I wish arts application processes would understand the bottom up processing of autism and how discriminative it is that they expect autistic people to answer the questions only a top down processor can do. Deep sigh.
Speaking of the Arts Council specifically, they have two funds 'Develop your creative practise' and 'Project Grants'. The DYCP grant is a little more ND friendly in that it's far less detailed and involved so isn't instantly off-putting as a prospect. I genuinely don't know how anyone succeeds with a Project grant application, even though they offer a support worker for both. They both require that you know what big picture you're aiming at, as opposed to exploring the idea, and the questions you're working through, they want to know things like who is it for and what's the end goal and how will you make money. Deeply abstract questions for a mind that has just gone "there's a thread here I need to unravel". As an autistic person my experience, even in my paid work, is that when I have an idea for something that I know is either artistically interesting, or in the case of a regular job, going to improve efficiency longterm and solve a problem that might not yet be pressing, I can never get anyone onboard until I've basically built the model. Using the work example, I was trying to convince my boss that we needed to move to a digital filing system, in a legacy team that had a way of working they hadn't changed in 20 odd years. The only way to convince them was to work with IT on building a prototype, completely out of the scope of my job, alongside my job, so that I could show them the benefit - and then I got them on board when they only had to do 3% of the thinking. I have to show, I can't really tell. With arts projects it's always been the same, by the time I am able to answer the questions asked I will have had to already have completed the project, but you can't access funds for work you've already done. My communication, processing and learning differences mean that I can't explain a solution, I have to seek it. Which is effectively all art based practices are doing, but the method of applying is created by neurotypicals and non-creatives who tend to see the big picture then focus on the details. I see the details and work through them to the big picture, because of the levels of details I work through, usually my big picture will look nothing like where an NT mind started from if we were working on the same problem. I'd usually land somewhere different - probably more future proofed - but no application has been designed for this way of thinking, yet. What this means is that even if I try and imagine what the big picture is, it's still never going to make sense to an NT who wouldn't be able to connect my starting point to my end point because they would never have started where my big picture lands.
Wow that is really quite something you have articulate there. And the ironic thing is, there are so so many ND people in the arts!!! It makes me wonder how on earth it ended up this way. It all just seems so backwards!
It’s absolutely maddening. We flock here and it’s still largely constructed to trip us up. Creativity and growth mindsets aren’t really compatible but you can’t tell an organisation that, they don’t want to hear it.
I love this article so much! I had a successful business as a developmental writing coach using bottom up processing and I could never explain it to the clients and anything but metaphor. It took a long time to finish books but when we were done, those books were the best books they were ever going to be, and the clients had accepted an integrated their own truths completely, after years of trying other methods.
You bet your bottom dollar they were the best books they were ever going to be. Bottom up processing irons out all the creases, it doesn't cut corners. And that's bound to make that book a most excellent book!!! Happy Autistic Pride Day :-)
Thank you for sharing this. I’m on the waiting list for assessment, but I see myself in every part of what you’ve written. One of my most recent bosses actually named it - ‘bottom-up processing’ - when she saw how I tried to get my head around a strategy. It’s really useful to know how this might be useful, and how it might also sometimes lead me astray.
Thanks Gem, I wish you all the best in your assessment and hope the waiting list isn't too long. It's interesting how you identify that bit about being led astray. That happens to me too. Where the lead on my thoughts has just got too long and I've ended up in the long grass! Sometimes we need other people to pull us out, like a check-in so that we can get untangled from it all.
Wow! This is all new to me and yet, I can totally relate to all of it! Thank you for sharing this wonderful information. I'm seeing myself in a totally different light. I'm not good with labels but just knowing my brain processes differently, that it's not a bad thing, that there are ways to navigate life with a different brain, well, to me, that's worth more than all the money in the world. Thank you. 🙏🏼
Silvana, this is just the beginning, there's so much richness and treasure to be discovered in this journey. I wish you all the best as you continue to discover more and find layers you never even realised were there! Happy Autistic Pride Day!
Thank you for sharing this! It is such an important perspective. I am a therapist who works with a lot of neurodivergent folks and sometimes find it incredibly difficult to help colleagues understand this type of thinking. I will definitely be passing this along!
