what I mean when I'm saying that, that you know what the, the possibilities very often of neurodivergent people are, are incredibly expansive. And then hugely like, like I was doing an event where it was, it was an event for, I can't remember what kind, I think science businesses.

And this guy came up to me afterwards. He went, oh, I've heard your A DH adhd. He said, we've got a guy who works for us. He's A DHD. Um, he's very, very good. But I mean, the one trouble is he just never seems to be able to make the morning meeting. I said, how important is it that he's at the morning meeting?

He said, well, you know, it's just a thing where we [00:12:00] all, I said, it doesn't sound like it sounds like what he's bringing is a lot. He may not be able to tick all of the boxes, which are really the kind of the rather bland elements that we go, but you need to be in at nine o'clock and you need to leave it.

Yeah. All of that stuff. And I think if we had a more malleable, I mean, it's a bit like looking at, for instance, you know, since lockdown there's been a lot of research and from beforehand as well to say that working from home can be actually often better, uh, than working in an office space. And yet that suspicious mind of institutions is, no, we need you back here.

We need to be watching you all of the time. And I think all of these limits are, you know, a, a, a hugely problematic. So, so hang on, I'm answering a different question now, aren't I? You were asking about diagnosis, weren't you? Well, I'm, I'm curious, did you, so, so as of yet, have you had a formal diagnosis?

Yeah, I did. And I didn't enjoy it at all, but I did get it. I'd love, I'd love to hear about what that process was like. I just didn't, do you know what? [00:13:00] I knew I didn't need it. And I also knew why I was having it done. I knew that I was having it done because. It was specifically for this book because I thought.

There's so much cynicism as we know, in, in any, anything which is considered to be other, um, that people would go Well, I, I find it very interesting because, uh, actually, you know, he's not had a formal diagnosis. It was just this autistic guy who told him. Um, and of course I, I've, I've been diagnosed by people for 20 years as a performer.

You know, audience members of neuro divergent audience members have been coming up to me on a nightly basis. Seeing within me what I was avoiding and or not avoiding. I don't really know what the word is. So, yeah, I didn't really enjoy the process, so I did it for a very pragmatic reason. And, you know, a again, whatever, and there have been cynical people, you know, I, I think it's very interesting that one of the things that happens, uh, for those of us who, who get this, and I, and I'll always avoid that, but you know, people go, why do you want a label?

And you go, it's not a label, [00:14:00] it's an instruction manual. It's a roadmap. It is not a label. A label is just as simple as you stick it on your card and say, I am this. As we know, whether, uh, whether we're talking dys fracture, whether we're talking dyslexia, like a friend of mine who was dyslexic and he was only diagnosed after he left school, but the moment he found out he was dyslexic, he has gone on to live the most amazing life as an auto didact, working in prisons, creating wonderful pieces of art.

He was given a freedom, not just because he had that label, but because he had that understanding. So I just wanna throw that in there as well. I think it's a very important thing not to, the label is very much a, uh, i, I think a word used by the cynical, uh, to discourage people go, why do you want that particular badge?

I don't want badge. I want, you know, and it's all, I always find it funny, the idea that you have an instruction manual for A DHD, uh, in your head when of course, as someone with a DHD, you are very bad at reading instruction manuals. Uh, but instinctually kind of, you know, it works. But I, so I, I think, yeah, the, I, I think a lot of it is down to, um.

Battling with the, with the, with the [00:15:00] cynicism that's out there. And, and, and I, I definitely found that people, oddly enough, you know, one of the, or perhaps not odd at all, one of the institutions that I work for, uh, I suddenly had this thing where there was a, had a meeting with my agent and said two of the executives believe you're having a mental health, uh, episode.

In fact, I'd never been mentally healthier. And that's one of the things that I'm sure some listeners may have experienced themselves or with friends where, which is when you lose the incredible self-loathing that can go with Neurodivergence, you are not as easy to bully. You are not as easy to bus around.

You know, I don't think it's any coincidence that it was after that, that finally after years, my, you know, my friendship with Ricky Ves fell apart because I had the confidence before, apart from anything else to write in a very gentle way that I worried a great deal about the way he dehumanized trans people.

And I think I had a new confidence in going, no, this is not acceptable. And I, I, I [00:16:00] see that in a lot of things now that I feel I can, I can stand up and that is where people can go, oh, I think you must be ill because we can't bully you as much as we used to. I'm curious about, uh, Anya's perspective on this.

'cause one thing that it's worth, I think, listeners knowing is that A DHD is strangely enough, quite siloed within mental health and autism to an extent. It's kind of, when you train in general psychiatry, you tend to become very, very familiar with most of the common common conditions. But then strangely, A DHD and autism very much remains specialties.

Within themselves. I had to do like separate a DHD training after I became a consult and psychiatrist. Um, how do you, how do you see A DHD within the broader landscape of different mental health conditions? Aren you? I think it is tricky as, especially as a trainee and especially, I mean, it's something that we talk about in our trainee groups, the fact that there's this area [00:17:00] which we seem to have oddly little training, teaching and experience in, unless you specifically seek it out.

But it's, it doesn't fall into the general training, at least that we get at the, at the centers where I've worked where, where Alex and I trained. And so it means that you feel like, I think at the moment you're kind of playing catch up a little bit so that there is this thing that medical school didn't really cover and then later training hasn't really covered and yet.

It's super common. It's really important. It can be quite defining to people's lives. I guess one of the helpful things that I, I think I heard from someone you'd spoken to on the podcast, Alex, is that, you know, it's not a, it's not a condition in the way that we see, uh, depressive episodes that come and go, for instance.

But it is sort of the way that other people's brains are. It's a slightly different way of living in the world. It's a whole part of that [00:18:00] person's existence. It feels like an area that we need to understand better, um, especially because of the nuance involved, especially because it can be so important to people to have a diagnosis, but it can equally be so important to make the correct diagnosis in a world where we don't have blood tests or brain scans that tell us if, if that is the right diagnosis, because it's the right thing for some people.

If it's not the right thing for someone else, then you're missing something different. I was just thinking about again, the, the limit of definitions, because thinking about that seems been increasing amount of research where we see, and Gina Rip, I know has got a book coming out about the amount of late diagnosis, very late diagnosis of autistic women that, you know, even the idea of women being autistic.

It, you know, it, it seems pretty recent and I meet doing events a lot of, uh, women who, fifties, sixties, seventies, who, you know, some who in their late sixties have been diagnosed and, and you know, they've lived their whole life and done, you know, with, with that. And, [00:19:00] and it seems to me with a DH ADHD as well, which is in fact when I was doing the book, one thing that I realized, I think my A DHD was far similar to a lot of the women that I spoke to than the men.

