In our latest podcast episode, we delve into the often misunderstood world of autism and ADHD, shedding light on the complexities and beauty of neurodiversity. Pastor Sarah Jane, a seasoned pastor and clinical therapist, is joined by Alicia, a mother and author, to discuss their personal experiences and the misconceptions that surround these diagnoses.

Alicia shares her journey with her son, David, who was diagnosed with autism. Through heartfelt anecdotes, she illustrates the intelligence and unique problem-solving abilities that many autistic individuals possess. Contrary to the common belief that autism equates to a lack of intelligence, Alicia emphasizes that autistic people often think outside the box and see things that others might miss.

Pastor Sarah Jane highlights the importance of understanding and compassion when dealing with autism. She recounts stories of individuals who, despite their challenges, demonstrate remarkable intelligence and capability. She also touches on the stigma and negative framing that often accompanies an autism diagnosis, urging listeners to see beyond the label and recognize the person behind it.

One of the key points discussed is the intersection of autism and ADHD. Alicia explains how these two diagnoses often go hand-in-hand, leading to unique challenges and strengths. The hyperfocus associated with ADHD, for example, can enable individuals to master skills and solve problems in ways that others might not.

The conversation also addresses the misconceptions about the causes and treatments of autism. From misguided beliefs about diet changes to the idea of “praying away” autism, Pastor Sarah Jane and Alicia debunk these myths and stress the importance of proper medical and therapeutic support. They highlight the need for a balanced perspective that acknowledges both the difficulties and the gifts that come with autism.

Throughout the episode, the role of faith in navigating the challenges of autism is a recurring theme. Pastor Sarah Jane and Alicia discuss how their faith provides strength and guidance, helping them to support their loved ones and find peace in difficult times. They also emphasize that while spiritual practices can offer comfort, they are not a substitute for medical treatment.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking to understand autism and ADHD better. Whether you are a parent, educator, or simply someone interested in learning more, you will find valuable insights and inspiration in this heartfelt discussion. Tune in to discover how faith, understanding, and compassion can transform the lives of those affected by autism and ADHD.

Listen to the full episode now and join us in breaking down the barriers of misunderstanding and stigma. Together, we can create a more inclusive and supportive world for everyone. Scroll down to read full transcript.

 

>> Pastor Sarah: hey, listeners, this is Pastor Sarah Jane. I’m here with my co host for the month, Alicia. we are talking as much as we can. everything autism. she is an authoress, a mother and a wife. her oldest son, she spoke last week about her oldest son who was diagnosed with autism, along with other things. And so that’s kind of the topic that I wanted to discuss today was just the misconceptions and the other diagnoses, that sometimes get in that view. And, one thing you last said was that people have the misconception that, autistic people are not smart, that they’re seen as dumb. And that is so true. But like I had said, at the very end, I was talking about this young man who was to, you know, every view looked like he was on the lower end of the spectrum because he couldn’t speak. And he couldn’t really move and didn’t really have good interaction. And yet this boy was so smart that he would rock his wheelchair to move it to the location he wanted to be at. And when he was at my house, he would be on one end of my kitchen, next to his sister or his mom, and he would move his wheelchair to me. So I have a hard time with the idea or the view that they are not smart, correct?

>> Alicia: Yes. I just think that there’s just so many misconceptions in general. and part of the reason there is the misconception that autistic individuals are not smart is because autism has been mainly framed as a negative thing. Now, I’m not going to be saying that autism is a wonderful thing, because autism does have some very, very difficult challenges associated with it, but I also don’t think it’s correct to entirely frame it as a negative thing because then all sorts of misconceptions just pop up about what it really is. and in reality, there are some incredible gifts and some incredible hardships that go along with it. and one of the great gifts is just the ability to think outside the box and to see things that nobody else can see. and there’s definitely a lot of intelligence there and there’s just a lot of problem, solving. And if the autistic individual also has a diagnosis of ADHD, there’s also that hyper focus that enables them to really concentrate on a problem or a skill and just really master it.

