Key insights from the conversation

Holger's personal journey

• Studied architecture, became a carpenter, then a communication designer.

• Discovered his own autism after his daughter was diagnosed.

• The importance of understanding and accepting one's unique traits.

Roberto's perspective

• Roberto shares his journey with his son's autism diagnosis.

• The importance of acceptance and leveraging strengths while acknowledging challenges.

• Need for awareness and understanding in both personal and societal contexts.

Balancing strengths and challenges

• The duality of living with autism: the gifts and the challenges.

• Importance of recognizing and nurturing individual strengths while managing difficulties.

• The concept of the "social battery" and the need for intentional rest and recovery.

Professional and educational implications

• The benefits of early diagnosis and tailored support strategies.

• The importance of storytelling in helping children and parents understand and navigate autism.

• Acknowledge the feelings of guilt and judgment parents may face.

• The importance of support systems, early detection, and intervention.

• Holger's book as a resource for parents and educators to better understand autism.

Communication and workplace adaptations

• The need for clear communication and understanding individual preferences in the workplace.

• Benefits of team agreements and creating an inclusive environment for neurodiverse individuals.

• The connection between creativity and the autistic experience.

Final Thoughts

• The importance of self-kindness and understanding.

• Need for ongoing effort and resilience in parenting and personal growth.

Full transcript

Here is the entire conversation transcript, edited for clarity and conciseness. Here's also the link to the conversation on LinkedIn Live.

Roberto

Hello! Hi, Holger. Good to see you again.

Holger

Yeah, it's good to see you, Roberto. Thanks for having me.

Roberto

Thanks to you. Thanks. I'm very excited to do this live with you today.

Of course, it's also a very dear topic for both of us. It's very personal, which also has a special meaning for me. First, besides thanking you for doing this, for your generosity, your time, and everything you share, I would love to thank the people who are connected.

And so first of all, I would like you to tell a little story of how we met and came here. Why are we doing a LinkedIn live on awareness about autism and the autism spectrum? So, I had the pleasure of attending one of your webinars from Strategizer. You're acting as a visual facilitator, and I was so amazed at how you were drawing, and you remember you had this camera pointing from the app, and then I said, wow, it looks like magic. And I was like, wow, I would love to learn that. And then I kept following you, and maybe it was a coincidence; I saw that you shared a project related to autism awareness, which is this book that I have, which is October 2023. And then, I reached out to you, and I shared with you that

I fully supported this initiative because also my son was recently diagnosed with autism. And I got the book, then I received the book in in April of 2024. I loved it. And then, OK, fast forward. A few weeks ago, I shared a post on diversity, a fantastic book from Temple Grandin called Thinking Visuals. And I reached out again to you. Then, you explained this project that you had once again in mind. And it was swift, and we connected again and talked about how to do a LinkedIn live. We discussed that this is so important to both of us and said yes, and it's funny because we met in person virtually yesterday. I'm very excited to hear, first of all, Holger, what's your story, and how did you get here?

Holger

So that's a long story, though. To make a long story short, I always felt I was slightly different from other people. I was figuring out why and how. And I could make a living with art back in the day. Of course, everybody told me that's not possible. So, I tried to become an architect, but it didn't work. So, I stopped studying architecture after one and a half years.

Then I became a carpenter, so I'm a trained carpenter now. Then, I became a communication designer because I studied communication design. After all, the arts were still a part of my life. Being creative was a part of my life, and I wanted to understand how people communicate and the psychology behind communication. So I studied that, and in 2009, I started my self-employment as a communication designer.

And now I'm here. This year, I'm celebrating 15 years of self-employment. And all the way through, I mean, people always told me that I'm different because I can do all these things and what I do for a living. But I still thought that there was something different in myself. It's not just the creativity, but I never knew how. So, in the meantime, we got three kids. So my wife and I got three kids, and our oldest daughter turned 12 when she got pretty strong problems in school. We tried to figure out what it was, and there we got the diagnosis of autism for our oldest daughter.

And when I was reading all about it, I knew you are a bookworm too, right? You're reading a lot of books. And, of course, I bought all the books possible about autism in that phase. And I told my wife when I was reading them that they were explaining my inner self and that they were out there just explaining me. So we knew where the autism came from because it's genetics, right? And it has to come from somewhere. And I knew, OK, that's me. Now I know why I'm feeling different. So that was 2021 when I accepted for myself in February 2021, I accepted for myself that I am autistic. And yeah, from then on, the journey continued.

