Neurodiversity and Christmas with Paula Duncan and Monica Jones

Ian is joined by Paula Duncan and Monica Jones to discuss neurodiversity and Christmas! They share about their own experiences of the holiday period and reflect on ways we can all help neurodivergent people find joy this holiday season.

The transcript of the episode is available here: https://share.transistor.fm/s/f10791b7/transcript.txt

If you have any questions, or just want to say hi, email us at [e-mail] or find us on twitter @autismtheology.

This podcast is brought to you by The University of Aberdeen's Centre for Autism and Theology.

Website: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/sdhp/cat

The artwork for this podcast uses the Centre for Autism and Theology Logo, created by Holly Russel 

Creators & Guests

Host

Ian Lasch

PhD candidate at the university of Aberdeen researching autism and the Imago Dei

What is Autism and Theology Podcast?

The Autism and Theology Podcast is a space where we engage with the latest conversations in the field of autism and theology, share relevant resources, and promote ways in which both faith and non-faith communities can enable autistic people to flourish.

Our episodes are released on the first Wednesday of every month. We have a variety of guests who are related in some way to the field of autism and theology. Some are academics, others are people with life stories to share, and some are both!

We also release CATChat every third Wednesday of the month. These are shorter and more informal episodes where your hosts will share news and give you as listeners an opportunity to ask questions and share your stories.

