Glimmers: Neurodiversity Psycho-Education, Hermanus (2026)

03/10/2026

1 in 31 isn’t rare.

If it’s not your child, it’s someone you know.

There’s no reason to be uneducated about autism anymore.

Learn. Listen. Understand.

Behind every statistic is a child, a family, and a life that deserves to be understood and not judged. 🤍

30/09/2026

There are so many ways to say, “You matter to me.” 💟

Love might arrive as a heartfelt message, a hug or a thoughtful gift. It might also arrive as a meme, a playlist, an enthusiastic explanation about a favourite interest—or the quiet comfort of sharing a space.

“Neurodivergent love languages” is a community-created way of recognising expressions of care that can be overlooked or misunderstood.

They might include:

🌿 Info dumping: “Let me share something that brings me joy.”
🌿 Parallel play: “I love being near you while we each do our own thing.”
🌿 Support swapping: “Let’s help each other with the things we find difficult.”
🌿 Penguin pebbling: “I found this little thing and thought of you.”
🌿 Deep pressure: “A firm hug feels comforting to me”—when wanted and comfortable.
🌿 Body doubling: “I’ll keep you company while you get this done.”
🌿 Sensory-safe affection: “Your comfort matters when we choose how to be close.”
🌿 Safe communication: “You can ask for clarity and take time to process.”
🌿 Sharing favourites: “This song, playlist or treasured thing is something I want to share with you.”
🌿 Shared curiosity: “Let’s research and discover something together.”
🌿 Stimming together: “We can share joyful movement and comforting rhythms.”
🌿 Vocal connection: “These familiar sounds and playful phrases are part of how we connect.”

Sometimes care is bringing someone water, preparing a meal or remembering that they need quiet after a busy day.

These aren’t fixed categories or a checklist. Every neurodivergent person is different, and many of these expressions overlap with the familiar love languages. They can belong in friendships, families and romantic relationships alike.

A different way of showing love is no less true or valid. Understanding each other means noticing the care being offered while also talking about what helps each of us feel loved.

❤️ What does “I care about you” look like in your world?

Infographic: Glimmers: Neurodiversity Psycho-Education

29/09/2026

🌿 A resource for parents of neurodivergent children

Gina from Tribe around the table is offering this training.

Gina also has a support group for parents of neurodivergent children—a space to connect with other parents who understand the journey. 💛♾️

Gina will be running their “Beyond the Label” training, which will be their last for the year. Should you have any patients/ parents/ grandparents/ teachers/ principals/ Nannie’s/ au pairs that could benefit please share far and wide. Let’s help shift the understanding in order to support our children in the best possible way.

See Gina's post & information 👇🏻
____________________________

Join us for our last training session for the year!

YOU DO NOT WANT TO MISS THIS OPPORTUNITY!

We have had incredible feedback from our last workshop and we look forward to building knowledge together to enhance our understanding thereby supporting our children in the best possible way.

We are so excited to meet you and share our knowledge and experiences together.

📍Sign up form link in 1st Comment 💛

25/09/2026

Lost in Translation: Peopling & Relationships ♾️

An autistic adult can be articulate, capable, and deeply caring—and still find relationships exhausting.

From the outside, a conversation may look effortless. Inside, that person may be filtering background noise, following several voices, working out when to speak, reading expressions, choosing words carefully, and trying to notice whether anyone has misunderstood them.

For a late-diagnosed autistic adult, this effort may have gone unseen for decades. They may have been called too sensitive, too intense, blunt, distant, or difficult long before they had language for their experience. A diagnosis can bring relief and a hope that loved ones will begin to see them more clearly. It can hurt when the same old judgments continue.

A need for quiet may be read as rejection. A direct question may be heard as an argument. A request for a clear plan may be called controlling. Going silent when overwhelmed may be mistaken for a lack of care.

One misunderstanding can be talked through. Years of being misunderstood can make the next conversation feel risky.