I'm happy that I know it by now. Understanding who and how we are is often a pain. You have the same feelings, and it's somehow a struggle. It's a gift. I'm trying to find my way through it. That's why I wrote the book as well. It's part of how I deal with the topic because it's very complex, challenging, and demanding. It can also help some other people find their way through the book.

Roberto

Thank you, Holger, for sharing this. And yet, I also see one thing, which is where you are, 15 years, self-employed, using your communication skills, combining all these things and doing what you love, because I can see that you love what you're doing, not only about the sketches on the back of your but how you explain this. And also, when you say accepted, yeah, this is something that we have to accept. And it should. What came to me was that it should not be like this. We should not have to accept. It's like, OK, this is something, let's say, bad.

So I have to accept it. And it's like, and it's more like the awareness. Like, OK, now I understand why I started all with this. Now, with that. And honestly, when, for example, in my case, when we discovered that my son Luca is autistic, I thought, OK, I see some, not everything, but some of the things that I see in him, I also see in me. I also have to accept that something may be more challenging for me than it is for others and vice versa. So there are two sides, no? From this, I see, on one side, what we're accepting, that we will struggle with something because we are not the same. And at the same time, what's this thing that I'm good at? How can I use that? And have fun, of course.

Holger

And have fun with it, yes. Yeah. Yeah. And go ahead.

Roberto

What's your experience? Yeah, what's your experience with these two sides? I'm curious. What's your experience with these two sides?

Holger

Yeah, the two sides. So I didn't know for a long time, like 40 years. I didn't think I was autistic. I lived the life of a neurotypical person. So, for people who don't know the terms, a neurotypical person is just another name that other people would say is normal. But as we all agree, life is not normal, right?

So that's why neurotypical people are people who don't have a mental challenge like autism or ADHD, for example, bipolar; those are all challenges of people who you would call neurodivergent, right? And neurotypical people are all the other people who are just in the norm; whatever we like, society decides as the norm. And by living that life, I think it costs a lot, right? Because I went over my borders all the time.

And I'm now like, I'm a chronic pain patient as well, right? So I've been suffering headaches since, I don't know, 23 years now, and we're counting. And I hope sometimes it's getting better, but I'm an average on like four to five days a month without headaches. And I'm, on average, between 10 and 15 migraine days per month. So, suffering a lot for living the life of a neurotypical person because it's a lot of stress just adapting to everything around us when we are autistic.

And, of course, it's always on the spectrum. So, some people can deal better, and others can deal less. I found that I don't want to miss out as well. So many people say, look, then live the life of an introvert, right? Don't meet people, don't go outside, and don't work. I don't know how that should work, right? But, like, avoid all these triggers. And I would say, look, but life is talking to people, meeting people, working, and being out there. And I am also a bit stressed, right? Sometimes, that's part of life because that's how we experience it. So that's kind of on the challenge and positive sides. I mean, for me personally, I have a sharp mind, and I would say I have an autistic mind of a combination of hyper-focus and seeing connections.

And that helped me in my job, right? I'm a visual facilitator and graphic recorder, trying to capture knowledge visually or help people understand what they say. And that's my superpower. I can understand everybody, no matter what they talk about, it might be like a topic about mechanisms,

psychology, biology, law, or business; it doesn't matter what they talk about, I understand what they say, and I can help them put things together in the big picture. So, if I weren't autistic, I guess I wouldn't be able to do that as well. So it's a trade-off.

Roberto

Yeah, and when you say that, I hear that we wouldn't change who we are. If we had a magic pill or the blue pill, the red pill, I would take the pill of being who I am 100%. And one thing that you say when you say, OK, I don't want to live an introverted life or not communicate with people, that when you do, you are much more intentional; you know what you want to do.

And then, OK, I have, for example, to my case, and there is a metaphor of the social battery, which, by the way, I share with me, for me, for the person I admire a lot. And it's like, OK, I have my battery. I will need time to call off if I am in a crowded room for three hours. But knowing that makes me anticipate, and again, as with my son, my son needs to know what will happen, when and why, et cetera, et cetera. If I see that, OK, no problem, but I will enjoy it. Of course, then my energy will be; I need to take a walk in the forest in the park or whatever to recharge my battery. But, of course, I enjoy interacting with and talking to people.

Last week, I was at an event in Madrid, and it was so amazing to see the people's energy and all the interaction. And it was like a nightmare for the social battery because of the noise, queues, the bathroom, and wow. But I said I want to do this. It's uncomfortable, but I want to do it. And the upside of being there, connecting with people, and what you discover is much more than what we spend on energy. This is what we say.