ND Holidays with Paula and Monica
Zoe: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Autism and Theology podcast, brought to you by the Center for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.
Ian: Hello and welcome to this episode of the Autism and Theology podcast. I'm Ian and I'm so glad you've joined us this week. This podcast is a space where we engage with the latest conversations in the field of autism and theology, sharing relevant resources and promoting ways that help faith and non-faith communities enable autistic people to flourish.
This podcast is run from the University of Aberdeen's Center for Autism and Theology, which we've shortened to [00:01:00] CAT. If you would like to access the transcript for this episode, it can be found via the link in the show notes. Today we are joined by Paula Duncan and Monica Jones, who are both PhD students at the University of Aberdeen's Center for Autism and Theology.
I'll let them introduce themselves just a bit further. Paula, Monica?
Monica: Hi
Paula: Hi, I'm Paula. I'm a PhD student at the University of Aberdeen. I'm working on obsessive compulsive disorder and how it affects your relationship with your faith. I have OCD myself and I'm really excited to be here and to talk more.
Monica: Yeah. And I'm Monica. I am also a PhD researcher, obviously at the University of Aberdeen. My project is looking at autistic Christians when they join new church communities. And I'm specifically really interested in how, as autistic people, we come to understand ourselves to be part of a new group and to be part of a new community.
As I kind of said, I'm autistic myself. I was diagnosed when I was 19, [00:02:00] shortly after I went to university. So yeah.
Ian: Well, thank you both so much for being with us today. We're thrilled to have you both offering your perspectives and, and differing perspectives of neurodivergence, during Christmas and the holidays.
And that's our topic today is talking about the sort of neurodivergent experience of Christmas and the holidays. So before we get into anything else, I wonder if you'd just mind taking a minute to describe your overarching impression of Christmas and the holiday season.
Paula: I love Christmas, which is sometimes a controversial opinion because I also work in retail, and I know that a lot of people who are in retail at Christmas kind of hate it and hate the, sort of, the Christmas music that's always playing, but I love it and I have my antlers on on the first of December.
Yeah, I love it. It brings me a lot of joy and I look forward to the, sort of, particularly the run up to Christmas, I think is a lot, a lot of fun. Monica?
Monica: Yeah, I, [00:03:00] find Christmas quite a mixed bag. I think I also have quite a lot of the joy and also, I live far away from my family and my siblings also live far from my parents now.
So really one of the only times of year that we all get to see each other guaranteed is Christmas. And that's really nice to like see people and I have so many friends who I only see at Christmas time so that's amazing, but then it's also one of the busiest times of the year and there's so much going on like with work and people are trying to finish things before the Christmas holiday And then when Christmas holiday comes, it's not really a holiday, it's just kind of meet this person meet this person like so many things going on. So yeah, it's a mixed bag, but overall, I mean I'm not, I'm definitely not getting Christmas decorations out in November, kind of, kind of excited, but I am still I'm not a Grinch, you know, so.
Paula: I will admit I have put some of the Christmas decorations up already.
Ian: Yeah, I know some people who have put them up by 1st of [00:04:00] November, which seems to me a little bit extreme, but…
Monica: Yeah.
Ian: But I know some people just love it that much.
Monica: We had a rule because my brother was he's born in beginning of December So we had a rule we weren't allowed Christmas decorations till after his birthday and even though I no longer live with my brother that is still the rule, so.
Ian: My oldest son was born just a little over a week before Christmas and both my wife and I are Episcopal priests, and so he has, you know, he just really got the short end of the stick, because we are in the midst of Christmas every year, so we try to carve that time out and make sure that it's really his birthday, and not just Christmas extended, so I get that, you know, it's, you want to make sure you're not just running roughshod right over all those other days in between.
Monica: Yeah.
Ian: Well, Monica, you alluded to this a little bit, but the holidays in general are a joyful time for a lot of [00:05:00] people, but they also are quite stressful. There's a lot of a lot of hectic busyness, and a lot of stress involved. Can you talk a little bit about what you think are the particular stresses that are specific to your own neurodivergent experience of Christmas and the holidays?
Monica: Yeah, I think I alluded to it a little bit, but I think for me the most overwhelming thing about Christmas is the social dynamics of Christmas. There's so many family members who you have to see and make nice with and then so many people who you have to make small talk with and then, you know, often there's a new significant other at Christmas that, like, someone has brought along that's maybe different to the significant other they brought along last year, and you have to kind of navigate that, and I, so, but particularly for me, my, both my siblings have actually gotten married within the last two years, so in the last kind of four, five years, [00:06:00] or really four years—so my brother met his now wife in 2020.
