Invisible Disability Is Exhausting | Fallon Morey on Autism, Anxiety, Masking & Systems Failure

What happens when nothing about the way you look has changed, but everything about the way you function has?

In this episode of Rupture, Wendy Lurrie talks with Fallon Morey about invisible disability, the pressure to seem fine, and the exhausting labor of having to constantly explain, justify, and translate what others cannot see.

Fallon shares her experience with depression, anxiety, ADHD, and being diagnosed as autistic later in life, and how those ruptures reshaped her work, identity, relationships, and understanding of herself. Together, Wendy and Fallon unpack masking, the hidden cost of credibility, the failure of medical and workplace systems, and what it means to rebuild a life when the world was never designed for the way your brain works.

This is a powerful conversation about invisible disability, neurodivergence, grief, accommodation, and what happens when systems only trust what they can see.

In this episode:

• invisible disability and the burden of proof
• autism diagnosis in adulthood
• anxiety, depression, and ADHD
• masking and the cost of seeming “fine”
• workplace and medical systems failure
• identity after diagnosis
• motherhood, neurodivergence, and recognition
• why diagnosis can feel like relief
• what support and accommodation should actually look like

If this conversation resonates, subscribe, share it, and join us at bestguessistan.com.

Bring us your rupture. Bring us your systems failure. We’d love to hear from you.

#RupturePodcast #InvisibleDisability #Autism #ADHD #Anxiety #Depression #Neurodivergence #LateDiagnosedAutistic #Masking #SystemsFailure

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to Rupture, the world of Best Guest Stan. I'm Wendy Lurie. Invisible disability creates a specific type of rupture. Nothing about the way you look has changed, but everything about the way you function has. And because nothing is visible, the burden isn't just the condition itself. It's the constant requirement to prove it exists, to justify accommodations, to explain limitations, and to perform credibility for systems that only trust what they can see. This episode comes to you from the Ministry of Visible Proof in Best Guessan. A place where looking fine means you don't need help, not looking fine means you're unreliable. And either way, you're penalized. Today's conversation with Fallon Mori explores what it's like to live with invisible disability, and what happens when that collides with systems that only trust what they can see. Which created so much pressure for Fallon that she needed to not only rethink how she worked, but her career itself. Some point last year, I put out a call for new officials of Best Guessan, and you might wonder why. Well, Best Guestistan was growing and it still is. The ministries were sprawling, and they still are, and what do new bureaucracies need? They need new bureaucrats. And I found a message on that post that said this. I feel I'd be a shoe-in for leading the ministry of overthinking and second guessing. Or would I? I've been mulling on this for hours and circling around whether this is the best choice for me or for someone else while weighing the substantial pros and cons. I'll go make a list and you can let me know what you think. Be back after I find the longest sheet of paper I can and draw as many checkboxes as possible. And I knew in an instant that Fallon belonged in Best Guessan and that the only ministry that she needed to run is the one she invented herself. So Fallon is the Minister of Overthinking and Second Guessing, and I'd like to welcome you today. Welcome, Fallon.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Very happy to have you here on Rupture.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Yeah, I'm excited to be here.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Awesome. Let's just dive right in, okay? And people will learn about you through the more about you through the conversation. So I'm going to leave the intro right there. So let's start with the rupture and naming the rupture. Tell us what happened. And I know yours came in waves.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

So yeah, so uh I kind of had two ruptures in my life. I think one of them was more external, was more obvious to the rest of the world around me, more significant impact on my public life, I'd say. And the second one was a little more internal. So I'll start with the first one. I was an officer in the military on active duty, and I had, I'll just leave it at a significant personal tragedy, is the best way to phrase it. And for reasons you'll we'll unpack later, I was able to overcome it and get back to work, to life. I I've always been, you know, pushing extra hard all the time just to make myself feel like I could just keep up or not even keep up, but just try to be on par with everyone else around me. And so I jumped right back into work and I was doing it and I was moving it forward and you know, all those other basketball analogies they have for what you do at work to keep things advancing. And I something really simple led to this sort of a rupture is a great word for it, but it was literally a conversation over a brunch one day, just cracked me in half. And I, you know, by the end of the morning, I was literally laying on the outside porch of my foreign apartment in the rain, just shattering into pieces. And, you know, I had a lot of kind people around me. Luckily, I was overseas. I had no family support, I had no real close friends. So I had someone take me in and she said, you know, like, honey, this is I I've experienced this. I've been dealing with depression my whole life, and that's what this feels like. That's what this sounds like. So I I went to, you know, get psychological, psychological evaluation. I don't know if that's the right word for it, but psychological evaluation, which is not an easy feat in the military because A, you don't have time, and B, there's kind of a stigma against getting mental health help. And they quickly diagnosed me with not only having major depressive disorder, but being, you know, in the middle of a depressive episode. And also, they diagnosed me with having generalized anxiety disorder because of what I was telling them about my life. And, you know, my my therapist was like, you know, not everyone lives with this like constant running script in their head of like, you know, did I do this right? Is this about to fall apart? Is the world gonna catastrophically end? This will all go away at any minute. And I was like, really? I thought everyone lived like this. I've been living like this forever. And so, you know, as a result, I I sunk into this sort of like depressive episode. I I couldn't, I'm trying to find the right words, I couldn't find my way out. I couldn't, it wasn't in any, I wasn't in danger of like self-harming. I I just didn't care. This tremendous apathy. I didn't care about certainly my own personal well-being. I couldn't care about anything in the world around me. It was like it was like hanging out over my own shoulder and piloting my you know, meat puppet around the world, but I didn't, I wasn't really experiencing it. It eventually led to me getting sent back home from overseas, canceling sort of the the job I was supposed to do in the Navy for the next three years and having to get transferred to another command. You know, effectively in my line of work, that would have sort of that sort of like would have railroaded my whole career. I would have never really advanced to where someone in my position might have. So I was looking at, you know, a career I wasn't going to be super happy with. I could have continued, but it didn't seem like it was in the cards. You know, I had to kind of explain to a lot of people around me like why I was supposed to be here for three years and now I wasn't going to be. And, you know, eventually I crawled my way out of those depths and kind of reset my life, this new life that I wasn't expecting to be living, and was able to move on from it while learning how to deal with my, you know, my anxiety on the long term. And then, you know, keeping a constant vigil for never falling into that pit again of depression. So that was the first one.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

