Most autistic people spend their lives on the receiving end of one question; what is wrong with this person? It puts the problem inside a body-mind and produces a diagnosis, a correction, a plan to modify someone. Schools, CAMHS, assessment services, wards and benefits assessors are almost all built to ask it, usually without realising they are asking anything at all.

The question that almost never gets asked is the second one; what is wrong with the world around them? To ask it properly, we need a different picture of what a person is. If a person is a sealed box (a skin with a brain inside it), the problem can only ever be inside the box. Existential diversity is our attempt to draw a picture in which the person was never a sealed box in the first place.

Existential diversity is the diversity of how lives connect with and impact the reality and the world around them, unconfined by the physical boundaries of the body-mind or by the limits of a mortal existence.

In this episode

* Why the second question is so seldom asked, and how it builds on the ecosystemic model of distress developed with Tanya Adkin and Helen; distress as information about an environment, not a symptom of a person

* The four ways we reach past our skin; materially, functionally, causally and semiotically

* Why your existence begins before you arrive and carries on long after you have gone, and why that is a source of real hope

* Four things existential diversity does for autistic people; it moves identity out of the diagnostic box, explains why hostile environments wound us so deeply, widens the welcome to madness and psychosis, and makes joy visible

* Community as an ecology rather than a container; belonging isn’t granted, it’s built

A thread to take away

Pick one thing outside your body that is part of how you think, feel safe or know who you are; an object, a place, a person, a phrase someone once wrote. Notice it. That is a part of you.

And if you are a practitioner, here is the smallest useful version of all this: when an autistic person makes a connection you don’t understand, ask what route they took to get there. Treat the route as meaningful rather than recording it as missing.

You are not contained. You are multiple, and you are connected.

Pre-order After Normal

After Normal: Autistic Essays on a Broken Society and the Ecosystems We Grow Instead is the fifth anniversary edition of The New Normal, revised and expanded with eight new chapters. It brings together autism and neurodivergence, philosophy, neurodiversity studies, mad studies and ecological thinking, and many of the threads in this episode run right through it. Publishing 7 April 2027 in paperback and ebook.

Pre-order After Normal here

Find out more

* The Wider Existence; where Helen and I write in more depth on existential diversity, symphrenia and the connected body-mind, with a premium podcast for paid subscribers

* NeuroHub Connect; our online community and part of the ecology described in this episode, with regular connect sessions, support groups and more. Come and join us

* NeuroHub Horizons; our Horizons Project, run in partnership with Autistic Realms

* Re-Storying Autism; the framework and book Helen and I co-wrote for Autistic people, carers and supporting practitioners

* NeuroHub Zine; a free-to-access library of neurodivergent knowledge and experience, open to community submissions

* Neurodivergent News; NeuroHub’s own news publication

* NeuroHub Community; the home of our training, consultancy and community work

Stay weird, and I’ll see you next time.

David Gray-Hammond

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What if you could see burnout coming?

Many Autistic people know burnout well. It’s the exhaustion that builds slowly, the skills that get harder to reach, and the long recovery afterwards. What often makes it so hard is that it creeps up on us. By the time we notice, we’re already deep in it.

Philia Sense are working on that. They’re developing technology designed to spot the early signs of Autistic burnout, so people have a chance to adjust, rest and get support before they hit crisis point.

Join us for the live premiere

NeuroHub Community is proud to premiere our exclusive episodes with Philia Sense, live and online. You’ll be among the first to watch, and you’ll be in the room with the rest of the community as we watch together.

In these episodes, we explore:

* What Autistic burnout is, and why it’s so often missed or misunderstood

* How Philia Sense’s technology works, and the thinking behind it

* Why Autistic people need to be involved in designing tools meant for us

* What early warning could mean for self-understanding, self-advocacy and everyday life

* The questions we should all be asking about technology, data and Autistic wellbeing

Who is this for?

* Autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people

* Families, partners and supporters

* Practitioners, clinicians, educators and employers

* Researchers, technologists and anyone curious about neuro-affirming innovation

You don’t need any prior knowledge. Come as you are.

