413. “You’re Not Broken” | A Roadmap to Unmasked Self-Discovery with Sol Smith

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Sol Smith:
Really kind of letting yourself get really involved with the things you're interested in can give you a sense of purpose and a sense of control and…

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Hello and welcome to The Daily Helping with Dr. Richard Shuster. Food for the brain, knowledge from experts, tools to win at life. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. Whoever you are, wherever you're from, and whatever you do, this is the show that is going to help you become the best version of yourself. Each episode, you will hear from some of the most amazing, talented, and successful people on the planet who followed their passions and strive to help others. Join our movement to get a million people each day to commit acts of kindness for others. Together, we're going to make the world a better place. Are you ready? Because it's time for your Daily Helping. 

Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Daily Helping Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. And I am so excited to share our guest with you today. His name is Sol Smith, and he is the author of the newly released The Autistics Guide to Self-Discovery. It's now available everywhere, and he is a certified autism specialist who's autistic, dyslexic, and living with ADHD. 

He spent more than two decades as a college professor before shifting his focus to coaching other autistic and ADHD people to gain autonomy in their lives. His speaking skills have earned him a following of hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok, which led to educational seminars about neurodiversity with corporations around the world. Very timely topic. Sol, welcome to The Daily Helping. It is awesome to have you with us today.

Sol Smith:
I'm stoked to be here, Dr. Richard. Thank you very much.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Absolutely. You know, it's so interesting because the term neurodiversity is kind of a newer one. And even though the concepts are old, the terminology is more recent. And we just look at brain and behavior differently than we did 10-20 years ago. So, I am excited to dive into your book, but what I wanna do first is jump into the Sol Smith time machine and kind of go back. And I want to kind of hear your superhero origin story. And let's talk about what put you on the path you're on today and some of the challenges you faced early on.

Sol Smith:
Yeah, you know. For sure. And it's somewhat typical for a lot of late identified autistics, I think, that I always knew I was different. That was sort of clear to me. One thing that may be a little different for me from a lot of other people's experiences is that my parents were very careful or instinctively, maybe, framed all my differences as a positive thing. 

My dad was very smart. He was just a great guy. And he seems, looking back, we totally think he was probably autistic. And we all just kind of thought, "Oh, well, you know." My brothers, and sisters and I, we just kind of thought, "Oh, we're kind of like him." And it just kind of had this idea that, like, we were just a little different and we're raised a little different and that it was an okay thing. 

So, that difference was always kind of evident in the way that I thought, the way that I processed things. And I never really saw it as a big detriment to myself. And obviously, when I got out into the work world, it kind of had its way with me. By which I mean, like, I really felt like I had to fake my way through a lot of school because school, I didn't like following instructions. I didn't like doing things the way they wanted me to. But I could do things my own way and seem to get away with it. So, I kept getting away with it, and kept passing things, and just kept thinking, "Oh gosh, they're going to catch me someday that I'm not following the directions, that I'm doing it my own way."

And then in the workplace, it was kind of like that same thing. I was teaching my own way. I wasn't following a set sort of pattern. I was responding to the students, responding to their preparedness, trying to get them excited about what we're doing instead of following what should be next in the plan. And it just felt right. 

But I was also having lots of problems fitting in with colleagues. I was having lots of problems forming friendships. I started to recognize that all of my friends were sort of second-hand friends, that growing up, I had friends through my brother; and then, in my adult life, I had friends through my wife. Very few people that I actually meet and become friends with on my own. So, that made me suspicious, you know, because I felt like I was a friendly person but I started recognizing that I just didn't form these on my own, unless I was introduced to somebody through somebody I was really close to. 

So, eventually I started. You know, when the pandemic hit, I started this podcast of my own about the education system and about how to try to empower yourself despite the education system's flaws. And I'm highly critical of the education system. I have a doctorate in education, and I feel like we just have these sort of substitute goals in education of grades and getting points. And none of that really means very much when it comes to learning. So, I wanted to make this podcast that would empower students to feel like they could invest in themselves, that they could find out more about themselves through their work and play the game of school just enough to get by while really digging into what they can get out of school for themselves.