And that so let's just stick with the first one for a second. So that one came on suddenly, right? You did not have warning of that, you didn't sense that wasn't like a gradual onset.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

No, it didn't feel like a gradual onset. But when I look back now, you know, hindsight is I I would say it's even greater than 2020. Hindsight is like, why couldn't I have seen that coming for years? You know, before I moved overseas, I had been in a relationship with someone that was very emotionally and mentally abusive. Like it it meant all the check boxes. I had just gotten out of that. And so like that probably was was putting me on that, you know, on that path or adding to that burden. I went through this like very personal, like horrible, like the most horrible thing that's ever happened to me personally. And I just gave myself a month and then sort of had to regroup and pack it all back in and just go. So now when I look back, I think, oh, I I should have known it was coming. I should have known by the way I was feeling that it was coming. Like this was the most miserable I'd be for many reasons that I'd ever been in my life. I couldn't, I couldn't find anything that really made me happy or contented. But the actual like moment of rupture was like a bang. Like I was doing fine. Look at me, I I can overcome anything with sheer willpower.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

And all our warriors, yes.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Right. And one person's comment sent me into a spiral of emotional chaos that I've never felt before. And it it all just kind of cracked from there.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

So it it felt sudden, but it probably wasn't.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Exactly. Yeah. And I'm not a great gauge of my own emotions. I don't always feel a strong emotion or an emotion building for reasons I'll explain in a second. So for me, like sometimes emotions do that to me anyway. I don't I don't feel the buildup. I just I'm fine and then I'm very sad, or I'm fine and then I'm very angry, but it's hard to feel the the buildup to anything. So that probably added to that. Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Okay, so why don't you keep going and that'll explain why the emotional piece is so hard.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Yeah, absolutely. So, and and we'll kind of I'll probably end up talking about this more, but I was fortunate enough to find an amazing partner, my husband, who, you know, when I had my first rupture, I was just meeting him, and I I had to say something, which I don't think a lot of people have to say, which is look, you make me feel very joyful when we're together, but you can't make me happy. And I'm in something really horrible right now, and it's a little, it's a little what other people would call crazy. And we just started this. So if you want to run away, like I fully support you. Now is the time, man. Like, off board as fast as possible. And he's like, Yeah, so like what's the big deal? Like, he was just very like, eh, I'll I'll deal. It's fine. I don't even have to deal. It's you do you, you know, like, but he was very supportive, he was good at intuiting my needs as I learned about my own anxiety. He sort of already could like intuit what I needed in the moment I needed it, or sometimes before I knew I needed it. So we, you know, we built this great life together and we had two awesome little boys. And, you know, when my second son was about four, he was diagnosed as autistic and quickly after that, ADHD. And I always thought, like, man, I am killing at this mom thing. Like, I always know what he needs so intuitively because I'm a great mom. And then I sort of realized I always know what he needs because I always needed the same things. And it made me sort of step back and be like, hold on, what if I take my life and I reflect it through this lens of the potential of being autistic? And that's why the world feels so hard and so difficult and so not built for my brain. And I and I look into this. So I listen to a lot of podcasts, honestly. There are great podcasts out there by autistic adults who discovered they were autistic later in life. And I, you know, I was diagnosed with ADHD, which I knew had always been a problem, but I was like sort of rediagnosed and got medicated that helped. But I went through this long kind of very not complicated, this very like intensive diagnostic process. I found a great doctor. She's actually based in Canada, and she herself is autistic. So it's somebody who has autism that is helping other autistic adults. And I was diagnosed as autistic last year in December. Not this past year, but the year before.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

So anxiety, depression, ADHD, autism. That is a very full plate.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

That is a full plate. And and the second rupture was more internal. Because yeah, because so it's not like it's not like you, you know, autistics and even people with ADHD, any type of neurodivergence. And I'm sure that and anybody who has any kind of issue with processing can probably tell you, as you probably are aware, not to speak for you, but you you do a lot of things to make the world palatable to you and you palatable to the rest of the world. A lot of people call that masking. I call it that, or for me, that in the stuff coming in goes through like a big, tightly woven mesh filter. And I had been putting so many of these things in place for so many years, I didn't realize that I even had them and that things bothered me. And I just was used to letting everything bother me. I was like, I was used to letting it bother me to the point where I felt physically bad and learn how to even overcome that. So I think my body absorbed a lot of the stress of that over the years. My brain certainly did. So once you take those masks off, you can't put some of them back on. So, like, it's like when you pack a suitcase for a trip and everything fits in nicely because you've just washed it and folded it, and then you take it out and wear it, and it doesn't go back in the same suitcase. It's like that. Like, there's a lot that doesn't go back in this suitcase anymore. So, like internally, despite having to still work and be a mom and a wife and a friend and a person in the world, you are having to like reconstruct the way you deal with the world around you and and kind of grapple with the fact that you're never gonna be able to just put up with stuff again. And that so that's like an internal rupture that sort of reframes everything about everything. In some ways, it was very positive. I was able to let this long-standing feeling, I was able to let little girl Fallon off the hook and tell her like it's not your fault. You weren't weird, you weren't bad, you didn't do it wrong, you just didn't have the brain that was built to do it the right way. And that was incredibly freeing. It was also incredibly terrifying and scary, as like waking up in a world that was made of different colors.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

So I mean, we one of the ways we describe it with because I totally get it, because also my brain does not work the way it did before.