That is one way social anxiety can develop. An autistic adult may rehearse what to say before seeing a friend, check a message repeatedly before sending it, or replay an interaction for hours afterwards. They may watch closely for signs of irritation and apologise before anyone has said they are upset. The mind is trying to prevent another painful misunderstanding.

Many also learn to mask: to manage their facial expression and tone, force uncomfortable eye contact, suppress stims, hide sensory distress, or stay at a gathering long after their energy is gone. Masking can help someone get through a situation where being visibly different feels unsafe. It also has an emotional cost. A person can be surrounded by people and still wonder whether they would be accepted if they stopped working so hard to appear at ease.

Then there is social exhaustion. Being with people can require sustained attention, sensory filtering, emotional regulation, and quick decisions, even when the company is enjoyable. When the event ends, the energy that held everything together may disappear.

This is the social “hangover” many autistic adults describe. Noise may feel sharper. Words may be harder to find. A simple question may feel overwhelming. Someone may be foggy, tearful, irritable, or unable to answer messages for a while. They may need a quiet evening or several days with fewer demands, depending on what the interaction required of them.

The enjoyment was real. The affection was real. The need to recover is real too.

Repeated invalidation can make it harder to ask for that recovery time. Being told that sensory distress is an overreaction, or that a need for clarity is unreasonable, can lead someone to doubt whether their needs deserve to be heard. Gaslighting is more than a disagreement or misunderstanding: it is a pattern of denying or distorting events that causes a person to question their own perception. Both can deepen anxiety about speaking up.

So an autistic adult may explain and explain, hoping that the right words will finally bring understanding. They may soften every request, apologise for needing space, and put their own comfort aside to keep a friendship or partnership intact. Underneath that effort is a desire many people share: to be loved and accepted by the people who matter to them.

Understanding grows when the effort moves in both directions. A friend or partner can ask what a quiet moment means before assuming rejection. They can say what they need directly, agree on when to return to a difficult conversation, or help choose a less overwhelming place to meet. The autistic person can also listen, clarify their intentions, and repair hurt when it happens.

Some autistic adults find particular ease in neurodivergent friendships, where directness, silence, and time apart may need less explanation. Across any neurotype, the most valuable things are curiosity, respect, and a willingness to believe each other about what an experience feels like.

A smaller social circle may look like withdrawal to someone watching from the outside. It may be a thoughtful choice to spend less time recovering from painful interactions and more time with people, places, and glimmers that restore energy.

Autistic adults deserve relationships where their needs can be spoken aloud, misunderstandings can be repaired, and being loved does not depend on keeping the mask in place.

Glimmers: Neurodiversity Psycho-Education
Neuro-affirming conversations about identity, connection, and belonging.

17/09/2026

🌙 NOCTURNALS: Normalizing sleep differences and the “God hour”

Not everyone’s mind follows the rhythm society considers “normal.”

Some of us come alive after midnight. When the messages stop, the household settles and the demands of the day finally fall silent, our minds become clearer. Words arrive. Ideas connect. Art takes shape.

Creatives sometimes call this quiet stretch of night the “God hour”—a sacred space in which the world is asleep, but imagination is wide awake.

Historian A. Roger Ekirch found many references to “first sleep” and “second sleep” in preindustrial records. Some people slept for several hours, woke for a quiet interval around midnight, and then returned to sleep until morning. They might pray, reflect, talk, tend the fire or complete small tasks.

This does not prove that everyone once slept this way—or that segmented sleep is the only “natural” pattern. It does remind us that human sleep has always been more varied than the idea that everyone must sleep continuously from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.

For many autistic and ADHD people, nighttime may also be the first time their nervous system experiences:

✨ fewer sensory demands
✨ no social expectations
✨ freedom from interruption
✨ control over time and attention
✨ space for deep focus and creativity
✨ the safety to think without being observed

Sometimes it is not simply that we cannot sleep.

Sometimes nighttime is the only part of the day that feels entirely our own.

This does not mean we should romanticize chronic sleep deprivation. Most adults need approximately seven to nine hours of sleep across 24 hours, although individual needs and sleep timing vary. A different rhythm is not necessarily unhealthy—but persistent exhaustion, distress or difficulty functioning deserves compassionate support.

