When Autistic people withdraw during a conflict, too often we are treated as a problem.
People assume we step back because we’re not engaged in the conversation or motivated to work through the conflict. Pausing a conversation gets read as avoidance. Creating distance is taken as a refusal to work things through. The underlying expectations are clear: Care looks like staying present. Responsibility means continuing the interaction without a break until it is resolved.
When an Autistic person withdraws, that choice is rarely understood on its own terms. It is labeled: avoidance, stonewalling, punishment, manipulation. These labels do more than just describe behavior. They assign intent and motive, turning a person’s decision to take time and space into a moral judgment against them.
For many Autistic people, however, timely withdrawal serves a different purpose. It is a way of re-regulating a distressed nervous system before full dysregulation takes hold. Withdrawing from conflict helps preserve clarity, reduce harm, and make continued relationship possible. What is often framed as disengagement is, in practice, a means of staying safe enough to remain connected.
What “Timely Withdrawal” Means
I’m not talking about disappearing, abandoning relationships, or refusing accountability. I’m not arguing for disengagement as an endpoint, and I’m not defending avoiding difficult conversations. The focus here is narrower and more specific: how and when stepping back and taking time to collect oneself can prevent harm rather than create it.
Timely withdrawal means choosing to create temporary distance before nervous-system overwhelm takes hold. It can look like pausing a conversation, leaving a charged environment, or taking space long enough for regulation to return. Instead of pushing through when capacity is already strained, timely withdrawal allows the nervous system to settle so that thinking, language, and judgment can come back online.
Timing is the key distinction. Stepping away early, while some capacity remains, is very different from being forced to endure an interaction past one’s limits. When withdrawal happens proactively, it functions as a stabilizing pause. The longer withdrawal is delayed, and the more regulation has unraveled before taking a break, the more reactive that withdrawal becomes. When that happens, the break itself is much less effective at preserving stability and safety.
The difference that makes withdrawal timely is not the act of pulling back, but the choice to step away sooner rather than too late.
The False Moral Binary
In most social settings in the country where I live (the United States), people seem to understand a simple rule about interpersonal conflict: staying with the conversation is treated as a virtue, while leaving is treated as a failure. Remaining engaged is associated with maturity, care, and responsibility. Stepping away, by contrast, is often read as immaturity, hostility, or a lack of commitment. This creates a familiar binary in which continued presence is assumed to be constructive and withdrawal is treated as suspect, regardless of what is actually happening for the people involved.
This binary rests on hidden assumptions about capacity. It assumes that everyone has equal access to nervous system regulation, verbal precision, and emotional bandwidth at all times. In reality, people differ widely in how they process stress, sensory input, and emotional intensity. For Neurodivergent people, the ability to remain present and articulate under pressure can fluctuate significantly. Treating “staying” and clear communication in the heat of the moment as things that should always be possible ignores these differences. It mistakes unequal capacity for unequal care.
For Autistic people caught inside this framework, conflict presents an impossible choice. Staying risks escalating dysregulation and loss of capacity. Leaving to prevent that escalation invites accusation and blame. One option is framed as a failure of self-control; the other as a failure of character. When both paths are punished, the problem is not individual behavior. The problem is the system that defines what counts as acceptable in the first place.
What Happens When Withdrawal Is Denied
For anyone, as stress increases, capacity narrows in predictable ways. For Autistic people, this effect is amplified. Most Autistic people reach high levels of stress with a lower threshold of input.
Sensory input can become overwhelming, making it harder to filter sounds, sights, or internal sensations. Verbal precision may decline, with language becoming slower, less flexible, or more effortful to produce. In some cases, the nervous system interprets the situation as a serious threat, and defensive language emerges: angrier or more forceful than intended.
Under this kind of pressure, attention constricts and response options narrow, making it difficult to track nuance or adapt in real time. These shifts are not matters of choice or attitude; they reflect how the nervous system functions under sustained load.
There is a common belief that sticking with the conversation will eventually lead to clarity or resolution. But once capacity has been exceeded, continued engagement rarely improves understanding or communication. More time and more pressure do not restore regulation. Instead, they tend to further tax already limited personal resources. In these conditions, persistence stops functioning as problem-solving and becomes additional strain on top of the original conflict.
When withdrawal is blocked or discouraged, escalation becomes more likely rather than less. Opportunities for early exit are replaced by forced endurance, increasing the chances of dysregulated responses that lead to negative attention and real consequences. Denying withdrawal can produce the very outcomes that are then judged and condemned.
Why Withdrawal Is So Often Misread
Many people are used to handling conflict through immediacy. There is an expectation that concerns should be addressed right away, out loud, and in the moment. Strong feelings are often met with direct confrontation, and staying in the conversation is taken as a sign of sincerity, care, and commitment.
Within this framework, withdrawal is easy to misread. A pause meant to reduce overload can look like silence. Taking distance to restore capacity can look like rejection or disengagement. When someone regulates by stepping back instead of pressing forward, that choice often doesn’t register as regulation at all. It registers as absence.
Most of the time, this misreading is not intentional. People interpret behavior using the norms they know. But intent doesn’t erase impact. When withdrawal is repeatedly interpreted as avoidance, punishment, or lack of care, real harm can occur, even when no one meant to cause it.
Withdrawal as Harm Reduction
Timely withdrawal can be understood as a form of harm reduction. It is a way of responding early to rising strain, before damage becomes difficult or impossible to undo. When a situation is becoming unstable, stepping back can limit how much harm occurs and how far it spreads. In moments where no option is entirely without cost, withdrawal can be the choice that reduces risk rather than escalating it.
The harm at stake is not abstract. When dysregulation escalates unchecked, people can lose jobs, relationships, reputations, and access to community. They can lose standing in workplaces or educational settings, be pushed out of housing or social networks, or find themselves excluded from spaces they once belonged to. In some contexts, the consequences can extend even further, including loss of freedom or serious threats to physical safety. These outcomes are not the result of poor character or bad intentions; they are the result of being pushed past capacity without a way to pause or exit.
Dysregulated responses such as meltdowns and shutdowns are not matters of choice or intent. They occur when regulatory capacity has been exceeded, not when someone “decides” to lose control. Acting to prevent that threshold from being crossed is not manipulation or coercion. It is a preventive step taken to preserve stability and safety in situations where the costs of escalation can be severe.
Care does not always look like continued engagement. Sometimes the most responsible action available is to step back before irreversible harm occurs. Care sometimes looks like distance.
Timely Withdrawal Preserves Relationship
When withdrawal is timely, it isn’t taken before it’s needed. But when withdrawal happens early enough, it can prevent harm that is hard (or impossible) to undo later. Taking space before capacity collapses lowers the chance of saying or doing things that permanently damage trust or safety. In that sense, withdrawal is not a rupture itself. It can be one of the ways a relationship is protected from true rupture.
Stepping back from a stressful experience is not the same as stepping away from a relationship, job, or course of education. Pausing to restore capacity does not mean care, commitment, or responsibility have disappeared. Treating temporary distance as abandonment collapses two very different things into one and misses what the pause is actually for.
Many ruptures that get blamed on withdrawal do not happen because someone left. They happen because someone could not leave. When leaving is denied, discouraged, or treated as morally wrong, pressure builds with nowhere to go. In those situations, damage often occurs not because distance was taken, but because it wasn’t allowed.
Supportive Agreements (Before Conflict)
Talking about withdrawal ahead of time often makes the difference between it being taken as harm or as care. When people have shared understanding about pauses and exits, taking space doesn’t come as a shock. Without that understanding, withdrawal gets interpreted in the most stressful moment, when assumptions tend to rush in and fill the gap.
A helpful understanding can be as simple as knowing that stepping away is allowed when capacity is strained. Discussing withdrawal before it happens (or during a calm time afterward) means having language that helps people tell the difference between taking necessary recovery space and abandoning a relationship. Understanding doesn’t dictate how long a pause should last or how things must be resolved when the pause has ended. It just makes it possible for distance to be seen as regulation, not rejection.
The timing of these conversations matters. They need to happen outside of active conflict, not in the middle of things unraveling. When expectations are named ahead of time, pauses don’t have to be defended or negotiated under pressure. That matters, especially when an Autistic person may not have the words or calm required to explain or even excuse themselves. The withdrawal can be taken as needed, and (hopefully) understood in its true spirit, not erroneously interpreted and judged.
A Principle, Not a Preference
For many Autistic people, the ability to withdraw is not a matter of comfort or personal style. It is a necessary condition for maintaining regulation, safety, and the ability to participate at all. Treating withdrawal as optional misunderstands its role and places demands on capacity that cannot be reliably met.
What is at stake is not convenience, but the basic conditions that make interaction possible. Safety depends on the ability to prevent overwhelm. Dignity depends on having one’s limits recognized. Autonomy is only preserved when one’s needs are honored. Continuity depends on reducing harm that cannot easily be repaired. When withdrawal is respected, these conditions are far more likely to hold.
Timely withdrawal is not a failure to care.
It is often the action that makes care possible at all.
Image Description: A person with a dark ponytail, wearing a bright yellow-green sleeveless t-shirt, stands with their back to the camera. They are looking at a fork in a forest path, deciding which direction to choose.
Note: This blog essay and resource lists are U.S.-centric because I live in the U.S. and am only familiar with U.S. processes and resources. I apologize for this provincial restriction. If you have or know of similar essays and resource lists for other countries, please let me know so I can link to them. Thank you.
Many adults reach a point in life when they start wondering whether they might be Autistic, ADHD, or both. Sometimes this comes after years of feeling “out of step” with the people around you. Sometimes it’s triggered by hitting a wall of burnout that won’t lift, workplace conflicts that keep repeating, friendships that feel confusing or exhausting, or a lifetime of being told you’re “too much,” “too sensitive,” or “not trying hard enough.”
