Autism Stories

"There's so many life coaches out there. Just like there's so many doctors, and there's so many psychologists and psychiatrists, and occupational therapists....but there's not a lot of autistic ones. And I thought, how amazing is it that I Can go out there, and I can speak to somebody, and I know what they're going through, and I can help them. There's not a lot out there, but it's such a necessar...

“I am telling the story one last time- my life leading up to my diagnosis, what it looked like before, and a little of what it looked like after- and that's pretty much it. I want to be hired for other things. Not that I won't still talk about my story, but I don't want it to be the focus of why people are hiring me. I want to be a part of the bigger conversations around disability in leadership,”...

"4 of the cast were autistic and 2 were not autistic. That I felt was important as well. I didn't want people to look at the play and be able to say, "oh look, there's the autistic people doing their thing over there." I wanted people to say, "It's okay for all of us to be in this room together, and look how much better it is,” says Jody O’Neil. Jody joins this episode to discuss her play "What I...

“Sex is deemed an inappropriate subject. People either shut down or they start giggling, or maybe they just blurt out everything and say too much. It is deemed inappropriate and something to be ashamed of. There's so much shame in our country in the way that people think about sex. We are oversexualized when it comes to the media, but we're also very shamed when it comes to our personal selves. It...

“One of the main things that I'm in charge of is granting ADA requests. I want an employee to be super comfortable with me, and know that I will go after their manager looking for approval for an ADA accommodation. I just had to do so a couple weeks ago. There was a lot of back and forth with the manager, but I really stick to my guns- I'm here to help employees out,” says Dominique Cyntryn. Domin...

"I also use self disclosure as a therapist. I am very open about being neurodivergent and struggling with that myself, which I think makes a big difference. Because I've learned that neurodivergent people tend to build relationships and share information through storytelling. I tell my stories, they tell their stories, we share special interests to build rapport. Everything is custom to the neurod...

"I am partial to children's books because I feel children have an open mind. To me, autism needs children to understand us because they are in school with autistics everyday. I want autistics to feel understood and accepted. My childhood would've been much better if that had happened for me,” says Gregory Tino. Gregory joins this episode to discuss his new book “The Autistic Boy in the Unruly Body...

“Running my own art therapy private practice has been one of the greatest vehicles for self growth I've ever had, because I have to take ownership of every single decision in my practice. Do I want to maintain my policies? It's been such a process of looking at myself and standing true to my values, and designing my practice in a way that both really meets my clients' needs, but also meets my own...

“The first 15 minutes of class, we are teaching about the brain. We are teaching about the autistic neurotype and the strengths. It's a strengths-based approach, because you gotta play to the strengths. It's not fun to be in a situation where like oh, here's something that you're not good at, let's just keep on doing that, because you're not good at it. That's so deflating,” says Mara McLoughlin....

"I don't understand when someone gives me something that's more than three steps, I can't do it and I just panic, but I can write you a book in three days. It's one of the reasons that I have trouble with functioning labels, and why the autistic community in general, has trouble with functioning labels. Because you can't call someone like me high-functioning because that's not accurate, and you ca...

"I've been preparing to move and I know it's gonna be a big change, so I've been prepping myself, sort of, and trying to prepare what in my routine is gonna stay the same. That's brought me a lot of comfort. I also went to a support group for late-diagnosed autistis last week, and I got some amazing advice from them. They said to have all your comfort items easily accessible,” says Ziale Evans. Zi...

“Design, and art as a larger umbrella, is storytelling. Just like music is storytelling, even without lyrics. I think that we all tell stories. I really feel that every single thing we experience is some sort of story. We tell ourselves stories; everything that comes out of our mouths is a story. It's how we navigate the world,” says Neisha Hirsch. Neisha joins this episode of Autism Stories to di...

