The AutSide Podcast

Autistic development doesn’t end in childhood—it unfolds when safety and relationship arrive. This conversation traces how non-linear minds make meaning, why systems erase autistic futures, and why attunement—not control—is what allows people to grow.
It was wonderful to get to spend another Saturday morning with Cathy. What today’s conversation keeps circling is a quiet but radical absence in our professional imagination—the idea that autistic children grow up.
So much of autism discourse is structurally frozen in childhood. Language development is treated as something that either happens on schedule or expires. Support is designed with an unspoken endpoint. By the time a young person ages out of services, the system behaves as if their story is complete. What I am trying to name is how false—and how damaging—that is. Autistic development is not arrested. It is contingent. It unfolds when safety, recognition, and relationship finally arrive. My own life is evidence of that. I did not “fail” to develop language. I was prevented from doing so, then later surged forward once the conditions changed. Development did not stop. It was deferred.
From there, the conversation opens into a wider question of how meaning itself is made. I do not process language in neat sequences. I process life as a whole first—emotion, pattern, atmosphere—before I can ever reduce it to parts. Writing is not output for me. It is translation. I write in order to make myself legible to myself inside a world that never offered cognitive mirrors. When institutions call this delayed articulation “confusion” or “distortion,” they mistake a different epistemology for pathology. What they label disorder is often simply non-linear coherence.
This is where professional erasure enters. I work inside special education law, yet the system does not imagine that one of its former subjects might one day become its practitioner. Autistic people are built into policy as recipients of service, not as future colleagues, thinkers, or leaders. I rarely see myself reflected in professional development spaces—not as an autistic adult, not as a gestalt processor, not as someone whose cognition might itself be a source of insight. Much of my writing exists because I had to create the mirrors that were missing. It is not productivity—it is repair.
The same pattern appears in education more broadly. My teaching is shaped by story, cadence, and relational memory—an inheritance from Gaelic culture, where knowledge travels through song and lived narrative rather than rigid hierarchy. That is not romanticism. It is pedagogy. When I teach mathematics, I begin with the whole—the meaning of what we are doing—before breaking it into parts. Students who struggle under purely sequential instruction often flourish when sense comes first. Yet the system privileges speed over understanding. We move on whether meaning has arrived or not. Punctuality has replaced knowledge as the organising value of schooling.
This is not just an educational problem. It is cultural. We have dismantled the everyday spaces where attunement is learned—pubs, cafés, informal public life—places where people once practised being with strangers. Without these relational commons, conversation itself atrophies. We then misdiagnose the resulting disconnection as personal failure rather than infrastructural loss. What looks like social decline is often relational deprivation.
Across all of this, one word keeps surfacing as the unspoken through line: attunement.
It runs through how I teach, how I write, how I relate, how I collaborate, how I understand autism, how I understand learning. Growth happens in relationship, not compliance. Whether with children in therapy, students in classrooms, colleagues in conversation, or readers on the page, what actually changes people is not technique but alignment. Systems obsessed with hierarchy, pacing, and control systematically undermine the very conditions that make development possible.
Even the small details belong to this same logic. Finding clothes that finally fit my body is not vanity—it is sensory and relational safety. It is the body coming into agreement with itself. Coherence is not abstract. It is lived.
The conversation with Cathy is not really about language stages, or education, or autism in isolation. It is about a civilisation that mistrusts relational knowledge and then wonders why so much no longer makes sense. What I am trying to articulate—across my work and in this dialogue—is that we do not need better control systems. We need better conditions for contact.
Not more management of human beings—but more understanding of how humans actually grow.
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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit autside.substack.com/subscribe

Today’s episode explores the emotional and structural barriers faced by an educator when navigating a shifting professional credentialing landscape. Although the author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, remains legally qualified to teach, new administrative policies have reclassified their existing skills as additional requirements, forcing a choice between absorbing harm or forgoing further training. This “gated learning” is criticised for its sharp hypocrisy, as programs that preach inclusivity often fail to accommodate the physical and neurological needs of the adult learners they serve. Dr. Hoerricks’ decision to decline these courses is framed not as a rejection of professional growth, but as a necessary refusal to compromise their well-being for a redundant certification. Ultimately, the narrative highlights how cumulative systemic obstacles create a quiet form of exclusion that limits future opportunities without ever being officially recorded. This creates a lasting sense of grief and frustration for those who are technically invited to participate but practically barred by the design of the system.
Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/writing-the-complete-gestalt-the
Let me know what you think.
The AutSide is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit autside.substack.com/subscribe

Today’s episode examines a scientific paper that explores the potential physiological connections between dermatology and autism. Whilst the original researchers focus on biomarkers like inflammation and skin barrier issues, the author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, questions the underlying intentions of such medical studies. Dr. Hoerricks argues that focusing on the skin allows clinicians to treat autism as a quantifiable pathology that can be measured without engaging with the actual lived experiences of autistic individuals. By reducing complex human traits to surface-level data, the scientific community risks overlooking the regulatory and relational importance of the body. Ultimately, her article serves as a warning against using biological evidence to further stigmatise and reduce the autistic identity.
Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/when-skin-becomes-evidence-a-review
Let me know what you think.
The AutSide is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit autside.substack.com/subscribe

Today’s episode explores the exhausting demands of social expectations and the performative nature of casual "checking in" after the holidays. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, rejects the traditional catch-up call, arguing that these interactions often prioritise the caller’s need for efficiency over genuine emotional intimacy. For Dr. Hoerricks, silence is not a sign of isolation but a necessary space for self-regulation and internal coherence. She emphasises that verbal spontaneity can be a taxing burden for those who are autistic and / or gestalt processors. Ultimately, her article and poem serves as a firm boundary-setting exercise, reclaiming the right to exist without constant narration or social performance. She reframes quietness as a position of strength rather than a withdrawal from the world.
Here’s the link to the source article and poem: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/quiet-is-not-withdrawal-the-cost
Let me know what you think.
The AutSide is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit autside.substack.com/subscribe

Today’s episode “redefines” Gestalt Language Processing (GLP) by applying the lens of Chicano Borderlands Theory to modern educational and clinical debates. Rather than viewing this holistic communication style as a developmental error, the author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, argues it represents a unique form of ‘nepantla’ cognition that prioritises whole meanings over linear segments. Dr. Hoerricks suggests that current professional opposition to GLP is not a simple scientific disagreement, but rather a form of epistemic policing used to protect traditional institutional standards. These established systems often struggle to accommodate non-linear ways of knowing because they rely heavily on extraction and standardisation. Ultimately, she frames the struggle for GLP recognition as a fight for the validity of diverse cognitive experiences against rigid societal norms.
Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/borderlands-of-meaning-gestalt-language
Let me know what you think.
The AutSide is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit autside.substack.com/subscribe