Mistakes are an integral part of the human experience. They help us learn, grow, and ultimately become better versions of ourselves. The systemic failure loop here is that we've been programmed to equate our self-worth with our successes and dread being labeled as failures.

In this episode, Caitlin challenges the concept of failure and calls for a ban on the word 'failure' in 2026. They emphasize the importance of self-compassion, adjusting goals, and reframing negative thoughts.

💬 " Let's not consider anything a personal failure, unless you did something like morally and ethically heinous." - Caitlin Liz Fisher

💬 " There's no more failure. No more personal failures. Only huge systemic failures. Don't compare yourself to huge systemic failures... You're a person doing person things, and as long as you are a person doing person things, it's not failure—it's learning." - Caitlin Liz Fisher

As far as Caitlin is concerned, unless your actions cross a moral or ethical line, a misstep is not a personal failing—it's an opportunity to learn. 💜

What We Explore In This Episode
- Why it's important to reconsider what we define as failure
- How to reshape our understanding of personal failure
- Recognizing the distinction between genuine mistakes and unethical behavior

🎟️ Join The Creatives Rebellion on Patreon for bonus content, unfiltered rambles, exclusive merch, and the best little weird creative family on the internet: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/caitlinlizfisher⁠⁠⁠Join our Neurodivergent Creative Pod!🌞

Want to support heartfelt conversations about mental health, creativity, and neurodivergence?Join the Neurodivergent Creative Pod community: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.askfishfisher.com/pod⁠⁠⁠

📩Subscribe to Cait’s newsletter and grab your copy of the Audacity Bill of Rights—a weekly dose of "you’re not broken, you’re brilliant": ⁠⁠⁠https://www.askfishfisher.com/audacity⁠⁠⁠

🎧 Leave a comment, send a DM @caitlinlizfisher, or scream into the void (and tag us!)We love hearing what hit home for you!

In this episode of The Neurodivergent Creative, Caitlin sits down without a set agenda and gently spirals through morning pages, phone addiction, creative habits, spirituality, and the quiet grief of living in a world shaped by capitalism and rising fascism. What begins as a reflection on journaling becomes a compassionate exploration of why we need personal rituals, spiritual hope, and tiny acts of care—not to optimize ourselves, but to survive and stay human.

💬“Do something that is just for you. Do something that makes you feel hope for a future that you cannot logically know is there, but spiritually you will allow yourself to believe in it—so that there’s a reason to get up in the morning.” - Caitlin Liz Fisher

If you’re tired, cynical, overstimulated, or struggling to imagine a future that feels safe or possible, this episode offers permission to slow down and choose gentleness anyway.💜

What We Explore in This Episode:

• Morning pages as a practice of mental and emotional clearing, not productivity
• Doomscrolling, phone dependency, and protecting your nervous system from constant bad news
• Why capitalism, shame, and moral perfectionism make rest and creativity feel “undeserved”
• Spirituality, creativity, and imagination as survival tools

🎟️ Join The Creatives Rebellion on Patreon for bonus content, unfiltered rambles, exclusive merch, and the best little weird creative family on the internet: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/caitlinlizfisher⁠⁠⁠Join our Neurodivergent Creative Pod!🌞 Want to support heartfelt conversations about mental health, creativity, and neurodivergence?Join the Neurodivergent Creative Pod community: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.askfishfisher.com/pod⁠⁠⁠📩Subscribe to Cait’s newsletter and grab your copy of the Audacity Bill of Rights—a weekly dose of "you’re not broken, you’re brilliant": ⁠⁠⁠https://www.askfishfisher.com/audacity⁠⁠⁠🎧 Leave a comment, send a DM @caitlinlizfisher, or scream into the void (and tag us!)We love hearing what hit home for you!

In this episode of The Neurodivergent Creative, Caitlin starts with a headline about “quiet hoarding” (aka: keeping your phone longer than capitalism wants you to) and spirals deliciously into a full-bodied rant about holiday consumerism, tech entitlement, ADHD time distortion, gift guilt, and the simple, radical act of wanting things without shame.