SPEAKER_02 15:14

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

I've had to relearn because my brain processes, I talk about this a lot, not just at different speeds, but it processes in different ways. Like it's just it's not going through the same pathways. But yet you have to kind of show the world that you're fine and you're not fine. You're you're not fine. And I mean, that's the invisible quality of this, of all of these things that both of us have and a lot of our guests have had, makes it so, so difficult, which is actually like the next thing I want to talk about, which is the cost of being fine. Like it is, it does not come without a price to go through your life and be a mom and do your job and be a pa you know, be a friend and be all these other things when you've got all these things roiling inside you. And like, what does it take to seem fine? I mean, there's energy, there's resources, there. I mean, you're using everything you have. Like, what does that take?

SPEAKER_01 16:00

I mean, on the depression and anxiety side, what I've found is that I have it's been about 10 years since I was diagnosed. And it's it the cost of that obviously was very high at first, trying to make it through, you know, not only the rest of my Navy career, but when I decided to to leave the Navy and go to a like a civilian career, a regular career, kind of, you know, navigating those waters that because that was new. I it wasn't, it had nothing to do with my anxiety, but now I had to think about like interviews and grown-up insurance and like all these things that I, as I call it, that I've never thought about before. All dealing with being worried about all of it all the time. And and that was a high cost, but I would say it was temporary because it's easier to explain to people around you. It's easy to get medicated for anxiety. I'm on medication, I'm a full proponent of it, it makes life easier. Even the ADHD, like once I got through like saying like it's okay to tackle this later in life, that was because once, you know, I don't know if many people know, but as you approach like perimenopause and menopause, the the hormones and the structures in your brain that allow you to mask and to get by when you have things like ADHD break a little bit, and it gets harder and harder and harder to kind of white knuckle your way through your life without intervention. So I was medicated for that. But the autistic side was I think the hardest because you the cost of being fine is that you until you're diagnosed, and I would say watching my little boy go through it, his cost of being fine every day, it's heartbreaking because it takes a lot out of like I can see a like micro version of it in my own house. And like it helps me honestly to go, you know what, like to be a better parent to a child who's autistic, but to be a easier for me to be fine as an autistic person, but it it's an incredible mental, physical, emotional toll. I don't know if I'm allowed to reference this, but there's a great adult male podcaster, and he did an episode about masking, and he said something that I always remind myself of. And he said, you know, when you tell other people you're autistic, people like to be like, and that you have to like put on a different persona at work. They're like, Well, I have to put on a different we all put on a different persona at work. And he said, No, for you it's like going getting dressed for work and putting on a scarf. For me, it's like getting dressed for work and then putting on an entirely an extra outfit on top of your outfit. And can you imagine having to wear two outfits around all day? And that's a perfect example.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

That's a great analogy, Ashley. That's a great analogy.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

Going out into the world around people that are not like your your safe people, right? Is like wearing an extra person suit, like and having to zip that up and and suffocate all day.

SPEAKER_00 19:17

It's like it's a double-edged sword, though, right? Because you know, if you show people what you're really going through, then you're basically saying to them, like, you need you know all this, and they're all gonna try to fix it. I mean, everyone tries to fix it. We actually have a ministry of don't fix me, just listen.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

Because people don't want to be fixed in the moment that they are bearing their souls. But on the other side, to keep it all inside so that you can function, you can pass, and you know, your language, you can mask, is a tremendous amount of work. It's exhausting.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

Yes. And people, especially with a disability that you cannot see, as you probably have experienced as well. People either want to a, like, I don't know if if you assume positive intent and think they're trying to either make themselves less uncomfortable when you talk about it or or ask for what you need, or they're trying to make make you feel more comfortable by showing some sort of misguided empathy, say things like, Well, we're all a little anxious, or we're all OCD, or we're all a little autistic. And you would never walk up to somebody in a wheelchair and say, Well, we're all a little paraplegic sometimes. Because they're visible somebody's physical disability is visible. It's a hard, it's a struggle, and you you are aware visibly of the accommodations that they have to live life. But with an invisible one, you can't unless you want to go into deep detail, which autistic people will tell you one of their favorite topics to like deep dive into is autism. It's when you're first diagnosed, all you do is talk about being autistic and learning about how to be, you know, fix being autistic, I guess. Not fix it, but like accommodate yourself, you know, and make sure see if people are feeling the way you're feeling. But people like want to like squash that down and really or they get like threatened, especially. I found as a professional woman, like, how can you be doing as good or better than me with this thing that you deal with? So I also need to relate and say, Well, I have a thing that I deal with.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:25

You know, or like it's not a it's not really a big deal.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

Well, I I I do tend to give people the benefit of the doubt because I go through this also and assume that they're well-intentioned.