Because as a very anxious child, I was keeping in all of my, you know, I was fidgeting in small ways and I was chewing paper and I was scribbling on things all the time, but I wasn't the one who was climbing over the desks. And that seems to me, again, to be an example of mental health is an issue if someone's getting in the way of the formula of society.

But if it's not, and many of those autistic women, uh, and also A DHD, uh, they're not getting in the way 'cause they're hiding it all. Um, and I just wondered, you know, again, because so much of it's been masked for so long and now everyone's going, God, look, why is everyone like this now? And it's like we, we've reached a stage where people are now prepared and encouraged in [00:20:00] some areas and have, feel that they've got some permission to say, this is actually what's my life has been like on the inside.

Right, the right to open up about their struggles. Um, I mean I I, I think the thing that sticks to my mind and links to, I think what you were talking about before, Robin, is the amount of energy that it, it has taken up. So sort of the, the people that I have met who have got a, a diagnosis and sort of the explanation of their life in later life, that's one of the things that they point to, that they, uh, how much energy it took up to mask and, and the, and the fact that having the diagnosis sort of gave them the choice to, you know, that they can still mask if they feel like it's necessary in a certain situation.

But the understanding and the ability to, to just not, because they realize that this is something that they don't have to hide or act differently or fit in with people's expectations, just kind of [00:21:00] frees up so much mental energy. And, and I wonder if that links to what you were saying about. Sort of suddenly having, feeling better and having time to deal with issues, uh, that, that you didn't before, couldn't, couldn't kind of face dealing with.

Oh, yeah. I mean, totally. I, I, I think on many different, I wrote a piece for the big issue, and I think this was a big issue the other week about saying that I, I write a lot poetry now started just under a year ago, and I've like write hundreds of, of, I've written about a thousand poems in the last year of, of varying quality obviously, and they all come instantaneously, and I do, I said, I think it's in the box, which used to keep my anxiety.

So all of that energy where the anxiety was and leaking out to have that to, to, it, it doesn't take, I mean, I, I would say to anyone who ever gets worried, they go, but what if I get diagnosed? Do I lose something? I think in, in terms of say creatively. I don't think that is true. I think I can see why people are wary, why [00:22:00] they go, oh, but I've got this bit of pain and this bit of pain might be my creativity.

I, I think actually, um, by losing that pain, what you get, as you said, is a huge amount of energy. There's a huge amount of extra, you know, there's a thing that I, I used as a kind of, you know, metaphor, and I've heard other people use it since, which is, you know, it felt like I had this incredibly heavy coat on, which was made of horse hair and it was damp, but it didn't feel like that when I was wearing it.

But when it came off, it was like, oh my God, this is ridiculous. This is, you know, and I, I've always been somebody who says yes to far too many things. So I don't think anyone would've thought that the energy was, um, that I didn't have energy, and yet that what I would say is that that was filled with a negative energy.

Whereas now the creativity is filled with a kind of positive energy that is there and, and the instantaneous way that I would find jeopardy or threat. Is now replaced by an instantaneous way of going. That's an interesting shape of moss. I think I might write about the shape of the moss on that wall. So again, I know I've been very lucky in [00:23:00] that, in, in, in that way.

But I, I think it is, you are right. The amount of energy that is taken up is, uh, is, is remark and it, it is. 'cause I, I remember the first time that I, I, I, I still think about it a lot. I deliberately, I, i don't forget about it. I think it's very important to think, what am I doing today? Having little moments where I think this would not have been my life three and a half years ago.

Um, and so keeping that, I, it, I never, ever just take it for granted, you know, after 50 years or whatever it will be. I dunno when it probably started when I was about, about, I dunno if, I mean the first things I can really remember, things like suicide ideation when I was seven or eight years old. And, you know, and from that point onwards, that is sapping away and sapping away and taking it.

And then to be 52. And go, oh my God, this is, to, to feel the weight of that coat leaving is, is, is incredible. So definitely It sounds like the, the self-acceptance piece has [00:24:00] been really useful. And when I assess people, if I diagnose 'em with a DHD, sometimes that's enough. Like, okay, I have this understanding.

I can understand how these seemingly disconnected problems actually connect under one umbrella, under one phenomenon. For many people, that's enough. They might try a few non-medication strategies. W was it enough for you or have you been compelled to seek out any kind of formal treatment, be it psychological or be it medication or lifestyle changes?

Ha. Have you pursued any of that? Well, I mean, the main thing is that I did, after about six months after I was, uh, diagnosed by Jamie, I just, uh, I suddenly, I started thinking, why have I always been, uh, ashamed or just not thought about? Just trying something that might curb some of the anxiety. So the anxiety was still there.

I certainly felt a, a, a great deal of, uh, more freedom, but I still had a, a, a lot of anxiety and um, and then I was very lucky with the first [00:25:00] thing that I took happened to work very effectively for me and has continued to do so. And what was that? The sertraline. And, and I know not everyone will have a great time with it again, you know, so, so I'm also, I I, I was very lucky that, that, and it was interesting 'cause I was able to kind of measure it because what happened was, it wasn't long before I started doing a tour in America with, with Brian Cox, uh, the scientist.

And, uh, when, um. So I started taking such, I haven't realized, no one had warned me that you get a bit of a dip, first of all. So actually you are in a slightly, you can be in a slight, you can be, not for everyone, but you can be in a slightly kind of, uh, um, you might slip into a bit, a slightly darker place.

And um, and then I, and I've put this in the book actually, 'cause I wrote an email. To Brian and, uh, his assistant staff and said, I don't really know. I'm right. I think it was even titled boring email. You know, this is, uh, uh, I mean that's one way you can can check whether you are getting better [00:26:00] is how many of your emails start with sorry to email you.

And if you begin to see a dip in how many times you immediately start with apology. Um, but anyway, so I wrote this email and I, I said, just so you know, I I, I'm just going through quite a lot of, uh, anxiety at the moment and it won't get in the way of the Torah I promise or anything like that, but I just wanted to, to to mention to you.

Um, and then it was only when I was writing the book that I realized that that wasn't because I was more anxious. It was actually because I was less anxious. I was now able to focus on the anxiety so well, and I was also had the confidence to tell someone that I was experiencing anxiety. And then we go on the tour and I can watch that.