Holger

Yeah, true. True. Yeah, I had the same experience just last week. I was a keynote speaker. Again, that's why I agree 100 % with you. I wouldn't want anything different than what happened to me in the past because if anything, even the slightest, tiniest bit, were different, I wouldn't be here, right? We wouldn't meet. And everything happens as this happens. I don't want to change it.

If I had known I was autistic, I'm not sure if I would have become a keynote speaker, right? Because it's like, it's the opposite of what you should do as an autistic person. But I was at the event, roughly 100 people, and I was there for three days, not only for the keynote. Of course, my social energy battery was drained, drained, drained. I had some; I had the picture of you having to take some power bars with you, right? So you have to recharge yourself, but after such an event, there is no chance I will do another event next week.

So this week was blocked for these kinds of events because they will kill me if I do them in a row. So I need to recharge and do other things. We have a different life now because I'm alone in my room and only have you to chat with, but I wouldn't do anything like another big event or a keynote, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Roberto

Absolutely. And that's also the gift of knowing and being aware and from there, OK, who I want to be, what I want to express. Then was the price I wanted to pay, the investment I wanted to make to help that. And it makes much more intention, which brings me to how this connects if I knew earlier. You also do workshops and presentations to spread awareness in schools. I would love to hear your thoughts about autism in the early ages and what your experiences are.

Holger

I'm torn about how good it is to know, right, and early on because it shapes your path. As I said, if I had known as a kid, I'm not sure if I would have taken this; most likely not because I would have known all the challenges. On the other hand, awareness helps my kids, right? Because they can learn exactly what you just said early on. Is this worth the effort, or should I invest on the other side? Do I participate or not? Do I need my time or not? One example is that our son also needs to sleep a lot. And I slept a lot, too. When I was at school in my childhood days, right? I had to sleep an hour to an hour and a half every day after school. I didn't know why. And I felt always a bit strange about it, right? If you know, it's not weird. It's just OK. I was recharging. That's entirely OK.

So that's why it's good to know early about it: You can design your life how you need to and want to have it. That's why I wrote the book, and I'm doing sessions and workshops related to the book as well. Because if we have a good story and what people tell me, the book is a good story. We can have more profound reflections on what we heard, right? We have on a deeper level than just reading about looks; autism means difficulties in communication, difficulty in eye contact, difficulty in this, difficulty in that. That makes it very difficult for a person like you and me or our children to reflect on, OK, how do I want to design my life? But if you read a story, in this case about an alien, you can identify yourself with it as well.

You have that leeway of saying, well, that's not for me, and I'm different, and I'm like, I'm more this, and I'm less this, which is fine. And it helps you, as I said, reflect more deeply about it. And that's why I like doing sessions around it, because, like, reading the book and then talking about it and, like, what would you need in a situation that the alien faced and how would it help you to deal with that kind of social environments and how do you recharge your battery? You can ask all these kinds of questions after reading such a story. So that's why I enjoy it a lot. Yeah.

Roberto

Absolutely, and when you say these examples and put things into images, it also reminds me of the importance of the parents understanding this and not being ashamed of it. And this is something that you put it beautifully because it's like you normalize everything.

I'm not going to give many spoilers; it's the story of an alien who goes from one place to the other, and things happen, and every time something happens, there is a message. And so you have to give words and images of something that's happened and the situation. And you said no one is identical, so maybe you are experiencing something or not. And again, it's a spectrum. Also, one more thing is that there is no, there has no, and at least there should not be a feeling of guilt or shame from the parents. This helps a lot when reading the book because it's completely normalized. There is nothing wrong. You did nothing wrong, probably as a father. I remember I felt so bad.

Holger

I still feel that, honestly, Roberto; I still feel a lot of guilt and shame around being autistic myself and giving that to my children. And I think it has a place, right? But we need to get away from that feeling, don't we? But it's still, it's still there. Not every day, but many days, there is a situation where I think, like, that's because of me. You know?

Roberto

Yes, and to that, you mentioned the genes, but there is one thing genes, and one thing is what you do with those genes. And there are many things that you can do. And the one thing I accept now is that whatever I am, my son or my daughter is, it's what it is. I didn't do anything more. But I would never forgive myself, and I was at the point I was like, why didn't I do this before? And because we were seeing signs of something's not normal, no? And my parents also told me that we should go to someone and see.

