Episode 180: Neurodiversity-affirming therapy – with Emily Kircher-Morris

The episode transcript is below.

Carolyn Kiel: Welcome to Beyond 6 Seconds, the podcast that goes beyond the six second first impression to share the extraordinary stories of neurodivergent people. I’m your host, Carolyn Kiel.

Carolyn Kiel: On today’s episode, I’m speaking with Emily Kircher-Morris, host of The Neurodiversity Podcast. After working as a gifted education teacher and school counselor, Emily pursued her passion of supporting the affective needs of gifted and twice-exceptional children as a clinical mental health counselor. She’s also the author of several books, including “Teaching Twice-Exceptional Learners in Today’s Classroom” and the forthcoming revised edition of “A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Children.” She has three neurodivergent children and is neurodivergent herself. Emily, welcome to the podcast!

Emily Kircher-Morris: Thank you so much for having me.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, so happy to have you here today and to learn more about all the great work that you’ve been doing.

So, just to start out, for people who may not be familiar with the term twice-exceptional, or 2E, can you explain more about what that means?

Emily Kircher-Morris: Yeah, absolutely. So in the gifted education world you know, you have students who are identified as cognitively gifted and they typically qualify for different types of programs or enrichment or acceleration, different things like that. So a twice-exceptional student is somebody who is both identified as cognitively gifted and also has another diagnosis such as ADHD or autism or dyslexia. So it’s kind of that layering that, that dual diagnosis that goes together and kind of makes things very complicated for, for people when you kind have those two very different and divergent pieces.

But one of the, you know, it’s not like a technical diagnostic term, it’s a term we use in the educational setting specifically. And so you find that depending on who you’re talking to, some people may not, may not be familiar with that term. Like especially if they’re in the medical community, perhaps. You know, or even in the psychological community, unless they’re very familiar with gifted ed.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, that was a relatively new term for me to learn as well. Cuz I remember when I was in school back a while ago now, I don’t think there was any concept of twice-exceptional or, or 2e. There was certainly a concept of gifted and, and, you know, other, you know, special education at that time. But 2e was something that I’ve just been learning about recently.

Emily Kircher-Morris: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. So yeah, when we were going through school, you, you might have been identified for the gifted ed program. But usually, I mean, first of all, most of those diagnoses like ADHD and autism, you know, really it’s within the last couple of decades that we’ve started just getting better at identifying them in general, but identifying them in students who also have high cognitive ability gets even more complicated.

And I will also say that when I went through and got my master’s in gifted education, which was in the early two thousands, we didn’t even have the term twice-exceptional at that point. We were talking about kids who were gifted and maybe ADHD. Not with, not, you know, not autism, you know, or, or at that time Asperger’s. But you know, it, it is changed so much, so rapidly. And you know, I’m glad that it has, but we still definitely have a long way to go.

Carolyn Kiel: Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, since there was no concept of 2e when we were in school, but you yourself were essentially a 2e student, even though you weren’t identified as such. So what was life like for you, you know, in school, at at home, kind of growing up as a twice-exceptional student?

Emily Kircher-Morris: Yeah, it was really difficult. I always, I often feel like people go into education for two different reasons. The first reason is because they love children and they love school and they love learning, and they wanna instill that in the younger generation. The other people who go into education are the people who hated school and wanna change the system. And so you know, that was me.

It was, it was really difficult. Because, you know, I will say that as a, you know, gifted ADHDer, the only reason I was even diagnosed was because my mom was a special educator, and so she really was an advocate for me. And when I was in you know, when I was diagnosed with ADHD back in the early nineties, that was just at a time when really it, you know, ADHD I feel like at that point in time kind of has been where autism has been for the last maybe 10 years or so, where we’re really starting to learn what it really looks like in individuals. And I would also say that even at that time, while I’ve never been given a diagnosis of autism, if I were being assessed today, we would’ve at least been looking at the, at the criteria, would’ve been part of you know, kind of that diagnostic question. Because I see a lot of those traits in myself. It’s very hard to tease out though what’s, you know, what is gifted, what’s ADHD, what’s autism? Because if there’s a Venn diagram, it’s a lot of overlap in all of those areas.

