Matt, Erin, and returning guest Kate McNulty are back — and this one moves from burnout to shame to safety, with stops at birds, clocks, and emotional support cheese.

We’re talking about what happens when your spark goes out… and how to find it again without shaming yourself into motion.

We cover:
• How to rebuild momentum in burnout — from “skip a step” strategies to using curiosity as fuel
• What shame actually is, how it forms in dysregulated relationships, and why it disconnects us from safety
• Fawning, appeasement, and nervous system survival — and why victims aren’t “choosing” compliance
• Why reclaiming autistic joy, collections, and special interests is resistance — not selfishness

There’s honest conversation here about re-parenting yourself while raising autistic kids, being shamed for what you love, and why honoring your natural cycles matters more than burning out in glory.

If you’re feeling stuck, flat, or ashamed of the very things that light you up, this one’s for you.

And yes — we still want to see the cats in cosplay.

Matt and Erin are joined this week by Kate McNulty, LCSW — therapist, teacher, late-identified Autistic human, and one of our own. We start with “special interests”… and end up square dancing, grinding coffee beans, and dismantling white supremacy. So. You know. A normal episode.We talk about:

• Kate’s late diagnosis at 60, the “lost generation,” and how stereotypes shaped by Rain Man left many of us masking for survival
• What a “special interest” actually is: intensity, flow state, intrinsic motivation — and why these passions regulate our nervous systems and anchor our purpose
• How engaging our interests (from pouring water to vibe coding to repairing clocks) can be acts of agency and even justice in overwhelming political times
• Why movement, pleasure, humor, and connection aren’t trivial — they interrupt freeze, restore hope, and help us stay human when systems are designed to make us feel helpless

Side note: Yes, we talk about cornflakes. Yes, we talk about masturbation. Yes, we connect it back to dopamine and regulation. This is what happens when Autistic therapists follow their associative thinking all the way down.If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, immobilized, or disconnected from the things that used to light you up — you’re not broken. You might be disregulated. There’s a difference.Come back next week. We’ll pick up the thread we almost started.

This week is a mailbag episode, and Erin and Matt take on two common questions from allistic listeners that come up constantly in real life. Both questions sound simple. Neither one is.

Episode highlights:

• If ABA is harmful, does that mean all discipline or behaviorism is bad — and what discipline is actually for
• Why punishment fails to teach, and how it damages trust, learning, and regulation
• The difference between misbehavior driven by dysregulation vs. misunderstanding
• Why discipline should mean teaching, modeling, and guiding — not control or compliance
• Why Autistic people can be deeply literal and deeply sarcastic (aka snarkolepsy), and why that confuses people so much

Also: this episode includes refrigerator magnets, cuckoo clocks, air fryers, AIC buttons for dogs, Amelia Bedelia logic, Hannah Gadsby wondering how she a box, and a penguin are related, Back to the Future, and a very firm rejection of authoritarian parenting. Matt and Erin don’t get to the rest of the mailbag — including PDA — because these two questions needed the space they took. And honestly, that’s kind of the point.

Note from Erin:

If you're interested in getting started on AIC buttons with your animals, I highly recommend checking out Fluent.pet and HungerForWords.com. They have lots of great info and free resources, even if you don't buy their buttons.

Some of my favorite button-pushers to watch:

Elsie at Elsie wants... (Human: Mary Robinette Kowal who is an incredible human all-around, but also happens to be a Hugo Award-winning author, celebrated narrator, and professional puppeteer)

Twiggy, Odin and Freya at Twiggy and her Cat Cat Friends (Human: Janine Marie Skunk, talking about how she got started here)

Bunny at What About Bunny (Human: Alexis Devine, who is also one of our Autistic neurokin! She tells her story and Bunny's in the book, I Am Bunny)

And, we can't forget the O.G. of interspecies button learning - Stella at Hunger4Words (Human: Christina Hunger, the speech and language pathologist who first noticed the similarities between her puppy and the pre-language toddlers she was working with. You can learn more about Stella's learning process in the book How Stella Learned to Talk)

This week, Matt and Erin slow things down and talk plainly about stress — what it actually does to autistic bodies, and why it hits so hard. From shutdowns and migraines to doomscrolling, snacks, and dogs who run bedtime, this is a lived-in conversation about surviving a loud world.

We cover:

• Why autistic stress isn’t just “in your head,” including interoception, shutdown, overdrive, and burnout
• How bodies give clues when stress is too much — and how many of us were taught to ignore those signals
• Practical, real-world supports: automated routines, snacks-as-care, sleep scaffolding, and letting animals (and people) help

Also included: vestibular migraines, perimenopause realities, surprise chicken strips, revenge bedtime procrastination, vagus nerve tools, cheese as coping (with rules), Google-induced rage, and why silence + snacks is a legitimate love language.

This week’s episode is heavy. Matt and Erin slow things down to talk plainly about safety, community, and what it means to stay human when systems built on control and cruelty become more visible. This is a grounding conversation about fear, responsibility, and why autistic ways of seeing the world matter right now.

We cover:

• What it feels like to live under threat — and why many white autistic people are only now feeling what Black and Indigenous communities have lived with for generations

• Why autistic justice sensitivity, bottom-up processing, and pattern recognition make this moment especially destabilizing (and clarifying)

• Balancing staying informed with protecting your nervous system — including permission to rest, dissociate, distract, and come back

• Community vs. rugged individualism: why survival has always been collective, not transactional

• Practical ways to engage that don’t require burning yourself out (calls, mutual aid, creative support, resource-sharing)

• Repair, accountability, and why changing your mind actually matters — but only if you do the work

Also: snowstorms, go-bags, echolalia, Batman canon, Abed as an autistic icon, consensual licking (yes, really), and a reminder that you don’t have to do everything — just something, when you can.

