Keys to Understanding Autistic Behavior: A path to a more inclusive and empathetic world with neurodivergence

The Emotional Landscape of Autism

One of the most important things to understand about the autistic experience is the intensity with which emotions are felt. As autistic neurodiversity advocate Janae Elisabeth describes it: sensory and emotional experience operate on a different scale: happiness can arrive as elation, sadness as devastation, grief as something that feels like the end of the world. The same intensity that applies to sound, light, touch, taste, and smell applies equally to the emotional world.

Because the connection between emotions and the body is so immediate and so strong, movement becomes a primary tool for processing and self-regulation. Stimming — tapping, rocking, spinning, flapping, bouncing, dancing — is not a behavioural quirk to be eliminated. It is, as Elisabeth puts it, how many autistic people "stay in touch with their inner selves and their intense emotional world." Motion is emotional processing. Any approach that attempts to suppress stimming is working against the very mechanism the nervous system is using to stay regulated. 

Meltdowns and Shut Downs

A meltdown is not a tantrum, and understanding the difference matters enormously. It is an involuntary neurological response to a state of overwhelm — sensory, cognitive, or emotional — that has exceeded the nervous system's capacity to self-regulate. It functions as a release valve, and it cannot simply be stopped through consequences or redirection. What is needed is reduction of load and a calm, non-demanding presence.

When a full release isn't possible, a shutdown may occur instead, a state that can look like daydreaming, blankness, or social withdrawal. As Janae Elisabeth describes it, this is not disinterest or avoidance: it is the body reaching its input limit and going offline to protect itself.

Being autistic and feeling intensely are inseparable. Meltdowns and shutdowns are not signs of dysfunction, they are signs that the environment has asked more than the nervous system can give in that moment. The question worth asking is always: what can we change about the environment, rather than what can we change about the person?

If you need more information or practical advice visit my previous post: Meltdowns, Aggressive and Self-harm Behaviors: Guide to Calm the Crisis

Congruence: Body Language and Facial Expression

Neurotypical communication relies heavily on implicit social cues, but so does autistic communication, often with greater intensity. Many autistic individuals pay close attention to facial expression, tone of voice, and body language precisely because they are working harder to make sense of the social environment around them. This means that incongruence, when what we say doesn't match how we look or sound when we say it, can be deeply disorienting.

I was reminded of this during a session supporting a child with toilet training. The first thing I noticed was the parent's face in the moments when the child didn't make it to the bathroom in time: a flash of frustration, a shift in tone, even without any explicit scolding. The next day, when the child felt the urge during our session, I watched him freeze. His expression was one of confusion and fear. In a very quiet, uncertain voice he said: "oh, oh..." and I understood that going to the bathroom had become associated for him with shame and anxiety, not through anything that was said, but through everything that had been felt.

 

I spoke with the parents about being mindful of their expressions and tone during moments of learning, especially in the moments when the child was still trying to make sense of what was being asked of him. Shortly after that conversation, he began going to the bathroom independently at home, and eventually started asking permission to use it at school. The shift wasn't in him. It was in the emotional texture of the environment around him. 

Behaviour Is Communication

For those of us trained in neurotypical-centred frameworks, there is a strong pull toward treating the absence of spoken language as a deficit to be fixed. This is a mistake that costs us enormously in understanding. Behaviour is not the problem, it is the message. And when we focus only on eliminating the behaviour, we stop listening to what is being communicated.

 

As Janae Elisabeth reminds us, words carry significant weight for many autistic people: they are emotional, mental, and physical work. Many autistic individuals conserve that energy deliberately, communicating instead through movement, action, and the organization of their environment.

I worked with a child whose way of signalling that he needed a break was to tidy up the entire classroom. His teachers, not understanding this, interpreted it as conscientiousness and carried on with the lesson which consistently resulted in a meltdown. When I shared my reading of the situation, that he was communicating through movement, telling them he needed to go outside or rest, something shifted. The meltdowns decreased significantly, and his relationship with his teachers became noticeably warmer and more trusting. He had been speaking all along. They simply hadn't had the framework to hear him.

For some neurodivergent individuals, literal language is also important. Metaphors, implied meanings, and indirect communication can create genuine confusion. Saying what you mean, and meaning what you say, is not bluntness. It is clarity, and it is a form of respect.

For a deeper understanding of this topic, I recommend Mona Delahooke’s book “Beyond Behaviours” and “Uniquely Human” by Barry Prizant.

Atypical Social Engagement and the Double Empathy Problem

One of the most persistent myths surrounding autism is the idea that autistic people lack a "theory of mind", the ability to infer the mental states of others —and that this deficit explains the social difficulties they experience. This framing deserves to be examined carefully.

When two people build a relationship, they share information to create mutual understanding — a process researchers call intersubjectivity. What the research of Damian Milton and others has shown is that when an autistic person and a neurotypical person interact, what occurs is not a failure of empathy on one side, but a failure of coordination on both sides. Milton calls this the Double Empathy Problem: the difficulty is relational and mutual, not located in any one person.

What sustains the "theory of mind deficit" myth is a power imbalance. We live in a neurotypical-centric world, and in that world, neurotypical social norms are treated as the universal standard against which everyone else is measured. When autistic people struggle to navigate those norms, the difficulty is attributed to a deficit in them — while the equal and opposite difficulty neurotypical people have in understanding autistic communication, culture, and perspective goes largely unexamined. The empathy problem, in other words, runs in both directions. Acknowledging that is not just more accurate, it is more honest. 

Autistic Identity

“If I didn’t have Asperger’s, I would be stuck in the social game that everyone else seems to be so infatuated with. I see the world in a different way, with a different perspective.” (Greta Thunberg)

Autistic identity is not defined by what is absent. As Janae Elisabeth describes, many autistic people measure success by internal metrics — autonomy, justice, genuine connection, and truth — rather than by external recognition, competition, or material achievement. They tend to value congruence deeply, are often acutely sensitive to inauthenticity, and will frequently prioritize honesty even at social cost. These are not deficits. They are values.

As a professional, what I believe is this: we need to abandon entirely the framework of "autism correction", the implicit premise that autistic people are broken neurotypicals who need to be made more acceptable. Every person deserves to be heard, supported, and respected on their own terms. Our role is not to normalize, but to accompany, to help autistic individuals navigate a world that was not designed for them, while advocating for that world to change.

And to any autistic person reading this: as autistic clinical psychologist Dr. Erin Bullus puts it, there is value in choosing to be authentically yourself, making space for the ways your body naturally moves and regulates, spending time in the environments that genuinely restore you, and building a life around what actually fulfills you, rather than around what makes you easier for others to manage. You are not a problem to be solved. You are a person with a perspective the rest of us need.

References

Check out Janae Elisabeth's blog (autistic researcher and neurodiversity advocate) Lost in Translation: The Social Language Theory of Neurodivergence

Milton, D. (2012) On the Ontological Status of Autism: the “Double Empathy Problem”. University of Birmingham.

Heasman & Gillespie (2019) Neurodivergent intersubjectivity: Distinctive features of how autistic people create shared understanding. Autism.