Accessibility

This is an online event, so you can join from wherever you’re most comfortable. You’re welcome to keep your camera off, use the chat instead of speaking, stim, move around, eat, or step away whenever you need to. [Add captions / recording availability here if applicable.]

Event details

* Date: [Day, date]

* Time: [Start–end time, UK time]

* Where: Online via [platform]. The joining link will be sent to your email after you register

* Cost: FREE

About NeuroHub Community

NeuroHub Community is an Autistic-led neurodiversity consultancy, training and community organisation. We create spaces, resources and conversations grounded in Autistic identity, neurodivergent wisdom and mutual support. Find out more at neurohubcommunity.org.

About Philia Sense

[Add a 1–2 sentence description from Philia Sense, in their own words.]

Reserve your free place today. It costs nothing to take part, and it helps us know you’re coming.

https://app.philiasense.com

Click Here To Download Phoenix AI NeuroAffirming AI Companion

NeuroHub Community Journal | Newsletter | Announcements is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit news.neurohubcommunity.org/subscribe

In this episode, David walks through the full findings of NeuroHub’s Autistic Language Preference Survey 2025/26, the largest piece of community-driven research NeuroHub has run on this question to date. Fifty-six percent of respondents prefer an identity-based term such as “Autistic person”; among Autistic respondents themselves, that rises to seventy-one percent. But the real story isn’t the headline number, it’s what predicts it, and it isn’t diagnosis, age or gender. It’s whether someone is Autistic themselves, and whether they’re connected to Autistic community spaces.

The episode also covers the survey’s most uncomfortable finding: nearly forty-five percent of respondents describe Hans Asperger, the clinician whose name still labels a diagnosis and an identity for many people, in terms of Nazi collaboration, eugenics or complicity in the killing of disabled children. David explains what the data shows about who holds that understanding, and why it’s the single strongest predictor of rejecting his name.

Along the way: why a diagnosis doesn’t predict the words people keep using in later life; why professionals and Autistic people so often talk past each other on terminology; and what NeuroHub thinks services, charities and training providers should actually do differently as a result.

Content note: this episode includes factual discussion of the Aktion T4 programme and the Nazi-era killing of disabled children (around minute 32), handled briefly and without graphic detail.

The full written report, with every figure, statistical test and methodological caveat referenced in this episode, plus the anonymised dataset, will soon be available from NeuroHub Community.

NeuroHub Community Journal | Newsletter | Announcements is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit news.neurohubcommunity.org/subscribe

https://neurohubcommunity.org/2026/06/11/welcome-to-neurohub-community/

Topics: Ecosystemic Model, autistic identity, autistic burnout, neurodivergent wellbeing, peer support, neurokin, monotropism, rhizome, mycelial community, systems and power, NeuroHub Community.

NeuroHub Community Journal | Newsletter | Announcements is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit news.neurohubcommunity.org/subscribe

What would you add to this list?

neurohubcommunity.org | NeuroHub Online Community Space | Our Toolkits & Frameworks

NeuroHub Community Journal | Newsletter | Announcements is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit news.neurohubcommunity.org/subscribe

→ Engage with NeuroHub Community

NeuroHub Community Ltd is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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It sounds like a simple question. It isn’t.

In this episode of Autistic Identity with NeuroHub, David sits with a puzzle that has followed him for years: whether autism has a distinct “feel” at all, and what it means to try to describe an inner world using a language that was never designed for Autistic experience.

Drawing on ideas around the double empathy problem, linguistic relativity, and the politics of who gets to name reality, this episode explores Autistic identity as something lived, embodied, fluid, and continually authored — rather than a static diagnostic category.

This is a reflective, philosophical invitation into the complexity of Autistic being: the limits of translation, the power of story, and the quiet radicalism of developing language that belongs to us.

A gentle episode for anyone curious about Autistic identity, self-understanding, and what becomes possible when we start telling our own stories.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dghndconsultancy.org/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit news.neurohubcommunity.org/subscribe

For many of us, our earliest understandings of autism came from professionals, reports, and systems that framed Autistic lives through deficit, risk, and correction. Long before we encountered Autistic voices, we were often handed stories about what autism is; and what it supposedly means for a person’s future.