So when I was a student though, you know, my, my teachers just really didn’t know what to do with me most of the time. They were often kind of confused by me because I could often do the work. I could master it, I could do it very quickly. But I was really kind of a, a, a disaster most of the time as far as my executive functioning skills go. I was very impulsive. I was, you know, just really had a difficult time, you know, interacting with peers. Like my report card always said things about “does not work well in groups.” Like, I worked better on my own.

And it was hard because even for myself, I knew that I could do things, but my grades weren’t reflective of that. And then I was getting in trouble, or I was comparing myself to other students and I, I never really understood why other people could do those things and, and be successful in a way that I just couldn’t quite figure out. I couldn’t quite figure out how to play the game of school and do that successfully. You know, and so it was really difficult.

I mean, I had teachers throughout the years who felt like I should not be allowed to go to the gifted ed program because my grades were very poor. I was frequently in trouble. I had to stay in from recess to do homework that was missing. Which I think now a lot of that has stopped, but at the time, like, I needed that recess! And so sitting inside to, to try to make up work that was missing was not really, it was, it was effective in no way, shape, or form.

But you know, I, I learned a lot of really negative things about myself throughout that whole process. I mean, we had just a, a whole lot of shame that went into, you know, who I felt like I was. I mean, we had disciplinary systems that were so punitive and, and still exist to this day. You know, different behavior charts and card systems and all of these behavioral techniques. And I always wanna, whenever we’re, I see a teacher who’s utilizing those, I always wanna say, what are you hoping to accomplish with this? Because ultimately, you’re not going to bribe a neurodivergent kid out of something that they’re wired to do. You, you have to find other ways to break things down or, or develop those skills or, or provide some accommodations, whatever that might be. But having a public display of, of, of a child’s failures, ultimately is, it’s just not effective.

So, you know, it, it was hard. I will say finally, by the time I got to college, I kind of like figured it out a little bit and, and so that was good. But yeah, it was, it was difficult going through school.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. And when you found out that you had ADHD, were you like through the school system or were you still in school?

Emily Kircher-Morris: Oh, that’s a great question. Yeah. No, I was in fifth grade. I was, I was young. And so, like I said, it, you know, when I was in middle school, as a matter of fact, they did like a counseling group for kids who’d been diagnosed with ADHD. And out of the 15 kids in the entire middle school or whatever who were in this group, and I was one of them, I was the only girl. And so, but it just kind of goes to show that, that that’s just kind of where we were with those things. Like there weren’t very many girls or women around that time who were diagnosed. And I think that goes to show just how many adults there are who are getting late diagnosed now.

And you know, I think in some ways, I am glad that I got that diagnosis when I was young because it did provide me with some level of understanding, but also the label in and of itself wasn’t enough. That didn’t like then lead to anything. I didn’t have any accommodations. I didn’t have any other supports. There wasn’t a lot of information out there. You know now it’s like, there’s books and there’s activity, you know, all of these different things for kids, like as they get diagnosed so that they can have a better self-awareness of things. And I didn’t have a lot of that, but it was better than nothing. At at least I didn’t just go through life thinking I was broken, which I feel like a lot of people who, who are undiagnosed when they’re young, really kind of do.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. Yeah. It’s really discouraging to hear how a lot of the challenges that neurodivergent students have are attributed to behavior problems when in, in essence it’s wiring and people just don’t really understand that. As you were saying, you’re not gonna be able to bribe a neurodivergent student to do certain things, even if they desperately want to.

Emily Kircher-Morris: Right.

Carolyn Kiel: It’s not a matter of wanting to, or not wanting to.

Emily Kircher-Morris: Well, and sometimes I’ll say, you know, people will say, well, we did this, or, you know, we take away video games, or we do this, or we do that. And I’m like, well, that is a, a very short-term solution and it might get compliance right now, but you’re not teaching the skill. You’re not, you know what I mean?

Like, it, it, it’s, it’s, and, and I will also say, I mean, I, I wanna be re very just realistic and honest about it. Like, there are times when, when I will, you know, say to one of my own children, like, “if you go and get your shower done, you know, you can have ice cream for dessert.” Like I’ll, you know, just to kind of expedite that process a little bit, but at least I’m aware like that of what I’m doing there and, and realizing like if that’s what gives my seven year old a little dopamine kick to just kind of get going with things, I’m willing to do that in the moment. But I also realize that what he’s doing when he’s distracted and off task and doing other things, it’s not willful, it’s not defiance. He’s not doing it because he’s mad or he just doesn’t care or doesn’t wanna be, you know, it, it’s like his brain sees something and it’s like, “Ooh, what’s that over there? I wanna go check that out.”