Perhaps the question is not always:

“Why can’t you sleep like everyone else?”

Perhaps it is:

“What happens at night that finally allows you to feel calm, free and fully yourself?”

The God hour may be creative sanctuary. It may reflect a different chronotype or segmented sleep rhythm. And sometimes it is a message from a nervous system that has been waiting all day for silence.

♾️ Glimmers: Neurodiversity Psycho-Education

Sources:

A. Roger Ekirch, At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past
Ekirch, “Segmented Sleep in Preindustrial Societies,” Sleep
American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society adult sleep-duration consensus statement

16/09/2026

♾️ The myth of “high-functioning” autism

“You communicate so well.”
“You’re so independent.”
“You’re great with people.”
“You’re successful.”
“You don’t look autistic.”
“You seem to cope with everything.”

For many autistic people, these comments describe what others can see—not what it costs to maintain that appearance.

Behind “doing well” there may be rehearsing conversations, analysing every interaction afterwards, masking and mirroring, suppressing stims, hiding sensory overwhelm, people-pleasing, perfectionism and pushing through exhaustion.

👉🏻Someone can be articulate and struggle to communicate their needs.
👉🏻Independent and need support.
👉🏻Successful and experience significant executive functioning difficulties.
👉🏻Sociable and need hours or days to recover.
👉🏻Calm on the outside and completely overwhelmed underneath.

This is one of the problems with labels such as “high functioning.” They can describe how manageable an autistic person appears to other people, while telling us very little about their internal experience, support needs or the amount of energy required to keep functioning.

And support needs aren't static. They can change with environment, sensory demands, stress, relationships, illness, transitions and burnout.

For those of us diagnosed later in life, there can also be a painful realisation:

I wasn't necessarily coping as well as everyone thought.
I had simply become very good at making my struggle invisible.

So perhaps we need a different question.

Instead of “How well do they function?”

Ask:

🌿 “What does this person need to live well, safely and authentically?”

Because appearing capable doesn't cancel out disability.
Needing support doesn't cancel out capability.

Both can be true. ♾️

Different, not less.

— Glimmers, Spins & Stims
Autistic-led | Neuro-affirming

16/09/2026

♾️ What high-masking autism may look like…

Sometimes autism doesn’t look the way people expect it to.

It can look like being articulate, capable, independent, successful, caring and deeply empathetic. It can look like coping well, getting things done and being the person everyone else relies on.

But what others see on the outside may tell only part of the story.

Behind the mask there may be rehearsed conversations, constant self-monitoring, suppressed stimming, hidden sensory overwhelm, people-pleasing, executive functioning struggles and an enormous amount of effort simply to keep up.

You may hold everything together in public… and fall apart when you finally reach somewhere safe.

You may be the person advocating fiercely for everyone else, while finding it incredibly difficult to recognise or communicate your own needs.

And sometimes you become so good at adapting, mirroring and meeting expectations that you begin to wonder:

Who am I underneath all of this?

High masking does not mean “less autistic.” And appearing capable does not mean someone doesn't need support.

For many late-diagnosed autistic adults, discovering their autism is the beginning of gently separating who they really are from who they learned they needed to be.

Unmasking isn't about suddenly dropping every coping strategy. Some masks helped us belong, work, survive and stay safe.

It can be a gradual journey towards recognising our needs, honouring our limits, allowing ourselves to stim, resting without guilt, setting boundaries and discovering what feels genuinely authentic.

🌿 You don't have to prove how much you're struggling before you're worthy of support.

And you don't have to become less autistic to live a meaningful life.

You are allowed to be fully, authentically you. ♾️

Glimmers: Neurodiversity Psycho-Education
Autistic-led | Neuro-affirming

16/09/2026

🌿♾️ TO THE LATE-DIAGNOSED AuDHD ADULT ♾️🌿

Finding out you are autistic and ADHD later in life can feel like finally discovering the missing language for your own existence.

For years, you may have known you were different.

Too sensitive. Too intense. Too distracted. Too much. Too quiet.