And so that Christmas, we didn't meet her because it was COVID, but the next Christmas we met her and that was the first time really we'd had someone who was a significant other at Christmas in a way that was like this person might still be here for the next 50 years, and I found that so difficult and so stressful as far as how did this person fit into the plans that I had?
How did this person what did I actually talk about with this person? And so I think that's that ties a lot into as well: change and expectation as far as how I have plans for how Christmas works. My family is quite structured and organized. One of the reasons why we theorize I didn't get diagnosed until I went to university was because my family essentially created a fairly ideal home for an autistic child.
[00:07:00] And Christmas was scheduled the same every year. We had the same… we went to church same time. The, our, actually our priest in the church we grew up in did the same sermon every Christmas day. He did the chocolate, Christmas nativity, which if you've never heard it, you should go and look it up.
But it's basically the nativity story where you use the names of chocolate bars within the storytelling and then when you hear the name of a chocolate bar, you yell it out and the children get given the chocolate bar. And so he did that every Christmas day and we went home from church with like five or six bars of chocolate each.
And then, you know, we ate lunch at the same time and we always had the same food for lunch every year. And so, now that all changes because we now have different people and new family members, and that's one of the biggest stresses for me at Christmas, to be honest, is all of that change. But yeah, what about you, Paula?
Paula: Yeah, I do find the sort of change in my routine quite difficult. But for me, it tends to be that, you know, the awkward period between Christmas and New Year where, like, you're not really doing [00:08:00] anything, nobody's really doing anything. I don't know what to do with that sort of openness in my schedule that can be quite a challenge because I feel a bit sort of lost.
But yeah, I think it can be really difficult when there's a bit of disruption to your routine, but we tend to do a pretty similar thing every year and we tend to have quite a small Christmas day with usually my family, like my parents, my brother and my granny. And often we have a bigger family thing on like Boxing Day.
My mom's birthday is between Christmas and New Year as well. So there's sometimes a wee celebration for mom. But yeah, it can be tricky being neurodivergent at Christmas, I think. And one of the sort of niche things that I find quite difficult in having OCD is writing Christmas cards.
Like, I have a lot of, like checking behaviours as part of my [00:09:00] OCD and I find it really difficult to put a Christmas card in an envelope. Because what if it suddenly has changed? What if the words I've written don't mean what I think they mean? Or what if I've said something incredibly rude? Or even if I've got the person's name wrong?
So, I am much better at this now. I've just finished writing some of my Christmas cards for my brownie unit. And didn't check a single one.
Monica: Well done.
Paula: But I used to take pictures of the inside of a Christmas card so that I could then seal it and then go back and check that it didn't say something wildly inappropriate.
So I think sometimes the challenges of having like a neurodiversity or mental health condition can be kind of obscure things that people wouldn't immediately think of. So, yeah.
Monica: well, yeah, like, I mean, for me, one of the things that I find the most difficult actually is sitting at the dining table on Christmas Day, because of the Christmas tree.
And I'm fine with the lights on the Christmas tree, like generally, but when you're sat, you know, and there's already lots of conversation going on, so there's lots of audible input. My ability to [00:10:00] deal with the sensory input of the lights and the Christmas tree really dials down, and so we have to, like, it's one of those things now where the Christmas tree goes behind me so that I'm not, it's not in my peripheral vision and I'm not seeing the lights, but like, again, that's quite an obscure thing maybe that you might think, well, you're fine with the Christmas tree lights normally, but not at Christmas dinner.
So, yeah, I think it's a… there's some odd things sometimes.
Paula: There was something that I was thinking about that I wondered if you felt the same way, but I find it difficult as well when you're kind of expected to feel a certain way, like you get this expectation that I am going to feel joyful for the entirety of the month of December and then if anything kind of doesn't go that way or I'm not feeling like I'm looking forward to Christmas for whatever reason or something is stressing me, I'm like, I'm doing Christmas wrong.
I find that a challenge.
Monica: Yeah, yeah, I definitely struggle as well with that, emotional regulation level of Christmas isn't actually always that joyful. If you've got [00:11:00] like, you know, nine adults with competing views, there's going to be an argument at some point. You know, even when we were kids, there was an argument at some point on Christmas Day.
And yeah, I think dealing with that, that level of, but I’m meant to feel a certain way. And for me, actually, one of the things that doing my research has really helped me realise is how much of the autistic experience is saying, “I'm meant to feel this way.” And then when you talk to non autistic people, they're saying, “Well, I don't feel that way.”
So this idea that we're meant to feel a certain way, but actually, is that because we are assuming, like, hyper responsibility for how we feel, when, or hyper empathy even sometimes, where we're letting other people's emotions really colour our own? When actually, other people, like neurotypical people, they aren't actually feeling joyful for the whole of Christmas either.
So if we're doing it wrong, so are they, so yeah.