Or my 14 year old who just has very, very slow processing in terms of like, getting started on things and getting anything done. It’s like, as much as I would love to have him step on the gas a little bit, sometimes I also just have to know like, it’s just who he is. And once I wrap my head around that, it takes so much of that frustration I think that a lot of parents feel out of it, because it, it’s just more like, oh again, it’s, it’s not personal. It’s not about me. They’re not a bad kid. So how do we adapt for that? Where do we accommodate? You know, we need to start getting ready earlier. We need to do whatever, and just kind of know that that’s how that works.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

So you mentioned before that a lot of people go into teaching and education either because they loved school or they hated school and they wanna make things different. Earlier in your career, you were a teacher of gifted children. So what inspired you to get into that field of teaching?

Emily Kircher-Morris: Yeah, it was definitely just my own experiences and, and wanting to, wanting to support the kids who were like myself because I had had so little support when I was going through school. And so that was really, that was what, what drove me. I think also it’s interesting like, if you had asked me when I was younger, if I was going to go into education, I would’ve definitely said no, I didn’t think that that’s where I was going to end up. And my experience in the general education classroom was short-lived. Like that was, oh my gosh, the executive functioning skills that a, that a elementary school classroom teacher has to have to manage all, all of those things! That was really hard for me. So I very quickly went and, and got my certification in order to teach in the gifted ed classroom. And that was much more my speed, much more flexible with what we were doing and, and what the kids needed. And so, you know, I, I really enjoyed it.

Carolyn Kiel: And were you teaching mainly gifted students or also twice-exceptional students?

Emily Kircher-Morris: So I had both for sure. And so some of whom were identified and some who weren’t. So I’ve taught in both elementary and middle school gifted ed classrooms. I actually spent some time, as a matter of fact, teaching in a program for exceptionally gifted students. That was their full-time classroom. So I was, I taught them reading and writing and math and all of those things, which was also really an interesting experience. So but yeah, there were definitely, definitely 2e kids in, in all of my classes.

Carolyn Kiel: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And you alluded to this before about the amount executive functioning and, and focus that’s needed to teach general education. But otherwise, how is teaching gifted students different from a teaching perspective than teaching general education?

Emily Kircher-Morris: Well, I’ll preface my response with this: and that is that what a gifted program looks like varies greatly from school to school and district to district. And it, a lot of that has to do with what the conceptualization of giftedness is and how they identify that in their students, because there’s no agreed upon, like final say, like this is what this is that’s uniform. So that being said, programs that I taught in typically were much more focused on divergent thinking, creativity, independent projects, you know, that, that kids could really dive into.

It was always interesting as a gifted ed teacher as far as curriculum planning, because on the one hand we wanted to do things that were deeper and were challenging to kids because one of, one of the goals in gifted ed is always to make sure that sometimes those kids might not ever experience a whole lot of challenge in the general education classroom. But experiencing challenge and persevering through that is a really important skill towards self-regulation in the long run. And so you know, we would have to try to find lessons or units that could provide that, but then also weren’t stepping on the toes of the general education classroom, which was always kind of a tricky, a tricky thing to do. So, you know, so that was a lot different.

I would say the other thing though, that was, that was the most different for me that was helpful was that first of all, I had much more freedom to kind of choose how and what I was teaching in the classroom. And additionally it, it was a lot more what I call front end planning, which I love. Like, oh, I have this idea I’m gonna do this, we can do this. And I like to do all of the, the prep stuff. I don’t have any problem with task initiation. I have problems with task persistence! And so, so in the general education classroom, when I would have to do all of the grading and I would have to do the remediation and I would have to, you know, plan all these things, that was really overwhelming for me. In the gifted ed classroom, I didn’t have as much of that. It was much more of that front end planning and and we just moved through things really quickly, which was kinda how my brain worked anyway. We didn’t have a lot of the, the going back over things. So and also just you know, because of the nature of what the classroom was, we had smaller class sizes, which again, for me was much more manageable.

