Welcome to the Restoring the Soul podcast. I'm Julie Ann Kusick, and I'm here in the studio today with my husband, Michael cusick. Michael, it's so good to be back in the studio with you today. It's always good to talk with you, but it's especially fun when we do this venue for the podcast. I'm particularly excited today because we're going to talk about something that I think will be helpful to a lot of people, but it's also just a way for me to share more of my life and to talk about our relationship and some of the struggles there. And not a way that people can be voyeuristic, but in a way where we can reveal some things that will help to normalize lives and marriages for people and also to give some hope. So let's just jump right in. The topic broadly is neurodiversity. And specifically, it's this idea that a little less than six years ago, largely through your encouragement and reading and understanding and some of your clinical work while you were in graduate school, roughly six years ago, I was diagnosed with Asperger's, which is one of the old disorders that psychologists used to describe, which is now considered the autism spectrum disorders, or ASD. And so there it is. I've come out, so to speak. I've talked about this before in a couple other venues, but the time has never been right to share it on the podcast. And Julianne, the beautiful part of this is that this has been a journey together for you have been the one to help me really come to terms with this, to own it. But I think we'd both say that the understanding of the way that my brain works, the way that I see the world, how this ASD affects my mood and the way that I experience the world, it's been a game changer in our relationship, right? Absolutely. A game changer. And I find that it's also a game changer when I'm working with couples where they have undiagnosed neurodiversity. I want to give a little pushback on the word disorder, though, because I know that's what the DSM calls it and Asperger's isn't even in there anymore. But I think it comes with Astigmatism, and I think that's a roadblock many times to people being willing to look at, hey, what is neurodiversity? It's really just a cluster of traits and it doesn't look the same twice. And so it's really hard to get a handle on. I want our listeners to know, hey, if you feel different and your wiring in your brain is a little bit different, it's not bad, it's not a disorder. It's different order. And so if we could just, right on the onset, just change that word from disorder to different order. So autism spectrum difference? Yes, autism spectrum difference or neuro different. There's so many words coming out now like neurodiverse, neurotypical, neurodivergent, neuro different, neurotribes. And so what are we talking about? Here. We're talking about the neurology that we've inherited, much like our biology that we've inherited. I inherited dark hair and dark eyes. You've got beautiful blue eyes that I absolutely love. But we inherit our neurology as well. And that's something that can be often overlooked, especially since so many folks that would be neurodiverse are very bright, very successful, very capable, very competent, as you certainly are. I mean, if anyone has heard you speak, teach, be on the podcast, lecture in a classroom, speak at a public venue, you are one of the brightest, most gifted, talented individuals I know. And with that, there comes some unique challenges which we've bumped up against in our 32 years of marriage. Yeah. And I love how you're talking about it as a collection of traits as opposed to a simple label that fits onto people. And that's part of why I resisted this for so long, along with large doses of shame that with a lot of other diagnoses and issues and trauma and whatnot in my background, I literally remember conversations with you and the coach from the East Coast that we used and continued to meet with from time to time. I remember just saying, I can't take one more thing that's wrong with me. And this is not just a politically correct spin, but I've really come to see that this is not something that's wrong with me, but something that's right with me. And as I've embraced it, that it really leads to kind of being able to exploit some superpowers and then to learn to trust others, that they can see my weaknesses and vulnerabilities, which are pretty glaring in regard to how I function and see the world and that I can be loved and accepted. And it's like if I'm blind in one eye but don't realize that, and I keep turning at the intersection the wrong direction, and I don't know why, but if I have a diagnosis that, oh, one of your eyes is not functioning, that's going to change my life. Yeah. And I think knowledge is power. And when we understand what it is that we're dealing with dan Siegel says we have to name it to tame it. And I think when we have not a label, but a framework of understanding I'm not big into labels or the diagnoses, but a framework of understanding, it's like these glasses I'm wearing today, right? If I took them off, things get a little fuzzy, a little blurry. But when I put them on, oh, there's clarity, there's