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What a fascinating read. Now I understand the name of your newsletter better. Thank you thank you for writing about this! And you know, I also thank you for making me take another look at my "us vs them" perception. It's quite judgy, and you've made very valid points on why we should stop.

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Hi, Ang! Autistic folks already have a difficult enough time dealing with groups and tribes, and we're already prone to feeling alienated and isolated, so reinforcing that tendency by dividing ourselves into "neurodiverse" vs "neurotypical" only enhances our feelings of not belonging. In addition to the deeply unscientific nature of the terms.

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Thank you Ogi, this is very useful and very good information. I discovered I was autistic rather late in life and had accrued all the trauma that goes with not understanding that or being understood earlier. I'm 50 now. I'm interested in the "mind states" you state that we can access that are beyond the normal. After many years of struggling I started doing psychic training (I'm on a team run by Julia Mossbridge now) and realized that though I'd previously always thought I couldn't read people at all, I actually can read them very very well but hadn't been able to control or understand the input, and so I was chronically swamped. Things are much better for me now I have some tools to handle this, and some discipline.

I'm also an artist (artist/autist, ha!) and my experience with inspiration is interesting too. Definitely a transcendent state. I wonder if you would separate that from autistic experiences, or if you would lump them together as part of the same phenomenon?

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My parents are autistic, and they didn't find out until their 70s. Women are especially likely to have not been diagnosed when they were younger. So many of us blamed ourselves for a lifetime of perceived personal failings, when knowing it was autism would have lifted that self-blame and trauma and at least provided an explanation.

I, too, find tremendous solace in art. I think autists have a special and often more intense relationship with art compared to non-autistic folks.

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