Ian: Yeah, it's, you know, there are several things here that make me think of [00:12:00] other things and that's one of them right this idea. I think that for autistic people. There's a tendency to this is this is overgeneralizing, but we tend to take things at face value, right?
So when everyone says this is the most wonderful time of the year, we're like, “Oh, my gosh, this has to be the most wonderful time of the year.” And then if you delve a little deeper, you realize people mean that as—in a general sense, Like, they just, they just really like this time of year, but overall, it's every bit as rollercoaster-y as the rest of the year is, and sometimes in, in even more ways because it's so hectic.
And I think once you realize that, and you realize, this is, this is almost aspirational, right? “This is the most wonderful time of the year—we hope!” And that's what we're, what we're aiming at. I also had never thought about the lights on the Christmas tree because our Christmas tree is always in a different place than the Christmas table, right?
So I've never had to deal with all of that, but I can imagine the nightmare that that would be. [00:13:00] And then for me, one of the, like one of the other difficulties is, and this is a direct result of being clergy and working in the church that things get so hectic, so busy.
Monica: Yeah.
Ian: And not that this doesn't happen outside the church. Everybody has Christmas parties and things and everybody's over programmed in the month of December.
But in the church like it is an executive dysfunction nightmare. You have so many tasks to complete and like so limited time and it's just autistic inertia sets in and you're like I I've got to write six sermons and I haven't even started and that sort of thing.
It's just—there are just a lot of difficulties that I think This time of year can present for neurodivergent folks. Oh, and the last thing I want to say for autistic folks who tend towards the PDA, what is called pathological demand avoidance, although there are issues with that terminology, potentially, that dictation of how we're supposed to feel can [00:14:00] sometimes cause the opposite, right?
Like if somebody says, you need to feel joyful. I'm like, “the heck I do. I'm not going to do that.”
Paula: “Well, now I'm not going to feel it.”
Ian: Yeah, exactly.
Monica: I think I feel that way about snow specifically, like you and you were talking about, this is the most wonderful time of the year. A lot of people, especially in the UK are like being like, “Oh, I hope it snows on Christmas day.”
And I'm always like, “why?” Like, that would be so annoying to, for it to be snowing when we're trying to get to church. And then also when we like want to go for a walk in the afternoon and it's snowing and, and, yeah, we've had loads of snow in Aberdeen this week. And yeah, you've been, like, Paula's been sending loads of photos to me with her dog absolutely loving the snow.
And I'm just like, every day, I'm like, “I have to put on my snow boots, I have to put on my layers, and I'm still cold, and I still, my face still is cold,” and I'm so like, “why can't it just go away?” And, and so I think, yeah, like, there are lots of things which people, people go, oh, these are meant to make you feel joyful and happy, and I'm just like, “but practically, they don't.”
[00:15:00] The things which I think. I think that sometimes that's being honest with yourself about the fact that actually, you know, this doesn't, this doesn't make me joyful, but also I don't need to make it, like, ruin the experience for everyone else. The fact that it doesn't make me joyful can be, like, good, so…
Paula: because I love snow, but I can see why people would hate it. And I did not enjoy driving in it as very much.
Monica: Yeah.
Paula: Yeah, and I have been guilty of being, “I wish it would snow on Christmas,” but I, what I mean by that is I want to be cozily inside before it snows, and then watch it from indoors, warm.
Ian: Right,
Monica: Exactly.
Ian: I appreciate the aesthetic beauty of snow, but I don't enjoy wrapping up in layers and coming in all soggy wet and all that stuff. That's not, that's not fun.
Monica: No.
Ian: One last thing I want to say, Paula, you mentioned the difficulty after Christmas, and to me, that's the best part is because the day after [00:16:00] Christmas is one of those days where like, no one does anything.
The entire world is shut down. So if I drive somewhere, like I can get in my car and drive and there's no one on the road and I'm not bothered by an entire soul under the sun. And like, to me, that's wonderful, especially after all of the buildup, but I just highlight that to, to, to sort of illustrate how difficult it is to put a finger on quote unquote, the neuro divergent experience of the holidays, because it all runs up against each other. And, you know, some people love aspects that drive other people crazy.
Monica: Exactly.
Ian: But Paula, you've also written previously about some of the ways that you find Christmas comforting, just because you have clearer idea of expectations, what to expect than maybe the average Sunday service at church. Can you tell our listeners a little bit more about that?
Paula: Yeah, absolutely. I wrote an article for Seen and Unseen, the online magazine, which is a great site if you [00:17:00] want to have a look at it, there's sort of topical posts coming up to Christmas and things, but last year I wrote about being essentially a Christmas Christian.
I find it very difficult to go to church and read the Bible. It's part of where my research has come from is this difficulty engaging with faith, because the, one of the first things I did when I got my Bible home from school is I read Revelation and then I was terrified. Some of the imagery is really scary and it's really hard to, process that without some sort of guidance, and we didn't go to church.