Anyway, by the end of making that first season, I looked back on it and went, "I basically made an instruction manual for bottom-up thinking. I basically deconstructed school and taught people how to think like an autistic person." And that was really eye-opening for me because at the time I was studying psychology, and I was very interested in autism, and I realized, "Oh, my gosh, I think like an autistic person." So, yeah. We took the long way around, but that's how it came.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
And so, you launched this information on a podcast, which was essentially, like you said, the blueprint for bottom-up thinking. So, I kind of want to step back and do a little bit of 101 here because if somebody's listening to this and they said, "You know, I've heard of neurodiversity, I've heard of the autistic spectrum, I personally haven't interacted with anybody who carries that label," let's do a high level. Talk to us about what are some of the differences somebody who's autistic might display in the real world?

Sol Smith:
One way to sort of put it is that autistics don't have the same filters as neurotypicals do. And this is just sort of a shorthand way of putting it that our brains aren't really using a lot of their energy to take in information from the outside world. They're using a lot of energy to filter out stimuli. There's so much information that it's overwhelming. So, our brains filter things out and help us focus on just the very important stuff that's out there. 

And an autistic person's filter is just a little off. So, you know, anything from sensory data, like sights and sounds, textures, tastes, can be very overwhelming to an autistic person. So, you might see stuff like that, like being really sensitive to certain types of light, being really sensitive to certain types of clothing, and being really sensitive to noisy places. And all of this just has to do with the fact that we do not tend to focus our senses the same way that neurotypicals have learned to do it. 

And it's the same way with our conversational style and with our thinking, that we don't see the same levels of importance as a neurotypical will. And we basically don't socialize in the same way. Most of our socialization is masking, that we watch how people are interacting with each other, and then we get into character and go and try to interact that way. But it misses a lot of the subtlety that is hard-wired into neurotypical communication. So, we're using a lot of cognitive effort to try and fit in and it still doesn't quite work for us most of the time. 

And so, it makes lots of interactions really rough. It's really hard for me, for example, to join a group of people and fall into sync with the conversation, which is why I think I became a professor because I get to interact with people with a very clearly defined role, and everybody kind of has to listen to me, and that's easy. You know, I can be in this role and control the conversation, and everything's sort of cut and dried. 

And also with friendships, if I make friends through my brother, or if I make friends through my wife, I have a defined role. I'm the little brother, or I'm the husband, and there aren't as many expectations on me. So, things work out. I don't have to return text messages at the same time. I don't have to watch these different levels of disclosure the same ways. I can just kind of be more free to swim around within that role and show up sometimes, not show up other times. And that just makes this different level of comfort for me where I'm not trying to read social situations quite as closely as I would have to otherwise, because it's just not hardwired in me.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
No, it makes sense what you're describing. And certainly, again, the way that scientists are thinking about autism is different than it was decades ago. One of the earliest episodes I did actually was with Temple Grandin, and I remember her talking… I mean this was like seven or eight years ago, but she was talking you know about you know there's all kinds of ideas as to what causes autism and that has evolved over time. There are people who think, "Oh, well, we could fix autism. We could fix autism." And she very starkly said, "We shouldn't be trying to fix anything. If we tried to fix autism, there wouldn't be computers because Bill Gates had autism," right? 

And so, there's still a lot of debate around why the numbers are increasing so much. And some people are saying, "Oh, it's because we're better at detecting symptoms of this earlier and educators have a better handle on it." Some people are saying, "No, there's got to be something environmental." And the fact is we just really don't know. And I would argue, I don't know that it matters. The reality is, people who are different, whether they're different from a neurological standpoint, or a biological standpoint, they're people, right?

And so, I think your book is awesome, in the sense that, like you said, you made this blueprint. And there may be people that whether it's in a corporate space, whether it's in a family setting, who just don't really know the right way to optimally interact with somebody who's neurodiverse. 

So, I usually ask people, why did you write the book that we're here to talk about today? But you already kind of gave us the secret sauce there. And you made your book over a series of podcasts during COVID. So, let's jump into the book. I'd love to spend some time there. What would you say, if people are just going to take away, like at the highest level, what are they going to get from this book? 

Sol Smith:
I think, you know, at the highest level that if you are autistic, that it's a roadmap for people who are identified as autistic and aren't sure what to do with this information. Because lots of times, that's sort of where the experience ends professionally, that you get diagnosed, and then it's sort of like, "Here's your piece of paper. Good luck." And if you even get diagnosed, access is a huge problem, lots of people self-identify because they don't want to spend thousands, but they spend years researching this and being afraid that they might not be autistic after all, but not many neurotypicals spend years researching autism. 