insight, there's understanding. And I think when we understand and have a framework for understanding how we are different, how our wiring is different, not just as men, women, or as believers, but as really having a neurological difference, it just reframes everything from it's not bad, it's just different. And understanding. That is like an invitation and an opportunity then to have insight and understanding, which then leads to greater connection which it certainly has led to greater connection between you and I, as we've both learned about. What does this neurodiversity mean? And what does it mean? Uniquely for you and for me, as we're in this marriage together. So let me ask you this, Julianne. What began to give you clues or thought that there was something going on beyond a mood disorder that I've lived with across our marriage or beyond the trauma? Because we have done a lot of individual counseling, and I've talked a lot on the podcast about how I've done a lot of couples counseling. And oftentimes people will say, well, if you're negatively interpreting your spouse and hearing something that's not really there, that's your trauma, that's your shame, and you work on that. And I've done all that and cleaned a lot of that up, and we've still had communication issues and things like that. So after all that work, you started to wonder, there's got to be something else going on that we're missing. Yes, I did. And part of that was some of the chronic things we just kept bumping up against, like the communication, unsolvable problems in marriage. We seem to have had more than our share of unsolvable problems, and I just think we kept bumping our heads up against one another, almost like we were speaking two different languages. I'm speaking French and you're speaking German, and we're just not connecting. And the other thing is, you have a really good heart. I mean, you're a good man, and I'm proud to be married to you. 32 years, right? So I always knew underneath you have this really good heart, and it didn't make sense, some of the things that you would say or do or some of the things that you wouldn't say or do. And I've had a lot of hurt feelings over the years, and I've done a lot of my own work, right, to be separate from that, like, not let your mood or whatever. For me not to take that personally. Matter of fact, that was a little mantra I had for a while. I kept muttering around the house, it's not about me. It's not about me. It's not about me. Like, trying to grow in this place of, I don't have to take your bad mood personally. So, yeah, so it came out of that I started to do some reading on neurodiversity in relation to something else. Wasn't even about you at all. I don't have permission to go public with who it was about, so I want to kind of protect this individual. But I was reading about neurodiversity nonetheless, and I thought, oh, my gosh, this really sounds like my husband. And so I started digging a little deeper. And then it was summer. I remember a couple well, what, four years ago, maybe five years ago, just saying, hey, I have this framework, and it seems to fit. And I know for you, Michael, and you said, oh, my gosh, it's one more thing. I can't have one more thing. For me, it wasn't another quote unquote diagnosis, right? But it was like this umbrella, this framework of understanding of, oh, it's just one and all of these things like depression and anxiety and mood disorder and impulsivity and compulsivity and Add and ADHD, right? They all just kind of fall underneath this one umbrella. And when I put on these glasses, if you will, of neurodiversity, it was like I saw you in a whole new way and I had this whole new understanding. And the light bulbs just kept going off over and over and over again. Or maybe I should say the light bulbs kept going on over and over again. Like I was reframing things and understanding things. And I feel like this framework of understanding has given me a window into you in a whole new way. And it's given insight. And understanding kind of illuminated some of the chronic issues and struggles and challenges that we've had that seemed confusing, crazy making, unsolvable. And we've just made such great progress in some of these areas now that we have this lens and this understanding. Yeah. And let me just say because people may be wondering, well, what exactly are the symptoms? What was it that was manifesting that you saw? And we can get to that. And I know that this is a larger topic that we're going to be addressing in some conversations and offering resources, but a lot of people have said to me, from acquaintances to close friends to people who have come up to me as I've shared this in public that I've never met before at a talk or something. You don't look like you have autism. And of course, people think of Rain Man or people think of a person who's nonverbal or somebody who's rocking or somebody that looks peculiar or special needs or something like that. And as I've begun to live with this, I've learned that there's a number of people from Elon Musk that shared on Saturday Night Live two years ago that he has asperger's to Jared Polis, the