I learned about, like, religion through school, but we didn't really go to church as a family or anything. We tended to do, like, the Christingle service on Christmas Eve, and I really liked that, and then I realized sort of, as I got older, that I really like the Christmas service. We started going to the midnight watch night service, which was just cozy and nice.
And I [00:18:00] really like that they tell the same bit of the Bible, the same story every year. And I know that there's going to be songs that I know and that nothing unexpected is going to happen, like nothing, they're not going to suddenly read Revelation to me and I'm not going to be stuck with those difficult images that I can't get out of my head and that kind of thing.
So I, I know what to expect, I know when it's going to happen and yeah, I just find that really nice and it's a good way for me to engage with faith. Yeah, maybe in the future it'll be something I can look to as going to church more regularly, but for now, quite content.
Monica: Yeah, I find it interesting you say about how you always know they're going to read the same, like, Bible passages.
And one of my reflections as someone who, I study worship a lot, like, that's really kind of my research specialism, if you generalize it to the biggest point, is, is the Sunday service. And I find it so interesting how little role the nativity plays in [00:19:00] the rest of the church year. You know, most churches won't, won't read bits of the nativity story at any other time of year, unless you're doing like a Bible study of something in Isaiah, which specifically references, you know, the coming of the Messiah, and then they read from like Matthew or Luke in order to, like, you know, provide some context to that.
And so the, you know, I think, I actually go to a church which has started singing carols during the rest of the year. Not, I go to, like, an evangelical charismatic church, so they're not singing, like, hymn carols, they're singing modernized, like, Rend Collective versions of the carols. But even so, and that has been really interesting to me, as far as helping me to, like, think about, I think, like, these things aren't just special for Christmas.
Actually, like, the joy that I get from singing them at Christmas can be joy I have the rest of the year as well.
Paula: I like that.
Monica: Yeah, it's quite nice. But, yeah, but I [00:20:00] don't, I have joy singing Christmas carols at Christmas, but I don't actually find the same structure and joy in the Christmas service that you do, which is, is very interesting.
I think part of that is partially maybe because I come from a non liturgical church background. So, I've been in free churches, when I was a child, we were a Baptist church. But, one of the things I think that, for me, I find very difficult is that I don't know who's going to be at church when I turn up on Christmas day.
Because, you know, people travel for Christmas. And that means that people might not be there, but it also means that there might be loads of people there who I don't know.
Paula: The people like me that only turn up for Christmas.
Monica: Yeah, but also like, like, you're, you know, when I was a teenager, I had quite a strong youth group.
You know, so there were three sets of families who all had between two and three children of very similar age. And so we were a very closely knit youth group. But then, you know, some years we'd turn up on Christmas day, and we would be the only family there of [00:21:00] our age, because they'd all have gone to go see grandparents or aunts and uncles, and then some years they'd turn up, but they'd bring the cousins and the grands, like, and then I'd have to talk to the cousins, who I didn't know, because—and so there's that.
And then as an adult, my parents moved church quite soon after we had all, like, aged out of church, like, we'd all become adults and moved away to university, and that was partly just because the church they were at kind of had really shrunk and shrunk and shrunk and eventually collapsed and so the church they now go to I actually started going to that when I lived with them for a year after I finished my master's and they started going when I started going there and it's a HTB church, which is, if you don't know, it's essentially an Anglican church, but deeply modernized.
So, you know, they have flashing lights, they have a confetti cannon, and it's released at the end of special services. Or sometimes they have balloon drops at the end of special services, which, as you can imagine, the kids [00:22:00] absolutely love, like screaming all over the place. Again, like, I'm a firm believer in the fact that there is actually structure to be found in those kinds of services you get at free churches and evangelical churches.
You know, I was speaking to a liturgical scholar the other day who was like, “well, what do you mean there's this structure?” And I was like, “well, actually, you know, it's very predictable. There's always some kind of welcome and there's normally two people standing at the front and there's normally this and, you know, and then we sing three or four songs and I could give you a list of the hundred songs that those three or four songs are going to be from,” you know, it's not that it's, it's not that it's from a hymn book, but it is essentially from a kind of non existent virtual hymn book.
And, but the Christmas service isn't like that. You know, what carols they sing, that's completely at the whim of the worship leader, like, and whether they sing carols at all, you know, like, I couldn't tell you, whereas, you know, most churches I go to, like, pretty much, if you, if you keep a month's score of what songs they're singing, they're [00:23:00] going to sing the same songs over that period of a month, the same ones the next month, but the Christmas carol services, the Christmas services are different.