For others, the shift happens more quietly: stumbling across language from Autistic or ADHD communities that suddenly fits. Recognizing yourself in someone’s story online. Seeing one of your children get diagnosed and reflecting that you were just like them when you were their age. Realizing that the explanations you’ve been handed over the years never quite matched your lived experience. Or looking back at a string of misdiagnoses and thinking, “What if they were all circling something deeper?”
Wherever you’re starting, you’re not alone. Many people come to this inquiry later in adulthood, and there’s no wrong timing. This post is meant to help you sort through the early steps: what to consider, what tools might help, and how to decide whether an official assessment makes sense for you.
Why People Seek an Official Diagnosis
There are many reasons an adult might choose to pursue an official diagnosis. For some, it’s about access to doors that only open when paperwork exists. A formal report can make it easier to request workplace accommodations, seek school supports, or document the need for flexibility. In environments that rely on policies and checkboxes, a diagnosis often becomes the key that unlocks them.
For others, the motivation is more internal. A diagnosis can offer a sense of validation and clarity that’s hard to find elsewhere: the relief of having language that matches your lived reality, or the reassurance of finally understanding long-standing patterns that never made sense through any other lens. And some people are only able to find the strength to advocate for themselves within their family if they are backed by an official diagnosis.
Some adults pursue assessment because it connects them to specific supports or benefits: things like disability services, vocational rehabilitation, insurance-covered therapies, or government programs that require formal documentation.
And sometimes the decision is practical. A diagnosis becomes part of your documented history in medical, legal, or employment settings. Having that record can matter for future care, life transitions, or navigating systems that tend to treat undocumented needs as nonexistent.
None of these reasons are “more valid” than others.
Reasons People Do Not Seek an Official Diagnosis
Just as there are good reasons to pursue a diagnosis, there are equally valid reasons many adults choose not to. The first barrier is often cost or access. Assessments can be expensive, and in many regions the waitlists stretch for months or even years. For people already dealing with burnout or instability, that kind of delay can feel impossible.
Another obstacle is fear of stigma or biased providers. Too many adults have had experiences with clinicians who misunderstand autism or ADHD in adults, especially in women, nonbinary people, people of color, and anyone who’s learned to mask. The risk of being dismissed, judged, or misdiagnosed is real, and not everyone feels safe stepping into that vulnerability.
For some, the barrier is deeper: past trauma with medical or mental-health systems. If you’ve been harmed, ignored, or pathologized before, trusting another professional can feel unreasonable.
There are also practical concerns. Some adults worry about employment or insurance implications, or about how a diagnosis might be viewed by institutions that don’t always treat neurodivergence with nuance. Some may fear losing custody of their children if they get an official diagnosis. (I wish I could say that fear is completely unfounded, but I would be lying.)
And for many people, the simplest truth is that self-identification is enough. If understanding yourself through an Autistic or ADHD lens improves your life, helps you make better choices, or gives you access to community, you may not feel like you need a clinician’s confirmation to legitimize your experience.
Choosing not to pursue formal assessment is a valid and respectable decision. You’re allowed to decide what supports your wellbeing. I will say that it is important to think the decision through carefully because once you get assessed, you can’t erase that record. Once you come out Autistic or ADHD to an employer or institution, you can’t take it back.
What Online Screeners Can (and Cannot) Do
If you’re starting to explore autism or ADHD, online screeners can be a helpful first step, but it’s important to understand what they’re designed to do. These tools are not diagnostic on their own. A high score doesn’t equal a diagnosis, and a low score doesn’t rule anything out. They’re screening instruments meant to highlight patterns worth paying attention to.
What many people don’t realize is that clinicians often use the exact same assessments during intake. Tools like the AQ, CAT-Q, RAADS-R, or the ASRS are standard parts of many professionals’ evaluation processes. The difference is that a clinician interprets them in context, combining your scores with interviews, history, and other measures.
Online screeners can still be incredibly useful. They can help you clarify patterns you may not have articulated yet, highlight traits you’ve never named, and give you language for experiences you’ve had your whole life. They also allow you to gather data in a low-pressure, private way and reflect on the results without anyone judging your answers.
If you decide to seek a formal assessment later, these early results can help you feel more prepared and grounded. They can give you a clearer understanding of your traits and make it easier to talk with a professional about what you’ve noticed.
Screeners don’t diagnose you, but they can help you begin to recognize yourself.
Reputable Online Screeners
If you’d like to explore your traits in a structured way, these well-known screeners are widely used by both researchers and clinicians. Many assessors include them during intake (my most recent assessment used many of these screeners, in addition to other tests and interviews), so completing them yourself can give you a head start and help you understand your own patterns.
Looks at how ADHD traits affect daily functioning. (Scoring guide)
No single screener captures the full picture. Autism and ADHD both show up differently from person to person, so taking several assessments can give you a broader sense of your patterns. Think of these tools as snapshots: each one adds detail but none tells the whole story on its own. You’re allowed to combine them to understand yourself better.
How to Use Results When Deciding Next Steps
Once you’ve taken a few screeners, the most important part isn’t the score. What matters most is what the results mean in the context of your lived experience. Spend some time reflecting on the patterns that showed up. Do the descriptions feel familiar? Do they explain things you’ve struggled with or masked for years? Or do they highlight traits you hadn’t recognized until now?
It can also help to consider how these traits affect your daily life: your relationships, your work, your energy levels, and the ways you move through the world. Many adults discover that their traits have shaped their choices and challenges for decades, even if they never had language for it before. I can’t count how many times someone in one of my support groups has said, “I just thought that was part of my personality. I didn’t realize it was something I have in common with many other Autistic people.”
If you decide to speak with a professional later, your screener results can serve as conversation starters. You don’t need to present them as proof. You can use them to develop observations. Something like, “These patterns keep coming up for me, and I’d like to understand why,” is enough. Clinicians are used to weaving self-report tools into the broader picture.
And it’s important to remember you’re not signing a contract with your own curiosity. You do not have to pursue a diagnosis just because scores showed up on a screener. Some people use the insights to reshape their life on their own terms. Others seek formal assessment. Both choices are valid, and both are yours to make.
Pathways to Official Assessment
Talking to a PCP or GP
If you decide you want a formal evaluation, a primary care provider is often the first stop. Many adults feel nervous about this step, but a simple, direct approach usually works best. You don’t need a long speech or a detailed life story.
One way to start is:
“I’ve been noticing long-term patterns that align with autism/ADHD, and I’d like an evaluation with someone who works with adults.”
This keeps the focus on your needs rather than defending your experiences.
If you’ve taken online screeners, you can bring the results without over-explaining. A doctor doesn’t need a full analysis. Just letting them know that the patterns show up consistently is enough. Something like:
“I completed a few standard screeners, and they indicate traits worth exploring further.”
This signals that you’ve done your homework without putting you in the position of proving anything.
Be specific about what you’re asking for: a referral to a psychologist or psychiatrist who evaluates autistic or ADHD adults. (Or other specialist professionals. See the section about other diagnostic professionals below.)
Adult-focused assessors are important because many clinicians are still trained primarily on childhood presentations. A professional might be excellent with children but if they have no real experience with adults, there’s a strong chance they won’t be able to identify whether you are Autistic/ADHD or not. Even worse, they may mis-diagnose you as NOT Autistic and/or ADHD because adults do not present the same way children do.
And if your GP dismisses your concerns or minimizes your experience? That’s unfortunately common. You have options. You can:
Request a second opinion from another provider in the same clinic.
Switch doctors if your insurance allows it.
Seek assessment independently through specialists or clinics that accept self-referrals.
Address the topic again at a future visit, bringing written notes next time to keep the conversation more focused.
A GP’s reaction isn’t the final word on your neurotype. It’s simply a step in the process, and you get to decide how to move forward.
Assessment Through Insurance or Local Providers
If you have insurance, your plan may cover part (or sometimes most) of an adult autism or ADHD evaluation. Start by looking for psychologists or psychiatrists who explicitly list adult ASD/ADHD assessment in their services. This matters; training in child assessment doesn’t always translate well to adult presentations, especially for people who mask or who were overlooked earlier in life.
Another option is university psychology clinics, where advanced graduate students conduct assessments under supervision from licensed clinicians. These clinics often use the same standardized tools as private practices but at a much lower cost. Because they operate in academic settings, they’re also more likely to be up-to-date on adult neurodiversity research.
For those without insurance or with limited coverage, sliding-scale clinics might bridge the gap. Community mental health centers, nonprofit agencies, and some private practices offer reduced fees based on income. Availability varies by region and is easier to find in urban areas than rural, but these services can significantly lower the cost of getting evaluated.
Each of these pathways has its own wait times, costs, and levels of expertise. The key is finding a provider who understands adult neurodivergence, not just childhood stereotypes, and who makes you feel respected throughout the process.
Online Assessment Providers
If a local in-person assessment isn’t practical, whether because of geography, cost, or scheduling constraints, there are now a growing number of telehealth providers offering full adult autism and/or ADHD assessments. These services are often more flexible and accessible than traditional clinics. I’ve included a list of many available online providers at the end of this blog post.
Important Notes & What to Verify Before Using an Online Provider
Licensure in Your State: For any telehealth assessment, ensure the clinician is licensed in the state where you physically live. This ensures the diagnosis will be valid and recognized.
Full Report vs. Letter vs. Summary: If you need diagnosis documentation for workplaces, schools, or accommodations, make sure the provider offers a formal, detailed report (not just a brief summary or a recommendation letter).