And I know other teachers who look at the gifted ed classroom and they go, never . I don’t want, you know, I don’t wanna, it, it, it’s, it’s a different beast, but but it was, it, it was lovely. I mean, the, the kids were amazing and brilliant and some of them I’m, you know, even friends with on social media and everything today, which is always a little strange to see them having their own children and all of that. But yeah, it was, it was a good experience.

Carolyn Kiel: Right, yeah, that sounds awesome.

And in addition to your master’s in education that you were teaching with, you also have a master’s in counseling and family therapy. So what led you to pursue counseling as a career after doing education?

Emily Kircher-Morris: Yeah, so, so while I was working in the gifted ed classroom, I knew what my real passion was with all of it was that social and emotional piece. And you know, I, I, well, if you look at the research, the, the amount of career hopping that ADHDers tend to do is greater than, than the general population. And I would say that the thing that has worked for me with that is that I’ve, I’ve been able to stay kind of in the, in the same lane within the education / mental health / gifted / 2e world, like working with kids like that’s at least helped me kind of still progress, even though I’ve kind of made some of these lateral changes in some different ways.

But what I really wanted to do was be able to really support the kids. Because when I had them for a single hour out of the day, you know, when they were in the middle school, or one day out of the week only when they were in elementary school, you, you really just didn’t get a chance to, to really see the growth and work with them in the one-on-one way that they really needed.

And also I just saw a gap that was there that was not being served. I had so many of my families who had these 2e kids who were getting diagnosed, were getting diagnosed, you know, even just with more like a anxiety or depression or things like that. But as a clinician, you, you kind of have to view whatever’s going on in a person’s life through that lens of neurodivergence. And I, and I include cognitive giftedness under that umbrella of, of neurodivergence. And so, you know, if you have somebody who is autistic and you’re supporting them and, and they’re dealing with depression, if you don’t consider the fact that they’re autistic as a part of who they are and how that influences that, you’re not gonna be very effective in helping them. And so it is the same with giftedness. It’s like you have to kind of view some of that through that lens of giftedness and how they process information and how they are experiencing the world in order to find the interventions that are most effective.

And so when families would come to me and say, we need some help. Do you have any referrals? Whatever, there was like nobody, there was nobody who understood that. And so, I, I just felt like that was something that we needed in our community and, and so I saw that as an opportunity to kind of take that next step.

Carolyn Kiel: Oh wow. So in your current career, do you see families and clients and have a counseling practice?

Emily Kircher-Morris: Yes, I do. Yep. And so I have a counseling practice. I, I, you know, so I’m outside of St. Louis, Missouri, and it’s grown quite a bit. At first it was just me and now there are seven other clinicians who work there with me. And we are all in varying ways neurodiversity affirming with our different areas of specialization, and we are pediatric focused. But it’s, it’s it’s awesome to be able to work with other people who really see what kids need and can help them in a way that you know, is not widespread enough at this point.

Carolyn Kiel: That’s wonderful and so important for neurodivergent children, adults, families, to be able to find neurodiversity affirming therapists or even neurodivergent therapists themselves. Because, and you know, I especially find this with, you know, talking to a lot of autistic people, autistic adults who maybe are looking for therapy to deal with things like, you know, depression or anxiety or burnout and a lot of the things you see are, like a lot of cognitive behavioral therapy, which is just like, oh, that’s not always great for autistic people! And it’s so hard to tease out like who’s gonna be a good therapist who’s not gonna cause more harm than good?

Emily Kircher-Morris: Absolutely. And that’s really hard for parents to know because there’s just not enough information out there for them to figure that out. And, and it kind of goes back to the whole thing I was talking about with like the behavior charts and different things in schools. Like you are not gonna set up a reward chart that’s going to get an ADHDer to like, fix executive functioning things. You know, it’s like there, there has to be more to it. Or you can’t just think your way out of time management difficulties. And cognitive behavioral therapy, I was just talking to somebody about this the other day, and essentially I think that is the only treatment modality that any MD has ever heard of because that’s what they say, they tell their clients, okay, well you need to go find a therapist who uses cognitive behavioral therapy. And they don’t even know what that is! Well, the doctors do, but the patients don’t know what that is. And so they come in, they say that, and I’m like, well, I mean, I would say that most current therapeutic interventions or, or modalities have some little sprinkling of some CBT stuff in there, like being aware of all of that. But it’s not strict CBT. And strict CBT is not appropriate for neurodivergent people. I mean, I’m just gonna say that directly. And you have to be able to think about some other, other ways, you know, to connect.

