Author & Neurodivergent Advocate
Rejection sensitive dysphoria looks a lot like complex PTSD, yet nobody has put the two side by side. Animal studies show the brain unlearns fear through a small burst of dopamine when an expected bad thing doesn't happen. I think that burst...
Continue readingPrivacy, comparison, LinkedIn, and what I mean when I call someone a friend. There are eight reasons I stay away from social media, but the last is the one I care about most.
Continue readingAutism is defined largely by differences in how we communicate. Add ADHD, dyslexia and words that won't come when I need them, and there's a big gap between what I know and what I can get onto a page. AI helps me...
Continue readingAn open letter, written to everybody who ever decided what I was. About what it actually means to think differently - and, it turns out, to feel differently - what it cost to hide both - and why "I'm only protecting them" is almost never true.
Continue readingIn 2017 Simon Baron-Cohen told the United Nations that autistic people were still falling outside their human rights. He was right, and he was mostly talking about children. These pages do the same job for adults and reach a different conclusion: the...
Continue readingAutistic loneliness is usually explained as a preference, and it is rarely about the empty room. It is about the full one - being present and still outside. It is also a loop: you are excluded before you have done anything, you...
Continue readingThe written version of a talk I gave at the Sydney Disability Expo in August 2026. Adults are being diagnosed autistic in their forties, fifties and sixties - not because autism is spreading, but because the lens that could see them was...
Continue reading"Everyone masks" is usually said to end the conversation. It should start it. The claim is true - impression management is universal, and the research now confirms that neurotypical adults mask at work for the same reasons autistic adults do. What differs...
Continue readingMore people are being diagnosed autistic as adults, and about two in five autistic people are ADHD too. Is the ADHD part of why the autism diagnosis came so late? In children, the answer looks like yes. In adults, nobody has checked....
Continue readingIn the lab, competition seems to suit autistic people quite well. Outside it, autistic adults are thin on the ground wherever life is openly competitive. I used to think we just cared about fairness. Then I realised I'd been carrying two opposite...
Continue readingAdults are now diagnosed autistic or ADHD in their thirties, forties and fifties - and by then, most have a partner. A late diagnosis lands in a relationship that was built for years without it. Does the relationship change after that? As...
Continue readingWeight-loss drugs like semaglutide work by changing how the body senses hunger and fullness. Many autistic people sense hunger and fullness differently. So does the drug work differently for us - better, worse, or just strangely?
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