governor of Colorado, to Dan Aykroyd, to Darryl Hannah who was in the movie Splash with Tom Hanks. There's a kind of normalcy to the outsider. But when you get close to the person and this is really important, I think, to 97% of people, even that know me. They would say, Michael's just quirky. He's kind of funny, but it's in. The most really smart. He's really smart in the most intimate relationship. This is where it plays out. And that's because there's a phenomenon known as masking, and this is an important concept for people to understand. But I heard about masking and I thought, oh, my gosh, this is my life. For anybody who has hung around me socially outside of a work or ministry context, I've done impersonations my whole life. I've done voices and sounds. And I like to walk around and sing and make funny noises and click my mouth and do impressions of animals and things like that. I know that sounds bizarre to some people. I was a mimic from a very young age, and one of my heroes was Rich Little, who did impressions. And then Robin Williams came along and people early on called know the Christian Robin Williams, even though I never did stand up comedy. And it's because one of the features of this is that my mind is constantly running. And in assessments and tests that I've taken, I have a very high processing speed in my brain. But one neurofeedback person described it this way, that my brain is like a Porsche, but it's stuck in neutral and the engine runs very high and it's very fine tuned, but I have a difficult time getting it out of gear, into gear, and therefore my mind locks onto one thing at a time. So in conversations with you, if you were talking about your feelings or taking out the garbage or what we were going to do in terms of parenting with one of our children, I would hear a word that you said or a sentence, and I would get locked on that, and I wouldn't hear the rest of what you said. And then for me, it would become this titanic struggle of that word stands out, and then it would become an argument or I would interrupt. So one of the features of this and this can sound like ADHD, but there again is where neurodiversity is this broader term. And ADHD can be included on the autism spectrum as well as things like nonverbal learning disorder, which was an earlier awakening that I had. You don't have to look autistic, and oftentimes the person will resist the label because I can look people in the eye. Don't autistic people look down and they can't look people in the eye? And I can engage and I can connect with my emotions. I'm highly emotional and I have the ability, almost in a superpower ray, to read the emotions and what's going on inside of another person. But somehow that's blocked from you because I can't mask. The masking is I've observed and learned by watching other people how to do something. It's not that it's false and that I'm acting, but I've taken that on as, oh, that's how you do it. But when I can't mask at home with you in an emotionally connected conversation with you, that masking isn't there. And then this filter of neurodiversity is there. And it's caused you a lot of pain that I don't feel guilty or ashamed about, but I sure feel sad that we didn't know this until more recently. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And yet our situation is so common. There's more and more information out there about late diagnosis of neurodiversity or ASD autism spectrum disorder. And I want to say spectrum meaning that covers a lot of distance, right? Because on one hand and we can be stereotypical when we think about autism as it's something where somebody's nonverbal. Well, if that's one end of the spectrum, it starts at the highly verbal. The nonverbal learning disorder are these little kiddos who have too many words to count by the time they're two. And they're very precocious, they're very bright, they're very verbal. As a matter of fact, learning for them happens through talking. And if they're just left with a worksheet, they're not going to be learning. They learn through discussion and engagement. They're very bright. And yet trying to perform the IQ is high, but the performance IQ, right, being able to write it down, that's where it gets stuck. It's like there's a clog in the pipe. And teachers can get really frustrated with kiddos because they know they're bright, because they're talking to them. And yet when they ask for a written book report, they get nothing. Or they get something that's got a lot of mistakes in it, misspelled, and it's incohesive. But if they say, hey, tell me about that book, the kid can go on for 20 minutes and tell them everything that he or she read. So there's not just one way to look at neurodiversity. And that's actually what I enjoy, because to me it's like this I keep unwrapping this gift of neurodiversity and discovering, oh, my gosh, you have felt so alienated or misunderstood or less than for so many years, and look at all these amazing gifts that you have. And the more I get to know you and the more I get to know other folks that are what we would say on the spectrum or neurodiverse, it's like, do you realize not