>> Pastor Sarah: Yeah, I think it’s, interesting that you brought up ADHD because I actually just had a conversation with my husband yesterday, and it was half joking, but he works at a, ah, agency that is completely filled with scientists and mathematicians. And I just kind of said, you know, babe, I really feel that, almost everybody at your agency is autistic. And I wasn’t throwing out there to be lighthearted about the diagnosis. It’s that there is truth to the fact that a person in his field that has the level of brain capacity that he has, that his coworkers have or colleagues have, their brain function is that. I mean, my husband alone. Let me just, And I’m not saying my husband’s autistic, but I. My husband, alone in school from kindergarten all the way up through master level degree, had 4.0 plus. That’s almost unheard of. That is the elite of the elite, and their brains function differently and they are incredibly smart. And there are, like, I think you mentioned this, during our last talk, there are historical people like Albert Einstein, like Isaac Newton, like Abraham Lincoln, that people believed had we had something in that time that could diagnose somebody with autism. Autism. They would have been diagnosed with autism and adhd. Because, those two diagnoses pretty much go hand in hand for most autistic people. Because, again, your brain is. Is functioning at a level that, isn’t the quote unquote norm. my brain does not. I mean, I do believe I have some form of add, because I am constantly doing things. I can’t just be, I mean, like, a prime example. I currently am reading four books at once. I mean, normal people read a book, and then they go into the next. But I can’t. I cannot. It’s like a. It’s like a palette cleansing where I’m reading a fiction one. I’m also reading a nonfiction one. I’m also reading, like, a self improvement one. I’m also reading a, like, informative, educational version. I mean, it’s like, I rotate because it’s like, I can’t be stuck in this. My brain needs to switch over to something else.

>> Alicia: Yes.

>> Pastor Sarah: and so I think if we would have had the tools or the knowledge base to diagnose those people with, they would have been diagnosed with it. And so in the scientific, mathematical world that my husband lives in, most of those people are incredibly socially awkward. Like, they cannot empathize. They cannot, They don’t have. They don’t understand social cues and social norms. Like, it’s not okay to just be out, right, and say this or do that. You have to have some social graces. Not that they’re nasty or mean or, you know, autistic people just tend to not be able to make the connection of why your face looks like that. So, just as an example of that particular thing, I have a client, or had a client, actually, that he would see a face on you, and he would automatically think you’re mad and you hate him.

>> Alicia: Yes.

>> Pastor Sarah: Yes. And his parents were like, no, son, I’m just frustrated right now, or I’m just. I’m annoyed because this isn’t working the way I thought it was going to. But that has nothing to do with how I feel about you. But they almost can’t differentiate that. There’s levels of emotions and levels of connection.

>> Alicia: I’ve heard it as almost like an emotional blindness where you can see joy or you can see anger, but there’s nothing in between. And so you can tell if there’s sorrow or if you’re just frustrated or if you’re just having a bad day, you know?

>> Pastor Sarah: Right.

>> Alicia: And I would also say that, hints and subtleties, don’t happen. You have to be direct and forthright, and your communication needs to be mean what you say and say what you mean.

>> Pastor Sarah: Right. And sarcasm doesn’t go very far with them either.

>> Alicia: No, no, it doesn’t.

>> Pastor Sarah: No. Again, I don’t believe that my husband’s autistic, but he definitely gets sarcasm. He’s, like, the king of sarcasm. He has taught my 15 year old to be the queen of sarcasm. but in general, autistic people cannot, cannot, identify when somebody’s being sarcastic or not. Now, they can typically dish out sarcasm as seen by the world. Like, I can go and speak to some of those people at the agency he works at, a. And they are being sarcastic in their words, but it’s almost like, I know that they’re trying to be sarcastic, but they don’t really know how to do it in a tactful, funny way. It’s almost like a rude, obnoxious way.

>> Alicia: Right. And if an autistic individual is a gestalt language processor, you learn all of these phrases, but you don’t necessarily learn.

>> Pastor Sarah: The proper meaning behind him way to use that phrase.

>> Alicia: And so there might be a desire to be sarcastic, and so a phrase is repeated, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t like a spontaneous thing, you know?