And then people downplayed it. Don't worry. It's just a normal development process. It's slow. And then my intuition was that, no, there's something wrong. I have to see it. And then when we got this, we said, I should have done this before. I should have been more determined to find out this. And it's also easy, you know, to dismiss, yes, yes, of course, this is what you want to hear. You want to hear that everything will be OK because, statistically, it's OK. Everything is going to be OK. But then you look at the other side to see if you can do something by early detection or intervention.

As we said, it's a spectrum. We don't have black or white. It's not like a condition where you have a virus or you don't have the virus. It's like, and you have not, you have not cured anything. You have to know who you are, what your strengths are, and what you're struggling with.

And I always use a metaphor, at least for me, to rationalize this. It's like thinking my son had a slightly stronger left leg than the other one. So it would help if you did exercise to be able to walk normally. And if you jump on one leg, you would be amazing on that leg. It would help if you were very trained to jump on the other one. You have to focus on that. So you have to raise the level so you can walk normally. And you can run, and you can do everything. And perhaps the hardest thing to accept, and honestly, I don't know if I accepted it, is that my wife, my son, could not have a normal life.

So, eventually, if this is the case, you get to accept it, but this will be very hard for me. But then, things go on; you see the progress, and the more you put in, the more you get. This is 100%, and it's so satisfying to see that.

Holger

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, true. And you said something good there as well. So there's nothing to cure. So, a lot of people still think or assume you could you could take a pill against autism, which is not, it's not the case, right? It's just not how you are. But you can work on strategies and tactics to deal with life and to find your way, right? That is important. And if you do that early on, you build a strong foundation, as well as like of a person who might be able to say, I don't want this, or I can't do this, or I don't want to do this, and I need a break now, right? Where everybody would say, no, no, no, let's continue. That person might be able to say, no, I can't. And we need to build those strong, strong people. And I got it as an inspiration. I want to share a drawing with you. Roberto just came to my mind. We just switched on the camera. I hope that works.

You should see my hands now, and you should even be able to see me in one of the corners, perhaps. But when we assume that it's a spectrum, like autism is a spectrum, right? So it's this egg-shaped circle, and we have all these different things. Let me continue in gray for now. So, if we say there are little to no challenges in the center and maximum challenges on the outside, right? There are some typical traits of autism that you could take, and we could then skip some of the others, but there is the communication issue right where it's hard to understand what other people say or understand jokes; for example, it is difficult. So let's do a smiley face as well. So that is difficult, as well as eye contact for some autistic people. It's tough to hold, but then, as well, what we talked about, the energy, like the social battery thing, is sometimes full or sometimes less complete. Then, we have the challenges of the theory of mind. To be able to imagine what another person is thinking right now.

So, the feelings, emotions, and thoughts of another person are, for some autistic people, just not accessible. It's not possible. Like they don't see it, they don't see it. Let me see. I'm just switching the camera here. And then, so we have these challenges. Then we might have other challenges like, for example, touch and taste, and like some autistic people don't want to be touched, some want to be touched, different things. We have time blindness. Time blindness is when some don't know what time is, and they don't have a feeling for it. And there might be a special interest. The thing that they think about, only the thing that they think about.

So, if you see all these things on a spectrum, right? And we know that early on, we are autistic as a person, your son, my kids as well. You can start by thinking about where I am on that spectrum. You could think, OK, like communication is a big challenge for me. But I understand jokes, so that is not a challenge. I can hold eye contact, but it's tough for me. So I put it here. Then, my social battery was very low. So it's a big challenge for me. I have a very special interest. So I only want to spend my time here. I have no problem with the timeline. I have no problem with being touched. I have trouble thinking about what other people say. And you build that knowledge about yourself, and that is the spectrum of one autistic person.

Right? It's not everybody's challenge. It's just one specific autistic person. And if we know that early on, we can either decide, OK, look, I have a significant strength here as well, and I can communicate. Can I make something around those topics and focus on them? Or do I see and develop strategies that, for example, I can have less time blindness or strategies of like, I don't know, understanding better jokes or whatever it is, right? Can I build the gaps? And that's why it's so important to know who we are early on, right?

Roberto

This is amazing. Thank you for doing this live. It also reminds me of a beautiful exercise in coaching called the Wheel of Life. And it's exactly like this. You can put all these things in a circle and start grading and being aware. And then, when you are aware, you can decide what to do. Also, the beauty of what you did is that no two persons are identical.

