Meet the Autistic Woman's Brain with Guest Susan Kayler

In this episode, Wendy speaks with Susan Kayler about late autism discovery, self-understanding, and finding new purpose after diagnosis.

After successful careers as both an attorney and a judge, Susan still struggled with being misunderstood and having her facial expressions misread. Even practicing expressions in the mirror did not help her communicate emotions the way people expected. Yet when speaking about her passions naturally, others noticed her enthusiasm would shine through.

Susan created the podcast Meet My Autistic Brain with The Autistic Woman as a way to help family and friends understand what she was learning about herself through autism. Over time, the podcast grew into a widely followed resource for autistic adults and those exploring late diagnosis.

This conversation also explores identity, self-acceptance, and Susan’s transition into voice acting, a career that allows her to fully embrace her strengths without pressure to perform neurotypical social cues.

Takeaways:

• Autism can go unrecognized even in highly successful professionals
• Learn as much as you can about autism before you seek a diagnosis
• It’s a process. Be prepared for the highs of finally realizing there’s nothing wrong
with you, as well as the sadness and mourning that can come with a diagnosis

About Susan Kayler:

Susan Kayler, also known as The Autistic Woman™, is the host and producer of the podcast Meet My Autistic Brain. Her show focuses on autism, autistic lived experience, and conversations with autistic authors and creators.

Now in its sixth year, the podcast ranks in the top 0.5% globally with over one million downloads. Following careers as an attorney and judge, Susan has also begun a new career in voice acting and audio production.

Instagram: @meetmyautisticbrainpodcast
Twitter: @anautisticwoman
Website: theautisticwoman.com
Spotify & Apple Podcasts: Meet My Autistic Brain

About Your Host:

Wendela Whitcomb Marsh, MA, RSD, is an award-winning author, TEDx speaker, and host of Amplifying Autism. Though not autistic herself, Wendy has dedicated her career to supporting the neurodivergent community. She is the founder of Adulting While Autistic and helps late-diagnosed autistic adults find clarity and community. 

Books Available on Amazon

Website: wendelawhitcombmarsh.com
Instagram: @wendela.w.marsh
Adulting While Autistic: @adultingwhileautistic 

Join the Newsletter: https://forms.aweber.com/form/49/591191449.htm

Thank You for Listening:

If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it. Your support helps us reach more late-diagnosed autistic adults and those who care about them. 

YouTube: @AmplifyingAutism

Spotify & Apple Podcast: Amplifying Autism Podcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

This is Amplifying Autism, where every voice matters and every story shines. Join us as autistic authors, professionals, and trailblazers share their journeys, real stories, and real insight from those changing the world, one conversation at a time. I'm so pleased to welcome to the show Susan Kayler. Following a successful career as an attorney and a judge, Susan Kaylor, aka the autistic woman, became the host and producer of Meet My Autistic Brain, where she focuses on personal stories about autism and autistic people, and interviews autistic authors. She started the podcast as a way of communicating to her family and friends what she was learning about herself. Over time, others found the podcast, and now more than a million people have listened and benefited from the knowledge she shares. I'm a follower. If you haven't subscribed to it yet, maybe you will after you meet her. So let's get right to today's episode with Susan Kaylor. Susan, thank you so much for being here on the podcast. Well, thank you for inviting me, Wendy. It's just great to be here. It's and it's great to uh meet you uh again after I was on your podcast uh previously, and I hope people will go and and uh sign up for yours. But first, um most of our listeners are late diagnosed autistic folk, and I think you also identify with that that group. Can you tell us a little about that?

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Well, what I struggled with my whole life was communication and relationships, and it was getting worse as I got older, even though I had read every book written, it seemed like, on both of those subjects. And I would try the things in those books, and it might work for a week or two and then not seem to work anymore. Um, so I got to a point where in relationships, in particular, when I'd be communicating, the other person would misunderstand me, they'd misunderstand the look on my face, uh, and they would always misunderstand me in not a good way. And it got so bad that I said to myself, no matter what this takes, if nothing else in my life, you know, has an answer, I've got to find an answer for this. So I started researching, as we autistics often do, and I uh came upon a test for autism. And I don't know why I decided I'd take it because I didn't know anything about autism, but I didn't think I could be autistic. But the the little quiz online said I was. So I looked at more quizzes and they turned out the same way, and then I started learning about autism, and that's when I realized things just started to fall into place that I had many of the traits that were listed as being autistic.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Once you've had that new knowledge about yourself, how did that change your life or your perception of yourself in your past?

