🧠 The Cognitive Ecology Model, Layer Four: Cultural Narratives and Representation
Sneak Peek No. 5 in the Cognitive Ecology Series – Culture, Narrative, and the Power of Who Gets to Be Seen
Welcome Back. Let’s Talk About the Air We Breathe.
(aka: What Happens When Culture Decides Who Counts?)
If you’ve made it to Layer Four, you already know: this work is more than critique. It’s reclamation. It’s re-narration. It’s about taking back the stories that have told us who we are—and rewriting them from the inside out.
Maybe you arrived through my essay on institutional burnout.
Maybe you came through a spiral of self-doubt that led to diagnosis.
Maybe someone sent you a Substack link and said, “Hey, this feels like you.”
However you found your way here—I’m glad you stayed.
I call myself a Cognitive Ecologist because no traditional field could hold what I needed to ask. I don’t study autism as a deficit in brains—I study it as a mirror of design. Of culture. Of power.
This model doesn’t live in a textbook. It lives in our relationships, our breakdowns, our breakthroughs.
It lives in late-night realizations and quiet refusals to keep performing someone else’s idea of “normal.”
And now we’ve come to Layer Four—the one that’s hardest to pin down, because it isn’t a single institution or structure.
It’s the atmosphere we live in. The water we swim in.
It’s culture—and it decides everything.
Culture is the force behind the frameworks.
It decides whose story gets told, who’s too complicated to market, and who gets to be visible without a fight.
It’s not just the background—it’s the blueprint.
Let’s name the patterns that shape our perception.
Let’s talk about media, language, stereotypes, and who gets to speak.
Let’s explore how cultural narratives create both access—and erasure.
Ready to keep going?
👉 If you missed the previous chapters in this journey, here’s where you can begin:
The Cognitive Ecology Model: Rethinking Autism Beyond Deficit and Disability
Layer One: Individual Cognition – Where Environment Shapes the Mind
Layer Two: Relational Cognition – How Connection Becomes Survival
If Layer Three showed us how institutions define support,
Layer Four shows us who even gets to ask for it.
This isn’t just a critique of what’s missing.
It’s a declaration of what we are.
Let’s begin.
“Culture doesn’t just reflect what we believe—it decides who gets to belong.”
🏗️ The Cultural Construction of Neurodivergence
“Autism isn’t just a diagnosis—it’s a story society tells about who counts.”
Neurodivergence is often treated as a fixed medical fact—something discovered through tests, assessments, or expert evaluation. But that’s not the full story. Whether someone is recognized as autistic, believed when they self-identify, or supported in their needs is shaped just as much by culture as by neuroscience.
Culture tells us:
What autism “looks like.”
Who fits the mold.
Who is allowed in—and who is kept out.
This is why the same traits can be read as gifted in one context and defiant in another. Culture decides what’s normal, what’s pathological, and what’s worth supporting.
📊 Chart: How Culture Shapes Recognition of Autism
This isn’t just anecdotal—it’s patterned, systemic, and deeply embedded in how we diagnose, support, and include (or exclude) autistic individuals.
🧩 Cultural narratives don’t just reflect autism—they construct it.
That means if we want to challenge diagnostic bias and improve recognition for all neurodivergent people, we must start with the stories our culture tells—and who gets to tell them.
🚪 The Double Exclusion of Late-Diagnosed Autistics
“You were too ‘normal’ to be diagnosed—until you broke.”
For late-diagnosed autistic people, cultural exclusion happens twice:
In childhood, they were overlooked because they didn’t fit narrow, stereotyped definitions of autism.
In adulthood, they’re often dismissed because they’ve learned to mask—so well, in fact, that their distress is invisible.
This creates a paradox: the better someone copes, the less likely they are to be seen, supported, or believed.
📊 Chart: The Double Exclusion Loop
🧠 Being late-diagnosed isn’t about “missing signs.” It’s about culture ignoring the signs that didn’t fit the script.
This is especially true for:
Women and nonbinary people.
BIPOC autistics.
Autistics from low-income or rural backgrounds.
Those whose traits are internalized rather than disruptive.