You know, long car journeys will always be something that will make me a bit anxious. You know, if we're going from, you know, New York to Washington or, or, or beyond. And you can go through all those things like, oh my God, if there's no service stations, what? There's nowhere to go to the loo. What? I need to go to the loo.

And there's all of that stuff, you know, that, that, that's the very typical banal thing that would've dominate a lot of my life. And I would just watch it getting shorter and shorter. So initially I would do what I normally did, [00:27:00] which is if we were leaving at about 10 30, I'd get up at 6:00 AM so that my body was as awake, uh, awake as possible, because I'd think otherwise, what?

What if my body's not properly awake? And then I'd get in the car and I think, oh my God, my body's woken up now. Now just go to the toilet. We're actually still in the middle of Washington. There's whatever, all that stuff. And I would then go, oh, today, got up at eight. And then I would go. And today I went down to breakfast and I actually ate some food, not fearing that if I ate some food, that would somehow create a knock on effect of something going on with my digestive system.

And I had a coffee, I drank a cup of coffee, not, you know, all of these things. So I would just go, there's less today, there's less today, there's less today. And then eventually I went, oh. I now don't think, 'cause that, that, that was the IBS kind of side of things was one of the very, very dominant parts of, of, of my life, which in, yeah, I would even six months, I would, I would think, oh my God, I've just realized in six months time we were playing Brisbane last time, we had to get up at 4:00 AM to get the, uh, uh, playing for Brisbane.

And, and what if I, and I would start thinking about that. And now that's not in my life. You [00:28:00] know, I don't, every time that I get into a station think, oh, I better just, you know, nip the lube before just in case. Just in case. Um, so that, you know, it, it sounds like such a banal and a mod, but that was a way of measuring actually how much anxiety there was in my life.

Right. Wow. And what do you make, there's a lot of discussion in public about A DHD not merely being a, a condition or a disorder, but actually a huge strength and an adaptation in some ways, and you can see in your career the ability to have a racing mind, the ability to speak at length, obviously hugely advantageous.

Well, what do you think about this tension between A DHD as a sort of, so as a so-called medical condition as opposed to a strength and adaptation, a variation in the human experience? Yeah, I mean, I, I think there are many strengths that come with it and, and I, I would like in the book, I wrote them while I was just finishing the book, I had an event I was doing with an excellent author called Sarah Perry, who wrote The Essex Serpent amongst other things.

And [00:29:00] I'm just there writing the book and it's five 15 in the afternoon and I thought, what time am I doing that? That gig with Sarah Perry tomorrow? And I look up online and it turns out I'm not doing it tomorrow. I'm doing it that night at six 30, in 75 minutes. I don't drive. It's in Chelmsford, which is about 70 miles from where I live.

I go through total that, that meltdown where you're kind of punching yourself in the face and just the self-hatred is just like the, you know, again, something that would've been far more regular in my life generally, but that was big enough even with everything for me, just to go you. And then I managed to get, get through to a cab company and, and I, and I said, I just need to get that ready really quickly.

And, uh, I haven't fully read the book because I was gonna read it the next morning. And um, and then I arrived there one minute after the, the at six 30 go straight on stage. And we have a totally fluid with no notes conversation for 90 minutes. And I use that as an example of, those are the two sides.

There is this side which causes this crash, this [00:30:00] meltdown, this self-hatred, this destruction of yourself that you wish would happen, this desire to just switch yourself off. And yet then within. 75 minutes I was able to appear to be the mo. And you know what I can do? I did a thing with Slavo yet the other day, again, I the barber can and I didn't have to look at any notes.

I had some note, I made some notes, I read some stuff, but then I just started. And I, and I think all of those things are that, that's speed of mind that can come with this. I ne I never used the term superpower in the same way with autism either. 'cause I think that can be very dangerous because I think there are so many different levels, um, and different experiences, whether you are autistic, A DHD, both, you know, dyspraxic, dyslexia, whatever it might be.

And, and I think it can therefore actually fight against people who really don't feel they have superpower and it's almost makes so, so, but I do think it can be a different set of abilities and really brilliant abilities for people. You know, and that, and that's the, the, the great thing about being [00:31:00] easily bored is, you know, that that's why, you know, when I'm with Josie Long, it doesn't matter if we've not seen each other for six months.

We just start immediately talking. There's no kind of, Hey, how are you? You, uh, it's straight into whatever is bubbling in our head and, and then we'll just talk for about 17 hours or whatever, and all of those things. And then when you go into what is considered the more normal world, that is really stultifying.

That's another thing I found really useful, which is I have no, like, I don't go to parties very often. The mixture of the background noise and the kind of, what I would say is conversation for no point. Quite difficult to get hit from in any way. Um, but I will do the pragmatic thing. If someone says, will you come to this party with me?

And I'll go, yes. If they're a bit worried about gonna the party and then I'll think, can I, you know, and I'll say, can I go? Once you're comfortable, they, no, you have to stay for the whole thing. And now I don't feel any shame at once. Everyone seems happy in the party, I'll just go stand in the garden on me own.

Just drink some wine on me and look at the stars and that bit of not following social regulations and not feeling bad about it, and not feeling like you're [00:32:00] breaking any, you know? No, it's fine. I'm just going some, some, I remember someone said there a bunch of people going, see, I'm right. He's just standing in the garden.

And then one person who knew me reasonably well, I went, yeah, fine, fine. What, what about people who feel like they Actually, I'm, I, there's a lot of people with A DHD, they get a diagnosis. They feel like actually they want to become more consistent. They want to become more predictable. And maybe they do have jobs which just require that kind of consistency and predictability.

Uh, let's say they're training as a doctor, for instance, or some kind of profession which rely, which requires them to be very, very consistent. Is that something that, have you had friends who have had to overcome those kinds of struggles? Really kind of. Some way work on those A DHD traits in order to become more consistent?

Oh yeah. I mean definitely. I, I don't think there's like one single, you know, cultish way that we must now all become this [00:33:00] thing. And, and especially like I, I would say friends of mine who are, for instance, parents in particular, uh, friends of mine, you know, who I've, I've got one friend who's a mother of two small children and to now have a period of time in the day due to the medication she can take to just have proper focus.

Because of course, as we know, um, especially for women that, you know, being a parent, there is so much that is, is, you know, in terms of what responsibility. Because there still is such an imbalance in if it's between, you know, the, the, the, the father and the mother very often. And, and so I think for her that has really helped.