>> Pastor Sarah: Yeah. It’s just calculated how the language was learned.

>> Alicia: Yes.

>> Pastor Sarah: Yeah. you know, some of the other misconceptions, are, like, for instance, one of my daughters, when she was younger, she was diagnosed. She’s had different diagnoses, because every doctor we come in contact with, they’re like, oh, no, it’s not that. It’s this. Or, oh, no, it’s this, too. Or so when. When we first had her in for therapy or for, a neurological psych eval, because we’re like, something’s not right. Something’s. Something’s wrong. Like this. There’s something that we can’t figure out, where we’re at a loss, like at a disconnected. And we wanted to be able to speak her language and figure out how can we help her. We took her for a neurological psych eval, and they said that she had, Well, first we had to go see primary care physician. Primary care physician said she had ADHD and she had, OCD, obsessive, compulsive disorder. Somewhat looked that way, but it also somewhat didn’t, and then we had a psychiatrist diagnosed her with odd oppositional defiant disorder. And so we’re like, okay, we want to go see somebody that specializes in diagnosing, specifically the whole thing. Like, look at the big picture of everything and pull it all together. So we did a neurological psych eval, and they discovered that she does have adhd. She, has, ah, cyclothymatic disorder, which is a kind of depression, kind of, ah, oppositional defiant disorder, combo. And, she also had a learning disability. So she had all these things wrapped up into how to function. And so we had to change our way of thinking of how to address stuff because you can’t just. We don’t live in a world now with even just an average person. We can’t just say, do it because I said so. We don’t live in a do it because I said so world anymore. We are in the age of information, the age of instant gratification, the age of, you know, instant, communication. You know, information is like a big thing. And so we couldn’t address or we couldn’t, we couldn’t discipline or structure or anything in the way that we thought was doable. We had to retrain our brains. What was sad was, she then started having seizures and had full on grand mal seizures. And talk about scary. I mean, as a parent, and I know having talked to you, and I’m going to have you talk more about that, but I know as a parent, you have felt the scary, the, oh, my gosh, this is my baby, and I don’t know what to do. And seeing my childhood rolling on the floor with vomit, and I’m just going to leave it at that. There’s other things that happen, but for the sake of my, my daughter’s privacy, let’s just say she had grandma seizures that were full effect. Grandma seizures. M. You, can’t do anything now. Years ago, they would say, stick something in their mouth. They would say, hold them down, but you can’t do that anymore because they can choke and aspirate, and you. You just need to roll them on their side and leave them there. right. And so you feel very helpless because you’re just wanting to hold them and calm them down. But it’s. That has nothing to do with it. So the seizures affected her so much that from the age of basically nine to 13, they were giving her medications to try to control her seizures. And it was like, it’s a guessing game. We’re going to try this and see if it works. We’ll up the dosage and see if that works. We’ll go this way and see if that works. Until she was about 13 and they figured it out. Well, unfortunately, when, she turned 13 and her medication was stable, her seizures had stopped because it had it under control. The downside of seizure medication is that you have very poor memory. And so she was not able to retain stuff from school. She was struggling really bad with making connections of peers because during the formative years of learning how to interact with people, she was in the middle of seizures. So she had, like, the four year old awkward version of being friends where it’s like, I don’t know you, but I’m going to go sit in your close proximity and I. And take a toy from you, and that’s considered play, you know?

>> Alicia: right. Yeah.