So, once you recognize you're autistic, that's sort of where the experts end their interaction with you. But that's where our journey really starts because, all of a sudden, we're aware of the ways we've been masking, we're aware of the ways we've been working too hard, we experience skill regression, which is that awareness makes it harder to keep up with, so we lose some of the things that we've been doing well and get overwhelmed more easily, have meltdowns, shutdowns, and we want to find our way out of this. 

Lots of people find out they're autistic after a huge episode of burnout. I mean, basically, it's really rare for somebody to come to me and say, "I found out that I was autistic because things were going so well. I just knew something was different." And it's basically because society is just made without us in mind. So, it's a bad fit. When we say it's a disability, it's a social disability. Our fit in society just isn't quite right. So, the society disables us, makes it really hard for us to keep a job. We're dramatically underemployed, and we're dramatically underpaid when we are employed. So, lots of these conditions make it really hard. 

So, yeah, on the highest level, if you're autistic, it's a sort of roadmap on how to better understand yourself and better deal with unmasking so that you can live a life without using all of that energy, being more yourself, and find a definition of success that fits better with how much effort and attention you want to put into it, rather than just adopting the idea of more being our definition of success.

And if you're not autistic, it's going to help you understand your loved one. It's going to help you understand this phenomenon. It's going to help you understand what other people are dealing with that may seem really esoteric to you, may seem really weird, and it lets you into their world a little bit because lots of people just don't have the articulation. And the way that the DSM articulates it doesn't really speak to our experience very much at all.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Well, the DSM is pretty sterile in general but I mean, it's there for a reason, right? The DSM, the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, which clinicians use to not only diagnose autism but everything. It's just a series of check boxes. And this is true of any disorder. So, what happens if you have to have five of the prerequisites, but you got four? Does that… you know, so that's this kind of space where people can live and they still have these functional challenges. So, let's jump into the roadmap. We've teased it a little bit. So, Sol, take us down the road that your book lays out.

Sol Smith:
Yeah, I mean, basically, you know, when we talk about unmasking, this is living without masking quite so much, without pretending to fit in quite as well. Obviously, there's always times that everybody masks, right? Like you go to the dentist, you do customer service, these are times that you mask. But nobody expects those to be very fun, right? They're short-term situational relationships, you don't expect that to be fun. But going to a party, we don't expect that to be fun. But going to a party, we don't expect that to be a time you're masking. Spending time with your family, you don't expect that to be a time that you're masking. 

And autistics very regularly are doing that. We end up being chronic people pleasers. And essentially what has happened is we have this idea that if we stop behaving in this way, that we're going to uncover this true self beneath us that has these needs that have been unmet and will suddenly be able to live a much more liberated life. But the truth of the matter is, in most cases, there isn't a true self under there that is fully developed, that we stopped developing ourselves when we started masking. 

So, around five, six years old when we were being taught in school how to sit still, how to stop fidgeting, eyes on me, all of these ways that we began to try to fit in with our classmates and hide our autistic traits because we saw the kids who weren't high masking, and we saw how they were treated, we tried to match how the other kids were acting. And so, we basically stop developing our sense of self at that point and start developing a sense of, how can I be accepted? And that can go on for the rest of your life. And we wonder why we're not happy. We wonder why we are so sensitive to the world. 

So, unmasking process is partially self-creation. Trying to find out what it is you want out of life, who you really are, what are your likes and dislikes, what do you want out of life. And these are surprisingly difficult questions to answer. Most autistics over 30 years old, if you ask them, "What do you want in life?" they can tell you stuff they want for their spouse, stuff they want for their kids, stuff they want for their friends, provided they have any of those things. But they have a really hard time saying what they want for themselves. 

So, that's a good place to start, you know, trying to figure out what it is that you want because a lot of us have tried so hard to fit in that we may discover that our sexuality is different than we thought, that our gender identity is different than we thought because we've fallen into this idea of social norms that didn't really speak to us. And, now, we have a better vocabulary for what all these things are. And basically, socializing is what autistics don't do very well. But we're faking it so well that we've pulled one over on everybody, including ourselves, and we might find a much better way of living.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So, unmasking is the first step on the road. What comes next, Sol?

