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From Therapy to Social Change
We believe that insights and practices from the realm of therapy can contribute to a better world for all. At least, that's our hope... In an era marked by climate crisis, conflicts, and escalating inequality, any positive contribution is surely welcome. But what, more specifically, can the fields of therapy, psychology, psychiatry, and mental health offer to create a more equitable, sustainable, and flourishing world? This is the question we aim to explore in this podcast series.
Hosted by Mick Cooper, Professor of Counselling Psychology and author of 'Psychology at the Heart of Social Change' (Policy Press, 2023), as well as a father of four, and John Wilson, a Psychotherapist, Educator, and Co-Director of Onlinevents, we will engage in conversations with a diverse array of therapists, writers, and other perceptive and influential individuals.
We aim to delve into the depths of the human psyche while connecting it to current social and political issues—all with energy, enthusiasm, and a touch of humour, we hope!
Sponsored by Onlinevents: https://www.onlinevents.co.uk/
From Therapy to Social Change
Embracing Queer and Autistic Identities: Danny van Deurzen-Smith in conversation with Robbie Curtis
What if your identity is a tapestry of diverse threads, each contributing to a complex, vibrant whole? This episode invites you to uncover the intricate intersections of queerness and autism with our insightful guest, Danny, an autistic and queer existential coach. Danny's journey of self-discovery as a queer person with a late autism diagnosis sheds light on the unique experiences of feeling like an outsider while embracing the strengths and challenges of neurodivergence. Through personal stories and reflections, we explore the nuanced overlap of queer and autistic identities, emphasizing the richness and authenticity they bring to life.
Our conversation delves into the intertwining nature of gender and sexual identities, examining concepts like "autigender" and the impact of societal pressures. With poignant narratives from the restrictive era of Section 28 in the UK, we discuss the complexities of navigating identity amidst homophobic bullying and varying societal acceptance. Danny shares their experiences in academia and coaching, highlighting the importance of visibility and representation for marginalized communities. By critically examining traditional perspectives and incorporating subjective experiences, we consider how educational programs can evolve to embrace inclusivity and diversity.
We also tackle broader societal issues, such as internalized stigma and the responsibilities we all share in fostering understanding and safety for marginalized groups. Danny guides us through the political landscape, exploring the potential for progressive change and the crucial role empathy plays in bridging divides. This episode challenges us to engage with diverse viewpoints and advocate for inclusive, meaningful dialogues. With a focus on promoting social change through empathy, we aim to inspire listeners to embrace a more inclusive and authentic approach to understanding identity.
This Podcast is sponsored by Onlinevents
Hi, Danny. It's so amazing to have you on the podcast. Just thank you. Thank you so much for joining us at TASC. It's a real privilege and a real honor, and I can't wait to dive in some of these questions with you. Just to give people a bit of backstory, I'm sure lots of people will know who Danny is. They are an autistic, queer person. They're a gamer. They call themselves a geek and an e-sports fan, an animal lover, so much to it. You're also an existential coach. You specialize in neurodiversity, lgbtq plus issues, self-esteem and creativity. And then you're also the deputy principal of the NSPC, which is the New School of Psychotherapy and counselling in London. For people that aren't aware and we will probably be using that acronym moving forward You're also the registrar. You're the course leader of the MA in diversity studies. You're a research supervisor. You're a teacher. You just must be so busy with all of that.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:Well, I'm not the course leader of the diversity studies anymore. That was a really temporary thing actually that I stepped into, so I correct that slightly. But yes, the reason things like that creep in is because I do wear far too many hats.
Robbie Curtis:I can imagine. Thank you, yeah, so I think I just want to acknowledge kind of where I come into this conversation. So I'm a straight, white, cis, heterosexual, neurotypical man. I've had a lot of privilege in my life. Maybe there might be a bit of a power dynamic and I just wanted to acknowledge that. Maybe we can check in on that and see how we get on Great. So just kind of just to dive in then. So when you think about your own before they do that, sorry, could you just kind of so we've mentioned kind of autistic and queer Could you give us a sense of kind of what those mean for you?
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:Yeah, sure. So in terms of queerness, I'm sort of holding two things at once there. So usually when we talk about queerness, we're talking about the full kind of spectrum of LGBTQ plus identities, which encompasses a huge amount of different experiences and identities. From my perspective, I'm both bisexual and genderqueer, so two quite difficult to pin down identities that have their own particular nuances, um, and then I am a quite late diagnosed autistic person as well, um, and of course with that comes lots of nuance too. I'm really big on nuance. I'll probably be repeating that word such that we forget what it means. So apologies in advance for this, um, but it's a bit of a hobby horse for me that's absolutely fine.