And I think anyone, again, I don't have a normal job and I, I find if I go into a, an office in the BBC, within 10 minutes, the, you know, my elbows feel red raw from rubbing against the sides of the room and, you know, and I'm always just fiddle, fiddling around and not really, you know, it looks like I'm not concentrating, but I am taking everything in.[00:34:00] 

Um, it's interesting that was, I was talking with someone whose, uh, daughter is autistic and just at university, and she said that her, her daughter gets in trouble because, uh, when she a lecture, she also reads a book. If she's only doing one thing, uh, it's not going in at all. And again, that's another, sorry, I'm answering another question, but that thing where you go.

I think it's really important for those people who are neurotypical to know that when we are not necessarily being obedient in the way they think, like looking someone in the eye, being a typical one, which is for many of us, looking someone in the eye means that we're really concentrating on looking in their eyes.

But we're not hearing a word they're saying. So it's an absolute lie that that's, whereas, you know, I might be fiddle, fiddling around with something else, but actually I'm taking everything in as well. It's just I'm not following the social. So I, I, you know, but, but yeah, I definitely think that, that there is, there is no single correct way that the, the, the way that we are looking for is for people to have a greater contentment in their life is for [00:35:00] people to have, you know, less anxiety, less self-hatred.

And, and I know people belittle this stuff all the time and, and, and kind of, but you know, there are people living agonized lives and there are, you know, it's that old line, but it Thoreau, is it Thoreau or, I can't remember now, but, you know, people living lives of quiet desperation. There are so many people living those lives and when I meet those people who've managed to come out to another destination and found a new way, and I see their happiness as well, you know, I meet people all the, sometimes teenagers who've just been diagnosed or on the way of diagnosis or just understanding.

And every single time you meet people who you see the lightness in them, now you see that the weight that has gone. I don't understand why. You know, every time people go, uh, you know, we don't even want much. It's not as if you go, oh God, these A DHD people, and they all get given special luxury swimming pools or whatever.

You know, it's not, you're not, it's literally, it's like the vegan thing. I always use the example of people always go, [00:36:00] oh, don't vegans bang on a lot, but vegans don't bang on nearly as much as people bang on about vegans banging on. And in the same way, the requirements of, of people, you know, whether it's a DHD, you know, certainly a lot of autistic people.

And you know, I mean, again, today we are recording the day after Robert Kennedy has, has, you know, done the most horrible speech saying autistic people will never write poetry. Autistic people will never pay tax. I mean, oh my god. We should have. Not only is he an anti-vaxxer, but he's entirely raising the, you know, and I, I, I mean the book is dedicated to Sold, which is a beautiful charity shop in Shor and by sea, which is the majority of the people work there are autistic and, uh, autistic or or other learning differences.

And you know, I see what's been built there for a lot of people who 20, 30, 40 years ago, they would not have, they would've just been considered to be nothing unrequired and placed in the corner. [00:37:00] And, you know, to give people the fullest life, that's another thing. We, we need to create a society where people live the fullest lives possible.

Yeah. I hundred percent agree with that. And I was speaking to an A DHD expert a couple of weeks ago, and the way he phrased it is it's about the gentle balance of acceptance and change. And for the, in helping the individual see which areas are more about acceptance. Which chairs are both about, are more about change and I think the, the elegant thing about that is it applies to A DHD, but it's really applies to the human, um, experience at large.

I think that's a really helpful framework people can use. And I, when I, I think about your life, Robin and your like trajectory, it's kind of like you are lucky in the sense that you very early found a career that suited you, that suited that disposition. It, it seems like, and it, it might have been in a different life, a different reality had you become an accountant, say, and then gotten diagnosed at a DH ADHD at the same age.

It's not just the acceptance [00:38:00] piece, but actually the change piece of like, let me find some work that actually suits my disposition perhaps, or figure out a way to be a better accountant. Yeah. If I hadn't come from the privileged background, the nice middle class background, I come from, you know, my friends who work in prisons, the number of people who are A DHD in prisons.

People who have not had, you know, they, they have not had any come, come from backgrounds with no support within their existence. And at the same time, these minds that can be so erratic and, you know, and that's, that's a, that's a vast, you know, problem, a number of people who are neurodivergent or indeed, you know, mental health issues and who, uh, then will just live their life from a perpetual cycle of incarceration.

Let's suggest the elephant in the room. And I actually would like, again, Anya's take on this, the over-diagnosis is a DHD being over-diagnosed. There's a lot of, you know, a DHD for like, it's or not, there is a lot of controversy. There is a lot of public debate amongst [00:39:00] professionals and non-professional.

We were talking offline about Suzanne O'Sullivan's new book, age of Diagnosis. We have actually spoken to Suzanne on the podcast before about her previous book about psychosomatic illness. I'm gonna put my cards out on the table. I think there could be a problem with both over-diagnosis of A DHD in some respects and on the diagnosis for different reasons.

What, what do you think, Anya, what's your perspective on this? It's actually a question I was gonna put to both you and Robin. So, um, uh, I'm really pleased about the fact that I now have to express an opinion. Um, but no, I mean, I guess what I will, I I will probably err on the side of, of not expressing an uninformed opinion, because I think that's probably less helpful than anything else.

Um, but it's certainly something that to, to follow from what you've said. Alex. I guess the, the worry that I have is the, the size of the waiting lists for NHS diagnoses, which I think contributes [00:40:00] to the possibility of underdiagnosis in people who, um, as you say, Robin, aren't from nice middle class backgrounds.

Um, and. If, if we assume that it is a condition that we're getting better at recognizing or sort of a way of being that we're getting better at, recognizing, chances are there'll be the same socioeconomic disparities as there are sort of in, in most of health. And given the problems that arise for people who, who, who are a DHD without knowing it.

Like you say Robin, the sort of the prison rates, the drug use I think is so much higher. That's an issue. Um, and then on the back of that is the idea if the overdiagnosis, I really don't know what the situation is there. Um, and I guess, I think the problem we have is that some professionals diagnose [00:41:00] in a nuanced, thoughtful, uh.

Way where they have, they really try to think through the whole person's life. You know, they get collateral information from friends, family, they sort of try to get an understanding of the person's development from childhood. And I don't think that's what every, every, every clinic does. And that's not what every clinician does.

And that potentially is problematic if, because it's based on questions, because it's based on clinical experience. It, it creates the potential for people to be incorrectly diagnosed and either for something to be missed or for, for them to be receiving sort of an incorrect explanation for their difficulties.

Um, and then from there, potentially be experiencing harms from the treatments that, that come on. But yeah, I'd really like to hear both of your views as you, Alex, kind of in the clinic that you work and the experience in Robin from, [00:42:00] from talking to people that you have in writing this book. Well, my general, I mean that answer I suppose, Annie, really what we're saying there is society is tremendously imbalanced and there's something hugely wrong in having a country that is as rich as ours, um, where we have such an imbalance between the richest and the poorest in terms of accessibility of so many things.

