Neurotypical
The built-in sound engineer
Autistic
Drag faders ↕ to filter
What actually helps?
These aren't fixes for a broken brain — they're accommodations for a different one. They help the autistic nervous system manage an environment built for a neurotypical one.
A quiet garden
Soft sounds. Filtered light. No demands. The nervous system can finally exhale.
📚 Learn more
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"The non-autistic brain has an automatic filter that prioritises some data and relegates the rest to 'background.' The autistic brain has reduced automatic filtering — so far more data reaches conscious awareness, and everything that arrives gets processed at full volume."
"Because the brain doesn't automatically decide what matters, the autistic person must manually decide: ignore the light, focus on the face, answer the question. This manual prioritisation is effortful, slow, and depletes energy rapidly — unlike the automatic, effortless prioritisation of the non-autistic brain."
This is why social situations are exhausting even when nothing "bad" happens. The energy cost isn't in the event — it's in the constant, effortful management of incoming sensory data.
Dragging faders down represents masking — the conscious effort to suppress and tolerate input. It changes how things look on the surface. It does not recharge the nervous system. The body is still receiving every signal at full intensity; the brain is just working harder to bury them.
The autistic nervous system only recovers when two things happen together: the absence of distressing input, and the presence of soothing, regulating ones — soft light, gentle texture, predictability, special interests, or simply quiet. This is why "just push through" doesn't work, and why rest after social events isn't laziness — it's the system finally being allowed to come back online.
The autistic nervous system isn't a broken neurotypical one. It's a different operating system entirely — and it regulates differently.
Most of society is built around the "dog standard" — adaptable, social on command, energised by interaction, flexible with change, high stimulation tolerance. We treat that as the default and call anything else dysregulation.
But many autistic and ADHD nervous systems are more cat-like:
- 🌿 Environment dependent — context shapes everything
- 🐈 Social by capacity, not demand — connection has a cost
- 🤚 Sensitive to stimulation — the volume knob doesn't go down
- 😴 Needs recovery time — alone, quiet, predictable
- 🏠 Needs familiarity — routines and sameness regulate
A cat isn't broken because it doesn't act like a dog. We don't expect it to come when called, fetch a stick, or thrive at a dog park — and we don't think there's something wrong with it for that.
"I want to have the same acceptance and understanding for myself that I have for my cat — who is a cat, and is not misunderstood for it."
Accommodations like headphones, sunglasses, calm spaces, and recovery time aren't preferences or quirks — they're how a different operating system stays online.
Use this tool to build empathy and shift assumptions about masking, accommodations, and burnout in sessions, classrooms, training, or family discussions.
Suggested walk-through:
- 1. Pick a scene relevant to your student, client, or colleague's daily life
- 2. Compare the two panels side by side. Note: the autistic side starts at full overwhelm — there is no "off" button
- 3. Drag faders down on the autistic side. Ask: "Is the bar going up?" The answer surprises most people
- 4. Try the accommodations. Headphones, sunglasses, or exiting to a calm space — these are what genuinely raise nervous system capacity
- 5. Discuss: what does this change about how we accommodate, plan, and respond?
Key teaching points:
- → Masking is effort, not rest. It looks like coping, but the body is still depleting
- → Recovery requires both the absence of distressing input AND the presence of soothing input
- → "Pushing through" is the mechanism behind autistic burnout
- → Accommodations aren't preferences — they're how a different nervous system stays online
These are common patterns, not universal rules. Individual experiences vary. This tool is illustrative and educational; it is not a diagnostic tool and does not replace clinical assessment or professional guidance.