Robbie Curtis:I know what you mean. You have to get the details exactly right, I think, and lots of things it's. It's it's complicated, yeah, yeah, okay, um, and then it kind of could you talk about. So that was kind of queerness. Do you have a sense of kind of what you as an autistic person, what that identity means for you?
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:Yeah, gosh, I mean all sorts of things and not completely separate from the queerness as well.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:I know we're going to talk a little bit about that and and and the sort of the overlaps and intersectionality there, and there is a very strong overlap between those, those identities, those um, those identities, um, but I suppose in terms of, in terms of the autism, it's almost like a label for um, lots of different parts of my experience. So some of that is around, uh, I guess my experience of being an outsider, being slightly on the outskirts of things throughout my entire life, not quite being able to tune into the sort of the status quo or the social norms and and, and having that sense of being just on the outside, um, you know, what some people would have called eccentric in times gone by, um, but now we sort of know is is often a kind of neurodivergence of some sort. Um, when people present in that way, um but also um, I mean, I think in a funny way, that part of it is easier to frame in a kind of um, positive, affirming light. Right, because there's uh, you know you can talk about creativity, you can talk about originality when you're outside of the box. It gives you certain advantages, um, but I also don't want to wash over some of the challenges of being autistic as well, because, um, again, nuance, um, there are challenges and good things, um, and some of the challenges are around what's called executive function, um, so all of the kind of bits that are almost like our inner personal assistant does for us, things like prioritizing um, um, memory, those sorts of things can be a really big challenge, um, one example of that is that I um have I'm going to be very honest in this interview one of the ways that manifests is that I can never keep on top of my laundry.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:It's, um, there is a big pile in my room always of some clean laundries, of dirty laundry. There is some order to the chaos, but it is chaos, um, and part of being an autistic person or neurodivergent person is really kind of recognizing those limitations and then being able to put things in place to kind of mitigate them to a certain extent, but not falling into the trap of thinking that we just haven't tried hard enough or somehow we're going to mystically solve this issue.
Robbie Curtis:Um, it's kind of inherent to us that makes that makes a lot of sense. It kind of feels like you've kind of you've accepted that this is, this is me, and it's not a an issue, but it's it's, it's it's part of me yeah, exactly, I can still look at the pile of laundry and feel shame from time to time.
Robbie Curtis:That's absolutely the human end given. I think, well, that really kind of goes into kind of. My next kind of question was around and we talked about before, kind of, you know, do we kind of separate queerness and your autistic identity? And my thinking is that we kind of we'll frame the questions as both and then we'll see if we can go into the details and the nuances. You say, um, so, on top of kind of that that really specific, really helpful anecdote around around the laundry, are there other um narratives, stories, memories you've got around. This is this is what this is what I understand by my, my being queer, my being autistic that you can tell us about.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:Yeah, I mean so many One of the sort of common experiences that people have.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:So I came out later in life as well, so I did all of this stuff in my 30s and what tends to happen, both with coming out with a queer identity but also in getting a diagnosis of autism or another neurodivergent condition um, what often happens is that you go through this process of looking back on your life through the lens of this new knowledge and it's shocking what you find when you take the process.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:So one of the things that sort of bubbles up to the surface when you ask that question. If I think about the autistic part, one memory that would often come back to me but I couldn't really make sense of it until I'd gotten the diagnosis that would often come back to me, but I couldn't really make sense of it until I'd gotten the diagnosis is being in secondary school and basically I found out years after something happened that people have thought that it was weird and that they've been talking about it the whole time and making fun of me to my face and me being completely oblivious to it, and the thing that I did that people picked up on, I mean secondary school is just so relentless isn't it? You can't get away.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:Um was that in the middle of the class at some point, when we were having a class discussion, I threw in something about how, um, I really like camping because I really like the sound of the rain on the canvas at night. Apparently, this was a weird thing to say in that context. Now, looking back through my awareness now of neurodivergence, I can see that there were lots of different things going on there all at the same time. There was a sensory thing of me getting really absorbed in remembering that sensory experience and having very strong feelings about it and wanting to share it. That thing about um, not not quite filtering my thoughts, not realizing that, um, that the other kids in that group would have been filtering and censoring and not sharing these kinds of experiences, and then also not being able to read the room for like years afterwards and realizing that people were making fun of me in front of my face. Now, that's quite a benign example, um, but I think it encompasses a few things at once in terms of queerness, um gosh, on a gender level.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:I remember going back through very obsessively in a in beautiful autistic fashion once I had made this discovery about myself going back over um diaries, over, um, you know, whatsapp chat logs that I'd had with uh friends and sort of looking, piecing together the evidence, so to speak. And one of the things that really struck me when I was looking back at some of these old chats was there was a moment where I've been speaking to my best friend and we were joking about, um, about our souls and what our souls were like, and I started describing my soul as she, her, and I stopped myself and I said, actually I think my soul is male, and then just carried on and like, didn't think anything of it, because for me, actually, I kind of always knew this stuff about myself, gender wise, um, and I wasn't sort of too concerned about it. It was when I started talking about it to other people and they became concerned about it that it became an issue, which is an interesting dynamic. And then, in terms of queerness, I think, um, well, in terms of queerness I just talked about queerness in terms of bisexuality, um, one of the memories that comes to mind again in this trawling through lots of information, uh, in a sort of obsessive manner, um, I found a list that my uh one of my best friends and I had done years and years ago, when I was in university of, uh, things that we liked and things that we didn't like.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:Um, and it's a ridiculous list, I mean it's. It should not be taken seriously um, but one of the things that we listed that we didn't like was bisexuality, and the reason that we put on there was best of both worlds, which is really interesting yeah yeah, it was like screaming.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:I want to claim this identity, but I don't feel that I can like. This is the best of both worlds. There's clearly a draw towards this, and yet I have to say that it's something that I don't like that's that's so.