So here, here’s an example that is just kind of top of mind because I was just doing something with this. But I always kind of joke the, the amount of information I have about various fandoms that I am not a part of that I’ve learned from my neurodivergent clients is, is a lot! Pokemon, Minecraft, Roblox, Marvel superheroes, like I have a lot of stuff stored up here, Dungeons and Dragons, which I’ve played a couple of times. Which I love, I love connecting with my clients about those things. But what’s funny is that they’ll tell me and talk about these things and then like as we have this conversation, they, it might be a little bit of info dumping, right? Where they’re just kinda sharing and, but we, I definitely allow that to happen. And sometimes they’ll sit there and go, oh, well we didn’t really talk about anything today, did we? And I said, oh, no, because you can always pull in the real life stuff. And when you connect over those shared interests and those passions, it’s so much more meaningful.

Well, how many clinicians out there might say, you know, “oh, well let’s focus on, on social communication here. You’re talking about this, but do you know like, what is my response and how are we going back and forth? Is this reciprocal and, and you know, this really isn’t the topic at hand. Let’s move over here.” And what is that, what is that client learning about themselves? They’re learning that the way that I am is wrong. This is not how I’m supposed to be. And if this is somebody who is a trusted adult, or just a, you know, a trusted clinician and they’re trying to change me, then again, that’s just kind of me getting the message that, that I, I’m doing it wrong.

My philosophy as far as being a neurodiversity affirming therapist is kind of this, you know, I don’t wanna change who my clients are. I just wanna help them find ways to get what they need and what they want. So whether that’s accommodations, peer relationships, like whatever that looks like for them. And I think that that really requires us to, to do a, a paradigm shift.

I mean, I had a client at one point in time who, who at recess would want to go out and read a book at recess. And so his parents and teachers were like, “well, he needs to go out. He needs to socialize. He needs to make friends. He needs to do all of these things.” And I kind of just wanted to say, well I did say, “it’s his recess. If that’s what’s enjoyable to him, why are, we are projecting what we think he needs as far as, you know, and it’s like, but he’s not expressing that he’s lonely. He is fulfilled and that’s how he wants to spend his free time. That’s what recess is all about.” And I think that that’s hard sometimes though for for people outside of the neurodiversity community to really wrap their heads around.

Carolyn Kiel: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think a lot of therapies, particularly for autistic children and, and most likely ADHD children, other children are focused on getting the kids to behave in certain

Emily Kircher-Morris: Neurotypical.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. Neurotypical, quote unquote, “socially acceptable” ways that literally they’re just arbitrary. You know, as an autistic person, I’ll just say, you know, somebody made them up and that’s just how for some reason, we’re supposed to do things. But doing it a different way doesn’t hurt anyone and it’s not harming anything and it doesn’t seem to be upsetting the child. So forcing kids to conform to arbitrary standards without thinking about the internal experience

Emily Kircher-Morris: Right.

Carolyn Kiel: what it feels like to be neurodivergent and focusing on that. If there’s, you know, distress in the child going on with that, then helping them with that instead of making them look more neurotypical.

Emily Kircher-Morris: Yeah, absolutely. I do a lot of trainings for, for educators and clinicians, and we’ll do an activity where we talk about looking for what is the neurotypical norm for what we expect, and then what is often, like how, how a neurodivergent person might experience that thing differently. And so then what is the neurodiversity affirming intervention?

So one of the examples that I’ll often give is eye contact. It’s kind of a classic, right? Everyone, you know, it, it’s one that most people are familiar with as something that, that some neurodivergent people you know, don’t, is not as comfortable for them. And when we talk about, when I try to introduce the concept of what’s neurodiversity affirming, what does that mean? The response that sometimes I’ll get is like, well, you can teach the child to like, look at somebody’s nose or look at somebody’s forehead or their ear or whatever. I’m like, no, no. That’s just teaching them to mask, that’s not neurodiversity affirming. Now, I do think there’s value to helping kids or whoever understand, like there might be times where people are expecting this, so how can you make the choice either to self-advocate or to just not worry about it or to, you know, if you do choose to mask, making sure that it’s how do you weigh out the benefits versus the drawbacks for you personally in those situations? Like, like I think sometimes there’s anxiety that goes along with it where, where it’s just this, it’s just very individualized. And so, but that to me is the neurodiversity affirming piece. But my preference would be like to give somebody the tools to say, “you know what? It’s much easier for me to focus on you when I’m not watching you speak. And so I might look at the floor, but please know that I’m still listening.” Right? Rather than trying to teach them to, like you said, conform or, or, or match these ideas that we have of what’s like, what difference does it make?