SPEAKER_00 3:14

Well, my immediate reaction when I was really certain and I was convinced was oh great, there's nothing wrong with me. And that opened up everything because it was like a whole history of, you know, being either being told there was something wrong with me, like you're too sensitive, you know, you're too whatever. Um, but it also made me look back on my life and see different things that had happened and see them through that new point of view. And what I saw was someone who had tried her best to try to fit in and to try certainly to learn how to communicate and have relationships. And I finally had the answer to why it didn't work. So, what happened is I went through the process many of us do where I grieved for a while. I grieved the fact that I had had a life as someone I didn't know who she really was now, you know, that I'd been masking, as we learn that it's called. And uh I grieved for that loss also of not knowing what life would have been like had I known earlier that I was autistic. And after going through these phases, I finally reached a point where I was more comfortable with being autistic and accepting that life was different before and that I couldn't change that. Since then, I would say that I have become more accepting of myself. It's the one thing that surprised me a lot is I was really good at masking before. And um, be the nice thing about being an attorney is that you know, that almost in itself is a mask that we put on. So I was able to play that role pretty well. But as I found out more and more about autism, it became harder and harder for me to mask. And it became very difficult to be in situations that required me to mask. So being a judge, being an attorney, it got to be harder and harder than not be myself and to just play that role of, you know, here's who I am, when I knew deep inside that wasn't who I was. So what has changed with that is that I've become more of myself and I spend less time in situations that where I can't be myself, unless it's something minor, you know. Obviously, I'm not gonna mask necessarily going to the grocery store or something, something small like that. But if the people that I am more drawn to being with are the people who have accepted that I'm autistic, and even if they don't know for sure what it is, because even we are trying to figure that out ourselves, they still accept me and accept the fact that I've told them I'm autistic. And then they're learning about more about what that means.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

That is so important. Yes, and I know uh a lot of people I've talked to uh share some of these same experiences. I loved what you said about that you thought there was something wrong with you, but that turned out there's nothing wrong with you because autism is not wrong. Exactly. But as you mentioned, it made life difficult.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Yes, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Yeah, and so many intelligent, successful uh women in particular, we meet a lot of late-diagnosed high masking women. Um, people don't want to believe that they're autistic because how could you be autistic and have this fabulous job? Um, but you found that uh that yeah, you were autistic in spite of all your successes. Um and one of the things that you did with your new knowledge was to share with others. You started your podcast. And I would love for you to share with our listeners about your podcast because they will want to come and follow and subscribe to yours.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

Well, the way it started really was that I wanted my family to understand what it is to be autistic. I wanted to be able to tell stories about my life and how things turned out and how that showed that I was autistic earlier in life. So I thought, oh, a podcast is a great way to talk about it, and maybe they'll tune in. Well, some of my family did, and some of them, you know, are in denial, and that's fine. But then people started to listen to it, and I was surprised, but pleasantly, as I learned more and more about autism and how it affected my own life, then I talked on each episode about some other facet of my life and and how it turned out because I'm autistic. And for three years I did that mostly talk about my own experience, and then in the fourth and fifth year, I've been interviewing other people, and you've been one of them, Wendy. And it's been wonderful to hear other people's stories and to learn about them, to see what we have in common, because there are experiences we all have in common, or most of us have in common, and there are experiences we don't. It's been wonderful to see how autism has affected other people's lives and then what they've done with their lives, you know, even not knowing they're autistic. As you said, a lot of women are very successful, well-educated, uh, brilliant women out there in particular, and men too. And it's fascinating that they nonetheless have gone through what they've gone through and yet still reachie this level of success, and still were held back in some ways by their autistic qualities.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

Yes. And you know, the one of the ones that you mentioned, being misunderstood, that is such a common thread. Yes. Uh people are told, oh, you're being rude, or I know what you really meant by that when it's like, uh listen to the words, you know.

unknown 9:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

Don't try to make it something different because of what you think my face is saying.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