💬 “I saw a headline calling younger people ‘quiet hoarders’—like quiet quitting, but for not upgrading your iPhone the second a new one drops. And somehow that’s being framed as a failure on our part, as if keeping a billion-dollar company afloat is now our moral obligation. Corporate personhood has gone too far.” - Caitlin Liz Fisher

So, yeah! If the holiday season makes you anxious, overstimulated, or morally conflicted… this one's for you!

What We Explore in This Episode:

• The rise of “quiet hoarding” (aka: keeping your phone until it dies) and why corporations treat it like a personal failing
• How AI, data centers, and corporate entitlement drive up costs and drain resources
• How poverty, shame, and gift guilt shape what we feel “allowed” to want
• Values-based gifting and opting out of cheap consumerism

🎟️ Join The Creatives Rebellion on Patreon for bonus content, unfiltered rambles, exclusive merch, and the best little weird creative family on the internet: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/caitlinlizfisher⁠⁠⁠Join our Neurodivergent Creative Pod!🌞 Want to support heartfelt conversations about mental health, creativity, and neurodivergence?Join the Neurodivergent Creative Pod community: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.askfishfisher.com/pod⁠⁠⁠📩Subscribe to Cait’s newsletter and grab your copy of the Audacity Bill of Rights—a weekly dose of "you’re not broken, you’re brilliant": ⁠⁠⁠https://www.askfishfisher.com/audacity⁠⁠⁠🎧 Leave a comment, send a DM @caitlinlizfisher, or scream into the void (and tag us!)We love hearing what hit home for you!

MLMs (multi-level marketing companies) don’t actually sell you freedom—they sell you scripts plus a story. For neurodivergent people, that combination can feel like safety, clarity, and belonging all wrapped into one.

When masking is exhausting, ambiguity feels like a threat, and job environments are deeply inaccessible, the promise of “work from home, be your own boss, follow this exact formula, and you’ll succeed” lands like relief. You don’t have to invent the structure, the branding, or the messaging.  You just follow the script and buy the starter kit. For an autistic brain that craves predictability, and an ADHD brain hungry for novelty and dopamine, that promise is catnip—and also a trap!In this episode, Liora and I unpack the MLM trap as someone who deeply gets it.

💬 " The more barriers we can remove, the easier it's gonna be for a neurodivergent person to do the thing." - Caitlin Liz Fisher

🌈 Meet Our Guest: Liora Natania (she /them)
Compassionate Career Coach • Fractional Recruiter • Inclusive Hiring & Recruiting Consultant • Founder of Colorful Futures

Liora is a queer, neurodivergent career coach who specializes in helping ND and queer job seekers navigate work, burnout, entrepreneurship, and transitions with clarity, agency, and self-trust. They bring their background in graphic design, creative recruiting, and DEI-focused career development to help people find work that actually fits their brains—and their bodies. Their business, Colorful Futures, is built on the belief that neurodivergent people deserve accessible careers, supportive systems, and workplaces that meet us where we are.

Go check out Colorful Futures, their queer, neurodivergent-owned career coaching business supporting ND and queer folks with job searching, entrepreneurship, and building work lives that actually fit.

_____

⚠️ Trigger WarningThis episode includes discussion of:

• Eating disorders and disordered eating
• Intentional weight loss and diet culture
• MLMs (Beachbody, Pure Romance, essential oils, etc.)
• Chronic pain, hypermobility, and overexercise
• Abusive relationship dynamics (brief mention)
• Mental health, shame, and burnout

Please take care of yourself, friend! Pause, skip, or return later if your body needs a break. 