Normally, the preach is much shorter. Sometimes there are lots of people who don't know what church is in there, and I think that's a good thing. I think we should be having people who don't have strong experiences of church in church, but it also means that there's a lot of stuff going on that maybe doesn't make church the peaceful experience that it maybe is meant to, in inverted commas, be at that time of year.
And so yeah, I think it's, it's interesting how different it can be, because I really do see what you mean about it being comforting, but just for me, I've never found that experience.
Paula: And now that you've said that, I can see why you feel that way as well. I think you've picked, like, we're good people to have been interviewed together.
Monica: Yes.
Ian: Yes, exactly. No, it's, it highlights all sorts of different things that I hadn't even thought about, because the, the, the social aspect to me is, is less of an issue, right? Not that it's [00:24:00] comfortable, I'm, it's always awkward meeting people, but on Christmas it feels like the social expectations are so low, tight?
Like, especially as a clergy person, I meet people, I have time to shake their hand and say hello, and like, that's it. Like, that's the whole interaction. So like, for me, yes, there's that higher social bar in terms of meeting a lot of new people or seeing people that I haven't seen in a year and going, “Oh, my gosh, do I remember their name?”
But, you know, the depth of interaction is much, much shallower for me. So it's just, it's just really interesting. I also love that I, the, what you're making clear, Monica, about, sort of implicit versus explicit liturgy, right?
Monica: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Ian: Because I grew up in a, in a Methodist church that had very bare bones outline of what the worship was going to be.
And yet, it was relatively predictable once you get the pattern in your head. But to me, that's a nightmare because then I have to get the pattern in my head. It's [00:25:00] much better for me personally to know what the pattern is to have it something external that I don't have to maintain, you know, so, so for me, that's, that's a big part of why I'm in a liturgical tradition, right?
It's because it's explicit rather than implicit, but I can only imagine the nightmare of having things change suddenly, on Christmas and it be very different from what I'm used to and what I'm expecting.
Monica: Yeah, I think it's also, it's interesting, and this is important to know, I suppose, like, I am a charismatic Christian.
I go to churches which, you know, will regularly be derailed by the Holy Spirit. But I find that as an autistic person, almost easy, like, who believes in God and believes in the power of the Holy Spirit to do those things, almost easier to comprehend. then like a human changing them for human whims, you know, for a human going, well, socially, we need to have a shorter sermon because there will be people who are not used to sermons here.
And I'm like, but that's not what normally happens. So, [00:26:00] and then I think it's interesting just to come, you said about, you know, you having lower social expectation on Christmas. I think that's like, as a clergy, I really understand your position on that. I think for those of us who are like, there as lay people, there's so much more, like, there will be some people who will be like rushing off to go home and like finish the turkey or whatever.
And then there's often like, often at a lot of churches, you know, there's a, you know, there's my church, there's like mulled wine and mince pies after Christmas day service. And so like, you really have to stay around and like, sip your mulled wine and eat your mince pie and chat and ask the kids what they got for Christmas that morning and ask the parents what they're cooking for dinner and then ask them what their plans are over the next week and there's so much more, you're meant to take so much more interest in the social life of people at that time of year, I think, because there's this implication that either people are doing a lot.
And, like, they want to share what they're doing. Or also, people aren't doing anything, and you as a Christian are kind of really meant to try [00:27:00] and pick up on those people who need support at that time of year. It's one of those things that my parents have always been very, you know, strong on, is that there's someone who, like, is going to be on their own that Christmas.
It's like, well, what can we do to help them not feel alone that Christmas? But that does mean you have to talk to more people at Christmas time, so, so yeah.
Ian: And that, you know, that actually speaks to one of the things that I really do love about Christmas, at least in, in the ideal, if not, if it doesn't play out that way in reality, is this idea that people are a little bit kinder to each other, a little bit more generous, a little bit better to each other around the holidays.
But a lot of people just really don't know what they don't know about neurodiversity. So the idea of being kinder sometimes plays out in ways that can actually be neurodivergent unfriendly, right? Are there ways that you can think of that people could be more kind or more understanding or more accepting to you or other [00:28:00] neurodivergent folks during the holiday season?
With the hope that maybe those carry over to the rest of the year, too?
Monica: I think like my biggest thing, and I say this as an autistic person, is to one, make plans in advance. So like, I have a very, a fairly large friendship group who all at Christmas want to have dinner. That still hasn't been arranged yet.
