Discovering you're Autistic can be a difficult time, for a lot of people. It is a weighty realisation, that takes some coming to terms with however it happens. It does not help when people are told that they should understand themselves in terms of a disorder - that the misunderstandings, rejections and overwhelm they have probably faced throughout their lives are all the result of something wrong with them.
Aside from the soul-crushing negativity of these messages, they are also just not very helpful. They don't give a person all that much to work with: their differences ('deficits') aren't going away. Only unusually good assessment services will provide freshly-identified Autistic people with guidance on their rights in the workplace, education or public services, for example - or what kinds of adjustments can be helpful in these contexts. The very best services are truly neuro-affirming: helping people to understand themselves in positive terms, recognising the strengths and joys of Autistic experience, while providing supportive opportunities to connect with and learn from Autistic peers - including ones who are already at ease with their Autistic identities.
Discovering You're Autistic packs as much of that as we could into a short educational animation - recognising the difficulties and challenges of being Autistic, and starting the journey of understanding what that means, while pointing the way to where and how people can learn more, and find connection.
Ever since Autistic people started purposefully coming together in the early 1990s, the benefits of connecting with like-minded people have been widely reported (e.g. Sinclair, 2022 adapted from a 2005 talk). This is hardly surprising. As Kurt Vonnegut (1998) wrote:
Many people need desperately to receive this message: ‘I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.’
Autistic people are far more likely to be socially isolated, which traditional accounts of autism have put down to deficits in 'social communication' and 'social imagination'. As Watts et al (2024) point out:
This overlooks the possibility many disadvantages may be ascribed to societal factors like stigma (Grinker, 2020; Turnock et al., 2022), which create barriers to better QoL [quality of life].
Studies indicate community contact may benefit QoL for Autistic people. Contact with other Autistic people provides access to narratives challenging deficit-based perceptions of Autistic personhood facilitating positive Autistic social identities (Kapp et al., 2013). Increased identification with a positive Autistic social identity has been associated with better mental health and may mediate the impact of stigma on well-being (R. Cooper et al., 2021).
Placing Autistic differences in a social context gives people ways of working against stigma, and working around barriers like inaccessible workplaces and institutions. Recognising the positive aspects of being Autistic encourages people to notice and pursue the things that bring them joy - and Autistic joy is often intense - and to make the most of their attention tunnels (Murray, Lesser and Lawson, 2005). None of this minimises the very real difficulties people may face, as opponents of the neurodiversity movement have sometimes claimed (Murray, 2018) - rather, it is a matter of making the most of what we have. These lessons are valuable across the whole of the Autistic spectrum (Rosa, 2019).
Spending time with other Autistic people can help us to find strategies for navigating life, and feel the comfort of knowing we are not alone in our experiences (Botha, Dibb and Frost, 2022). It can also allow for lower-stress socialising than we are used to, with fewer misunderstandings (Crompton et al, 2020). As David Gray-Hammond (2025) puts it in his reflections on an Autistic Mental Health Conference he helped organise:
The most striking theme was the constant pulse of community affirmation. Messages were punctuated with small digital gestures that said, “I see you, I hear you, you’re not alone.” Participants met each other’s stories of harm with compassion and validation, creating an atmosphere where vulnerability was not met with silence, but with solidarity.
With this animation and 'Lightbulb Moments', we hope to give people a glimpse into the power of a positive Autistic identity, and an invitation to Autistic community. Too much of what people hear about autism is still unhelpful, both psychologically and practically, but the tide has turned on these narratives. Autistic people have been speaking up about our experiences for some decades now, and more and more people are finding that it pays to listen.
References
© 2021-2025 Thriving Autistic CLG is a non-profit social enterprise dedicated to advancing the human rights of Autistic and otherwise Neurodivergent people | The Neurodivergent Practitioner Network is a trading name of Thriving Autistic | Registered in Ireland 695770 | Privacy Policy