Scope of Access (ASD, ADHD, or Both): Some services specialize in just autism or just ADHD; others cover both, which matters if you suspect overlapping conditions (like AuDHD).
Cost & Payment Models: Some accept insurance or offer out-of-network receipts, others are strictly private-pay. Some offer sliding-scale or lower-cost options.
Wait Times & Appointment Flexibility: One of the big benefits of telehealth is often shorter wait times and scheduling flexibility. But this varies. Some clinics may still be busy.
Neurodiversity-Affirming Approach & Adult-Focused Assessment: Especially for people diagnosed late or who mask, you want a clinician or service that understands adult presentation, masking, and diversity of experience.
In-Person Specialists
Some adults prefer (or need) to be evaluated in person. If that’s you, there are several types of professionals who commonly assess Autistic or ADHD adults.
Neuropsychologists are often the most comprehensive option. They conduct full cognitive and behavioral evaluations, sometimes spanning several hours or multiple sessions. These assessments can include memory tests, executive function measures, problem-solving tasks, attention assessments, and standardized autism instruments. A full neuropsych assessment can be especially helpful if you have a complex history, overlapping conditions, or need detailed documentation for school, disability, or legal contexts.
Adult autism specialists are typically licensed psychologists, psychiatrists, or clinical social workers who focus directly on Autistic traits and lived experience in adulthood. Their assessments tend to be more targeted and conversational, relying on clinical interviews, history, and structured autism tools. These evaluations are often more relevant for high-masking adults, late-identified people, or those who need a diagnosis for work accommodations rather than an exhaustive cognitive profile.
In some regions, occupational therapists (OTs) with advanced training in sensory processing or autism can participate in the assessment process. Their role varies widely by location and licensing laws: some OTs provide formal evaluations or co-assessments, while others offer sensory profiles, functional assessments, and recommendations that complement a psychologist’s diagnosis.
The biggest difference between a full neuropsychological assessment and a targeted ASD/ADHD evaluation is the scope. Neuropsych testing looks at the whole cognitive landscape: how you think, learn, remember, and problem-solve. A targeted assessment focuses specifically on autistic or ADHD traits and how they show up in daily life. Neither approach is “better”; it depends on what you need. A narrower evaluation may be faster and more affordable, while a neuropsych exam can provide a deeper understanding of your strengths, challenges, and support needs.
The right choice for you is the one that fits your goals, your comfort level, and the kind of documentation you may want or need.
What to Expect During an Assessment
If you choose to pursue a formal evaluation, it can help to know what the process usually looks like. While exact formats vary from one clinician to another, most adult ASD or ADHD assessments include a few core components.
You’ll typically start with a clinical interview where the assessor asks about your history, patterns, strengths, challenges, and the experiences that led you to seek evaluation. This conversation may touch on childhood memories, sensory traits, social patterns, communication style, attention, routines, burnout, and coping strategies. Many assessors now explicitly ask about masking and unmasking, and how these behaviors have shaped your daily life.
Most evaluations include standardized measures, which might take the form of questionnaires you fill out on your own, rating scales, or guided tasks. Some clinicians also request input from a partner, friend, or family member, though this isn’t mandatory, especially for people who don’t have supportive or available informants.
The time commitment varies. A focused ASD or ADHD evaluation might take one to three hours, while a full neuropsych assessment can run several hours across multiple appointments. Afterward, the clinician may need days or weeks to integrate your results into a written report.
It’s also normal for the process to stir up emotional responses. Talking about lifelong patterns, especially the parts shaped by misunderstanding, trauma, or chronic masking, can be activating. Many late-identified adults feel a mix of relief, grief, clarity, or vulnerability during and after assessment. This is a common part of the journey, not a sign that you’re doing anything wrong.
The good news is that many assessors are now familiar with late-identified adults and the unique ways autism and ADHD present in people who learned to compensate or camouflage. You don’t have to “perform” your traits or fit any stereotype. Your lived experience is enough, and a thoughtful clinician will help you make sense of it without judgment.
Alternatives to Formal Diagnosis
Not everyone needs or wants a formal clinical diagnosis, and that’s completely valid. Many adults find that self-identification, rooted in lived experience, gives them all the clarity they need. If the framework helps you understand yourself, make sense of your past, and build a better life going forward, that recognition has real value even without a clinician’s signature.
There are also non-clinical supports that can make a meaningful difference. Peer-led spaces, community groups, educational resources, and neurodiversity-informed coaching can help you navigate sensory needs, executive function challenges, communication differences, and burnout without requiring a diagnostic label. These supports don’t diagnose you. They focus on understanding, skill-building, and validation.
For example, I facilitate peer support groups for Autistic and AuDHD adults and I never require anyone to have an official diagnosis to attend. I don’t even require attendees to be 100% sure they are Autistic and/or have ADHD. As I tell my support group members, questioning your neurotype is valid. Some participants have come to feel more sure about whether they are or are not neurodivergent as a result of attending the group and interacting with others.
Many adults also choose to set up accommodations informally in their own lives: using noise-cancelling headphones, structuring their days around attention cycles, reducing sensory overload, planning social recovery time, or reshaping their environment to match their rhythms. You don’t need an official diagnosis to give yourself the tools and conditions you function best in.
For some people, self-ID is enough, especially when the goal is personal insight, community connection, or healthier self-understanding. But there are times when a formal diagnosis may be useful or necessary: accessing disability services, securing workplace or school accommodations, applying for benefits, or navigating certain medical systems. It’s also helpful if you need documentation for legal, educational, or long-term planning purposes.
Ultimately, the right path is the one that supports your wellbeing. A diagnosis can be a tool, not a requirement. And self-recognition is just as real, meaningful, and valid.
Conclusion
There is no single “right way” to approach the question of whether you’re autistic, ADHD, or both. Some people find clarity through self-reflection. Others find it through community. And some choose formal assessment because it opens doors they need opened. All of these paths are valid.
What matters most is choosing what supports your wellbeing, safety, and access needs. You’re allowed to move slowly, to change direction, or to sit with the questions for as long as you need. You’re also allowed to pursue answers quickly if that’s what helps you feel grounded.
If you want to go deeper, you can explore additional resources, connect with peer-led spaces, or read more of my posts on late identification, Autistic and ADHD traits in adulthood, and navigating life through a neurodivergent lens. I’ve included some self-assessment books below this essay as well.
Wherever you are in this process, you’re not alone. Your curiosity about yourself is something worth honoring.
Offers comprehensive adult autism (and ADHD) assessments via telehealth for people in 46+ U.S. states. Uses the semi-structured interview tool (MIGDAS-2) designed for adults; tailored to high-masking or late-diagnosed individuals.
They do not accept insurance directly; costs are out-of-pocket, though clients may get a “superbill” for possible reimbursement.
Provides virtual adult autism and ADHD testing. Offers a “Diagnostic Testing” (telehealth) option, and a “Diagnostic + Report” for a more detailed clinical report, which can support accommodation requests.
Because it’s private-pay, you’ll need to confirm whether your insurance offers out-of-network reimbursement. Also, check whether their report meets documentation requirements for accommodations (work, school, etc.).
Offers specialized adult autism assessments entirely via telehealth, staffed by licensed psychologists experienced with autism in adults. Services may be covered by insurance (depending on plan), and the “get started within weeks” promise helps avoid long waitlists.
As with any telehealth provider, confirm that your insurance is accepted and whether sessions are in-network. Also check licensing for your state.
Provides nationwide telehealth autism evaluations, with an emphasis on neurodiversity-affirming care and sensitivity to late-diagnosed or high-masking adults (including women, AFAB, and gender-diverse folks).
Because clinicians must be licensed in your state, availability may depend on where you live. Verify licensure ahead of time.
Provides virtual autism (and dyslexia) evaluations for adults in certain U.S. states. Their advertised cost ($400) is lower than many full evaluations.
Because service regions are limited (only certain states), check whether your location is covered. Also verify what kind of diagnostic report you receive and whether it’s accepted by third-party institutions.
Appendix B: A Few Useful Books about Self-Assessment and/or Self Understanding
So You Think You’re Autistic: A Workbook for the Confused Person Who’s Just Trying to Figure Things Out (2022) Samantha Stein
I Think I Might Be Autistic: A Guide to Autism Spectrum Disorder Diagnosis and Self-Discovery for Adults (2013) Cynthia Kim
The Autistic’s Guide to Self-Discovery: Flourishing as a Neurodivergent Adult (2025) Sol Smith
You Mean I’m Not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?! The Classic Self-Help Book for Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder (2006) Kate Kelly and Peggy Ramundo
Understanding Adult ADHD: From Signs and Symptoms to Causes and Diagnosis (2014) Christine Weil
The powers-that-be love to frame autism and Autistic people as problems to solve. Puzzle pieces, if you will.
When I saw this incredibly powerful Tweet (what do we call Tweets now? Xes?) by Bishop Talbert Swan, I knew I needed to add my Autistic voice, highlighting transgressions against Disabled people:
Image description and transcription of Bishop Swan’s post:
Top image: a circular photo of Bishop Swan: a Black person with dark sunglasses and a beard, next to the words “Bishop Talbert Swan” and “@TalbertSwan”
A former Fox News host, who paid a settlement to avoid a sexual assault case, is Secretary of the Department of Defense.
The former head of World Wrestling Entertainment, who is accused of covering up the sexual abuse of minors, is over the Department of Education.
A former heroin addict, who is accused of sexual assault by a former family babysitter, is over the Department of Health & Human Services.
A 34 time convicted felon and adjudicated rapist, who has been accused of sexual assault by 26 women, is president of the United States.