I would like that to have been arranged, like, three weeks ago. I know it's gonna happen, but no one has actually, like, tried to arrange it. And I have arranged the last three, and I told them last year that someone else needed to take the lead. But I think I'm gonna take the lead again, because I wanna—well, when you book, need to book a restaurant table for, like, 12 people, that's not, like, they've all got partners now, and so the group has grown exponentially.
So I think, like, that booking things in advance and trying to help like the neurodivergent people in your life find structure in what is quite a chaotic time in that way and like signaling, you know, in advance: okay we're gonna do this and this is why. [00:29:00] But then also at the same time things change short notice people get stuck on roads and can't get in when they're meant to and things get cancelled and stuff and I think that can be a real struggle for people, but I think if, if people approach that with kindness and also with recognition that you might not understand,
I actually just had this conversation with a friend earlier. So my parents are foster parents and they asked me a couple of weeks ago because it's just going to be me and them on Christmas Day this year. My siblings are not going to be able to come for Christmas Day. And so my parents asked me, would it be okay if we put ourselves on the emergency foster rota for Christmas Day? So what that means is that if a child has to be removed from its parents on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, they may come to us for Christmas.
And I had to really sit there and think about it. And then I said to my mom, I said, I think I'm going to be okay with it. But also, I don't know how on the day, if it happens short notice, I will react to that. And can we think of some backup plans for, you know, if I react really badly and I can't like [00:30:00] cognate the change that's happening here in a way that turns positive, can we work out a backup plan for that?
And then can we work up a backup plan for like, if I just get really sensorily overstimulated by having a young child in the house and like, I think some of those, but then I was talking to a friend and she was like, but why is that such a problem for you? And I have to stand there and explain the fact that like a lot of autistic people, to like manage our lives, we will control them.
You know, we will try and plan them and put in really high level of control into our lives. And then when things that are outside of our control disrupt that plan and that pattern, we, sometimes we just don't know what to do. Like I just get stuck. Sometimes my mom has come up to me and I'm just standing there and I cannot say anything and I cannot do anything because my brain is just stuck four steps back where something disrupted the plan.
And so I think being aware of that and then also helping the neurodivergent people in your life to come up with actionable plans in [00:31:00] the event of disruption and change, I think is really important because it's much better to preempt that than it is to miss, but you might say something different.
Because you might catastrophize if you preempt, but you can like, you can tell me what you think of that as someone with OCD.
Paula: I actually agree with you on this one. I think it's helpful for a lot of people as well, even if they're neurotypical, is having plans and having sort of thought through some of the sort of common potential disruptions to your day, like what you're going to do if X, Y, Z happens.
I think that can be really helpful and I think it can kind of mitigate some of those sort of stresses and anxieties. And I guess the only thing I was thinking about is, yeah, mainly communication and like expecting everybody's emotions to be quite heightened. Because as we were thinking about earlier, everybody's expecting themselves to feel a certain way.
And that can kind of raise your stress level anyway. And [00:32:00] yeah, I think, especially if you're in a, in a shop, be kind to retail staff. That's my, my shop worker plea.
Monica: Be also kind to like, restaurant staff and cafe staff. As someone who used to work in a cafe in a shop that got a lot of Christmas customers. And a lot of people coming in on Christmas Eve to like, pick up their turkey from the butchers. And they were, like, mean people sometimes. I was like, oh, I don't really want to be here any more than you do.
Paula: Yes, the ones that come in and go, oh, I can't believe you're having to work on Christmas Eve, and I'm like, well, you're here, so.
But yeah, I think it's sometimes retail can look like the antithesis of Christmas, but it also can be genuinely quite joyful, I think, in retail, but it does kind of require people to be aware of how they might be feeling and not take that out on people who are just there.
Monica: I think that's good advice in general.
Paula: Yeah.
Monica: It's just like anytime someone annoys you at Christmas. To really sit there and [00:33:00] think, like, what is my reaction and how is that going to damage the situation or benefit it?
Paula: It's probably good life advice in general.
Monica: Good life advice in general.
Paula: Conflict management.
Monica: Yeah.
Ian: Monica, I think you, you had to qualify an earlier statement saying you're not a Grinch, right?
And I think that's one of the things that, that I think needs to be remembered too, is that for neurodivergent folks, this can be an even more difficult time of year than any other time of year and can be more difficult for us than for neurotypical folks, tight? And one of the things that I hope people remember is that we can't assume that anyone who's having a tough time is a Grinch, right?
