Some Ways Learning I Was Autistic Improved My Life.

Dear my autistic daughters, You don’t have to try to be a super human to compensate for being autistic. It’s okay to just exist. There will be thousands, millions of people telling you what you should and shouldn’t do, care about, without ever taking the time to know who you are and what your life is like. These people do not know you and therefore, what they say has little value. They do not have to walk in your shoes nor have they tried.

Letters to my autistic daughters project Introduction As any autistic parent could tell you, raising autistic children is a heart wrenching experience. Not only do we desperately want to shield our kids from what we went through, we are also still healing from it and trying to figure everything out at the same time. When I think about what I went through as an undiagnosed, unaccommodated autistic child, my heart breaks. I never want any kid to grow up feeling so alone like

SpIn sharing is an integral part of autistic communication — and I will take every opportunity to share. I’m writing an article for Autism Spectrum News titled “Autistic Endurance: What Ultra Running Has Taught Me About Regulation and Belonging.” Running has been a SpIn of mine for a while, but I only started racing in September. For years, I avoided races. Too many people. Too many unwritten rules. Too much to figure out. Where do I stand? When do I start? What if I do somet

As a late-diagnosed autistic person, as well as the parent of two autistic children who have had a variety of assessments, services, etc., I have interfaced with A LOT of professionals over the years. Not only personally, but professionally, as someone who specializes in working exclusively with autistic people. . Unfortunately, every single slide is a quote I have heard recently from a professional about an autistic person. .

After almost 2 decades of working with people with OCD and anxiety “disorders”, I always felt uneasy about how the DSM delineates between what is a “disorder” vs non-disordered human conditions. Who gets to decide this? And then we have so much training and modalities based on the foundational belief that there is disorder within an individual that needs to be treated. ⠀ I am not saying that I don’t believe in mental illness, because I most definitely do believe that humans c

When we peel back all the layers, here’s the real issue: ⠀ When I speak, I am relying on the actual definitions — like dictionary definitions — of my literal words to communicate what I want them to communicate. ⠀ The majority of the human race, however, communicates using much more than literal definitions of words. They seek meaning through facial expression, body language, tone, and other social signals. ⠀ What they find must be confusing, because as an autistic person....

Having a disability that directly impacts my ability to socially engage with my species has been incredibly hard. ⠀ Learning I was autistic did not open up a world of long lost skills that would solve anything — it just made it painfully more obvious. ⠀ What’s extra complicated is that I don’t know if I would change it even if I could. ⠀ I recently received feedback that the reason I was having issues with yet another institution was because I didn’t know how to “fluff up” my

Intro To Adapting Psychotherapy For Autistic Clients  LIVE Training on March 1st, 2026 Cost: $150 (including 3 CEs 2 clinical, 1 cultural) ​ When: Sunday, March 1st, 2026 9am-12:00pm PST (pacific time) ​ Where: Via Zoom videoconferencing ​ Description: This is a 3 hour course designed to be a interactive introduction to adapting psychotherapy for Autistic clients which focuses on four main areas: What Autism is (the lived experience, early diagnosis, late-diagnosis), Common

Growing up as an undiagnosed and unaccommodated AuDHD person was rough. I experienced a lot of shame around the aspects of myself that were clearly different from others. As someone who always wants to know why something is happening, I spent my entire life trying to figure out why my brain seemed to work differently than others or why people could just sit still without fidgeting or order sandwiches at the counter without anxiety. I thought it meant I was broken.

I apologize in advance because I have no idea who to attribute this quote to, despite scouring the internet. According to LinkedIn, I’ve worked in mental health in some capacity for 20 years. Before that, philosophy and psychology were lifelong special interests. I’ve always been trying to figure out how to live life well—and how not to get stuck in traps. Traps like the hedonic treadmill, keeping up with the Joneses, or working myself to the bone in pursuit of security, only

Many of us have internalized the belief that we are not allowed to seek comfort. That comfort is a failure state. That growth only happens through pushing past it. ** For many autistic people—especially those of us who have masked our whole lives—comfort was never something we were taught to consider. We learned early on that our needs were inconvenient, excessive, or something to override.

When we think of accommodations, many of us imagine our favorite stim objects, a cozy corner, perhaps subtitles, or a map of a conference before we attend.

The Hardest Part of Autism (for me) Autism, at its core, impacts a person in two main ways: socially, and through repetitive behaviors or restricted interests (aka special interests, sensory issues, the need to stim, the need for sameness, etc.).

I was really hoping that my blog post about fighting for regional services for my child would’ve been a victory speech on how my knowledge and clinical expertise fought the system and won. Despite being able to recite the DSM-5-TR criteria for autism by heart, my hard won visceral-to-my-bones knowledge of autism wasn’t enough. I was up against a legal system that systematically denies high-masking BIPOC AFAB gender non-conforming, etc folks as "not autistic enough" to require

Some thoughts about why autism is confusing, at least why it's confusing to me.

Not a comprehensive list by any means but some common themes I have seen clinically and personally.

As you may have guessed as a therapist with lived-experienced, this is a deeply personal journey. The beginning of this story is actually way before I became a therapist, before I even knew that much about psychology. It began when my parents told me that a family member was getting an Asperger’s assessment (I am deeply aware Asperger’s is no longer a term used and has a bad history to it but I am using it here for accuracy, Asperger’s syndrome is now included in the diagnosi

Joining a group of late-discovered folks, some very early in their discovery journey and some many years in, offers a place where you don't have to overexplain your autistic experience in hopes the other person might finally understand. Trust me, we understand.

This is a short list of some traits that most of my clients struggle with