Late diagnosis often arrives after burnout, after therapy, after years of internalizing shame. And even then, the cultural gatekeeping continues—with disbelief, invalidation, and lack of support.
🧰 Culture as a Gatekeeper: Who Gets Access to Recognition and Support?
“Culture doesn’t just tell you what autism is—it tells you whether you count.”
When most people think about access, they think of buildings, websites, or funding. But cultural narratives are access points too—or barriers. They shape:
Who is believed when they say they’re autistic.
Who receives a diagnosis (and how early).
Who is granted workplace accommodations or legal protection.
Who is seen as needing help—and who is told they’re “fine.”
In this way, culture determines eligibility. It decides whose struggles are valid, and whose are dismissed as personality flaws, “bad behavior,” or poor performance.
📊 Chart: Cultural Gatekeeping at a Glance
📌 If your autism doesn’t look like the media version—white, male, tech-savvy—you may not be recognized as autistic at all.
This gatekeeping isn’t just interpersonal—it’s policy-level. It’s embedded in:
Diagnostic criteria.
School eligibility forms.
Workplace accommodation processes.
Disability benefit systems.
Recognition shouldn’t be a fight. But for many, it still is.
📺 Media Representation: The Erasure of Complex Neurodivergence
“When the dominant narrative doesn’t reflect your reality, it takes longer to find yourself.”
Most people don’t learn about autism from research papers or diagnostic manuals. They learn from movies, TV shows, TikToks, and memes. And unfortunately, the stories media tells about autism are often incomplete, narrow, and stereotyped.
We’re shown:
The savant genius who can memorize digits of Pi.
The awkward white guy who doesn’t get jokes.
The emotionless robot who doesn’t feel empathy.
The disruptive child who throws tantrums in public.
These aren’t just tropes. They are filters. If you don’t see yourself in them, you may believe you can’t be autistic.
📊 Chart: Common Media Stereotypes & Their Harm
This limited storytelling leads to real-world consequences:
Misdiagnosis and missed diagnosis.
Delayed self-recognition.
Inaccurate public understanding.
Stereotype-driven policies.
🧠 Case Reflection: “I Didn’t Think I Was Autistic…”
Before I understood my neurodivergence, I ruled autism out because:
I was highly emotional.
I was relational and intuitive.
I wasn’t a math prodigy or tech expert.
It turns out, I was just watching the wrong story.
📡 The Role of Cultural Norms: How Society Defines "Normal" & "Other"
“Who is considered ‘normal’ is a cultural decision, not a biological fact.”
Cultural norms are invisible scripts that tell us how to behave, communicate, and even feel. These norms are not neutral—they are designed to benefit those who fit them and marginalize those who don’t.
For neurodivergent people, especially those who are autistic, these norms become daily obstacles. They dictate what’s “appropriate,” “professional,” or “polite”—and punish deviation through exclusion, ridicule, or forced conformity.
📊 Chart: How Traits Are Coded by Cultural Norms
These cultural scripts don’t just shape how others see us—they shape how we see ourselves. Many autistic people internalize these judgments, leading to years of self-doubt and self-suppression.
🎭 Masking as a Cultural Survival Strategy
“I didn’t choose to mask—I was taught that being myself was unacceptable.”
Masking is often framed as a personal choice. But it’s not.
It’s a survival strategy—one forged in environments that equate difference with danger, and demand conformity in exchange for safety, inclusion, or even basic dignity.
Autistic masking includes things like:
Forcing eye contact, even when it causes distress
Memorizing and mimicking social scripts
Hiding stimming behaviors
Suppressing emotional responses
Smiling or laughing at the “right” time, even when it’s confusing or painful
While masking may help someone navigate neuronormative settings temporarily, it comes at a massive cognitive and emotional cost.
📊 Chart: The Long-Term Costs of Masking
Masking isn’t a failure of authenticity.
It’s a response to a culture that punishes authenticity.
And over time, it leads to burnout—not because autistic people are fragile, but because pretending to be someone else is unsustainable.
🔍 The Social Construction of “Normal” and Deficient
“Who is considered ‘normal’ is a cultural decision—not a biological fact.”
