Today’s episode critiques traditional safety education for autistic adolescents, arguing that it fails by prioritising social performance and compliance over recognising the inherent wisdom of the individual’s instincts. Author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks proposes a paradigm shift, advocating for a focus on relational sovereignty rooted in a matristic ethic of communal care and trust. Safety is taught by helping teens identify coercive dynamics through concrete pattern recognition (like the loop of charm, confusion, and blame) and by anchoring red flags to bodily and sensory cues. Instead of behaviourist role-playing, Dr. Hoerricks promotes the use of rehearsal techniques and short sovereignty scripts to establish boundaries and allow self-trust during moments of pressure. Crucially, she asserts that long-term safety requires a shift toward an ecological commons, demanding that schools and communities dismantle hierarchical structures that enable harm instead of placing the entire burden of prevention on the teen.

Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/teaching-danger-without-teaching

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Today’s episode examines how intense emotional sensitivity and hyper-empathy—particularly that experienced by autistic individuals—is systematically exploited and extracted as unpaid labor by societal institutions. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, argues that hyper-empathy is frequently mislabeled as a personal flaw or instinct when it is, in fact, a resource consumed by families, care professions, and empires, fitting into a long history of coerced relational labour assigned to marginalised groups. Dr. Hoerricks directly challenges the narrative of the “autism empathy deficit,” stating that many autistic people experience overwhelming emotional attunement which is then utilised in exhausting “empathy pipelines” where their survival strategies are mistaken for natural availability. This dynamic transforms sensitivity from a personal capacity into an obligation that maintains the comfort of others, with the cost being borne solely by the deeply feeling individual. To counter this extraction, she advocates for reclaiming empathy as a specialised, boundary-protected skill and for the fundamental redistribution of emotional labor into a collective, reciprocal practice.

Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/the-empathy-that-built-the-world

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Today’s episode serves as the introduction to a new podcast series that aims to explore Gestalt Processing from the internal perspective of an autistic gestalt processor. Authored by Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, the work posits that gestalt processing / gestalt language processing is not merely a speech pattern but an entire cognitive ecology or architecture of perception wherein individuals absorb the world in whole gestalts—emotional atmospheres and complete patterns—rather than segmented parts. Dr. Hoerricks distinguishes this mode of thinking from the analytical approach, arguing that GLP represents a different developmental pathway rather than a developmental delay or mere memorisation. She specifically contrasts GLP with the previously used term “non-verbal,” favoring the newer framework because it names the sophisticated architecture of the mind rather than suggesting an absence of language. She promises that the podcast will discuss how GLP influences every life domain, including memory, identity, and relational attunement, making all episodes freely available to broaden public understanding.

Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/constellations-of-meaning-the-architecture

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Today’s episode explores the complex reality of international migration, focusing on the acute difficulties faced by Gestalt Language Processors (GLPs), neurodivergent, and queer families. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, asserts that the choice of country is a classed fantasy, as mobility is heavily restricted by bureaucratic, economic, and ideological borders that weigh families based on perceived asset or burden status. A critical challenge is the clash between the GLP’s non-linear language acquisition, which requires years of atmospheric absorption, and the state’s demand for immediate linguistic coherence and performance. Dr. Hoerricks critiques the concept of a guaranteed “safe country,” concluding that substantial liquid cash is frequently the only effective way to bypass these barriers and purchase the necessary time for a GLP to safely achieve expressive fluency. Ultimately, the real question for these families is where they can find an environment that allows their identity reconstruction and unique pace of unfolding without penalty or fear.

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In today’s episode, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, PhD, outlines her philosophy of writing, which she terms “genre promiscuity,” asserting that her work—which layers memoir, political critique, myth, and embodiment—functions as an “ecosystem” rather than a fixed category. This style is necessary because, as an autistic, queer, trans thinker, her complex life experience resists the linearity and segmentation demanded by institutional gatekeeping. Dr. Hoerricks contends that refusing traditional genre is a political act against systems that attempt to shrink or simplify marginalised narratives. She discusses two primary branches of her output, The AutSide (focused on systemic analysis) and Sensual Residue (concentrated on the somatic and erotic), maintaining a strategic separation to protect the archive from censorship. Ultimately, her methodology is designed to translate a non-linear reality by honouring the coherence of the whole story, proving that complexity is a form of fidelity.

Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/the-shape-of-what-i-write-and-why

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Today’s episode explores the tension between linear, simplified thinking prevalent in human services and the inherent multicausality and complexity of life, particularly for autistic and divergent individuals. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, uses a sociology assignment as a framework, contrasting a human services textbook that treats complexity as an inconvenience with a 2025 research article by Da Silva, Abramov, and Quintanilha that frames ableism as a recursive, systemic structure rather than a personal failing. The core argument is that institutions often insist on monocausality to avoid systemic responsibility, thereby pathologising complex realities like gestalt language processing and reinforcing ableist norms. Dr. Hoerricks advocates for shifting professional practice from an analytic focus on individual deficits to an ecological understanding of forces acting upon a person, asserting that complexity is the fundamental truth of human life and key to liberation.

Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/a-world-too-simple-for-the-truth

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Today’s episode argues that conventional neurotypical politeness functions as a system of social control that actively protects those who cause harm whilst punishing the clarity and directness often characteristic of autistic communication. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, contends that politeness is often a “social technology” built on strategic ambiguity, which manipulators exploit to maintain power and deflect accountability. Furthermore, Dr. Hoerricks explains that autistic directness is mislabeled as rudeness or a “failure” of social skills when it is actually a form of resistance and self-preservation that disrupts coercive etiquette by eliminating the fog of ambiguity. Mechanisms like tone policing, accusations of rudeness, and claims of “overreaction” are described as tools used to enforce compliance and silence those who speak plainly, forcing autistic people to choose between truth and safety. Ultimately, she advocates for a shift from compliance-based politeness to ethics rooted in clarity and transparency, arguing that autistic communication is not broken but dangerous to systems built on performance and distortion.

Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/politeness-as-weapon-how-neurotypical

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Today’s episode argues against the pervasive societal belief that autistic individuals fail to mature beyond childhood. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, asserts that this “infantilising gaze” is upheld by institutions and research that focus only on early intervention, effectively erasing the adult autistic experience from policy and recognition. Dr. Hoerricks contends that autistic development is a lifelong, spiraling process and that play is a mature and crucial form of learning and communication—a “praxis”—that the non-autistic world misinterprets as mere immaturity or regression. Ultimately, she calls for the reclamation of autistic adulthood and autonomy, defined by complex forms of connection, self-knowledge, and resistance through play.

Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/the-myth-of-peter-pan-on-autistic

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Today’s episode provides an overview and meditation on Sarinah O’Donoghue’s 2023 essay, “Thinking with Sticks.” The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, emphasises a posthumanist perspective on autistic narrative, arguing that communication and meaning extend beyond verbal language and are co-authored by bodies, objects, movement, and sensory life. Dr. Hoerricks examines two foundational works in autistic self-advocacy, Mel Baggs’ In My Language and Adam Wolfond & Estée Klar’s S/Pace, to illustrate how material components, such as sticks or stones, function as thinking partners and communicative elements. This framework challenges the notion that intelligence is housed solely in the brain, instead proposing that cognition is distributed and relational, which validates non-traditional forms of expression like stimming and facilitated communication (FC). Ultimately, she advocates for recognising autistic experience as a valid and complex form of human patterning where the world actively participates in storytelling.

Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/in-my-language-in-my-space-autistic

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Today’s episode explores the lived experience of being an autistic-trans self, focusing on the concept of emergence and the societal “fog” that obscures self-recognition. The author of the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks, describes how autistic and gender masking are survival mechanisms built to manage others’ limited perceptions, forcing the individual to live within the visible, often misinterpreted, portion of their truth. Dr. Hoerricks powerfully critiques epistemic violence—the way external projections and systemic discourses (psychiatrisation, repressive protection, medical management) attempt to define, pathologise, and control autistic trans identities at micro, meso, and macro levels. Ultimately, she argues for reclaiming authorship and establishing a community-led truth-making that insists on the clarity and self-sovereignty found when the oppressive societal fog finally lifts.

Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/the-fog-the-landscape-and-the-autistictrans

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The AutSide is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.