What’s your bedtime routine?
It took years for an autistic mum and son to establish a workable bedtime routine.
In the penultimate episode of this season of 1800 Seconds on Autism, YouTuber Agony Autie Sara Harvey has advice for autistic parents.
Planning an office in a cupboard sparks joy for Jamie, and he and Robyn reveal how weighted blankets and familiar voices play a part in their carefully honed bedtime rituals.
Just to prepare you, next week’s episode will officially be the last one in this series. However, another coronavirus extra might just land in your podcast feed some time in June.
With Robyn Steward and support bat Henry, Jamie Knight and Lion.
Produced by Emma Tracey
Subscribe on ±«Óătv Sounds and say "Ask the ±«Óătv for 1800 Seconds on Autism" to your smart speaker.
Email stim@bbc.co.uk
Transcript
This is a full transcript of 1800 Seconds on Autism: What’s your bedtime routine?, presented by Robyn Steward and Jamie Knight and released on 14 May 2020
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[Jingle - ±«Óătv Sounds: music, radio, podcasts. 1800 Seconds on Autism with Robyn Steward and Jamie Knight.]
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JAMIE - The cupboard is only 1.5m x 2m, and I’ve got a to the millimetre plan for where everything is going, even the things on the desk will have little taped boxes to put them in so that they always align in the right place every time.
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SARA - Understanding our sensory profiles, understanding when we need a break, where have we been taught that? We are often learning that someone’s autistic, but we’re not taught it in schools.
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ROBYN - The texture of my pyjamas is very important.
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JAMIE - Oh yes.
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ROBYN - And sometimes I have my weighted blanket, my gravity blanket for a bit. And I often sleep under two duvets because I prefer the pressure.
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[Music]
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ROBYN - This is 1800 Seconds on Autism, a podcast about the highs and lows of autistic life with two autistic presenters, which is me, Robyn Steward and
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JAMIEĚý - Me, Jamie Knight. We talk a lot about sleep during this episode, but please do try and stay awake. I’ve also been allowed to talk about my new cupboard, so you’ve got all that to look forward to as well.
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ROBYN - Please keep your messages coming; they all get read, even if we can’t always respond. The address is stim@bbc.co.uk. In the studio with us today are Lion.
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JAMIE - Roar!
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ROBYN - Support bat Henry, Jamie’s support person Ollie, and producer Emma.
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EMMA - Hello.
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JAMIE - Shall we start with our checklist, Robyn?
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ROBYN - Yeah
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JAMIE - So, we like to check in on our spoons, stims and intense interests at the start of each recording, this is just to kind of get an idea of how we’re both doing. So, just before we get into it too much spoons are a way in which I record my energy and a lot of other autistic people do. We start the day with a number of spoons, like ten spoons, and then we use them through the day and when they’re gone we are forced to stop completely. So, Robyn, how are your spoons today?
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ROBYN - I should just say they’re not actually real spoons.
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JAMIE - Physical.
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ROBYN - They’re metaphorical spoons. Anyway it says on the script that I’m to say, Jamie, it’s 3pm. Except it’s not 3pm.
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EMMA - Okay, but you have to talk about your spoons first.
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ROBYN - Oh okay. It doesn’t say that in the script but yeah, okay.
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EMMA - No, Jamie says, Robyn how are your spoons.
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ROBYN - Yeah, it does, but then it says, Jamie, it’s 3pm as we record. That’s what it says on the script. Anyway.
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EMMA - Never write down a time, that’s the answer to that question.
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ROBYN - I have five spoons.
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JAMIE - How many did you start with today?
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ROBYN - Seven.
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JAMIE - How many do you normally start with?
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ROBYN - 10.
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JAMIE - Oh, so a sleepy day.
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ROBYN - [Laughs] It’s because I went to bed at about three o’clock in the morning because it was Robyn’s Rocket last night, and I don’t normally do a podcast the day after. But we were running out of time to do this series so I had to do this.
