Autism
The spine of this blog: autistic experience from the inside, research translated honestly, and advocacy that starts from what autistic people say they want — not from a deficit checklist.
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Am I autistic? A map without a verdict
An honest map of the adult question: what self-identification is and isn't, what assessment trades off, and what this site's tools can and cannot show you.
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Inside the Meltdown: What It Is While It's Happening
What an autistic meltdown is from the inside: the narrowing senses, language going offline, the body's own logic, the shame after — and what actually helps.
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Unmasking and stress as competence: honest signals, real budgets, and taking the mask off slowly
Masking is skilled labor with a budget — shutdowns, short fuses and long crashes are the system doing its job. Unmasking is gradual, safety-dependent, yours to pace.
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Monotropism, flow, and the real cost of context-switching
Autistic attention is narrow-but-deep, not a focus deficit. Context-switching costs are structural — workplaces that ignore them tax whom they claim to accommodate.
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The cluster nobody maps for parents: AuDHD, EDS, POTS, MCAS, ARFID, and PMDD as one picture
Five specialists for what is often one cluster — connective tissue, autonomic, immune, sensory, endocrine. An affirming parent map, honest about thin evidence.
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Autistic adulthood as infrastructure: employment, housing, and supported autonomy
Past the transition cliff, autistic adults fall into sparse, fragmented support — employment, housing, supported decision-making, autonomy the goal.
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The double-empathy problem lands in your pull requests
Autistic communication friction is bidirectional — both neurotypes misread each other. The fix is protocol design, not coaching the autistic person to mask.
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Race × autism: the diagnosis gap as a gatekeeping problem
Black and Brown autistic children are diagnosed later, misdiagnosed more often. A diagnosis is access, unequally gated — a gatekeeping problem, not a clinical fact.
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Sleep, sensory regulation, and the body clock
Top autistic research priority, yet sleep training treats it as noncompliance — when for many it's sensory and circadian. Sensory-first, honest about evidence.
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The accommodation tax is a myth: neurodivergent-first design helps everyone (and the honest cases where it doesn't)
Designing for neurodivergent users rarely costs the majority anything — mostly the tax is a myth. The honest version names the real tradeoffs, answered with options.
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What "neurodiversity at work" programs get wrong: assimilation sold as inclusion
Neurodiversity-at-work programs recruit autistic people for narrow roles and measure success by masking. Real inclusion redesigns the workplace, not the employee.
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Autistic burnout and the cost of masking, for knowledge workers (not the HR version)
Autistic burnout is the predictable output of sustained masking — and standard corporate interventions make it worse. What actually helps, drawn from the research.
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Disclosure in software workplaces, beyond the negativity bias
The biggest study of neurodivergent developers yet finds disclosure outcomes mostly positive — despite the negativity bias of the forums that advise them.
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Learning design for neurodivergent learners
Most learning design is built for a neurotypical majority, then 'accommodates' everyone else. What changes when we start from neurodivergent cognition.
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What autistic people actually want researched
AutINSAR 2025 asked autistic people their research priorities. The answers are almost the opposite of where funding goes: mental health, sensory, adulthood.