>> Pastor Sarah: That’s kind of where she was at 13. And so she was getting made fun of. She was getting treated badly by her peers. and it caused her to act out. And, so they put her on some medication thinking that would help for depression or anxiety, because they thought the cyclothymatic disorder was the major issue. And, they put her on Ritalin at first, and that just made her crazy. And when I say crazy, I’m not saying, like, in a negative way. I mean, she really was, like, seeing and hearing things that weren’t there. She was saying things that were like, we are in danger for our lives, kind of thing. And then we switched. They switched over to, Ritalin. And. What’s the other one? Adderall. and Adderall worked, except, if you know anything about Adderall, it is a chemical that is closely related to, like, methamphetamines, and so it made her lose a ton of weight. So my daughter then looks skeletal and. But it was, at that time, the only thing they can figure out that would work for her. So the doctors always said, well, would you rather have this happen to her or this happened to her? Same with the seizures. Would you rather her have seizures or have good grades? I mean, I feel like I’d rather. There’s got to be a middle ground somewhere. And so, fast forward a few years, she graduated high school, she took herself off of the medication because she felt like she was a zombie. And I understand that, and she’s old enough to do that. she took herself off of every medication, even her seizure meds. And unfortunately, that had a harshen effect on her depression level. And so they ended up putting her on a different antidepressant, and then the seizures started again. So then she had to be put on seizure medication again. But I say all that to say, you know, she was looked at as dumb. She was looked at as not, able to socialize well. She, People, they feel like faith is too much for them to deal with. And my daughter is such a giving person. She gives to everybody. Her love language is gift giving. She gives the best gifts. She wants to be in your space.

She wants to spend time with you. She’s got such a big heart, but she’s also got a big personality to go along with that. And if a person doesn’t take time, no matter the diagnosis, I really wish people would stop looking at the diagnosis as that’s you. I wish people would look at the person and say, this is you. Plus, you have this diagnosis.

>> Alicia: Right.

>> Pastor Sarah: You know, and, I think.

>> Alicia: I think, unfortunately, that’s why there tends to be two campsite is people who refuse to get any diagnosis or people who get a diagnosis, and it becomes like their whole identity.

>> Pastor Sarah: Oh, yeah, they own it.

>> Alicia: It needs to be, you know, we get the diagnosis, we get the tools that we need. We understand how their brain works so we can better help them, but then we see the whole person. And when you look at the person, seeing the person, you know, in my case, the child I have, that gives you the ability to say, look at this incredible strength and look at this area we need to work on.

>> Pastor Sarah: Right, right. And I think, like you said, they tend to own it as their identity. I mean, even in the therapy realm, we have clients that will come into our agency and they’ll be like, oh, yeah, I have PTSD. And I’ll say, okay, when did this first start? Oh, it was like 27 years ago. What? What? there are really only a handful of diagnoses that are life diagnoses. Autism is one. ADHD is another one. PTSD is not a life diagnosis. It is a circumstantial diagnosis that can be treated with therapy and medication if needed. Autism and ADHD are totally different things. This is a brain situation that isn’t because of a circumstance. Correct. And so,

>> Alicia: And that is something else that I, you know, I wish more people knew. It’s nobody’s fault, right. You know, it’s not even. Shouldn’t even be considered so negative. There’s so much blame that gets cast around with the autism diagnosis. And, you know, a good pediatrician and a good psychologist or whoever you go to should give you the tools that will help you realize that this isn’t anybody’s fault. This just happens to be a difference in the brain, you know?

>> Alicia: And it’s not all bad, some of it’s very good. But, like you said, it is for life and you can’t take it away, you can’t fix it, nor necessarily should you try to fix it.

>> Pastor Sarah: Right.

>> Alicia: You, you help, you don’t try to fix.

>> Pastor Sarah: Right. Because they’re unique. And, you know, God’s word says that we were uniquely made. And for whatever reason, for whatever reason, David is for the rest of his life, got to be autistic. Ah. And no part of that diagnosis states that your son will not be able to function at a very high level. So just because David has a diagnosis does not mean that there’s anything wrong with him or bad with him. Same with faith and being diagnosed with ADHD. I have heard people, which I think is so horrible, I have heard people that have said that it is like being demonic possessed, that just pray the autism out of them. And it’s like, no, no, I’m sorry. A young man who cannot speak, cannot move, but scoots his wheelchair to be in close proximity to put his head on my shoulder, that is affectionate love and that is directly from God. You’re not going to tell me otherwise, that he is demon possessed and I need to pray it out of him.