Take care of yourself. Take care of each other. That’s not fluff. That’s the point.

Matt and Erin are back with returning guest Maisie Soetantyo for a deeper, wider conversation about what happens after diagnosis—inside families, across cultures, and over a lifetime. This episode shifts from systems to home, from protocol to relationship, and from “fixing” kids to protecting connection.We talk about parenting autistic kids without shame, why reward systems and compliance fall apart in real life, and how culture, gender, and family expectations shape autistic identity in ways the system rarely acknowledges.

Episode highlights:

• How early masking is taught at school and reinforced at home—and why it sticks for life
• Parenting neurodivergent kids without reward charts, coercion, or constant outsourcing
• The quiet harm of being labeled “easy,” “good,” or “low maintenance” as an autistic child
• Cultural shame, disability myths, and why many autistic people in Asian communities stay hidden
• What actually helps autistic kids grow into regulated adults: safety, interest-based lives, and a home that feels like refuge

This is a grounded, human conversation about raising autistic people—not to perform adulthood, but to survive it with dignity. Real talk, lived experience, and tools you can actually use.

Matt and Erin are joined this week by longtime colleague and friend of the show, Maisie Soetantyo—an openly autistic, multiply neurodivergent advocate with decades inside the autism service system. This episode is a slow, honest unpacking of what it means to start inside ABA, believe you’re helping, and then realize the system itself is doing harm.

We talk about visible “progress,” invisible trauma, and the moment when following the protocol stops making sense—especially when you’re autistic yourself and keep asking why. This one ends on a cliffhanger, because it has to.

Highlights from this episode:

• Maisie’s early work in ABA at UCLA, why it looked effective at first, and what those “successes” missed

• What happens when compliance replaces connection—and why masking is demanded from both autistic kids and therapists

• The long-term impact of training kids to be invisible, including burnout, shutdowns, and after-school collapse

• Moral injury, burnout, and why so many well-intentioned providers eventually walk away

• Parenting autistic kids after leaving ABA, including sensory-specific eating, regulation, and respecting a real “no”

We stop here on purpose.
Part two is about what comes after—what actually supports autistic people across a lifespan, and how unlearning the system is sometimes the most important work.

This week, Matt and Erin are joined by Arielle Juliette—autistic creator, studio owner, and justice-sensitive human living very online in a very loud world. We talk about trauma, visibility, and what it actually costs autistic people to speak up right now.

This is a wide-ranging, honest conversation about justice sensitivity, burnout, online harassment, and why “keeping the peace” so often means silencing ourselves.

Highlights from the episode:

• Autistic justice sensitivity, trauma exposure, and why the current social and political climate hits so hard

• What it’s like to be an autistic, queer content creator navigating hostility, trolls, and pronoun panic online

• Burnout, body signals, flow states, and why autistic people tend to shine hard—and crash fast

• Why “politeness over truth” protects systems, not people

• Finding (or building) your own herd when institutions and hierarchies were never built for you

• Using privilege strategically to speak up—and why your voice matters even without a huge platform

Side note: there are tangents. Superman vs. Superman. Advent calendars eaten incorrectly. Aliens. Keeping the peace at Thanksgiving. Also, a lot of real talk about fear, safety, and why speaking up can still be worth it—even when it’s hard. Exactly. Exactly.

Matt and Erin are back this week with returning guest Arielle of Dance Life Studio and Fitness, and the conversation goes exactly where Autistic conversations tend to go: movement, joy, systems that don’t fit us, and what actually helps people thrive.We talk about belly dance, autistic nervous systems, and why building a life that works for your body isn’t indulgent—it’s survival.In this episode, we cover:

• *Growing up with an autism-affirming secure base, masking as a survival skill (not a moral failure), and why the problem was never the kid
• Belly dance as stimming, regulation, and community—movement hunger, finishing the stress cycle, and why joy matters as much as recovery
• Accommodations, cinnamon metaphors, and how “the world won’t accommodate you” is usually just unexamined trauma talking
• Teaching and moving in ways that work for autistic bodies, including hypermobility, EDS, chronic pain, and seated adaptations
• Culture, colonization, and why understanding the roots of art—and not selling orientalist fantasy—actually deepens connection

Also: finger cymbals, butthole jokes as a legitimate teaching tool, autistic euphoria, “this is the cutest day of my life” energy, and a reminder that if you can move any part of your skeleton, you can dance.Everyone in the Autistic community is welcome here.

Matt and Erin sit in that strange in-between space after Christmas and before New Year’s, where everyone’s supposed to feel hopeful but most of us are just tired. This episode is a grounded, funny, very Autistic conversation about why New Year’s expectations don’t work the way people think they do—and what actually does help.

Highlights from the episode:

• Why New Year’s resolutions rely on dopamine, not sustainability—and why that backfires for autistic nervous systems

• Systems over habits: menus instead of time-blocking, meds placement, and designing life around how your brain actually works

• Process complexity, perfectionism, and needing to see the whole plan before starting anything

• Preparation as regulation: go bags, multi-tools, and why being ready reduces anxiety about the unknown

• Letting go of “fresh start” pressure and focusing on survival, scaffolding, and realistic support

There are also clocks (a lot of clocks), Daylight Saving Time joy, lightsabers that must be perfectly level, Batman toasts “to survival,” barking dogs, cat food reminders, and a reminder that you don’t need a new personality in January—you need systems that meet you where you are.

You made it here. That counts.

We’ll see you in the new year.