The Autism Spectrum According to Autistic People

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The Autism Spectrum
According to Autistic People

NeuroClastic

Change | Divergently

Autism

What is Autism? | Autistic Traits | Communication | Diagnosis | Child Therapies | Education | Autism Research

Gaia loves making senses

Jorn Bettin December 19, 2024

Core ideas within Buddhist and Daoist spiritual traditions are reflective of the commonalities found across many human scale indigenous cultures. A compassionate frame of love as vulnerable mutual knowing is compatible with a panpsychic relational philosophy. Everyone wants their experience to be taken seriously. We are embodied spirits, compelled to make sense of this world, and we can only do so in good company.

Gaia loves making senses

Jorn Bettin December 19, 2024

Core ideas within Buddhist and Daoist spiritual traditions are reflective of the commonalities found across many human scale indigenous cultures. A compassionate frame of love as vulnerable mutual knowing is compatible with a panpsychic relational philosophy. Everyone wants their experience to be taken seriously. We are embodied spirits, compelled to make sense of this world, and we can only do so in good company.

Gaia loves making senses

Jorn Bettin December 19, 2024

Core ideas within Buddhist and Daoist spiritual traditions are reflective of the commonalities found across many human scale indigenous cultures. A compassionate frame of love as vulnerable mutual knowing is compatible with a panpsychic relational philosophy. Everyone wants their experience to be taken seriously. We are embodied spirits, compelled to make sense of this world, and we can only do so in good company.

Neurodivergent nervous systems and sensitivity profiles

Jorn Bettin August 3, 2024

Our individually unique nervous systems and sensitivities develop and evolve over the course of our lives. 85% of neurodivergent adults often or always feel overwhelmed and misunderstood, and over 60% often or always feel disrespected and unsafe. Our overall sense of wellbeing is determined by alignment between our sensitivity profiles and the ecology of care we are embedded in (or not).

Falling in love with human limitations – healing from anthropocentrism

Jorn Bettin July 7, 2024

Humans are not going to find solutions for the polycrisis, conquer new planets, the galaxy, and the universe, fully understand the human condition, or develop technologies that replace anthropocentrism with technocentrism. Minimising suffering beyond the human translates to nurturing ecologies of care beyond the human, and to falling in love with human limitations.

How much cognitive dissonance is in your life?

Jorn Bettin July 2, 2024

The Autistic Collaboration Trust has been active in researching cultural and psychological safety from an intersectional perspective. We now explore the level of cognitive dissonance that is generated by the societies that people are embedded in. You are invited to contribute! The results of this research will inform the education services we provide to healthcare professionals and education providers.

Decolonising education

Jorn Bettin May 24, 2024

The April NeurodiVerse Days of Solidarity catalysed a range of conversations, with many threads weaving through the topic of education. Several topics resulted in in-depth discussion and new emerging ongoing collaborations, which is beautiful to see. Changes towards a more egalitarian culture that deeply fully appreciates cultural, biological, and ecological diversity are changes that improve the lives of all people, re-align humanity with our evolutionary heritage, and help us nurture sacred relationships beyond the human.

How safe do/did you feel growing up?

Jorn Bettin April 23, 2024

Initial results from a survey on psychological safety and mental wellbeing indicate that the biggest fears of Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+, and Disabled children – and especially those who also belong to cultural minorities, relate to classmates, parents, and teachers. 97% indicate often or always having anxiety, and 80% indicate often or always feeling depressed. We are committed to gathering further data from as many geographies as possible. The data and lived experience reports will flow into our education courses for teachers, and will inform our advocacy work.

Life in the compost heap of the industrialised mono-cult

Jorn Bettin January 16, 2024

It is impossible to recover from Autistic burnout within the established institutional landscape. The emergence of ecologies of care is the emergence of a beautiful diversity of human scale cultural species and organisms in the cultural compost heap of the industrialised mono-cult.