Robbie Curtis:Yeah, there's so much richness in that and the kind of the, the I suppose a contradiction there of like, of kind of how that fits together. Um, wow, um, I'm, that's so interesting and I can see. I can really see some parallels between the stories of like. Okay, I can see how they might kind of have some commonalities and have and people that have one identity might be more likely to have another. Um, I'm curious, do you kind of see a relationship between those identities, kind of as one may be more important to you than the other? Is one been more difficult to hold, or how does that work for you?
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:it's really hard to pick apart. I think they are kind of inherently linked and this is why there is um some discussion in the autistic community, particularly around this term, uh, autigender, which is the idea that your experience of your gender um can be so inherently linked to your autistic identity that it's impossible to completely separate them out. Um, and I can kind of relate to that to an extent. Um, I think there's a degree to which they are inherently linked and it's really difficult to kind of unpick one from the other. But in terms of, I guess, the impact that they've had on me or um, my um difficulty in holding those different identities, it's weird, it's.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:It's like, um, I think as a teenager, uh, the sexuality part was the hardest because, firstly, I went to school completely under Section 28 in the UK, so there was no education or discussion of different identities. Secondly, there wasn't really much media representation aside from like very stereotypical depictions of usually cis white gay men very stereotypical depictions of usually cis white gay men. So there wasn't a lot of kind of openness to different identity for me to be able to actually know that this was going on. And it was easier for homophobic bullying to take place in schools because teachers, you know were at risk actually stepping in and having those conversations with people you know were at risk actually stepping in and having those conversations with people. So in terms of the impact, I think sexual orientation was the thing that probably gave me the most um difficulty and angst, in an obvious way, as a teenager um, in trying to navigate that. But it's interesting, you know, again, we, even for somebody who is um non-heterosexual, it's often really difficult to pick apart the gender completely from that equation. Anyway, because even though I didn't know about myself that I was gender fluid at that time and there were no discussions about that, the bullying that I got as somebody who was closeted but clearly reading as queer um, was quite gendered, it was quite.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:You know, I would get called butch all the time, um, I was asked whether or not I was a man, like it. They're kind of even in the um, the discrimination, those, those two things are often linked there's, there's often a policing of you're not doing this correctly, you're, you're kind of slightly outside and that's a problem for other people. Um, with the autism thing, I don't know, I it's. I think it's impossible for me to understand what a life as a neurotypical. Um, I can kind of understand what it would be like to live life as a cisgender person and there's a heterosexual person, because I kind of tried to do it right, I see um, whereas I yeah, with the, with the autism thing, I think it's too difficult to even really properly mask.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:You kind of know you're masking while you do it. I don't know, it's a subtle difference there for me that I can't quite put my finger on.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:But yeah, I've rambled a bit what I was intending to say when you asked me. The question was, um, the sexuality thing, I think, was more difficult for me to unpick later on because that had been the subject of a lot of the kind of bullying experiences that I'd had, something that I really struggled to um own about myself. The gender thing hadn't been such a struggle to own about myself, I kind of knew it. But as soon as I started speaking about it, the wider general public, people that I encountered, or people in my life in general, were much more accepting of the sexual orientation thing and had a lot more kind of um questions, I suppose, about the gender thing.
Robbie Curtis:Right, it's interesting because it's totally the opposite of what was actually going on for me yeah, there's another kind of point of difference, not just in those entities but actually how people approach them.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:Yeah.
Robbie Curtis:Yeah, exactly, makes a lot of sense. I wondered if we could kind of move into kind of your experience in the coaching and academic world and, kind of, as a bit of a segue, what's it been like to kind of have those identities and then start or maybe you weren't out yet, but but to hold those identities in the coaching, academic world that you're also in?
