Tyler Barnett: Autism Advocacy with GAP Music and Empowerment

Welcome to Why Not Me? Embracing Autism and Mental Health Worldwide?
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one story at a time. Hi, I'm Tony Mantur. Welcome
to Why Not Me? Embracing Autism and Mental Health Worldwide.
If these conversations resonate with you, I invite you to
tap follow. It helps us reach more people who may
need to hear them. Thank you for being here. Joining
us today is Tyler Barnett. He is the founder of
Tyler Barnett PR. A public relations strategist and autistic music
creator dedicated to empowering the autism community through intentional sound
design and authentic storytelling. He creates music that supports emotional regulation,
self expression, and representation. His work stands at the intersection
of advocacy, creativity, and lived experience. His journey is one
that you do want to hear, So before we dive
into our episode, we'll be back with an uninterrupted show
right after a word from our sponsors. Thanks for joining
us today, Ah, thank.
You so much for having me, Tony, I'm happy to
be here.
If you would tell little bit about yourself and what
you're doing.
Basically, for the last forty plus years, I've been experimenting
in a lot of different mediums of art and music.
My profession, my day job is a publicist, and I've
publicized other musicians and people and products and such. And
this is really the first project that I've put out
there for myself, first time I've put myself out there
with what I do versus what a client does, because
I felt that this music I'm making needs to be
shared with the nautism community and with anybody really who's
looking for regulation.
Before we get too far into this, could you tell
the audience if you're autistic yourself. I am.
I was diagnosed six months ago, okay, and my journey's
been very interesting. I don't know if you want me
to get into that at all.
Oh, yes, absolutely, let's dive into what led you to
think that you may need to get diagnosed.
It's a really great question. I've always thought differently. I've
always known that I've always been different. I've always known.
That when you say you were different, what is your
definition of different?
You know? I can tell you what it is now
with the diagnosis, But prior I didn't know exactly what
made me different. I knew I was, and I dive
really deep into things, I mean hard into music and
art especially, and I've always been really into patterns and
pattern recognition. I've always struggled with educational environments, which is
why I created my own business. And I've always kind
of taught myself how to be I've been very aware
of like eye contact, for example, I've had to teach
myself eye contact. I've had to teach myself communication in
a particular way. It's funny. I'm a professional communicator, so
I've been asking in such a complicated way for so
long that I didn't think anything was different about me
or special. My daughter, she's ten years old. We suspected
she might be autistic and she was misdiagnosed with all
sorts of things, and I would go into a room
to talk to her and she would say, Daddy, you're autistic.
I didn't even know she knew what that word meant.
So why do you say that? She's like, well, you
just are and you're always wiggling your toes and you're
always twitching, and you know there's an autistic kid in
her school and she knows a lot about autisms and
what not. And I thought, what a weird thing for
my kid to say.
And she said them multiple times, Right, Okay.
I went into a chat GPT and I wrote, and
it's important to note I've been working with chat GPT
for three years since it came out. I've built a
bot that knows me better than anybody. I've shared everything
openly and you know, unmasked with GPT. And I said, hey,
how would I know if I'm autistic? And the system
responded like it had been waiting for me to ask
that question. And I started going through it. I was
like everything was hitting, every single thing was hitting, and
I was like, oh my god. I didn't believe it.
So I had it create like a dozen different tests
based on psychology and evaluation got like one hundred percent
correct on all those. Bill didn't believe it. I'm still
kind of in denial of it, but I mean, there's
just no doubt about it.
Did you go to a psychologist and actually get diagnosed?
So I've been to therapists, psychiatrists, psychologist my whole life.
I was misdiagnosed bipolar, terribly misdiagnosed and medicated as if
I was bipolar, which I'm not, never have been. And
so I did it myself. You know, I'm self diagnosed it.
Did talk to my psychiatrist about it. She agreed, She
said that makes sense. She didn't want to pursue diagnosis,
and I've decided not to maybe down the road, but
there's so much information out there, you know. It's just
I know I've always known. And when I did all
the reading and took all the tests, I just started crying.
I just started crying so hard because all of a sudden,
it was like, Okay, this explains it. One more piece
is that I've always been in some sort of pain
since I was a kid. I just just something that's
always been painful. And when I had my daughter and
I got married I got a house, my business is thriving.
I was miserable. I didn't know why I would like
pound the floor and I was painting what is wrong
with me? And so anyway, this answered all my questions.
That's interesting, Chat GPT diagnosis, you are correct. The way
that chat GPT works is so different than all the others.
