Review: Spicy Brain Podcast Episode 2
Name a podcast about neurodiversity and I’ve probably listened to it: You’re Wrong About ADHD, The Neurodivergent Woman, ADHD Chatter, Your ADHD Besties and more! So when I caught a clip of a new podcast called Spicy Brain featuring Dr Luke Beardon, I knew this was for me. The episode I listened to was ‘Dr Luke Beardon: AUTISM AT WORK | Autistic Understanding, Adjustments & Courtesy’ and this was my introduction to Lara Sullivan’s Spicy Brain podcast. From flawed interview processes to generic job descriptions, Lara and Luke unravel the overly complicated and sometimes inaccessible working world and explore what could be put in place to enable autistic individuals to thrive in the workplace.
Lara Sullivan is a wonderful host. Easy to listen to, warm, compassionate, honest and open-minded. I felt like I was listening to a close friend talking about what it’s like to be autistic in real life; the nuances and complexities, the ‘oh, in retrospect, of course it was autism’ and the determination to make sure her listeners will feel understood, validated and less alone. Mission accomplished Lara! I only meant to listen to 10 minutes but tuned in for the full hour and then sent it to almost everyone I know.
As Lara welcomed her first guest to the podcast Dr Luke Beardon, I shared her thoughts: what a great first guest! Dr Beardon’s perspective is refreshingly straight forward, compassionate and honest. He is well known for his handy equation: Autism + Environment = Outcome. In this case, applying the concept to the workplace: how can we adapt the environment to support autistic individuals and remove barriers? If we take the ideology one step further, how can we create meaningful change to the system so that everyone’s different needs are considered in the workplace?
I think the reason I was so captivated by this episode is because we rarely hear about autistic experiences in the workplace talked about so broadly. We might hear about office jobs, reasonable accommodations and the “best sorts of jobs for autistic adults” alongside the statistics that 80% of autistic adults are not employed. Long story short, it’s not always positive and tends to revolve around a binary of someone not being able to cope in the workplace at all or finding their dream job/working for themselves. A lot of (especially late diagnosed) autistic adult’s experiences involve trial and error; trying a range of different workplaces, finding what works and encountering obstacles or lack of support that leads to stress and burnout.
Lara and Luke discuss the barriers autistic individuals face right from recruitment processes through to reasonable adjustments and leaving a place of employment. I couldn’t relate more when Lara talked about her workplace asking her what she needed and she shared with Luke: “I had gotten diagnosed 6 days ago, I don’t even know what autism is, much less what accommodations do I need.”
Whether we were diagnosed 6 days or 6 years ago our needs will fluctuate and change so it can be hard to know what might help. It’s a lot of pressure to know yourself well enough to predict what you may struggle with in future hypothetical situations and ask for support! How can you ask for any support if you don’t know what a reasonable adjustment is or looks like in practise? Instead, as Dr Beardon says, a more collaborative process where employers are able to provide examples of practical adjustments they’ve implemented in the past or a few broader environmental adaptations based on sensory differences for example. This creates a space for an ongoing collaborative dialogue about support needs as they change.
Interestingly, both Luke and Lara worked in hospitality where Lara thrived due to the clear structure and expectations and Luke thrived in a different way when assigned to the laundry room and the repetitive, satisfying task of ironing sheets instead of the less comfortable social demand of a customer facing role. This shared but different experience just goes to highlight how shifting expectations and adjusting the environment can completely change an autistic person’s experience of a role from negative to positive.
My favourite part of the podcast was the discussion of Proactive Autistic Courtesy which is proactively implementing processes and ways of communicating that respect and accommodate autistic individuals with the main goal to reduce anxieties. A great example was a centralised list of everyone in the organisations’ communication preferences and adhering to them, such as a courtesy text to prepare someone for a phone call including what time to expect the call, the number that will be calling and a brief outline of what will be discussed. Lara picked up on how starting from the point of ‘what is causing you anxiety in the workplace’ is a much easier route to identifying what adjustments could be helpful. She shared that she found travelling at rush hour distressing so would often stay late at work to avoid it when an adjustment could be asking to leave half an hour earlier. I loved hearing the ideas bounced back and forward for practical steps to reduce stressors in the workplace for autistic individuals.
I really enjoyed this episode and definitely recommend it! I will be listening to more of Spicy Brain. It was so lovely to listen to such a thoughtful and practical discussion about the need for genuinely inclusive systemic change in the workplace from recruitment through to leaving. I’d love for this episode to go viral and for employers across the country to start implementing Autistic Courtesy as standard!
You can listen to Lara’s podcast for yourself here: Spicy Brain Podcast - YouTube
Read Dr Luke Beardon’s latest book here: Reasonable Adjustments for Autistic Adults: How To Make Your Life Better Please note this is an Amazon affiliate link, if you purchase via this link we can take a small amount of the proceeds from the sale which we use to further our training on neurodiversity; to keep our blog running and to create free resources for those who need them.
If you’d like to find out more about your own spiky profile, try our quizzes here and if you'd like to learn more about how to bring about systemic change in your own workplace, explore our training sessions here: Training | Neurodiverse Training - Bespoke Workshops & Webinars