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EMMA - Tell us what Robyn’s Rocket is?
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ROBYN - Robyn’s Rocket is a series of gigs. My lovely storage unit accidentally revoked my 24-hour access, so I had to take all the stuff home and then lug it up my stairs.
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EMMA - Summarise the storage unit thing: it’s a little place where you keep your stuff.
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ROBYN - Well, it’s quite a big place, but I’ve just got a little bit. They sell you a storage room, and my storage room is 25 square feet.
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EMMA - And that’s where you keep all the stuff that’s not in your house?
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ROBYN - Yeah. I always pay everybody on the night, and I do it via BACS transfer, so I just sit and go through all the payment forms of all the crew and the artists and pay them. And then I had a lot of adrenaline because I’d been hefting all the boxes around, so I typed up all the feedback and I updated the spreadsheet.Ěý
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JAMIE - There’s a great topic there for later about slowing down at the end of a busy day and trying to get to sleep.
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ROBYN - Yeah. And then I went to sleep, and then I woke up early to ring the self-storage people. Well, to be fair I didn’t plan on waking up early, but I had a dream about the storage place so I rang them when I woke up. And they offered me 20 quid, which I thought was quite rubbish compensation really. And then there were some things that Robyn’s Rocket needed that I thought well, if I don’t get them now I’m going to forget because the next one’s not until April, so I went off and got that. And then I thought I’ll have a half an hour nap, and half an hour wasn’t quite long enough because it takes me ages to get to sleep, and I realised I was quite low on spoons. And I had pizza for breakfast, which I’m not sure that that was a great breakfast really, and now I’ve eaten two Twixes.
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JAMIE - That’s a really long list of things.
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ROBYN - Yeah.
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EMMA - Woah, woah.
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ROBYN - Not a great day.
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JAMIE - That’s a really long list. I’ve had about five spoons as well. I’ve had quite a busy week and the travel this morning got a little bit disrupted, so we’ve been rushing around a little bit. But now that I’m here and I’m sat down and all relaxed I’m pretty good.
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ROBYN - Stims are next on the list. Stims are normally repetitive movements, but also I think some people have vocal stims. It’s something repetitive. In the professional community around autism they are often described as repetitive routine behaviours, but the autism community calls them stims. It could be rocking, flapping or anything really, and they’re done for lots of different reasons, including self-regulation and for fun. Jamie, have you got any stims, new ones?
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JAMIE - Not any big new ones, although I have just realised I’ve sat here wrapping this lovely headphone cable around my finger to the point where my finger hurts, and then unwrapping it for that lovely feeling of blood flowing back into my finger. Ooh, that’s probably a stim. It was nice. I should probably stop doing that before my finger falls off.
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EMMA - Yeah, maybe.
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ROBYN - Yeah.
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JAMIE - It seems like a good idea. Do you have any stims at the moment, Robyn?
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ROBYN - Not any new ones, no.
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JAMIE - Cool.
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EMMA - I think we get to talk about cupboards now.
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ROBYN - Yeah.
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JAMIE - Sorry, that’s my happy, excited, bouncy stim. So, last on our list is intense interests, the things which we’re currently super interested in. And I’m going to monopolise this one slightly because I finally got a cupboard. So, back earlier in the year I used to spend an awful lot of time working from the local Mothercare café. It was really nice, it was really close to home. And then Mothercare closed and the nearest café is a bus ride into town, and then it’s much louder, much busier, and I have been struggling to get my work done. And then whilst I was visiting a company for a completely unrelated reason they mentioned they had some office suites available. They showed us a couple and I went, “Ooh that’s a really nice cupboard, how much for the cupboard?” So, we’re turning a cupboard into an office. It’s going to be pitch black and dark and tiny and I can’t bloody wait, I’m so excited for it. It’s going to be amazing.
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EMMA - Why do you want a cupboard?
