In this email:

1. The unspoken thing under the things that people ask me about
2. 5 latest videos
3. Beyond Autistic Burnout course
4. Recent popular Tweet
5. Additional resource options
6. Next free workshop
7. Feature article: This Assumption Leads to Autistic Anxiety

Hi Reader,

When people first come to me, they usually tell me they want to work on getting out of burnout, or miscommunications with neurotypicals, or how they hate their job, or making sensory stuff or routines better, or other specific things. (Or all of that.)

They’ll tell me they’ve just figured out that they’re autistic in the few last months to years, and are working through all that that has brought up, processing their whole life through that lens.

But what they don't say is, "I am trying to leave behind my old identity and form a new one." But that's essentially what’s going on underneath all of those topics.

It’s that identity transition--from who you thought you were (and all of the coping strategies that built up over the years) to who you are becoming (and realizing that you always have been, but letting it show, in safer ways)--that I primarily work on with people, which shows up in the minutia of everyday life, in every part of life: relationships, work, communication, one's physical environment, daily routine, parenting, etc. It plays out in all these areas.

And as you work through each thing that comes up, and process where your current patterns came from, why that happened back then (“Oh, it's because I was autistic and I didn't know it, and neither did they.”), a lot of the shame and guilt falls away.

The shame of, "Why can't I freaking just say things right? Why can't I make a freaking friend? Ugh, I keep making the same mistakes. I've done this so many times. I keep doing the same freaking thing. There aren't any jobs that don't make me feel like crap. I can't deal with people. Why can't I…whatever.”

And as that shame, and guilt, and self-judgment, gradually fades away, new opportunities become possible. Like learning how to communicate in ways that work for your natural Autistic communication style, and that also work for their NT brain. And ways to adapt your routines to serve you better. And it frees up energy to put into making work better, or working for yourself (with all that entails). And all sorts of other things.

I realized recently that in making this autistic burnout recovery course, I’m essentially laying out my whole philosophy of how to get free from NT expectations and to make your autism-friendly life.

That didn’t entirely surprise me, because I’ve been saying for years that when you do exactly that, the natural result is that burnout decreases and eventually fades away. For good.

Because autistic burnout is a direct result of spending energy trying to live a life that isn’t right for you (often trying to live up to your perception of neurotypical expectations).

In the article and video below, I address this same topic in another way. It’s a specific example of when I saw those NT expectations show up in a social media post, and how it creates an untenable situation for NDs.

Is this making sense to you? Am I explaining myself well? I hope so. Well, I’ll leave it there for now, because my ND-positive life barometer (being in touch with my stomach) is telling me it is time for dinner. ;)

Wishing you a neurowonderful day,
Heather

P.S. If you're interested in that burnout recovery course, it offers practical guidance as well as deep underlying frameworks for how to gradually modify the parts of your life that are draining energy, to be a better fit for your brain and nervous system.

Even though we're partway through, it's designed to be accessible asynchronously, so you'll get access to the first three modules immediately, and can join us for the live meetings in the future (if you want to).

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5 Latest Videos

Transcripts are in the video descriptions.

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​The Danger Of Assuming People Wanted The Life They Got​

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​Can’t express your needs?​

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​Overexplaining is a trauma response​

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​Denying our experience disconnects us from important information​

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​This Assumption Leads to Autistic Anxiety​

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Beyond Autistic Burnout

A practical system for sustainable recovery, without quitting everything.

If you're Autistic or AuDHD, and in autistic burnout, and want someone who has been-there-and-done-that-and-come-out-the-other-side to shine the light on how to make a positive life for your neurodivergent and autistic self (how's that for a sentence), this might be what you've been looking for.

After working with over a hundred other Autistics and AuDHDers and NDs break the burnout cycle, I've developed a system that works.

I won't pretend that it'll fix everything quickly, but it took a long time to get where you are now, either. Making a better, sustainable life is possible.

