Hannah Gadsby
speaker
778 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard 10 Sep
Hannah Gadsby’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.
Appearances
I struggle to regulate my emotions when I'm under stress and I have a lot of trauma, big T's and little t's. So, you know, that also affects your ability to regulate. So, you know, I can, I have been, you know, you know, I can frighten people, you know, when I'm just trying to set devastatingly simple needs. If those needs aren't met, then I, you know,
can be snappy in a way that is not pleasant for other people and so I was laboring under the you know false idea that you know that perhaps I was borderline abusive but what was happening was my boundaries were not being respected and so I'd be a snappy tom and they're like you know When I'm fine, I'm very easygoing and like, okay. So it just seemed like I was Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde.
And one of the really interesting ones for me is touch because it's overwhelming for me. And in a lesbian relationship, that what? How are you supposed to do that? It's all about the touch, isn't it? Oh, touchy-feely. I'm like, oh, do we have to talk about our feelings again? Yes. Like just a light touch. Like that's a universal standard, isn't it, for like, you know, intimacy.
It's like just a nice soft touch. And I flinch, you know, because that is a really horrible sensation for me. But not knowing that, people take that as rejection. It's like, oh, you find me repulsive. No, just that touch. Generally, lovely. But it's really hard to communicate that when you don't know. Even when I did know I struggled for a while because it seems simple. It doesn't seem like much.
It's like, you know, if people kept not touching me with a firm touch and just a light touch, I kept flinching, kept flinching. It builds up and it just doesn't. It's a really easy fix, but the other person has to want to believe that I don't like a light touch. I don't know if I'm answering your question. You are.
Oh, all the time. And I do it to myself before I was diagnosed, too. Because I'm a problem solver. I have a problem solver's brain. So this is a problem. I want to fix it. And then so I experiment with fixing it. And this is like this ends up. I've had so many major depressive episodes. It's almost funny again.
Um, because it's that, that overwhelm of putting yourself into these sort of situations that are overwhelming and, um, detrimental to your central nervous system. And then you just can't cope. And then it's like broadcast out.
Um, and I will say this, Abby, like, you know, do, if you feel like there's something that I'm saying that is connecting to you and I'm being speaking very vague and, and, uh, and specific terms here. And it is a very complicated thing. But do get yourself checked out because if you are, it'll be a game changer.
And I will also say this, there is a very large crossover between autism and gender ambivalence. We'll call it ambivalence. I'm going to call it gender ambivalence. I love it. You know, because, you know, left to my own devices, like whatever, but people, neurotypicals demand that. That, like, front on, like, what are you?
But inside of me, it's just like, well, it's just coming out how it's coming out, isn't it? Like, you need to deal with your feelings on this. But there are a lot of non-binary folk, trans folk, genderqueer folk on the spectrum because I think there's something about the gender binary that does not make sense. Yes. If it's illogical, it is what is important, not what is interesting.
the idea of what autism is is being based and studied on, you know, young men, white men, if we want to get specific. Like the biases that exist in science everywhere, in all parts of science, medicine, research, you know, exist in this. So, you know, there are women of colour on the spectrum And a lot of them are running around not knowing it because it will be different again.
Because women are expected to behave in a certain way. And as a culture, we've been trained to pathologize women who don't behave in the correct way in the way that it is a character flaw. It is, you're going to hell. You're not doing it right. You know, it is that shaming and So if a young boy doesn't interact with his peers and he wants to identify every single dinosaur there is, fine.
That seems normal in a way. If a girl was to do that, often their peers will identify it as wrong before parents will observe it and they begin masking. So the masking thing in girls because you're watching your peers and you're like, they're doing these things, I should do these things.
And so I think a lot of the time, not so much now, like it's opening up now, but I think women of my generation, that's what is happening. Like you're masking. And you'll find people in their 40s having breakdowns all the time, women on the spectrum, undiagnosed women.
Yeah. I always was sort of, like to frame it as like, I always thought that I was struggling because I was depressed and anxious, but then I realized I am depressed and anxious because I am struggling. And so I never identified that I was struggling. You know, that, that, like, I didn't understand that I wasn't looking people in the eye and, you know, cause I would just watch their mouths move.
Like I wasn't, didn't understand. that I couldn't hear properly. I can hear properly. My hearing's, as my mum would call it, 20-20. That's tight, mum. But I do, I watch people's mouths and that helps me put together what they're saying. And so it's a lot of compensatory techniques that I use to get through that. But also it's about how trauma presents in neurodivergent people is not the same.
So getting therapy is... fraught, particularly if the therapist doesn't know or you don't know, you know, so there's like let's talk about this thing again. Let's talk about this thing again and that is so stressful. Like it is so stressful to be front facing to these things because the central nervous system is not cut out for that sort of onslaught. So it's things compound and a lot of people,
women on the spectrum have complex PTSD because these, these small traumas are just daily.
That's a long process. When I first started doing comedy, I was quite monosyllabic and, you know, I had to learn very, you know, train very hard to modulate my voice and things like that. But, you know, I was very deadpan and just used, worked with people's assumption on who I was and then subverted that. In order to subvert people's assumption, you have to play in that, on that field. You
Even if you're trying to subvert it, you're still kicking that ball around. You're still kicking the stereotypes around. You're still engaging with stereotypes. And as I matured as a performer, I got bored with that. That was no longer interesting, even though it was important to an audience. And I began to feel very disconnected.
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