_____

What Liora and I Explore in This Episode

• Why autistic and ADHD folks are especially vulnerable to MLM marketing
• Scripts, “be your own boss” messaging, and the illusion of easy income
• How Beachbody turned eating disorders and overexercise into a “business model”
• Grieving the past self who did harmful things to survive
• Relearning movement as care, not punishment or performance
• Moving from all-or-nothing to all-or-something self-care
• Healing from MLM shame and rebuilding your relationship with marketing, movement, and self-trust

Today’s episode is a spicy little unpacking of something my podcast content manager, Kitty, sent me on Instagram—a post that hit me right in my autistic businessy-brain and made an entire year’s worth of thoughts click into place. As an autistic entrepreneur, scaling always felt like mimicking neurotypical business culture. Bigger. Faster. More More More! I tried it. I hated it. It almost broke me.

The truth is: The internet has trained people to expect instant access, instant expertise, and instant mastery—all for free. A free downloadable, a free training, a free webinar, a free checklist… and for what? Freebie culture teaches people to expect transformation without investment, and it teaches creators to overgive until they burn out.

💬 " Freebie culture and fake expertise feed the same illusion that wisdom should cost nothing and that mastery can be rushed. Wisdom can't cost nothing, like wisdom has to cost something. That's how it's wisdom." - Caitlin Liz Fisher

Tune in to learn about the dark side of freebie culture, fake expertise, and dissecting the belief that wisdom should be fast, cheap, and easy.

What We Explore in This Episode:
- Why the rise of “freebie culture” has created entitlement and burnout
- The pressure to scale, automate, and produce constant “value”
- What it really costs to develop mastery, skill, and lived wisdom
- Why slower, smaller, sustainable business models are the future
- How I’m restructuring my offerings for 2026 with honesty and capacity in mind

🎟️ Join The Creatives Rebellion on Patreon for bonus content, unfiltered rambles, exclusive merch, and the best little weird creative family on the internet: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/caitlinlizfisher⁠⁠⁠Join our Neurodivergent Creative Pod!🌞 Want to support heartfelt conversations about mental health, creativity, and neurodivergence?Join the Neurodivergent Creative Pod community: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.askfishfisher.com/pod⁠⁠⁠📩Subscribe to Cait’s newsletter and grab your copy of the Audacity Bill of Rights—a weekly dose of "you’re not broken, you’re brilliant": ⁠⁠⁠https://www.askfishfisher.com/audacity⁠⁠⁠🎧 Leave a comment, send a DM @caitlinlizfisher, or scream into the void (and tag us!)We love hearing what hit home for you!

In this episode, Caitlin breaks down the 2025 Mass Blackout—a coordinated economic and labor strike happening from November 25 to December 2, 2025. This blackout overlaps with some of the biggest consumer spending days in the United States—Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and pre-holiday shopping—and asks participants to pause their participation in capitalism for one week.

💬"We collectively have the power people, people joining together with a shared mission have huge amounts of power." - Caitlin Liz Fisher

Caitlin shares the origins of the blackout, how it connects to worker rights, the political landscape, and the collective power we hold when we withdraw our labor and our money. They also shares personal reflections about navigating employment, healthcare, and consumerism, and offers a preview of the community events happening throughout the blackout week.

Give yourself a week away from capitalism. Just one. See what happens to your nervous system.

What We Explore in This Episode:

• What the Mass Blackout is and why it's happening now
• Key blackout dates: November 25 – December 2, 2025
• How to participate through non-shopping, non-working, and non-scrolling
• The realities of labor, healthcare, and privilege in American activism
• Community events, queer entrepreneur spaces, anti-capitalist education, and mutual aid offerings happening during blackout week

Caitlin's curated list of activities during the nationwide blackout:
https://www.askfishfisher.com/blackout

Not everything in life has to spark joy. Sometimes, joy simply lives in having what you need—clean underwear, a steady paycheck, a safe home, a quiet moment to breathe. It doesn’t have to be perfect to be enough. Because “Good enough” isn’t the same as settling for harm; it’s about recognizing what supports you right now. The wisdom lies in knowing when something’s serving you and when it’s time to lovingly let it go.