It does seem like you're speaking with another person on
the other side. By creating this thread and putting all
this information into chat GPT and going back and forth
with it. What was your process? What was the step
by step process that you did with chat GPT, And
once you came back with the diagnosis that it gave you,
how did you accept it? And then how did you
respond to it?
The great question. I'll answer this in two different parts.
First of all, I mentioned the GPT and I've been
working together for three years. When I say working together,
I mean I worked that every day on my business.
I create aiart with it, music with it, I create
lyrics and poems, and I dive deep into these subjects.
And so it already had a profile of me that
was based in deep pattern recognition how I talk specifically,
it can detect pattern changes in me I would have
I guess what it would are now considered to be
either meltdowns or total shutdowns, where I would have high
output days and just be frozen the next day, and
I would document all of this. I asked it to
go back over the last three years and tell me
if I fit the bill, and it said, one hundred percent,
you do. You absolutely do. So that was the first part,
based on data that I've provided myself over three years, unmasked,
totally trans second part is I took a very scientific approach.
I decided that I was going to take every single
test available that's reputable and accepted. I decided to analyze
my own work. So I've done a lot of painting
and work based on the patterns of three sixty nine
in the universe. I'm a painter of the Enzo, which
is a Japanese technique of meditative painting. I went through
all of the things I've done and why I've done them,
and so I took a very scientific approach, and then
I took a data driven approach from GPT. I put
the two together and I thought about it a lot
for quite a few weeks and couldn't deny it. And
the last couple of days I started telling people and
it feels really nice. Just still very weird. I'm gaslighting
myself about it still. But oh and also, my daughter's autistic.
She was diagnosed after me, once I figured it out,
we went down her road and figured that out. She's
beneficially diagnosed.
Can you tell me the reaction. I speak with many
different people that tell others that they are autistic, the
response they get, Some are good and some are not
what they expected. What has been your reaction? You've dealt
with so many people, with so many different layers of
your journey and what you do. So when you started
telling people, what was the response that you received?
It wasn't great. I told my family first, and they
just basically denied me of the of the reality that
I'm living in. I was gas lit by my mom
or you know. I told my mom. I thought that
I would get some sort of supportive response. She's like,
well did a doctor say this? And how do you know?
And you're not.
I tried to share it with brothers and they had
a similar response. And my dad actually had a great response.
He said, Okay, you know, it doesn't change anything, which
exactly the right response.
Right right exactly.
And then I started talking about it with people in
the autism community that were also autistic, that were I
was surrounded by that. I you know, some I didn't
even know were autistic, that were just other artists and
musicians and creatives. Last night, I was sitting with an actor,
a very well known actor, was a good friend of mine,
and we're just having a personal conversation. I can tell
he's neurodiversion. I suspected maybe he's a little like me,
and he was sharing some personal mental health stuff and
I just came out tony. It just was like, I said, well,
let me share it to you. I'm autistic and I
make this music and this art and I want to
show to you. And he was cool, man, he was
just like, oh, that's interesting, you know, tell me about it.
I was able for the first time talk about my
brain and my creativity and my history and all of that.
So it's been mixed. People either deny me of the reality,
which is fine. I don't need anyone else's validation for this,
and then others have just been really cool about it,
you know. So it's mixed.
Well, the perception is changing. Yep, there is still a
group of people that feel that if you get diagnosed autistic,
it's a death sentence and it's not right. So unfortunately
you have to get past that. Now, let's talk about
your masking. How did you go about masking when you
did not know you were autistic? I think that's very interesting.
Yeah, So I tried to go to college, couldn't really
finish it. I wasn't really interested in finishing it. I
wanted to get into entertainment, so I studied film. I
have always been able to talk my way into anything.
It's been my superpower. So I learned early that I
needed to be able to convince people of things because
I wanted to do things that were different than other people.
I wanted to, you know, make movies and start companies
and all this stuff. And so I started by mirroring
other people. Figured out at a young age that if
I just made the faces they made smiled and they smiled,
it made people comfortable. And then eventually that led me
to eye contact. I realized I'm not making eye contact
and I didn't think anything of it's it's like, okay,
I should learn how to do this. That should have
been the first.
Sign, right right now, do you take things literally? I
know a lot of autistic people will have a very
difficult time separating people who are serious or are not serious.
Which category do you tend to be in when it
comes to being literal? Well?
Both. I am extremely literal. I love things to be literal.
It makes me happy. So when people say one thing,
this trives me insane. When people say something, I block
the words specifically then and if they say they didn't
say it, or they said something else, or they changed it,
my brain just like malfunctions. No, that's not what happen.
Drives me insane, That's not what happened. On the flip side,
I'm a funny Jewish person. We're rooted in sarcasm and
humor and non literal jokes a lot of the time.