At its core, normalcy is a myth—a moving target shaped by history, power, and cultural expectation. What one society deems quirky, another may pathologize. What one classroom calls disruptive, another might recognize as gifted. There is no universal standard of what a “normal brain” looks like—only the dominant narrative of the time.
In most Western contexts, “normal” is shaped by values like:
Verbal fluency
Eye contact
Emotional regulation that prioritizes subtlety
Fast processing
Compliance with unspoken rules
These values are often assumed to be neutral, but they’re not. They are deeply cultural—and inherently exclusionary to anyone whose cognition doesn’t align with them.
📊 Chart: How Neurodivergent Traits Are Framed by Dominant Culture
This cultural framing doesn’t just shape how people are seen—it shapes who gets diagnosed, accommodated, and included. It sets the standard of legitimacy, and it penalizes deviation.
If we want a truly inclusive world, we must first question the legitimacy of the “normal” we’re being asked to conform to.
⚖️ Culture as Gatekeeper: Who Gets Recognition and Support?
“Culture doesn’t just influence how autism is understood—it decides who gets to be recognized at all.”
Diagnosis. Support. Legal protections. These aren’t just determined by need or medical criteria—they’re profoundly shaped by cultural stories about who “counts.”
The cultural gatekeeping of neurodivergence often operates through exclusionary assumptions:
Autism is something you can see.
Autism is a condition of childhood.
Autism is primarily male and white.
Autism must be proven through suffering.
These assumptions become barriers. Not just to recognition—but to survival.
📊 Chart: Cultural Narratives That Determine Access
When the cultural narrative defines what autism “should” look like, it erases the real, varied, and complex lives of neurodivergent people.
The result? Many never receive support—not because they don’t need it, but because culture refuses to see them.
🧩 The Double Exclusion of Late-Diagnosed Autistic Adults
“I didn’t get missed—I got misread.”
Late-diagnosed autistic adults often face a unique kind of erasure: excluded not once, but twice.
First exclusion: They were not identified in childhood, because they didn’t fit the stereotypes.
Second exclusion: As adults, their self-recognition is often invalidated by others.
This is not accidental. It’s the product of a system that equates autism with:
childhood,
extreme visible traits,
and rigid diagnostic boxes.
If you navigated life by masking, mimicking, or over-performing…
If you succeeded in spite of the system…
If you learned to survive by blending in…
You are often told:
👉 “You can’t be autistic. You’re too successful.”
👉 “You made it this far without a diagnosis.”
👉 “You’re just quirky/anxious/overthinking.”
But these narratives erase the cost of survival—the years of burnout, confusion, and self-doubt.
📊 Chart: Double Exclusion of Late-Diagnosed Autistics
Late diagnosis is not a privilege—it’s a recovery process.
📺 Media as Mirror: How Cultural Portrayals Shape Real Lives
“I didn’t know I was autistic—because no one on screen looked like me.”
Most people don’t learn about autism from medical journals.
They learn it from movies, television, and the internet.
And the problem is: media repeats the same narrow script.
Autism in pop culture looks like:
The white, cisgender, socially awkward boy-genius.
The emotionless computer-brain.
The burdened child who disrupts the family.
These tropes create a single story. And that single story becomes a filter for who is recognized—and who is erased.
If you are:
Empathic
Non-male
Non-white
Relational
Creative
You’re unlikely to see yourself reflected. And less likely to be believed when you begin to wonder if you might be autistic.
📊 Chart: Dominant Media Tropes vs. Reality
Representation isn’t just about identity—it’s about access.
When only certain people are portrayed as autistic, others are:
misdiagnosed,
disbelieved,
or left to figure it out alone.
And the deeper harm?
We internalize those exclusions.
We begin to think: “Maybe I’m just broken, not autistic.”
That’s what cultural narrative does—it teaches you who you’re allowed to be.
🧠 How Culture Shapes Diagnosis: Who Gets Seen, Who Gets Erased
“I didn’t miss the signs. The system missed me.”
Culture doesn’t just shape perception—it sets the terms for recognition.
Diagnosis, in theory, should be clinical and objective.
In practice, it’s deeply cultural.