I'd stumbled upon your article & it comforts me. I'm not autistic but I can relate a lot to what you wrote, I tend to see some 'flaws' in a rule that's dismissed as 'it is what it is' & my interests or curiousities dismissed. So it's comforting to see them encouraged & embraced here.
I also didn't know about bottom-up thinking before this so this is lovely lovely knowledge, I love collecting more info about humans & how differently we function. Thank you for writing this :)
It sounds like you have found yourself a new shiny pebble to add to your collection of 'stuff about human beings and how differently we function'. It is fascinating really isn't it.
Thank you so much. This was so powerful, I found myself in tears during the section about masking your bottom-up processing. One of my partners is genuinely fascinated in this capacity of my autistic brain and has so much time for my excited shares about new research rabbit holes. I can't tell you how healing that has been.
Wow Morgana, how lucky you are to have a partner who gives you this space for you to be you. I feel touched by what you have written here. It is a rare thing, hold it tight xxx
I genuinely am excited to read more about what you'll say for the other pillars--I myself have ADHD and seeing some of the overlap here is so great. Even in my own work with clients, doing a lot of shame-untangling is the focal point before we reach better insight and meaningful change.
You know what Kirk, I was only thinking this morning as I came out of the bathroom, what is helpful for ADHDers is helpful for Autistics, and what is helpful for Autistics is helpful for ADHDers. I don't personally identify as ADHD but having read so many books on it and researched it and living with three ADHD boys (including husband), I have found so so much helpful in it myself as an autistic person. The overlap is huge.
This is a great post. I’ve also been listening to the Autistic Culture podcast. Learning about bottom-up processing was a bit of a revelation. I’m wondering whether it is a contributor in decision paralysis (I may have made up this term!). I often find the more information I gather, the harder it becomes to make a decision. But I need to compile all the data first. It can be frustrating and, at worst, quite distressing. Just wondering if this comes up in the counselling room too.
Hi there, so sorry it's taken a while to respond. I didn't even realise there were any comments on my article until today!! Oh my gosh, this so comes up in the counselling room. A lot! There is so much brewing in my thoughts about the connections between bottom-up-processing, decision paralysis and also the corners we can get into and find it hard to get out of.
Totally relate and agree that being focussed on the details makes for a more complicated decision. There's no clear obvious answer and even if I think I have a gut feeling, I can see all sides to the extent I don't know what my gut feeling is telling me.
That is so true. Me too! I think that often in therapy, we're sifting through the details to find the felt sense of what does feel 'right', the 'gut feeling'. It doesn't help that autistic people often get gaslit around their gut feelings and end up gaslighting themselves and not even realise their doing it!
Bottom-up processing was the hardest thing to understand in my research into neurodivergence but ultimately one of the most helpful.
Thank you for these beautiful images (I have often compared myself to a deep sea diver!!) and the healing affirmation that the hard-won treasures really are treasures.
Also, I’ve never realized these were masking… I do every single one 😅 — “stop asking follow-up questions even when something doesn't make sense… force themselves to make quick decisions without gathering the information they need… apologise for being "too detailed" or cut themselves off mid-explanation… pretend to understand things they haven't fully processed yet.”
Thanks Bianca. I only use images that are created by humans. I don't use AI for my images as a personal value system I have created around AI. But I also have no judgement of others in their use of it. Anyway, I hope the article has helped to identify a layer - and the good thing about identifying that layer is that we can then work with it - it's sort of malleable I guess rather than stuck there.
I wish arts application processes would understand the bottom up processing of autism and how discriminative it is that they expect autistic people to answer the questions only a top down processor can do. Deep sigh.
That's really interesting to read. What are arts application processes? Happy Autistic Pride Day!
