Autistic shielding is leaning into your neurological differences and behaviours. It is embracing neuro-anarchy: being who you are, doing what you do and bollocks if others don’t like it.

Shielding for me is being aggressively Autistic and Attention Hyperactive and doing my OCD rituals and behaviours with no shame.

Shielding is liberation; protecting myself by showing the most extreme parts of myself. Projecting my weird to find my weirdkin. Surrounding myself with similar others who are also unconcerned with norms, or actively subverting rules to match their own ideals and lifestyles.

I shielded when I was younger through punk aesthetic and listening to aggressive music about overthrowing the government and hating Maggie Thatcher (thanks The Exploited!). Then it became biker culture. Now its more of a hippie, punk embarrassing Mum mix.

Shielding is an aggressive act of protecting myself by being authentically strange.

Protecting my special interests, owning my tics and stims, communicating in a way that makes sense to me. It is protecting my authenticity by embracing myself outwardly, fully, unapologetically.

No masking, no camouflaging, no double-guessing, no people-pleasing.

Sheilding is neuro-anarchy.

Hate me, love me, fear me, ‘cure’ me, I’m still Autistic and living the dream.

I have written other articles on Autistic shielding: Autistic realisation and shielding and Autistic Shielding, Autistic Communities