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JAMIE - Because I need a place where I can work, where I can be private, so I can take confidential phone calls and have confidential chats with people, but is cheap and isn’t too bright and isn’t too loud. This cupboard is surrounded by three inches of insulation and soundproofing. It might actually be the most fundamental change in my life from the last few years, because right now a third of my spoons, half of my spoons some days, are spent just travelling into town and back safely. This will mean that all of that energy can go on to work, so I am super excited for my cupboard. The cupboard is only 1.5m x 2m so it’s only 4 x 5ft. But I’ve got a little floor plan with everything: where my pot’s going, where the bin’s going, where the desk is going. I measured how wide my chair is. And I’ve got a to the millimetre plan for where everything is going, even the things on the desk will have little taped boxes to put them in so that they always align in the right place every time. It will be so structured and perfect. There’s an element of comical/childish joy in this cupboard. It is seriously the most exciting cool thing in my life right now. Maybe that’s just a little bit, like, depressing because I have a cool job and I’m doing mountain biking and stuff, but oh my god, a cupboard! Robyn’s giving me the look that I think basically means, yes Jamie.
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ROBYN - That’s nice Jamie.
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JAMIE - Pat, pat on the head Jamie.
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ROBYN - Yeah, that’s nice. I’m glad you’re happy Jamie.
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JAMIE - The trouble is every time I start having long conversations about my cupboard everybody gives me that look at the moment. There’s not a lot to talk about, is there? It’s a cupboard.
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ROBYN - Maybe other people aren’t that interested in your cupboard but they’re happy that you are interested.
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JAMIE - Yeah.
ROBYN - And they’re happy for you just to talk about it and they don’t want to say anything that’s going to stop you because it’s obvious you get a lot of pleasure out of talking about it.
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JAMIE - When I talk to people about my cupboard a lot of people have gone, “I wish I had a cupboard”. A couple of people have said, “I wish you were in the cupboard now” and then it took me about five minutes to realise that that was a subtle dig at, Jamie please shut up now. I’m doing my best but it’s so good.
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[Jingle - Email stim@bbc.co.uk]
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JAMIE - It’s a small change, an environment thing of you’re walking round an office block and they’re showing you all these suites and you’re like, “No, no, they’re all way too big, fancy, bright and horrible. But your cupboard looks amazing”. It’s like seeing the world a different way, because I had to be able to see the potential that the cupboard had rather than the thing I was shown.
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EMMA - He’s still talking about the cupboard!
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JAMIE - Sorry, sorry, sorry, I’ll stop on my cupboard now.
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ROBYN - But it’s all right because I didn’t have any intense interests to talk about. It’s time for a phone out where we call someone interesting for a chat. This time we’re speaking to Sara Harvey. Hi Sara.
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SARA - Hello there Robyn. And it’s Jamie as well?
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JAMIE - Hello. So, Sara is the autistic mum of an autistic child. On YouTube she’s known as Agony Autie and her channel has over 11,000 subscribers. One of the questions I’ve got here is to ask you why the channel is called Agony Autie?
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SARA - It was supposed to be a spin on Agony Aunt, but it was also a double-entendre, which is I’m in agony from this environment, I’m in agony from the social stigma and I’m in agony from the anxiety it’s creating.
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JAMIE - It’s both literal and metaphorical.
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SARA - Yeah. But also I’m in agony because I have a physical disability called hypermobility. But instead of looking at us as the actual problem I look at the societal things that harm us like environmental factors, instead of why are we broken.
ROBYN - You mentioned harm, I just wondered if you could elaborate what that means to you, because you’re not talking about just physical pain.
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SARA - I’m talking about social; I’m talking about service cuts; I’m talking about a lack of access to peer-to-peer community; I’m taking about damaging myths that exist around autism.
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ROBYN - But non-autistic people I think they find it, they don’t understand how that harms people I suppose that’s what I’m getting at.
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SARA - Ah, so it harms us by for me it’s a lack of access to jobs, a lack of ability to have friends that understand you for you, and I think for me the biggest thing is isolation and the social public stigma, and also access to education.