“Sometimes autistic movement differences can cause pain or functional limitations, and sometimes they are truly just differences. They may look different from the "reference norm," but they actually work just fine for that person and their body. It takes a lot of teamwork between the patient and the provider in order to tease that out,” says Iris Warchall. Iris joins this episode of Autism Stories...

“The last commissions paper about the future of clinical autism research I think is a very good example of how there is mismatch between the priorities and needs of autistic people and the priorities of researchers. Autistic people should be included as equal partners in autism research, but that is currently rarely happening,” says Heini Natri. Heini joins this episode of Autism Stories to discus...

“The lines are so meaningful. Whenever you're capturing something, the lines alone can trigger the mind to know what you're looking at- just the lines. Using clean lines and just spotlighting certain colors, I'm filtering out all of that extra information that even neurotypical minds have to sort through,” says Amanda Hebert Hughes. Amanda joins this episode of Autism Stories to discuss creating a...

“There are so many community priorities that have just not had anywhere close to adequate research, and I think that part of the reason why the research hasn't gone further, is because they haven't, for the most part, they have not had an adequate theory of autism. They're trying to make sense of this phenomena without a uniform theory to ground it on.” Dr. Wenn Lawson and Fergus Murray return to...

“There are certain things that neurotypical researchers are doing that I appreciate, but they get things wrong. Fundamentally they don’t understand the experiential side of things. Then experience alone doesn’t always work because a lot of us are living with multiple diagnoses so I love the idea of teaming up and finding patterns and themes and starting to understand,” says Denielle Rose. Denielle...

“When I came back off my period of time out with burnout I suddenly realized we need a top down disclosure approach to mental health problems. If senior doctors aren’t disclosing, if patients get that doctors don’t get that then it becomes more stigmatized. If we don’t disclose nobody else will disclose. Openness means that somebody else who is struggling may feel like they can talk about their me...

“These are all components we experience that vary from the neuromajority sexual experience. The more we can talk about the more we can start having dialogue around this and sharing with one another what we experience and don’t like frees us up from internalized Shane and empowers us to live our best thriving life what serves us or aligns with us especially sexually,” says Carol Jeane Whittington....

“In our quest for perpetual comfort, we grab at every resource to enhance our short life. This selfish exploitation is directly creating it. We are already in a state of happiness if our thoughts move beyond material and physical comforts. We are in paradise and need to preserve it,” says Vikram Kumar. Vikram joins this episode of Autism Stories to discuss his poetry, spelling to communicate, and...

“Particularly in the medical profession, sometimes the answer is to want to physically do something, to fix something, to want to make something better. It’s not meant in a negative way, but sometimes the answer is to stand back, give it a couple of minutes, and see what happens. If they calm down on their own, they don’t need medication,” says David Crisp. Davis joins this episode to discuss auti...

“I was so fascinated with human interaction and emotions, of course from having to mask and study that. I really enjoyed how words on a page can make me feel and how I can use those to express myself better and to have others understand what I want to express,” says Christele Gassant. Christele joins this episode of Autism Stories to discuss her collection of poetry and the factors that led to him...

"Astrology I now know is undoubtedly my special interest. It was bringing me back to life while I was learning about it, and learning about it was unpacking all my trauma and helping me see parts of myself that I'd never been able to either acknowledge at all before or was seeing in a much more healthy light,” says Colleen Harrison. Colleen joins this episode to discuss how astrology has allowed h...

“I've lived a really long time not knowing that I'm autistic. Since people weren't being diagnosed with autism when I was a child, that must mean there's actually loads of people like me out there who are autistic and either haven't realized or are just finding out. Maybe it would be useful if I talk about it on the internet?” says Purple Ella. Ella Ella joins this episode to discuss being a digit...

"In many anime and manga, there are characters with disabilities, but for the majority, either they're used as a reason for the main character to protect the evils of the world from. Usually, as the stories progress, they fade into the background. That wasn't the case with Code Gease,” says Olivia McAdams. Olivia joins this episode of Autism Stories to discuss disability and autonomy in anime char...