 💬“You don’t have to be thrilled about your underwear—but it’s important to have underwear. The joy can simply be, I have underwear. Fold them up, put them away, and thank them for covering your butt all day. You don’t need every pair of briefs to spark joy; sometimes it’s enough that they just do their job.” - Caitlin Liz Fisher, The Neurodivergent Creative

In this episode, Caitlin reimagines Marie Kondo’s “spark joy” philosophy... their version: "you don’t have to love your underwear, you can appreciate that you have underwear." In a culture obsessed with chasing passion and perfection, Caitlin reminds us that contentment is also joy. Not every job has to be your dream job. Sometimes the joy is that it pays your bills, fits your schedule, and gives you space to rest or create outside of work. You don’t have to force enthusiasm or romanticize every moment. Sometimes joy is practical. Sometimes, it’s just realizing—you’re okay.

What We Explore in This Episode:

• Why joy doesn’t always have to be ecstatic to be meaningful
• The difference between contentment, gratitude, and performative happiness
• “Good enough” jobs, homes, and routines as valid forms of stability
• How to find joy (or at least acceptance) in daily necessities
• Updates on U.S. elections, new creative projects, and small wins

📺Caitlin's New writing vlog YouTube channel:https://www.youtube.com/@caitlinfisherauthor

🎟️ Join The Creatives Rebellion on Patreon for bonus content, unfiltered rambles, exclusive merch, and the best little weird creative family on the internet: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/caitlinlizfisher⁠⁠⁠

Join our Neurodivergent Creative Pod!🌞 Want to support heartfelt conversations about mental health, creativity, and neurodivergence?

Join the Neurodivergent Creative Pod community: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.askfishfisher.com/pod⁠⁠⁠

📩Subscribe to Cait’s newsletter and grab your copy of the Audacity Bill of Rights—a weekly dose of "you’re not broken, you’re brilliant": ⁠⁠⁠https://www.askfishfisher.com/audacity

⁠⁠🎧 Leave a comment, send a DM @caitlinlizfisher, or scream into the void (and tag us!)We love hearing what hit home for you!

We’ve been conditioned to see our needs as inconvenient, to shrink ourselves, to avoid asking for help until we’re at a breaking point. But community care isn’t about convenience; it’s about compassion.

In this episode, Caitlin Liz Fisher explores what it means to allow ourselves to have nice things—to believe we are worthy of care, comfort, and support. Through a vulnerable story about buying new glasses and unlearning shame around “being expensive,” Caitlin invites us to reflect on the deep conditioning many of us carry about being a “burden.”

 “Don’t talk to people who act like your burdens are a huge inconvenience to them. We are here, in this human life, to be a little bit of a burden to other people — that’s part of being alive. That’s what community care is: showing up and doing something even if you don’t really want to, because it matters, because it’s important, because people deserve the help.” - Caitlin Liz Fisher

PS - We’re not meant to do life alone. Ask for help. Offer help. Be a little bit of a burden—and let that be okay. That’s how community care works. That’s how we heal!

What We Explore in This Episode

• The internalized shame of being “too expensive” or “a burden”
• How family dynamics and scarcity mindsets shape our self-worth
• Why it’s hard for many of us to accept care or spend money on ourselves
• Community care as an antidote to shame
• Doing things before it becomes an emergency — emotionally, physically, or financially

🎟️ Join The Creatives Rebellion on Patreon for bonus content, unfiltered rambles, exclusive merch, and the best little weird creative family on the internet: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/caitlinlizfisher⁠⁠⁠Join our Neurodivergent Creative Pod!🌞 Want to support heartfelt conversations about mental health, creativity, and neurodivergence?Join the Neurodivergent Creative Pod community: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.askfishfisher.com/pod⁠⁠⁠📩Subscribe to Cait’s newsletter and grab your copy of the Audacity Bill of Rights—a weekly dose of "you’re not broken, you’re brilliant": ⁠⁠⁠https://www.askfishfisher.com/audacity⁠⁠⁠🎧 Leave a comment, send a DM @caitlinlizfisher, or scream into the void (and tag us!)We love hearing what hit home for you!