Holger

No, exactly. Everybody will look different, which is a good feeling. Because sometimes I need to figure out how it is for you. When you say, for example, you are autistic, or your kid is autistic, people think in an avenue. OK, that person is like, they can't hold eye contact, they can't understand jokes, they can't communicate, and I don't know. And they are flapping their hands all the time, right? So that's what people think, but that's just one type of autism on the vast spectrum. And the spectrum is not a line, right? That is important, too. That's why I drew a cycle, and I'm trying to figure out what's happening with the camera. I'm sorry for that. Let's see, I will fix that in a second. But when we have the circle, it shows the spectrum because there's no end and beginning. It's just different.

We need to change the camera for a second. Let me give you a second.

Roberto

Absolutely. While you change the camera, I was reminded of one of the quotes from your book that I'm going to read just once; I'm not going to be more spoiler, but there is a phrase that is exactly what you say, which is this, which is, please remember that if you know an autistic person, then you know one autistic person, not everyone who's autistic. So this is the same. And this is also valid for everyone. If we take out the label autistic or neurotypical, there are not two people identical in the world.

We have these kinds of labels, et cetera, because, of course, in this circle that you draw, where you are on a very extreme, it becomes very challenging. And so you have to adapt. But if we only had a scale from zero to three or zero to four, we would not even notice because we would be like, OK, everyone is different; it's normalized. We have some tough challenges in some things, which makes us think that, OK, everyone is like this. And it's not.

Roberto

OK, there is a question from Carrie who asked, are you aware of the term highly sensitive people?

Holger

Yes, yes. And they are basically on a spectrum, too, right? When we see this picture again, let me know if they are. The angle was this way. That was the right way. And make it a bit like this. So, highly sensitive people would have many things here, and not going to the maximum where we say, OK, maximum is somehow difficult. Or I wrote the wrong way, but let's say this is OK and difficult. However, highly sensitive people would have issues, especially with sensory issues like touch and visuals.

We should add hearing, smell, and all those things. And they feel the whole room. They don't need to be autistic in that sense, but some autistic people are highly sensitive, right? So we have, like, there's often an overlap, but it's unnecessary. Those people have other challenges, though. Hypersensitivity is a struggle, too. Yeah.

Roberto

Yeah, I have; there is one question, which I will share with Becky. The guilt and some judgment never end. Thank you. You show that you wake up daily wishing you had done more than the 21-year-old without teams. Thank you, Becky, for sharing this. It is also why it's essential to your work to share awareness, especially at an early age. Because first of all, you have to have the information. If no one tells you, and you are not familiar with that, maybe you think, OK, maybe my son or my daughter has just difficulty.

And we say here in Spain that It was like, OK, he's a problematic kid, you know, this label, the difficult kid, and how many difficult kids are perhaps people without this? And then so they have to know. And then it's on you, with the information, what will you do? And, of course, if it's something of genes and whatever, you cannot do anything. And maybe you can say, what did I do during the pregnancy? Did I do something wrong? Did I give them something?

One thing also tormented me initially, especially the regression. It was utterly neurotypical initially, but something happened after two. What's happening? What did I do? And that's OK; we will never know. Of course, there is no answer, but I want to think that I did everything that I could. Of course, now it's easy to say.

But at that moment, it was not because I saw the progress but because I saw what we did, how amazing the progress was going to be, and how happy Luca was. But then you see your son unhappy because he was like a fish out of water; he didn't know what to do. And I was so frustrated. I didn't have the tools, I didn't have the information. And again, you have to want to do something.

It's much easier to take action if you know what it is and there is no judgment from your circle, the general, the school, society, parents, or anyone else.

Holger

Hmm. True. It is. It is. Yeah. Yes. And I hope most people get support from their circle because it gets easier. We only have a little support in the circle from the schools, too. It's more like teaching the school and the other people around what it means to be autistic and how to deal with that or basically how the individual autistic person has to deal with all the things they have to deal with. So it's tricky. So it's a lot of not fighting but talking, discussing, and telling people how it could work. Again, that's why I wrote the book: to give people something, right? It's a different thing to have, like a book with a story and some short explanations you can give people. They can read it in their own time. And then afterward, you can have a conversation about it. Then, sitting in front of people telling them, this is how it works, this is how it works, this is how it's like. It's like changing how you transport the message; it changes how it is perceived.

Roberto

Because then you have this. You can sit with your daughter and son, read, and say, OK, this is this. And you remember the, OK, this is, I'm this. I have this. And it's a fun way. And it also helps to create a bond and to share these things from a playful perspective. Not from a clinical point of view.