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JAMIE - One of the ways that I’d phrase it is that short-term harm normally leads to bad long-term outcomes. A great example of one recently: an autistic friend of mine was unable to attend one of their lectures because the hall had really bright fluorescent lights.
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SARA - Yes.
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JAMIE - She then did worse in that module, even though she should have done fine. And she could directly point out, “Well I missed those three lectures because I had migraines. The migraines were caused by the lighting, but they wouldn’t turn it off or turn it down”. So, in that case her achievement on her course has been directly influenced by the harm unintentionally done by others.
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ROBYN - One of the points we’ve got here, and this is kind of worded from a neurotypical point of view, but I think the heart of the question, like where the question is coming from, the intention is good: your son is autistic; are you guys, as in you and your son, similarly wired or do you have different sensitivities or you’re different? How do you make that work?
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EMMA - How would you have asked that Robyn?
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ROBYN - I’d have said, you have a child on the spectrum, are you alike in the way that you both experience autism or are you different?
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SARA - Yeah, I would have asked it like that too. I’m 33 and my son’s eight, and I would always ask people, are you like your kid. Just because we’re autistic does that infantilise me straightaway? And I understand what they’re getting at, but autistic people are different at different stages in their life. We’re also different across the board within our community. So, the answer is yes and no. Yes, there are massive similarities between me and my son – I’ve actually never met anyone so like me as my son in terms of the way he stims and hums and plays by imagining that there are things in front of him with his hands and making sound effects, so that’s echolalia, which is great for an artist if you want to be in movies. So, yes we’re similar. But we’re also very different, and our sensory sensitivities will be different because I’m more sensitive to noise some months, and light other months, and he’s the reverse so we’ll bounce off each other. So, just because you’re autistic it doesn’t mean you complement each other sensory wise or even compatibility wise, because we will have different needs. And it’s about finding a balance with each other. I try to educate what are my son’s main priorities and needs, and then I try to show my son what are my boundaries and when is it for me to have time out. So, that’s about managing noise levels and space and recuperation, respite.
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JAMIE - I live with another autistic guy, and about half the time our needs conflict with each other.
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SARA - Exactly. We bounce off each other.
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JAMIE - The other half of the time we found giving things the right name has been quite useful.
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SARA - Yes.
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JAMIE - So, we say that we’re decompressing, which means I need to be alone.
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SARA - Yes!
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JAMIE - Versus hiding, which means do not interrupt me on pain of shouting at.
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SARA - Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
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JAMIE - We will literally say, “I’m going to go hide now, if you need me send me a text message” or, “I’m going to go and decompress”.
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SARA - This is healthy boundaries.
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JAMIE - Yes.
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SARA - It’s communication and it explains it’s not you, it’s literally not you, it’s me, but I need to go and decompress. We’re about that I’ve done, what I’ve done, what I’ve done, because we’ll have social anxiety and that avoidance may cause us anxiety. So, understanding our sensory profiles, understanding when we need a break – where have we been taught that? We are often learning that from other autistics, but we’re not taught it in schools. When it comes to school no wonder we can’t sleep at bedtime sometimes.
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ROBYN - We got an email last year from Chris who says: I have a one year old boy and sometimes it’s a really big struggle with him. I’m very sound sensitive, enjoy being alone almost as much as possible, I’m very sensitive to changes in my environment and need a very structured daily routine. I also work two jobs, so I can find it really difficult to be alone with him for long periods of time without me having a meltdown. Every time I try to research the topic all I get is answers for parents who have children with autism. I think it would be really awesome to hear someone talk about the other side of the coin and hear about the issues with being a parent and being autistic. Do you have any advice for Chris, Sara?