When unqualified, morally bereft, white people occupy the highest positions in our government, y’all need to shut up about Black people and DEI.
Autism & Disability: When Power Talks About Us Like We’re a Problem
In another briefing, he claims autistic people “will never play baseball, date, pay taxes or have a job”, erasing millions of Autistic children and adults, at all levels of support needs, who do exactly those things. More importantly, this narrative teaches the people to think of human value in terms of productivity, that is to say, the narrative devalues all human life by declaring that people who can’t work have no intrinsic value.
The same administration created a presidential health commission and boasted that “by September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we will be able to eliminate those exposures”. It was a promise disability advocates called impossible, misleading, and ableist.
While top officials portray Autistic people as tragedies, burdens, or people with no future, their Education Department is busy rolling back protections: rescinding 72 guidance documents that spelled out the rights of disabled students under federal law.
Successive Education Secretaries push voucher and “school choice” schemes that often require parents of disabled kids to sign away their IDEA rights (rights to an appropriate education, services, and due process) if they want to leave underfunded public schools.
At the same time, the Justice Department removes multiple ADA guidance documents from its website: materials that helped businesses understand their obligations to disabled people. The DoJ called them “unnecessary and outdated,” even as advocates warn this weakens enforcement.
Across federal agencies, DEI offices and resources, including those meant to help marginalized and disabled people access education and jobs, are dismantled or wiped from websites after a White House order attacking DEI.
A reflective essay in conversation with Jordan Peele’s vision and the bodymind’s survival intelligence
A small child stands in a very dark place. A single dot of light glows ahead, its reflection rippling around the figure in the otherwise erased expanse.
Content note: racism, horror, trauma, child abuse, movie spoilers
The Body Learns Silence
The house I grew up in was static before the storm. The scent of ozone, leaves turned soapy bellies up, green clouds gathering in the east. I measured each sound I made, studied the rhythm of his footsteps, the pace of his breathing. I didn’t dare look at him, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away for an instant, because that’s how long it took for murmured menace to shift murderous. There was no pattern I could trust. Sometimes laughter set him off. Sometimes a single misplaced question. Sometimes nothing at all.
I tried to be good. I was a tuning fork, crafted in the key of danger. The work was impossible, but I kept trying, because the cost of guessing wrong was high. All this daily labor was churning through bodywire, nerve endings touching air.
When I made him angry (and I frequently did) my heartbeat drowned my ears; the room contracted around me. There was nowhere safe to go. He had chased me before, kicked through the bathroom door when I locked it. So I waited.
My vision tunnelled, centering his grievance-distorted face. His voice echoed down my cold marble corridors. Static in my ears, waves of sound lapping on my shores. All light contracted to a single bright dot, the last wink of an old television set before it goes black. And then it went black. I was gone to some silent, dark place, and I was alone, and I was terrified.
Sometimes, my nervous system makes the decision for me. It knows: survival sometimes means leaving your body behind. When my father became angry with me, I survived the impossible expectations of a moment with no right choices by unexisting inside nothing.
It is the most frightening state I’ve ever been in. It was traumatic dissociation. It was a sunken place.
Familiar Darkness
Yesterday, I finally watched the 2017 horror film, Get Out. In an early scene, the main character, Chris Washington, is hypnotized and sent to the Sunken Place. His eyes went wide, his chair fell back, and he was falling, panicked, silent, the world shrinking to a distant square of light.
My body recognized that drop into darkness. My hands went cold. The image wasn’t imagined; it felt remembered. My body knew what I was seeing.
Peele captured it with eerie precision: the sensation of being pulled away from yourself, consciousness receding while the body stays pinned in place.
It was both hair-raising and validating to see someone else’s map of the terrain of disappearance.
Peele’s Original Meaning
On Twitter, Jordan Peele wrote, “The Sunken Place means we’re marginalized. No matter how hard we scream, the system silences us.” He was speaking about Blackness in America, about a history of being consumed and erased, about the body turned into property and then into spectacle, about the ongoing horror of having to perform safety inside danger.
The Sunken Place is a Black creation, carved from centuries of forced silence. It belongs to that lineage, to the lives that carried terror and genius and grief in the same breath. The power of Peele’s image lies in that inheritance: the way he made visible the machinery of white desire, the way he showed how politeness can conceal predation.
This essay isn’t a redefinition; it’s a conversation. Peele built a world where the silenced body speaks through image, where the unspeakable finds form. “There’s lots of different sunken places,” Peele said in a Los Angeles Times roundtable.
I can never know the Black experience. I enter that world as a listener. Still, from all the way over here in my lane, I recognize the dissociation of marginalization. I found my own sunken place. My nervous system knows the frozen language of marginalization that speaks across lots of different experiences and echoes through lots of different sunken places.
The Body’s Language of Survival
When my father gathered his anger, my body calculated: I couldn’t fight a grown man twice my size. Flight had already failed. That left stillness. I never knew the safe thing to do, so I’d do nothing.
My body pulled the plug, dimmed my sight, twisted sounds until they broke away. This wasn’t a metaphor or an act of imagination. The same ancient circuitry that tells a gazelle to drop limp when the fangs close around its neck was pulling my consciousness out of my trapped body.
The autonomic nervous system runs the show when danger closes in: fight, flight, fawn, freeze, and finally flop: the full-body surrender of dissociation. For me, the fear and stress threshold has always been set low. My autistic senses strip me to the bone. The smell of tension, the pitch of a voice, the flash of movement, too much information, too fast, too loud. When safety collapses, my nervous system swings from high alert straight into shutdown, into blackout.
Dissociation isn’t intentional disconnection. It’s the body’s last, best act of self-care. It’s the autonomic nervous system folding consciousness away from harm until it’s safe to return.
The Architecture of Silence
What Jordan Peele built is a house of silence. Its walls are history; its foundation is the long echo of stolen breath. I don’t mistake my story for that house, but I recognize the architecture of generational trauma. The structure of being seen and not heard or believed, of existing at someone else’s mercy, of finding safety only in stillness? It’s familiar.
Black thinkers and activists mapped this terrain long before I had language for it. They drew the blueprints for how power shapes the body, how silence is manufactured and enforced. The Disability and Autistic movements learned from that cartography. Every framework we have for access and autonomy traces back to Black activists who fought to be viewed as fully human in systems built to deny their humanity.
There are many doors into silent houses. Peele’s door is race and history. Mine is neurology and trauma. The corridors are different, but the walls are built of the same materials: power, fear, and forced stillness.
The Nervous System’s Capacity
Dissociation begins long before the blackout. The body doesn’t leap straight to absence. It falls through stages of overwhelm. First comes sympathetic arousal, the fight-or-flight surge: heart hammering, blood flooding to the limbs, pupils widening, breath turning sharp and shallow. The body is shouting move! even when movement would mean greater danger.
When escape proves impossible, the system has nowhere left to send that energy. Adrenaline keeps firing, cortisol keeps rising, but there’s no outlet. The heart can’t keep sprinting forever, so the ventral vagal brake (the part of the parasympathetic system that normally restores calm after threat) tries to step in. It fails when safety never arrives. The body, still flooded, has to find another way to protect itself.
That’s when the dorsal vagal system seizes control. Blood pressure drops, digestion halts, temperature falls, perception narrows. The body drags itself down into metabolic silence. It’s a physiological form of invisibility. From the outside, it looks like stillness; on the inside, consciousness has pulled back to a distant point of dim awareness.
This is autonomic dysregulation in motion: the pendulum swinging violently from sympathetic overdrive to parasympathetic collapse. When it happens often enough, the thresholds shift. The body learns the shortcut from stress to shutdown. It begins to treat everyday tension as danger. For autistic people, the sensitivity is already heightened. With senses turned on high, noise, scent, light, emotion are each another demand on an already over-aroused system. It doesn’t take much for the switch to flip.
Across identities, the pattern repeats. A child bracing for a parent’s rage. A queer person gauging safety before speaking. A Black driver stopped by police. A disabled worker masking pain to keep a job. The nervous system recognizes threat in different languages, but the choreography is the same: surge, overwhelm, collapse. Awareness slides to the back of the mind while the body performs whatever will keep it alive.
The Sunken Place is more than psychological horror. It’s a mirror of autonomic biology, the moment when survival requires disappearance. Peele’s image gives form to the body’s ancient reflex: the will to live by going still.
Peele showed that experience through the lens of race and history; I recognize it through trauma and neurology. The spaces are not the same, but they rhyme.
Shared Darkness, Divergent Light
I keep trying to understand it: the blackout, the quiet, the way my body could vanish itself. I can diagram the sequence now. The sympathetic surge, the dorsal collapse, the whole autonomic ballet. I can trace the neural circuitry that pulled me under. But when I try to feel it from the inside, language falls away.
The bodymind remembers what language can only circle. Every time I get close, something inside me still flinches away, the same old reflex keeping its secret. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe dissociation was never meant to be understood, only witnessed, mapped from the edges, a coastline you can’t walk without sinking in.
Peele gave that darkness cinematic shape; science gave it names. I stand between them, translating what little I can. The rest remains unspeakable, and maybe that’s where it belongs. Understanding isn’t the opposite of silence. Sometimes understanding is a night-blooming realization that can only grow inside the silence.
Works Cited
Get Out. Directed by Jordan Peele, performances by Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Bradley Whitford, and Catherine Keener, Blumhouse Productions, 2017. IMDb, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5052448/.
Image description: A large natural stone arch spans between two rocky cliffs in Virginia. The arch is made of gray and tan limestone, with green trees growing along the top and on both sides. The view through the opening shows a bright, cloudy sky surrounded by dense forest.