Because often we want to assign motivation to them and say, I can't believe this person is so horrible and like, that’s, this is not justifying rudeness, certainly to wait staff or retail staff at all. I want to be clear about that, [00:34:00] but someone having a difficult time or being—seeming dour, during what is supposed to be a quote unquote joyful time of year is not necessarily indicative of how they feel about the year entirely, or what type of person they are, they could just be having a tough time. And that could be for reasons of neurodivergence, or it could be any number of other things, you know, for people who are grieving, it's a particularly difficult time of year. So if you're missing a loved one, that's difficult.
So it's just one of those things that like, we talked a little bit before about not trying to dictate the experience, the emotional experience of other people, and I think that goes to not judging the emotional experience as well, right? If someone seems a bit grumpy, as long as they're not being overtly rude or callous or making a scene, then like, that's okay too, right?
Paula: For sure, yeah. Because I think it can be a really tough time of year for a lot of reasons, and it can be quite a pensive time of [00:35:00] year, I think. Yeah, especially going from Christmas to New Year, that sort of time where you're supposed to be reflecting on, like, resolutions and all that kind of thing, it can make you really reflective of, like, the things that haven't gone so well that year, people you might have lost, or people who just aren't there for that time of year.
But yeah, it's a tricky one sometimes.
Ian: It is. So we are nearly out of time, but before we wrap up, I just want to ask, are there any additional thoughts that we haven't covered? Anything additional you'd like to add about Christmas and the holidays, that you would like to share?
Paula: Nothing much, I think we kind of covered most of what I was thinking, but the only thing that kind of came to my mind just now was that, thinking about New Year, I made only one New Year's resolution this year, and I've actually managed to keep it for the most part.
And it was just that I was going to be a better friend to myself this year. And. That really changed how I look at resolutions, because I, [00:36:00] I will admit that this, it was 100 percent a compulsive behavior, but I used to try and set myself 365 different goals to do in a year, and that was my, like, and at the time, it was like, yeah, this is kind of fun, and then I was failing.
All of them, and—it just didn't work. So I've tried to like, tear that down a little bit, but last year it was like the ultimate, I am having one, and it's going to be that I'm going to be nice to myself. And, yeah, I think I will continue that ethos this year.
Monica: That's a good resolution, good resolution.
Yeah, I have one thing I think I want to talk about, and it's kind of a bit of a story, and maybe it's the kind of story which I think might be helpful for people who have a child who's autistic or who are autistic themselves and might notice something in themselves in it. But the first Christmas after I'd moved to university, so I moved away to university when I was 18.
I moved four and a half hours away from home because I was the oldest child. I was independent. I was like, this is what you do. I'm going to university that's really good for my subjects. And I'm not going to think about how far away from [00:37:00] home that is. And yeah, and I came back for Christmas holiday and I probably had, I wasn't diagnosed as autistic at this point.
This was pretty much the breaking point, a point at which that I, I needed, I started seeking out something. Because I had three what I would now call full on autistic meltdowns in the space of the three days I was home before it was actually Christmas. Like, every day, I was completely, like, a complete mess, because it felt like everything had moved, like, I described it to my mum, I eventually managed to get words for what was going on, and I said it feels like everything has moved two centimetres to the left.
Everything is just slightly wrong. And I think that sometimes we, as autistic people, we don't realise how much, just things being just slightly different can completely, like, change everything. And Christmas isn't just like everything being slightly different, it's everything being a lot different, like the normal weekly routine goes out the window for [00:38:00] two weeks of the year, like, you know, you have this whole—there's so many things and decorations around that aren't normally there, there's so much sensory input that's not normally there, every shop is playing Christmas music at top volume and they're often conflicting songs and, I think that the, Christmas, unfortunately, is a time of year which can just be a source of a lot of, like, confusion and difficulty, but it was also for me that Christmas was the point in which my mom was like you need to go and see someone. And I spoke to a counselor like the second week back at uni and she listened to me for 15 minutes and then she said “so, has anyone ever suggested you might have autism?” And then that was like the beginning of the, you know, and I was diagnosed like 11 months later, and it was a whole thing, but I think that if I hadn't had that really bad Christmas, I wouldn't be where I am now.
Honestly, like, I wouldn't have the same acceptance of myself that I do, and I wouldn't have [00:39:00] the same, I wouldn't, I definitely wouldn't be enjoying, enjoying Christmas as much as I do now. So, yeah.
Ian: I love both of those, the idea that sometimes even the bad experiences can have good outcomes, and just being better friends to ourselves. I love those takeaways.
Thank you both, Paula and Monica, for being with us today. We are out of time, so it's time to wrap up. For our listeners, if you have any questions, you can message us @autismtheology on X or Instagram, or you can send us an email at [e-mail]. Even if it's just to say hi, we'd love to hear from you.
Zoe: Thank you [00:40:00] for listening to the Autism and Theology Podcast. If you have any questions for us or just want to say hi, please email us at [e-mail] or find us on Twitter @autismtheology.