The Neurodivergent Creative Podcast

In this episode of The Neurodivergent Creative Podcast, Caitlin talks about the reality of burnout when we're siloed because of hardcore survival mode—and how community helps keep us sane and ease the pressure when we're running on fumes.
"Once sleep and stress get all fucked up, the rest of you will get all fucked up. In fact, if you can prioritize improving like one aspect of your life , it should be sleep first." - Caitlin Liz Fisher
What You Will Learn:

• how capitalism thrives on our burnout
• input, output, and the value of quality rest
• why community care alleviates the pressure

Everything has gotten more expensive, and young adults have made it clear that the cost of living has become increasingly harder to achieve vs their parents' generation. So, if money is available for us to earn, shouldn't we be working harder to make more?
In this episode, Caitlin brain spiral is activated thanks to money trauma from the past. Again. Their thought gremlin clung to the belief that if they were not paycheck maxing, then they somehow didn't care about their financial goals and obviously deserved to be punished.
But, of course, instead of letting the gremlins win, Caitlin uses their free will to launch a counterattack by identifying the neutral circumstances of their situation. What are the facts? What do we know about this situation that is true and measurable?
If you've been kicking yourself in the butt for not being more productive in this capitalistic hellscape, then here's a much needed perspective on what it's like as a neuroqueer career human trying to live in a world that glorifies "normal," all while said world makes it almost impossible to survive with one paycheck.
💬"At the end of the day, what even is normal? Like, we're all just existing on spectrums of lived experience and coping mechanisms and our own version of truth. The important thing is, like, what do you want to feel when this kind of thing happens?" - Caitlin Liz Fisher
What You Will Learn:

• How to re-center yourself using neutral thinking when money anxiety hits hard
• Why working harder to earn more won't solve your money trauma
• Why knowing more and better is not a foolproof way to feel safe and secure
• What "Being Good with Money" vs "Being Bad with Money" has taught us to believe about ourselves when no one is looking

Have you ever said “um” one too many times, forgotten a basic word, mixed up two sounds, or completely abandoned a sentence because your brain and mouth stopped cooperating?
In this episode of The Neurodivergent Creative, Caitlin dives into the fascinating, funny, and surprisingly complex world of filler words, speech disfluencies, spoonerisms, verbal mix-ups, and the tiny linguistic detours our brains take while trying to communicate.
From accidentally saying “fart cone” instead of “car phone” to getting trapped in a “once a ton of pine” loop, Caitlin explores why our words sometimes come out scrambled—especially when we are tired, distracted, stressed, excited, multitasking, or experiencing executive dysfunction.
💬" We use filler words a lot, and they're normal, and they're not bad grammar, and they're not ignorant, and they don't mean that you are stupid or uneducated. They're a normal part of human speech." - Caitlin Liz Fisher
What We Explore in This Episode:
- Why filler words are a normal part of human speech
- The difference between spoonerisms, malapropisms, revisions, and repetitions
- How burnout and executive dysfunction can affect word retrieval
- What current research suggests about ADHD and speech disfluency
- How filler words function as social and conversational cues
- Why disfluencies are not personal failures that need to be eliminated

In this episode of The Neurodivergent Creative, Caitlin explores the psychology of secrecy, honesty, rumination, and the very neurodivergent pressure to be “fully transparent” all the time.
Because sometimes keeping secrets is not dishonest. Sometimes, it is safe. Sometimes, it is healthy. Sometimes, it is necessary.
Inspired by a Psychology Today article and research from Michael Slepian and Alex Koch, Caitlin unpacks why humans keep secrets, what kinds of secrets people commonly carry, and when secrecy becomes emotionally or physically harmful. They also share how OCD, black-and-white thinking, and burnout created a belief that being a good person meant being endlessly open, endlessly nuanced, and endlessly available. (Spoiler: it does not!)
💬"Sometimes keeping secrets is a safety thing. You don't have to tell everybody everything about you." - Caitlin Liz Fisher
What We Explore in This Episode:

• The difference between privacy, secrecy, and dishonesty
• How OCD and black-and-white thinking can create pressure to be “honest” at all costs
• Why oversharing can become unsafe or unsustainable
• How secrets can cause distress when they create shame, isolation, or uncertainty
• Why rumination is often more harmful than the secret itself
• How confiding in a safe, compassionate person can reduce the burden of secrecy
• Three questions to ask yourself when deciding whether a secret is harmful

In this Pride Month episode of The Neurodivergent Creative, Caitlin Fisher dives into bisexuality, queer history, compulsory heterosexuality, and the social systems that taught us to treat straightness as the default.
💬" Heterosexuality as norm is a social construct. Without hierarchy, it's all just neutral behavior." - Caitlin Liz Fisher
They also explore the Kinsey Scale, its historical importance, its limitations, and why newer models of sexuality offer more nuance. Caitlin connects this conversation to queer erasure, religious and patriarchal control, colonialism, defunded queer research, and the ways queer history has been intentionally suppressed.
At the heart of this episode is a liberating reminder: human sexuality is fluid, layered, and far more expansive than the rigid categories society often tries to enforce.
What We Explore in This Episode:
- Compulsory heterosexuality and how it shapes self-understanding
- Bisexual erasure, queer gatekeeping, and the fear of not being “queer enough”
- The Kinsey Scale as an early model of sexual orientation and where it falls short
- Alternatives to the Kinsey Scale, including the Klein Grid, SASO, and MSS
- Queerness in animal behavior and why “natural” is not synonymous with heterosexual
- How religion, patriarchy, colonialism, and political power have shaped sexual norms
- The intentional erasure of queer history and queer research
Mentioned in this episode:
- Episode 167: Why We Are 60 Years Behind on Queer Rights: https://youtu.be/YM24FA_s9lg
- Episode 168: Pride, Bisexual Erasure, and the Harm of Queer Gatekeeping (with Bailey Merlin): https://youtu.be/f7JBJYXAC44
- Alfred Kinsey and the Kinsey Scale - https://bi.org/en/famous/alfred-kinsey/
- The Klein Sexuality Grid - https://bi.org/en/bi-101s/kinsey-klein/
- The Sell Assessment of Sexual Orientation - http://www.lgbtdata.com/uploads/1/0/8/8/10884149/ms003_sell_details.pdf
- The Multidimensional Scale of Sexuality - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2230111/
- Queerness and bisexual/homosexual behavior in animals - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals
- History of Human Sexuality - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_human_sexuality#Religion_and_sex

It’s Pride Month, and Caitlin is kicking things off with a very queer, very passionate, very neurodivergent deep dive into Heated Rivalry—the gay hockey romance that has officially become a hyperfocus.
💬"If we didn't have the hetero patriarchal state that we live in that just assumes straight is the norm, people would be so much more fluid and open and just not scared of their own sexualities." - Caitlin Liz Fisher
This episode begins with a Pride Month PSA about visibility, queerness, shame, and the ridiculous amount of work people do to avoid accepting the full spectrum of human sexuality. Caitlin reminds listeners that Pride is not about “shoving sexuality in people’s faces.” It is about being alive, being out, and refusing to disappear in a world that still tries to push queer people back into the closet.
What We Explore in This Episode:

• Why Pride Month is about survival, visibility, celebration, and resistance
• The shame and fear many people carry around sexuality and same-sex attraction
• How heteronormativity limits people’s ability to explore their own desire
• Why Heated Rivalry became Caitlin’s latest hyperfocus
• Why slow-burn enemies-to-lovers stories can feel so emotionally powerful
• The risks Shane and Ilya face as queer athletes in a deeply unsafe world
• How fear, secrecy, intimacy, and longing shape the central romance

Queer media resources mentioned:

• Heated Rivalry: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt35495073/
• Game Changers book series by Rachel Reid: https://www.goodreads.com/series/245053-game-changers
• Schitt’s Creek: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3526078/

In this episode, Caitlin reflects on nervous systems, shame, emotional safety, and what happens when we finally experience relationships where we don’t have to suppress ourselves to be loved.
💬"If somebody's shaming you and telling you to, like, 'Shut that up and get a handle on it,' I don't think they have your best interests at heart. I think they have their best interests at heart, and their best interests are, 'You don't make them deal with anything.' And part of humanity is dealing with each other, right? That's community. That's love. That's relationship."
Through stories about startling easily, autistic burnout, relationships, and midnight dog walks, this conversation explores how healing often begins when our reactions stop being treated like inconveniences.
What We Explore in This Episode