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:yeah, well, um, as you say, I mean, arguably, I kind of grew up in those worlds, because I grew up in in a family where I have I have four parents, effectively two step parents and two biological parents, and all of them are academics and all of them are involved or have been involved in psychotherapy, psychology or philosophy, so that I kind of navigated those worlds and, and you know, became a coach and and got involved on that level myself too, without knowing those things about myself, without having claimed those aspects of my experience.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:When I did start to claim those aspects of my experience, I was very clear that I wanted to do that in a very open way, because I think I recognize the immense privilege that I hold. So, even though obviously those are ways in which I don't hold privilege, but I do hold privilege in the sense that I'm very middle class, I, I'm white, I'm, you know, I'm educated, all of those things, and so it was really important to me to use that privilege aspect to hold some of those more what's the right word? More, um, what's the right word? Well, I don't know some of those different aspects of my identity in a public way, so that I was visible, so that I wasn't then kind of continuing to hide those things and perpetuate a system where we don't give people with those identities much of a voice or a platform. I felt very strongly that I needed to just be open about it so that there was somebody who had the privilege of having that platform and being able to kind of hold those aspects of themselves publicly for others to see.
Robbie Curtis:Um, and, as I say, I think that's been most difficult on a gender level, just because of where we are at the moment in society around these conversations yeah, I imagine there's a lot of people that look to you on on kind of their identity as a real role model of okay, well, danny's done it, so maybe I can. Was there anyone kind of when you were coming, coming through and thinking, okay, there's someone that is autistic, there's someone that's queer that I anyone kind of when you were coming, coming through and thinking, ok, there's someone that is autistic, there's someone that's queer that I can kind of look up to, or even kind of a sense of that at all?
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:Yeah, definitely. I mean as an as an adult looking at academia. There are so many really influential people and you know I'm grateful to be able to. You know, have had a working relationship with Meg John Barker, for example, who was probably one of the first people that I encountered who really owned a non-binary identity. So there are plenty of people out there who are doing it. But I think you often, historically certainly, have had to sort of look hard. It's felt like it's a niche thing right that you have to kind of search for, and I think I'm hopeful that that might change that, and the same for any marginalized identity right.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:There's a there's a feeling of um yeah, it's like pushed into the realm of the niche, rather than thinking of it as uh sort of equally important to any other space that we hold yeah, kind of a sense of othering.
Robbie Curtis:It feels like it was like okay, well, you can exist, but only in this particular space, rather than kind of more open, you'll put your part of this whole yeah broader community?
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:I wonder yeah, yeah, yeah that's that's so interesting.
Robbie Curtis:Thank you, um. I wondered kind of. So it's. It's absolutely fascinating to hear kind of all your backstory and kind of your journey and your own kind of experiences. I want to kind of just on a more professional level in terms of your academic background and kind of your position at NSPC. Um, could you talk a bit kind of about so I got I'm aware you got your master's in extracurriculation in 2013, um and without. I'm sure I'm sure NSPC then was doing some great work, but could you give us a sense of what's changed from your experience of your master's to kind of where NSPC is now and and maybe where it's going to be in another 11 years in terms of um inclusion and diversity around neurodiversity and and queerness?
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:um, well, obviously me. Having graduated from the program and then been in a course leader position with it for many, many years, I have um corrupted it with my queer agenda um, as as any good queer person would do. But, joking aside, I do think we've gotten better collectively in education, in training, in terms of you know, there's a much more focus on having experts by experience, for example, to come and talk about different aspects of their world, so you get more of that kind of subjective experience.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:Um, I think that we've gotten collectively better at recognizing the problematic nature of certain thinkers as well. You know, that wasn't really happening so much even back in 2013, whereas now it's a thing that, um, that our students, rightly, have pushed us to acknowledge, um, and something that I'm very careful to acknowledge now when I deliver training in other places as well, um, so I think a lot has improved in terms of um, I guess, looking critically at the context of thinkers that have, you know, historically dominated the literature, um, and in terms of getting a little bit of diverse experience injected into training programs, um, but you know, having said that, there's obviously a very long way to go. I think what I would like to see is and obviously I say this as somebody who does have some influence on this, but I'm also just one person I would like to see less of a kind of objective stance on marginalisation and intersectionality, much more subjective experience, but not necessarily by having to bring people outside to be experts by experience, but because we've actually built up a generation of people from marginalized groups who are delivering the training themselves and bringing that awareness into it. So it's not something extra that's coming in, it's actually something that's embedded within a curriculum, that's embedded within the culture of an organization. Again, I think that's getting slightly better, but there's a a very, very long road to travel with that.