The AutSide Podcast

Today’s episode explores a reimagined perspective on executive functioning, moving away from clinical labels toward a more intuitive, lived experience. The author of the source article, Jaime Hoerricks, PhD, critiques traditional medical vocabulary like “procrastination” and “time blindness,” suggesting these traits are better understood as personal weather forecasts or internal rhythms. By utilising Choice Theory and teleology, she argues that human needs and productivity are not linear hierarchies but are instead interconnected and meaning-driven. This approach prioritises qualitative experience and purpose over rigid, measurable metrics of discipline. Ultimately, her piece advocates for a language that acknowledges the depth of neurodivergent processing rather than viewing it as a series of deficits.
Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/executive-functioning-symptoms-rewritten
Let me know what you think.
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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

We explored why research misses gestalt language processors—how systems mis-sort us, how curriculum excludes us, and why curiosity must replace correction. The real question isn’t “Do we exist?” but “How do we help things go right?”
This week’s conversation with Cathy began with something deceptively simple—new glasses, clearer sight, a small recalibration of perception. And that felt apt, because what we were really circling was vision: what counts as evidence, who gets to define it, and why lived structure is so often dismissed when it does not fit institutional instrumentation.
She asked about the research claim that gestalt language processing “lacks evidence.” I started where I always start. There is no blood test. No algorithm. No neat metric that declares a cognitive architecture real. And yet I sit with students whose literacy data, phonological profiles, memory patterns, and—most tellingly—their nervous systems under pressure form a coherent, longitudinal picture. The giggle at nonsense words. The freeze when scripts fail. The panic when meaning cannot be assembled from fragments. None of these is proof in isolation. Together, over years, they are unmistakable. I recognise them because I have lived them.
We spoke about how systems mis-sort us. In American schools, autism is often framed behaviourally—externalised distress is legible. Conversational girls and compliant students, however, are routed into “specific learning disability” categories, their language architecture read as deficit rather than difference. The curriculum compounds this. It is built part-to-whole, analytic by design. Gestalt processors are expected to construct the cathedral from bricks handed out one at a time. When I give my students the whole first—when I narrate the shape of the mathematics before asking them to manipulate it—they grow. Yet districts spend billions on remediation without ever questioning whether the soil itself is hostile to certain minds.
Cathy pushed further: why does research insist we do not exist? I suggested it is less conspiracy than misframing. Much of the work looks from the outside in, cataloguing behaviours without inhabiting the structure that produces them. It seeks to correct what it presumes has gone wrong. My orientation has always been different. Years ago, I was told that administrators fix things after failure, but leaders help things go right in the first place. That sentence shaped my degrees, my dissertation, my classroom. The question is not “How do we remediate this child?” but “What in this environment makes flourishing impossible?”
We closed on that distinction. Curiosity versus correction. Architecture versus symptom. Research that begins with the assumption of defect will always miss the living pattern in front of it. Work that begins with relationship—longitudinal, embodied, accountable—has a chance to help things go right. And that, for me, remains the point.
I mention my three books in this chat—No Place for Autism?, Holistic Language Instruction, and Decolonising Language Education. You can find them at Lived Places Publishing, or your favourite on-line retailer.
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

Recovering from illness, I reflect on unmasking, gestalt meaning, and why the book must move at kairos speed—not academic delay. From inside the experience, I clarify: gestalt processing isn’t autism itself, but a way meaning arrives whole.
I recorded this one alone—cold light on the mountain, voice still a little rough around the edges. I’m not quite over being ill; two weeks of sinus infection unrouted everything, including my eyes, my sleep, my rhythm. I managed last week’s video episode in a fog, then had to step back. So this felt like a return—not triumphant, not polished, but steady. Reassembling. Letting the field come back into focus.
I wanted to clarify where we are. The book is real. It has landed internally. But I’m resisting the old academic tempo—the year-long gap between writing and release. That lag has always felt misaligned with how my mind works. When I say I’m ready, it isn’t impulsive. It means the whole has already cohered. The unmasking series and the executive functioning pieces were not detours—they were groundwork. They prepared the relational and linguistic field so the book could arrive intact. For a gestalt processor, action is the visible tip of a much older movement.
I also needed to restate something plainly: gestalt processing is not synonymous with autism. Many autistic people are gestalt processors—many are not. Many non-autistic people are gestalt processors. It is not about borrowed phrases or quirky echolalia. It is about how meaning forms. Whole-to-part. The ending often precedes the outline. The project can feel complete before the first word is typed. That isn’t mysticism; it’s architecture. And when schools or clinicians treat this as disorder, or try to coach it into analytic compliance, something essential gets flattened.
The unmasking work matters because safety matters. For decades I masked—professionally, socially, economically. Not out of deceit, but survival. Only with tenure, with a measure of structural protection, could I begin to live integrated rather than partitioned. And once unmasked, the naysayers lose their power. Critique from outside the lived experience feels different when you are no longer trying to earn legitimacy. You can read it and think: you are describing something you do not inhabit.
Now the series turns to executive functioning—Chronos versus Kairos. The violence of the timer. The way meaning-time does not bend to productivity metrics. I feel this daily in classrooms, in therapy rooms, in institutional schedules that demand compression of what cannot be compressed. So I want to offer tools that work from within—co-regulation, redesign, a redefinition of what functioning even means.
And at the end, I said thank you. Because despite the long monologues and the poetry, I am shy. Video is new. Being seen is new. Your comments have been steady rather than saccharine, thoughtful rather than fawning. That helps. I’m still recovering physically, still finding my breath, but the work feels clear. And I’m grateful you’re here in it with me.
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 argues that gestalt processing is a broad cognitive experience rather than a trait exclusive to autism or language development. This “whole-first” way of knowing prioritises immediate meaning over individual details, allowing gestalt processors who may be farmers or mechanics to perceive systems as a single entity. The author of the source essay and poem, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, introduces the concept of gestalt time, where planning flows backward from a future goal rather than forward through linear steps. This mental state, she describes as meaning-time, allows a project to feel finished before the physical labor has even commenced. Ultimately, she suggests that what onlookers might perceive as stillness or inactivity is actually a profound form of internal preparation. Through this lens, hyperfocus is reframed as a natural alignment with one's environment rather than a lack of self-regulation.
Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/executive-functioning-gestalt-time
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 critiques the traditional psychological concept of executive functioning, arguing that it serves as a corporate metaphor rooted in patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism. The author of the source essay, Jaime Hoerricks, PhD, suggests that society views the mind as a rigid boardroom where a metaphorical manager demands productivity at the expense of natural, human rhythms. This internalised pressure pathologises individuals who process the world through gestalt time (kairos), labeling their unique cognitive styles as defective or lazy. By decolonising this mental framework, her piece seeks to loosen the grip of societal expectations that prioritize efficiency over personal discernment. Ultimately, tshe advocates for a gentler self-understanding that honors the body’s internal timing rather than strictly adhering to industrialized standards of worth.
Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/executive-functioning-the-boardroom
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