Yeah. Um, and that seems to be a very common challenge. Yes, especially the face. I mean, I can't tell you how many times people said to me, Why are you mad at me? And I wasn't mad. I I might have been thinking not even about anything except their words or what I was gonna say, but I certainly was not mad in most of those cases. I hated that.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

Yes, and trying to create a facial expression as part of another layer of the mask, yeah, and think, okay, what facial expression do I need to put on for this conversation? That has got to be exhausting.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

Exactly. And I would even practice in the mirror. And when I thought I was smiling, I actually still had that terrible look on my face. But I got to doing one thing where I would put since I knew I wasn't gonna smile even though I tried to, I started pretending when I was in public that I just saw someone I knew. So I'd be like, Oh, even when I didn't, because that would make me smile naturally. So that's a good strategy. That was one of my coping strategies, yes. But of course, that doesn't work out of one-to-one conversation.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

This reminds me of a TV show that my kids introduced me to, um, a Korean show called Um something about Attorney Wu.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Yes, I saw it.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

Yes. Now, whenever Attorney Wu would think about whales, her deeply loved passion, she would kind of look up and there would be wind and there would be light and she would see whales floating. And she just looked like she was so delighted and happy. Yes. And my my youngest autistic daughter said, that's what it feels like to think about your your interest, your passion. That's they really got that right when they did all the special effects.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

So um, so I'm wondering if people sometimes think about something that they're interested in in order to put on a happy face.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

Sure, that's an excellent point. I know that some people will say to me, your face lights up when you talk about whatever special interests I happen to have at the moment. So, yes, that's true. That brings us a lot of joy.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Now, um, are there any other projects that you've got going on that you might want to share with people? I know your podcast is has been around for years, like five years now. Yes. Anything else coming up for you?

SPEAKER_00 11:33

Well, the thing that uh is sort of led to was a voice acting career. Now I'm I'm in that career, but as a result of it, I've done some commercials, some narration, which I really enjoy doing that for narrating videos, often they're for companies that are having training videos, um, and then doing some commercials, and I'm really enjoying that a lot, and I'm hoping to grow that. That sounds like so much fun. Yes, it's really been a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Now that is something I haven't heard a lot. There are so many things that are shared among this this community, but that's like a new door opening that is like, wow, that's very cool.

SPEAKER_00 12:16

That is cool. And you know, I wanted to be an actress since I was a young child, but for various reasons didn't pursue it. And so to me, this has kind of come full circle. Um, it's only voice, but that's fine. So I'm I'm still very happy about it.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

I think there are probably a lot of actors who may have had a career in the movies and then they're doing voices on cartoons and that kind of thing, who probably think this is so easy. No makeup, no costuming, no stand on your mark, you know, no jumping out of a burning car or something. I don't know. That's true. But uh it seems like the best bit of acting, the best part of acting without the worst parts. What an ideal uh new career for you.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Now I'm wondering, is there any question that you wish that I had asked you, anything that you'd like to talk about that I haven't brought up yet?

SPEAKER_00 13:06

I think you've covered everything very well. Yes. This has been delightful.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

Well, it has been a real joy to have you here. But before we before we do say goodbye, are do you have words of wisdom for our listeners who may be where you were, you know, five, six, seven years ago, who are just suspecting I think I might be autistic, or I just found out that I'm autistic. Um, what words of wisdom or encouragement do you have for for these folk?

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Well, I would say that prior to getting a diagnosis, learn all you can about autism. And I say that because in my case, I didn't even understand the question they were asking me. So I would give strange answers. For example, they asked me if loud noises bothered me. And I thought to myself, oh, like a siren? You know, that only lasts a few seconds. How can I say that bothers me? So I said no. And of course, loud noises aren't the things that bother autistic people solely. Uh, for me, some very quiet noises are disturbing. But once I learned about autism, I knew I could better answer that question. And there's a lot of questions like that you could be asked in a diagnostic exam that you may not even understand what they're asking. So I'd say learn a lot about autism even before you get a diagnosis if you can. The other thing is I would say, and it's kind of a cliche, but it is a process once you realize you're autistic, because you go through so many phases of, you know, there's gonna be some depression for a little while, there's gonna be grief, there may be moments when you hate being autistic, and when you realize that it is limiting, um, there's gonna be moments when you're very proud and happy to be autistic, and those will ebb and flow. You know, you may feel you hate autism today, and then you're doing all great, and then for a while you may hate it again. So it's an up and down, but overall, it has been something that's become more and more comfortable for me, and it and it all comes together at some point. So I'd say um hang in there, keep going, don't give up. It's going to get better as you learn more and more about yourself. Be okay with it.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