• How shame can train us to suppress normal human reactions
• Why safe relationships can reveal old wounds and triggers
• The difference between being told you're safe and actually feeling safe
• Nervous system healing and learning that you do not have to carry everything alone
• Why healthy relationships create room for your full humanity

In this episode, Caitlin Fisher reflects on trauma responses, people-pleasing, relationship conditioning, compulsory heterosexuality, polyamory, patriarchy, and the surreal realization that maybe… not everything is her fault.
💬"I'm constantly blaming myself for emergencies and problems that have not even occurred yet. I'm just walking around with a little sign above my head that says, 'You can blame me for that.' And I've been giving that away for free to people. I've just been giving them a get out of accountability free card... We're not doing that anymore because I'm tired, and I have better things to do with my life, such as living a life." - Caitlin Liz Fisher
What begins as a story about running out of whipped cream spirals into a layered conversation about nervous system healing, accountability, toxic conditioning, queer identity, relationship structures, and the strange cultural expectations we absorb without realizing it.
And honestly? Sometimes healing looks like sitting in your kitchen realizing someone said “damn it” and your body didn’t immediately prepare for a full on emotional battle.
What We Explore in This Episode

• How trauma can create hypervigilance and chronic self-blame
• The emotional relief of realizing you are not responsible for everyone’s feelings
• Compulsory heterosexuality and questioning relationship norms
• Polyamory, kitchen table dynamics, and relationship hierarchy
• Patriarchy, gender conditioning, and why hygiene somehow became “feminine”
• The relationship escalator and why default societal scripts deserve questioning
• How nervous system safety changes the way we experience conflict and mistakes

In this episode, Caitlin reflects on taking their first in-person drawing class in years and accidentally stumbling into a bigger realization about creativity, friendship, perfectionism, and neurodivergent self-worth. What starts as a story about pencils, charcoal, and sensory nightmares slowly unfolds into a conversation about being perceived, finding safe people, and realizing that maybe making friends isn’t about performing correctly after all.💜
💬“Apparently all you have to do is just be yourself, and the people that like that will come sit by you.” - Caitlin Liz Fisher
What We Explore in This Episode

• Perfectionism and the fear of “wasting” good art supplies
• AuDHD work experiences and supportive workplaces
• Friendship, authenticity, and accidental community-building
• Letting hobbies exist without monetizing or mastering them
• Reconnecting with the crafty, playful parts of yourself

Gentle Reminders From This Episode

• Your hobbies do not need to become productive to matter.
• Warm-ups count.
• Tiny creative crumbs count.
• You do not have to earn the right to use nice materials.
• Friendship is often less complicated than trauma taught us it would be.
• Accommodating yourself is not failure.
• Your human experience is worthy of the paper.

Attention is not just about being seen. It’s about being known. The people closest to us are close because they notice us.  They pay attention to our needs, our moods, our patterns. Giving our attention says: This matters to me. And when that’s missing, it can shape how we show up in relationships—whether that looks like avoiding needs altogether or longing to be noticed without knowing how to ask.
In this episode, Caitlin explores something many of us quietly wrestle with: our very human need for attention. They also introduce us to a psychological concept called the Spotlight Effect, which explains why we tend to overestimate how much people notice us. This conversation reframes attention not as something shameful, but as something we need to feel seen, held, and understood.
“We are shaped and molded by people around us. But at the end of the day, like we have to know ourselves and we have to know how to take care of ourselves. So like your world should include other people, but it cannot revolve around other people because then you are losing yourself."
What We Explore in This Episode

• Why needing attention is a fundamental human experience
• The difference between healthy attention and shame-based narratives
• How trauma can push us to center others and abandon ourselves
• Becoming the center of your own world (without losing connection)
• The “spotlight effect” and why people notice you less than you think
• Reframing attention as intimacy, care, and mutual recognition