OK, it's life. And one more thing, now that we're talking about being with our kids, I also firmly believe, first of all, I'm talking about this from a position of absolute privilege. I'm so lucky to be where I am, have the resources I have, and have the knowledge I have now. So it's straightforward from this position with all our support, all the time we invested, and all the economic resources because it's also a considerable investment. If you want to do it all in, it's a sacrifice and an investment. So you have to be very mindful. So, first of all, I'm talking about this from a privileged position. At the same time, most of the work is done at home.

So, of course, you have to have the specialist, the school, et cetera. But then, it only compounds if you do the same at home. We cannot delegate everything to the therapist, occupational therapist, logopedist, or psychologist because they see each other once a week. You cannot stay eight hours because you'll be overwhelmed again. It's much more. Fifteen minutes is as easy as 15 or 30 minutes every day, which is not easy to pull out as a parent, working parent with two kids, or with all these things. So you have to be very mindful. But then when you do it, and if you're patient, and this is also if we are like our child, we have this focus. At least I have this focus. I am a very focused person.

And I had this vision that, whatever happens, I would never, never miss my exercise with Luca in the evening. And I was like, wow, two years, every day, every day, every day, every day. And it's so hard initially, but then you start to see the result. And again, the more you put, the more you get. And it's easy to say this from a place where we have all the resources, but at the same time, if we didn't do this at home, we would be by no means where we are now.

OK, we could go on for hours. And I'm also curious about one thing. We talk about autism and the spectrum in life. And I'm very curious: how does this connect to the workplace and some more professional relationships? What's your view?

Holger

So, first of all, I think everybody could learn a lot from autistic people in terms of communication because of how to phrase this correctly. So, give you an example. When I realized that I was autistic, I understood that I learned communication by cognition. So, I learned how to communicate by observing other people, thinking about how they communicate, what they do to speak, and whether I should adopt it. Neurotypical people learn communication by observing and mirroring it and doing it without thinking about it. So, because I had to think about how I communicate, I developed some internal rules for my communication and became very conscious about how I communicate with whom. Is there a person whom I see already struggling to make eye contact? Would I look into their eyes or more?

Comfort them as well and look away. If I have a person who's very, like, very strong in terms of holding eye contact, I would mirror that by choice. It's not just like a feeling of mind. It's just like thinking that person is looking into my eyes for many seconds. So, I do the same to comfort them. So I developed many rules, and I figured that in the workplace, many people work in the knowledge worker area, where we have a lot of meetings, right? Of course, there are a lot of people who do not work in the large field.

But, if you think about meetings, how much better would they be if you had specific rules and how to communicate with each other? If you could speak about what I need, What do you need? How could we work better together? Right? Not on an autistic level, just saying, look, for example, when you Roberto sent me a voice message on WhatsApp, I will not listen to it because I don't listen to voice messages. I don't listen. If you send me post to a physical post to my mailbox, I will open it when my wife takes it out and opens it. Right?

So when we communicate, we should agree to text. Email, WhatsApp, or whatever is the best way to communicate because I can't speak another way. Wouldn't it be awesome to do that with everybody at work? Just talk about what your preferred way to communicate is. What's mine? For example, one thing I do with many clients is to send me different emails for different topics. Please don't send me one email with three or four topics. Please send me four emails. They say, yeah, but I want to send you something other than four emails. It looks like spam. If you send me one email with four topics and I need an answer for topic three, I will only answer the other questions once I have that answer. If you send me individual messages for every question, one message, I will answer the questions I have answers to. So you get three answers right away, and you have to wait for one instead of all of them.

You know? Everything can improve when we become more aware of how others work best. And that's not only for autistic people; that's for everybody. And then, if you have autistic people, of course, there's the particular need for adapting a bit more because, unfortunately, there goes the system of the less complex needs to adapt to the more complicated system or, the less stiff needs to adapt to the more stiff context.

Autistic people sometimes can't change, or it takes a lot of effort for them to change. Neurotypical people can adapt more efficiently in terms of communication, such as how to work together. So it's in most cases, it's neurotypical people have to adjust how they act rather than autistic people have to adapt. Of course, everybody should try to come together, but there are some situations and some things that an autistic person can't do. It's not possible for them. Not that they don't want to; it's just not possible. And sometimes it's tough to understand what it is because it feels so easy if you can do it and so strange if you can't. That would be my two cents on that.

