Iko Edward Fish: Transforming Self-Perception and Building Genuine Connections – A Journey of Late Autism Diagnosis and Personal Growth

Welcome to Why Not Me the World? Podcast, hosted by
Tony Mantor, broadcasting from Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join
us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will
make you laugh, some will make you cry. Real like
people who will inspire and show that you are not
alone in this world. Hopefully you gain more awareness, acceptance,
and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi,
I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me the World? Today.
Eco Edward Fish of Enlightened consent and joins me. He
works with autistic people confused by dating to help create relationships.
Welcome to the show.
Yeah, thank you so much, and I acknowledge you for
being such a strong advocate and allied the autistic community.
Honored and appreciative.
Thanks so much. The honor is all mine. Now are
you autistic or is this something that you do so
that you can help others?
Now? I am on the autism spectrum myself. I was
diagnosed later in life at the age of thirty eight
back in March through twenty twenty one, so literally three
years as of this one.
Oh okay, all right, I've spoken with many people that
have been diagnosed later in life. What led you to
get diagnosed at a later age?
I'll show what got me diagnosed at a later age
was after fifteen years of personal growth work that I
had been doing with myself, I was so missing some
basic things, and especially when it came to to groups,
so it was so missing on social cues. And ultimately
it was listening to a teex talk by a woman
who had also been diagnosed later in life. Okay, and
within that it was in her going describing her own
challenges and what it was like during her Childow was like,
that was like me. That was like me. That was
like me, That was like me. It's like, maybe I
am actually on the autism spectrum. Sure, And I decided
to put myself on a wait list and that took
eighteen months, and that it took three days of testing
and three months later for me to get the results
from that to actually be told, yes, I am on
the autism spectrum.
Yeah. That's one thing that I have heard that getting
diagnosed at a later age is actually a little tougher
than even getting diagnosed at a younger age.
Yeah. And for me when I got diagnosis, like, okay,
so I have this diagnosis what does it actually give
to me? You know, what is available to me that
wasn't available to me before? Right, And I talked with
a therapist about it, and he said, well, you can
ask for more time on tests. It's like, I've already
got my bachelor's degree. I'm not going back to college.
He said, you can ask for accommodations from your employer.
I'm self employed, entrepreneurial. I can give myself whatever commodations
I need. And so it's like, what else is there?
Here's like I don't really know, And in looking around,
I was saying, oh, right, where is the silver lining
in this one? It gave me a bereater better understanding
and compassion for myself, which in being able to go
and share that I am on the audiences and spectrum
floyed owning that, I also found more compassion understanding from
other people, which is, you know, part of the reason
why you're doing your whole podcast of why not me?
Right to get that great understanding. The second simber Landin
I found as I had been doing relationship coaching for
several years at that point, I was like, Okay, well
I'm part of this population and I can go and
stand up and say we who are on the autism
spectrum are worthy, capable, and deserving of love. Absolutely, and
I could go in a pivot for who I was
going and working with, and after taking some time to
actually incorporate that, starting in twenty twenty three, I actually
did my first round of Autistic Dating Success focusing on
those who are on the autism spectrum of actually attracting
love in July, and each one of my clients that
went through that initial program either escalated the relationship that
they were all right in or attracting new love in
your life, which I'm very proud of.
Okay, So in your early years you wasn't diagnosed, so
because of that, you had to go through certain things,
whether it be bullying or just the differences in the
way that you thought process Like most autistic people, they
have a different way of looking at things and thinking
about it. How dramatically did that affect you and then
did that lead you as you grew older to start
really working towards what you're doing now?
Absolutely? Like growing up, relationships actually really confused, okay, And
I had no idea how social interactions really worked. And
when I was seven, my parents divorced okay. And with that,
while I was taken to a psychologist to intellectually understand,
you know, the divorce wasn't my fault, right, no one
taught me how to deal with the emotional rapifications, I'm sure,
and I ended up actually cutting myself off from my
emotions and going up into my head. And for the
next fourteen years I pretty much didn't feel anything right,
and I would go through the motions of going up,
going to school, coming back home, being in my room
unless someone came to give me for something. Sure, my
three constant companions were my cat, the TV, and my Nintendo.
Okay, Now you don't have to answer this if you
don't want, but it's just a kind of a question
that it does pop up in my mind because when
you say to your parents divorced at an early age,
do you think that it was because of your autism?
Because I know from talking with many people that the
divorce rate is higher because of dealing with autism, and
the parents don't know how to deal with that. They're
on different pages of how to approach it. So did
you have like meltdowns or different things like that that
might have contributed, or was it just something completely different now.