You learned to watch, adapt, push through and mask. You became so good at appearing okay that perhaps even you didn't realise how much it was costing you.

Then comes the diagnosis.

And the question becomes:

Who am I underneath everything I learned to be?

Late diagnosis can become an identity journey.

There may be grief for the child who needed understanding, the teenager who desperately wanted to belong, and the adult who kept pushing until they burnt out.

But there can also be something beautiful:

The opportunity to meet yourself again.

To understand your needs instead of judging them.

To rest without guilt.
To stim without shame.
To set boundaries.
To follow your passions.
To find your glimmers.
To embrace your spins.
To unmask where it feels safe.

And slowly, to stop asking:

“How can I be more normal?”

and begin asking:

“What does it mean to live authentically as me?”

You don't need to become less autistic.

You don't need to make yourself smaller for others.

You don't need to become someone new.

You are learning to meet the person who has been there all along—with curiosity, compassion and acceptance.

Perhaps late diagnosis isn't about finding a new identity.

Perhaps it's about finally coming home to yourself. 🌿♾️

Glimmers: Neurodiversity Psycho-Education

02/09/2026

🌿 A NOTE ON AUTISTIC FLAT AFFECT, SOCIAL DIFFERENCES AND EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION 🌿

Flat affect is a clinical term describing markedly reduced outward emotional expression. A person’s face may remain neutral, their voice may sound even or monotone, and their gestures may be limited—even while they are experiencing strong emotions internally.

Flat affect is not the same as having no feelings.

It is also not simply another name for an autistic resting face, a quiet personality, delayed processing or a moment of stillness.

Many autistic people do not have flat affect at all. Some are highly expressive and animated. Others communicate emotion more subtly, show it at a different time or express it in ways that do not match neurotypical expectations.

An autistic person may:

✨ feel excited while sounding calm
🌊 feel deeply while appearing neutral
⏳ need more time to understand, process and communicate a feeling
🧠 become quiet or still when emotions or sensory input become overwhelming
💛 express care through actions, practical help, shared interests or simply being present
🎭 consciously adjust their face, gestures or tone to meet social expectations

A subtle or delayed response is still a response.

Autism involves differences in social communication—but “different” does not mean absent, defective or uncaring.

Autistic social communication may include:

♾️ using fewer or different facial expressions and gestures
♾️ communicating more directly or literally
♾️ finding small talk less natural or meaningful
♾️ sharing information or special interests as a way of connecting
♾️ showing empathy through problem-solving or practical support
♾️ needing extra processing time before responding
♾️ finding eye contact uncomfortable, distracting or overwhelming
♾️ using tone, pitch, rhythm or volume differently

These are differences in communication style—not evidence of poor character or a lack of empathy.

Non-autistic people often rely heavily on facial expression, eye contact, tone of voice and rapid back-and-forth responses to interpret another person’s intentions. When an autistic person communicates differently, those signals may be overlooked or misunderstood.

This mismatch can work in both directions. Autistic people may struggle to interpret non-autistic social expectations, while non-autistic people may struggle to recognise autistic expressions of emotion, connection and care.

This is sometimes described as the “double empathy problem”: misunderstanding can arise between people with different ways of experiencing and communicating—not because empathy is missing from one person.

When conventional emotional expressiveness is treated as the only valid evidence of care, autistic people are easily misread:

💬 “You don’t care.”

💬 “You aren’t happy for me.”

💬 “You’re unfriendly.”

💬 “You’re being rude.”

💬 “You’re not taking this seriously.”

These are interpretations—not necessarily accurate descriptions of someone’s internal experience.

Autistic emotional expression is diverse, real and valid, even when it looks different. ♾️

If you are unsure what an autistic person is feeling:

🌱 Pause
🌱 Ask respectfully
🌱 Allow processing time
🌱 Listen to their words
🌱 Notice their individual ways of showing care
🌱 Believe their answer

Please don’t judge the depth of someone’s feelings by their face, eye contact, voice or immediate response alone 💛

🦋 Be kind. Don't mock autistic people or make fun of their social differences.