I'm sure you've seen those awful statistics where I think it used to be, I dunno if it is still now, but there used to be a a, a road that ran across Kentish town and if you were on one side of that road, you would die, I think on average something like nine years earlier than if you were on the other side of that road.

And that was that way of actually measuring the difference in the other side of the road was all council flats and for people sheltered housing and, you know, and so I think that's the, you know, the biggest issue I would like to challenge, you know, that, that I think needs is, um, on so many things on education.

You know, the, the problems we have at school. The problems we have where class size means that if a kid is a DHD already, it's a huge issue [00:43:00] when you've got a class size of 30 people there. Um, I was talking to a young mother whose, whose daughter, I mean, it, it's, it's extremely unlikely that her, her, her teenage daughter, early teens is, is not autistic in, in all the ways, but the, uh, in fact she's autistic, she's been diagnosed, but the local council said, um, I think she should just go to this set normal secondary school.

And mother saying, well, she's actually, you know, the, the, the, the her, where she is on the spectrum is, you know, she will just wander off if you put her in a huge school. She, she wonders all the time, she all this stuff. And so you are always seeing this cutting, you know, everything has to be cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, which shows that we are living in a society that has no respect for life, for the equality of.

Everyone and everyone's had access to these things. I mean, you know, the, the waiting list for, or, you know, again, another person that I met who's got a, uh, a daughter who's not quite a teenager yet, but has been told four years before, [00:44:00] uh, her daughter get diagnosed now going through puberty for four years and being autistic, undiagnosed, or, you know, that's a huge issue to me.

Um, so, you know, in the end, I, you know, almost writing this book is my journey towards something between, you know, Marxism and anarchy in terms of my, my anger, uh, about, and, and also then on the other side, like Suzanne Sullivan's book I on the A DHD side, I found it very unhelpful when she said things like she said anecdotally at one point she says, only anecdotally, but I am worried that people who are di diagnosed with A DHD, that there is no palpable, uh, improvement in their life.

And then continues by saying, many of them say that they're happier. Now, first of all, I think, well, that is a palpable improvement. Happiness in your life is and then continues to say, um, there's a, there's another. Oh yeah. But despite that, many of them are leaving education or leaving their jobs as if that's a negative thing.

Now, there may be many again, the reason that they have [00:45:00] squeezed themselves into a shape to fit however much that contortion has been painful. If they are now given the freedom to remove some of those shackles to get out from that box, we shouldn't just go, oh, they left their jobs. That must be a negative thing.

It could be one of the most positive things that's ever happened. I'm sure we will all have friends who have jobs. They absolutely loath, but sometimes remain in them out of a mixture of fear and the, at least you have a certainty if you always hate your job. So, yeah. I, I, I think what we see with so many of these issues, not just in, in terms of neurodivergence mental it, is that it's always about saving money.

If the, and if someone is, and what, right, do we have to choose the correct level of despair that someone is concealing before they're allowed to? I mean, it's like when I talk to people who I was chatting to, someone who's gone through, through periods of um, uh, really vicious suicidal thoughts. [00:46:00] And when they started, when, when another cycle of them started and they have attempted to take their own life in the past.

So I should have probably warned the preface this with hopefully people know, but they said the most ridiculous thing is that they were told, unfortunately, we can't do anything until you've actually tried to take your own life. And it seems to me that a lot of issues are, we are not handling them until they have got to a point of utter desperation.

And that is also very costly for society. You know, the cost of all of these things, I. So, yeah, so, so my answer is one, from a, uh, anarchist Marxist perspective, I, I think I definitely agree with you on the point of the way emergency mental health services are set up is incredibly problematic in that way.

That, for example, we have these really harsh risk thresholds and sometimes people attend away because they're not risky enough because they, for example, haven't attempted self harm or to take their own lives even. And in some respects, [00:47:00] and that of course if someone wants help or, uh, have some help from mental health services that will logically incentivize the exact behavior they want avoid, that's a huge problem.

But I don't think the kind of inequality and, and discrimination is the only issue when it comes to A DHD and autism. I wanna speak just about a DHD 'cause I don't feel like I have enough expertise to comment on autism. There are some real problems about the diagnosis. I think I'm gonna, I'm just gonna mention three.

One is. I think our diagnostic criteria aren't sophisticated enough and they haven't been updated in a long time, unfortunately. Again, I don't feel like I have quite enough expertise to say how they should be updated, but I think there's generally a sense that in the A DHD community that they're worth revisiting on that the first problem that, because I suppose we started off by almost framing this, whether there's too much diagnosis, [00:48:00] not so much.

The idea is, is there an issue with the diagnosis and, and, and the criteria. Because I would certainly say, I just wanted to throw, you know, that thing about this, you know, still because it's seen as a childhood issue and you know, when, when someone said, you know, can we get a, uh, the, when I went for the official one, you know, a, a a a, something written by someone who knew you when you were a child, well, pretty much everyone who knew me well enough to in any way, observe me from distance is dead now.

So, you know, that wasn't, and secondly. I think it's a really difficult thing to do because so many people, um, are also masking so much when they're a child, when they're, when they're staying in, in a corner of the library or wherever it might be, where they're, they're hiding away. So I feel, I, I, you know, sorry, just, I was just interested in the diagnostic thing.

I can certainly, from my experience, I, yeah, I, I, I would've, I I, I, I found the official version of it, quite problematic theories of Yeah. Boots. I, [00:49:00] I'm really curious how, how did you find the assessment and what was difficult about it? I think it's also be because you are so overly observant of the, the world you are in, you become tremendously.

I, I, it was a bit like when I tried therapy was I was so aware of, of myself, so fearful of going, what does that mean? What, what do I think that means? What do the thing that means? What are the thing that means? What do the thing that, that I kind of, it was probably one of the most anxious times I had since I had dealt with my anxiety.

And uh, and I also think it can be quite hard to truly speak honestly in, in, certainly in the environment that, that, that I was in. You know, you sat next to someone, you know, probably dressed in a suit or whatever with their pen and their, and, and their pad. I mean, that's just the experience I had, you know, and, and, and they were perfectly fine and everything, but there was, yeah, the, the, it, it was one of the least comfortable experiences I've had in the last three years in terms of post.[00:50:00] 

Understanding myself more. Yes. I, and I always find, I often find that people are a bit apprehensive for these assessments. And I try, and one of the first things I do is try and deescalate that anxiety and kind of make it a little bit more comfortable. But I'm just gonna talk about these other couple of problems and we can discuss them.