So I was raised in an environment where I could
be goofy and silly and make shit up. And since
I've realized that I am autistic, I've stopped trying so
hard to not be so literal. Now I'm like, Okay,
this is how I am, this is how'm going to be.
It's challenging because people don't always know how to react
to that. Just a real quick story, I was meeting
with a client. I didn't realize I was unmasked. I
had just gotten through all this autism and stuff. I
was really proud of it. And I was looking at
him and he stops talking and he goes, why are
you looking at me like that? No one's ever said
that to me before? Ever, in eighteen years of doing publicity,
I've never heard that. What does that mean? And then
it occurred to me in a second what I was
doing or what I was not doing, and I went.
Sho, hey, you know on going.
That was the first time I caught it happening in
a conversation. I caught myself throwing the mask on and
doing the dog and pone show. And I was just
devastated after that meeting.
Now, your daughter is ten years old and she's autistic.
She's told you that you are autistic. She was being
very open and honest with you about what she saw
about you. Now that she's been diagnosed and is autistic,
how is she handling it? It must be a whole
new world for her because she's going to school. Unfortunately,
at schools sometimes kids can be mean and bullies. So
how is she handling it?
Yeah, Well, she's extremely very high function she's extremely well socialized,
well masked, and she's got a lot of friends. She
makes eye contact. She's incredibly talented at dance and other
creative things. But she cannot get through school. She cries
every day, she has meltdowns. It's hard for me to
even talk about. We've been trying to figure out what
the hell's been going on for ten years. You know.
We met with her whole school team yesterday and they're
telling us that she's defiant and she's avoiding class and
she's not doing the work, and we're like, hey, this
is not defiance, this is not anything more than a
nervous system that's overloaded. The label for her, though, was
very empowering. She took it right away. She knew what
autism was already. When we told her, okay, this is
what we think is happening, She's like, yeah, I think
I'm this much autistic. She's like she tells her friends,
she's embraced it. She talks about stimming, she talks about regulation.
She's extremely brilliant, you know. But yeah, she had a
melt down in the middle of her class and was
hitting herself in the head. So, you know, as a parent.
It's extremely difficult to watch this happen, but it's also
empowering to know that I know what's going on with
her and there's nothing wrong with her.
Does she have the ability to know and feel when
a meltdown is coming on? Where she can get away
from people that way? By being away from people this way,
she can go through her fifteen twenty minutes or whatever
timeframe it is to calm down. Then she can get
back to class and do what she was doing right.
Yes and no. You know she at home, she's well aware.
When she's not regulated, she will say I need to
regulate and go in her room by herself and do
what she does at school. It happens real fast and
she melts down real fast. Trying to help her to
catch us and get the hell out of the room.
And we're trying to educate the team on what autism
looks like in girls because they have no clue. Ten
people in this meeting, no one knew what we were
talking about. And they kept saying, well, she has lots
of friends and she's social and she doesn't flap her hands,
And I'm like, well, there are different profiles. You know,
this is not a staff, So she doesn't really have
a lot of support at school. We're trying to teach her.
But to answer your question, you know, not really. The
meltdowns happened fast because she's not trying to prevent them anymore,
which I think is helpful.
Yeah, that sounds great. Now you know she's autistic. She
knows your autistic. Has that changed your dynamic? And how
do you get along? Now?
Oh, it's beautiful. You know we've always been really close.
I've always felt something very tight between us. I have
two daughters with my other daughter too, but there's something
specific about Lucy that I always kind of knew was
like me. Now we regulate each other without even realizing
we're doing it. I put her to bed every night.
The second I sit next to her, no matter how
overwhelmed or undisregulated or whatever, within about five minutes we're
both just am and sitting there. So that's the first thing,
and we know. The second thing is she knows that
I can help regulate her wherever she is. So she
was having a meltdown a dance. I got there in
five minutes. I say, give me a hug and take
a breath. She was better, just like that. Our nervous
systems are very tightly embedded, and so that's the big thing. Also,
she has somebody that she loves in respects that also
has this thing, so it doesn't make her feel isolated
or different or stupid or any of these labels that
a lot of us, you know, have put on ourselves
over the years. So it's great. Our relationship has gotten stronger.
My wife is parenting differently, so it's wonderful. It was
great to learn this about her and myself. It changes
everything absolutely.
That was my next question. How did it affect your wife?
And of course how did it affect your other daughter?
Changed everything? You know, parenting an autist's child is a
complete one eighty from parenting a neurotypical child. And so
my wife dove hard into the information. She educated herself
on everything there is educate herself on, and she started
parenting differently. We became less frustrated with her. It's the
first thing, like, you know, why is she so defiant?