I was actually much more on the introverted group of things, yes,
and so I didn't really have outlashers. I became very
very introverted, very isolated. Okay, so that the divorce wasn't
really around that topic. That was more having to do
with money issues and scarcely.
Okay, Well, well that's good. I mean, it's not good
that divorce, but it's good that you can at least
move forward knowing that you didn't contribute to that.
Yeah, And there was a part of me that did
blame myself that I uncovered for a while because there
was a instant shortly before the divorce where I had
gotten a slipper in my foot and I actually for
exact well, my dad was trying to go and remove it,
and he gave me a single swad on one butt cheet.
And my mother actually used that as one of the
two reasons besides the money issue for the divorce, even
though it really didn't have anything to do with me.
It was just for becoming fearful of what he could
be capable of, which he really wasn't violent.
Right, once you got out of school and you started
getting into the real world of war and just the
way the world is. How did you adapt to that?
Because you're self employed now, I'm assuming that you didn't
become self employed until later on.
It was actually through a process while I was going
to college that I even started on my whole personal
growth journey that started literally twenty years ago, back in
like February of twenty twenty. Most of my childhood and
even into the high school and college, I had maybe
one friend at most at any throwing point in time,
and once I got to college, stayed that way until
I was twenty one and a guy who was in
a club, the social club at the college, came to
me and took me at the lunch one day and
he said, hey, I noticed you're disconnected from your feelings.
I don't mean just now, I mean you always. What
do you think about gating back in touch with Okay,
and a feeling of sheer terror ridge from my dire
bot was like the most intensive feeling that I'd felt
in several years. Sure, I gave him every excuse in
the reasonable book of like, you know, I was going
to school full time, I was working just on a
part time basis, didn't have much money, and he really
took a stand for me and saw something being possible
okay that I had not seen possible for myself, and
at least trusted him enough to go to this personal
growth program.
Oh good.
And in going to this program, like the first day
was a three day loan program, first day, first even,
and they're like, who liked to go first? I jumped
up and said, hey, I will okay, and they said
why are you here? And I said, I'm here to
get back in touch with my emotions. Tell me the
steps forward. I'm really good at following instructions one, two, three, four, five,
Tell me how to do and when the course heeries
looked at me and said, that's not how this works, okay,
And I went, well, if you don't know how to
do it, and you know I don't know how to
do it, what is it there where I should go
and do? In here that they took me through a
series of steps and processes that I actually really struggled
and it seemed almost like they were ready to give
up on and then one of the course leaders paused
things and said, hey, you know you don't have to
do this right. In fact, you don't ever need to
go and do this and get back in touch with
your emotions, and let me just give you a little
bit of a preview what I see your life might
train out if you choose not to do this, okay,
And he painted this visceral, vivid picture that was so lonely,
so distraught and heartbreaking to me, and a part of
my mind just went, that is too much of a
realistic picture that I cannot allow that to go and happen.
I'll do whatever takes to go and get back in
touch with these emotions. Sure, and I was able to
have that breakthrough. And first there's a lot of anger
that came up. And they actually had like seven guys
pulled onto me while they just said, okay, let out
this anger. You try to move forward. And even with
these seven guys on out to me, it was like
step by side, I was like, Rah, like all this
intense anger for you?
What kind of anger was it? Was it an anger
that was pointed at any one person, or was it
pointed at the world, or what kind of anger did
you feel?
It was fourteen years of pent up emotion, of frustration
of the insults that I had taken, a bullying that
I had gone through, that I had just kept up
and bottled inside it had never spoken up to or
given a voice to before. That just came pouring out
of me. Okay, right, And then after that there was
a layer underneath that of step sure, the loneliness and
the yearning and the connection of just being so isolated.
And I just curl up into a ball and I
cried and cried and cried as I crab myself in
the sole fetal position. By the end of this process,
I was like completely emotionally.
Spent, I can just imagine.
And they laid out a mat for me, because I
literally just felt and expressed like more emotion in that
short period of time, you know, than I had for
the past, you know, several years. And I crawled over
to this, I lopped down onto it, and all the
course leaders and the pillow participants in support SaaS surrounded
me a couple of feet often. And then when the
course leaders looked down at me and said, do you
want them to come closer to you? I looked up
to them and said yes, and the course leader said well,
then asked them I said, please come closer, and they
all took a couple of steps closer, so they're just
like inches away, and then the course they said, do
you want them to touch They said yes, and they
looked to the course leader said, well, then ask them to.