So the second problem is that the, which is one Suzanne raises, which is the lack of biomarkers. This is really a problem when it comes to every mental health condition. We don't yet have reliable sort of biological markers we can use, okay, here's the A DHD, we've done a brain scan. Be really useful to have that.

Um, and it does raise questions kind of about the, uh, scientific validity of the diagnosis, even if clinically it's a pattern that you see over and over again, which I think, you know, you do. And that's why I think A DHD diagnosis and treatment can still be useful. The lack of biomarkers is a problem. And then the, the third problem I'll mention and I'll stop is.

Is a, this is a [00:51:00] problem I actually deal with quite a lot in the clinic is that we treat A DHD officially as you either have a DHD or not unlike autism where it's acknowledged that it's a spectrum. In reality, A DHD is almost certainly a spectrum because there isn't one A DHD gene. It's very likely, actually there are a ton of different genes, which would mean it's a trait, not like eye color.

Where where, where you have like either brown eyes or blue eyes. It's probably a lot more like height. You 1, 6, 8 and then 1 6 9 and then one 70 in the clinic. This is a huge problem because very often you'll see someone and you, you say this is either, you know, officially, you know, mild A DHD, or maybe what you would call sub-threshold, A DHD, where they have traits, um, but you wouldn't necessarily say they weren't the full diagnosis.

And then you get into really interesting territory philosophically. It also helps sort of underscore, again, back to my first [00:52:00] point, that there are this problems with the, with the diagnostic criteria. I think where the, the, the usefulness of the diagnosis really shines is where there's a really severe case where extremely restless, you know, have all of the Cardinals signs.

Then, you know, no problem with the diagnosis there. But for all those gray area cases and cases where other factors may be at play, like metabolic problems, other mental health problems like depression, um, things like that, then it can get pretty tricky. What do you think, Andrew? I. In terms of what Alex just said, the, I think the idea of a spectrum in some ways is even, it is more, would be more helpful to work with clinically.

I dunno if it would be more helpful to people because it's, that feels like it's much more reflective of the reality of our world and psychiatric illnesses in general. We had, um, of a SAF dab on the podcast a few weeks ago, and he sort of, he had quite, like, he talked about the philosophical approach to diagnosis and the idea that [00:53:00] you, there are some things that you either have or you don't have, like, uh, say an infection of some kind.

You know, you say you, you either have syphilis or you don't have syphilis. You know, you can isolate the bug or you can't. But there are other things where there has been a much more kind of human application of knowledge and culture and science. Um. To, to give a diagnosis or not. And that very much applies to most of psychiatry, but also to things like diabetes, for instance.

You know, we sort of set a number on a blood test after which, and so there is a biomarker, but we still apply a, we still, we still say, okay, here you have diabetes here you don't. And then a few years later we say, oh, do you know what pre-diabetes actually is quite important and does actually seem to be associated with some problems as well.

Um, and that's, you know, that's fine. That's knowledge. That's us improving our understanding of the world. Um, but I guess it, it feels a little bit like that may, maybe that's what, that's where we're at a little bit [00:54:00] with, um, with a lot of mental illness and maybe, and perhaps with conditions like A DHD in that right now we're sort of saying, yes, you have it.

Yes, you don't. And then we have lots of arguments because we're saying, this doctor thought you had it and this doctor thought you didn't. Uh, whereas perhaps the, maybe that's not the most useful question and the more useful question is, all right, so what are the problems that you're getting? What are the treatments that we can offer?

What's the risk of those treatments? What's the potential benefits that they can offer? And if you, as the sort of competent adult, uh, want, are happy to accept the potential risks, and you try it and it gives you benefits, then sort of go ahead. And I guess, like you were saying, Robin, if, if we're talking about improving people's quality of lives, that feels like a slightly more useful way.

That is, you know, to acknowledge that there probably is a spectrum rather than a blanket, uh, not a blanket, that's not the right word. A binary yes or no. I think that's it. Because I, I've, I've got an old book for the 1950s, one of those kind of half [00:55:00] Freudian, half existential psychotherapy books, and it's called The Everyday Problems of Living.

And I think that the thing is that when we don't have the language you get, especially to describe what is actually going on in our mind. Then, uh, we can't, you know, that the reason we need to understand these things more is because, you know, as we know with language, language, it can change our, um, sensory experience of the world because, you know, and in the same way that bit, if someone says, you know, if we are not able to truly, and it's very hard, of course to actually express your feelings unless they're, they get to the extreme of in terms of, you know, um, suicide thoughts, et cetera.

So I think that's one of the things is we need more open discussion just about how we are feeling and how, you know, when someone came up to me, I think I mentioned in the book there was, I was doing a, a, a show in, in Sydney and, and a woman came up to, she went, I think I-A-D-H-D. And uh, she went, I was wonder, wondering about getting a [00:56:00] diagnosis.

And I said, how is your life? She went, brilliant. I have a really great time. I said, well, honestly, if you are happy. I don't necessarily know whether you need a, a diagnosis if you are not finding challenges in your, then I, I, I don't think I said, but to now at least be aware that there may be times. When you do go, why do I feel like this?

Why do I feel that? That might be a way to then just investigate a little bit more about A DHD and whether, you know, so I think it's, you know, actually knowing what are the problems. It's not just your A DHD or not, it's actually the way that you are living. It's, it's, it's the pain that you are. And as we know with pain itself, physical pain, you know, the difference in terms of physical ba there's that great, I think I wrote about that in, um, in the, in the science, but the importance of being interested, the, the, the great story from the Lancet of the, the builder who, uh, a nail gun went right through his foot, the, the, the, the nail.

And he was an absolute ago acne in the, had to give him the highest doses of, of, of, of morphine. He was screaming. He was screaming. And when it got to the x-ray, um, it turned out the nail actually missed [00:57:00] his foot. It was just between two toes, not even in the toe, you know, there was no damage at all. But his belief of that pain and I think, you know, things like that.

Again, in terms of being able to understand the emotional pain people might go through, we, we are lacking. The language required, and especially because people are still ashamed of these things and there is still, you know, so much. I know imposter syndrome isn't really a syndrome, so we put the back imposter sensation of, should I really be making this fuss?

Isn't everything all right? Oh, I should just keep quiet and, and just not having the vocabulary required. And I think the more vocabulary people have and the more, and it's that bit of speaking out aloud as well, like there was someone I know who sent me a thing about some, well, some, some pretty awful abuse that she experienced when she was younger.

