The Blog
Hyperfocus Isn’t a Superpower When You Can’t Stop
This article challenges the popular idea of hyperfocus as a superpower by exploring its often painful and compulsive aspects, especially for AuDHD individuals. It highlights how hyperfocus can lead to dissociation, neglect of basic needs, and difficulty stopping, even when the task becomes harmful or exhausting. The piece calls for more compassionate understanding and practical support to help neurodivergent people navigate hyperfocus in ways that honor both their brilliance and their well-being.
Task Initiation Is a Trauma Site: Why AuDHD People Freeze Where Others Begin
This article explores how task initiation challenges for AuDHD individuals are often rooted in trauma, nervous system overwhelm, and a history of shame and misunderstanding. It reframes the freeze that happens before starting a task as a protective response rather than a lack of motivation or discipline. The piece calls for greater compassion, flexible support, and a shift away from judgment toward environments that honor neurodivergent ways of beginning.
We’re Not Lazy. We’re Exhausted: AuDHD Burnout as Chronic, Cyclical, and Misunderstood
This article explores the chronic, cyclical nature of AuDHD burnout and how it is often misinterpreted as laziness or lack of motivation. It highlights the invisible labor of masking, the neurological tug-of-war between autistic and ADHD traits, and the long recovery times that are rarely understood or accommodated. The piece calls for a shift from blame to compassion, emphasizing the need for supportive environments that respect neurodivergent rhythms and make space for real rest.
What Looks Like Flakiness Is Actually Survival: Understanding AuDHD Inconsistency
This article reframes AuDHD inconsistency not as flakiness or unreliability, but as a survival response to a world that demands linear productivity from a brain wired for rhythm and protection. It explores how cycles of energy, executive dysfunction, and sensory needs create fluctuating capacity that is often misunderstood or misjudged. The piece calls for a shift toward compassion, flexibility, and honoring neurodivergent rhythms as valid expressions of care, effort, and resilience.
Incompatible Demands: When Executive Dysfunction and Sensory Needs Collide
This article explores the often-overlooked intersection of executive dysfunction and sensory overwhelm in neurodivergent individuals, particularly those who are autistic and ADHD. It highlights the daily struggles of knowing what would provide relief while being unable to initiate or complete the necessary tasks due to neurological barriers. The piece calls for compassionate, accessible support systems that understand this internal conflict and prioritize real, practical care over assumptions about motivation or effort.
Living Between Extremes: The Chaotic Grace of the AuDHD Nervous System
Living Between Extremes: The Chaotic Grace of the AuDHD Nervous System
De-escalation is a Neurodivergent Access Need
This article explores how traditional crisis response systems often fail neurodivergent people by waiting until visible distress occurs, rather than offering proactive, affirming support. It emphasizes that de-escalation should be recognized as a neurodivergent access need, grounded in trauma-informed care and early intervention. The piece calls for a shift toward environments that prioritize regulation, safety, and autonomy to prevent harm before it happens.
How Ableism Sees the Body: The Politics of Neurodivergent Movement and Expression
This article examines how neurodivergent people are routinely judged and pathologized based on their body language, tone, posture, and expression through a neurotypical lens. It explores how societal norms pressure autistic and ADHD individuals to perform "acceptable" versions of themselves, often at the expense of their comfort, authenticity, and well-being. The piece calls for a radical shift away from ableist expectations toward a world that respects neurodivergent embodiment as valid, meaningful, and worthy of inclusion without condition.
Why Neurotypical Empathy Isn’t the Gold Standard
This article challenges the assumption that neurotypical expressions of empathy are inherently superior, highlighting how autistic and neurodivergent people often experience and express empathy in different but equally valid ways. It explores the emotional depth, ethical commitment, and unique communication styles that characterize neurodivergent empathy, while exposing the ableist bias in how empathy is culturally defined and measured. The piece calls for a broader, more inclusive understanding of empathy that honors diverse ways of connecting, caring, and being human.
The Politics of Being ‘Too Much’: Autistic Intensity and Cultural Policing of Passion
Autistic people are often told they are “too much” for expressing passion, emotion, or deep interest, leading to shame and self-suppression. This article challenges the cultural norms that pathologize autistic intensity and reframes it as a powerful and authentic way of engaging with the world. It calls for a shift away from emotional policing toward honoring neurodivergent expression as valid, necessary, and deeply human.