everybody has that special gift and talent that you have? That's one of your superpowers, Michael, one of yours is being able to take a topic and know, wax eloquently about it. Like your memory, what you retain memory wise. It's a special power. People are not like that. I'm not like that. I have to study things and review them to get it to stick in my brain. But you see it once or skim it once and you retain it and you're able to regurgitate it, which is amazing. I want to pause and have you tell a story because I've always said that I have a semi photographic memory. And so if I read or learn or hear a talk about something that compels me, something that's interesting, I can remember that 30 years later. And the same with a book, but as people might say, well, that's really arrogant that you think you have a semi photographic memory. But I can't remember when you asked me to go to Costco and pick up the prescriptions and three other items. Why, I literally come home with the wrong items and I forget to go to the it's not just ADHD, so tell the story about me going to Natural Grocers. I think this is instructive because it's not just funny, but it's instructive where people may be listening and go, oh, my gosh, that's happened to me. Okay, well, all right, you asked for it. And I'm so grateful, honey, that we can laugh about this. And I'm amazed that we're going to be able to share it with others right now, because 20 years ago, before we knew about this or 15 years ago or even ten years ago, I would have been angry and frustrated. So, Michael, you've said a lot, and you've asked for an example, and you talk about the milk at Natural Groceries. So it was a Friday afternoon, and I was like, hey, you can either drive across town and pick up this item, or you could stop for me because we're out of the original unsweetened almond milk. You could stop and pick that up at the store and you were tired and you didn't want to drive across town. You're like, hey, I'll just pick this up. I was like, great. I'm out. I'll drive across town. I'll pick this up. We're team Cusick. We're making this happen, so get home. And it was the incorrect milk was not what I had asked for and what I drink and what I have had at home for years. So long story short, you were like, I'm going to take it back. You went twice on Saturday, still came home with the incorrect milk, and then we're determined on Sunday to do it again. And I felt so bad the fourth time you walked in, and it was close, but it still wasn't what I was asking for. And I think we'd even taken a picture of it, and those containers just look so similar. And so I finally just said, hey, it's Sunday. I'm going to go to the grocery store and I'm going to get the milk, and you're done dealing with this. And we had a really good laugh about it, and I said, next time, why don't you drive across town and I'll be the one to pick up the milk at the store. But that has happened so many times over the years that I would I'd ask you to go, hey, look, we need diapers or formula or we need laundry detergent or a prescription. And you come home with 16 things, and none of them are what I've asked for or what were on the list. And when I say, where's the list? You were like, oh, I lost the list. And then even when we've got the app on our phone now where it's like we can update it, sometimes you'll accidentally hit check off two things on the list instead of just one, and so it becomes a comedy of errors. So that's pulling back the curtain a little bit on some of what daily living can be like for us. And part of what we've learned is that I think at a very macro level. So the issue with that milk is that I had focused on one word, almond milk. And I blocked out the word unsweetened and original and almond milk every time. And it's almost as if I would put my hand up on the shelf toward the correct one, and then my hand would go to the right because I would see almond milk, and I see in pictures, and I think in pictures, but I don't see the detail. When I was a kid, I was one of those kids that did not do well with the highlights. Magazines find the hidden things in the picture. I would just look at the that was my favorite, was Find the hidden things. Right? So there's a lot of folks that might be thinking, well, this sounds like ADHD, but we'll be talking more about this. Another one that I'm proud to say that I'm aware of now is interrupting you. I remember for Christmas a couple of years ago when I asked you what you wanted for Christmas, and you said, I'd like you to stop interrupting me. And I was like, no, really, what do you want for Christmas? And you said, I'm dead serious. I want you to stop interrupting me. And I've read books on impulsivity control, and I've taken different medications, and it's a really difficult thing to do because of the way that my brain works, and I have to be very humble and to bite my tongue around that. I want to end with this story, and then we'll have future conversations about this. I really resisted this diagnosis, as I said at the outset of Asperger's and high functioning autism spectrum issues. And there's a book that I was given by Julianne