Lauren loves to talk. She’ll talk to anyone — baristas, postal carriers, neighborhood dog walkers. But her talking is more than just idle chit chat — it’s a kind of compulsion that’s gotten her in a lot of trouble over her life. Lauren’s never been able to turn it off and has never been able to figure out why… until recently, thanks to a diagnosis that changed everything.
Pushkin. A little content warning. We get into some Sado descriptions of childhood punishment in this episode, so keep that in mind when listening. Okay, onwards. I have always been a talker, but not just a person who talks. I am a person who loves to talk. I talk all the time. I talked to the mail carrier. I talked to my dog. I talked to every grocery bagger and take a taker. When I'm alone in my house, I talked to no one. I especially love talking to my neighbors. Hi, how are you doing some winter cleaning? No? No, what do you mean? You're trimming everything here? My love affair with talking began early. My beliague mother Kathy, can't quite remember when I started using words, but she knows it was way too soon. She would have preferred a few more months of baby babble bliss, just a little bit more calm before the relentless torrent of words made landfall on her shores. But tough tone nails for her. It didn't happen like that, And once I started talking, I just didn't stop. At a glance, my talking was harmless enough. Questions and thoughts uttered out loud, which is fine when you're a toddlerdoodling around in your playroom, but it's a totally different situation once you're in school, or on a team or in a workplace. You can't just blurt out whatever query, critique, or witticism that comes to mind. You can't endlessly and add her on because you think you're interesting or because you don't like silence. You have to learn how to calm the vesuvian eruptions spewing from your mouth, which is something I've never really been able to do and I can't seem to figure out why. But it's not just that I have an overactive mouth. Lots of people talk and talk and talk. My uncle Gary is a champion talker. He once told me a twenty minute story about a tetnas shot for me understanding my talking was actually about unpacking the pain and anxiety that my mouth has caused over the years, my inability to relax in the face of quietude, my unintentionally harsh tone, my ear splitting loudness. I wanted to grasp why I didn't quite understand how to properly communicate with the world, or how to properly exit a conversation. All right, Well, enjoy your trimming. All right, Well, y'all have a nice afternoon. By smoke, be good. If you didn't catch that. I said goodbye to my neighbor twice and her dogs smoke once, and those were just the goodbyes. I'm letting you here. What can I say? I just love chatting, and leaving a chat is hard, and so when I finally figured out the why behind my compulsive talking, the answer knocked me on my behind. My family was taken aback, and my friends were like what people I work with were fully confused. And the reason for my gift of gab, my loquacity, my talcoholism. I'm autistic and that probably flies in the face of everything you thought you knew about autism. So imagine how shocked I was when I got that diagnosis. You're listening to the loudest girl in the world. Who is me, Lauren Ober. I'm a journalist and a podcast host, and perhaps more importantly for our purposes, I'm a person on a mission, a mission to figure out a lot of things. Why I've always been thought of as difficult, why I feel like I'm always struggling with my emotions, and why I just can't shut up to it. I've now been talking for four straight minutes, and that's a lot of minutes of talking. The Loudest Girl in the World is the story of my journey to understand what the hell it means to be on the autism spectrum and how to live life is a newly diagnosed autistic woman. This podcast is about finding yourself broken in a pretty dark place and emerging from that place a mostly glued back together person. For years, maybe even decades, life just seemed harder than it should have been for me. And then, in the middle of a global pandemic, when the entire world was on fire and we were all reevaluating our lives, I went searching for answers and I've found them in a diagnosis I never could have anticipated. So I want to tell you about a formative event that led me to this place of self discovery. It happened in my sixth grade year, and looking back at it now, it feels like my entire elementary career was leading up to this one moment. But before I can tell you about that, I have to take you for a wander through Little Lauren Land. My mom, Cathy Lauren, had a difficult time connecting with kids. Always from the time she was young, when when we would have play dates and stuff, and she'd want to play her own thing, and the girls that came over would want to do something different, and so they'd be usually usually more girly than spot on