Tony Mantor: Why Not Me ?
Kory Andreas Shares Insights on Neurodiversity and Self-Realization
22 Jan 2025
Chapter 1: What insights does Kory Andreas share about autism?
So a lot of people are getting really bad information from otherwise pretty fantastic therapists because so much has changed so fast. So what I try to do is just update people on, you know, hey, we saw Rain Man. We know what that presentation of autism looks like. And that's real. But there's this whole other side of autism that people really don't even understand.
So just kind of giving them the up-to-date information, the signs, books to read, accounts from actually autistic people and more information so that they understand that there's this whole other side of autism that we didn't know about.
Yeah, that's all good points. Now, you brought up masking. It's pretty well known that although some men mask, it's more of a female trait because they're trying to fit in. Sometimes they do. Sometimes it doesn't work out as well. When it doesn't, it can create a lot of psychological issues. What do you do to help them get through that?
Yeah. So masking is really the reason why so many girls and gender non-conforming people don't get diagnosed because they become really good at fitting in, really good at kind of faking neurotypicality. So one of the reasons why I do the assessments the way that I do, it's an interview. So we really just talk about a lot of the different preferences and background history and things like that.
So it's about a four to five hour interview where we just talk about how they are sort of oriented to the world. And I think the reason that that works so much better than a lot of the standardized tests is that it's complicated. I mean, I'm autistic myself, so I can be incredibly social and incredibly well spoken and fit in in most situations.
But it's it's detrimental to my well being at times if I'm really overstimulated, or if it's too much, and you know, things like that. So really just talking to people about their internal experience, because if you ask the right questions, people are very able to explain what happens, you know, when you kind of push yourself too far in the areas that are tough for you.
So I think it was just a matter for me of figuring out what Those questions were kind of picking apart a lot of the assessments that I didn't feel were super accurate and finding out a better way.
You mentioned that you're autistic as well. Did you find out that you are autistic before you were teaching or afterwards?
No, after. It was actually a couple years ago. And it really wasn't until I started working with women. I worked with predominantly boys for a long time in the schools. You know, I had a handful of kiddos that I worked with that were autistic girls. But that was so rare because the girls tended to do better, to have less trouble. They have better communication.
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Chapter 2: How did Kory's personal experience shape her professional journey?
Now, do you work with the nonverbal as well?
So I don't, I have some referral sources that I send people to. I don't think that's my strength by any stretch of the imagination. I certainly did in the beginning of my career. Now, you know, I've sort of found that my niche is, I would say, typically highly verbal clients who are more of like the what they would call like level one autism clients.
Okay, that makes sense. What would you say that you see for the major differences between someone that's around five or six like your daughter was when she was first diagnosed to a 15-year-old and then like 25 to 45 or more?
Yeah, absolutely. Great question. So, you know, at five, you're dealing with a lot of like emotional regulation and skills to be able to go into a classroom and drown out all the things that are triggers. But the social skills are typically okay in that, especially with some of the kiddos that get diagnosed a little bit later where it's not as obvious when they're toddlers.
They can sort of be in the periphery of the social interaction or in it, but they're just a little off. They're missing some cues. 15, that's when it all, you know, middle school really is where it all goes off. And so that's where most of the girls are identified. Or if they're not identified or it was missed, it was because, you know, nobody knew what they were looking at.
But that's when all of the mental health stuff kind of comes into play. So we see a ton of eating disorders, substance use. We see... incredible amounts of anxiety and depression, suicidality. I mean, there's just a lot of cutting behaviors, things like that, high risk behaviors. That's really common. Boys and girls, all genders at that time.
And then, you know, 25, we're looking at failure to launch. We're looking at, I had a really tough time with the transition to college, but that sort of evens out around 25. So most of my 22 to 25 year olds are doing things that neurotypicals were doing at 15 to 18. So there's that sort of like two thirds rule of,
going to school a little bit later, driving a little bit later, dating a little bit later, having sex a little bit later, like all of the milestones of adulthood, those type of relational things to come typically a little bit later.
And then 35, a lot of my in their 30s clients are working on job stability, being passed up for promotions, because they have a hard time advocating for themselves or speaking up or accommodating themselves in the workplace. But majority of my clients have incredibly high creative abilities, incredibly high intellect, a lot of skills that make them shine in the workplace in their 20s and 30s.
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