Experience
Autistic reflections
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This page shares autistic people's voices, points of view and personal experiences. When I hear or read something that speaks to me, I will share it here. All authors have given their kind permission for me to do so.
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Nonspeaking Autism -
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Isaiah Tien Grewal writes for Bened Life.
My Point of View
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A very informative blog where Isaiah gives his point of view as a
non-speaking autistic person. A highly recommended read.
🧱 “How LEGO Taught My Son to Read”​
Liam and Sonja Ghersin, write about their son's experiences of a late dyslexia diagnosis, showing how they found a way to help him by entering his world,
rather than expecting him to fit, uncomfortably, into theirs.
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When my son was in first grade, we received the difficult news: severe dyslexia, diagnosed late. The speech therapist gently told us, “He’ll probably never be able to read or write.”
As a parent, those words hit you like a punch to the chest.
On top of that, he was diagnosed with mild autism. But you know what his world was — what made him light up? LEGO. Not just a toy, but a true fascination. Creating, building, imagining — that was where he thrived.
And then it hit me:
What if I stopped trying to pull him into our world… and instead stepped into his?
So we did just that.
Together, we drew out every letter of the alphabet. We counted how many LEGO bricks we’d need to build each one. We went to the store. And we built the entire alphabet out of LEGO.
📚 Letter by letter.
🧠Thought by thought.
💡 Until he could see them… recognize them… read them.
Not because someone told him to.
But because it finally made sense to him.
We did the same with numbers. And even for telling time. All of it visual. Tangible. Built from his world.
Today, he’s in first year of secondary school, following the mainstream curriculum, at his own pace — without ever having to repeat a grade.
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He reads and writes. Not because someone believed it was possible — but because we built our own path when none was offered.
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✨ To other parents, teachers, and caregivers:
Sometimes the key isn’t pushing harder.
It’s looking differently.
The real breakthrough comes when we step into their world, instead of forcing them to live in ours.
That’s how the bridge is built.
One brick at a time. 🧩
A forgotten evolutionary truth about the autistic nervous system
Written by Ophelia Truitt and originally published on Medium. ​​
​​Ophelia is a late-diagnosed autistic woman writing about
identity, collapse, and the beauty in seeing clearly.
We talk about autism as if it’s a glitch.
A divergence.
A break from the path humanity was “meant” to follow.
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But here’s the little-known truth nobody says out loud:
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Autism is not a deviation from humanity.
Autism is the blueprint.
The original human wiring before the world became too loud for its own mind.
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This isn’t poetry.
It’s anthropology, neuroscience, and evolutionary logic — the kind buried under centuries of misunderstanding.
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Let’s walk through what the autistic mind actually is:
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More sensory input, not less
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More attunement to pattern
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More honesty, more consistency
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More memory, more detail
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More empathy, more emotional resonance
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Less tolerance for deception, noise, chaos, and coercion
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If you strip away modern society — the concrete, the sirens, the performance, the deadlines, the social games — and return to early human life?
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These traits aren’t “symptoms.”
They are survival mechanisms.
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Autistic Sensory Acuity Was a Lifeline, Not a Burden
Imagine a world where survival depended on noticing:
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the rustle of predators in tall grass
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a shift in wind direction
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the subtle change in animal migration patterns
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the emotional tension rising within your group
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the difference between an edible plant and a poisonous look-alike
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Autistic sensory perception; sharp hearing, heightened smell, tactile sensitivity, deep visual detail, would have been essential.
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The autistic person wasn’t “too sensitive.”
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They were the one who detected danger first.
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They were the one who remembered the way home.
They were the one who noticed patterns others missed.
They were the early warning system of the tribe.
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The modern world calls it overwhelm.
Evolution called it vigilance.
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Honesty and Moral Consistency Were Social Glue
Autistic people today are accused of being “rigid” or “blunt.”
But in small tribal groups with high interdependence, survival required:
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clarity
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transparency
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trustworthiness
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predictable behavior
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moral alignment
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Autistic honesty built group cohesion.
Because deception in a small band wasn’t clever, it was dangerous.
A single lie could fracture alliances, endanger hunting, or get someone killed.
In early society, the autistic mind’s moral clarity wasn’t a quirk.
It was stabilising.
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We weren’t the outsiders.
We were the anchors.
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Pattern Recognition Was Intelligence, Not Obsession
Our “special interests”?
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In early human civilization, that was called expertise.
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The person who could track:
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seasonal shifts
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animal behavior
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plant cycles
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tool-making processes
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star positions
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…was invaluable.
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Deep focus isn’t a “restricted interest.”
It’s the foundation of every advance humanity ever made.
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Autistic hyperfocus is not pathology.
It’s mastery.
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The modern world does not reward it, but evolution did.
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The World Shifted. Our Wiring Didn’t.
The problem is not the autistic nervous system.
The problem is the environment.
We now live in a society built on:
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constant noise
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artificial light
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emotional suppression
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rapid social rules
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multitasking
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dishonesty as etiquette
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sensory overload as normal
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speed over accuracy
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performance over truth
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crowds, cubicles, and chaos
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The autistic person, wired for clarity, not chaos, feels out of place not because we are broken but because the world mutated faster than the nervous system could follow.
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Most people survived by numbing their senses.
Autistic people never developed that numbing.
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And that’s why we suffer —
not because we are deficient, but because we remain unpoisoned in a culture that rewards dissociation.
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Autism Is Not a Modern Disorder — It’s an Ancestral Inheritance
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When you understand autism through an evolutionary lens, everything snaps into place:
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Our sensitivity is ancient.
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Our honesty is ancient.
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Our pattern-focus is ancient.
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Our emotional directness is ancient.
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Our deep thinking is ancient.
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We are not broken versions of neurotypicals.
We are preserved versions of an older, more attuned humanity.
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The modern world is the outlier, not us.
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We are not a mistake.
We are not a malfunction.
We are a living archive of the human nervous system before it was drowned in noise.
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You Are Not “Behind.” You Are Out of Time.
Autistic people aren’t lagging behind the world.
The world sprinted ahead into an overstimulated, disconnected reality that the human brain was never built for.
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We stayed aligned with the original blueprint.
Which means this:
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You are not wrong.
You are not defective.
You are not a broken version of modern humanity.
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You are a true version of ancient humanity.
Your sensitivity is truth.
Your perception is clarity.
Your brain is not damaged — it is preserved.
You are not less evolved.
You are differently evolved.
You are the ones who still hear the signal beneath the noise.
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The Modern World Needs Us Back
We live in a time of:
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misinformation
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sensory overload
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fractured attention
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emotional numbing
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moral inconsistency
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chronic burnout
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And in this landscape?
The autistic mind; precise, honest, perceptive, pattern-driven, is not a liability.
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It is the antidote.
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Maybe that little-known fact isn’t little at all.
Maybe it’s the truth history forgot to record.
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Maybe autistic people aren’t a deviation.
Maybe we are a reminder.
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A reminder of how human beings were meant to perceive the world before everything got too loud to bear.
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A reminder of clarity.
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And maybe the world needs that clarity again.​​​​​​​​​​​​​