I looked up and pleading it in my eyes and said,
please touch me anywhere everywhere. And these loving people who
had just seen me pour out my heart and soul
and laid myself bare before them, put their hands on
my head, on my shoulders, my torso, my legs, my feet,
and I felt flooded with unconditional love. And it was
for the first time in my entire life that I
actually felt lovable just as I was. That is really
what led me into this work that I'm doing to
let people like myself know that they are lovable just
as they are. Sure there's nothing wrong, bad, or broken
with them.
Right. So when that happened, that was your first step
towards eventually what you was going to do. How long
did it take from that first time that you support
everything out you felt, all those different emotions. The people
surrounded you showed you that you weren't alone before you
actually started believing that you're not alone.
That's an excellent question. I will say that one thing
that I knew is strength at that point was that
I was an excellent student. Okay, it was something that
I prided myself on. And after I got back from
my programs like okay, I recognize I want to feel,
I want to go and connect. What is it that
I'm actually going to do about this? And I started
learning everything I could about relationships, dating and attraction and
started to pour my attention into that, which over that
time period it's been twenty years now and over four
hundred and fifty hours of training, study and certifications in
different modalities, I will say that the story that I'm
unlovable can still linger even to this day. That there's
that fear of rejection, and even in my entrepreneurial pursuits,
there can be parts of me they're reluctant to put
myself out there, that've been concerned about you know what
other people going in for me. Yet over that same time,
I have made connections. I've gotten to have these visceral,
loving experiences with it good.
So now you've been through this, how did that affect
your family? Because growing up you had this introverted self
that went away from your parents and different friends. Did
this change your relationship with them and how you looked
at things. Did that get better because of that?
Considering the question, I would say getting into the personal
development and discovering who I am and what I need
and what I desired. And I'll also make the distinction
that the autism diagnosis was still something that was mass
and not cover it not uncoverage for another, you know,
seventeen years when I started going doing this, Okay, all right,
I will say that in getting to know myself and
what I needed, what I wanted, and what I desired
in terms of the family, I actually started to create
healthier boundaries with the help of the coach. Sure, and
I was always, you know, the dutiful child doing just
whatever it was that I was. I was asked, like,
you know, it's a common trait within the autistic community
for those of us to not really go much beyond
the surface level and to just be like take things
at face out. Okay, So when a coach actually said
to me and I described what my relationship with my
mother was like and what the environment was, and he said,
you know, you can actually tell your mother that you're
not going to come back home for Christmas. You're not
obligated to go and do that. Sure, that was mind
blowing to me at the time that I actually had
that choice. It was a huge shift for me to
go from this is an expected obligation to this is
a choice. It's a get to, not a have to.
And I will say that that has really become one
of my core values of that freedom of choice.
Sure sure, being able to.
Say, you know what is actually right for me, regardless
of what others may expect, what I want? What are
my values that I choose to live by.
I had a father and a son that was on
my podcast a few months ago. The father was trying
to help his autistic son and be more neurotypical, and
the son was kind of not going along with it,
but not fighting him hard. Then once he got out
and graduated, he and his father actually went to a therapist,
and his father told me that it was the hardest
thing he'd ever been through because he realized that everything
that he did was not absolutely one hundred percent correct
for what his son was needing. And his son brought
that up to him, but it strengthened their relationship. Have
you done anything or thought of doing anything that like
with your mother or your father or whoever you might
need that in your family to help bring that bond
back together so they understand you more of what your
needs are and then they can understand what you went
through and hopefully help.
I appreciate you asking about that. And you know, it's
a common thing for parents wanting their kids to succeed
or wanting them to go and fit in with everyone else.
And the sign in research actually shows that in trying
to get an autistic or neurodivergent person to mask and
to fit in actually causes psychological harm right to the
point of you know, if the if we mask for
too long, it can lead to autistic burnout or even
a psychotic break because we're being so inauthentic to who
it is that we actually are. And I've done a
ton of personal growth work on myself. I consider myself
to be a personal growth work junkie and have taken
many different programs. Uh, you know, we invested over one
hundred thousand dollars I would say at this point in
all these trainings, which include self help and professional development work.
It helped me to let go of a lot of
the angered resentment that I had for as my mother.
My dad was a very simple guy and he didn't
really understand. He passed on back in twenty sixteen, so
he is in before I was diagnosed on the autism spectrum,
though I did go and come out with it, come
out to my parents about being in a most all
alternative sexual lifestyles during Christmas one year. And while my
dad didn't really understand and he thought that I would
literally catch some kind of disease and die from it, right,
what he did go and come to us a conclusion
was I don't prove and I still love you, which
out of all the alternatives, that was a positive thing.
