It’s so very nearly October! That means you are legitimately allowed to throw syrups in your coffee, marvel at acorns (bumper crop this year) and watch Scary movies until at least mid November.
To help you along, Gothic City Sirens have provided you with a List of movies to get working through.
"Silent Hill: because it’s so different. It’s based on a horror game, it has great monsters, an atmospheric setting and a spooky siren.
Get Out: it’s brilliantly acted and different, with a hilarious best friend side kick. The horror is more subtle yet also more terrifying.
Hammer Horror’s Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde: We loved that one. It was clever, and the Victorian London setting added to the gothic feel. Watch the classics!
Digging up the Marrow: We love Adam Green’s films, and the documentary style makes it seem real.
The Taking of Deborah Logan: really clever indie horror film about dementia. It keeps you guessing ‘til the end.
Tucker and Dale vs Evil. Genius film. Absolutely genius. Hilarious and so many quoteable lines! It takes the trope of hillbilly murderers and twists it.
Cabin in the Woods: Again, a very smart film that knows the horror sub tropes and reworks them all.
Happy Death Day: We love horror comedy, and the lead actress is fabulous.
The Conjuring: Brilliant paranormal horror based on a true story. It’s the creepiest of the Conjuring franchise.
Dead Snow 1 & 2. Scandinavian horror is fantastic. And this one has Nazi Zombies." Who doesn't love a Nazi Zombie eh?
As if Gothic City Sirens couldn’t be any cooler; they are currently awaiting their prop maker producing a bespoke ‘live’ beating human heart for their latest Indie Horror film, AND have been in control of the clapperboard on their friends film! “We much prefer being crew” they tell me, regaling the times that they have wrapped film sets in cellophane. Whilst they look forwards to the opportunity to appear in front of the camera, they attribute their preference to behind the scenes largely due to the fact their autism can be a barrier to performance.
A rare breed
“Our mum suspected we had autism when we were 18 months old”. But their diagnosis didn’t come until 2022 when they were age 38. Being female identical twins is pretty rare, but for both to have been born with autistic brains is even rarer. Autism is largely known as a male condition. Historically, research has taken place using male participants by male researchers, so everything that we know about Autism stems from a male centric perspective to the point that it was thought that girls couldn’t “get it”. We obviously know this isn’t true and that neuro divergence exists in female brains, however for females, it is rarely picked up and diagnosed until their early teens at the earliest.
There’s a raft of reasons for this including that females are great problem solvers and “fake” neuro typicality until life and relationships become so complicated and nuanced that they can’t fake it any more. For those of you who are screaming gender words at me… you’re going to have to bear with me on this one. Our psychology and mental health research as it exists, is based entirely on engendered brain research. Male brains. Female brains. In the 1980’s and 1990’s when Gothic City Sirens would have been growing up, the idea of autistic identical female twins would have been so rare that they would have either been preposterous or in the “big book of medical journal rarities” <this is not a real book. Please don’t Google it>.
Autism is a spectrum, and in my professional opinion, I feel that everyone is on that spectrum in some regard. “Low functioning” autism generally refers to people who’s day to day life is negatively impacted by their autism. This can include not developing language communication skills or self awareness. “High functioning” autism generally refers to people who have learned or adopted behaviours and strategies which enable them to ‘mask’ their symptoms. Typically this might be a person who ragingly has sensory overload in a supermarket (for example) but knows it is not socially appropriate to have a melt down in the middle of the dairy aisle, and instead holds it in until they get home. Alternatively this might be a person who has developed social anxiety because they lack the social communication skills required to form a variety of relationships, they mask this by avoiding going out.
For Gothic City Sirens, communication skills and social anxiety have always been an issue for them. “We used to refuse to enter a playground if another child was in there” they tell me about their early days with Autism. “If we were upset as babies, we didn’t like to be cuddled (still don’t) so mum put us in our cot together and we’d be happy. We didn’t speak English until we were two and a half, as we had our own twin language and would only communicate with each other. Though we started reading at two and a half, soon as we started speaking English, so we were always really advanced in reading. We read Jaws and Watership Down when we were 9, and were reading Dean Koontz and Stephen King by the time we were thirteen. We were mute for the first couple of years in school, but autism wasn’t a ‘girl thing’ and they said we were just shy.”