Intrigued? all the juicy details are here:

(It's a long read, but worth it.)

Recent Popular Tweet​
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Heather Cook 🦓🖖Autistic Life Coach @hmm_cook If you don’t know what’s going on internally, then you don’t have enough information to make appropriate changes or reframe it, and it’s often just, “Well, that situation sucks, so it must be me.” #Interoception #ActuallyAutistic #Autistic #AuDHD #Sensory 8:0 AM • Oct 27, 2024 0 Retweets 13 Likes

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Next Free Workshop

Practical Tips for Disclosing Your Autism​

At various points in your later identification autism Journey, you’ll want or need to tell someone that you’re Autistic (or think you might be). But how?

There are so many possible reactions, and you’ve heard of (or experienced) negative ones, and want to avoid those. But how?

In this workshop, I’ll offer a few key tips for approaching this so it is more likely to go well, along with some things to consider and several sample scripts to get you started with what to say.

We’ll cover family/personal as well as work situations.

Tuesday, March 11th
12 PM PT - 3 PM ET - 8 PM BST

This Assumption Leads to Autistic Anxiety

A response to a conversation on social media reminded me of a way of thinking that I'd like to discuss.

​Read this on my website here​

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I ran across a conversation on social media recently in the context of business marketing (I promise I have a point that’s relevant to you), and one of the participants (I’m not going to name who because I’m going to criticize their point) argued that it’s totally fine to promise clients you can get results for them in a particular timeframe, even when it’s up to the clients to do part of the work, and they may not do it according to your schedule. He said:

“We may know that clients rarely do everything as prescribed, but you can’t develop a system with that assumption. The estimated time is a product of a formula. You have to assume their effort/inputs will be A.) as prescribed and B.) constant — because a formula needs a constant or it’s not a formula.

If they are behind schedule, have an honest conversation about why & what needs to be done to fix it.”

Why am I bringing this up? It’s a perfect example of the type of thinking that leads a lot of Autistics to develop anxiety.

Here’s what I mean.

Let’s replace “client” with “Autistic”, and loosen the focus from “getting results in a specific timeframe” to “getting results”.

“We may know that Autistics rarely do everything as prescribed, but you can’t develop a system with that assumption. The estimated results are a product of a formula. You have to assume their effort/inputs will be A.) as prescribed and B.) constant — because a formula needs a constant or it’s not a formula.

If they are behind the program, have an honest conversation about why & what needs to be done to fix it.”

How does this feel now? Is it more familiar?

This looks an awful lot like ABA, or Positive Behavioral Supports, and frankly, it looks an awful lot like the general attitude of society toward us in all the little moments of life.

I might rephrase it one more time to make that last connection more obvious:

“We may know that Autistics rarely do everything neurotypicals expect, but you can’t let them off the hook for that. You have to keep at them. You have to assume they will A.) keep trying to do things right, and B.) be consistent — because you need to be consistent or it won’t work.

If they mess up, talk to them about why & what needs to be done to fix it.”

How about now? Have you encountered this attitude?

The underlying assumption

The basic assumption underlying this is that 1) we know that these people are a certain way, but 2) we’re going to ignore reality, and 3) pretend that everyone is the way our concept says they should be, and deal with them on those terms, and when that predictably gets results we don’t want, 4) blame them and push them to become our conceptual people.

While most people wouldn’t recognize that as an intentional thought behind how they deal with the people around them, when you really get down to it, it’s essentially how a lot of us go through life.

“Ugh, he’s so rude. I’ve told him a thousand times he can’t say things like that. If he keeps it up, he’s going to lose his job.”

To be fair, some things are straight up mean and hurtful to say. But is he actually being mean? Or just autistically direct? Maybe other people could get curious about whether he’s telling the truth and consider his point, rather than just taking offense and trying to fix or punish him?

I admit to doing this myself. Rather than taking people for who they are, I’ve been known to overly focus on what “should” be, and get frustrated that it’s not that way, rather than dealing with the real person or situation in front of me.