Why is she breaking down? Why are these things? And
once we knew, we're like, okay, we need to come
in with one hundred times the empathy. And she would
yell at her sister during these meltdowns, and so we
explain to her sister that sometimes she has a hard
time staying calm because of how her brain works and
her body works, and it's not your fault. And so
now her little sister understands, and if she yells at
a little sister, I can say, hey, just remember you
know your sister has autism and sometimes she has a
hard time. And so it's it's made everyone more empathetic,
made life somewhat easier for us.
I think, Okay, now you've got the school under control,
or maybe not under control, but at least on the
road for them to understand what's going on. You understand
and have found out more about yourself. Your friends and
people that you work with are starting to understand more
about you. What about other people, people that are not
in the business, let's say, other parents that you have
interacted with. How has that changed or has anything changed
now that you understand autism more than you did prior
to all this.
It's a very insightful question. Well, to start, we educated
people around her that were very close to her that
this is what's going on. So the first person I
told was her nurse at school. She's constantly going to
the nurse, and the nurse is annoyed with her and
telling us it takes a lot of people to calm
their down, And I said, let me just make this
easier for you. She has autism. We just figured this out,
so now maybe educate yourself on how to properly be
a nurse to her in a kind way. You know,
she told her best friends, and believe it, she shared
this with her two best friends three best friends now
and they've embraced her. They've just been wonderful and it's okay, great, Lucy,
we understand, and you know, she scratches her skin as
a stem a lot and it's terrible. And she does
what we do and they're okay with it, and they
support her and they stay with her and they don't
judge her. So them know, it's been extremely helpful. I'm
kind of done telling people that I'm autistic. I don't
like the response, and I don't like being pigeonholed, and
I don't want to be judged. It's not the right word,
but I don't want to be treated differently. So I
just decided I'm not going to tell anyone else but
totally open about it. Just not going to go broadcasting it.
I guess to other parents and stuff.
I can understand that completely. I speak with other people
and they tell me when they open up and let
them know that they are autistic, they get this disbelief
or they get this phrase, you don't look autistic, which
makes them wish they had never told them to begin with.
Yeah.
Yeah, do you feel that may be a big reason
why you feel like not opening up to other people now,
because you and not getting the understanding that you would
hope for.
Ah. You know, when I got this bipolar diagnosis, I
was like, all right, I'm going to embrace it. I'm bipolar.
I told everybody I did art shows about it. I
just embraced the label. And it didn't do me any good.
It didn't serve me, and it changed people's perception. I
could feel it. I don't want to go down that
road again. And that's kind of it. I don't need
approval from anybody, I really don't. I love it. I
love my brain and body and my nervous system, and
I love it. Don't feel like it's a disorder. It
sucks sometimes, terrible sometimes, you know, Yeah, but life is
terrible sometimes.
And yeah, it can be, and so you know.
I just would rather be known as either Tyler or
my artist's name is Enzo and leave it at that.
How has it changed your focus or has it changed
your focus in the way you work with your PR
and of course the way you work in your music.
Oh boy, it's changed everything. It's changed everything. For one,
I don't you know. I used to have pretty bad
imposter syndrome. I would make like eighty tracks of music
and then wonder, like what I think I'm doing? Or
I would like close multiple deals in PR, and what
am I going to do now? I don't know how
to do PR when I've been doing it for eighteen years.
And I would dive into these patterns, you know, this
three six nine pattern of the universe I've always been
obsessed with, and people told me that I shouldn't talk
about these numbers because I sound manic, and so I
kind of suppressed all that. Now I'm just letting it flow.
I'm letting anything that wants to come through me flow.
I found a flow state. I call it the gap,
which it might be a good segue into what this
music is about, but it has changed everything. This flow
state that I found were uncomfortable.
Let's talk about your music. How has that changed?
Okay? So I was making music. It's all electronic music.
I write all the lyrics myself. I produce it, and
it's a mix between electronic and AI. I was making
like fun hip hop stuff with like piano and like cello.
Just I was trying to make music that I like.
I started realizing as I made more and more music,
there were certain tracks I would make that would just
calm me instantly. It would just bring me to bass
right away. I throw my headphones on. That's another thing.
I put noisecanceling headphones on. I was like, oh my god,
what is this? So I started listening to certain tracks
and trying to identify what it was about the music
I was making. It was relaxing me, and I came
to some really deep conclusions that have led to some
really interesting music. Part of my own therapy for being
autistic is being present, always practiced meditation. I've always tried
to remain present in a base because it's hard for us,
very hard for us in that state. I started realizing
that when I was in this flow state, the music
that came through me had a sound that I had
never heard before, and I love music. I'm obsessed with them.