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:And also one of the things that I often talk about when I'm delivering training and again, another one of my hobby horses, sorry is recognising the wisdom that comes out of a marginalized group's specific experience. So one of the things that I notice when, particularly when I'm doing autism training for other organizations, is that, um, we'll get feedback of like um, people basically saying, okay, I can see that this is an extreme example that you're giving, but actually I really relate to a lot of these things in general, don't? We all struggle with this to a certain extent, and the answer is yes and no. What I think is that each experience of marginalization kind of brings to the fore particular issues, and those people who deal with that particular kind of marginalization then acquire a hell of a lot of wisdom about dealing with that particular issue, because they've had to, they've had to sit there and think about it. You know, as a genderqueer person I've had to sit and dissect gender and I've had to understand a lot of things about that that I never would have thought in a million years I would have to look into or think about um. And in some ways that's annoying because it means that you're constantly having to do a lot of work because people just haven't told you things, because they wouldn't think to um. But it also means that you develop a level of um awareness and knowledge and wisdom about something that actually I think pretty much anybody could benefit from.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:So I kind of like to move away from the standard dialogue that we have at the moment, which is really focusing on the experience of being marginalized and all of the struggles that that creates. That's really important and I wouldn't want to let go of that. But there's a flip side to that which is more generative and more about sharing like wisdom and awareness. And now we're in there somewhere, rather than just focusing on the marginalization aspects of it. And take that with a pinch of salt because, as I say, I'm coming from in some ways having quite large privilege, so it's kind of easy for me to sit back and say that, right, yeah but it sounds like I suppose it's a more holistic experience that we're trying to communicate, not just, as you kind of say, of marginalization.
Robbie Curtis:But how does that fit in with your general experience and maybe some similarities? Not just these are all the hard things I've done in life, but this is my life more generally. That's really important to my story as well.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:Yeah, and what can we all learn from this? How does this apply to people across the board? Rather than it just being again, it's like moving away from that thing. That idea of it being like a niche experience where it's kind of I'm trying to think of a way to say this isn't cynical, but I'm such a cynical human being that it's really impossible for me to do that. It's almost like to be able to sell to people that they need to stand up and pay attention to marginalised people's experience. You kind of have to show them why it applies to them as well, and not just in a way that makes them feel like, oh, I'm being attacked, I have to go on the defensive because I'm being painted as a bad guy here, but actually understanding why this stuff benefits us more broadly socially.
Robbie Curtis:Yeah, and kind of emphasising the commonality, I suppose. Yeah, I mean a lot of people will have. You know, the phrase all lives matter invokes a lot of negative feelings, and us all, because of how it's used yeah, yeah, but and that's but, yeah, but, that's and that's. And that's exactly where kind of the nuance comes in. Well, there's something about this experience of being queer that's that is quite unique to me and there's something about actually it matters to you, even if you don't care about queer people, which you know, which is a really sad state of affairs but it's still interesting to you and it should still matter to you.
Robbie Curtis:Um, yeah and and that's something, something I've struggled as well as like is is that how much like? How much of my experience of being male is about maleness and is about being a man, or is it just? Is this just whatever everyone goes through? Um, I mean, I thought of this. This might sound a bit of a strange anecdote, but I but like. So I was on a bus, you know, the other day, and someone was being an arsehole and and and I thought, I'm a white man, there's nothing different about me. Almost lucky me that I didn't have to think, oh, was it because I was this race or this gender? I didn't have to think, oh, was it because I was this race or this gender? I didn't have to think are they being horrible about a really specific thing, but are they just a really horrible person?
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:You know what? I had a very similar experience the other day. I got pulled over by the police for the first time at the end of last week and it really disturbed me. A because it was the first time, so it was a new experience, and I had no idea what to expect. B because I felt that I was being um, seen as somebody who was um, you know, not following the law that I was, that that I was being um disruptive in some way, which absolutely wasn't my intention.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:Turn out, my lights weren't on, ridiculous, didn't realize. This is the problem with modern cars they do it all for you and then you forget um, yeah, but I did think after that, like how um terrified and appalled I was in that moment and how anxious I was about it and thinking, yeah, but imagine, like, imagine being in that position, having that threat leaning over you and knowing that you're in a group that are more likely for that to escalate. Like I'm, I'm white, I'm quite well spoken, I can navigate that situation without feeling like there are all of these other factors that just take power away from me in that position and still I felt really scared yeah, thank you so much for sharing that.
Robbie Curtis:That's sounds horrifying, but but as you, as you, as you say, kind of in in that mix of of of these different identities and, as you say, other white person, that it's, it's obviously, it's a huge privilege, but in that really specific situation that we don't think about, kind of and also thinking.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:You know, this is a part of, yeah, I sit under the transgender umbrella. I'm I'm a binary person. I'm like I've never quite decided exactly what label to call myself. Sometimes I call myself genderqueer, sometimes I call myself genderfluid. I guess that kind of indicates that there is some gender fluidity there, because it's it's. The terms I'll be using are so fluid. But, um, but I am not somebody who you would look at in that situation and think, um, that person is trans. You might get a vibe or you know, you might. It might be something that comes up later but in terms of being stopped by a police officer, I'm not going to get, uh, treated differently because of that part of my identity, because it doesn't read Right, whereas you know, know, a trans woman, depending on the trans woman, may very well find herself in that situation and be discriminated against and have things escalate very quickly. Yeah, so yeah, even though I'm holding a little piece of that identity, I'm still. There's a lot of privilege there.