SPEAKER_02 21:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

But that they also don't know, and this isn't their fault. And this may be something that we do a panel discussion to kind of workshop are what can people say when they hear these things that are actually that that are that remain well intentioned, but aren't as damaging as the things people actually say. I mean, you know, I heard a lot of hey, it could have been worse, right? I mean, count your blessings, you could have been dead. I mean, all kinds of stuff that people say that is meant well. It comes across as though they're minimizing what you're going through. And then that puts you in the position of what are you doing? Arguing for your disability? Like that's that's that's not a position any of us wants to be in.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

Exactly. And you know, you kind of liken it. I think there's a tiny bit of a grieving process that accompanies any type of diagnosis or rupture process for the rupture itself. I love this word that you've you've kind of put on it because I've never heard it described like that. And it's such a perfect encapsulation of what actually happens.

SPEAKER_00 22:31

And I said it before Mark Carney did a Davos. He used rupture. So I was like, no, we were there first.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

You are the pioneer. But yeah, like you go through this grief process, and it's like when people are well-intentioned with a grieving person and they say things like, Well, the person could have suffered longer, or the person is in a better place. And it's like, yeah, sure, I'm sure on an emotional, spiritual level, that may be true if that's what you believe. But the person grieving doesn't want to hear that it was a positive when they are they want to like feel the feeling of it hurting them, which is okay to do. And it's okay to sit with your disability and say, I need something more to get through the world, or I need you to hear me and listen to me in a different way. I think the other big cost is, you know, if you are an independent person, if you're used to functioning on your own and being strong, and and you know, you now have to stop and go through this incredibly humbling process of figuring out who you can talk to safely and telling people that you need help.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

How hard was that? I mean, I know for me how hard that was. How hard was that?

SPEAKER_01 23:53

It's very hard for me. I'm so lucky with my husband at home because, you know, we watched some videos online and somebody was joking about, you know, this is the big light. Don't turn this on if you have neurodivergent people in the house. And I was like, I said something about that, and my husband just looked at me and he was like, I've been doing this for you since we started dating, which is about nine set nine years before I got diagnosed with anything. And he I said, Really? He said, Yeah, because I'd turn it on and hiss at me like a vampire bat and close your eyes. And so I was like, Yes, that's off limits, you know, or I figured out the right volume of the TV to set for you because you would like curl up when it was too loud, or I'd turn the lights off at a certain time.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

So you found a good one.

SPEAKER_01 24:38

There, I know there are people in the world that are there for you that will just know and intuit what you need if you're lucky, which not everyone is lucky to have that, but I was lucky to have that in my inner circle. It was harder for me in the workspace, and it was harder for me with friends when I didn't know how people would react.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

You know what? Let's actually let's go here next. I have another section I want to come back to, but since you brought it up, you know, one of the things we talk about in Rupture and Best Guest to Stan a lot is that after the rupture, what the rupture reveals are the systems' failures, right? The rupture doesn't just happen to you. It shows you that the things you thought you would be able to count on just aren't there. So which systems failed you first or hardest? Workplace, medical, family, social.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

I mean, with the first the first one I'll see about with the first one I experienced, I think the workplace one was first. I realized I had always known that the Navy was like a very, you know, you show up to work, their job for Navy, for Navy Medical is to get you back to mission ready and back to work. I had given years of my life, barely ever taking time out for sicknesses. And, you know, my first therapists with the Navy who diagnosed me with depression and anxiety were great. But shortly after that, that that medical system started to fail. I mean, I literally had a a psych a psychologist that I saw make a suicide joke to me in an appointment. Excuse me, trigger warning. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

No, no, that's fine. I know it's but for the but they they they they made a suicide joke?

SPEAKER_01 26:23

Correct. Walking in, they basically made a joke to the effect of like, you know, because we had to miss an appointment, and the the person made a joke of like, well, it's okay, it's not like I think you're gonna, and then he like made a very like casual reference to self-harm. And I was a little blown away, and I was like, so I asked the switch therapists, and then they were like, Well, it'll be months until you can get anyone. So that system sort of gradually failed me like over and over again until I got out. And it wasn't honestly until luckily I was out of most of my depression at that time, but my anxiety was still kicking. And so, luckily, when I had my first child, my my very nice doctor, like the day I gave birth, was like, you're taking this medicine and you're going to see a therapist, or I'm gonna like while I was pregnant, she was like, Your anxiety is worse for the baby than anything physically happening with you. If you don't go see a therapist within our practice and get that calmed down, I'm going to make you take medicine. And that was kind of an eye-opener. So, like, but the the the initial medical systems failed me. The Navy sort of workplace failed me. I had one, you know, senior officer who walked into my appointment with a medical professional to ask if I was like, after my personal tragedy, well, is she dying or can she get back to work?

SPEAKER_02 27:51

And so I think that's a binary, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:56

So in the beginning, I think the the systems on the second, on the other side, on the on the autism ADHD side, I think the systems that fail you first are when you learn the people around you that just can't like openly listen to you or just aren't willing to like accept that you are not what they thought of you. But I would say that for anyone who's dealing with an invisible disability, especially if you're autistic and undiagnosed as an adult, I think those systems have been failing you for a long time, personally, because none of the systems are built for you.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

And so you are making your own system. So yeah, it's social case.