Carolyn Kiel: Mm-hmm. .

Emily Kircher-Morris: What difference does it make? And I think we have to ask ourselves that question sometimes.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. That whole piece around self-advocacy was, you know, definitely something that, since I’ve been interviewing neurodivergent people on the podcast that I’ve learned so much about and it’s just something that was, you know, never a thought when we were, when we were growing up. You just sort of, you know, learned what you’re supposed to do and you did it, and if you had a problem with it, just, you know, too bad! But it’s so powerful and it really is a, a skill that you have to learn as, as a child or as an adult if you didn’t get to learn it as a child, about how to advocate for yourself. It, I think it’s a lot more challenging than people expect, but it’s so critically important.

Emily Kircher-Morris: It is. And, and you know, part of the other problem, especially, you know, bringing it kind of back to that twice exceptional piece, is that if you have a gifted autistic child or a gifted ADHD child or whatever. If you tell them to do something enough times, they’ll figure out a way to usually do that. It may not be comfortable for them, it may not be easy for them. It might cost a ton of, of energy and anxiety to do that. And they still not, might not even understand why, why it is that they’re being asked to do it. But you know, I feel like there, there’s kind of some level of understanding quite often where it’s like, oh, this is the thing I have to do. Okay, I have to figure this out. And so how can I either do it or, or work my way around it. And that actually makes it much more difficult to then identify the underlying neurodivergence with the giftedness. You know, because, you know, a lot of 2e people are just very high masking. They’re the ADHDers who become perfectionistic. They’re the, you know, the autistic people who, who are able to appear like, you know, these very extroverted folks, even though that might not be their internal experience, but they’ve learned that that’s how they have to act.

Carolyn Kiel: Mm-hmm.

Emily Kircher-Morris: You know, and, and I, I don’t know. I, I just, I wish that people didn’t have to go through their lives experiencing that.

Like, that’s kind of my mission, right? Like, how do we create a neurodiversity affirming world? How do we make schools and workplaces and society in general, a place where neurodivergent people can be who they are authentically without being judged or, or being thought of as you know, weird or whatever.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. Oh, that’s so important, a really important reality to be working towards!

And you know, in addition to your counseling, you also have a podcast that’s focused on neurodiversity. It’s called The Neurodiversity Podcast. And you’ve been podcasting now for, I guess, about five years with that. So yeah, tell me about the podcast and what inspired you to start doing that?

Emily Kircher-Morris: Yeah. So really initially, well it works out that my husband is a voice actor, so we already had the studio in the house and so, so that made things a little bit easier. And when we really started the podcast more than anything, as a way to kind of market and spread the word about the counseling practice. But it has grown incredibly beyond that. And so we have a pretty good mixture of neurodivergent people, neurodivergent parents, parents of neurodivergent kids, educators, and clinicians who, who listen to the podcast. And we have episodes that just really focus on, you know, both the lived experiences of neurodivergent people, but also how do we find the ways to make our homes or our schools or our workplaces or society, like how do we shift them to be more neurodiversity affirming? And so I always joke it’s, it’s great because I get to call some people up and I’m sure you can relate to this and say, Hey, can I just talk to you for 30 minutes? You know, can I ? And it’s, it’s been a lot of fun. So yeah, it’s, it’s great.

Carolyn Kiel: Awesome! And how do you select your guests? Do you focus on certain types of experts or people with lived experience or both?

Emily Kircher-Morris: Yeah. Yeah, both. I mean, I, I will say I, you know, we really try to highlight neurodivergent voices. I think that’s really important. But I also, I, I try to, I feel like I have a very nuanced view on most things, and I, I feel like that there are people who have valuable things to add to that conversation who maybe aren’t necessarily neurodivergent themselves. And so cautiously I consider who those people might be to invite them. And I think that that has been a good balance for us. As far as finding who those guests are, it’s one of two ways. It’s either you know, somebody whom I’ve come across who has something really unique or, or different, or an experience to share that I feel like would be something that maybe we haven’t talked about a whole lot on the podcast. Or the flip side of that is if there’s a topic that I want to address specifically, I will go and, and seek out somebody who can talk about that topic. So it’s either, it’s either guest driven or topic driven, one of the two. It kind of just depends. And we try to get a balance.