I started experimenting with systems that would create emergence within
the music, meaning I would set up environments where the
direction for the music was unclear or paradoxical. So I
would write prompts like We're going to create an entirely
instrumental track based on the three six y nine patterns
of the universe, based on call return, based on these
structures that create a form of safety. And then what
I was finding is I was using AI for the vocals,
is that I would get these emergent vocals that I
was not prompting. I would get lyrics that would come
out that were guttural sounds. The first major tell that
I was doing something interesting was there was a beautiful
male vocal that all of a sudden merged with a cello,
and the vocal in the cello became one, Okay, I'd
never heard that before. Is supernatural the guy singing, and
then he goes into cello and back into human. And
when I heard that, my body dropped and I was like,
oh my God. And that moment, I was like, Okay,
we're going to go deep. And so for the last
year I've been working on what I call gap music,
music that emerges from the space between. I've been mentioning
this three six y nine pattern. You know that a
lot of people are obsessed with Tesla really, you know,
made it famous. And so the three builds the tension,
the six expands it, and nine releases it right, and
the cycle repeats. This pattern for autistic brains is incredibly
soothing because it creates a perfect loop, and so you
can listen to it over and over and over again
without feeling burnt out by it. Because the way the
music is structured kind of like a spiral. And I'm
sorry if this is like a two out there.
But no, not at all.
Music is kind of like a spiral. I can see
the music in my mind and you don't know what's
coming next. So I'll start with like a piano cello solo,
and then it'll slowly merge into acquire vocal maybe or
a mantra, and that slowly merge into maybe a choir
and handpan and piano playing at superhuman speeds, and then
all of a sudden, you think that you've clocked the music,
and you think you've clocked the pattern. Bam, dubstep dubstep hits,
and you're like, your brain just starts going. You know,
I've got eight D sound moving around and it's like,
what the hell is this? And as soon as you
clock that pattern, bam, I shoot into a boom boom
bat hip hop beat nice. So when your brain's about
the clock that, I go right back to classical. And
so I've created a system where your brain can't track
the pattern and it's extremely satisfying.
Have you released your music so other people within the
autistic community can hear it? And secondly, what has the
response been to those that have heard it?
You are the first person in the media I've shared
this with. Okay, so I did a lot of research.
I found you unquoted in a few other media databases
because that's what I do, and your response was extremely empowering. Obviously,
you've got an unbelievable background in music, and I don't
have to tell you what you've done. Your backgrounds incredible
and you know what you're talking about. So you're the
first person that actually validated that this is what it is.
I appreciate that.
And so I share it with other neurodivergent people and
one hundred percent of the time they come back and say,
this is the best I've ever heard, and they don't
know why. Nice not just for neurodivergent people. I call
it Gap Music for Beautiful Brains because it really helps
anybody in regulation, and so the feedback's been incredible from
the community. I played it for my daughter the other night.
She hates my music because she's my kid and she
thinks I'm cringe and she fell asleep. She just fell
asleep to it. I played it for my wife and
my dog. They fell asleep.
You know.
When I play it for people, every single one of
them has the same response. It's incredibly fulfilling, relaxing and interesting.
If you would tell our listeners how they can find you,
how they can follow you, and how they can listen
to your music.
So I have two tracks that are public, both on YouTube.
It's called gap Emergent Music. If you search for Gap
Emergent Music you'll find it. But the YouTube channel is
app Music for Beautiful Brains. The channel name is at
gap Music for Regulation at Gap Music for Regulation on YouTube.
And how do people find you?
They can find me by going to Instagram dot com.
Slash Enzo. The artists e nso the artists. They can
find my publicity business at Tyler barnettpr dot com and
on TikTok at Millennial Dad got a pretty decent following there.
I would love for not just the tism community, but
everybody who is looking for some regulation go to Gap
Music for regulation on YouTube and let me know what
you think. I'm going to be releasing tracks slowly over
the next month. I've created eighty tracks, so I'm trying
to sort through them and put out what I think
is most helpful. So that's where it can be found.
And there's two tracks on there right now that are
my favorites. And I also used AI animation to create
some loops of water ripples. They are also really beautiful
to watch.
Nice, Nice, I love it. This has been great, great conversation,
great information. I really appreciate you taking the time to
join us today.
Thank you so much for having me Tony. I really
appreciate very insightful questions. Please keep doing what you're doing.
You have a beautiful show and your message is amazing
and you're helping a lot of people, and I really
appreciate the opportunity to talk to you today.
It's been my pleasure. Thanks again, thanks for taking time
out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today.
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