In this episode of Autistic Identity with NeuroHub, David explores autism as story rather than symptom.

We look at how narratives shape identity, how internalised deficit stories quietly turn into self-surveillance and self-contempt, and how re-storying autism can become a gentle, ongoing practice of reclaiming meaning, dignity, and self-trust.

This conversation is for:

• Autistic people exploring their own identity• Families and carers wanting to move beyond “fixing” narratives• Professionals seeking relational, neurodivergence-competent ways of understanding Autistic lives

It’s an invitation to notice the stories we’re living inside — and to ask whether they are helping us breathe.

🔗 Explore Re-Storying Autism (workbook, PDF, Kindle, and on-demand video course):

🌱 Support the Re-Storying Autism Kickstarter campaign, we have until2nd April to raise £5000 but currently have £20!:

🤝 Join the NeuroHub Community (peer support, learning, and Autistic-led spaces):

NeuroHub Community is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dghndconsultancy.org/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit news.neurohubcommunity.org/subscribe

Through diagnostic language.

Through books, posts, memes, and threads.

Through words that try to explain us before we’ve had a chance to explain ourselves.

In this episode, David explores autistic identity as something we don’t simply discover, but slowly write.

An identity shaped by lived experience.

* By sensation.

* By memory.

* By relationship.

* By growth.

This is a reflective, philosophical conversation about moving from borrowed narratives to self-authored meaning; and about giving ourselves permission to change the story as we change.

If you’re early in your autistic journey, this episode offers gentle orientation.

If you’re further along, it offers permission to revise, expand, and soften old conclusions.

Autistic identity isn’t a finished product.

It’s a living text.

And you are already writing.

You don’t have to write your story alone.

You don’t have to get it “right.”

You just have to keep listening inward.

NeuroHub Community is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dghndconsultancy.org/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit news.neurohubcommunity.org/subscribe

Rather than treating “realising you’re Autistic” as the end of a journey, this conversation sits with what happens next; how identity shifts as our environments change, as safety grows or disappears, as burnout, recovery, community, ageing, and connection reshape how we relate to ourselves.

Drawing on lived experience, this episode challenges the idea that change means inauthenticity. Autistic identity isn’t something we possess once and for all; it’s something we live, negotiate, and revisit as we move through the world.

This is an episode about becoming rather than arriving.About coherence rather than consistency.About giving ourselves permission to grow without feeling like we’ve lost who we are.

More Content- https://davidgrayhammond.com

NeuroHub Community-

https://neurohub-community.sintra.site/

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dghndconsultancy.org/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit news.neurohubcommunity.org/subscribe

We explore how Autistic identity emerges through relationship, memory, masking, unmasking, and the stories we’re told about who we are allowed to be. Rather than treating identity as something to “discover” once and for all, this conversation frames it as relational and ecological, shaped by environments, power structures, and the quality of connection available to us over time.

The episode touches on being “authentically Autistic” as another mask rather than a goal to aim for, the joourney to self-acceptance through struggle, and the quiet labour involved in translating ourselves for a world that often refuses to listen. We also explore what happens when Autistic people begin to tell their own stories; not to seek permission, but to reclaim authorship.

This is not a how-to guide or a diagnostic explainer. It’s a reflective, grounded conversation about meaning, belonging, and the ongoing work of becoming yourself in a world that prefers you to be less complex than you really are.

Expect nuance, honesty, and a refusal to reduce Autistic lives to narratives of deficit or triumph. This episode is about that complexity, and the freedom that comes from finally being allowed to keep it.

NeuroHub Community is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dghndconsultancy.org/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit news.neurohubcommunity.org/subscribe

In this first podcast of Autistic Identity With NeuroHub, David Gray-Hammond explores the long history of autism, which has come to shape how Autistic identity is formed in contemporary society.

Future episodes will be a mix of short, informational offerings, alongside episodes that are longer, with deeper discussion.

To find out more about NeuroHub Community Ltd and the work they do to support Autistic people click below:

NeuroHub Community Ltd

To learn more about the presenter, follow this link below:

David Gray-Hammond

NeuroHub Community is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dghndconsultancy.org/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit news.neurohubcommunity.org/subscribe