Speaking of the Arts Council specifically, they have two funds 'Develop your creative practise' and 'Project Grants'. The DYCP grant is a little more ND friendly in that it's far less detailed and involved so isn't instantly off-putting as a prospect. I genuinely don't know how anyone succeeds with a Project grant application, even though they offer a support worker for both. They both require that you know what big picture you're aiming at, as opposed to exploring the idea, and the questions you're working through, they want to know things like who is it for and what's the end goal and how will you make money. Deeply abstract questions for a mind that has just gone "there's a thread here I need to unravel". As an autistic person my experience, even in my paid work, is that when I have an idea for something that I know is either artistically interesting, or in the case of a regular job, going to improve efficiency longterm and solve a problem that might not yet be pressing, I can never get anyone onboard until I've basically built the model. Using the work example, I was trying to convince my boss that we needed to move to a digital filing system, in a legacy team that had a way of working they hadn't changed in 20 odd years. The only way to convince them was to work with IT on building a prototype, completely out of the scope of my job, alongside my job, so that I could show them the benefit - and then I got them on board when they only had to do 3% of the thinking. I have to show, I can't really tell. With arts projects it's always been the same, by the time I am able to answer the questions asked I will have had to already have completed the project, but you can't access funds for work you've already done. My communication, processing and learning differences mean that I can't explain a solution, I have to seek it. Which is effectively all art based practices are doing, but the method of applying is created by neurotypicals and non-creatives who tend to see the big picture then focus on the details. I see the details and work through them to the big picture, because of the levels of details I work through, usually my big picture will look nothing like where an NT mind started from if we were working on the same problem. I'd usually land somewhere different - probably more future proofed - but no application has been designed for this way of thinking, yet. What this means is that even if I try and imagine what the big picture is, it's still never going to make sense to an NT who wouldn't be able to connect my starting point to my end point because they would never have started where my big picture lands.
Wow that is really quite something you have articulate there. And the ironic thing is, there are so so many ND people in the arts!!! It makes me wonder how on earth it ended up this way. It all just seems so backwards!
It’s absolutely maddening. We flock here and it’s still largely constructed to trip us up. Creativity and growth mindsets aren’t really compatible but you can’t tell an organisation that, they don’t want to hear it.
It’s infuriating. They want to make us ask ‘correctly’ say please ‘properly’ otherwise they won’t give us any din dins…
This! Fuck off arts council (unless you want to give me some money then, hello)
Ahhhhhh I am sooo excited about this!!!! I will share it with our listeners! Thanks for this powerful. contribution to the conversation.
This is the best description of bottom-up processing I've ever read.
Thank you Catherine, a fellow Catherine! I like my name, I hope you like it too. :-)
Happy Autistic Pride Day!!! :-)
Bottoms up! 😀
I love this article so much! I had a successful business as a developmental writing coach using bottom up processing and I could never explain it to the clients and anything but metaphor. It took a long time to finish books but when we were done, those books were the best books they were ever going to be, and the clients had accepted an integrated their own truths completely, after years of trying other methods.
You bet your bottom dollar they were the best books they were ever going to be. Bottom up processing irons out all the creases, it doesn't cut corners. And that's bound to make that book a most excellent book!!! Happy Autistic Pride Day :-)
Thank you for sharing this. I’m on the waiting list for assessment, but I see myself in every part of what you’ve written. One of my most recent bosses actually named it - ‘bottom-up processing’ - when she saw how I tried to get my head around a strategy. It’s really useful to know how this might be useful, and how it might also sometimes lead me astray.
Thanks Gem, I wish you all the best in your assessment and hope the waiting list isn't too long. It's interesting how you identify that bit about being led astray. That happens to me too. Where the lead on my thoughts has just got too long and I've ended up in the long grass! Sometimes we need other people to pull us out, like a check-in so that we can get untangled from it all.
Happy Autistic Pride Day!!
Wow! This is all new to me and yet, I can totally relate to all of it! Thank you for sharing this wonderful information. I'm seeing myself in a totally different light. I'm not good with labels but just knowing my brain processes differently, that it's not a bad thing, that there are ways to navigate life with a different brain, well, to me, that's worth more than all the money in the world. Thank you. 🙏🏼
Silvana, this is just the beginning, there's so much richness and treasure to be discovered in this journey. I wish you all the best as you continue to discover more and find layers you never even realised were there! Happy Autistic Pride Day!