The Child No One Wanted in Class
A recent New York Times article (October 1, 2025) suggesting autism needs to be broken into two categories cited “a survey of 800 families, conducted this year by the National Council on Severe Autism, [which] found that 80 percent had been told their children were too disruptive even for classrooms and services tailored to students with autism and other disabilities.”
While no one would accuse me of having “severe autism,” I, too, was an unwanted, disruptive presence in my classrooms. My kindergarten teacher loved me, even though I bit her when she tried to pull me out from under the table where I was hiding. My first grade teacher hated me and requested I be removed from her classroom and put in special education. She called me the R-word.
When I think back on elementary school, it’s hard to remember what happened, where. I changed schools so many times I’d been in at least six different schools by fourth grade. Sometimes there were other reasons for shuffling me around, but I was removed from many classrooms because teachers couldn’t handle me. No one knew what to do with me.
I’d slither on the floor like a lizard. I’d meow like a cat. I’d take any opportunity to hide under a table where it was darker, quieter, less overwhelming. My emotions erupted straight through my skin with no regulator, no buffer. My outbursts and disruptions became louder and more appalling the older I got. By middle school, I’d gotten myself expelled from the entire county school system. There was no place back then for someone who was both academically gifted and behaviorally disabled.
They have a word for it now: twice exceptional.
I hope they have more than a word.
I hope kids like me actually have a place now.
A Spectrum With No Middle
I grew up to find “my people”… sort of. Maybe.
There’s a current cultural argument: autism should be split into “profound” and “non-profound” autism. Researchers have joined the debate, studying where to draw the line and how to justify it. Quoted in the Times article, Ari Ne’eman, long-time Autistic self-advocate, compared the attempt at separating autism into two camps to trying to “cleave a meatloaf at the joints.”
I don’t belong on either side. Will that cleaver chop me in two?
My life keeps proving what the research hints at: the middle of the spectrum is where services, language, and understanding fall apart.
Services for “profound autism” will not help me. I speak, I write, I drive. I don’t require 24/7 supervision. I remember the days when those services were the only thing there was. I was drowning in my own life and no one would help me because my IQ is higher than 70. These are services only available to people who can’t ask for them.
But support and services for “non-profound autism” leave me behind, too. I have a hair-trigger nervous system. I become “profoundly” dysregulated and cannot “behave appropriately” in systems where no one is trained on the nuclear level meltdowns that overtake my bodymind in times of intense stress. My sensory sensitivities are calibrated so finely that I can barely stand to be around people (despite being an extrovert who loves human connection.)
I belong to the messy middle. We fall through the cracks.
The Lived Middle
When I read about the proposed split, profound vs. non-profound, I can see what each side is trying to describe, but (like many Autists…most Autists?) I live in the space between them. I don’t need someone to monitor my every move for my safety. But I do need someone who understands that my nervous system runs like a live wire, and that a “simple” social misunderstanding or a flickering fluorescent light can send me spiraling into hours of recovery.
I can cook, drive, write, edit, and facilitate groups. I can also lose the ability to speak for days. I can manage complex projects for work, then fall apart because someone touched me in the grocery store. When I melt down, my brain doesn’t politely announce, “please excuse the emotional disturbance.” It shuts down my access to my prefrontal cortex (while leaving my brain’s language center dismayingly untouched!) and throws me into a physical storm that feels like experiencing every threatening emotion in one giant tsunami.
I am neither the non-speaking child in a residential facility nor the worker who has kept the same job for twelve years (though not, I should note, without suffering or struggle). I am the missing middle case: the one who gets lost when systems are built for either the child who can’t communicate or the adult who can network.
If autism is divided, where will people like me go? “Profound” autism categories will not include me because I can speak. “Non-profound” services will exclude me because I cannot perform neurotypicality sufficiently to keep a job more than a few months. When I am regulated, I can explain my meltdown with elegant clarity; when I am in it, all I can do is scream obscenities. This same body holds both truths.
The danger of the cleaver isn’t just that it divides. It crushes the connective tissue. We mid-gradient people prove that autism isn’t a tidy collection of buckets but a terrain of overlapping ranges. We are the fault lines that make the whole visible.
The Scientific Lens, the Polygenic Divides
A 2025 study in Nature Medicine put forth the thesis that autism looks different depending on when someone is diagnosed. Researchers tracked thousands of children and found two main developmental arcs: one that emerges early, and one that surfaces later. The early group, usually diagnosed around preschool age, showed strong signs of dysregulation and social difference from the start. The later group, those not diagnosed until adolescence or adulthood, looked more “typical” in early childhood, then began to struggle as social life grew more complex.
Genetically, those two arcs map onto different constellations of traits. The early group is tied to genes that influence social communication and sensory processing. The later group is tied to genes overlapping with ADHD, PTSD, and depression. According to the data, the two profiles are distinct enough that they could almost be seen as different “autisms.” Yet even the researchers left an undefined window between ages six and nine, a no man’s land where neither trajectory cleanly applies.
I land in that overlap zone. I have an early-identified nervous system carrying the later-diagnosed cluster of comorbidities. My life is where the two curves meet and tangle. I was initially diagnosed at seven (squarely between “early” and “late,” in the study’s framework) yet I live with both the extreme emotional dysregulation the study defined as a hallmark of early diagnosis and the ADHD, PTSD, and chronic struggle with anxiety and depression that the study found more common among later-diagnosed people. I’ve always been the statistical noise that refuses to average out.
The scientists used the word polygenic to describe how hundreds of genes combine to shape each person’s developmental path. I think of it as poly-everything: polytraumatic, polysensory, polymodal. I’m a multivariate outlier. My neurology carries multiple histories at once: genetic, experiential, cultural. I am early-emergent in my meltdown profile, late-emergent in my self-awareness, and forever trying to reconcile a body that feels ancient with a mind that keeps discovering itself anew.
When researchers talk about these two genetic “factors,” they still speak as though everyone fits neatly into one or the other. But so many of us are hybrid systems: early storms that never quieted, layered with late revelations. The data call me interstitial. I call it being alive at the seam where categories unravel.
Science likes to sort, but the closer researchers look, the more the borders blur. Each new study meant to clarify autism’s architecture ends up revealing new subtypes, new overlaps, new contradictions. Attempts to cage the spectrum only unravel into a cluster of intersecting constellations. Advocates of the “profound autism” label say there is not one autism. In truth, there are not two autisms, either. There are many autisms, coexisting and often colliding in combinations inside a single person. The data are only beginning to catch up to what many of us have lived all along: there is no single arc, no single story, no single way to be Autistic. It’s Ari’s meatloaf with traits thoroughly mixed throughout, not lined up as discrete slices.
An Ethical Gap: Diagnosis Without Disclosure
I was diagnosed at seven but first told at thirty-four. For twenty-seven years, I lived with the label but not the knowledge. The word autism lived in files, not in my awareness. Others had access to information that could have helped me make sense of my life, but no one handed me the map.
When researchers talk about age of diagnosis, they assume the person diagnosed actually knows. But there’s another trajectory that rarely enters the data: early-diagnosed on paper, late-diagnosed in life. On a chart, I’d be plotted among the “early” cases; in lived time, I belong with the “late.” With my mixed collection of traits, I belong nowhere.
That’s one ethical vacuum in the whole conversation about splitting autism into “profound” and “non-profound.” What good are new categories if the people inside them still aren’t told who they are? The system can label a child, publish the data, even claim early intervention success — but if that same child grows up without language for their own difference, what intervention was that, really?
Diagnosis ≠ disclosure ≠ support.
Knowing about me is not the same as letting me know myself.
The Human Cost of Polarization
Both sides of the split debate are reacting to genuine pain. The parents of children with high support needs see the more verbal Autists growing in numbers, eclipsing children like theirs, putting forth an ideology that they fear will leave their children behind. They’re fighting neglect in a world that offers little safety net, little respite, and too few clinicians willing to take on complex cases.
Neurodiversity activists, on the other hand, are fighting erasure. For years they were told they weren’t “really” Autistic, that they were just eccentric or socially awkward. Meanwhile, glossy “Autism Awareness” campaigns featuring celebrities peddle a narrative of tragedy, comparing autism to diabetes and cancer.
But between those two righteous causes lies a widening gulf that swallows anyone whose life defies both archetypes. When advocacy polarizes around who suffers “enough” to be considered truly Autistic, people like me flounder with few places to turn for useful help.
I was the child too disruptive for classrooms and too verbal for compassion. I lost school placements not because I couldn’t learn, but because no one knew how to teach someone like me. I carried untreated trauma for decades because professionals saw only defiance, not distress. Even now, the daily work of emotional regulation: holding myself together through noise, touch, light, and human unpredictability? It’s invisible labor few realize I’m slogging through every day. I don’t fit either narrative. I suspect most Autists don’t. Who is researching that?
For the “profound” camp, I’m too capable. For many in the “neurodiversity” camp, I’m too volatile. But my existence proves both realities true at once: the need for safety and care, and the right to self-definition. The binary breaks apart where I live.
My Life as a Bridge
When I call myself a bridge, I mean the structure, the connective tissue that holds two sides in relation. The middle is not an absence but an architecture. People like me show where the spectrum’s supposed endpoints bend toward each other.
My neurology is hybrid, not broken. It offers a way to see autism as an ecosystem rather than a spectrum line. Forests don’t divide cleanly into “trees” and “not trees.” They contain gradations of shade and soil, roots interlaced underground. Autism is like that: an ecology of traits and bodies that shape one another. To understand the whole, you have to study the overlap zones, the places where categories blur and organisms coexist.