Not every discomfort is harm. That’s where this conversation begins—with the messy, necessary process of learning to tell the difference between what’s uncomfortable and what’s truly harmful.

💬 “Not every discomfort is harm. There’s a line—you need to figure out your own line. Honestly, we’re labeling a lot of our own discomfort as harm so that we don’t have to sit in it—and that’s keeping people from growing.” - Caitlin Liz Fisher

In this episode, Caitlin unpacks how our modern “therapy-speak” culture sometimes mistakes emotional discomfort for danger, how that confusion can stunt our growth, and why learning to tolerate discomfort is essential for healing, creativity, and community care. Caitlin reminds us that being human (especially a neurodivergent human) means navigating sensory overwhelm, emotional nuance, and social tension—and that learning to sit with discomfort helps us build resilience without self-betrayal.

What We Explore in This Episode

• The difference between harm and discomfort (and why that distinction matters)
• How moral superiority and “therapy-speak” can prevent honest self-reflection
• The Minnesota Starvation Experiment and what it reveals about recovery and nourishment
• Relearning how to eat, move, and rest without punishment
• The role of discomfort in growth, community care, and creative courage
• How labeling discomfort as harm can block vulnerability and connection

🎟️ Join The Creatives Rebellion on Patreon for bonus content, unfiltered rambles, exclusive merch, and the best little weird creative family on the internet: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/caitlinlizfisher⁠⁠⁠Join our Neurodivergent Creative Pod!🌞 Want to support heartfelt conversations about mental health, creativity, and neurodivergence?Join the Neurodivergent Creative Pod community: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.askfishfisher.com/pod⁠⁠⁠📩Subscribe to Cait’s newsletter and grab your copy of the Audacity Bill of Rights—a weekly dose of "you’re not broken, you’re brilliant": ⁠⁠⁠https://www.askfishfisher.com/audacity⁠⁠⁠🎧 Leave a comment, send a DM @caitlinlizfisher, or scream into the void (and tag us!)We love hearing what hit home for you!

Welcome back to The Neurodivergent Creative Podcast, the cozy, chaotic corner of the internet where we unpack creativity, shame, and the messy process of making art while living in a neurodivergent brain! In this week’s episode, host Caitlin Liz Fisher takes us along to their annual writing retreat—a gathering of writers, friends, and creative misfits who have built a community rooted in kindness, curiosity, and care. Between murder mysteries, unhinged PowerPoints, and chocolate tastings, Caitlin dives deep into what it really means to write your story—even when it doesn’t all make it into the final draft.

What We Explore in This Episode

- The difference between story and plot, and why not everything you write needs to “fit” the final version
- How writing can be both emotional processing and artistic craft—and the freedom that comes from separating the two
- Reflections on creative community, self-trust, and being loved without fear of punishment
- Why neurodivergent writers often fear being “too much,” and how shared space can heal that
- The joy of creative play: unhinged PowerPoints, ramen nights, and the art of just having fun again

💬"Anything that you write while you are working on your story IS story, but it's not necessarily plot. It might not end up in the final draft, but that doesn't mean you wasted it."

🎟️ Join The Creatives Rebellion on Patreon for bonus content, unfiltered rambles, exclusive merch, and the best little weird creative family on the internet: ⁠⁠⁠
https://www.patreon.com/caitlinlizfisher⁠⁠⁠
Join our Neurodivergent Creative Pod!🌞 Want to support heartfelt conversations about mental health, creativity, and neurodivergence?
Join the Neurodivergent Creative Pod community: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.askfishfisher.com/pod⁠⁠⁠📩
Subscribe to Cait’s newsletter and grab your copy of the Audacity Bill of Rights—a weekly dose of "you’re not broken, you’re brilliant": ⁠⁠⁠https://www.askfishfisher.com/audacity⁠⁠⁠
🎧 Leave a comment, send a DM @caitlinlizfisher, or scream into the void (and tag us!)We love hearing what hit home for you!