Over the last several years, as I’ve healed old wounds, unmasked, and learned healthier communication patterns, I’ve gotten a lot better at recognizing that impulse and not doing it.

What surprised me the most was that the more I disconnected from negative self-talk, and the less I judged myself, the less I judged others and the more my compassion for them grew. It happened quite naturally, and has been wonderful.

I mention this not to say how great I am, but to give hope that it is possible to change that pattern.

As someone who thinks and processes information and sensory data, and whose natural communication style lies, somewhat out of the expected range, I have been subjected to this pattern more than most.

How anxiety develops from this

Fortunately I never got ABA training, but I did get a lot of pressure to stop saying rude things, I got laughed at a lot, people would get offended when I didn’t mean it that way, or I would do something that I thought was humorous and it would go badly.

And, most of the time, the reactions of people around me were predictable and consistent. I was in the wrong. I needed to fix it.

They never explained how. Or what was so bad about whatever I said or did.

So my brain, that is excellent at problem-solving, would go to work on trying to figure out what the hell I did wrong.

But what was not consistent was the context, and the circumstances, and the manifold variety of factors, and exceptions, and, and, and… (how do some people just pick all this up intuitively???)

Sometimes I could figure out what my social faux pas was, but most of the time I was just left confused.

Over time, I learned enough of those rules to (more or less (kind of)) fit in, but there were lots of leaks around the edges. People could tell. I don’t think anyone was truly fooled. And damn, that was exhausting.

(Now I have a word for that: masking.)

But all that confusion had its effect; I was never sure what I would say or do that would set people off.

I never knew which way to turn. What to say. What not to say. What would make things worse.

The result was anxiety.

Fear. Without being able to point to a specific thing, and say, “It’s that.” “That thing is scary.”

‘That thing’ was “people.”

But that’s not really helpful. Because the same sentence with one person would lead to an eruption, but with another they would laugh and say “I love you so much.” (They were still laughing at what I said, but appreciated my unorthodox style?)

After I figured out I’m autistic, that powerful problem-solving brain of mine went to work dismantling the results of other people trying to fit me into their “shoulds.” I started hacking all of those experiences in my past, finding the painful beliefs that I developed about myself and other people in society, figuring out how to be more myself and how to be okay with the fact that not everyone loves that.

It led to more authentic communication and better relationships.

A lot of what I had to unlearn were the effects of people trying to fit me into their concepts of what “should” be.

How to unlearn these things, and how to figure out what to unlearn, without gaslighting yourself, is precisely what I will be sharing in my anti-anxiety course.

Because we don’t have to live in the world of “shoulds” or chase their “normal.”

Are you ready to break out of their formula and feel better about yourself? To make your life better? (That’s scary, I know.) Well, this is how to deal with all the fears and anxieties that arise because of the years of (informal or formal) training in “being normal” you’ve received.

You were born on this Earth the way that you are, which means that you deserve to be on this Earth precisely the way you are.​

Making that real isn’t easy (and that’s okay). And part of it is dealing with the fears and anxieties that come up every time you want to disclose something, or say no, or ask for accommodations, or tell someone what you really want, or ask for a change, or spend money on yourself, or try something new.

If you want to see this in action, here’s a post about a time when I actually told someone no, even though I was super anxious about it, but managed to get through it.

And I’ll include a link, just for those who are interested, to my anti-anxiety course in which I go over how do you actually get it to the point where you can say no, or ask for accommodations, or all the other minutia of life, from an autistic perspective, for autistics.

This is such an important thing for all of us, and I wish you well in your own Journey, and that you make today a neurowonderful day.

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About Heather
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Hi, I’m Heather. I’m Autistic, ADHD, disabled, and building a life I love.

I coach Autistic and other neurodivergent humans on creating their own neurowonderful lives.

Want personalized support in making your life more autism-friendly? See if 1:1 coaching is a good fit for you.
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