If research and policy treated those overlaps as instructive instead of inconvenient, support could become scalable and individualized rather than categorical. A system built for complexity would ask different questions: not “Which kind are you?” but “What do you need, and what helps you thrive?”
This is an ethics of care that designs for the edges and intersections, not the average case. The bridge perspective doesn’t erase difference; it honors it by keeping the structure intact for everyone who lives between.
Reclaiming the Middle Ground
I think of that child on the classroom floor, hiding under a table because it was the only place that felt safe. The lights were too bright, the noise too sharp, the air thick with other people’s expectations. No one knew what to do with that child. The teachers wanted them gone. The files called them disruptive. But they were trying, in the only language they had, to build a bridge between their bodymind and the world.
What if the field saw that child not as an outlier, but as the center? What if the messy middle was understood as the heart of autism rather than relegated to its margins? Every diagnosis, every theory, every classroom could start from that question: what happens when we design for the ones who don’t fit cleanly anywhere?
What if we center them in the story of their own life?
The future of autism can’t belong to the extremes alone. It belongs to us all: to those clearly defined and to those who live in the thresholds, translating between worlds, proving that connection itself is a form of intelligence. The spectrum’s strength has always been its range, and its hope lies in those who refuse to disappear into binaries.
That child is still here, learning to stand in the open. The world is finally beginning to meet them halfway.
Zhang, X., Grove, J., Gu, Y., Buus, C. K., Nielsen, L. K., et al. (2025). Polygenic and developmental profiles of autism differ by age at diagnosis. Nature Medicine, 31(2), 225–238. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09542-6
On the left, a busy multi-lane freeway carries heavy traffic beneath a sky filled with scattered white clouds. Cars stream in both directions, stretching toward the horizon. On the right, a narrow country lane winds through rolling hills covered in grasses and patches of wildflowers.
For maybe twenty years, I’ve been saying autism is a developmental delay, not a developmental halt.
Something I read today helped me realize that autism isn’t even a delay. I’ve written and spoken of autism as a different trajectory, a separate road. When we fail to meet developmental milestones, it’s because we’re not traveling the same road.
But today it struck me: traveling a different road means we really can’t be called delayed. Are apples delayed oranges?
The freeway is built for speed. Smooth blacktop, painted lines, endless streams of cars all moving in the same direction, at the same pace, toward the same destinations. It’s efficient, streamlined, and relentless. You don’t stop to notice much out there—just keep your foot on the gas, eyes forward, merging when you’re told, obeying the rhythm of the crowd.
The country lane is another world. Winding, uneven, with dips and bends that make you slow down, sometimes whether you want to or not. The air feels different on a country lane. You see the hawks circling above the fields, the wildflowers that grow between cracks, the way the light shifts when a cloud drifts in front of the sun. It’s slower, maybe—but it’s also fuller. You’re not just getting from point A to point B. You’re in the middle of a living landscape, taking in every detail, whether you asked for it or not.
The “Frozen in Time” Hypothesis
I started thinking along these lines after reading Jordan James’s take on autistic development. His metaphor was stark: autism as a kind of halted growth, “frozen” at different ages because of reduced synaptic pruning. In his view, some Autists remain infants in certain ways, others linger in childhood, still others carry pieces of teenagehood into adulthood.
It’s not hard to see why that framing resonates with some of us. Many Autists do describe feeling “younger,” or “out of sync” with peers. There are moments when the world treats us as if we’ve missed a step in growing up—and sometimes, it feels true inside our own skin. The sense of living on a different clock can be powerful, even haunting.
But the science behind this metaphor doesn’t hold up. As Dr. Nicolás F. Narvaez Linares, a pediatric clinical neuropsychologist at the University of Ottawa, pointed out in a comment on LinkedIn, pruning differences are variable, inconsistent, and nowhere near enough to justify sweeping claims about Autistic people being ‘frozen’ in time.
Worse, this conclusion risks being deeply damaging.
Lifelong Growth, Not Arrested Development
I think it’s more complex than the “frozen development due to clogged synapses” picture suggests. My own life has been full of growth—sometimes painfully so. I have changed, reshaped, and unfolded uncountable times. And I keep doing it. I’ve seen the same in Autistic friends, colleagues, clients—people manifesting a wide variety of “flavors” of autism.
In fact, one of the sharpest contrasts I have noticed is this: many allistic people seem “done cooking” by their mid-twenties. Their personalities stabilize, their habits take shape, and their ways of thinking become more consistent.
It’s probably no coincidence that 25 is the age when insurance rates drop and society starts treating people as more settled. For most, the brain has finished maturing, impulsivity fades, and people tend to become more predictable, less changeable.
Meanwhile, we Autists keep shifting. Still evolving. Still surprising ourselves with new insights, new ways of being, new patterns of thought.
Yes, I’m often pegged as younger than I am. I still love toys and cartoons. I carry a streak of naivety (though tempered now by memories of deception and betrayal.) But that doesn’t feel like arrested development to me. Quite the opposite. It feels like an ongoing capacity for renewal, a thirsty sense of wonder, a willingness to grow that doesn’t run out just because I crossed some birthday milestone.
This isn’t a deficit. It’s a gift. Autists have the ability to keep developing and changing all the way to our deathbeds. We are not halted, we are not stuck. We are alive to growth in ways most freeway drivers were never shaped to be.
What the Delay Framework Costs Us
The problem with calling autism a “delay” is that it traps us in a story that was never written for us. If development is imagined as a ladder, with rungs spaced at predictable intervals, then the assumption is that everyone is climbing the same structure and should be climbing at the same speed. In that model, Autists are forever stuck—still clinging to the lower rungs while everyone else rises higher.
That picture is not only inaccurate, it’s dangerous. It feeds infantilization: the idea that autistic adults are “really” children inside, no matter how many birthdays we’ve had or how much wisdom we’ve gathered. It justifies treating us as less capable, less autonomous, less deserving of respect.
And it ignores what is obvious to anyone who actually looks at us: we have spiky profiles. A spiky profile means strengths and challenges—relative to the neuromajority—sitting side by side in one person. Advanced in some areas, slower in others. Sometimes dazzlingly so, in both directions:
You might find a ten-year-old Autist who can recite astronomical data with the precision of a graduate student but struggles to tie their shoes. Or an adult who navigates complex systems of thought yet finds a grocery store overwhelming. You might meet a non-speaking Autist who points at letters with an eloquence that stops you in your tracks, yet who is still treated like a toddler because their sensory and motor issues affect when and how their bodies can show up.
This isn’t “delay.” It’s not a single clock running late. It’s an entirely different rhythm, unfolding unevenly, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, sometimes on a completely different path, always patterned in ways that don’t climb the standard ladder in the standard ways.
Attention, Not Distraction
Autists aren’t delayed freeway drivers. We’re lane travelers. We don’t simply move more slowly on the same road; we move differently, on different terrain altogether.
On the country lane, you notice more. The road itself demands it. The texture of bark on the cottonwoods. The exact angle of sunlight through a cloud bank. The sound of gravel crunching under your tires, each stone distinct. What the freeway calls distraction, the lane calls attention. We are immersed in the details, saturated by them, compelled to take in the whole landscape.
This is one of autism’s great strengths: sensory depth, environmental awareness, the kind of noticing that catches what others miss. But that same fullness can overwhelm. Just as a country lane can’t handle the crush of freeway traffic without crumbling, autistic systems can be swamped when environments overload us with noise, demands, or relentless pace. That is where disability lives—not in some imagined lateness, but in the mismatch between our ways of perceiving and the structures we’re asked to navigate.
Spiky Profiles Are Terrain
The spiky profile only looks strange if you’re measuring it against freeway norms. From that perspective, it seems contradictory: advanced here, behind there, uneven all over. But on the country lane, the landscape isn’t supposed to be level. It has ridges and valleys, sudden overlooks, unexpected twists. The spikes are not flaws in the road—they are the road.
What’s called “delay” in one domain and “giftedness” in another are simply features of a different ecology. The unevenness is not a mistake to be corrected, it’s the terrain we move through and with. On the freeway, a sudden rise in the pavement would be a hazard. On the lane, a hill is part of the view.
The spiky profile means that Autists often defy simple labels. A person might compose music with exquisite precision yet struggle to keep their clothes clean. Another might master three languages while needing help to cross a busy street safely. These contrasts are not contradictions. They are part of the same pattern—the ridges and valleys of a life lived on a different road.
Different Roads, Different Rhythms
Autism isn’t about lateness. It isn’t about arrested growth, clocks that stopped ticking, or children hidden inside adult bodies. It’s about terrain. It’s about rhythms. It’s about sightlines that open in directions others don’t even think to look.
We don’t move along a single track of “normal development.” We move through our own ecologies—sometimes winding, sometimes steep, sometimes dazzling in their vistas. Our paths aren’t broken freeways; they’re lanes of their own.
Disability emerges when freeway systems are imposed on lane travelers. When schools, workplaces, and public spaces are built with only speed and sameness in mind, they leave no room for those whose journeys are richer, slower, or less predictable. That mismatch—between the way we are built and the way the world is structured—is what most disables us.
What We Bring Back
Freeways will always get you to the city faster. That’s their purpose: direct, efficient, predictable. But the country lane takes you somewhere else entirely. It winds through hidden valleys, past streams no map bothers to mark, into places you would never have found at freeway speed.
Autists are not late arrivals, forever catching up to the crowd. We are travelers of another road. Our journey is not defined by delay, but by difference—by the sights we gather along the way, the details we bring back, the truths we carry from landscapes most people never see.