21/08/2026

⚠️ Sensitive topic: Su***de risk, self-harm and gender dysphoria

When a young person is self-harming, talking about death, withdrawing, or saying that others would be “better off without them,” we cannot avoid the conversation because it feels frightening.

Ask directly. Stay calm. Listen without judgement. Take every answer seriously. 💛

🏳️‍⚧️ Gender dysphoria and su***de risk

Being transgender, non-binary or gender-diverse is not a mental disorder and does not, by itself, cause suicidal thoughts.

Gender dysphoria describes clinically significant distress that may occur when a person’s experienced gender does not align with their assigned gender or physical s*x characteristics. Not every gender-diverse person experiences gender dysphoria.

For some young people, su***de risk may increase when gender-related distress is combined with:

* Unwanted puberty or body changes.
* Severe body-related dysphoria.
* Repeated misgendering or deadnaming.
* Family or community rejection.
* Bullying, harassment or discrimination.
* Fear of being outed or losing important relationships.
* Barriers to gender-affirming psychological or medical support.
* Co-occurring anxiety, depression, trauma, autistic burnout or social isolation.

Do not assume that gender dysphoria is the only reason for self-harm or suicidal thoughts—but do not dismiss it when the young person says it is contributing to their distress.

A comprehensive assessment should explore gender dysphoria alongside depression, anxiety, trauma, bullying, family stress, medication effects, neurodivergent overwhelm and other possible risk factors.

🌿 What affirming support looks like

* Use the young person’s chosen name and pronouns.
* Believe their description of their own distress.
* Allow safe exploration without forcing a fixed identity or outcome.
* Protect their privacy and involve them in decisions about disclosure.
* Advocate against bullying, misgendering and discrimination.
* Seek a clinician experienced in both su***de-risk assessment and gender-affirming care.
* Never use conversion practices or attempt to force the young person to identify with their assigned gender.

Family acceptance does not replace professional treatment, but it can be powerfully protective. Rejection, discrimination and victimisation are associated with poorer mental-health outcomes, while accepting a young person’s affirmed gender and expression can reduce risks related to depression, anxiety and suicidal behaviour.

🧠 For neurodivergent young people

* Use clear, literal language.
* Allow extra processing time.
* Accept spoken, written, text or AAC responses.
* Do not require eye contact or a particular emotional expression.
* Do not assume a flat expression, shutdown or difficulty identifying feelings means there is no risk.
* Remember that self-harm and suicidal intent are not necessarily the same—but both require assessment.

🚨 If there are suicidal thoughts right now, an attempt has occurred, or there is immediate danger:

* Stay with the young person. Do not leave them alone.
* Secure dangerous objects, medicines and weapons if it is safe to do so.
* Call emergency services or go to the nearest hospital emergency department.
* Tell emergency staff exactly what the young person said or did.
* Clearly communicate whether gender dysphoria, rejection, bullying or fear of being outed is contributing to the crisis.

If there have been recent suicidal thoughts or a previous attempt, even without current intent, arrange a same-day su***de-safety assessment with an appropriately qualified clinician.

South African crisis support:

📞 SADAG 24-hour Su***de Crisis Helpline: 0800 567 567
📞 Cipla Mental Health Helpline: 0800 456 789
📱 SMS: 31393
📞 Childline: 116
🚑 Immediate danger: 112 from a cellphone or 10177 for an ambulance

The aim is not to interrogate, punish, debate their identity or force a promise. The aim is to communicate:

“You are not alone. I believe you. Your identity is not the problem. I am staying with you, and we are getting help.”

If you need more information, see this blog post:
https://www.eunoiahomeschool.com/post/gender-diversity-info-for-parents

Resources:

NIMH ASQ Toolkit: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/asq
American Psychiatric Association — Gender Dysphoria: https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/gender-dysphoria/what-is-gender-dysphoria
SADAG: https://www.sadag.org/

***dePrevention

Glimmers: Neurodiversity Psycho-Education

03/10/2026

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25/09/2026

17/09/2026

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