Most advice for autistic adults focuses on what to do when things go wrong. This blog takes a different position. The more useful question is not how to cope after the fact — it is how to use what you already know about yourself to build the conditions for regulation before you need them.

Most approaches to supporting autistic adults share an underlying assumption that is rarely made explicit: that the goal is to close the gap between how an autistic person functions and how a non-autistic person would. The research on autistic wellbeing is increasingly clear that this is the wrong goal — and that a different approach produces better outcomes.