Actually Autistic Quotes

...in real life I always seem to have a hard time winding up a conversation or asking somebody to leave, and sometimes the moment becomes so delicate and fraught with social complexity that I'll get overwhelmed trying to sort out all the different possible ways of saying it and all the different implications of each option and will just sort of blank out and do it totally straight -- 'I want to terminate the conversation and not have you be in my apartment anymore' -- which evidently makes me look either as if I'm very rude and abrupt or as if I'm semi-autistic and have no sense of how to wind up a conversation gracefully...I've actually lost friends this way.

But how?" my students ask. "How do you actually do it?" You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down at, say, nine every morning, or ten every night. You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on the computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so. You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. You look at the ceiling, and over at the clock, yawn, and stare at the paper again. Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind -- a scene, a locale, a character, whatever -- and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind.

I’ve heard “experts” say that autistic people have trouble with empathy, but sometimes I wonder if these experts have ever actually sat down and talked to autistic people.

It’s neurotypicals who categorized autism as a social disorder.” Autistic people don’t actually lack communication skills, or a drive to connect. We aren’t doomed to forever feel lonely and broken. We can step out of the soul-crushing cycle of reaching for neurotypical acceptance and being rejected despite our best efforts. Instead, we can support and uplift one another, and create our own neurodiverse world where everyone—including neurotypicals—is welcome.

Girls can be more bitchy and mean, and Aspie girls don’t play that game. They are loyal, trustworthy, and kind. They just don’t do bitchiness, and they find it very hard to understand why girls would actually enjoy being so cruel to each other and so destructive.

but quite to the contrary a result of an intensely if not painfully aversively perceived environment.” Behavior that looks antisocial to an outsider might actually be an expression of fear.

The “Intense World” paper proposed that if the amygdala, which is associated with emotional responses, including fear, is affected by sensory overload, then certain responses that look antisocial actually aren’t.

When Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling published the piece "TERF Wars" on her blog in the summer of 2020, she specifically mentioned her fear that many transgender men are actually Autistic girls who weren't conventionally feminine, and have been influenced by transactivists on the internet into identifying out of womanhood. In presenting herself as defending disabled "girls," she argued for restricting young trans Autistic people's ability to self-identity and access necessary services and health care. Rowling's perspective (which she shares with many gender critical folks) is deeply dehumanising to both the trans and Autistic communities.

Sometimes all a parent needs is to know the impossible is actually possible. Hope goes a long way when it comes to autism. Matt gives people hope.

It was in this moment that I realized my quarrel would no longer be with schoolyard bullies; it would be with actual adults.

Maybe I'm not overthinking it. Maybe I've been told I'm overthinking it so often, by so many people, I've convinced myself it's all I'm capable of. But what if they're wrong? What if I'm thinking it exactly the right amount? What if everyone else is simply underthinking it, continuously, and the deficit is actually theirs? Because something tells me I'm not in the wrong here: my instincts are spot-on.

We tend to be both easily disturbed by sound in our environment, and unable to tell when a noise actually merits our attention, at the same time.[44] I often brute-force my way into paying attention to something by shutting the rest of the world out. I think it’s also likely that lifelong masking has rendered me hypervigilant, almost as a trauma response. My sensory system is used to scanning the environment, to determine whether I’m alone and thus “safe” enough to be myself. Trauma survivors often become hypervigilant, which tends to come with intense sensory issues.[45] Some researchers have also theorized that sensory issues in Autistics are, at least in part, caused by the anxiety and hypervigilance we experience from living in a world that doesn’t accommodate us, and often treats us with hostility.[46]

Jack was the kind of guy you could take into any situation and he would figure out how to fit in. Wayne, not so much. So they didn't really ever bond." "You know what we therapists say about people who fit in in every situation?" "What?" "They have no inherent genuine personality. They aren't themselves, they are only who they think the current audience expects them to be. Flawed though some of Wayne's actions may seem to you, at the end of the day he sounds like someone who isn't afraid to just be himself, all day, every day. That takes a fairly strong sense of self, to not go against your natural instincts, to not try to make yourself into something you aren't in order to be better liked or more homogenous." "I never thought about it that way." "Most people don't. But if you look at some of the truly great minds and artists of our history, they are often people who didn't necessarily fit, who were outside the norm. Some of them had actual disorders, many of the great minds are now presumed to have some level of Asperger's or low-level autistic tendencies, but a lot of them were just left of center." "Are you saying that Wayne is a secret genius? Do I have a Jobs or Spielberg or something on my hands?" "Of course not. I'm just saying that fitting in, or caring about fitting in, isn't necessarily in and of itself the world's most desirable trait.