Gothic City Sirens, like so many ND peeps back in the 90’s, felt like they had zero support or understanding throughout school, and experienced what can only be described as horrendous bullying. They tell me the motive for the bullies was “mostly for being twins and for being weird. We refused to blend in. We’d have things thrown at us, we were spat on, someone tried to set us on fire, we were punched, but the worst was the verbal abuse. We’re still scarred by it. It got so bad we dropped out of school for the last two years. This led to us suffering extreme social phobia that kept us housebound for 10 years.”
Just Breathe
Adults, either diagnosed or otherwise, who have grown up in such adversity surrounding their ND, are most likely to be living with co-morbid Anxiety, Depression, and/or Post Traumatic Stress. The mental health component becomes the “primary need” or from a differential diagnostic perspective, is “diagnostically overshadowing” the core need which is the Autism. We tend to charge in with helpful solutions and offers of treatment for the symptoms associated with the mental health, such as behavioural activation and cognitive behavioural therapy, when we should in fact be focussing on supporting the Autism, making the environment feel safe and accessible for the individuals before then assessing what impact this has on their mental health.
Even as teens and as adults, Gothic City Sirens explain that they revert to coping strategies that they used as babies. “We tend to go mute when we become overwhelmed, so we barely spoke in high school. They didn’t know we were autistic. We didn’t know we were autistic. We were the “freaks”. That was their favourite nickname for us.” Had provisions been put in place to support them with sensory processing at that time, it is likely that instead of being non verbally communicative, they would find alternative coping strategies or even be in a place where they didn’t need to strategise their way through school.
Many children with ND who have speech and communication issues are referred to Speech and Language Therapy. However, due to the politics surrounding the commissioning of services (especially in England) accessing other therapies such as Occupational Therapy and Sensory Integration, is somewhat of a lottery, so the responsibility to “fix” the issues lie quite firmly at the doorstep of Speech and Language Therapists. Whilst Speech and Language Therapy can be super helpful for many ND people, sensory integration techniques and exercises are more likely to yield the results needed in the overwhelmed ND brain, quicker than the traditional Speech and Language therapies which are currently recommended in the NICE guidelines.
It has been proven that if we engage children in activities that cross the midline, and that integrate the areas of our brains responsible for processing sensory input, we not only see improvements in speech and communication, but as adults, individuals will be less likely to engage in sensory deprivation seeking behaviours - like - “lying in abandoned mortuary fridges” in order to “be alone, calm down and just breathe.”
Pole glorious pole
As they talk to me, I can help but imagine a world where schools have within their gymnasiums, a few X-Pole’s tucked away, ready to whip out for PE sessions, well-being days, and movement breaks. A land where any young person who may be struggling, can climb, swing, spin, hang upside down, and feel all the mighty power of pole. Had this have been a reality for Gothic City Sirens growing up, would their experience of life have been different? At that crucial teenage stage of brain development, if there was an outlet there for them that worked, could we have prevented the mental health difficulties that they described?
“When the depression kicked in at 14 we quit everything. We tried loads of different exercise classes and while we enjoyed them, nothing sparked that obsession. It wasn’t until we were 33 that we found Pole Dancing, we went along with someone we knew from high school and what appealed to us is that we didn’t have to join a class, that it could be just us. Instantly hooked! People don’t appreciate how uncomfortable it is being in a class! Being around a lot of people in a small space, with the noise of everyone talking and the music, is very overwhelming. Our hearing is so sensitive that we hear everything, which makes it hard to then hear the instructor. With 1-2-1 classes, you can focus on the pole without having to contend with the hyper-stimulating environment of a class.”
The research tells us that there are many environmental factors unique to Pole as a form of exercise. The focus away from “performing to a mirror”, the smaller class sizes, the generally quieter environment than a large studio inside a commercial gym, are all huge motivating factors for polers. Without realising it, we have created an exceptionally ND inclusive recreation and exercise which has underlying scientific wizardry that has unique psychotherapeutic benefits for a range of humans with different mental health issues.