What we expect autism to look like is filtered through media, class, race, and gender stereotypes. And those expectations dictate:
Who is flagged early
Who is deemed “at risk”
Who is dismissed as “just quirky” or “overly emotional”
📊 Chart: Cultural Filters and Diagnostic Disparities
When diagnostic criteria are based on outdated or exclusionary narratives:
Autistic girls are missed.
Autistic people of color are criminalized.
Autistic adults are gaslit.
Autistic self-identifiers are not believed.
It’s not a failure of insight.
It’s a cultural mismatch.
The diagnostic process isn’t just about identifying traits—it’s about believing people. And we don’t believe everyone equally.
📄 Policy by Stereotype: When Culture Becomes Law
“If the story says autism is a childhood disorder, the policy will forget we grow up.”
Public policies are not just shaped by science or need—they are shaped by narratives. And when the dominant cultural stories about autism are narrow, so are the laws meant to support us.
What gets written into law is often based on:
Outdated research focused on boys.
Media portrayals that emphasize extremes.
Deficit-based models that frame autism as tragic or burdensome.
This doesn’t just shape public opinion—it shapes funding, service eligibility, workplace protections, and healthcare access.
📊 Chart: From Narrative to Policy Barrier
So much of the policy landscape is shaped not by what autism is, but by what the culture imagines it to be.
If we want inclusive systems, we don’t just need more data—we need to shift the narrative that informs decision-makers.
We don’t need permission to exist.
We need policies that assume we do.
🎭 The Masking Mandate: Cultural Survival at a Cost
“I didn’t learn to mask for fun—I learned to survive.”
Masking isn’t a personality quirk or a communication strategy. It’s an act of cultural survival—a performance that neurodivergent people are taught (explicitly and implicitly) to do in order to be accepted, protected, or even just tolerated.
But here’s what masking really means:
Forcing eye contact to seem “normal.”
Suppressing stimming to avoid judgment.
Memorizing social scripts instead of being spontaneous.
Downplaying sensory overload to avoid seeming “dramatic.”
Overworking to prove you're capable in environments never built for you.
It’s exhausting.
It’s unsustainable.
And it’s not a choice—it’s a cultural demand.
📊 Chart: The Cost of Masking Over Time
Masking isn’t sustainable because it disconnects us from ourselves.
The world praises the masked version of us and punishes the real one.
But what if we stopped asking, “How do we help them mask better?” and started asking,
“Why must they mask at all?”
🌎 Rewriting “Normal”: Cultural Norms and the Myth of the “Appropriate Human”
“Who is considered ‘normal’ is a cultural decision, not a biological fact.”
The idea of normal is not neutral—it’s a moving target defined by power, history, and privilege. Cultural norms decide:
What behaviors are acceptable.
What forms of communication are professional.
What emotions are “too much.”
What timelines are “appropriate” for development, productivity, and success.
For neurodivergent people, this means constantly navigating a world where their natural ways of being are labeled inappropriate, inconvenient, or inferior.
🔄 Chart: Cultural Reframing of Autistic Traits
Cultural norms don’t just shape perception—they create standards that force neurodivergent people to contort themselves into someone else’s idea of acceptability. These norms:
Label relational differences as “deficits.”
Expect conformity without reciprocity.
Penalize authenticity in favor of performance.
But what if the problem isn’t us?
What if the problem is the rigidity of the systems demanding that everyone fit the same mold?
🏛️ The Culture–Policy Feedback Loop: Who Gets Access, Who Gets Erased?
“Culture is not just vibes—it’s infrastructure.”
Cultural narratives don’t just shape how autism is understood; they shape who gets services, protection, and legitimacy. When a stereotype becomes widespread enough, it finds its way into policy. And policy, in turn, reinforces the stereotype.
This is the feedback loop that keeps neurodivergent people—especially those who are multiply marginalized—locked out of support.
🔁 Chart: How Cultural Beliefs Translate Into Policy Consequences
Policies don’t form in a vacuum. They are crafted in the image of the stories we tell. If the dominant narrative paints autism as visible, male, severe, and childhood-bound, then everyone who doesn’t match that picture is left behind.
We don’t need more awareness campaigns.