Absolutely.
From the day that I moved out of the house,
which is just before my eighteenth birthday, up until the
Sunday before he died, he kept up until you calling
me just to see how I was every single week.
I was good.
I'm very grateful for that. Yeah.
Now, you went several years doing learning about yourself, going
through this self help, and then you get diagnosed as autistic.
Once you were diagnosed, how soon was it after you
got diagnosed that you actually started your own business to
try and help other autistic people.
I'd already been doing relationship coaching for like seven years
at that point.
Okay, all right.
I was struggling just trying to be more of a
general relationship coach and trying to do things, you know,
a neurotypical way of going and doing things and trying
to you know, do it all the big successful people
going to SURE And when I got my autism diagnosis,
I remember that I actually cried. It was like, here
was my last holdout for being any kind of quote normal,
right right. It took me a while to go and
come to it, except of where that was at and
how to integrate that into my own life. In twenty
twenty one, the beginning of twenty twenty three that I
actually launched and sthysically decided to be like, Okay, I've
wanted to understand myself enough that here are the people
that I'm choosing to more directly focus on. Right. Found
more success in working with those that are socially awkward
on the autism spectrum.
Okay, you just brought up something I think needs to
be brought out. I've talked with several people that have
got diagnosed later age. They went through all their turmoil
not understanding why they were different. You're just going through
everything that everybody goes through when they don't have any answers.
Then they finally got the answers. And I've had both
things said to me, which you just said. One of
them was that you was upset and it kind of
bothered you. And then I've had others say that it
was a relief to them because now they understood where
they were and what they had to do to approach life,
so they could take and move on and not worry
about being neurotypical. They could be themselves and just start growing.
So how long did it take you to get to
that point of the grief of what you felt, to
the point of where, Okay, this is going to be okay,
and now I can use this to help others.
Great question. I would say that it took me a
number of months of working with that and learning to
integrate and accept it about myself. Besides there being a
part of me that was bothered body, it is equally
true that there were parts of me that did find
relief and comfort, being like, oh, this explains things of
why I am the way I am that I didn't
have have questions too before. Sure, And with that, what
I found is that the more self acceptance and compassion
I had for myself the more that I got to
experience compassion and acceptance by others as well.
Okay, all right, so now what's the name of your
company that you've developed?
Enlightened Consent?
Okay, So enlightened consent and that helps people find themselves,
helps people with love relationships, kind of an encompassing of
just learning how to not only love yourself but love others.
Do you have more people now that you've been diagnosed autistic?
Do you have more people that you find yourself working
with this on the autistic spectrum? Or is it still
a good mix of where you started and now you've
included the autistic people within it?
The question or one of my main premises in all
our beliefs that I put forward and teaching my clients
is the idea that as long as the people directly
involved their consenting and honoring their relationship agreements, it does
not matter what anyone else thinks or feels about what
you're choosing a consent.
Okay.
And with the populations of people that I love to
go and work with are those that are outside of
the society of arms, whether that be those who are
on the autism structrum or those who are like are
the LGBTQ plus community, which I'm also part of it,
Okay has been like queer gender fluid, And it really
comes down to another premise of I can only love
someone else the level and depth that they love that
I love and accept myself first, and I can only
feel as loved and accepted by someone else to the
level of depth I love and accept myself first as well. Sure,
because even if people try to love me more than
what I'm able to go and let in, it just
causes a mess. They don't feel received, and I don't
feel any more loved to accept it until I grown
hit container.
Okay, I had an autistic speaker come on. He was married,
had two kids, and did quite a bit of public speaking.
He told me that it was very surprising the amount
of people that would come up to him and really
truly believe that autistic people couldn't have kids. So that
goes to my theory of the understanding part that people
need to get more of about autism and everyone that
lives in the autistic unity. Now, he had a belief,
and I think it was a very great way of
looking at things, is that he's autistic. His wife's neurotypical,
and they looked at as a culture difference, and it
was no different than someone marrying someone from a different
part of the world or part of the country and
have to learn the different ways that they live and coexist.
And by doing this, he really created a culture within
his family that just thrived. Is that something that you
kind of teach only maybe not quite in those same words.
Yes, not quite in those same words. And I do
believe there's a beautiful way to look at the autistic
community as a culture. If you've met an autistic person,
you've met one autistic person.