The Architecture of Access: Why Neurodivergent Liberation Starts with the Built Environment
The built environment deeply impacts neurodivergent people, especially autistic individuals, by either supporting or undermining their ability to navigate the world comfortably and safely. Most spaces are designed without considering sensory needs, spatial logic, or accessibility, leading to exclusion and distress. True neurodivergent liberation begins with reimagining architecture itself, centering autistic perception in the design of lighting, acoustics, flow, and visual clarity to create environments that foster inclusion, regulation, and dignity.
The Sensory Politics of Clothing: Fashion as Regulation, Armor, and Language
For neurodivergent people, clothing is not just about style but a critical tool for sensory regulation, emotional safety, self-expression, and communication. Fashion can serve as both a site of masking and a powerful means of unmasking, especially when societal expectations around dress codes, gender norms, and professionalism conflict with comfort and autonomy. Honoring neurodivergent relationships with clothing means recognizing it as an access need and respecting it as a form of agency, identity, and resistance.
Unmasking the Body: Why So Many of Us Don’t Know What We Physically Feel
Many neurodivergent people, especially those who are autistic, struggle to recognize internal bodily signals like hunger, pain, or emotional cues due to differences in interoception, past trauma, and years of masking their true selves. This disconnection from the body is often a survival response to environments that have invalidated or punished their natural expressions and needs. Reconnecting with the body is a gradual, healing process that involves rebuilding trust in one's internal experience and reclaiming the right to feel and respond authentically.
Autistic Rage and the Gendered Gaze: When Our Anger is Called Hysteria
Autistic rage is often misinterpreted as irrational or dangerous due to the combined effects of ableism, misogyny, and transphobia, especially when expressed by autistic women and trans people. In reality, this anger is frequently a clear, informed, and necessary response to systemic injustice, boundary violations, and accumulated harm. The pathologizing of autistic anger serves to silence and discredit marginalized voices, but reclaiming that anger is a powerful act of resistance and self-advocacy.
Neurodivergent Quiet Quitting: How Burnout Shows Up as Boundary (Copy)
Neurodivergent quiet quitting is a self-protective response to chronic burnout, not a sign of laziness or disengagement. Autistic and ADHD professionals often withdraw at work to preserve their mental health after enduring years of masking, overextension, and systemic ableism. This boundary-setting is a form of resistance against exploitative environments and a call for more inclusive, sustainable workplace practices.
When Inclusion Is Just Another Word for Control
This article critiques how many so-called inclusion efforts are actually systems of control that require autistic people to conform to neurotypical norms in order to be accepted. It explores how schools, workplaces, and therapeutic settings often use the language of care while enforcing compliance and masking, rather than creating accessible environments. True inclusion, the article argues, must center autonomy, access, and systemic change, not performance or assimilation.
We Are Not Your Project: Autistic People Deserve Relationships, Not Fixers
This article explores how autistic people are often treated as self-improvement projects by partners, therapists, and family members, rather than being accepted as whole, complex individuals. It critiques the ways in which support becomes conditional on progress or compliance with neurotypical norms, leading to harm, disconnection, and internalized shame. The piece calls for relationships rooted in mutual respect, consent, and radical acceptance—where autistic people are not fixed, but genuinely seen and valued.
Grieving the Years You Lost to Not Knowing You Were Autistic
This article explores the unique grief that many late-diagnosed autistic adults experience as they come to understand how much of their lives were shaped by not knowing their true neurodivergent identity. It reflects on the relationships, opportunities, and self-understanding that were lost or distorted due to years of masking, misdiagnosis, and internalized shame. Through this grief, the article also offers space for healing, self-recognition, and the possibility of reclaiming a more authentic life.
Disordered or Disabled or Neither: Questioning the Pathologizing Language of Diagnosis
This article challenges the deficit-based language used in clinical diagnoses of autism and ADHD, which often frames neurodivergent people as disordered rather than different. It explores the tension between needing a diagnosis for access and support while resisting the harmful impacts of pathologizing frameworks. The piece advocates for affirming, context-aware understandings of neurodivergence that center lived experience, dignity, and agency.
Autistic Intuition Is Real
This article reframes autistic intuition as a valid and embodied form of perception that is often dismissed by neurotypical norms. It explores how autistic people sense patterns, emotions, and inconsistencies with deep accuracy, yet are frequently told their insights are wrong or inappropriate. The piece calls for a cultural shift toward respecting autistic ways of knowing as legitimate, valuable, and worthy of trust.