and that I've since recommended to many people, and it's called The Journal of Best Practices. So if you are a spouse and you think that your spouse may have neurodiversity issues and somehow be on the autism spectrum, really encourage you to read this book called the Journal of Best Practices by David Finch. He and his wife are based in Colorado. She's in some medical profession, I think a speech pathologist or an occupational therapist, and they were married five years, no kids at the time. She came home from work, she handed her husband David this questionnaire and said, Fill this out. And he went and filled it out, and he came back, and there were a hundred out of a hundred questions, 100%. And he said, what is this? She said you have asperger's. You filled out the questions, and it's absolutely certain. He goes, oh, I've kind of wondered that my whole life. So he had this easy acceptance of it, and he's an engineer or software tech or something kind of stereotypical. And he then got a journal, and he said, Everything my wife tells me, I'm going to write down, and I'm going to put my energy into it to repair and to do the opposite of what I've been doing. So with a real sincere effort. So I'm reading halfway through this book and I'm thinking, this is not me. This is not me. I mean, this guy's kind of a freak. And yes, he's high functioning and it was obvious that he was a great writer and he was funny. And I'm laying in bed one night next to Julianne and I'm reading the book, and I just laugh out loud. And he says in his Journal of Best Practices, do not speak in a British accent all weekend long. My wife does not enjoy it. And the reason why I burst out laughing is that over the 25 or more years of marriage that we'd been together at that time, the number of weekends where I've spoke in cartoon voices, british accents, impersonating people, impersonating donkey from Shrek, that I think, in my mind is hilarious. And unfortunately, our kids thought was hilarious when they were younger. But my wife did not enjoy it any more than David Finch's wife didn't. And then I realized that my dad and I, for two or three or more years when I was an adolescent, when I was in high school, my dad and I only communicated in cartoon voices. My dad would be Inspector Clusseau and I forget who I would be at times, but rather than having normal father and son conversations, that's how we communicated. And I thought that was perfectly normal. I've talked with my siblings and looked back at my history with my dad. And I believe, without a doubt, that my dad was on the spectrum and perhaps not as high functioning as myself, god bless him. But he used to say, until a short time before he died, michael, I feel like I've gone through my whole life and I missed a class. I feel like I was never equipped how to do life. And for all of my gifting and success that God has allowed for me, I've always felt like there's something that's missing that I don't quite know how to do. And here's my big confession it feels like that's true socially, and I make my living socially, relationally, speaking to people, engaging with people. And I think most people would say that I'm an encourager and that I can make them feel comfortable, but I feel a lot of social anxiety internally. And the closer that relationship gets I e, the more intimate it gets, the higher the stakes are in terms of me feeling like I don't know what I'm doing. And yes, maybe everybody talks that way, but then all these filters and everything gets jumbled. And I just want to say that if you are suspecting or wondering if this is going on for you or for someone else, that this, to me and to Julianne, is a very, very hopeful thing. It's actually made me understand a lot of the other brokenness in my life. And I can honestly say that it's allowed me to take a deep breath and then to exhale and settle that there's not something wrong with me. There's something different with me. And we may never know why. Some of it's genetics, some of it may be trauma, it might be all of the above, but it's really been a gift to discover this. And we're still working things out. I'm still learning. We're part of an online community with several other couples that are neurodiverse, and it's a support group and turning 59. And I need help. I need tools, I need techniques. But more than anything, Julianne, I'm so grateful for you to not just help me to embrace this and understand this, but for your ongoing patience, your ongoing kindness, your ongoing acceptance, and being a wife and life partner who to this day, and I know beyond, accepts all of me. And you love the actual me and not the me that you would like me to be or that I would hope to be. Wow. Well, you've certainly said a lot. I am really humbled by your words, and I think if someone had told us we'd be doing this podcast today, I would say never. You have come such a long way from six years ago fighting this framework, and it really has made such a difference for both of us and our relationship. And so thank you again for your humility, your honesty, your vulnerability. It's one of the things that I love and respect most about.