Autism & Shame

Why do so many autistic people carry a quiet, persistent sense of being “wrong” — and where does it actually come from? In this Seed Talks workshop, autism-specialist counsellor Elaine Nicholson MBE explores the science of autism and shame: what shame really is — a felt sense, in body and mind, of fundamental wrongness — why it runs so deep for autistic people, and, crucially, why it has nothing to do with autism itself. As Elaine puts it, the shame autistic people carry doesn’t originate in their neurology; it originates in the world’s response to it, built up through countless small moments of “you’re too much”, “you’re not enough”, “why can’t you just…”. Drawing on more than fifteen years pioneering autism-specialist therapy, Elaine moves from the medical model versus the neurodiversity model, through the ways shame shows up day to day — never feeling good enough, people-pleasing, perfectionism — to a practical and genuinely hopeful antidote: authenticity, reclaiming authorship of your own story, and learning to trust your own experience again. Whether you’re autistic, love someone who is, work as a therapist, or are simply curious, this is a generous, myth-busting hour that reframes shame as something done to autistic people — never something wrong with them.