SPEAKER_00 28:48

But that's a lot, I mean, that's in workplace, medical, and social, those are like massive systems to to expose failure to you. And I totally agree because one of the one of the points I you know that that I make a lot because I'm seeing it more clearly, especially as I'm removed from the workplace more and more, is and I see it in medical stuff too. I had an experience yesterday that was like this, but systems are not built for the people who need them. They are built for the people who administer. And that's the problem. But that's what's revealed through the rupture. You don't know that until you need them.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

Right. And I I my most recent work has been in healthcare on the administrative side. I was a marketing and communications director for a healthcare plan, administering to a certain population. And so one of the things I loved about that job was thinking through the eyes of the people using the system, because we would publish everything they were going to see. And the idea was like everything is confusing. And through the lens of everything being confusing about healthcare, like, how can we make this better for the person receiving it, not for the person writing it or the person administering it? Which was like, I feel like gave me a lot of empathy for that job. Because things are set up for a world of people with a certain brain that meets the, I don't know, the bottom of the bell curve and not or sits in within the band.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

It's like a band.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 30:18

Wow, yeah. Okay. So it's a lot of systems failure. All right, I'm gonna go back to the one before and then we're gonna go to something else. So this one is about translation. And how often do you find yourself explaining? Like what's going on, like whether it's to managers or doctors or colleagues or friends, or like you, or back at the time when this was new.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

I mean, you know, for my first one, I had to do a lot of explaining because I had to tell, you know, I was lucky, the the second in command of the ship I was on. I was on a ship at the time. He was an incredible human being, still one of the most amazing people I've worked with. His wife was like basically a second mom to me. I had to talk to him, and that uh I didn't have to do a lot of translation for him, but because he was a very personable, like he understood people and that people have stuff. But everything else in my life had to be explained to people. I still have to explain anxiety. For example, because people get offended about why you're asking for things because they think it's a reflection on them. So if somebody watches my kids and I explain, like, please don't let my kids do X, Y, Z, I have to explain to them I have anxiety. And they'll say, like, oh no, no, I know everyone's anxious about their kids. And I was like, you don't understand. My brain creates scenarios that are so real that I can remember them like they happened. So, like, the first time I took my kids to the water park, we went to the water park, we had a great time, we came home. And that night trying to fall asleep, my brain decided that one of my kids had drowned at the water park that day and made up an entire scenario that this really happened to the point where I like had to go to my kids' rooms and I touched their chest and I listened to their breathing because my brain had decided that something bad happened because something bad could someday happen, and was like trying to like prep me for it, I guess. So when I try to explain to people, like, no, it's not just casual worry, it's it's a it's a whole processing problem. That takes a lot to try to explain to people, and and you know that at the end, you have to worry that they think less of you or they think you're crazy, or you know, that that's a lot of translating. In my current work, I'm lucky I I found this incredible boss. I told her what was going on. I told her I was diagnosed with autism or I was getting diagnosed as autistic. And, you know, one of the first things I realized was like, God, the overhead lights in this in this office, I can hear the buzzing all day. It feels like someone's got a needle inside my ear and is like poking me all day. Like it physically hurts me. And I couldn't turn the lights off in my office. And she was like, So the next day she came in, she's like, I'm taking your office, you're taking my office. I can turn the lights on in here. Sometimes you end up with a person that will just listen that you don't need to translate, or who looks at you and goes, She's having a rough time. Hey, you know, I need you to you, you should get out of the room, go walk. Or I like, I know that you like I've translated you enough to know that you need this. But for everyone else, you know, you have to kind of weigh out whether the translation is worth it. Like, do you give this little piece of yourself and this little insight away to translate why you have acted a certain way? Or do you not do that? And that's where the masking comes back in. Cause as soon as you decide not to just act the way you need to act to for yourself, and you like put the filter back on to be more palatable to them, like you again go back into this, like that harmful cycle, you know. So the translation question is interesting because you're always balancing like whether you should even do it.

SPEAKER_00 34:17

And how about the limitations of language? Did you find that you had the language to explain this? No. Oh, it's about that. That's one of the things that we focus on is a visceral visceral reaction.

SPEAKER_01 34:32

Yeah, no, perfect. I I don't know how to explain it because my brain works the way it always has, but now I realize that, you know, as especially with the autism diagnosis, it's people don't believe you when you say, like, well, you were fine with this yesterday and now you're not fine with it. It's like, no, it's that I finally took the the band-aid off that part of my brain and realized how like wounded it still is, and that I still feel like bad there. It's I mean, there's not like say there's not even like I use a lot of analogies in my life because for me that helps process and I help it helps me explain to people like it helps me explain to people like how I'm feeling. So for example, if I if I try to explain, like, you know, when you realize you suddenly can't stand a certain texture, you like people don't understand that. Well, you ate yogurt yesterday, why can't you eat yogurt today? And I was like, I can never eat yogurt again because my brain finally like associated the fact that yogurt is gloopy and gross, and and like I can I will never enjoy it, and I'll never pretend to enjoy it again because I pretended to enjoy it for 20 years. And but I I have to say something like it's sort of like that like recency bias or confirmation bias. When you buy a red car and then you see red cars everywhere, like your brain rewires a little bit to look for the red car. It's like that. Like my brain is now like refused to go, you know what? I'm not gonna force myself to do the thing that I hate anymore.

SPEAKER_00 36:09

I totally get that because I now have a long list of things that I can no longer tolerate. Like I like sitting at my desk to work, I can only work at a dining room table. That's all my brain will accept. There are thousands of those. And my brain just certain things cause what the neurologists call cause brain irritability, and they just they make you feel awful, and they're nonsense things. But you kind of have to honor them because you have to respect what your brain needs, and what it needs now is different from what it needed before.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

And can I ask you a question? How long has it been that you've been sort of like so this so my TBI is about three and a half years old?