That term that you just brought up is not brought
up in every episode that I have, but I would
say a good eighty percent of the episodes, because it's true,
there's such a wide spectrum within the autistic community. There
is no one person that can justify or be the
face of all autistic people. And that's kind of true
with neurotypical There's not one person that can say, Hey,
I'm neurotypical and everybody else is just like me. We're
all different, and that's what makes this world unique and good.
It is truly a spectrum that it is not a
linear line of like Lessinger de Morse. Here, it's more
like a kaleidoscope of like an entire color wheel of
you know, different factors that can go around.
How often do you have classes that you hold daily? Weekly?
What's your schedule in the way that you operate your
business to help these people?
Yes, and the variety is part of a beautiful thing,
and I really celebrate the diversity with it. What I
will say is a universal between all of us is
that I hold that each person is worthy, capable, and
deserving of being loved exactly who they are without having
a going mass.
Now, is this something that you do consistently weekly, monthly?
What's your schedule on that?
I am ramping that up. I do have a signature
talk that I give at least once a month called
being able to attract love into your life even if
you're a social awkward as Rage from Big Bang Theory, Okay,
all right? And I have an ongoing series with my
Autistic Dating Success for those who are into that program
that they can be in it. Like the initial usually
term is like ninety days. We get together once a
week for that. And I also travel round and presented
different places, both in person as well as virtually.
So you do a lot of public speaking for it.
Yes, it is something that ultimately I am looking to
go and advocate for and for the reason that I
actually founded my nonprofit Enlightened Consent Foundation back in twenty
twenty one.
Okay, do you seek to create sacred sanctuary spaces for
people to go and to explore their identities and intimate
desires without being blamed, shamed or being told that they're
bad or wrong or worse you I could beat up
on the dating apps.
Yeah, have you had in your last few years or
or whatever the timeframe may be, have you had one
or two people come to you that you looked at
and they might have been a total wreck. That might
have been it's like, oh, this is never going to work.
They just not listening or whatever. All of a sudden
things started clicking and then it turned into a success
story for you.
Great question. I will say that a number of my
clients that I work with can be at a point
where they don't even see what's actually possible for about
A great example I would say is that I've had
several women that I've worked with that told me that,
you know, they would use makeup in the mirror every day,
though they would not look themselves in the eyes because
they were afraid that they would hate who they saw. Yeah,
and through the course of working with me, being able
to get to a point where they could actually go
up to a mirror, look themselves straight in the eye
and say I love you and I accept you just
as you are good and believe themselves it's good. It
is transformation.
Yeah. Yeah. Now you're standing in a room and you've
got two hundred people in front of you. What message
do you want to put out there to give to them?
The message I have for you is that you are
worthy of love just as you are. There is nothing
that you need to say or do to earn that
love or that worthiness. There's something that you could say,
or could do, or not say or not do to
lose that worthiness of love. And if you have a
challenge believing that, I invite you to just lean in
for just one minute and by the power invest in
me by no one in particure I hereby declare you
now and forever more worthy.
Okay, all right? Is there anything that we haven't touched
upon that you feel that it's important that you want
to put out there?
Yes, I will say that for me, being in you'll
turn into life cells and being LGBTQ plus being polyamorous,
being in the kink rome, that it doesn't matter what
turns you on and what it is that you want
to engage in consensually with others. I promise you there
are other people that want and desire that too, and
they will say yes to you. And even if you
have felt unlovable, unworthy, or I think you're weird, or
you're the only one on the planet that could ever
be into whatever that thing is, it's okay and there's
nothing wrong, nothing bad, nothing broke with you, and you
can go and have that and experience it consensual with others. Good.
It's been a great conversation. I've really enjoyed it. I'm
really glad that you was able to come on. I
really appreciate your time. Thank you so much, Tony. I
do appreciate that your listeners want to go and reach
out to me.
I welcome that. One of the easiest ways is call
with ECO dot com, c A, L L W I
G H I c O dot com and if they
do forward slash tips. I knew the creating an overcoming
social awkwardness guide for people who gone, help them go
and move forward.
And you on all the social media platforms as well.
Yes, and one of various social media platforms, Muslim is
enlightened concentionally.
And again, I appreciate you coming on. I think it's
been great.
Thank you, Tony, and I really appreciate the time being
on your show. And thank you so much also for
what you're doing out into the world and helping people
to understand and come to an acceptance of who we
are in the artists of community and learn more about
our culture.
Absolutely, and thanks again. Thanks for taking the time out
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