The AutSide Podcast

Today’s episode examines an article, “When Writing Breaks Down,” which acts as a guide for teachers on understanding struggles related to writing and communication. The author, Jaime Hoerricks, PhD, argues that difficulties in student writing, which often involve structural, mechanical, and integrative barriers, are frequently mislabeled as simple behavioural problems rather than symptoms of under...

Today’s episode offers a personal and critical reflection on Gestalt Language Processing (GLP), trauma, and memory from an autistic perspective. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, details a temporal collapse that led to a meltdown, where multiple “nows” (past and present moments) layered together, an event she argues is not adequately explained by existing psychological literat...

Today’s episode explores the function of speech for gestalt language processors (GLPs), arguing that talking is primarily a form of memory integrity and maintenance, rather than mere recall or rumination. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, posits that speaking aloud helps keep complex, atmospheric, and relational memories whole over time, preventing them from hardening or fract...

Today’s episode presents a careful examination of the perceived binary between trauma and gestalt cognition, arguing that choosing between these two explanations for a mind’s functioning is a “trap” that fails to capture complexity, especially in AuDHD GLPs. The author of the source article, Jaime Hoerricks, PhD, who is an AuDHD gestalt processor and parent, asserts that gestalt cognition is the f...

In this week’s episode, Cathy and I explore how autistic gestalt language processors experience memory not as recall, but as whole return. Drawing on recent writing and lived experience, we examine why past experiences can arrive all at once, how safety governs integration, and why talking is not rumination—but memory integrity. Across these two essays and this week’s conversation with Cathy, I’m...

Today’s episode outlines the concept of Gestalt Memory in the context of trauma, particularly for gestalt language processors (GLPs). The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, argues that for GLPs, trauma is not stored in linear, manageable pieces but as a simultaneous, compressed whole—a “system” of sensation, meaning, and relational context that floods the body upon recall. This per...

Today’s episode examines the profound impact of gaslighting on an individual’s sense of reality and the necessity of repetitive validation for recovery. The author of the source article, Jaime Hoerricks, PhD, argues that the persistent need for confirmation, often misinterpreted as insecurity or emotional dependence, is actually a crucial process of structural and epistemic repair after the victim...

Today’s episode explores the concept of memory processing, particularly for gestalt language processors (GLPs). The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, argues that a cultural focus on “closure” and efficiency pathologises the natural process of “re-entry”—the repeated return to trauma or difficult stories—by labeling it as rumination or failure. Dr. Hoerricks reframes this repetitio...

Today’s episode analyses the negative impact of mandatory team-building and enforced vulnerability sessions on autistics and gestalt processors. The author of the source article, Jaime Hoerricks, PhD, explains that these rituals, often framed as care or community, systematically fracture safety for neurodivergent individuals by introducing ambiguity, power imbalances, and non-consensual demands. D...

Today’s episode discusses the nature of autistic memory and pattern recognition through a personal anecdote involving a student named Claudio. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, explains how an ordinary conversation with the student triggered a full-body, instantaneous recall of a previous workplace injury where she, an RSP teacher, was publicly reprimanded for following explic...

Today’s episode proposes that autistic memory and language, specifically Gestalt Language Processing (GLP), constitute a sophisticated and coherent “cognitive ecology” rather than a set of deficits. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, defines this framework as the autistic mnemotechnical tradition, arguing that meaning is generated holistically through sensory input, pattern rec...

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,...

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 spa...

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 contr...

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 trus...

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 fami...

Today’s episode serves as the introduction to a new podcast series that aims to explore Gestalt Processing from the internal perspective of an autistic gestalt processor. Authored by Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, the work posits that gestalt processing / gestalt language processing is not merely a speech pattern but an entire cognitive ecology or architecture of perception wherein individuals absorb the wo...

Today’s episode explores the complex reality of international migration, focusing on the acute difficulties faced by Gestalt Language Processors (GLPs), neurodivergent, and queer families. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, asserts that the choice of country is a classed fantasy, as mobility is heavily restricted by bureaucratic, economic, and ideological borders that weigh fam...

In today’s episode, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, PhD, outlines her philosophy of writing, which she terms “genre promiscuity,” asserting that her work—which layers memoir, political critique, myth, and embodiment—functions as an “ecosystem” rather than a fixed category. This style is necessary because, as an autistic, queer, trans thinker, her complex life experience resists the linearity and segmentation...

Today’s episode explores the tension between linear, simplified thinking prevalent in human services and the inherent multicausality and complexity of life, particularly for autistic and divergent individuals. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, uses a sociology assignment as a framework, contrasting a human services textbook that treats complexity as an inconvenience with a 202...

Today’s episode argues that conventional neurotypical politeness functions as a system of social control that actively protects those who cause harm whilst punishing the clarity and directness often characteristic of autistic communication. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, contends that politeness is often a “social technology” built on strategic ambiguity, which manipulators...

Today’s episode argues against the pervasive societal belief that autistic individuals fail to mature beyond childhood. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, asserts that this “infantilising gaze” is upheld by institutions and research that focus only on early intervention, effectively erasing the adult autistic experience from policy and recognition. Dr. Hoerricks contends that a...

Today’s episode provides an overview and meditation on Sarinah O’Donoghue’s 2023 essay, “Thinking with Sticks.” The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, emphasises a posthumanist perspective on autistic narrative, arguing that communication and meaning extend beyond verbal language and are co-authored by bodies, objects, movement, and sensory life. Dr. Hoerricks examines two foundati...

Today’s episode explores the lived experience of being an autistic-trans self, focusing on the concept of emergence and the societal “fog” that obscures self-recognition. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, describes how autistic and gender masking are survival mechanisms built to manage others’ limited perceptions, forcing the individual to live within the visible, often misint...

Today’s episode explores the historical and technological continuity of systematic harm. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, argues that texts like the Malleus Maleficarum (Witch’s Hammer), an early instrument of standardised persecution made widely accessible by the printing press, established an architecture of violence that has persisted through the ages. This architecture of...