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You’ve Never Seen an Untraumatized Autistic Adult. Neither Have I
What we think we know about autistic people may actually be a portrait of what happens to them. The email came in on a Saturday morning, about forty-five minutes before I walked into a room full of clinicians to present at the biggest psychotherapy conference I'll attend this year. A...
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Navigating Lifespan Transitions for Autistic Older Adults: Aging, Independence, and Dignity
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a lifelong neurodevelopmental condition characterized by persistent challenges in social communication and restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Many autistic adults, like Michael, a 61-year-old man diagnosed later in...
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The Other Side of Autism: Intense World Theory
Social difficulties in autism are usually attributed to poor theory of mind. That’s not always the case. In my early thirties, I was diagnosed with what was then known as Asperger’s syndrome. Like many on the spectrum who receive a diagnosis late in life, this was something of a revelation,...
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Challenge of Being an Autistic Higher Education Teacher in Brazil
This article discusses the challenge of including autistic teachers in higher education in Brazil, highlighting the scarcity of people diagnosed with autism working as university professors. In addition to these scarce university professors with autism, the first author of the article has the same...
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The Never-Ending Cycle: Autism, Stigma, and the Cost of Late Diagnosis
What actually constitutes as a late diagnosis for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has been up for debate for years. Some studies and institutions cite any diagnosis after 12 years of age as being the cut-off (Hoxworth, 2022), whereas some argue it could be as young as three (Russell et al., 2025)....
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Preventing the Hidden Burnout Crisis in Autistic Women and Girls
One of the most heart-wrenching things I realized as a late-identified Autistic woman was just how disconnected I was from my true self. Decades of masking, of becoming a professional-level chameleon, left me feeling like I didn't even know who "me" was anymore. It was this constant, buzzing,...
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Why Don’t Autistic Women Get Diagnosed, and Why Is It So Important?
I’ve diagnosed unrecognized autistic women for ten years and worked with them in therapy. These women are often successfully employed and married or with partners. They might have children and be involved in working with schools on their children’s behalf. Some might have struggled in jobs or...
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Autistic Lived Experience: Compromised by Neuropsychological Malpractice
If the world were a rightly ordered place, then this story takes a very different turn than it did. Looking back on how it unfolded, the wrong that was committed against me, as hurtful as it was, is not surprising, considering all I have learned since then about the prevailing narrative around...
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The Gulf Coast Burnout Queen
Ten years ago, we began to sense that women on the spectrum had largely gone unnoticed and, therefore, undiagnosed to degrees that might actually be beyond our imagination. It was like waking up to find out that the nightmare was real. Thanks to the cultural realities of gender expectation,...
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Mask of Your Own Face – Experiences with Masking as an Autistic Adult
Imagine for a moment that you are a kid. As far as you’re aware, you’re like every other kid, but as you go throughout your childhood and adolescence, people start pointing out parts of you that seem a bit…off. Maybe your interests are strange or inappropriate; maybe the way you talk and move...