SPEAKER_00 36:46

Three and a half years old. The first is interesting, we're just talking, we we did uh an episode about this, and it's it it's sort of in in stages, right? So like the first year was just, oh my god, what has happened? And I was wearing dark glasses and basically saying what fucked everything couldn't handle light, couldn't handle sound, couldn't handle anything, and trying every kind of treatment known to man. I mean, literally like every kind of treatment known to man. And then by year two, I realized that those treatments weren't working. And I was kind of stuck, and I was just in this sus, and you will understand this is sad, dark place. This really sad dark place. And in year three, when I happened upon Best Guess Tan, because I needed to write, I needed to create a place for people like us because the world as it is wasn't accommodating. So I invented one, but that demonstrated to me what the world was lacking and also what the world needed. And the more I started to write that and create these ministries and create this infrastructure, it was like, okay, I can create this fake world that provides all of this, but what can we learn from this fake world that we can then apply to the real world? Because there are a lot of us, right? I mean, rupture comes in a million flavors, but once you're ruptured, we're all kind of in the same place of trying to figure out who are we now?

SPEAKER_01 37:59

Like the Grand Canyon is never gonna fuse back together. Correct. And your brain, I I think my brain is the same way. Like, like after my anxiety diagnosis, it putting a name on it like made me, it didn't make me more anxious about everything. I just started to notice how anxious I was about everything all the time. And now it's something I live with and I've worked very, very hard to manage through therapy, you know, through medicine, through all kinds of different methods to accommodate myself, you know, and and ways to deal with when my anxiety gets acute. Still in probably the the the middle two years of this the autistic thing, because I'm still finding things that my body is or my brain is like a hard no or that really, really trigger me. One of the things I realized about a year ago that is isn't incredible, and I know people use the word trigger very like casually, but it it is like if you're a trigger. One of the things that I realized is I do terrible, and you might notice I probably overexplained because I have a major trigger on people not understanding my meaning or my intention. And so when I proceed with something based on what, you know, doing something, whether it's at work or personal life, that I that I I'm trying to convey a certain message or convey a certain thing, and then people misunderstand me, it makes me not irrationally upset, just incredibly upset. And then I can't help but think like if I were just normal, I could explain why I'm upset. But like I it's I can't, and it I lose the words for that, right? I I don't have a way to explain it. I I just explained this to someone at work the other day because we had had like a little bit of conflict, and I said, you know, I tr really struggle with people not understanding me and my intention. I am very forthright, so I will always tell you what my intention is. And I'm not a good liar. My kids are not good liar. They're terrible. They were playing like a game called Liar Zuna the other day and both losing miserably because they're my especially son is a terrible, terrible liar. I don't have like a different, I don't have a a good work versus home persona because I don't have a way to like to to turn that stuff off. I am just one person and it's hard enough to be that one person. So like yes.

SPEAKER_00 40:36

So oh, that's really interesting. So the one system you didn't mention that failed, um, which actually a lot of our guests on who've experienced different heights of ruptures have said was the first one that happened was identity.

SPEAKER_02 40:49

How did all of this mess with your identity?

SPEAKER_01 40:53

So I don't know because identity to me is identity to me is a fascinating concept because of I don't really it's hard for me to grasp really what it means, I guess which is interesting because when I had my autistic diagnostic test, she said, who are you? And I was like, I can't answer that question. I need more information. I need what like do you mean like what do I do for a living? Do you mean like what is my social job? Do you mean like like my name, age, birthday, eye color? Like what do you mean? And she was like, I don't even want the answer. Like that's the autistic answer that I was looking for to check that box because neurotypical people will answer that question like social role first, followed by followed by faith usually or occupation, followed by some other category. Like, I'm a mom who's a Christian and I work at a school, but I like autistic people are like, I I don't know, I don't know how to process that.

SPEAKER_00 42:02

I think it's a diagnostic question.

SPEAKER_01 42:05

Yeah, it's a diagnostic question, and I still struggle to answer this because for the identity piece, I might be the only one that says for the identity piece as I was diagnosed as autistic, is it was the piece that like made me breathe a sigh of relief about my entire life in a way that I had never been able to before. I think I mentioned I had I had spent my whole life being called weird and being on the outside and feeling like what like every every situation I walk into has a script that I haven't seen and rules that I have not been given the book to. And I'm always on the the outside of it. I'm always like just a little off. I'm always saying the right thing until I'm not saying the right thing. I'm always like going one step too far. I don't know how to like stand or sit or talk, or like I don't know how to play the right game. And so for the first time, I could go, you know what? There's a reason I can't do any of this. And that was like that was the only system that shored up for me in that case.

SPEAKER_00 43:12

So diagnosis was relief.

SPEAKER_01 43:14

A little bit because it it didn't mean autistic became my whole identity. I'm still the person I was, but I was able to go, you know what? I can finally stop feeling bad about my identity and feeling bad because before my identity was like, if you want to break it down to rules, I am a mom and I love being a mom as that part of my identity. And I love working, like I like being busy and that fulfills me. It's something I enjoy doing when I'm doing it toward a good cause. And I enjoy all those things still, but like the identity that's behind that is like I'm just some like socially awkward, a little off base, weird girl. Like, guess what? Like, there's a reason for that, and I feel so much better that I didn't. Just do it wrong for 40 years.

SPEAKER_00 44:02

So that that's that is such an interesting way to look at it. That's really, really insightful. Uh and it's true.