We need a complete cultural overhaul—one that reflects the reality of who we are and what we need.
💣 The Myth of Meritocracy: Why “Success” Doesn’t Mean Support
“You have a job, so you must be fine.”
Cultural narratives around success often become tools of erasure. When autistic people appear to be “doing well”—holding a job, raising a family, getting good grades—they’re often told they don’t “need” support. But that assumption rests on a dangerous myth:
That struggle and success are mutually exclusive.
In reality, many late-diagnosed or high-masking autistic individuals have built survival strategies that look like success from the outside—but come at immense personal cost.
🧠 Chart: The Myth of Functioning vs. The Reality of Support Needs
When we assume competence means comfort, or that fluency equals functionality, we ignore the hidden labor autistic people do to survive in neuronormative culture.
Success should never be the barrier to support.
Support should be what makes success sustainable.
🎭 Masking as a Cultural Demand, Not a Personal Choice
“I didn’t choose to mask—I was taught it was the only way to belong.”
Masking is often misunderstood as a conscious strategy—a choice to "act normal" in order to fit in. But for many autistic individuals, masking is a survival mechanism, shaped by cultural expectations of behavior, professionalism, and social performance.
Culture doesn’t ask us to mask—it requires it.
We’re told eye contact is respectful. That stimming is disruptive. That speaking directly is rude. That expressing sensory needs is “too much.” These aren’t personal preferences—they are neuronormative mandates enforced through praise, punishment, and exclusion.
🌀 Chart: Common Masking Behaviors and Their Consequences
Masking isn’t social polish—it’s camouflage.
And the longer we do it, the more we forget who we were before we started.
That’s not “adaptive.” That’s a crisis of identity.
🔥 Burnout Is Not a Personal Failing—It’s a Cultural Outcome
“You’re not broken. You’re exhausted from trying to survive a world that wasn’t made with you in mind.”
Burnout among autistic individuals is often dismissed as poor self-care or an inability to "cope." But this framing misses the point entirely. Burnout is not a glitch in our personal wiring—it’s the inevitable result of chronic masking, systemic inaccessibility, and cultural erasure.
Burnout is not a failure of resilience. It’s a symptom of a society that demands too much while offering too little.
We don’t burn out because we are “less capable.”
We burn out because we are overextended, under-supported, and persistently misrecognized.
⚙️ Chart: Burnout as a Systemic Outcome
This is why autistic burnout often looks like “falling apart” to others—when in fact, it’s a body and mind finally saying:
No more pretending. No more performing. No more pushing through.
🌱 Redesign, Not Retrofit: Why Accommodations Aren’t Enough
“You can’t retrofit liberation into a system built for exclusion.”
When institutions offer accommodations, they often frame them as generous exceptions to an otherwise functional norm. But what if the norm is the problem?
Autistic people are told:
“Let us know if you need anything.”
“We’ll make adjustments as needed.”
“We’re happy to support you… within reason.”
But this approach still centers the existing structure as default—and asks neurodivergent people to fit themselves around it.
Real inclusion doesn’t happen when we add a ramp to a staircase.
It happens when we design spaces without stairs in the first place.
🏗️ Chart: Retrofitting vs. Redesigning
Accommodations may provide relief. But redesign offers justice.
If our systems truly valued neurodiversity, we wouldn’t need to disclose our pain to gain access—we’d be supported by design.
🔚 Final Reflection: Imagining a Culture That Sees Us Fully
What if neurodivergence wasn’t something you had to explain?
What if the stories that shaped our culture made space for the rest of us—the nonlinear thinkers, the sensory attuned, the pattern seers and empathic disruptors?
Layer Four of the Cognitive Ecology Model reveals that neurodivergence doesn’t just live in our brains. It’s mirrored, distorted, or denied in the culture around us.
Culture decides whose difference is framed as brilliance—and whose is framed as brokenness.
When the dominant culture only validates certain kinds of autism—white, male, techy, quirky—it leaves the rest of us scrambling for legitimacy. And the consequences are tangible: misdiagnosis, dismissal, delayed support, self-doubt, and institutional abandonment.
But culture can be rewritten.