We’ve done episodes on, on dyslexia and dyscalculia and dyspraxia and we’ve done episodes on you know, just emotional regulation and executive function and you know, just a, a wide range of, of varying topics and trying to touch on all of the different corners of neurodiversity and, and helping people to understand what that experience is like for folks.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, that’s really important. Because I think a lot of people when they hear the term neurodiversity or neurodivergent will think, you know, sometimes one, just autism and two, maybe autism and ADHD and then sometimes it doesn’t go beyond that.

Emily Kircher-Morris: Right.

Carolyn Kiel: I think it’s really important to be able to share that it’s, it’s so much wider. It really is a very wide inclusive umbrella of all different types of neurotypes.

Emily Kircher-Morris: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s always an interesting conversation too, where depending on who you talk to, there’s no really agreed upon definition there. Which, you know, again, I can have a nuanced conversation about all of those things. Like, I never was, was on a debate team, but I could have been. Cause you tell me either side, I can argue either side for, for most things. But I think, to me, you know, understanding that, that some people, because of the way they are wired, learn and think differently, to me that’s one of the cornerstones of neurodiversity, well, neurodivergence specifically, I guess. And just realizing that that what works for some people is not going to work for everybody. And so we just have to be more flexible about things.

Carolyn Kiel: It’s really interesting to see that applied in day-to-day life and conversations because so many of the assumptions that we have about how social interactions are supposed to work, really are very neurotypically based. Like the whole concept of like, “well, if you’re always late to when we get together, then you don’t respect me and you’re not trying hard enough,” is a really ableist take! You know? And it took me a long time to realize like, no, there are people who are wired that like they wanna be there on time, but it’s just not something that is gonna happen. It doesn’t mean they don’t respect you.

Emily Kircher-Morris: Right. Or, or they’re gonna become so anxious about it and they’re going to mask and then they show up an hour early to every single thing, you know? And, and, but that overcompensation because of that fear that goes along with that. And, and, you know, I just wish, I think so much would be solved if people were just able to have authentic and clear and honest conversations about a variety of things. And so often we are bound by what we are “supposed to do” that, I don’t know, it costs people relationships. It costs people their happiness and, you know, I, I, I, don’t know. I just, I just think there’s a lot of wasted energy with all of that.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. And especially if you’re someone who’s been raised to mask and raised, you know, with that shame of, oh, I can’t do the things that everyone else seems to be able to do easily. You may not even be able to explain that like, no, I’m not being late on purpose because, you know, there’s other things going on. You may not even realize that you have ADHD. It’s, it’s so nuanced. It’s so layered.

Emily Kircher-Morris: Right, right. Well, and I think, I think actually going back to the whole labeling of being neurodivergent. I think, well, I am all for labeling things appropriately, because I think when we don’t, it just contributes to the stigma of a variety, you know, of different things. But I also recognize that there are probably a lot of people who might not ever notice it in themselves, or might not ever, even if they have the ability to go through a diagnostic process, maybe they, what we like to call in the clinical “sub diagnostic.” It’s like you don’t quite meet criteria. It’s like, okay, well how do you sort through what’s learned behaviors and what’s masking and what’s all, you know?

And you know, I was listening to something the other day and they were talking about from a, you know, a clinical psychologist point of view and an assessment point of view, somebody might meet criteria for autism at one point in time. And then if you were to reassess them, depending on what skills they’ve learned, they no longer meet. Does that mean they’re not autistic? I would say probably not. It just means that based on that particular assessment on that particular day, it showed up differently in the numbers. But it doesn’t change who they are. And, and that’s what I feel like about is part of neurodiversity, right? It’s like, like if you are neurodivergent, it’s part of who you are. It’s inextricable in many ways. And when people embrace that, when they are okay with that, they’re just going to be, you know, much more satisfied in their day-to-day life.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. in addition to sharing a lot of those great stories and, and knowledge on your podcast, you’re also a published author. So you have two books that are about raising and teaching twice-exceptional children. So how did you select those topics to write about for your books?