Robbie Curtis:That's. That's so fascinating. There's a previous episode of the podcast with Mick Cooper and Myra Khan and I've mentioned that episode in another episode. It's just wonderful. So they were.
Robbie Curtis:So Myra was talking about, kind of she wears the hijab and it's very visible and you know you can tell that she's a Muslim, whereas Mick is Jewish and he could pass as Christian, as non-Jewish, and it does. And it comes with challenges for both of them because you know if someone is actively Islamophobic, then they're going to, you know they're going to target someone like Myra, whereas for Mick the issue is when they don't know he's Jewish and they'll say something anti-semitic and then you're like, well, you don't know what's going on for me at all, it might. You know it wasn't directed at him and and he's got kind of it's got its own challenges. So it's a real, it's a it's got it. Yeah, it's unique kind of if you're, if it's visible in your identity or not, and then kind of different challenges for both. But, as you say, kind of a real privilege for us that. So I'm not trans, but I also don't come across as trans, so it's kind of it does feel like a privilege.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:And that's an important distinction to make as well, because of course, there are lots of people who aren't trans but do come across as trans and who absolutely do suffer from.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:You know certain aspects of the same discrimination. I know so many queer, cisgender women, who get policed in bathrooms in some cases, have been spat at for using women's toilets, just because that's where we're at precisely now, women's toilets. Just because that's where we're at precisely now, where it's like people feel that they can take it upon themselves to essentially police somebody's gender performance and just to that.
Robbie Curtis:I mean, misogyny's been been forever, but that feels like, you know, before trans identities was, before people knew about what trans meant so much, they wouldn't have really made this assumption. So it's quite a they wouldn't. They would, yeah, they would have just thought okay, you're, I'm stereotyping a woman with short hair um in a sense that that it's because people got that, oh, maybe you're this, maybe you're that, when, obviously, who the fuck should care? But the fact that they do exactly, exactly.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:But they do. People care very, very deeply and, um gosh, I don't know, sometimes I just wish that people would put their care and concern as something that would move us forward.
Robbie Curtis:Yeah, yeah the immense amounts of harm yeah, I'm curious kind of on this kind of topic of of maybe some relationships between have um trans affirming and non-trans affirming people. Um, I think I'm really interested in how we kind of manage of kind of respecting people that might have transphobic views or might not understand what being trans means, um, and not making them feel shut down, but also having a real, real concern for trans people that their identities feeling safe, their safety often feeling safe, and kind of their existence not being denied, and how we manage that as a society, as therapists and coaches, and what thoughts you might have around that.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:Oh gosh, I mean it's so tricky, isn't it, isn't it? From my perspective, what I always try to do with these things is to initially give someone the benefit of the doubt that perhaps somebody just hasn't explained something to them or they're not aware of the harm that they may be doing when they say something in a particular way or express a particular view. Um, I do think there's a thing about trying to acknowledge that we're all at different places in our journey of, you know, awareness, understanding about particular topics, whether that's transness or or something else. I know I've put my foot in it with um plenty of things in my life and I will continue to do so. Um, but it's about intent, and if somebody has the information and then they continue to do the behavior, knowing that it will cause harm, then that's a completely different situation and at that point you know we have to um approach it from a different angle and protect people, make sure that they're safe.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:Um, there's a really fantastic bell hooks quote that I usually use when I'm doing um training around gender particularly, which basically says that I mean it's a it's a reference specifically to the feminist movement, but you could use it for any marginalized group but and it is just about that, recognizing that we're, that we have all been at the beginning of that journey at some point in our lives as well and that we have to, um, accept that of other people. We have to understand that and work with that and meet people where they are on that particular journey. If they're not interested in going further in that journey and actually understanding things, digesting them, asking questions, all of that lovely stuff um then you probably quite quickly at the end of the road there, because there's this more basic issue around dehumanization and uh and and recognizing harm to others that's, that's just so.