dad. That checks out. Not a lot of Barbie friend time for me. Also, her quote disruptive behavior, there was no mean intent behind it. She could not manage herself in a classroom setting, and not being able to be the one who was talking that always stood out. All that caused some problems for little Lauren in school because apparently not everyone likes to be talked to or at while they're sitting at their desk trying to concentrate on their times tables, and apparently teachers don't like it when students talk incessantly. It kind of disrupts their whole flow. So all this means that little Lauren that's me was in trouble a lot in elementary school. I was often ejected from class and forced to sit in the hall by myself. My desk would be moved next to the teachers, and numerous times teachers tried and failed to institute a sticker based reward system to get me to quiet down, as if I would stop talking for a lousy sticker. One of my more memorable punishments was the wall. The wall was where the kids spent recess. Basically, a teacher would discipline me saying you're going on the wall, which meant that for the whole of recess I was to stand against an outer wall of the school. My fellow batties and I had to have one part of our bodies touching the wall at all times, and there was absolutely no talking. The wall is pretty memorable and looms large in my inner child psyche Like damn, I did a lot of standing against cold brick when I was a kid. If you're a teacher and you're listening, don't use any of these punishments on your students. They're humiliating and scarring, and unless you want to put the bill for their therapy, you should think about some more humane alternatives. But when I think about my talking and how much trouble it got me in the wall or the hall, banishment or the desk next to the teacher are not the punishments I keep coming back to over and over. That would be the box the box event happened on Halloween thirty one years ago, and it came up recently. On a trip home to see my folks. I was in the car driving with my mom Kathy, who I call Kathy, and my stepdad Bob. We're talking about Halloween costumes and whether any of my childhood looks would ever preclude me from getting nominated to, say, the Supreme Court. Now, I'd say my lack of a law degree might be the first disqualifier there. You never know these days to be nominated for the Supreme Court. Would it be? No, You'll never find those photos? Who has those photos? That's right? That was pre internet. Pretty sure there's nothing objectionable about a devil or a clown costume some of my early Halloween hits. But then I start thinking about my favorite costume ever, my pippylong Stocking ensemble. I'll never forget. I mean, my pippylong stuck in costume is forever mired. You're forgiven if you don't know who pippylong Stocking is. Barely Pippy is a fictional character from a Swedish children's book. She has red hair and also a horse and a monkey in a righteous sense of justice. And if that isn't fun enough, Pippy is also a little bit naughty orphan with superhuman strength. She's piattails, she's freckles, she's fun if you're young or old, and she's loved the world over. She's Pippy long Stocking. Pippy was a real idol of mine. I truly thought I was her in my extremely on point costume. But when I think about my costume, I inevitably think of the box because the two are forever linked. I was so proud of that costume. It should have been my best Halloween ever. But then the box incident occurred, and my memory of that day is fully painted. Oh I know, because you were because why confinement? Yeah, and you're home not by me, the teacher, Patty Patterson. Yeah, put me in a cage. More accurately, it was a box, a three sided box, like the size of something your new refrigerator might come in. Also, if it sounds like Kathy and I are harsh with each other, well that's just the way we talked. I can't believe that it was. Yes, it was. Don't you remember you were a home room mom and you I remember that, but I didn't remember the teacher. I don't remember what year I was a home room mom every year. I want you to picture this. It's a sixth grade classroom and the blackboards are decorated with ghosts and ghouls for Halloween. All the desks are in neat rows facing the front with little treat bags on them, organized by the homeroom moms. There were no home room dads. Lol. This was nineteen ninety one. The kids are milling around their desks, comparing candy and showing off their costumes. But then and there's a little desk at the back, and whose desk is it? Whose desk was it? And what was around the desk hardboard or some sort of partition. Yeah, a three sided cardboard box. My desk wasn't in any of the neat rows. My desk was at the back of the classroom with a giant cardboard partition around it, like six feet tall. I couldn't see my classmates and they couldn't see me, which was a shame because my costume really was the