Emily Kircher-Morris: Well, it was funny. I’ve always wanted to be an author. I still would love to be a fiction, a published fiction author. You know, someday. I’ve got time. Maybe, I don’t know. I really have no time, but I’m gonna tell myself that. So but I was at a conference and I was presenting and I had an acquisitions editor for a publishing company approach me and say, Hey, have you ever considered writing a book? And I said, well, let me open up my notebook here and show you all the ideas I have for a variety of books! And we selected the first one I wrote was for educators on twice exceptionality because there really just wasn’t much out there about that. And it was an area that was really, had had a need for more information to get into the schools.

And then beyond that, again, actually for the second book as well, I had a publisher approach me and said, you know, we, we realized that there’s a gap here. We don’t have a book specifically for parents of neurodivergent gifted kids. Would you be willing to do this? And, and so, you know, never to be one to say no, I , I agreed.

And so but yeah, so that’s, that’s kind of how those came about. And the newer book that’s gonna come out this April, that’s for a parent’s guide to gifted kids, which is actually one of the seminal texts for parents about the social and emotional needs of gifted kids. It was originally published in 2007, but oh my goodness, has so much change since then! And so I was asked to be a co-author on this revision, which was really quite an honor. And so I’m excited for that. And then I’ve got another project that’s now in the works, but it’ll be 2024 before it’s out in the real world. But again, broadening that ability to create neurodiversity affirming environments.

And for what it’s worth, you know, I love 2e, like, that’s, that’s kind of my experience because that’s where I worked in the schools. But that’s kind of why with the, with the podcast and everything, right? It’s like, it’s broadened. It’s, it’s, it’s wider than just that. Because that is one part of it, but that’s just a very niche population.

Carolyn Kiel: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, that’s really exciting! That’s awesome! Congratulations!

Emily Kircher-Morris: Thank you.

Carolyn Kiel: Really, really important stuff to be sharing.

Emily, you’re involved in, in so many great things around neurodiversity advocacy and support. How can people get in touch with you or learn more about your podcast or your books or the work that you do?

Emily Kircher-Morris: Sure. Well, they can find The Neurodiversity Podcast wherever they listen to podcasts, so they’re listening to one now. So whatever platform you’re on, you can go and find it. You can also find me on, I’m on Twitter at EmilyKM_LPC. And our website, we have NeurodiversityPodcast.com.

And if, if people are educators and also parents, we have some things coming up. But we also have what’s called the Neurodiversity University, and we actually have virtual courses that people can take. So right now the two courses that we have are professional development for educators specifically but we’re working on some content specifically for parents. And so that website, if they went to, is neurodiversity dot university.

Carolyn Kiel: Oh, fabulous. Yeah, I’ll put links to those in the show notes so people can find those easily.

Emily Kircher-Morris: Yeah. And, and you know what, actually, Carolyn, as a matter of fact, I will send you, we have a new course that I’m just creating and it’s a free course and it’s about using fandoms to connect with neurodivergent kids to develop coping skills. And we’ve got some that are pre-made, but also some instructions for people about how they can actually do it. And I’ll send you the link if you wanna include that as well, so people can get to that and access it.

Carolyn Kiel: Oh, that’s awesome! Yeah, definitely. We’ll put that in the show notes. So yeah, that sounds really cool!

Emily Kircher-Morris: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun.

Carolyn Kiel: Fabulous. Yeah. Well, Emily, thank you so much for being on the show. As we close out, is there anything else that you’d like our listeners to know or anything that they can help or support you with?

Emily Kircher-Morris: You know, just keep living your best life, and don’t be afraid to advocate like we were talking about, and you know, continue doing the work because the world is becoming more neurodiversity affirming. We’ve just gotta keep on that path.

Carolyn Kiel: Right. Fantastic. Yeah. Great way to end off the show. Well, thanks so much, Emily. It was great talking with you today.

Emily Kircher-Morris: Oh, thank you so much, Carolyn. It was a pleasure.

Carolyn Kiel: Thanks for listening to Beyond 6 Seconds. Please help me spread the word about this podcast. Share it with a friend, give it a shout out on your social media or write a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast player. You can find all of my episodes and sign up for my free newsletter at beyond6seconds.net. Until next time.