And she said, oh, I'm sorry to make this so, um, heavy. And I said, I wanna live in a world where we don't have to call that heavy, that we just say these are acceptable [00:58:00] conversations when we are friends. And we don't have to immediately go into a special way of talking. We, this is life for so many people.

If we are able to actually talk about the intricacies of life apart from anything else, we end up having far more in terms of. Educational and, and in terms of, of, of feeding in the most, you know, pragmatic way, our curiosity of understanding each other. And I, and I think that's such an important thing that the more that we talk about our mental, our, our inner life, because I definitely have found that, you know, because, uh, there are little bits in my shows where I, I sometimes talk about these things in whatever ridiculous geish way, but I will get the number of times that people come up to me and go, oh my God, I didn't realize I didn't work because I, I have that.

And it's that bit when we speak out aloud, we are able to build the stories not merely for ourselves, but for other people to express their own as well. Yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, articulation of our difficulties, of course, is such like atonic, and I think [00:59:00] echoing Anya's point, maybe psychiatry starts needing to move in a less objective and a more pragmatic direction.

I'm talking about, I. Maybe formulating new ways to describe problems rather than rely on diagnoses. Like, you know, if someone came to the clinic with A DHD, like problems, you know, whether or not they have a thing that we could call A DHD. Their problems are much more self-evident. Like they have problems, concentration to concentrating.

They have problems with timekeeping or organization or restlessness. Those problems are self-evident and there doesn't need to be any public debate about them. And then the conversation can shift to, okay, what's, what's are the landscape of options? What's the menu of options? Of which there are tons and tons.

That's the really good thing about A DHD, tons of things actually, that you can do to help to address some of those difficulties. So perhaps more broadly, that's the kind of the direction the mental health system needs to think about [01:00:00] moving in perhaps. I think Daniel, what do you think? It sounds good in many ways.

I think the issue is that it become, and we've come sort of full circle, but it becomes like a societal problem because, uh, I, I think I remember in my first couple of years of training, I got, well, no, actually even now, you know, I sort of love writing my kind of five well, paragraph page, long impression of a formulation of, you know, these are sort of all the factors and this is the story, et cetera, et cetera.

But, um, unfortunately when you are, you know, sending, when you are looking at the person's record or sort of their GPS communicating with you or their lawyers communicating with you or whatever it might be, what they want is a sort of three word diagnosis. And, um, so, uh, and there, and there, there are a helpful shorthand to some extent as well.

You know, they can help us kind of point in the direction of, of treatments, et cetera. But, um, [01:01:00] so. I, I, I dunno that that's a problem for psychiatry to solve. Uh, and or maybe in some way, I dunno, perhaps psychiatry could lead the way, but I think it, we, we will just be shouting in our own little rooms. I think if psychiatrists try to fix it, because actually it, it needs to be much more than that.

And I think often even, you know, patients or you give them the explanation of here is the, again, here's the paragraph explanation in words. And they're like, yeah, but what's the, well, are you diagnosing me with anything? And I presume that's, I think that's just 'cause that's how people have brought, been brought up to see their health, I assume.

I imagine. Right? I dunno. I think that's interesting. 'cause it reminds me, it makes me think in terms of, I think one of the things that I've been learning with the more science shows that I've done over the last 20 years, which is, you know, the important thing is not necessarily the answer. It's the questions it can then generate.

And I think we live in a kind of society though, which says a lot of the time, but just tell me what the [01:02:00] answer is. And that's actually not the most useful thing. The most useful thing is, you know, for instance, when, when Jamie spoke to me and, and took me through all these different A DHD things, the interesting thing for me was what it then generated, it wasn't interesting to me.

In fact, it was rather worrying to me and rather embarrassing in a certain way. I thought, just think I'm a bit an idiot and everyone's saying this nowadays, whatever. Um, but it generated lots of questions about, hang on a minute, so why do I do this? And why does that happen? And why, why have we just had that exchange and why am I looking at that for, you know, that to me is the, the, i I I think if we look at things going here is the solution as opposed to the solution is now the start of where else?

And, and again, that's not what, uh, I think the system wants. The system wants to go, you are this, here is a prescription, please leave. So the solution is encouraging more deeper reflection, self-examination, and then potentially, you know, how could I. [01:03:00] Start to think about getting more harmony in my life, actually more harmony between my internal and external state.

Something like that. I think also lowering shame. I think that's exactly, that's within that answer you just said, which is there are so many things in this and, and so much of our world is built around, uh, you know, you look at the way the news media and social media work, and so much of it's about shaming people.

You know, whether it's the, you know, in this most simplistic way, the, the, the body shaming of famous women or whatever, uh, but also psychological shaming, the, all of those different things, which it reminds me of when I was doing that thing with je. He, he has this way of summing up a certain way of, I think it's bulk and thinking where he, he says, this is the way you need to think about the, the way a Boran thinks.

And this is, uh, he says, if a, if a fairy suddenly arrived to the farmer and said, um, I will, uh, give you anything you want. Uh, but just so you know, I will give twice [01:04:00] as much to the farmer who lives next door to you, whatever you request. And the farmer says, take one of my eyes. And he says that, that's a, you know, that.

And, and I think a lot of our thinking is that we, we look at not at what, you know, not in the positive way. We look at, oh good, someone else has had something worse than me. And, and I think again, it's about a lot of this is about a positive outlook is about, you know, one of the things that I find really interesting about hanging around generally with, you know, in, in, in groups and neurodivergent people, I dunno if you've come across this either, but I notice there is a very low amount of banter, there is a lot of mucking around, there is a lot of joking, there is a lot of talking in the most fabulous, ridiculous manner.

Sometimes so many different things. But there is not the competition to be the winner and make sure someone else is the loser in a conversation. And that might not be [01:05:00] true in, in, you know, in, in for other people's experience. But certainly my experience and a lot of people I spoke to said, yeah, they just, it's like you feel that you're united and let's have a really great time.

In the same way. I, I think I was thinking about this the other day. I was doing a gig, uh, amnesty International and, um, one of the acts on wonderful act called Cheeky Keita, she said, do you still get nervous before you go on S stage? I said, no, I, I don't. And um, and I said, why? And I said, because I go out there and I think, I think everyone wants to have a nice time and if you go out and the starting point is love, you might have that rejected.

But, and I thought, that seems to me so, so very often if you go to a comedy club, the comic will walk on stage and immediately be antagonistic, which means they themselves feel threatened, so they're now threatening the front row or whatever. And I think, and I realized, well actually that's a lot of everyone's existence.