I love that. I I want to jump back to one of the things you said about the diagnostic questions. Yes. And a lot of people I've talked to have had some of those same struggles. For instance, if they say, Do you have a problem with eye contact? Well, some people will think, no, I just avoid eye contact. It's no problem for me. And so they'll say, No problem. Others will say, Ah, not anymore. I have a system for eye contact. How many seconds to look at the eyes and look away and look back? I have a system, therefore I don't have a problem with it. Same as social conversation. I have a script for social conversation, and because I have a script, it's not a problem. And then they don't get diagnosed because they have created for themselves the accommodations that they need and deserve. And it gets in the way of them getting that diagnosis. So I love your advice to really dig into autism before taking the tests.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

Right. You do have to, because partly we're wearing a mask. When I first discovered I was autistic, there were very few uh therapists or psychologists who had any criteria for adult women who have masked their lives. So there's there's some now that are getting it, you know, they understand there's a difference, which is wonderful. There are more opportunities now.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

We're we're starting to learn more in the field, and and that's good, but it takes time. Yes, it does. And the other, the other thing you said that I think is so important is that yes, I mean, a lot of people feel elation, like, oh, thank goodness there's nothing wrong with me. But that doesn't mean that the uh sadness or mourning won't come. Right. And if you hear people saying, Oh, you're artistic, you have a superpower on a day that you're thinking, if only I could make my face say what my feelings are, it doesn't feel like a superpower when you still struggle. Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

And any of us who have masked, uh, we have conquered things in life by finding out, researching, and finding out how to conquer those. And I thought I could conquer autism too. I thought if I just learn enough about it, I can fix all these things. And then I found out I can't. This is this is who I am. So for those of us who have been fixers and have been successfully able to solve problems, this we're not a problem to be solved. This is who we are.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

I love that. You're not a problem to be solved, even if you have a gift for research and you know, use that gift uh for you know, for yourself, not to beat yourself up about it. Right. That is that is so wonderful. Now, I know that our listeners are going to want to either get in touch with you or follow and subscribe to your website. What's the best way for people to reach out to you?

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Well, you can email me at info at the autisticwoman.com or I am on Instagram as Meet My Autistic Brain Podcast and on Twitter as AnAutistic Woman.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Okay. Well, we will put those in the show notes so that people can just click and go. And and I hope everybody who's listening is going to go on over there and uh subscribe to that podcast because uh there's I mean, there are a lot of a lot of topics that you cover that somebody who's just learning about is gonna want to read or listen to those. Well, thank you. Yes, there's quite a library. There is. I was just looking at it again today and it was so impressive. Thank you. So, and thank you again for being here, Susan. It's been lovely to have this little bit of time together. It is. And uh yes, I appreciate it, Wendy. Oh, me too. Well, maybe I'll see you next time. Okay, I'd love that. What an informative conversation with Susan Kayler, the autistic woman. She shared about how, in spite of her successful career as an attorney and a judge, she still struggled with being misunderstood and having her facial expressions misinterpreted. Even practicing in the mirror didn't help her learn to express the happiness she felt on her face at the right times. But when she wasn't trying, when she talked about her interests, people told her that her face lit up in delight. She didn't realize she was autistic until she was an adult. Susan shared two important pieces of advice to anyone who's recently diagnosed or who suspects that they might be autistic to help newcomers navigate the road that she's already traveled. First, Susan sells to learn as much as you can about autism even before you seek a diagnosis. And second, it's a process. Be prepared for the highs of finally realizing there's nothing wrong with you, as well as the sadness and mourning that can come with a diagnosis. If you haven't found Susan's podcast, Meet My Autistic Brain, yet, I highly recommend checking it out on Apple Podcasts. You'll probably want to subscribe like I did. And check out her links in the show notes. This autistic woman has a lot to offer. Thanks for listening to Amplifying Autism. I'm Wendella Wickham Marsh. Looking forward to next time. You've been listening to Amplifying Autism, celebrating the voices that shape a more understanding world. Don't miss the next episode. More stories, more insight, and more voices that matter.