“Pole has most definitely positively impacted our mental health! For example, we’ve always hated revealing our skin. Even as kids, we would rather overheat and suffer sunstroke than wear a t-shirt and shorts. Having our skin out felt like we were exposed. We were always completely covered. For our first pole lesson, we showed up in hoodies and trousers. As we became more advanced, we had to wear shorts and crop tops. This was so painfully uncomfortable for us! So as more skin got exposed, more tattoos got added, so they’re like a form of armour. Now we’re perfectly comfortable not wearing much for pole. The other day, we even walked to the gym in shorts! This would never have happened without pole. It's also helped us (forced us) to make physical contact with people. We don’t freak out if our instructors touch us, because they’re spotting us, and being teachers, we have to spot others, though we always tell them where we’re going to put our hands, and ask if it’s ok. Although if someone we don’t know suddenly touches us, we still flinch a bit. Like facial expressions and eye contact, it’s something we don’t understand. When we opened our mobile studio, we bought silicone poles so people wouldn’t have to take their clothes off if they weren’t comfortable.” They explain, describing more of the simple ways to be more ND friendly. “We force ourselves to face our class when leading the warm up…” which begs the question, do we have to?
Competition Pole and Autism
We moved on to talk about competition pole. And quickly realised this is an entire blog piece in its own right. “We’re those people openly criticising [the competition Pole scene] which hasn’t always gone down well! Not everyone likes to hear that they’re not as inclusive as they think they are. But if an ND person is saying that an event is not ND-friendly, NT people don’t get to say that it is. We love shaking things up. We’ve always been rebellious, always challenged the system, always stood up for what we believed in, even if it ended badly for us. Being Autistic means we have a strong sense of justice. We’ve rocked up with our rock and metal soundtrack, our coffins, our black costumes, our gothic horror vibe, our dead pan facial expressions and refusal to look at anyone, and basically gone “we’re different. Deal with it.” This of course means we will never win. But people remember us. Though that’s not always a good thing! We’d rather lose because we can’t make eye contact, and have people love and remember our routine, than win because we looked at the judges, and have nobody remember what we did.”
But a lifetime of learning how to block out outside stimuli in order for them to function as ‘acceptable’ human beings, has provided Gothic City Sirens with some unique transferable skills for stage performance. “We don’t hear the cheers, we don’t see the judges or audiences, (we’re also short-sighted so can’t see them even if we looked) there is just us and our music, which allows us to perform without having a meltdown.” The epitome of mindful performance, in the moment, totally connected to the present.
Whilst they praise those who have reached out to them on Instagram to ask how to make competition Pole more ND friendly, and that so many people are moving mountains to change the way they run comps, they still affirm that there is much in need of change. “Oh so much! We can’t speak for everyone who is ND, because it’s different for everyone. People with ADHD don’t often have the same issue with eye contact that Autistic people do, but they share the same overstimulation issues. ADHD isn’t a spectrum disorder, whereas Autism is, so one person’s Autism isn’t the same as someone else’s. We can only speak for us and what we think should change. The simplest thing would be quiet areas backstage would be much appreciated. Dressing rooms are cramped, chaotic, with high energy, lots of noise, lots of movement. It can be quite painful. Especially when you’re trying so desperately hard to appear “normal.” Masking is exhausting, but we’ve done it for so long, we don’t know how to unmask, because masking means survival. A quiet area allows people to decompress, stim if they need to, to exist in their own little bubble without worrying whether they come across as weird. We have so much going on inside our heads that we sit perfectly still, often staring into space, because we’ve shut down. NDs don’t want to be shut away – most are quite sociable, (not us, we’re miserable buggers) but having somewhere to decompress is important. It doesn’t have to be a room, just an area, dedicated to quietness.”
But we still have a way to go. We need to align our approaches to Pole and aerial coaching so that we can offer the same standards of ND inclusivity, and ultimately be assured that we are coaching “safely” from a mental health perspective. This requires bespoke training for coaches and studio owners and - I hope - an accredited course of study that ensures coaches (who are already doing most of this stuff anyway) can be rest assured they are supporting people in a safe and evidenced based manner.
What do you think? How do you include ND friendly practises? What does your coach do well? What needs to change?
Gothic City Sirens can be found…
September 25th – UKAAP
October 15th – performing at Active Cherry’s showcase.
October 22nd – Midlands Pole Championship
November 12th – English Riviera pole comp.
We’ve also entered The Great British Pole Championships, and will enter Yorkshire Pole Championships again, but have to wait to find out if we make it to the finals.
We wish them good luck and can’t wait to see what they bring to the stage!