Tyler Barnett: Autism Advocacy with GAP Music and Empowerment

Meantour.

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It helps us reach more people who may need to hear them, thank you for being here. As long as today is Tyler Barnett, he is the founder of Tyler Barnett PR, a public relation strategist and autistic music creator dedicated to empowering the autism community through intentional sound design and authentic storytelling. He creates music to support 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. Oh, thank you so much for having me Tony, I'm happy to be here.

If you would, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you're doing. Basically, for the last 40 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 autism 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 was diagnosed six months ago and my journey has 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 at heart, 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 missed diagnosed 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 it that word meant. So why do you say that?

She said, "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 autism and whatnot. I thought, "What a weird thing for my kid to say." And she said a multiple times.

Right. I went into a chat GPT, and I wrote, "And it's important to know that 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 eating, every single thing was eating," 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 a hundred percent correct on all those, filled in, 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, psychologists, my whole life, I was misdiagnosed by polar, terribly misdiagnosed, and medicated as if I was bipolar, which I'm not, never happened. And so I did it myself, you know, I'm self-diagnosed, I did talk to my psychiatrist

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. 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 have been working together for three years.

When I say working together, I mean, I work that every day on my business, I create AI art 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 I would have 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's at 100% you do, you absolutely do. So that was the first part, based on data that I've provided myself over three years, unmasked, fully transparent. 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 369 and 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. It's 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 been officially 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 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 the reality that I'm living in. I was gaslighted by my mom. I thought that I would get some sort of support of response. She's like, "Well, did a doctor say this and how do you know?" And you're not. I tried to bear it with brothers and they had a similar response and my dad actually had 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 and the autism community that were also autistic that were 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, a good friend of mine. And we're just talking about personal conversation. I can tell he's neurodefurge and 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 it to you and he was cool man. He was just like, "Oh, that's interesting. You know, tell me about it." And I was able to 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 full about it. You know, 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. But 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. That's

been my superpower. So I learned early that I needed to be able to convince people of things because

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 and smile, they smiled and 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 other. Just 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 and 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 tries me since saying, when people say something, I block the words specifically. Then if they say they didn't say it or they said something else,

they change it. My brain just like malfunction. No, that's not what it tries to mean saying. It'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 I'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 the shots. It's been stuff. I was really proud of it. I was looking at him. He stops talking and he goes, "Why are you looking at me like that?" And it's ever said that to me before. Ever. In 18 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, "Whew, hey, you know, I'm thinking about it." That was the first time I caught it happening in a conversation. I caught myself thrown the mask on and doing the dog and pony show and I was just devastated after that meeting. Now, your daughter is 10 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, it's 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-mass. And she's got a lot of friends. She makes an 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 10 years. 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 defiant. This is not anything more than a nervous system. It'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 saw.”

She tells her friends. She's embraced it. She talks about stimming. She talks about regulation. She's extremely brilliant. But yeah, she had a meltdown 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 it. 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 15, 20 minutes, so whatever time frame 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, go in her room by herself and do what she does." At school, it happens real fast and she melts down real fast. We're 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 on 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 "sustat," 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 happen 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've 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. I see the second I sit next to her, no matter how overwhelmed or undisregulated or whatever, within about five minutes, we're both just home and sitting there. So that's the first thing that we know. The second thing is she knows

that I can help regulate her wherever she is. So she was having a meltdown at dance. I got there

nervous systems are very tightly embedded. And so that's the big thing. Also, she has somebody that

“she loves and 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? Uh, changed everything. You know, parenting and autistic child is a complete

180 from parenting a neurotypical child. And so my wife dove hard into the information. You educated herself on everything. There is educated herself on it. She started parenting

differently. We became less frustrated with her. It's the first thing. You know, why is she so

defiant? Why is she breaking down? Why are these things? And once we knew we were like, okay, we need to come in with 100 times the empathy. She would yell at her sister during these meltdowns. And so we explained 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 her little sister, I can say, I just remember, you know, your sister

has autism and sometimes she has a hard time. So it's made. 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 nurses in the way to with her and telling us it takes a lot of people to calm her 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 that's okay. Great Lucy. We understand. And you know, she scratches for skin as a stem. A lot is terrible. And she does what we do. 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. And so I just decided I'm not going to tell anyone else, but wholly open about it. Just not going to go broadcasting and I guess 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 disphrase. You don't look autistic, which makes them wish they had never told

them to begin with. Yeah. Yeah, that. Do you feel that maybe a big reason why you feel like not opening up to other people now because you are not getting the understanding that you would hope for? You know, and I got this bipolar diagnosis. I was like, all right, I'm going to embrace and I'm bipolar. I told everybody. I did our 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 and I don't feel like

“it's a disorder. It sucks sometimes. Airables sometimes, you know. Yeah. But life is terrible sometimes.”

Yeah, it can be. And so, you know, I just would rather be known as either Tyler or my artist 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 and posture syndrome. I would make like 80 tracks in music and then wonder like what I think I'm doing

or I would like close multiple deals in PR. What am I going to do now? I don't know how to do PR when I've been doing it for 18 years and I would dive into these patterns, you know, this

369 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 might be a good segue into what this music is about. But it has changed everything. This flow state that I found were profitable. Let's talk about your music. How has

I produce it and some mixed between electronic and AI. I was making like fun hip hop stuff with

“like piano and like cello. I was trying to make music that I like. I started realizing as I made”

more and more music. There were certain tracks that 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 noise canceling headphones on. I was like, "Oh, I got 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 practice meditation. I've always

tried to remain present in the bass because it's hard for us. Very hard for us. In that state, I started realizing 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 it. 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 369 patterns of the universe, based on call return, based on the structures that create a form of safety." And then what I was finding, I was using AI for the vocals, is that I would get these emergent vocals that I was not prompting. I would get little hearks that would come out that were gutteral 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 and the cello became one. Okay. I had never heard that before.

It was super natural. The guy singing and then he goes into cello and back into human. And when I heard that, my body dropped and I said, "Oh my God." And that moment, I said, "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 369 pattern, you know, that a lot of people are obsessed with Tesla really, you know, made a famous. And so the 3 builds the tension, the 6 expands it,

a 9 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, it kind of like a spiral. And I'm sorry if this is like two out there, but no, no, no, no, no. 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 a choir vocal, maybe, or a mantra. And that slowly merge into maybe a choir and hand-pand and piano playing it, super sweet. 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, you brain just starts going, you know, I've got the 80 sound moving around and it's like, what the hell is this? And as soon as you clocked that pattern

bam, I shoot into a boom boom bat hit pot beat. Nice. So when your brain's about to 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. No, okay. So I did a lot of research.

“I found you on quoted and 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 background's incredible. And you know, you're talking about.

So you were 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 100% 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 from 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 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 you music. So I have two tracks that are

public both on YouTube. It's called gap emergent music. Research for gap emergent music. You'll find it. But the YouTube channel is gap 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

at ilerbarnetpr.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 was 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 80 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 then I also used AI animation to create some loops of water ripples that 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 a very insightful question. 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. We hope you'll enjoy it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. If you know someone who has a story to share, tell them to contact us at WhyNotMe.world.

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