Do you leave your front door hoping in some ways that there will be love and beauty or something on the way? [01:06:00] Or do you leave your front door immediately waiting for the first antagonism? Which of course also would've been my existence, uh, for a long period of time. And if you are able not to immediately go out with this, this, this negative and defensive frame of mind, I think there is such a possibility of growth.

And I know it can be very difficult because I know people do not live easy lives, and I do understand that. But I also think there are other people where you think, you know, some of those people like Lawrence Fox or whatever, you think, oh my God, stop whining. You know, you've can ev every possibility and you're rich and you're a white guy, and all of those things.

And all you do is, well, actually I think I've had worse time than everyone else. And that does seem to me, I mean, it's, it's the Trump way, isn't it? You know, Trump is always saying, you know, no one's had it as hard as me as being president. Every, you know, and, and then they go on about the woke always whining and you think, oh my God, have you ever heard how much you whine the whole time?

There's an interesting psychological idea behind this, which I'm not sure if you've heard of, but it's the, [01:07:00] it's called Kass Drama Triangle. And essentially the idea that. In dysfunctional situations, people tend to occupy very specific roles and it's usually victim, persecutor, rescuer victim is obviously the victim who usually disowns their, their power.

The persecutor arguably takes on too much power and persecutes, the rescuer self sacrifices usually to help the victim. And people often go into victim mode as a pretense to then allow them to persecute. So if you look at Hitler in the 1930s, he basically went on a campaign of claiming different ways Germany was victimized.

Each instance using that as an opportunity for Germany to gain territory. So we were victimized, therefore, we have to go into Czechoslovakia, we were victimized and therefore we have to expand our territory further. Until eventually Poland was just the last straw actually in a long series of territorial expansions.[01:08:00] 

Uh, and you see this all the time, obviously in modern politics, you know, in need. He's an enemy to fight against. So you need to kind of go into victimhood first. And I think the same thing plays out culturally with mental health. You know, the, the, the, a label, like a diagnostic label allows the possibility of othering, it allows the possibility of prejudice, it allows the ability to project your hatreds or your fears or insecurities into another group.

So all of these things make, uh, the diagnostic process even more complicated. I was, I was gonna say, you know, again, again, the beginning of the week that we're recording this, you know, the, there was the, the, the finding on, on, you know, the definition of biological sex and some of the pieces that have been written, you would believe that, you know, oh my god, yeah.

That the, that Britain has been under this heavy yoke of trans regulations, when in fact people with an enormous amount of, of of power have. You know, been fighting against, uh, uh, [01:09:00] really a group of people with far less power and far less representation, you know, and, and, and the way that it is framed though is if to say, oh yeah, you know, it's just, it's just gone too far now, hasn't it?

The way, and, and you go, it hasn't really got anywhere yet. And now we've, we've taken a huge step backwards and I, and I, I find the fact that we fall into those traps of believe, you know, it's like again, how the bullies managed to also be the victims. You know, we see that in politics all the time. The people with the most power say, poor me.

And, uh, and it, yeah, I, I, I think it, and we're seeing, you know, looking in America at the moment, and it will catch on in the UK and is catching on the UK to see the oppression that is going on for anything that can be described as diversity, which literally means anything that might have been done that was notable by someone who, uh, wasn't an old white guy.

I mean, it is a white supremacist, you know, nation at the moment. And it, and I, and I find, and again, yeah, whether, and in the same way when we look at mental health, when we look at the life of the mind in any way of, of, uh, [01:10:00] othering people, yeah. We have a real battle now against, 'cause it's, you know, the, the, it's, it's a bit like, you know, for years now, for, I mean, almost since I was a child, there have been articles written, uh, and columnists who always say, well, of course nowadays the worst thing to possibly be is a middle class white man.

You know, because, you know, the best thing to be is a, is a one-legged black lesbian. Right. And, and I have looked at society. And there is still and has not been in the last 35 years, a one-legged black lesbian in charge of the Bank of England, in charge of the BBC as pri, you know, th this false thing, which is the moment there is even the slightest threat of someone having the same opportunity as you, we will then instead decide, well, all women are now in charge of this, or all trans people are in charge of that, or the whole thing's gone LGBT crazy, or, you know, oh God, you can't get Star Wars now.

You can't appear in Star Wars unless you're a, you know, a black actor or a woman. Well, apart from all [01:11:00] those white guys in it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, apart from then from, I do think one of the most positive things that is coming out of the, uh, oppression that is building up is I just see more and more, uh, wonderful, beautiful voices.

And we need, one of the things that we need to do as human beings is there's a great line, oh God, I've forgotten her name now. Wonderful writer who, uh, said that we spend too much time, uh, looking for poison and not enough time finding nourishment so that we can constantly keep focusing on the negative voices.

And what we should do is go, that negative voice means that I now need to elevate this positive voice instead. In fact, I'm gonna entirely ignore the existence of that negative voice, and instead I'm going to raise the platform for this voice that speaks against them and, and speaks with, you know, love.

And so much of my favorite recently, a lot of the art that I've been to. I just love the fact that when you see thing and you just go, this starts from love. There's a [01:12:00] wonderful exhibition of the Hayward Gallery in London, a woman called McClay Thomas, and right at the beginning it just talks about that it comes from love.

And with that love is also a great amount of activism as well. But if, if, if our activism and if our desires to make a better world for whether it's neurodivergent people, whether it's, whether it's talking about, you know, race, sexuality, gender, whatever it might be, if all of these things start from love, then we are already, the seeds that we're able to sow are so much more powerful than those who are starting with derision and hate.

Yeah. Well that's definitely a good starting point. Robin, thank you so much for spending some time with us today, your new book. Normally We and Weirdly Normal, my Adventures in Neurodiversity, it's gonna be out May 1st, if my plans and machinations work out correctly, this episode will be out May 2nd.

We'll put a link in the description, Robin, we can people go to find out more about your work if they just go to, uh, robin in.com. I'm doing about a hundred gigs in the next 60 days. [01:13:00] Uh, libraries and bookshops, independent bookshops. And I will then be doing even more after that so, uh, they can find out all about the, the book and if they're, and, and I, hopefully if I'm not coming to somewhere near them and they'd like me to just get in contact.

'cause I'll find a way of coming. 'cause I've, I've put in a hundred dates, but I've still got a huge amount of the UK that I've, I've not put in yet. But I will be perfect. Robin Anya, thanks so much. Thanks. Thanks everyone.