most dope. For the life of me, I can't remember what I did to get put in the box. Probably murder, also arson. No, I can only guess that the partition went up both as a punishment for some chatting related violation and to prevent me from talking to my classmates also from distracting them with any antics. Or maybe Miss Patterson was trying to preempt any shenanigans from happenings. Why did you talk to everybody around? But why would you do that to a child? I didn't do it, not you, the teacher did it. But why I did it? That's just the way it was. Then I can't explain to you. They just did it. Then. It's the saddest thing. I loved that costume. I had copper wire braided into my hair, freckles on my face. I had a little hobo costume, kind of pippylong stocking. Do you think anybody would put pippylong stocking in a box? I think we can all agree that the answer to that question is a resounding no. Now, at this point in my umteenth three telling of this story, my folks are laughing at me. I love that you guys are laughing about this thing. That it has stuck with me for fifty seven, nine hundred years, and it's stuck with me because it was extremely traumatic. It was traumatic. No one in my class dropped that, Yeah, exactly. I got thrown out of the room during singing class. Yeah, I got through another room every Tuesday. Basically, the story of the Box has stuck with me all these many years later because it changed the way I felt about myself as a kid, and that feeling never really changed as I grew up. Today as an adult, I almost always think I'm bad or I'm doing bad things, or people think I'm doing bad things. I feel isolated from my peers, and I have a sense that I deserve it. I have internalized the message of the box that I am a person with problems who needs to be separated from the herd. I reached out to my former teacher, Miss Patterson to talk about this, and I got this email in response. After giving your project a lot more thought, I've decided not to become involved. That is my finale answer. No amount of persuasion can change my decision. Well, all right, then, but she did wish me the very best in her email. I'm not blaming Miss Patterson for my childhood difficulties. I had problems making and keeping friends way before I stepped foot in her classroom. I'm pretty sure that at the time, I had like half a friend. But that particular punishment at that particular time in my life was so othering. It made me feel like I was straight up trash. And it's set in motion a self esteem spiral that still persists even today, like right this very minute, as I'm saying these words, which is why we should probably take a break so I can compose myself. When I talked to my parents about my obsessive talking and all the trouble I got into because of it, their take on it, some thirty years later is very different than mine. To my dad Russ Lauren, Lauren's behavior in school was obviously disruptive. I was was as bad as Lauren, or probably worse, and so you know, I didn't find it so upsetting. I didn't say that I found it upsetting. I just said that I noticed it and it was an issue. But your dad and I used to talk about and think, well, you know, the teachers are just going to have to get used to it. This is the way Lauren is. And I know we talked about this, this is the way she is. Yeah, let they should deal with how to deal with Lauren. But I definitely I was never really upset about it, you know, like there are some parents. Well my mother, I mean when those dames came home, came to our house and said, well Russell, I was so you know, lack of self control and almost like you know, she was freaked out because she would tell me, this reflects on me. Yeah. My parents' issue with my talking wasn't that it reflected poorly on them. It was that they were exhausted by it, especially my mom. Kathy is a textbook introvert. She gets her energy from people staying the hell away from her. When the pandemic forced most everyone to keep to their homes and twiddle their thumbs, Kathie was happier than I've seen her in a long time. When she retired from her job at a local hardware store midway through COVID times, she told me she was done dealing with the public, so having a loud tone, deaf, chatterbox child wasn't exactly easy for her. Kathy once told me that raising me was like raising three kids at once, and when my younger brother r J was in middle school, she declared that she was done being a parent. In some ways, the stork delivered Kathy the wrong daughter She would have been better off with a compliant, girly bookworm who ate all the food on her plate and didn't have an answer for exactly everything. But instead, my quiet little mom was stuck with a shrill no at all who rarely listened and didn't come with an off button. I used to play a game with Lauren. I would say, well, we have to stop talking now. The game little brother r Jaye coming in with the jokes very different, and maybe I should