SPEAKER_01 44:09

Yeah. And I, you know, and especially revealing your diagnosis to certain people is something that I think can make or break your identity as well. Because when you start feeling good about your identity, and then you tell another person and they disregard what you say, it can really break that process for a lot of people. You know, I was really nervous about telling my mom because she was a teacher and she was a special ed professional. And one day earlier this year, I was in the car with her going somewhere and I just blurted it out. And she's like, I know. And I was like, What do you mean you know? She's like, Well, if I kind of thought about it when you were a kid because you, you know, you always had your hands over your ears. The the noise bothered you, the light bother you. She's like, I didn't I didn't touch you a lot and hug you because when you when I would, you would like shrink away because I don't like to be touched. That's like one of my biggest things, especially not by skin or I actually have a shirt I wear at a social events to give me the language, and it's a smiley cactus that says not a hugger. My husband bought it for me.

SPEAKER_00 45:16

I may want the link to buy that.

SPEAKER_01 45:18

I might just send you my extra because I have two. You have extra. But I told and she said, you know, when you were younger, there was no test for girls. There was no behavioral differences for girls. There, it was all based on little boys, and it continues to be based on samples of mostly male children. Now, research is getting better and is evolving, but that that's a huge gap in autistic and neurodivergent research, is that it is only around a certain demographic of people and a certain gender and sex. And so it is not, she was like, it wasn't made for you at the time. And I and I said, Well, you realize that as I was older, and she was like, Yeah, but how do you tell your like high functioning, successful, very intelligent daughter that that potentially you're gonna tell her she you think there's something wrong with her, brain, yeah, especially if she hasn't considered it herself. And I was like, huh. And I had only been thinking like, why didn't anybody do this for me? And I realized like she's been carrying around this thought for a long time that she's never been able to share because she just doesn't know how I would react, which was a new perspective for me altogether. And so I think that you know, I was lucky that I found people that could shore up that continuing sense of like like identity that I was able to grab because I I was lucky enough to to find that, which I acknowledge not so many people, especially who are autistic or ADHD or depressed or anxious, nobody believes them, and their own family doesn't respond and their friends don't respond, and that wrecks that particular system.

SPEAKER_00 47:04

And that's a lot. We talk, I mean, I have these conversations with people all the time, but when you have these other things and you put in all the work to seem fine because society needs you to seem fine, right? Society doesn't have a lot of room for people out like us who are outside the ban. Again, why we need best guests to stand, you're faking it all the time.

unknown 47:27

Right.

SPEAKER_00 47:28

You know, right? You're you're performing, you're wearing an extra, you know, to use yours, you know, a new set of clothes on top of your existing set of clothes.

SPEAKER_01 47:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:35

Just to get through it. And then it's like, I'm done. I'm done. It's exhausting.

SPEAKER_01 47:39

It's it's exhausting. I was away, I was out of town all week, for example, for work. And I was in my my like extra thick person suit for a couple of days because there was a lot of like emotion. And and you know, I was in an office building and I was under lights and there was a lot of noise. I was in a busy city. I just recently moved to the country, which is so much better environment for me and my son and my family. And I didn't realize how much I needed that until we got here and and all of the things. And so, like, today I'm rolling in, probably not as fresh as I could be to this, because I'm exhausted because I had to put my person suit in the my extra person suit in the wash, and it's just me, and I'm like still grappling a little bit with like going through all this stuff. But people who do not experience it don't understand that like what toll that takes.

SPEAKER_00 48:34

Yeah. Agree. And I think, by the way, I love the extra thick person suit. And we have a gift shop in Best Guess a stand is called No Wrong Answers, and it may be something we need to sell there. For for when people leave Best Guess a stand and go back to the real world, which we also refer to as worst guess a stand.

SPEAKER_01 48:50

I agree. I think the world is worst guess.

SPEAKER_00 48:53

Yeah, the world is. That hasn't been revealed because that's at the end of the other book, but I'm just sharing that for now. Yeah, two more questions, one of one of which I know the answer to, but the the first I don't. So this is the magic whiteboard part of the conversation. So especially when I talk to someone who's gone through a rupture and has really experienced systems failures and you have experienced multiple failures on multiple fronts. If you had the magic whiteboard and you had no restrictions, no barriers, you could fix any one of these or more of these with one or two ideas.

SPEAKER_02 49:22

What would you do? I mean, I think let's start with the easy one.

SPEAKER_01 49:28

Medically, I would just make medical care I would make I would stop separating out uh mental health care completely from medical care because one so desperately impacts the other. And I would make it so much easier to like for people to get to both for the care they need. I would make adult diagnosis like like a a more regular practice. It was so hard to find a diagnostician for anything as an adult. And I would make diagnosis so much easier on adults. And I would make I would make more avenues for easier support. That like it shouldn't be that people who have money for therapy or you know access to internet only or access to a large social group of like-minded people like should not be the only people that get to thrive.

SPEAKER_00 50:30

You mean healthcare should be a right and not a privilege?

SPEAKER_01 50:33

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's absolutely health care, but mental health care, especially, because all of us have a brain piloting the meat suit, as many of my friends say, like and and like everybody has a brain, and it's an incomp a complicated little like little organ that can fracture in a number of different ways and needs to be cared for as much as your heart, as much as your you know, your orthopedic pieces.

SPEAKER_00 51:01

All of it. Probably even more so, probably even more so.

SPEAKER_01 51:05

And I think socially, like, wouldn't it be great if we had like a like a I don't even know. I I started dating my husband before apps got really, like dating apps got, but wouldn't it be great if we could just have like for me, if I could just have like an autistic friend matcher that I could swipe right and be like, oh yeah, this is my kind of like you know, neurodivergent that I can be friends with, or oh, a normie that like knows how to talk to neurodivergent people, like excellent. I found that like you tend to gravitate toward people that understand you, and you it once you get diagnosed with things, it turns out you find people that like in your life who are like, oh yeah, me too. I like and you didn't realize that until you were there's a reason, but socially card.