It already is—every time we tell the truth of our lives out loud.
🌈 Chart: The Culture Shift We Need
The cultural narratives we absorb shape every layer of our experience—from how we understand ourselves, to how others see us, to what policies get made in our name.
To change the culture is to change the context.
And to change the context is to change what becomes possible—for all of us.
Let’s keep writing new stories. Let’s keep being each other’s proof.
🌀 Final Reflection: What If the Culture Had Seen Us All Along?
Imagine a culture where neurodivergence isn’t a punchline or pathology.
Where autistic people aren’t portrayed as emotionless geniuses or misfit kids—but as artists, parents, leaders, lovers, healers.
Where your differences aren’t ignored until they become a crisis—but are recognized early, supported deeply, and celebrated loudly.
That’s the world CEM imagines.
Not a flattening of difference—but a flourishing of complexity.
💬 Let’s Change the Story
How has culture shaped your journey?
Where have you seen yourself reflected—or erased?
What stories do you wish the world knew about your neurodivergent experience?
Drop a comment, share this post, or join us inside The Compassion Collective.
Together, we’re not just rewriting the narrative—we’re liberating it.
💬 What’s Next?
In Layer Four, we uncovered how culture doesn’t just reflect neurodivergence—it constructs the boundaries of visibility, legitimacy, and support. We explored how media stereotypes delay diagnosis, how social norms force masking, and how public narratives gatekeep access to care.
But culture doesn’t live in the abstract—it’s embedded in systems.
So in Layer Five, we’ll trace the threads of narrative into the policies, laws, and structural systems that either uphold or dismantle neurodivergent access. We’ll explore how intersectionality shapes diagnosis, why class and race determine care, and what it would mean to create policy that centers justice over compliance.
Because until our systems reflect our truths—we’ll keep being misread, misjudged, and left behind.
And we’re not here for that anymore.
🧠🖋️ Shamani of The Compassion Collective
Again, you have written a cogent essay for our cultural biases and misunderstanding of autism. Reading this, I am nodding my head and feeling an ache in my heart.
"Masking isn’t a failure of authenticity. It’s a response to a culture that punishes authenticity.
And over time, it leads to burnout—not because autistic people are fragile, but because pretending to be someone else is unsustainable".
How have I chosen the cultural norm instead of authenticity in myself and others, in particular, my daughter? As a society, we belong when we support the cultural story in spite of the expense to the individual. I think I would rather belong to the Compassion Collective. Thanks Sher.
Thank you. Your essays render clarity. They are brilliant. I shared them with my 32 year old daughter, with African roots, I am sure it will resonate for her. She has been diagnosed 2 years ago as a gifted Audhd. I am crying because this recognizes all the pressure I am going through to be believed. I am a 53 year old single mum of four, I had the IQ test a couple of years ago and since then, my introspection has led me to be convinced I am Audhd too, like my daughter. Please excuse my mistakes in English because I am French. I thought I was just this working overwhelmed mum you mention and didn’t understand fully way things were so stressful and difficult for me. I have neurodivergent friends who get me. I have been a schoolteacher for 30 years and am actually in my second month of sick-leave for burn-out. And have been différent for a décade of back pain, and hypertension. I think it is all linked with Audhd. I have been so lucky my doctors didn’t make fun of me and believed me straight away. I am waiting for an appointment in June with an autistic neuropsychologist specialized in late-diagnosed women. I am going through a real identity crisis. I have to meet with the teachers’ designated doctor at work and am so scared she will not believe me and tell me I need no help. I have taken notes and pictures of your work to help prepare the conversation with her. I have no words to express my gratitude and kept thinking, while reading, this is me ! Thank you for helping me understand why it’s so confusing and what would need to be done. I wish you get a lot of readers, as this important topic for autistic people’s survival deserves. I imagine most of them are autistic or healthcare professionals. I will definitely speak of your work when I meet my specialized doctor.
Future me is a fog. I know I can’t work as hard as I have up till now. I have written a book because writing is my thing. I don’t know how I am going to cope now. Luckily my 4th child will leave home in September to be a student, I will be on my own, it looks like the moment for transition and change.