be in therapy to figure out why I couldn't deal with all the talking. I would argue, everyone needs to be in therapy, but that's just me. But my mom shouldn't have to pathologize her desire for quiet. There are lots of people in my life over the years who have wished I was less loud. When I was in college, I played a Division one lacrosse. When I got to talkie, one of my teammates, an outrageous Australia named Brook, used to sing a Simpson's line to shut me up, but in a nice way. Oh years for Brooke, I was so and my voice was the saxophone, and sometimes the instrument just needed to go back in its case, which is totally reasonable. But here's the deal. My talking isn't always a thing that gets me in trouble or creates awkward situations with strangers. It's also a thing that gets me jobs and wins me awards. I've been pretty lucky to find a career where I could talk for a living. Literally, I get paid to say words to people. I'm Lauren Ober and this is the Big Listen from WAMU and NPR. I'm Lauren Ober and from American Public Media. This is spectacular Failures. I'm Lauren Ober and this is fine Gorilla person the Miseducation of Coco. So I found a creative and professional outlet for all my blabbing. My parents are so proud. But also I've been able to harness my talking for other uses as well, even though I generally feel like I'm going to poop my pants when I'm doing it. I'm pretty great at speeches and presentations and live storytelling in these days. Now that I'm in my forties and I've had years of practice, I can basically hold my own at parties and social gatherings, as long as I can take ample breaks to recombobulate myself. Thank God for bathrooms to hide out in. If you saw me out in public, I might seem pretty damn delightful. Or at least that's what my friends told my producers when they called asking for descriptions of me. Yes, I almost always call her at charm school graduate like top of the class, valedictorian, charm School. Yeah, she isn't very loud, but she is also hilarious, and I think interesting and fun to talk to. She can talk about almost anything to anyone, brilliant, charming, distinctive. I don't worry about her at a party. I mostly like I know that she'll take care of that half of the room. She appears to be someone very comfortable in their own skin, and it's nice to be around like you feel well held in a conversation. But figuring out how to be charming and social has taken so much work. Until fairly recently, I spent many a professional conference hiding in my hotel room. Parties were dismal, too loud, too busy, too stressful, going out to dinner with people I didn't know, forget it. So in order to make minglings seem less burdensome, I've had to become a keen study in the ways of seamless social engagement, don't talk too much about yourself, how to maintain icontect your facial expressions. Basically, try to be like everyone else and don't be weird except I am weird. I'm a board certified weirdo. No matter how much I try, I still stare too much, scowl too hard, talk to you loud. Socializing still feels like dangerous territory despite my best efforts. Call it a midlife crisis, call it the wisdom of age, call it a hunch. But a couple of years ago, my need to understand why I am the way I am started making more and more noise inside my brain. I just couldn't reconcile why nothing in my life felt frictionless, nothing felt easy. But it wasn't just that I rambled on or had trouble at parties. So I started an informal accounting of all the things that I felt set me apart from my peers. I wanted to understand why I felt so crummy about myself, and Patty Patterson's Box was a big part of that, but it wasn't the only thing. I've always had troubles at work and difficulty with bosses telling me what to do. I am famously finicky, and the list of foods I won't eat, ranging from arugula to zucchini, is come long. I often don't want to be touched, and sometimes I involuntarily recoil when touched, which is a great look on dates. My ears are highly sensitive to all kinds of normal sounds, like headphone bleed and people biting their nails. I can't seem to get a system in place to regularly put away my laundry. I have nuclear grade meltdowns that make me not want to exist. I don't miss people when they go away, but I want to. I compulsively pull out my hair and have for thirty years. This list will be very familiar to autistic people, and trust it's just the tip of the iceberg. All of these traits, these quirks. When I added them all up, they just didn't feel normal. To be honest, I just didn't feel stoked about myself. No matter how well things were going for me personally and professionally, I still felt like I was Lady Sysiphus pushing giant rock up a hill, and for what what was at the top of that hill? That was so great. Anyway, the more I thought about it, the more I needed an answer, which I may or may not get. After this break, part of my awakening