Robbie Curtis:Yeah, I completely agree, completely agree. That's that's a really I think that's a really great way to frame it. Um, and, as you say, if someone, if, if you can't really give them the benefit of that anymore, then then then that's, then, that's it. I think that's, that's that's so well put. I wanted to kind of I was just kind of aware of what time we're on I wanted to kind of just move on to kind of specifically social change and kind of go into kind of the broader, kind of maybe political or kind of policymaking field. That's okay. So what, what do you see as the most common challenge? I know we've kind of touched on lots of these, but are there kind of particular challenges that neurodiver, um neurodiversion or um people with lgbtq plus identities bring to to your coaching practice or to coaching and therapy in general? Um, and then where? How does that translate into policy making, politics, what, what we can actually do or continue to do to really support those people?
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:I think, for all of those groups, for all of those experiences, one of the biggest things that people bring certainly in my coaching practice is internalised stigma, and that's often one of the biggest things that we have to work through. So, again, from a queer angle and from an autistic angle, that is often one of the sort of centerpieces, actually, that we end up coming back to again and again and again is that kind of um, understanding, deconstructing the ways in which society's attitudes have left us feeling like there's something inherently broken about us. Actually recognising that that's what's going on in the first place is one piece of the puzzle. And then keeping on noticing and challenging that and challenging our assumptions around, that is another piece of the puzzle. Challenging that and, uh, challenging our assumptions around, that is another piece of the puzzle.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:Um, in terms of neurodivergence specifically, there's something really important about being able to um well, it goes back to my laundry pile recognizing our limitations, um, and developing greater self-compassion around those things as well, both around the internalised stigma and around those limitations, knowing how to get the best out of ourselves, because people won't have necessarily taught us how to do that. I mean, again, this translates more broadly, right? I mean again, this translates more broadly, right. We all grow up not being taught what the best thing for ourselves is how to work with ourselves, how to recognise our limitations, all of these things.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:It's just by an autistic experience where you might have what's called a spiky profile, which is where you know there are some things that you're highly, highly competent at and then other things where you're just kind of like way below the average competency for that thing. So, for example, when I did my um assessment, they did a sort of profiling.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:They used a profiling tool and it came out really high on things like you know ability to engage academically, for example. Actually, my social skills in general are pretty OK thanks to masking and, you know, being able to do all those sorts of things. But a lot of the stuff around self-care was really low. But a lot of the stuff around self-care was really low. And there's something about the sort of assumptions that we have societally that if you see somebody performing really well in one area, we tend to assume that that's kind of a baseline or that their baseline is not far off from that.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:In neurodivergent populations there's a hell of a lot of variation. So being really good at one thing, there's probably going to be a bunch of other things that we really suck at um, really struggle with um, so unpicking that understanding that can be really difficult because there's often frustration, frustration that will have been expressed to us by other people in our lives, right, teachers, parents, people in authority who can see that we have a capability in one area and they say why can't you get this other thing? Why?
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:can't you just do it, you're not trying hard enough, you're being lazy, those sorts of things, and again that feeds into the stigma because you know we absorb all of that.
Robbie Curtis:So very rambly answer but hopefully some sense in there somewhere yeah, yeah, so much sense, um, and I suppose, yeah, my thing, my things are. When you go over that whole I mean it's a range of experiences and a whole range of challenges people face and you will say, if you're talking to Morgan McSweeney, say, the big kind of Labour person that's all behind the scenes and lots of people don't like very much because of what Labour are doing, um, do you see kind of specific things? Or maybe did you have hope that Labour would do xyz, that they're doing, not doing or could, could be doing. Do you think on a policy level?
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:well, I have a very complicated relationship with the Labour Party. I ran as a councillor not too long ago and I'm now a member of the party at all so so that tells you a little bit about my uh political listening um.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:But having said that um, a friend of mine, sarah owen, mp for uh north, has just been made chair of the Women and Equalities Select Committee and she's a very sensible person who will take that role very seriously, who is aware of a lot of these issues and I fully trust her to be able to hold that in the complex way that she will need to hold it as chair, that in the complex way that she will need to hold it as chair um. So I think whenever you have a um I can't even say left-leaning because it doesn't quite feel right in terms of my interpretation of the current labour party, that's up for debate but, um, but whenever you have, you know, the more left-leaning party in charge, even if it takes a more centrist position, there is an opportunity for progress and you have a choice about how you engage with that process whether you're somebody who's going to do that from within the system, that's, taking over and act as a voice that kind of tips it perhaps further into progressive policies, or whether you're going to be on the outside creating pressure from the outside as an activist. But the point is that if you have a more left leaning party in power, there is the potential to be influenced in that way, there is the potential for things to shift. I think, unfortunately, where we again, this is my cynicism, probably, but I think that where we are at the moment in time, and in our culture, in our society, I don't have much hope that we're going to get really. I think it's really important that we don't just then, you know, throw out all sense of hope or possibility, because it's the starting point. From that starting point, from that slight cultural shift just to a slightly more progressive stance, there is possibility in there.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:You know, I look at the US election. I'm slightly biased towards this because I'm weirdly, I'm a US citizen even though I've never lived there. Dame, oh, really yeah. But you know, I've been really heartened to learn about what Tim Walls' track record on LGBTQ youth I mean. It's incredible, incredible, um. So there are pockets of um brilliance, I think, within those movements that are actually quite progressive and if we continue applying pressure, either from within or from outside, things will shift gradually and, importantly, the culture as a whole will shift, because, you know, when you grow up under I was born under Thatcher it was a very different world, and it shows you what's possible. It shows you, it sets the tone, in a way, for society. So I'm hopeful that, as long as we keep voting in people who are at least slightly more left-leaning than the alternatives, that you're creating an opportunity for something to shift yeah, I'm completely with you, and it's a kind of what you talk about kind of bit by bit by bit, is that I think?