A close-up photograph shows a white official vote-by-mail return envelope resting on top of a U.S. flag. The stars and stripes of the flag are partially visible as a background. The envelope text is clearly printed in English and Spanish, with bold red letters reading “NO POSTAGE REQUIRED / NO REQUIERE FRANQUEO.” Additional printed text identifies it as an “OFFICIAL VOTE BY MAIL BALLOT” envelope to be opened only by the election canvassing board.
President Donald Trump has announced plans to issue an executive order eliminating mail-in ballots and voting machines, forcing Americans to vote only in person and on paper. He frames this as a “return to integrity,” but for millions of disabled people, it’s nothing less than an act of disenfranchisement.
Disabled Americans already face enormous barriers to voting: polling places without ramps, machines that don’t work with screen readers, poll workers who don’t know the law. The ACLU has long documented how many of us are turned away, forced to rely on others to fill out our ballots, or left with no way to vote at all. Mail-in voting is not a luxury for us — it is often the only path to casting a ballot privately, safely, and independently.
Disability Advocates Have Already Spoken
This is not just my opinion. Disability rights organizations have been sounding the alarm for years:
The Center for American Progress explained that vote-by-mail is essential for people with mobility challenges, sensory processing differences, or medical conditions that make crowded polling places dangerous.
The American Council of the Blind has emphasized that blind voters must be able to cast and verify ballots privately and independently. Forcing U.S. voters into paper-only systems strips away that independence.
Disability rights groups in Wisconsin and Ohio have gone to court to defend accessible absentee voting, pointing out that restrictions on mailed or assisted ballots directly violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.
These are not abstract policy debates. They are real world questions (many with life-or-death consequences) faced every day: Questions about whether disabled people will be allowed to participate in democracy as full citizens.
Mail-In Voting Is Disability Access
When Trump calls for eliminating mail-in ballots, he is not just attacking “fraud” (which is vanishingly rare). He is targeting the civil rights of disabled people, older adults, and anyone for whom in-person voting is physically impossible or unsafe.
Think about it: people who use ventilators, people in long-term care, people with severe chronic pain, autistic people who cannot endure hours-long lines and crowded rooms. Without mail-in voting, these citizens are effectively silenced.
That’s what makes this proposal not only dangerous but ableist. It ignores decades of disability rights law, advocacy, and lived experience. It treats our participation in democracy as expendable.
Democracy For Whom?
Every time Trump promises to abolish mail-in ballots, he is really saying: democracy is for the non-disabled only. Everyone else — stay home, stay silent, accept second-class status.
But we refuse. Disabled advocates, Autistic self-advocates, blind and low-vision leaders, mobility-impaired voters, and aging communities have been clear: accessible absentee and mail-in voting is a civil right. To eliminate it is to commit deliberate disenfranchisement on a massive scale.
Conclusion
Trump’s plan is not a neutral “election reform.” It is a discriminatory attack that will most deeply harm disabled people, elders, and anyone who depends on accessible voting. We need to name it plainly: this executive order would be an ableist assault on the ballot box.
If you care about democracy, you must care about disabled enfranchisement. And if you care about disabled enfranchisement, you must defend mail-in voting.
What You Can Do
Contact your representatives. Tell them that eliminating mail-in ballots would disenfranchise millions of disabled voters. Demand they speak out and defend accessible voting.
Spread the word. Share articles, blogs, and personal stories to remind others that mail-in voting is not just a convenience — it is accessibility, and accessibility is a civil right.
Center disabled voices. Listen to and amplify the testimony of those most affected by these attacks on voting rights.
Book cover of The Neurodivergence Skills Workbook for Autism and ADHD by Jennifer Kemp, MPsych, and Monique Michelson, MPsych, with a foreword by Sonny Jane Wise. The subtitle reads: “Cultivate Self-Compassion, Live Authentically, and Be Your Own Advocate.” The design features colorful botanical illustrations in red, orange, green, blue, and purple against a white background, with a soft and inviting feel.
A Book About Us, For Us, By Us
When I pick up a book about autism and ADHD, my first questions are: Who wrote this? Do they get it from the inside, or are they peering in from the outside? That matters—because lived experience changes everything about how you frame a struggle, a strength, or a survival skill.
The Neurodivergence Skills Workbook for Autism and ADHD passes that test instantly. Both authors, Jennifer Kemp and Monique Mitchelson, are neurodivergent themselves. And not in the vague “oh, I relate to some traits” way, but openly and specifically: they are Autistic, ADHD, and committed to working from a strengths-based, non-pathologizing lens. That shows in every page.
A Foreword That Sets the Tone
And then there’s the foreword by Sonny Jane Wise, whom I adore. Sonny—trans, multiply neurodivergent, Autistic, ADHD—writes with the kind of clarity and conviction that makes me nod along the whole way.
Sonny showed up as an advocate on the same wavelength as work I and others had already been doing, voicing truths we’ve long expressed, but in their own, eloquent, powerful voice I admire tremendously. Sonny’s uncompromising advocacy and apparently boundless energy are such a delight.
Having their words open this book was a joy. It’s like entering a room and the first voice you hear is already speaking your language. Sonny Jane Wise is an advocate I trust completely. By the time you reach the first chapter, you already feel held by people who get it.
Not Just Another Workbook
While there are a growing number of excellent workbooks being published, the market has been flooded with “workbooks” for neurodivergent people for a while. Far too many of these are warmed-over CBT checklists or generic productivity hacks written by people outside the community who slapped a rainbow cover on something to exploit a market niche. This book is SO very much NOT that.
Kemp and Mitchelson’s workbook isn’t a thoughtless re-brand or instructions for making you into a more tolerable version of yourself for neurotypical comfort. It’s about helping you know yourself more deeply, regulate without shaming yourself for struggling, and build skills that actually work for a nervous system like yours.
Why It Works for Emotional Regulation Struggles
As someone who lives in the messy, stormy, exhausting reality of emotional regulation challenges, I read this with a mix of curiosity and cautious optimism. What I found was a thoughtful, step-by-step approach that blends evidence-based strategies with lived-experience wisdom.
They talk about emotions not as “problems to fix” but as signals to understand. They normalize overwhelm. They teach skills in layers—starting where you are, without pressure to perform. And they do it without the infantilizing tone that so often creeps into resources aimed at autistic or ADHD adults.
A Few Highlights
Here are some of the aspects of this book that especially shine:
Interoception & Self-Check-Ins: Practical, compassionate exercises for learning to notice what’s going on inside your body before you tip into crisis.
Sensory Strategies That Aren’t One-Size-Fits-All: Acknowledging that what soothes one neurodivergent brain can overload another.
Scripts for Self-Advocacy: Not in the “just say this and everything will be fine” sense, but as adaptable frameworks to make self-expression easier under stress.
Why I’m Recommending It
I don’t recommend every book I read. Too many get the tone wrong, or the science shaky, or the audience wrong entirely. This one nails it—particularly for Autistic and ADHD people who wrestle with emotional regulation in a world that often treats our distress as a moral failing.
The fact that it’s written by therapists who are openly neurodivergent, with a foreword by Sonny Jane Wise, gives it a credibility and warmth that I want my readers to experience. It’s not just a workbook—it’s a conversation with people who know the terrain, who have walked it themselves, and who are willing to hand you the map they’ve drawn.
Final Takeaway
If you’ve been burned by self-help that left you feeling like the problem, this book will feel different. It treats your neurodivergence as a given, not a flaw. It offers skills without the side order of shame. And it does it all with the voice of people who speak our language.
This one’s going on my recommendation list, because it’s honest, useful, and written for us.
This bill is moving fast, and your senators need to hear from you now.
A square photo of the U.S. Capitol building with a pale blue sky in the background. Behind the Capitol dome, a large letter is collaged into the sky, as if rising like a backdrop. The sample letter begins with “Dear Senator,” and includes instructional lines for writing about urging support or opposition to a bill.
Right now, the U.S. Senate is considering Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
It’s a sweeping, high-stakes proposal that would reshape healthcare, disability access, immigration, education, environmental protections, and more—all in one massive vote.
This bill is moving fast, and your senators need to hear from you now.
Before it’s too late.
You don’t need to know everything about politics. You don’t need to say it perfectly.
You just need to say what matters to you—as a person who lives in their state, as someone directly affected, or as someone who cares.
Even if you’ve never contacted your senators before, this post will walk you through it.
Even if your heart is pounding or your brain is foggy, you can still do this.
This bill affects real people. It affects us. And your voice matters.
How to Find and Contact Your Senators (Even If You’ve Never Done It Before)
If you care about what’s happening in the world, you have a right to speak up. One powerful way to do that is by contacting your U.S. Senators—the people who represent your state in Congress and vote on federal laws.
But if no one ever taught you how? This guide is for you.
Step 1: Find Out Who Your Senators Are
Each state has two U.S. Senators. You don’t need to know their names ahead of time.
2. Scroll down to “Choose a State” and pick your state from the list.
3. You’ll see the names of your two senators. Each name links to their personal Senate website.
Step 2: Find Their Contact Page
Click on each senator’s name to go to their website.
Look for a link that says something like “Contact” or “Email Me.”
Sometimes it’s at the top of the page. Other times you might have to scroll down.
Most sites offer:
An email form (where you fill in your name, address, and message)
A phone number
A mailing address
Step 3: Know What to Say
You don’t have to be fancy. Just be honest, brief, and say you are a constituent (someone who lives in their state).
You can say:
“Hi, my name is [your name], and I live in [your city or ZIP code]. I’m writing to ask Senator [Name] to support [or oppose] [the issue]. This issue is important to me because [reason, if you want to share]. Thank you for your time.”
Tip: If you’re autistic or disabled, you can say so. It helps your senator understand the community they represent.
Calling Instead of Writing?