Sol Smith:
Well, what comes next is dealing with a lot of the challenges that you have with communicating this to family members, communicating this to your loved ones, because you do have to, in some cases, really experiment with things as you're unmasking. So, how to talk to your family members about this, how to get allies, essentially, in this process, how to enlist people who are going to support you and get them to understand that you have not been inauthentic with them, that this has been your authentic self so far as you knew yourself, but that things are changing and you'd like them to be in your life. You'd like their support. 

And so, that becomes a big step. Lots of us, again, we're in burnout. So, I have some stuff about how to get out of burnout. And there's a lot of… let's see, rumination is a huge problem for autistics. Rumination, like our default mode network is busier than neurotypicals. You see lots of different numbers out there. The one that people keep quoting is 42% busier default mode network. So, we're constantly self-analyzing. 

And this is where the rumination comes in. When you have an unfavorable interaction, you have something embarrassing or something that was stressful, we keep reliving it in our heads and we feel like we're problem solving, but you're basically, you know, opening up a conversation between your frontal lobe and your limbic system and just creating a feedback loop that's keeping you anxious, keeping you in this state where you think that you're solving a problem, but then you think you're experiencing a problem, so you think you're solving it, but really you're just reliving something that most neurotypical people could have just put down. 

And this causes, as far as we can tell, tons of depression, tons of anxiety, self-harm, unhealthy coping mechanisms. So getting out of rumination is another one of these steps. You know, how to recognize that you're ruminating and not problem-solving. You know, how to build some long-term tools of resilience and how to build some short-term tools to get it to sever that cord and stop doing it. And you know, all this is stuff you have to experiment with because there's so many different ways to be autistic.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
And my presumption is this roadmap doesn't have to be sequential, it can be… 

Sol Smith:
Exactly.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
But you did say something that was so interesting that I never thought of. So, how do you distinguish between rumination and problem solving? Because there's obviously a great deal of overlap there.

Sol Smith:
Yeah. No, there is. And lots of people will say, basically, that the problem solving works just enough for me to trust that it's problem solving. But then, when it's rumination, the rule of thumb that I tell people is that if you're thinking about it for more than three days, you're probably using much of the same words to think about it. You're probably treading much of the same ground just making this path in your neural pathways deeper and deeper and feeling like you're getting somewhere, but you're going in a circle. If it's more than three days, you're probably ruminating. 

And lots of times this has to do with a problem that you have with somebody, somebody close to you, and you feel like you have had a miscommunication, a misunderstanding that caused some sort of a fight, a problem, and you want to unwind this. You want to try to figure it out, and it feels like you're almost there. Then, you come up with a new metaphor, a new way of looking at this, a new way to explain that my intent was not the harm that happened, and they'll understand this now. It's seeking to be understood. 

So, you tell them this again and they're not receptive to it. They feel like, "Gosh, you're dwelling on this. You're rehashing this again. Why do you have to bring this up again?" And it can be so mystifying because we feel like we are coming from a place where we want to be understood and we just want acknowledgement of something deep inside of us that has been very analytical about this interaction, but that's just not how neurotypicals seem to think about conflict. 

The way that I frame it is two people are walking together, and they fall through the ice, and the neurotypical is like, "We've got to get out of the ice," and the autistic is like, "How did we get so far out on the ice?" and starts retreading the steps, trying to figure out how we got so far on the ice, why did it happen this way, and neither one of them is wrong, but they're just looking at two different sides of this problem, but yeah.

So, if you're making this closed feedback loop, you end up really damaging yourself, you get really stuck, and it can cause lots of communication problems. But that's my general rule of thumb. If it's three days, you're probably not going to come up with a solution.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
I think, yes, 72 hours is probably the line. That makes sense. So, I want to touch on this briefly because you have talked about whether it's wearing a mask at work or having conflict with people you work with. At the end of the day, this is distressing, right? And the feelings may be masked, and it may be this internal struggle, but it's there nonetheless. 

And so, I don't know how many people over the last eight years talk about, "Use meditation because it's a wonderful thing to alleviate stress." And it is. I'm not saying that it's not. It's terrific. But in your experience, when somebody who is neurodiverse is experiencing burnout or emotional distress, what are some of the coping mechanisms that have worked really well for you that you talk about in the book? 

Sol Smith:
Well, I think that something that's important to note first is that there's a very high risk if you're late-identified autistic that you have developed some really unhealthy coping mechanisms. Alcoholism, eating disorders, sex addiction, gambling addiction, these things are sky high. And of course, hard numbers are hard to come by because the studies are new, and they're not using very large numbers of people, but 88% of autistics we believe are going to have one of these addictions in their life. 