Robbie Curtis:I think there are some people where they think and maybe this is my cynicism is that I look, I look at some some people, maybe on the left as well, on well, on all sides, and I, in your mind, if you could just click your fingers and everyone would listen to you, then you could change the whole world and I'm like that's a lovely thought. We need, you know, utopians like that. But actually it changes slow and it's a grind and it's a hassle and it's a nuisance and happens slowly but it does happen and I think as lefties we fall into a massive trap with that as well.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:Sorry to anybody who's listening, who isn't a massive lefty I happen to be one, so I'm speaking from a different perspective, um, but again, I'm kind of translating this more broadly. So I my observation of left-wing politics, um, is that people end up falling into similar traps as they're criticizing the right, for in some ways, you know, people dig their heels in and get really dogmatic about particular issues, and I understand that and I'm actually behind them a lot of the time on those issues. I agree with them. But it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we can just kind of force that narrative on people and expect them to to get on board with it. We can't, we can't do that. It doesn't work like that.
Robbie Curtis:We we have to somehow make it feel accessible, applicable to people broadly yeah, I'm completely with you and I think a lot of that to me, it, I mean, it comes comes from a maybe moralistic stance of thinking I'm right, you're wrong. You know, and I was talking to someone the other day about kind of the urban rural divide and kind of Brexit and people don't understand like what it you know to feel like you're in a small town, you're going nowhere, you know the mines are closed, you're really struggling, and kind of the kind of classic you know, no, I know you're, you're, you're working based in London. So I don't want to stereotype, but you know a lot of Londoners think, oh, you know those silly little villages that are so backwards and so you know out of date, like you don't understand what that experience is like. You know I grew up in a small town.
Robbie Curtis:I'd my, my former MP was one of the key Rwanda people. Like you know I don't I really disagree with a lot of the time, but I get kind of where it comes from and that's I mean, hopefully, I think, a lot of our hope at Tusker. That's what Tusker is about. Is that bringing kind of my ideas from therapy and social change, of empathy, unconditional positive regard, what actually understanding people not just how do I change your mind, but understanding first and then maybe we go into. You know difference and and go from there exactly.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:I mean, we would never do that as practitioners, right? We?
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:would like wade in and be like well, you're wrong, and here's why, here's my wisdom. We would dream of doing it would be completely unprofessional and unethical, and yet we kind of feel like with these political ideas, it's somehow okay to do that. I'm not sure that I agree that it is okay to do that in any context. It's trickier because it means that you, you know, you have to kind of buffle your rage that you feel boiling up when you're speaking to people like that. But you have to. You have to understand where they're coming from. You have to understand and particularly if you're actually a politician, you have to represent where they're coming from.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:You have to understand and particularly if you're actually a politician, you have to represent that person. You've got to represent them all. So it's tricky. It's a lot more complicated, I think, than we like to believe, but I do think that a lot of the time with some exceptions that if you can actually have a proper conversation with that person, you're not necessarily going to get to the, you know, share the same opinion, but at least you can understand what they feel is at threat or what value they're trying to uphold, and in many cases, certainly, I think, with the sort of trans panic that's going on now. Actually a lot of the things that people feel at threat are probably not the things that are actually at threat, and so if you could understand where they're coming from, there is actually room for maneuver in that, because you can then have a sensible conversation where they actually know that you've listened and heard yeah, I feel like I could talk to you forever, danny.
Robbie Curtis:Um, there's so much wisdom in everything you shared, but I'm really conscious of respecting your time. Um, so, yeah, just just as I say thank you so much, I think we might wrap up there, if that's all right for you. Um, but, yeah, thank you so much for for your time and for sharing everything with us. Um, most of our listeners are kind of progressive mind therapists and and a lot of this kind of a lot of them will have some, some knowledge and a lot of awareness around um the issues we've discussed, but I think it'll be really invaluable for a lot of them and a refresher and and a piece of education for lots and lots. So, yeah, thank you so much, danny.
Danny van Deurzen-Smith:It's been wonderful. Thank you so much.
