The AutSide Podcast

• Episode 440: Refusing the Analytic Scalpel—Gestalt Language Sovereignty

  Today’s episode offers a highly critical and unapologetic rebuttal to a 2025 ASHA publication regarding Gestalt Language Processing (GLP), which the author, Jaime Hoerricks, PhD, views as a harmful repetition of old, non-autistic analytic critiques. Dr. Hoerricks argues that this professional opposition is rooted in analytic supremacy, insisting that language must be broken into parts to be valid, thereby dismissing gestalt processing as an inferior or immature form of communication. She contends that the pushback is fundamentally driven by capitalist capture, as recognising GLP threatens the revenue structures and clinical labour models of traditional speech-language pathology interventions. Further, the critique is accused of using “proximity innocence”—citing work with autistic children without integrating their actual voices—to mask its institutional power and colonial language politics. Ultimately, Dr. Hoerricks declares that autistic people are finished trying to reform these existing structures, instead advocating for the necessary work of building a new, neurodivergent-led field centered on multimodal communication, where lived expertise is the gold standard of evidence.Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/when-proximity-becomes-a-weapon-whyLet 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

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• Video Episode 00: The Dawning of a New Era

  A first conversation between Cathy Shilling and I on gestalt processing from the inside—how GLP minds think, speak, remember, and reorganise meaning in wholeness. Autistic cognition as lived architecture, not deficit, explained with clarity, tenderness, and depth.This first episode begins where gestalts always begin—not with definitions, but with atmosphere. Cathy Shilling and I open a shared space to speak about gestalt processing as it is lived, felt, and embodied, rather than as it is measured or reduced. This is not a training module or a checklist. It’s a conversation rooted in coherence.We explore gestalt processing as a whole cognitive ecology—a way meaning arrives fully formed, saturated with emotion, context, memory, and relational signal. We speak about why GLP is so often misunderstood as delay or disorder, and what becomes visible when we understand it instead as a different developmental pathway—one that prioritises pattern, attunement, and wholeness over segmentation.This episode also traces recognising oneself as a gestalt processor—how language doesn’t disappear, but reorganises; how memory lives as atmosphere; how identity can recalibrate suddenly when a single gestalt shifts. We talk about why repetition isn’t redundancy, why certain words carry entire worlds, and why clarity feels like safety for GLP nervous systems.Above all, this conversation is an invitation—to parents, educators, clinicians, and gestalt processors themselves—to listen differently. Not to translate GLP experience into analytic terms, but to meet it on its own ground. This podcast exists to widen the field, one conversation at a time—and this is where we begin.Here’s the link to the source article: https://autside.substack.com/p/constellations-of-meaning-the-architectureSee you next week.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

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• Episode 439: Love Without Vanishing—Coherence as Intimacy's Core

  Today’s episode explores the foundational principles of autistic attachment and intimacy, prioritising self-preservation within deep connection. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, emphasises that safety and true bonding rely on the pre-verbal signals and coherence of the body, asserting that innate autistic clarity should be trusted over social expectations. Dr. Hoerricks contrasts honest relationality, which begins with recognition and reciprocity, with toxic societal reliance on charm and masking, which are identified as manipulation traps. True closeness, she notes, requires establishing boundaries and practicing soft autonomy, treating sensory consent not merely as a safety measure but as a language of trust. Ultimately, she advocates for building a relationship architecture spacious enough for desire that honors one’s full presence and does not necessitate self-abandonment or emotional disappearance.Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/love-without-losing-yourself-coherenceLet 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

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• Episode 438: Teaching Danger Without Fear for Autistic Teens

  Today’s episode critiques traditional safety education for autistic adolescents, arguing that it fails by prioritising social performance and compliance over recognising the inherent wisdom of the individual’s instincts. Author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks proposes a paradigm shift, advocating for a focus on relational sovereignty rooted in a matristic ethic of communal care and trust. Safety is taught by helping teens identify coercive dynamics through concrete pattern recognition (like the loop of charm, confusion, and blame) and by anchoring red flags to bodily and sensory cues. Instead of behaviourist role-playing, Dr. Hoerricks promotes the use of rehearsal techniques and short sovereignty scripts to establish boundaries and allow self-trust during moments of pressure. Crucially, she asserts that long-term safety requires a shift toward an ecological commons, demanding that schools and communities dismantle hierarchical structures that enable harm instead of placing the entire burden of prevention on the teen.Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/teaching-danger-without-teachingLet 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

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• Episode 437: The Empathy That Built the World and Broke Us

  Today’s episode examines how intense emotional sensitivity and hyper-empathy—particularly that experienced by autistic individuals—is systematically exploited and extracted as unpaid labor by societal institutions. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, argues that hyper-empathy is frequently mislabeled as a personal flaw or instinct when it is, in fact, a resource consumed by families, care professions, and empires, fitting into a long history of coerced relational labour assigned to marginalised groups. Dr. Hoerricks directly challenges the narrative of the “autism empathy deficit,” stating that many autistic people experience overwhelming emotional attunement which is then utilised in exhausting “empathy pipelines” where their survival strategies are mistaken for natural availability. This dynamic transforms sensitivity from a personal capacity into an obligation that maintains the comfort of others, with the cost being borne solely by the deeply feeling individual. To counter this extraction, she advocates for reclaiming empathy as a specialised, boundary-protected skill and for the fundamental redistribution of emotional labor into a collective, reciprocal practice.Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/the-empathy-that-built-the-worldLet 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

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