Our July Guest Call was on Intuitive Flow & Creativity with Kari Betton

About Kari:

Kari Betton is a coach and mentor for highly sensitive and twice-exceptional people, with a passion for helping them find their innate sense of intuitive flow.

Too often, we can be focused on developing our mental health, physical health, intellect, etc, but including intuitive development in our personal development practice creates an easier foundation for all types of development within you to be congruent with each other.

A personal intuitive wandering practice can have profound implications on achieving the results and designing the life that you desire. In this call, Kari will focus on how to attain clarity and enough space in your life to listen to the inner wisdom that you already have.

In their spare time, Kari enjoys recording and producing their podcast Decolonizing Sexuality, vegan foodie adventures with friends, and painting galaxies.

You can find out more about Kari and their work at: simplybybeing.com/

In this episode:

• What is effort transcendence?
• Maintaining a trajectory of expansion over time
• When to give drops, and when to be your fire hose self

Links:

Embracing Intensity Community

Workbook on Harnessing the Power of Your Intensity

I’m excited to introduce you to a speech therapist whose work is informed by the autistic community and her personal experience in identifying as twice-exceptional. Her heart and passion are to help give a voice to those who can’t speak for themselves. Join us!

Mara McLoughlin has over ten years of professional experience working with autistic and other neurodivergent people and their families. She has been a student and teacher of yoga and mindfulness for over 25 years, knowing that building these skills can help build a better world. She is a certified provider of the PEERS program that exists for the educational and enrichment of relational skills. With both her bachelor’s and master's degrees in Communication Science and Disorders, she knows that communication is fun, difficult, and the key to life. To learn and gain confidence in the initial steps of founding friendships and self-regulation skills can help improve the lives of everyone.

Show Highlights:

• Why Mara is intensely passionate about yoga and working with autistic people and their families
• How Mara’s intensity looks like a strong sense of fairness and fiercely advocating for those who can’t speak for themselves, especially those with autism or aphasia due to stroke
• Growing up, Mara was a precocious speaker who struggled in school and was a determined but difficult child
• How the masking component has affected Mara in “code-switching” according to different situations
• The misconception about autism and the children who aren’t identified by their response to social cues
• The relationship between non-binary gender identification and autism
• How cultural factors affected Mara as she grew up in white, conservative, suburban Chicago as she didn’t follow the “rulebook” or the status quo
• Why she was unsuccessful in toning herself down or tuning herself out because she couldn’t conform to others’ expectations
• How Mara moved to the West Coast and found where she fits in and feels at home
• How a stroke affected her partner at age 43 and brought out Mara’s advocacy skills
• How Mara uses her fire for good by being a fierce advocate for people who have different brains, helping to build capacity in environments for different learners
• How Mara harnesses the power of her intensity through breathing, yoga and movement, meditation, mindfulness, and gratitude
• How Mara helps others use their fire through the PEERS program with social and emotional development in making and keeping friends and solving conflict
• Mara’s business, IRL Social skills, which is a collective of speech-language pathologists and occupational therapists who help families of autistic teens and adults
• How Mara uses immersion therapy in her work

Resources:

Connect with Mara:  irl Social Skills.com 

Find IRL Social Skills on Facebook and Mara McLoughlin on Twitter and @pawsomesocialskills on Instagram.

There are lots of upcoming great events happening in the EI Community. Check us out at Embracing Intensity 

A while back I had seen a lot of posts about the overlap and similarities between ADHD and Autism, and it got me thinking about some observations I’d made both personally and professionally testing neurodivergent kids over the years.

I posted this tweet asking folks the following questions:

Curious with the #Autism vs. #ADHD discussions recently, if you have one or both, what do you relate to more:

1. Big Picture vs. Details
2. Order vs. Chaos
3. Think in Words vs. Pictures
4. Acquired Knowledge vs. Novel Problem Solving
5. Process Fast vs. Slow

Elaboration Welcome

More recently I posted the same questions with elaboration on TikTok and the responses were fascinating!

I think my biggest takeaway from hearing personal accounts from so many neurodivergent folks is that even when there’s a consistent pattern that is statistically more likely in a specific area of neurodivergence, they are not hard and fast rules. 

I met today’s guest through the neurodivergent community on Twitter. Join us to learn more about his inspiring story.

Joseph Gitau is a writer, singer, and blogger who has been diagnosed with ADHD and Bipolar I. With his childhood and youth being spent between his native Kenya and the US, he has a unique perspective about how neurodivergence is treated differently in both countries. Joseph uses his talents to promote mental health throughout his creative outlets.

Show Highlights:

• Why Joseph is intensely passionate about mental health and the arts
• How Joseph’s personal brand of intensity includes music and twice-exceptionality
• How Joseph’s journey of discovery through school was difficult because he was an introvert
• How the Kenyan tradition of children being “not seen and not heard” was very difficult for Joseph as an ADHD music-lover who always wanted to sing and play music
• Joseph’s years in Kenya and the US, and how his ADHD and bipolar diagnosis came about
• How Joseph has to tone himself down--even today
• How Joseph’s intensity got out of control when he dropped out of university, and he didn’t know what to do next
• Why Joseph does the important work to break the taboo around ADHD and promote mental health awareness
• Why Joseph’s writing includes interracial characters
• How celebrities represent neurodiversity to the world
• Why society uses labels to put people in different boxes
• How Joseph came to accept his neurodivergence
• The mixed feelings around neurodivergence, superpowers, white privilege, and economic privilege
• How Joseph uses his fire for good through his blog where he talks about the educational system, neurodiversity, and how marginalized people are affected
• Joseph’s plans for the future
• How Joseph harnesses the power of his intensity through yoga and learning to balance structure and flexibility
• Joseph’s parting advice: “Don’t worry about tomorrow. Nothing is set in stone except what you did yesterday. Do what’s right by you, and people will respect you.”

Resources:

Find Joseph Gitau on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.