Roberto

And it's brilliant because, first of all, you touch on one thing, which is not to make any assumption about your preferred way of communication being the way of the other person. And if they don't engage in the same way, maybe you think they are not looking into my eyes. There's something wrong. No, there's nothing wrong. But if you assume this is because they don't like me, no, maybe it's because they don't are comfortable with that.

And that's the first. And then you also mention one thing connected to the psychological safety of being able to talk about these things and not being judged. And then, from there, you agree.

It also reminds me of the team agreement, which is very basic. We don't have to talk about neurodiversity to say, I don't want to, for example, I don't want you to send me a direct message with a file attached. I prefer an email, or it looks silly, but it's how we work. And then again, we can agree on what we want as a team. Do you have any special needs?

For example, I'm overwhelmed by an audio message, as you said, two minutes and a half of audio message. What's that? In that case, I will give it to Copilot so he can transcribe it to me because I don't want to hear that, or yes, I want an audio message because it's personal. It's second best to have a call to agree on this and how amazing it would be. We do it less and always do more. Still, if we start the project with what we know as workers, we also have the experience of working on a project with a team. Then, we disband the team, move to another team, and work with different people if we invest one day at the beginning of the project. It's a lot to know each other, discussing how we want to work, what our lour limits are and arise, what's the thing we like, what's the thing we don't, how easy likey, and the rest of the project would be.

Holger

Yeah, so much easier. So much easier.

Roberto

It's fun also because when you do this, you discover I'm not the only one who doesn't like two minutes of audio messages. You also normalize that, and you think that you are different, and you have to, OK, well, there has to be something wrong with me because everyone sends these two-minute-and-a-half messages. But then you see, OK, me too or not, and you have a conversation.

And it's the same as normalizing something in the personal and school and the same in work. Of course, you must be more intentional in your work. You have the structure; then you have the team dynamics. It's not like in your family. But I'm an optimist. I'm an optimist. And I hope that we see this more and more in organizations.

Holger

Yeah, me too, me too.

Roberto

I'm curious now, Holger. Besides, of course, the Kickstarter, which I'm sure will be a huge success, what excites you the most?

Holger

What excites me the most? So, first of all, it's when I see people change. I like to see the epiphany of people in their eyes when they learn something new and they see something. Perhaps I was the person who taught them a skill or gave them insight, and I saw this spark. And that's exciting. And the other thing is I'm a creator, and I'm a creative person. So, if you let me create what I want to do, I would be thrilled. And I don't have a focus, so you might know I'm writing a fantasy novel. I'm writing a poetry book, I'm writing business books, I'm drawing and painting.

Through creativity, we can experience life in the best way.

It's where we can understand many things, like psychology and communication, how we tick. Creativity is one way or one of the best ways to dial into that and figure that out. And I know from your work that it works. So you work, and you are hyper-creative as well. And it helps us without often saying it, just getting to the point.

So I'm very excited about that. Yeah.

Roberto

I see these two things; I also see a connection from what you talk about because what you do with all this creativity also helps you be who you are, which is an expression of who you are. Again, when we said I would give up anything about who I am because of this combination, it made me unique. Again, what you said about seeing the spark in the people and connecting with my coaching practice resonated powerfully. And this is one of the gifts of being a coach, in that you see that everyone is creative.

And I need to be more creative. Yes, you are. Everyone is creative. We remember that as kids, we did every kind of thing. And then someone told us something, or we decided we were not creative anymore. We have this assumption again. And then you take off this idea, and yes, I can be creative. And this is amazing. And you didn't do anything less than show them what you see through your eyes and then ask a question.

Holger

Yeah, very powerful. That's very powerful. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah.

Roberto

Super interesting. Yes. And one more thing that I would love to hear and connect with what we discussed. What do you think is the biggest challenge for someone who has a daughter or son with autism or is himself on the spectrum? Perhaps, what can be the biggest challenge, and what would be?

Holger

So I need to draw something for that again. Let me draw something here.

So, the most important thing is that we have this battery. And for a person with autism or parents of a kid with autism, I think it's essential to accept that this battery is usually not full at any time. It has less capacity than neurotypical people. So this is the autism capacity, let's say, the given energy per day.

If you were neurotypical, you could have the whole thing. So, this will be the neurotypical level, the NT, and the autism.

Accepting that would be a first step. Then, every activity that we identify as average costs way more energy than we think. Like talking to other people and eating. There may be something wrong with the food. That can drain the energy instantly, like hurting yourself because you run against a corner or something, right? I need help finding something or knowing the answer.

