Your Architecture Is Not a Flaw
A Field Guide for the Late-Discovered, the Recently-Wondering, and the Long-Since-Known
You are not alone. You are not broken. You are autistic/neurodivergent. This guide is written in your language.
By John C. Derrick
Autistic since birth. Diagnosed at 32. Now 45.
Written for everyone who's spent their whole life reverse-engineering a world that wasn't built for how their brain works.
The Graph Nobody Showed You
The line is a lie. Autism doesn't exist on a single axis from "mild" to "severe." It exists as a landscape - a spike graph with multiple independent dimensions, each rising or falling in different places. Understanding this changes everything about how you see yourself.
You've probably seen it. The line. The spectrum drawn as a single horizontal axis from one end to the other. Someone sits in the middle and gets told, "Well, you're not really autistic. You're too verbal. You have a job. You seem fine."
That line has been used as a compliance tool. A gate. A gatekeeper's measurement stick that looks objective but isn't. It's designed to make you doubt yourself. It works. It's worked on millions of us.
Here's the thing: autism doesn't work that way. Neither does ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, or any neurodivergence I know about. We don't sit on a line. We occupy a landscape.
The Spike Graph Model
Imagine a coordinate system where each axis represents a different dimension of how your brain processes the world. Not better or worse - just different. Some of these dimensions are:
- Social Communication: How you process social rules, read faces, manage eye contact, navigate conversation flow
- Sensory Processing: How intensely you perceive sound, light, texture, smell, proprioception
- Executive Function: How you initiate tasks, manage time, switch between contexts, organize materials
- Pattern Recognition: How you see systems, connections, anomalies in data
- Interest Intensity: How deeply you can focus when something captures your attention
- Need for Routine: How much predictability and sameness you require
- Emotional Regulation: How you process and express emotions, how easily you move between emotional states
- Literalness: How directly you interpret language and social expectations
Most neurotypical people look like a relatively flat line across all these dimensions. Slightly above average in some places, slightly below in others, but generally clustered in the middle. They're the baseline.
Most autistic people look like a spike graph. High here. Low there. Wildly high somewhere else. The pattern is unique to each person.
Profile A: "Too Verbal to Be Autistic"
Profile B: "Asperger's Type"
See the difference? These two people might both be autistic. They might both work professional jobs. One struggles more with social understanding but has strong execution. The other has brilliant pattern recognition but terrible time management. Both are on the spectrum because the pattern - the existence of spikes - is what defines neurodivergence.
The linear spectrum is not just wrong. It's actively harmful because it's been weaponized into a gate.
Why the Linear Spectrum Breaks Down
I spent fifteen years not knowing I was autistic despite showing clear autistic traits. Why? Because I'm very verbal. Because I hold a stable job. Because I can "mask" well enough that I look neurotypical in certain contexts. I scored low on "obviously autistic" because everyone's using a measuring stick that only measures one thing.
Here's what nobody tells you: the person who's brilliant at masking will often show the fewest signs of autism on standard assessments. Because they've been practicing the performance since childhood. The architecture is the same. The visibility is not.
The late-diagnosed are full of people like this. We weren't "missed" because we're "not autistic enough." We were missed because the measuring tools were designed by people who were looking for obvious symptoms in children, not adults who've spent 30 years learning to mimic neurotypical behavior.
The compliance officer - that internal censor I'll get to in the next chapter - got really good at her job. She took the spikes and flattened them. She made you look like the line. And everyone believed the line.
What the Spike Graph Actually Tells You
The spike graph is liberating because it's honest. It says: you have genuine strengths that are neurologically rooted. And you have genuine challenges that are neurologically rooted. Both are real. Both are you. Neither means you're broken.
It means you're designed for certain kinds of work and certain kinds of environments. It means some relationships will feel easy because they require fewer lookups and less masking. It means some tasks will drain you in ways that don't drain others around you.
It means you're not defective. You're different. And difference, as a systems architecture, creates different costs and different efficiencies.
You might recognize yourself in the "too good at masking" category. Or in the "seems fine" label. Or in the "not autistic enough" dismissal. This is what happens when a spike graph meets a linear measurement tool. The tool is broken. Not you.
The spectrum is not a line. It's a landscape. Your architecture has peaks and valleys. The peaks are not compensation for the valleys - they're part of the same system. Understanding where your spikes actually are is the first step toward building a life that works with them instead of against them.
The Compliance Officer
There's a voice in your head that isn't you. It's older than your actual self. It's been running background processes since childhood, and it's gotten so good at its job that you can't tell it apart from genuine self-reflection anymore.
Let me describe a system to you, and tell me if you recognize it.
When you're a kid and you stim, you get told "stop fidgeting." When you talk about your interest, you get that glazed-over look that means people are bored. When you're direct about something, you're "rude." When you need to leave a social situation, you're "antisocial."
By age seven, you've internalized a subroutine. It runs constantly. It monitors your behavior before it happens. It predicts how people will react. It filters your words. It suppresses your movements...
What's Inside the Complete Guide
- Chapter 1 - The Graph Nobody Showed You Free Preview
- Chapter 2 - The Compliance Officer Full Guide
- Chapter 3 - The Lookup Table Full Guide
- Chapter 4 - The Redline Full Guide
- Chapter 5 - No Man's Land Full Guide
- Chapter 6 - The Protocol Full Guide
- About the Author Full Guide
- Further Reading Full Guide
The Full Guide Is Coming Soon
6 chapters mapping the autistic architecture from spike graphs to survival protocols. Written from the inside. No padding. No performance. Just the spec sheet you were never given.
The full guide will be available soon. Check back at johncderrick.com/ebooks for updates.
Why This Guide Exists
Architecture diagrams, not affirmations. Written for the brain that wants to understand how it works, not just that it's okay.
Not an outside observer explaining you to yourself. Someone who shares the wiring, mapping it in language the wiring understands.
The masking subroutine you've been running since childhood, finally documented. The lookup table. The redline. The cost you've been paying.
Honest about both the capabilities and the costs. The pattern recognition AND the burnout. The spikes AND the valleys. The full architecture.
Your Architecture Is Not a Flaw
A Field Guide for the Neurodivergent
You are not a broken version of normal. You are a functioning version of different.
The field guide is coming.
Companion Guide: The Manual You Didn't Know Was Missing - for the neurotypical people in your life.
johncderrick.com