The AutSide Podcast

A conversation about belonging, language, and meaning-making. From autistic community to reading comprehension, we explore what becomes possible when people are understood on their own terms rather than measured by performance. Today’s conversation felt so coherent because it was not really about three separate topics. Community, comprehension, and communication kept collapsing into one another. E...

Today’s episode challenges the clinical perception of autism by reframing hyper-empathy and sensitivity as accurate forms of perceptual resolution. Rather than viewing the autistic experience as a failure to maintain boundaries, the author of the source articles, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, argues that these individuals are often acutely aware of a shared human field that others ignore. This heightened f...

In today’s episode, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks describes her life navigating an autistic brain that functions as a high-speed field processor, absorbing and analysing information without traditional filters or hierarchies. Initially, this internal intensity led to a systemic collapse, resulting in years of being over-medicated by a medical community that misidentified her cognitive style as a disorder. H...

Today’s episode explores desire as a form of pattern recognition and environmental intelligence rather than a fixed preference for specific objects or identities. The author of the source articles, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, reframes attunement and sensory regulation as the primary drivers of human connection, tracing how early experiences of absence and imposed gender narratives shape the body’s search...

What if support succeeds so well that it becomes invisible? A conversation on autism, GLPs, assessment, adulthood, Kairos and Kronos, and why affirming practice begins not with labels, but with ecology. This week’s conversation with Cathy began with a deceptively simple question: what does it actually mean to be neurodiversity affirming? The longer we talked, the less interested I became in labels...

Mathematics was born inside stories of trade, navigation, building, and survival. This talk explores how story creates meaning, why GLP learners need scripts before symbols, and what happens when education forgets both. This talk was not planned. At least, not in the way most talks are planned. I am currently approaching the end of a long writing cycle. The Whole of It as Accommodation is nearing...

Today’s digression argues that establishing inclusive educational environments requires moving beyond simple classroom adjustments toward true partnership between teachers, students, and families. Author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, highlights how systemic inequities, such as underfunding and the lack of affordable housing for educators, prevent teachers from building deep roots wit...

After evacuation warnings during a California wildfire, I reflect on recursive memory, autistic overwhelm, voice notes as survival infrastructure, and why assistive technology is not cheating but a way back to coherence. The strange thing about catastrophe is that the body often understands it before the mind does. The alarms go off. The mobiles erupt. The message arrives in the flat administrativ...

In today’s episode, a cross over piece from Sensual Residue , Dr. Jaime Hoerricks examines how consent is often ignored in both social and educational settings by drawing parallels between a coercive encounter at a club and the academic pressures placed on autistic children. She describes witnessing a woman’s subtle physical withdrawal being dismissed by a partner, much like how an autistic child’...

Jaime and Cathy explore classroom ecology, fragmented curricula, nervous system overwhelm, and why students are too often expected to perform knowledge before they are ever allowed to encounter the whole of it. Today’s conversation with Cathy moved through something I’ve been trying to articulate for years—that many students are not failing because they lack intelligence or curiosity, but because...

A reflection on classroom ecology, gestalt learning, sensory regulation, and why many autistic and gestalt-oriented students are failed not by inability, but by systems that mistake compliance, fragmentation, and noise for learning. Today’s conversation with Cathy kept circling back to one central idea: ecology . Not accommodation as an afterthought. Not support as a bolt-on intervention once a st...

A geometry moment became a flood. This video traces how one sentence—“the whole may be the accommodation”—unlocked a book, exposing how schools mistake sequence for learning and offer meaning only after access is denied. It begins small, because it always does. A classroom moment. A student working at the edge of fit—not incapable, not disengaged, but misaligned with the route being enforced. Then...

Today’s episode explores the disconnect between scientific evidence and the aggressive marketing of executive functioning interventions, particularly for autistic and gestalt-oriented children. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, argues that popular service providers frequently misuse research by applying studies of allistic populations or broad diagnostic categories to children...

After another Autism Awareness Month, this video offers a decoder ring for claims about gestalt processing—showing how research, marketing, and hope get entangled, and how to ask whether a support actually fits the child in front of you. There is a particular kind of fatigue that follows April—a saturation of language that claims to see, paired with a quiet absence of what actually needs to be see...

A brief re-introduction: an autistic gestalt processor, late to language and diagnosis, writing from a script garden of delayed echolalia. Fifteen short points to orient new readers entering the work midstream. Opening — Welcome / Re-introduction With Cathy off enjoying a jazz festival this weekend, I wanted to take this time to do something a little different. There have been a lot of new people...

This video introduces The Wrong Reader—a series on therapy, misreading, and autistic jeopardy. Not content, but script garden: a warning, an offering, and a record from inside the weather system of being read wrong. This morning’s video is less a conventional introduction than a threshold note— a quarter turn before the next doorway opens. I begin by thanking the many new readers and listeners who...

Today’s episode examines how societal institutions utilise simplified questioning as a method of systemic control. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, argues that schools and workplaces prioritise compressed, rapid responses to make individuals easier to manage and categorise. By shifting the focus from personal experience to structural critique, her writing explores how the pre...

In today’s chat with Cathy, we circled a familiar truth: for many autistic GLPs, the whole arrives before the parts. Recognition often begins in resonance, memory, and misreading—long before language catches up. Here’s the link to my support script that I mentioned in the video. Today’s conversation with Cathy ended up circling a truth I keep returning to: for many autistic, gestalt-oriented adult...

Today’s episode introduces a conceptual shift in communication by prioritising the needs of Gestalt Language Processors and others with field-first minds. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, advocates for moving away from interrogative extraction toward an atmosphere where truth and inquiry are invited through relationship. By imagining rooms designed for connection rather than...

Today’s episode introduces an exploration into the social scripts and linguistic rituals that often mask the true internal experiences of neurodivergent individuals. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, examines how common inquiries like "How are you?" frequently prioritise social convenience over genuine emotional connection. Through the lens of masking and alexithymia, her arti...

Today’s episode introduces a thoughtful exploration of how neurodivergent individuals experience the psychological strain of making seemingly minor decisions. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, suggests that questions about personal preferences or simple choices are often far more complex than they appear, requiring a “compression” of one’s identity that can feel deeply overwhe...

Today’s episode explores the psychological burden placed on individuals when they are forced to explain their identities or actions under pressure. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, argues that the question “why?” often functions as a form of coercive interrogation rather than a genuine inquiry, especially for those experiencing trauma or delayed processing. By demanding a lin...

Today’s episode highlights how ordinary questions can trigger an intense internal load for unsupported adults, requiring significant mental labor to process. By analysing the hidden mechanics of conversation, the author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, explains why simple prompts often feel like overwhelming demands rather than casual interactions. Readers are encouraged to view their n...

Today’s episode introduces a specialised series by Dr. Jaime Hoerricks titled “WH- Questions and the Cost of Compression,” which investigates the psychological and physical distress caused by basic inquiries. The new series serves as a supportive guide specifically for unsupported adults who experience intense anxiety, paralysis, or confusion when faced with common questions. By prioritising somat...

A dawn reflection on why this next turn is not a detour but a continuation—moving from collapse, precarity, and autistic futurity into the hostile “simple questions” that demand impossible answers from gestalt minds. This morning’s video sits in that strange in-between place—the liminal edge between one body of work ending and another beginning. I recorded it at dawn, with rain outside and that pa...