SPEAKER_00 51:50

It's the red cars you were talking about before, right? It's the you notice the red car once you bought the red car.

SPEAKER_01 51:54

Exactly. It's exactly that. And then I'm like, oh, you sure do have a lot of weird flavor issues. Like, what's your deal? Or like, why do you always wear linen? You know, I you know, just like I do, I do.

SPEAKER_00 52:05

I haven't found my TVI people. That one turns out to be actually harder to find. Really? I've developed more neurodivergence since. Like, it's definitely blown up my OCD in big ways, my anxiety. It just blew all that up. Those things are easy, especially in New York. It's not hard to find someone who has anxiety because I've always thought, man, it would be fun to live in New York.

SPEAKER_01 52:27

And then if I spend a week in there, I'm like, get me out of here.

SPEAKER_00 52:31

We're moving to the country too, by the way. That's like our next move. I love it. I'm a native New Yorker, but my brain needs the quiet now. So we're we're moving up to like very, very quiet northern Vermont where there are just a lot of these stresses don't exist, and the noises. I mean, for me, the noises are a huge part of it.

SPEAKER_01 52:50

The noise, the noise. It's the noise of life that is probably one of the biggest things I noticed both with both ruptures is is everything around you makes noise. And especially after realizing that with my autistic diagnosis, like every light that's turned on makes a noise. Every computer that's on has a fan, every fan has a click, every like every person near your house makes a sound, and like everyone around everything has a noise. And the constant background of life, like I wish I could get I wish like that might be another whiteboard. I wish I could get like permanent ear filters installed that that tamped down because I don't know if you remember like the old car radios that had the squelch button and you could turn down like as much of the background as possible so you didn't get the static. It it's like when you when you realize how your brain finally works, someone removed that option and you can no longer filter out at a threshold. And so, like, I would find a way.

SPEAKER_00 53:57

I know it's impossible, but if you no, not with a magic light play, everything is possible. Everything is possible.

SPEAKER_01 54:02

I want headphones that filter out all of that, but leave the people at the right volume. Like I perfect.

unknown 54:08

Perfect.

SPEAKER_00 54:09

I think that's a perfect that's absolutely perfect for the whiteboard. That's great. Now we just need to find engineers to do it, but you know, we'll get we'll get there. We'll get there.

SPEAKER_01 54:16

Yeah. But like also, I have terrible demand avoidance, so like I'm not gonna be the one to go find the engineers for you.

SPEAKER_00 54:24

I'm good at organizing things.

SPEAKER_01 54:25

I might try because I think that I'm not sure if you're not a manager in real life, because once you give me the tools for the project, I'm great at like putting it all together and making it happen. But I'm not gonna take the first step.

SPEAKER_00 54:36

That's fine. I will. We'll talk about it offline. So, my next question, which is usually my last question, I do have a last question, is something you've already answered. Because usually at this point, I ask our guests if they would lead a specific ministry, but because you volunteered and invented your own ministry, and I think everyone who listens to this will understand why you are perfect for it. You are the minister of second of overthinking and second guessing, but you already have your paperwork. Like you're already like on board. I don't have to send you the confounding instructions and all of that.

SPEAKER_01 55:04

So no, I mean I have the sealed version in here. I wish I want you know for my wall. I'll I'll just never figure out where to hang it. That's why I have a pile of other certificates I don't know where to hang it.

SPEAKER_00 55:15

Well, you'll see the pros and cons, and you can do like the rubric and like rethink the rubric and then see what other data points you need.

SPEAKER_01 55:22

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 55:22

Yep. But my actual last question is because I feel like we scratched the surface. Would you come back?

SPEAKER_01 55:28

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 55:28

And talk some more?

SPEAKER_01 55:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:30

Because there are lots of things we have to talk about. I mean, more about the neurodivergence, there are other things, but I would love to have you back and continue the conversation if that works for you.

SPEAKER_01 55:37

Yeah, I would love it. I I think I told you this offline, but you know, and I thank you for keeping me on so long. But, you know, I by no means speak for every autistic person or anxious person out there, real person with anxiety. And I I never say that my experience means that people who are not neurodivergent don't also have things going on. But I'm so open to speaking now about what I'm going through because I want the next little girl Fallon to hear those words and go, you know what, it's okay that I'm like this. I'm not bad because I was born like this. It's not a failing, it's something I can I can help myself with, not fix because I don't want to fix myself. I want to just be myself. But also for all the people out there that don't have the medical care access or don't have a supportive partner or a supportive system where they feel like they could get diagnosed and blow up their own life a little bit and have support, like listen to this and go, you know what, it's okay to be like this. At least somebody else is like me a little. You know, I think it's important just to talk about.

SPEAKER_00 56:49

I agree. And that feeling of you're not alone and there are other people going through this, and I now have the language to talk about it is like it's huge. It's huge. Just because these things can feel very isolating and alienating. So thank you for sharing your story.

SPEAKER_01 57:02

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 57:03

And thank you for giving us so much of your time. And I really love this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 57:07

Me too. Thank you so much for having me on. I love what you're doing with you with this.

SPEAKER_02 57:12

And you'll be back.

SPEAKER_00 57:17

Thank you for joining us for this week's episode of Rupture, the world of Best Guessistan. Today's episode featured Fallon Mori, and we were talking about invisible disability. If this episode resonated with you, or you know someone who could benefit from it, please consider sharing it with them and helping them find our community. To support our work, you can like, share, subscribe, or join us at Bestgesistan.com. Bring us your rupture. Bring us your systems failure. We would love to hear from you.