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SARA - Absolutely. I care for my son four and a half days a week, because me and the father are separate, and I’ve just gone in to apply for adult social care. Not because I can’t look after my son, but because of the physical and social and sensory and mental health demands that I’m having, I need that bit of care for me when I’m in my alone time so that I can have more energy for when it comes to me being there for my son. Because the role of a parent is hard. This guy sounds like he’s sensory overloaded. The child’s one so the one year old will not be in control of any of the noises or a lot of what their impulses or wants or needs or desires, so it’s a very turbulent time for the baby, but also for the parent sensory overload and routine wise that all goes with a baby, it all goes.
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JAMIE - It sounds to me like they’ve got an awful lot of demands if they’re also working two jobs and they need time to reach out.
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SARA - Absolutely. It’s like there’s nothing wrong with you saying, I need help. It’s not the baby needs help; it’s I need help so I can be the bestĚý that I can be for my kid. I would recommend ear buds, there’s nothing wrong with putting ear defenders on if baby is crying. That’s not you ignoring baby crying; that’s you being in the same room as baby but baby could be teething, so that could be 13 hours of crying. There’s nothing wrong with putting on some soothing music or ear defenders or asking friends to take shifts to help, if you have friends. Again, we’re isolated as a community.
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ROBYN - Just before me and Jamie talk about our routine, Sara let’s hear from you. I know you’ve got a whole family night time routine; please tell us about it.
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SARA - Okay, well first of all I’ll tell you what it used to be: I used to put my son to bed at 11pm when he was seven years old because he couldn’t get to sleep because he was anxious. And then I would maybe get to sleep at 4am, before getting up at 8am with my then husband to get my son ready for school, who is sleep deprived, we’re all sleep deprived. And that’s how it used to be: we all used to be out of synch and out of rhythm. And I would literally pace around trying to get rid of energy, rid of anxious nervous energy before sleep. I’m finally, after about three years – it’s taken a long time to iron it out – getting to bed about 10, half 10, 11 now. I’m sorry, I am proud. I have worked so hard to get to that point. And how can I when I’ve got so much anxiety, I’ve got trauma, yes I’ve got sensory overload, yes we’re autistic, but at night time that’s when things run through your head the most. So, we made some changes in our environment to try and help with bedtime routines. Little things like: after six o’clock, which is tea, I light a candle, which is night time essential oils. And I say to my son, “What can you smell?” and we do a sensory kind of, “I smell lavender”. Then a sensory bath, which is bath bombs, little bath paints, lots of different textures, candles, music. After the bath a story if my son wants to, or some free time for him to draw and play, but always letting him know, “You’ve got 20 more minutes, you’ve got 10 more minutes” then light off and then go to sleep. But that took years.
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JAMIE - That’s not a million miles different to my bedtime routine.
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SARA - Yeah?
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JAMIE - So, my bedtime routine includes a bath. I also put my phone away, and I’ve got a dedicated iPod Touch for in the evening.
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SARA - Fantastic.
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JAMIE - So, I’ll sit in the bath, listening to podcasts or audio books, or watch documentaries on YouTube, that sort of thing.
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SARA - So, you make sure you can’t work. It’s that relaxation mode, not activation mode.
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JAMIE - Well, there’s another thing that I do which is probably a little bit strange, which is I always open a Note document when I get in the bath. It’s like the first thing I do when I get in the bath. And I write down anything that’s in my head at that point. Sometimes the notepad will be empty, but actually that’s quite useful because sometimes something will come out on the notepad that I hadn’t actually realised was a problem.
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SARA - Amazing.
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JAMIE - And then I can do something about it. We also refer to it as an itchy brain. For example if my flat is 80% tidy or 90% tidy I’ll have a really itchy brain about all the things that aren’t done. So, sometimes running around my flat for 10 minutes fixing all the itchy brain stuff can also really help my sleep.
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SARA - But we got to this point of routine by not forcing it. So, we didn’t just turn around to my son one day and go, “Right, it’s essential oils at six; it’s bath time at seven, and it’s a book”. It didn’t just go boom, boom, boom. It was introduced slowly over time, what works, what doesn’t, because different things work for different people. So, when my son is anxious I really encourage him, especially before bed, to draw; draw it out. He’ll often scribble and write. Just let them have that extra time. So what if it’s now 10pm? It’s better than them tossing and turning until 2am.
