By: Joshua Pitney.
As an autistic person growing up, I was told many times, in many ways, that I couldn’t.
I thought I couldn’t make friends. It was challenging for me to make friends due to my introverted nature and reliance on special interests to strike up conversations. Eventually, I learned to integrate my interests into other topics to keep conversations going and create meaningful friendships.
I felt stigmatized. People belittled me online by cruelly claiming autism is a disease that harms families. That kind of stigma is damaging to people like me.
I wondered if I’d ever find success because the world either ignores those of us on the spectrum or tells us that the odds are not good.
Determined to find a way, I kept going and learned to love my autistic identity. Rather than viewing it as a limitation, I now see it as an advantage. Being on the autism spectrum gives me powerful advantages over others; my deep inner world makes me enormously creative, thoughtful and compassionate.
Those qualities, along with my passion to share inspiring stories about people like me, has led to my studying screen arts at Pepperdine. I’m now a filmmaker who is dedicated to cinematically showing the realities of neurodiversity and demonstrating that we can be a positive force for good.
I hope my work helps the next generation of neurodiverse kids see themselves on screen – and off – not as side characters or negative stereotypes, but as heroes, dreamers, leaders and creators who are resilient and full of possibility.
Joshua Pitney is a proud alumnus of Pepperdine University. He majored in Screen Arts because he believes that cinema has the power to transport viewers to another world that leaves them changed. Joshua is on the autism spectrum. In cinema, he found a place where he can use his personal experience to powerfully tell the dramatic and inspiring stories about people in the neurodiverse community.