>> Alicia: Right? Yeah. I mean, you hear loads of unhelpful things when you get an autistic diagnosis. And one of them is, well, you can just pray it away or just play some godly music and the meltdown will stop. And it’s like, well, this isn’t a spiritual matter. Now, there are spiritual matters in this world, but this is not one of them. This is a brain problem going on right now. And yes, if music helps, that’s great, but it’s not the cure. It’s not a spiritual cure for a medical problem. just things like that. Or even if, here’s my favorite one is like, well, if you just change the diet, it’ll, all go away.

>> Alicia: When you have autism. And my son’s case, he also has a legitimate feeding disorder. Now, first of all, you can try to change that diet all day long. It’s not going to happen. If he doesn’t want to eat it, he’s not going to eat it. But also, it’s not a feeding problem. Now, some supplements, some foods may help because, you know, let’s face it, we all get a little hangry. So maybe the meltdown could be caused because he needed to eat, but it’s not a diet issue.

>> Pastor Sarah: Yeah.

>> Alicia: You know, there’s just lots of things like that that it would be really helpful if people realized it’s not all bad. We don’t need to be so negative about autism, and we also shouldn’t not be throwing around all these crazy things like, well, this caused it, or if you do this, it’ll go away. I often joke because, you know, we go to therapy, and there’s a whole organization full of kids getting therapy, and I’m often thinking, well, if just taking away dairy or gluten can fix it, every single one of these parents here would have done it by now. It’s just a difference in how the brain works, and we get therapy to help, but you can’t just take it away.

>> Pastor Sarah: Yeah.

>> Alicia: In there.

>> Pastor Sarah: Yeah.

I fully believe that the Holy Spirit, can change an outcome if that was the intended life of that person. Like, if the Holy Spirit wanted this young man to be free of autism and walk and talk and have a full, long life, then I believe that would have happened.

>> Alicia: Right.

>> Pastor Sarah: Also know that God chose this person to be this way, to impact. Like, he was uniquely designed to impact a specific situation. And I remember hearing from, at the church we were attending at the time, the pastors telling the family, just play christian music, put him up close, let him, you know, interact with the worship. pray over him. Let’s lay hands on him. you know, you guys need to be praying more fervently about his healing. And I’m just like, you know, worship music will help, not him. He’ll enjoy it, but it won’t help his medical diagnosis. It will, however, help, bring peace to the family that’s struggling with the behaviors or struggling with being so tired or struggling with feeling like they’re at their wit’s end. Listening to worship music and praying will help them find peace. But I used to feel so uncomfortable for the family that they were being told, you know, we just got to pray this out of him. Let’s lay hands on him. Let’s bless him with, oil, and, you know, fervently pray for his diagnosis to be gone, you know?

>> Alicia: Right.

>> Pastor Sarah: Yeah. which is extremely kind of offensive.

>> Alicia: I mean, not to say that again, autism isn’t all positive. Obviously, there were some very difficult things there, you know, with the wheelchair and all of that, but that to make it all negative just isn’t right. So we wouldn’t want to take away something from somebody that makes them who they are anyway. I mean, if God wanted their brain different, it was for a reason. You know, I was thinking how Jesus healed the man that was blind from birth, and people walked up to him and they were like, Lord, who sinned?

>> Pastor Sarah: Right, right.

>> Alicia: And he’s like, nobody sinned. This is just so the glory of God can be seen.

>> Pastor Sarah: Yeah.

>> Alicia: I, think we should all hold on to that story when there’s unexplainable diagnoses.

>> Pastor Sarah: Yeah. Well, thank you, Alicia. I hope people get a little bit more clarity from this particular, part of our talk, because I pray that nobody treats somebody with autism as though they were something that they’re not or mistreat, them or misdiagnose them or. Or, you know, think that they’re going to pray the devil out of them, because they deserve to be treated as Jesus would treat them, and he would be loving them. Yes. and loving their uniqueness. So, thank you, listeners, for listening part two of our autism moment of misconceptions and other diagnosis. join us next week. We’re going to talk about, dealing with the struggles as a parent and what we see our kids struggling with, who are dealing with autism. also remember that you are seen and loved. God bless.

 

Until Next Time

 

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