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JAMIE - Sara it’s been really great to talk to you. Thanks for all of your input into this episode. But I think we have to start wrapping up now.
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ROBYN - We’re not actually going to wrap you up in wrapping paper or anything. It means that we’re going to finish the conversation.
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SARA - Please do, that’ll be a nice sensory squeeze.
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JAMIE - Oh, we’ve already gone off the rails. It’s been brilliant to speak to you. Chat to you soon.
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ROBYN - Thank you. Bye bye.
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SARA - Thank you. Bye.
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[Jingle - 1800 Seconds on Autism, with Robyn Steward and JAMIE Knight.]
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JAMIE - Robyn, I’ve talked a bit about my sleep routine, do you have much of a sleep routine?
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ROBYN - Yes. I have a bath.
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JAMIE - I have a bath as well. It seems lots of people take baths to help them go to sleep.
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ROBYN - Yeah, I thought I was the only one. That is a joke. I didn’t actually; I know other people have baths. Anyway yeah, so I have a bath.
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JAMIE - Some people even have showers. It’s an amazing world out there, Robyn.
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ROBYN - They do. That’s weird, isn’t it, showers? No, showers aren’t weird; I’m just joking. Yeah, I have a bath and then I get into bed and the texture of my pyjamas is very important.
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JAMIE - Oh yes.
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ROBYN - And the weight. And sometimes I have my weighted blanket, my gravity blanket for a bit. And I often sleep under two duvets because I prefer the pressure. And I have Henry with me and I have a little night light that I put onto a very dim setting. I plug my phone in. I put the news on.
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JAMIE - I think we’re opposites on that. If I put the news on before I went to bed I’d be lying awake all night with my eyes open going, oh my god, the whole world’s about to end.
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ROBYN - No, even when I’m in Japan or New Zealand or wherever I like to go to sleep with a sort of vaguely familiar voice. Like the newsreaders, there’s a roster of newsreaders.
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JAMIE - Yeah, familiar; I get the same thing with audio books.
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ROBYN - Yeah
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JAMIE - I listen to a lot of audio books from the same…
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EMMA - Narrator.
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JAMIE - Narrator, that’s the word I was looking for.
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ROBYN - Jamie, what does your bedroom need to be like for you to be able to go to sleep?
JAMIE - So, there are three things that help me sleep the most: the first one is textures. I’m really, really, really sensitive to the textures of things around me. If my sheets feel wrong or they feel greasy or they’re wet or they’re very cold then that will keep me well awake. The second thing is the room itself. My room has grey walls, a white ceiling and white skirting board so that I can easily feel how big the room is. Sometimes what happens to me is my bedroom can feel the size of a cathedral or the size of a shoebox, and that’s quite a scary change when it happens. So, in my room I have all these little coloured arrows pointing at the corners of the room that stop that effect from happening.
And then the third thing and probably the most important thing is my bed itself. So, I had a custom bed made several years ago and it’s got sides. You can climb in an out of it through a little gap, and it’s taller than me, so it feels really safe when I’m inside. And then I curl up in there and it really helps me feel safe. I do roll around a lot in my sleep and have seizures and stuff so it means that I feel safe in my bed, rather than previously where I felt like I was sat on this big open bed and I knew I was going to fall off, because I’m constantly falling off. When I was a kid we tilted my bed towards the wall so I wouldn’t fall off as much. But this way I’ve got two solid sides and I can kind of use more of the bed without that constant dread of I’m going to fall over the side and wake up on the floor, again. So, I like my bed, it’s really good. Some of the best money I ever spent.
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ROBYN - I take some medication to help me go to sleep. It’s an antidepressant. Before I started doing that I used to just be up till one, two in the morning pretty regularly. And one of the things about taking the medication is it kind of guarantees I’ll be able to relax and go to sleep.