The ecological niche of A♾tistic peoples

Jorn Bettin December 16, 2023

Surviving on the edges of modern society is an Art. The Arts and regular immersion in genuinely safe Open Spaces help us imagine and co-create ecologies of care in which care and mutual aid are the primary values. Within the context of the polycrisis that shapes the modern human predicament, the urgency of cultural evolution can not be addressed from within the paradigm of a hypernormative education system. Healthy Artistic and Autistic life paths by necessity differ from “normality”.

De-powered dialogue

Jorn Bettin November 27, 2023

The smallest unit of learning is a feedback loop. Power is the privilege of not needing to learn. The dynamic process of life is best understood in relational terms. At human scale, all healthy relationships, independently of the level of intimacy, are characterised by the maintenance of de-powered dialogue – by a mutual deep desire to understand a precious living being.

Nurturing ecologies of care, healing, and wellbeing

Jorn Bettin November 21, 2023

Social power is best understood as a highly addictive and socially corrosive drug. Meaningful education in the era of the sixth mass extinction event has to focus on the majority of the human population that is not power drunk, and on the humane treatment of those who are ready to confront their addiction to power head-on. Conceptualising social power as an addiction provides the majority of the human population with a highly effective bullshit detection tool.

unWEIRDing Autistic ways of being

Jorn Bettin November 8, 2023

The mental health crisis, which is best understood as a crisis of pervasive cognitive dissonance, and which affects large parts of the population, creates plenty of profitable opportunities for ambulance at the bottom of the cliff approaches. Neurological and cultural diversity is the reservoir of imagination of the human species. In a time of existential crises the collective creative potential of neurodivergent people and marginalised cultures has become more important than ever.

Bringing our gifts to life

Jorn Bettin October 26, 2023

We did not evolve for a transactional world. It is time to stop trying harder to fit in. We have already done so all our life. We need to slow down,  to the relational speed of life that is compatible with our evolutionary history. This is well understood by many indigenous cultures in different parts of the world, but this knowledge, this deep wisdom has been actively suppressed.

Autistic human animals – a factor in cultural metamorphosis

Jorn Bettin November 27, 2024

Autistic culture is a world of infinite diversity beyond the neuronormative imagination. Every Autistic relationship is unique, and many of us are traumatised. We need appropriate tools to invest in deeply understanding each other. Cultural metamorphosis requires radically reframing everything we understand about cultural adaptivity in terms of co-creating ecologies of care.

The ability to relate deeply is the inability to conduct transactional busyness

Jorn Bettin November 22, 2024

Underneath the surface of internalised ableism, no one wants to be seen and heard by many. Everyone prefers to be understood and loved deeply by a few, and everyone wants to love and help. Continuous dialogues about commitments make life sacred. This is the experience of life as a process of becoming.

The inability to think hierarchically is the ability to think and live relationally

Jorn Bettin November 17, 2024

Many Autistic people have great difficulties to think of the world in hierarchical ways. From what we know about our evolutionary path as humans, this is a reflection of innate human collaborative cultural capabilities in combination with a much reduced capacity for maintaining cognitive dissonance on an ongoing basis, which in turn can be traced to uncommon sensitivity profiles that fall outside the bell curve of hypernormativity.

Understanding your Autistic child

Jorn Bettin September 17, 2024

In the current Aotearoa New Zealand Autism Guideline the existence of Autistic culture is not mentioned with a single word. Understanding Autistic people and Autistic culture is still a secondary concern. Civil society activists and child rights’ defenders from around the world are now joining together to create the Rights-Centric Education network.

Neurodivergent nervous systems and sensitivity profiles

Jorn Bettin August 3, 2024

Our individually unique nervous systems and sensitivities develop and evolve over the course of our lives. 85% of neurodivergent adults often or always feel overwhelmed and misunderstood, and over 60% often or always feel disrespected and unsafe. Our overall sense of wellbeing is determined by alignment between our sensitivity profiles and the ecology of care we are embedded in (or not).

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