It’s okay to be nervous. Staff members take messages all day. Some senators have voice mail and you won’t even have to speak to a person directly. You can write down what you want to say and read it to a voice mail recorder or to a staff person. You don’t have to answer questions. Just share your opinion.
Example:
“Hi, I’m [your first name], and I live in [your ZIP code]. I’d like to ask Senator [Name] to vote against [bill or issue]. Thank you.”
Then you can hang up. That’s enough.
It Counts
You may not get a reply, but every message gets logged. Support or opposition gets counted. That means, at minimum, you are casting an opinion vote with your senators. Your Congressional representatives may never read your email or listen to your call, but they are aware of the statistics of what their constituents are saying to them.
(I will say that every time I have written an old fashioned paper letter to any politician at any level of government, I have always gotten a paper letter back, even if it was just a scripted response from a secretary.)
If a senator gets hundreds of messages on one issue, they may or may not act, but they definitely pay attention.
Your voice matters.
You don’t need permission. You don’t need to do it perfectly. You have the right to communicate with the people making decisions about your life. You have the right to tell your senators not to pass a bill that will harm a lot of people, including you, including people you love. You have this right.
Why So Many People Oppose the “One Big Beautiful Bill”
Below are some of the biggest concerns people have about this bill. There are more reasons to oppose this bill, I’ve just chosen some of the major reasons most people are talking about.
You don’t need to mention them all—just pick the ones that matter most to you and speak from the heart.
Even one sentence to a senator, in your own words, can make a difference.
Access to Healthcare
The bill slashes Medicaid funding, putting millions of disabled, poor, and elderly people at risk of losing essential care.
It gives states the power to cut gender-affirming care, reproductive healthcare, and mental health coverage from public insurance plans.
It removes federal protections for pre-existing conditions.
Taxation & Redistribution of Wealth
It gives massive tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy and large corporations, while cutting services for ordinary people.
It proposes taxing disability and Social Security benefits above a certain threshold—treating survival income like luxury income.
It shifts funding away from schools, housing, and food assistance to increase military and border spending.
Immigration Law
The bill limits asylum claims, increases deportations, and allows for indefinite detention of migrants—including children.
It fast-tracks mass surveillance of immigrant communities.
It ends protections for certain refugee groups and undocumented students.
Disability and Civil Rights
It weakens the Americans with Disabilities Act by making accessibility “optional” for small businesses.
It removes funding for federal disability advocacy centers.
It allows states to impose work requirements on disabled people receiving assistance.
Undermining the Courts and Rule of Law
The bill includes a provision that would block courts from enforcing rulings against the President or executive branch, even if those rulings find violations of the law.
This would strip judges of the power to hold federal officials accountable, making legal checks on executive power meaningless.
It threatens the balance of power between the three branches of government, a core principle of U.S. democracy.
Critics warn it could let the President act with impunity, even in defiance of the Constitution.
Climate and Environment
The bill cuts clean energy incentives and eliminates many EPA regulations.
It expands oil drilling, fracking, and mining operations, including on public lands.
It removes protections for endangered species and sacred Indigenous sites.
Use What Speaks to You
You don’t need to list all of this. One or two issues, written in your words, is enough.
Speak from your values, your fears, your hopes—whatever moves you to act.
Your senator may never hear from someone quite like you again.
Let them know what matters before they cast their vote.
A red octagonal stop sign modified to include ABA data tracking. Below the large white word “STOP,” a data panel displays a behavioral goal: “Given an intersection with a stop sign, the driver will stop for at least 4 seconds in 3 consecutive sessions.” A trial chart shows six entries marked with plus and minus signs, and a small line graph displays a rising trend in correct responses. The sign mimics a discrete trial data sheet embedded into a traffic sign.
Introduction
You’ve probably heard it before: “We all experience ABA every day!” The go-to example? Stopping at a stop sign. Supposedly, we stop because we’ve been conditioned—by tickets or crashes or social pressure—and that’s Applied Behavior Analysis in action. Simple, right?
Except… no.
This tidy analogy shows up everywhere from therapist training programs to parent workshops to casual online debates. It’s trotted out to make ABA seem natural, universal, and harmless. The message is clear: if stopping at a stop sign is ABA, then ABA must be fine.
But that’s not how ABA works.
In this essay, I’m going to take that example for a spin. First, we’ll look at what ABA actually involves. Then we’ll imagine what it would really look like if stopping at stop signs were an example of ABA methods. And finally, we’ll dig into why misusing examples like this doesn’t just muddy the waters—it actively manipulates public understanding in ways that harm autistic people.
Because if following traffic laws is ABA in action, I’m owed a massive backlog of M&Ms.
What ABA Actually Involves
Applied Behavior Analysis isn’t just any old cause-and-effect learning. It’s a structured, clinical intervention rooted in behaviorist psychology. In practice, ABA relies on clearly defined goals, repeated teaching opportunities (called “discrete trials”), detailed data collection, and carefully managed reinforcement schedules.
If someone’s learning a skill through ABA, it’s not happening by osmosis. There’s a program written for it. There’s an “operationalized” behavior goal—something observable and measurable, like “Will raise hand to request help in 4 out of 5 trials over two consecutive sessions.” There are cues (called SDs), prompts if needed, and a consequence following each attempt: a reward for success or a correction for errors.
The process is deliberate, monitored, and graphed. It’s not just about learning—it’s about shaping behavior through external reinforcement until the target behavior becomes consistent, often without regard for internal motivation, context, or consent.
This isn’t how most people learn to stop at stop signs.
If Stop Signs Were Taught via ABA
Let’s say you really were taught to stop at stop signs through ABA. Here’s how that might look.
First, a behavior analyst would write a program goal:
“Given the visual cue of a red octagonal sign, the learner will bring the vehicle to a full stop behind the white line in 4 out of 5 trials across 3 consecutive sessions, with no more than one verbal prompt.”
You’d begin with structured instruction. A therapist—or in this case, probably your driving instructor—would deliver a discriminative stimulus (SD), like “There’s a stop sign ahead.” If you failed to stop, they’d use a prompt—maybe a verbal reminder like “Brake now,” or a gesture pointing to the pedal. If you did stop (even with a prompt), you’d get a reinforcer: “Great job!” or maybe a tangible reward like a piece of candy.
• Trial 3: No stop – Error correction procedure initiated
Your instructor would collect data for each discrete trial, likely on a clipboard balanced on their knee. They’d graph your performance over time to determine whether the behavior was increasing, whether prompts could be faded, and whether the skill was generalizing across different intersections.
Only after weeks of consistent data showing mastery would the stopping behavior be considered “acquired.”
At no point would you be expected to just get it because of logic, empathy, social norms, or internal motivation. That’s not how ABA works.
Why the Analogy Fails
So why do people keep saying that stopping at a stop sign is an example of everyday ABA?
Because it sounds good. It sounds simple. It reassures nervous parents and skeptical stakeholders that ABA is nothing to fear—just common sense in action.
But here’s the problem: it isn’t true.
Stopping at a stop sign is rule-governed behavior, not behavior shaped through operant conditioning. Most people stop at stop signs not because they were systematically reinforced over hundreds of discrete trials, but because they were told, “This is the law,” maybe saw a diagram in a driver’s manual, and internalized the rule.
They’ve likely seen a car crash—on the road, on the news, or in a driver’s ed video—and they understand the stakes without needing to personally experience any kind of aversive. We stop because we know it’s expected, because it would piss other drivers off if we didn’t, because we don’t want to get stopped by the police, and because we’ve absorbed the potential consequences both intellectually and viscerally. That’s not ABA. That’s culture, cognition, and social learning.
ABA is built on observable behaviors, external rewards, and structured repetition. It’s not a casual consequence you heard about once and filed away in your mind—it’s a targeted intervention, complete with data sheets and reinforcer hierarchies.
When people use the stop sign analogy, they collapse all of that complexity into a feel-good metaphor. It’s not just misleading—it’s strategically misleading.
The Harm of Misleading Normalization
When people claim that stopping at a stop sign is “just like ABA,” it’s not an innocent misunderstanding. It’s a deliberate rhetorical move—a way of normalizing a highly structured and often coercive intervention by comparing it to everyday life.
This kind of sleight-of-hand is designed to build trust where skepticism is warranted. It encourages parents to accept ABA without asking hard questions. It assures policymakers and funders that what they’re supporting is just good, common-sense learning. And it silences autistic people who raise concerns, because if “everyone experiences ABA,” then our objections must be overblown.
But autistic people don’t object to rules. We object to being subjected to intense, dehumanizing compliance training disguised as care. We object to interventions that treat our natural communication, movement, and affect as problems to be corrected. We object to being turned into data points in someone else’s binder.
By flattening the distinction between real-life learning and structured behavioral intervention, these analogies obscure power, consent, and the actual lived experience of being on the receiving end of ABA. Stories of “Stop Sign ABA” are not harmless—they’re manipulative. And they serve the system, not the person.
Conclusion
Applied Behavior Analysis is a specific, technical method. It’s not a vibe. It’s not a metaphor. And it’s not the reason you know how to drive.
When people reach for easy analogies to defend ABA, they’re not simplifying—they’re obscuring. They’re smoothing over the hard edges of a controversial practice and offering comfort at the expense of truth. But autistic people deserve better than rhetorical sugar-coating. We deserve honesty, accuracy, and respect for the reality of our lived experiences.
So the next time someone tells you that stopping at a stop sign is ABA in action, ask them for your operational goal, your discrete trial data, and the thousands of M&Ms you’re owed for a lifetime of lawful driving. Better yet, tell them: If that’s ABA, then I’m Pavlov’s dog.
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