All these things can be very strong energy drains. Way more substantial than we would assume as neurotypical people. And If you accept this as OK and being that this is the norm, that this is OK, and having the awareness and appreciation for it, it makes life way easier because then you can accept that like a small hurt of the feet can kill the whole, like can pull it down to close to zero, right? The energy. And then the other part, and I think that's even more important, is that for an autistic individual, both thinking about their energy and telling you is a challenge, right? Telling you is a considerable challenge.

It is so accepting that often enough, you can't figure out what is happening inside your kid, and you can't figure out what is going on inside yourself sometimes.

Right? Because you're not able to express it adequately, which is one of the significant challenges of autism: expressing what's going on in yourself. So, if you get clarity about that and get it in a piece, you are a huge step forward. But depending on my energy level, I sometimes forget all about this when it gets tricky, but that will answer your question.

Roberto

Thank you, Holger. One thing that comes to mind when I see and hear this is being kind to ourselves and others. And expect you to be less than 100 % all the time. We are not 100% one of them. No one is 100%. We don't have to expect our kids, neurotypical or not, to be 100%. Being kinder is also challenging as a parent. You always want your kid to be better than you. You want the best for them. So you have to remember, OK, you have to be kind. And this is a great message. Thank you.

Holger

And I want to counter this, Roberto, because I know it helps if you hear both sides. So yes, you can work on it. Yes, you can make progress. But literally every day within the family with autism, as ours, for example, I guess with yours too, there are points where you think, I can't do this anymore.

And there are points like a lot of tears, right, on all sides, a lot of crying, a lot of conflicts. No matter how far you progress, this will not go away. And if you are a listener here and experience something like this, know that this happens to all of us. As you said, Roberto, we don't always have the perfect life. And I think it's important to know that in the situation that we are in, as positive as we want to be, as positive as we stay, as much progress as we do a lot of the time, at least that's for me the case and my wife as well, I think I can't do this tomorrow again. Right? And we must see that side as well.

Roberto

Additionally, you also have to forgive yourself at that moment. If we do something that, for example, I remember one moment, the lowest possible moment. I still remember 100%. I wanted to be more kind.

This was before knowing. So imagine, imagine how you feel. Two months later, you get the information.

And you have to be able to forgive yourself because they forgive you. And also it's how you repair that. Not what you do, but how you repair that is matter. So if we fall, and we will fall, we are human; we stand up again. And you said an essential thing; in that moment, you said, I won't do that tomorrow. I don't have the energy. But also to add a positive note, you always find that.

So, at that moment, I will remember this battery. I will remember that my battery went down to zero at that moment. And then tomorrow, full battery again. I apologize if I did something wrong. And we will learn from this and go on.

Holger

Next day. True, true. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that, Roberto, as well. I appreciate that. Yeah. And yeah, it's just getting up again. There is a way. That's what we say. Yeah.

Roberto

And with this, I was also conscious of the time, and we could go on for hours. This topic is so interesting, and I would love it; we didn't check the chat but will check it later. If anything still needs to be answered, we will connect. But one more thing I would like before closing: I would love to hear the best way to connect with you or invite people; if someone listening to this wants to know more about you, about your work, what's the best way to do that.

Holger

Yeah, yeah. The best way is my website. That's my full name, holgernilspohl.com. We will write somewhere in the links. So you'll find it on LinkedIn here. And I'm on all socials under my full name, holgernilspohl. If you are interested in autism and the book I wrote, you can also visit my website, holgernilspohl.com slash autism. And currently, when you look at this on the 19th of June in 2024, the Kickstarter is still running. We are over 200 % funded right now. So, you can still get the book, the print book, the ebook, any motion toolkit, and much more cool stuff. So head over there. When the Kickstarter campaign is over, you will land on the website that is made for this book. So you can find everything there.

Roberto

Congratulations on this 200-plus percent. I'm sure it will be even more. Thank you so much, Olga. You're a wonderful person. Thank you for your generosity, openness, authenticity, and sharing all these lessons that I'm sure many people... Even if one person gets something from this conversation, it will be incredibly satisfying.

Holger

Thank you.

Roberto

and I'm sure that this is the case and even more. So thank you for all that you're doing. Thank you for doing this. And thank you also to the people who were connected and stayed with us. I hope you enjoyed it. I enjoyed it so much. It was a wonderful conversation. Thank you again.

Holger

Bye, take care.