was spurred by the time I was spending with my partner, Hannah's teenage son Jacob. Have you made a lot of exactly zero? Would you like to? Maybe it's a complicated Jacob is autistic and was diagnosed as a little kid because of the rock Heart. My favorite Jacob story is that his first words were now available on DVD, and in him I found someone who was eerily similar to me, but in teen boy form. Jacob has an intense need to correct people he thinks are wrong. He has an overwrought sense of justice. He is aggressively blunt, He skillfully avoids eye contact, and sometimes he needs to skip down the sidewalk to burn off the excess energy and emotion welling up in his body. Also, Jacob is very funny. Jacob said this sentence to me in the restaurant. Bulgarian wedding music doesn't have any vocals in it. It doesn't wow, it doesn't you know. It's like trumpets and ship. Yeah, it's just trumpets and shit. When you have an autistic kid, you tend to see autistic traits and folks that the general population might overlook. The more Hanna got to know me, the more she was like, um, you know you're autistic, right, which is rude, but I forgive her because she did kind of know what she was talking about, and I was kind of thinking the same thing. I really was trying to remember, like what were my first clues. I mean there was a time we were in New York at an airbnb. Yeah, I mean you had to melt it like it was. That was kind of amazing because it was like a classic annoying New York airbnb where the owners are like, oh, you know you have this to yourself below, I'm going to come up and just make a tea or use the shower right exactly are ticket shower and like leave its steamy, but like pretend I was never fair, So it's like comical and annoying, but you totally melted down basically because the accommodations were chaotic and messy and not at all what I expected. That reaction was Hannah's first real indication that I might be a little different, because becoming borderline catatonic over a shitty Airbnb situation isn't typical. Of course, we joked about my idiosyncrasies. I'm so spectrum melol. My girlfriend is autistic, hahu. But that goofing kind of paved the way for a slightly more serious investigation. I started poking around on certain autism websites and YouTube channels. I began thinking more about my childhood. Then, as a little test balloon, I told my then therapist Arlene about my suspicion that I might be autistic, But the idea was still pretty half baked. I'm not an expert on it. Then I can see from what I do know and I'm trying to learn about it, that you know that you have autistic characteristics. But I mean, I couldn't actually be autistic, right. I owned a house and a car. I had a decent job, a girlfriend, a social network. I paid my bills on time, I kept my dog alive. Even when I was struggling, I always seemed to make it through. A previous therapist told me once when I was in between jobs, that I was the most highly motivated, slightly depressed, unemployed person she had ever come across. Well, if that isn't a feather in my cap. I don't know what is. Somehow, in my mind, being autistic seemed antithetical to living a typical, successful life, which is gross and ablest, and I fully know that. Still, I just kept telling myself that even though I might have a few autistic traits, I wasn't actually autistic. But then the pandemic happened, and my dog died, and I lost my job, and nearly every structure that was propping out my life seemed to fall away. It felt like I had been treading water for so long, and then someone took away my floaties. I started to drown, and while it was submerged, the atonal chorus inside my head became deafening. Figuring out my life my brain took on an urgent quality. I just needed to understand, and I needed to know that I wasn't bad. While all my non essential friends we're learning how to make sour dough or adopting pandemic dogs or dusting off the old acoustic guitar, my pandemic project became about something else, trying to unscramble my brain. And then finally, in November twenty twenty, I did sort of. I took the test. You've been listening to the Loudest Girl in the World. It's hosted, written in executive produced by me Lauren Obert. Our senior producer is writer. Also our associate producer is David Jah. Sophie Crane is our show runner and senior editor. Jake Gorski is our mix engineer. Music composed by my autistic Kiwie Pale the Inimitable Lady Hawk. Our artwork was created by the autistic illustrator Loretta Ipsum. The show was fact checked by Andrea Lopez Cruzado, and our autism consultant is Sarah Cappett. Executive producers are Mea Lobell and Lie tom Mullat. Special thanks to my pals Sharta balachandran or Uela, Callie Cyrus, Lulu Miller, Rob Quinn and Emily Vesselin for letting my producers pick your brains. And thanks to my family for graciously allowing me to stick microphones in your faces. And thanks to you friend for listening