And I, myself, had binge-eating disorder for 25 years. And that's really what hid my autism from me. I put all of my anxiety on that one place and it was able to sort of create this illusion that I had this one problem and everything else was okay. So, that was my coping mechanism. And when I finally tackled that coping mechanism and got rid of it, I was like, "Wait a minute. Where's all this anxiety coming from?" Everything else suddenly came to the foreground because essentially I put all my effort into mentally hiding this problem. 

So, yeah. So, suddenly you have to do new coping mechanisms. So, long-term coping mechanisms, they are lots of the ones that you've heard of. Like exercise for me, I started running like crazy. I was running 24 miles a week and that did not come close to my eating disorder as far as managing my anxiety. And so, it took a lot of working on myself, journaling, running, reading about autism, trying to educate myself, so that I could sort of see the way that my interactions at work and stuff were stacked against me so I didn't feel crazy. 

And yeah, meditation is great too, but of course we have these really busy minds, and you have to sort of look for different types of meditation a lot of the time, like guided meditations, or visualizations, walking meditation, yoga, like different ways of mindfulness to help you focus because the regular sitting meditation can be really hard to access and sometimes you need a teacher, but yeah. 

So, lots of long-term ones end up being the ones you've heard of a lot because they're going to regulate your nervous system, they're going to cut out a lot of anxiety. But other things are really following your special interests. Usually, autistics have something that they're really interested in, something that fascinates them. And it's sort of like having a crush on a concept. You know, if you think about civil war buffs or people who are really into trains is the cliche picture of an autistic. 

My son is really, really into crustaceans. And I mean really into them. He probably knows more about crustaceans than most scientists do. And he spends time painting and drawing them. His entire wall is covered with probably 300 paintings of crustaceans that he's done. And this is just something that he does to regulate himself when he's upset, to anchor himself and ground himself and get himself out of his compulsive thinking and into something that's much more productive. And it works really well. 

And my daughter, her coping mechanism is solving Rubik's cubes. She got really into this. She saw this documentary called Speedcubers. She decided she wanted to be like this kid, Max Park, who was an autistic kid in the show who became a world champion. It was her life's goal to meet this guy. And six months later, she was going up against him. And she can solve a Rubik's cube in six seconds. And she works hard. She does two to four hours of cube solving every single day. And we're going to World Championships next month. 

So, really, kind of letting yourself get really involved with the things you're interested in can give you a sense of purpose and a sense of control. And granting yourself permission for that can relieve a lot of stress because otherwise you're really holding yourself back from something that turns you on.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So, well said. And I'm beyond grateful that you came on the show today to share your wisdom with us. It's so important. As you know, Sol, I wrap up every episode by asking my guests just this one question, and that is, what is your biggest helping, the single most important piece of information you'd like somebody to walk away with after hearing our conversation today?

Sol Smith:
That you're not broken. You really have to trust that you're a unique person, and you're not defined by your neurotype, you are unique even within that neurotype. And that from wherever you are, you start where you are and accept yourself, you're going to be able to overcome the challenges that you're facing and live a happy life.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Beautifully said. The book is called The Autistic's Guide to Self-Discovery. It is available in bookstores, in Amazon, everywhere now. And we'll have links to that in the show notes as well. But, Sol, tell us where people can learn more about you online.

Sol Smith:
Yeah, you can go to professorsol.com, and that's where I do coaching for autistics and ADHDers who want a little extra help in life. And you can go to neurospicycommunity.com. We are the – actually, I found out – the largest membership group of neurodivergents who come together in support groups. We have several of them a week, 12, and try to get together and just share our experiences, share what we know, and just build a better sense of community.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Amazing. And we're going to have links to all of that in the show notes at drrichardshuster.com. If we got you in the car or at the gym, we got you covered. Sol, this was great. Thank you so much for joining us today. Loved our conversation. 

Sol Smith:
Thank you so much, Dr. Richard. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Absolutely. And to each and every one of you who took time out of your day to listen to this, thank you as well. If you learned something new, if you're going to grab the book, go give us a follow on a five star review on your podcast app of choice, because this is what helps other people find the show. But most importantly, go out there today and do something nice for somebody else, even if you don't know who they are, and post it in your feeds using the hashtag, #MyDailyHelping, because the happiest people are those that help others.