Thank you for sharing this! It is such an important perspective. I am a therapist who works with a lot of neurodivergent folks and sometimes find it incredibly difficult to help colleagues understand this type of thinking. I will definitely be passing this along!
Yay Aiden, hand clap hand clap.
We're in the same dimension, and it's a great dimension to be in.
Happy Autistic Pride Day!
I'd stumbled upon your article & it comforts me. I'm not autistic but I can relate a lot to what you wrote, I tend to see some 'flaws' in a rule that's dismissed as 'it is what it is' & my interests or curiousities dismissed. So it's comforting to see them encouraged & embraced here.
I also didn't know about bottom-up thinking before this so this is lovely lovely knowledge, I love collecting more info about humans & how differently we function. Thank you for writing this :)
It sounds like you have found yourself a new shiny pebble to add to your collection of 'stuff about human beings and how differently we function'. It is fascinating really isn't it.
Happy Autistic Pride Day!
Thank you so much. This was so powerful, I found myself in tears during the section about masking your bottom-up processing. One of my partners is genuinely fascinated in this capacity of my autistic brain and has so much time for my excited shares about new research rabbit holes. I can't tell you how healing that has been.
Wow Morgana, how lucky you are to have a partner who gives you this space for you to be you. I feel touched by what you have written here. It is a rare thing, hold it tight xxx
Happy Autistic Pride Day :-)
I genuinely am excited to read more about what you'll say for the other pillars--I myself have ADHD and seeing some of the overlap here is so great. Even in my own work with clients, doing a lot of shame-untangling is the focal point before we reach better insight and meaningful change.
You know what Kirk, I was only thinking this morning as I came out of the bathroom, what is helpful for ADHDers is helpful for Autistics, and what is helpful for Autistics is helpful for ADHDers. I don't personally identify as ADHD but having read so many books on it and researched it and living with three ADHD boys (including husband), I have found so so much helpful in it myself as an autistic person. The overlap is huge.
This could apply to adhd
That is so true!!!
Beautiful
Thank you Andrea - Happy Autistic Pride Day!!!
Thank you for seeing me!
This is a great post. I’ve also been listening to the Autistic Culture podcast. Learning about bottom-up processing was a bit of a revelation. I’m wondering whether it is a contributor in decision paralysis (I may have made up this term!). I often find the more information I gather, the harder it becomes to make a decision. But I need to compile all the data first. It can be frustrating and, at worst, quite distressing. Just wondering if this comes up in the counselling room too.
Hi there, so sorry it's taken a while to respond. I didn't even realise there were any comments on my article until today!! Oh my gosh, this so comes up in the counselling room. A lot! There is so much brewing in my thoughts about the connections between bottom-up-processing, decision paralysis and also the corners we can get into and find it hard to get out of.
Totally relate and agree that being focussed on the details makes for a more complicated decision. There's no clear obvious answer and even if I think I have a gut feeling, I can see all sides to the extent I don't know what my gut feeling is telling me.
That is so true. Me too! I think that often in therapy, we're sifting through the details to find the felt sense of what does feel 'right', the 'gut feeling'. It doesn't help that autistic people often get gaslit around their gut feelings and end up gaslighting themselves and not even realise their doing it!
Happy Autistic Pride Day :-)
Bottom-up processing was the hardest thing to understand in my research into neurodivergence but ultimately one of the most helpful.
Thank you for these beautiful images (I have often compared myself to a deep sea diver!!) and the healing affirmation that the hard-won treasures really are treasures.
Also, I’ve never realized these were masking… I do every single one 😅 — “stop asking follow-up questions even when something doesn't make sense… force themselves to make quick decisions without gathering the information they need… apologise for being "too detailed" or cut themselves off mid-explanation… pretend to understand things they haven't fully processed yet.”
Thanks Bianca. I only use images that are created by humans. I don't use AI for my images as a personal value system I have created around AI. But I also have no judgement of others in their use of it. Anyway, I hope the article has helped to identify a layer - and the good thing about identifying that layer is that we can then work with it - it's sort of malleable I guess rather than stuck there.
I hadn't realised those things were masking either, but I'm prone to all of them and this is a very useful framing.