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JAMIE - Okay, so that’s kind of managing the anxiety with medication, which kind of makes sense.
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ROBYN - No, I don’t know that it’s necessarily just the anxiety. I think it’s more complicated than that.
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JAMIE - Okay.
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ROBYN - Naturally I’m quite an anxious person, and I think what it does is it calms down the level of chemicals that are in my brain. But it’s not the anxiety of going to sleep or not being able to go to sleep; it’s just general.
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JAMIE - Baseline kind of day-to-day stuff.
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ROBYN - Yeah.
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JAMIE - I also take medication to help me sleep, which is a supplement called melatonin. And all it does, it’s the chemical in your brain that makes you sleepy, I take a very low dose of it and it helps me fall asleep. So, rather than taking three hours to fall to sleep I’ll fall asleep in half an hour or 45 minutes. And I’m accessing that via a GP/medical process.
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ROBYN - You should always check with your doctor before taking any medication. Like you need to be monitored and you need to find what works for you, and if you’re taking other medications or you have other health conditions you need to make sure that what you’re doing isn’t going to harm you.
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JAMIE - I know there’s the phrase sleep hygiene; light, temperature, texture, they’re all important to me. But another part of sleep hygiene is also just trying to not make it an abrupt transition. We sometimes refer to it as the runway, so sometimes when someone says, “Can you do x?” I’ll say, “No, I’m currently doing runway”. And that just means that I’m landing and I’ve got 100m to slow down and stop.
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ROBYN - Yeah, it takes me about two hours to get to the point where I can go to bed. Occasionally I’ll do a job where I’m working in the evening till, like, nine and I get back at 10, and I’ve got to be up in the morning at, say, ten, and I know that I actually need 14 hours in my house before I can leave. So, maybe I need two hours to settle, then I sleep for eight or nine hours – nine hours is quite good – and then be up for an hour before I leave the house. And if I don’t do that I find that my brain is just not as sharp as it normally is.
But I also, more and more as I get older, I just realise how much of a problem school was in that you have to go there for seven hours a day under strip lights, and you can’t go, “Actually I’m just going to go and sit under this table in the dark for two hours” or, “Actually right now I don’t really feel like doing maths and maybe I’ll do it later”. But as an adult you have a lot more choices.
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JAMIE - Flexibility. And this actually overlaps quite nicely with the topic of sleep and employment. If I had to do a nine to five job and be up and working every day from nine to five I’d really struggle. But because my job is flexible around when I’ve got energy I can make the most of that energy. So, rather than wasting half my spoons trying to focus when I can’t focus I can go away, I can sort out the things that are getting in the way, whether that’s doing a piece of tidying, eating. If I’m well out of structure and out of routine, going through something like my lunch routine, and then I can come back to work when I’m ready to focus and can make the most of my energy. So, I think they’re kind of related. Ironically worrying about work was one of the main things that ruined my sleep, and then my sleep being ruined made my work stuff even harder, so it kind of got into a vicious cycle.
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ROBYN - Yeah, I don’t think I could do anything other than be self-employed and stay flexible.
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JAMIE - Well, I am self-employed on other things. I’m not self-employed with the ±«Óătv, but I’ve got a line manager who understands how my energy works, so we actually get a really flexible, really useful working routine. So, there are options for flexible working, but generally in employment they’re less flexible. But it does exist, it is out there.
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[Music]
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JAMIE - This has been 1800 Seconds on Autism with Robyn Steward and me, Jamie Knight. Plus a bat, the Lion, Ollie and our producer, Emma.
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ROBYN - Just to prepare you next week’s episode will be the last one in series two. If you haven’t heard all of it there are nearly 20 episodes available now, including the short coronavirus extras. Please share the podcast with anybody you think might enjoy it, and subscribe to 1800 Seconds on Autism on ±«Óătv Sounds. Thanks for listening.
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[Jingle - That was 1800 Seconds on Autism.]
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1800 Seconds on Autism
The podcast that makes you think about how you think.