And I think for a moment, because people don't actually ask that very often. They tell me what they think I feel because they've read it in books, or they say incredible things like "autistic people have no sense of humour or imagination or empathy" when I'm standing right there beside them (and one day I'm going to point out that that is more than a little bit rude, not to mention Not Even True) or they -- even worse -- talk to me like I'm about five, and can't understand. "It's like living with all your senses turned up to full volume all the time," I say. "And it's like living life in a different language, so you can't ever quite relax because even when you think you're fluent it's still using a different part of your brain so by the end of the day you're exhausted.

some people think being autistic means you’re unable to perceive the thoughts and emotions of others. Actually, based on my experiences and from talking to other people on the spectrum, it’s quite the opposite: you feel every possible emotion and see every possible outcome of a social situation at once. It’s kind of like being Doctor Manhattan from the comic Watchmen: you’re seeing several timelines happening simultaneously. But unlike Doctor Manhattan, you can’t teleport to Mars every time you feel overwhelmed, so you shut down and remove yourself socially. People are exhausting, and when your brain is working overtime to try to understand them, it can suck the joy out of socializing.

The idea that hyperreactivity and hyporeactivity are two variations on a theme might even have implications for theory of mind. The “Intense World” paper proposed that if the amygdala, which is associated with emotional responses, including fear, is affected by sensory overload, then certain responses that look antisocial actually aren’t. “Impaired social interactions and withdrawal may not be the result of a lack of compassion, incapability to put oneself into someone else’s position or lack of emotionality, but quite to the contrary a result of an intensely if not painfully aversively perceived environment.” Behavior that looks antisocial to an outsider might actually be an expression of fear.

This is actually a really common Autistic experience. Perhaps because so many of us are alienated from mainstream neurotypical life, we come to identify with fantasy creatures,[14] aliens, robots,[15] or animals instead of the people around us.[16] Our hyperliteral, analytic minds recognize that the rules of the gender binary are arbitrary and entirely made up,[17] so making up our own gender identities and rules of presentation seems like fair game. Identifying outside of the binary (and outside of humanity) also helps many of us put a name to how detached we feel from society, and from our bodies. Of course it’s hard for me to carry myself in a “ladylike” way, I’m a robot in a human suit! There’s a term for Autistic trans people who see their neurotype and gender identity as inextricably linked: autigender.[18]

After I left finance, I started attending some of the fashionable conferences attended by pre-rich and post-rich technology people and the new category of technology intellectuals. I was initially exhilarated to see them wearing no ties, as, living among tie-wearing abhorrent bankers, I had developed the illusion that anyone who doesn’t wear a tie was not an empty suit. But these conferences, while colorful and slick with computerized images and fancy animations, felt depressing. I knew I did not belong. It was not just their additive approach to the future (failure to subtract the fragile rather than add to destiny). It was not entirely their blindness by uncompromising neomania. It took a while for me to realize the reason: a profound lack of elegance. Technothinkers tend to have an “engineering mind”—to put it less politely, they have autistic tendencies. While they don’t usually wear ties, these types tend, of course, to exhibit all the textbook characteristics of nerdiness—mostly lack of charm, interest in objects instead of persons, causing them to neglect their looks. They love precision at the expense of applicability. And they typically share an absence of literary culture. This absence of literary culture is actually a marker of future blindness because it is usually accompanied by a denigration of history, a byproduct of unconditional neomania. Outside of the niche and isolated genre of science fiction, literature is about the past. We do not learn physics or biology from medieval textbooks, but we still read Homer, Plato, or the very modern Shakespeare. We cannot talk about sculpture without knowledge of the works of Phidias, Michelangelo, or the great Canova. These are in the past, not in the future. Just by setting foot into a museum, the aesthetically minded person is connecting with the elders. Whether overtly or not, he will tend to acquire and respect historical knowledge, even if it is to reject it. And the past—properly handled, as we will see in the next section—is a much better teacher about the properties of the future than the present. To understand the future, you do not need technoautistic jargon, obsession with “killer apps,” these sort of things. You just need the following: some respect for the past, some curiosity about the historical record, a hunger for the wisdom of the elders, and a grasp of the notion of “heuristics,” these often unwritten rules of thumb that are so determining of survival. In other words, you will be forced to give weight to things that have been around, things that have survived.

Among the diverse modes of processing, one that distinctly characterizes Autistic brains is bottom-up processing. Bottom-up processing involves an immersive and methodical journey through the nuances of information. Unlike top-down processing, which weaves a few pivotal pieces of data into a coherent whole, bottom-up processing delves into the minute details, meticulously piecing them together to construct a comprehensive understanding. This approach enables Autistic people to forge intricate connections and associations between various elements, cultivating a deep understanding of complex systems. However, this detailed-oriented approach is a double-edged sword. While it facilitates deep comprehension, it demands substantial cognitive resources. The misnomer of “slow processing” often misrepresents the reality—Autistic people are actually deep processors.

It was as though I had even to trick my own mind by chattering in such a casual and blase manner; any other way stopped at the point of motivation. It was as though I were emotionally constipated and the words could not otherwise escape my lips. If it were not for the methods I had devised, my words, like my screams and so many of my sobs, would have remained silent. People would push me to get to the point. When what I had to say was negative, this was quite simple. Opinions that had nothing to do with my own identity or needs rolled off my tongue like wisecracks from a stand-up comedian. ....Hiding behind the characters of Carol and Willie, I could say what I thought, but the problem was that I could not say what I felt. One solution was to become cold and clinical about topics I might feel something about. Everyone does this to an extent, in order to cover up what they feel, but I had actually to convince myself about things; it made me a shell of a person.

IN AN obscure journal, an article by Professor Tzvi Lamm of the Hebrew University charges that Israel has lost touch with reality.* Lamm’s view is that although the Zionist idea in its early stages seemed more dreamlike than practical, it was soberly realistic. Its leaders knew just how much power they had—or had not—and adhered closely to their goals. They were not hypnotized and paralyzed by their own slogans. Jewish leadership, and with it Israel as a whole, later became “autistic.” Autism is defined by Lamm as “the rejection of actual reality and its replacement by a reality which is a product of wish-fulfillment.” The victory of 1967 was the principal cause of this autism. Israelis began to speak of the West Bank of the Jordan as “liberated” territory. “The capture of lands aroused … a deep, sincere, emotional response to the territories … and to the historical events that took place in them: the graves of our patriarchs and matriarchs, paths along which the prophets once trod, hills for which the kings fought. But feelings cut off from present reality do not serve as a faithful guideline to a confused policy. This break with reality did not necessarily blind men to the fact that the territories were populated by Arabs, but it kept them from understanding that our settlement and taking possession of the territories would turn our existence as a state into a powerful pressure that would unite the Arab world and aggravate our insecure situation in a way previously unknown in our history.

Oh, that’s terrible, that’s not nice.” We immediately stopped what we were doing in the kitchen and hurried through to the lounge, not quite believing that our son was actually sounding as though he felt sorry for someone. On the screen, there was a badly injured woman in a mangled car. We eavesdropped as Dale went on, “Oh, dear, Henry, that’s a shame.” Jamie and I looked at each other in amazement—at long last our son was showing empathy—but with impeccable timing came Dale’s punchline: “It’s all broke, Henry. Poor car.” We resigned ourselves to a slightly longer wait for empathy. Despite our continued efforts to engage with Dale

I ask the anti-label people to think twice, before they criticize our need to call ourselves Autistic People. We are Autistic People, and we now have a term many of us use: Au
So, it is for our identity, healing, closure and true self-actualization that we become rightfully diagnosed and/or self-identify as autistic. 

An additional problem occurs when people may infer they have synesthesia when they really do not, or they may pretend to have it when they don't. These people can actually harm diagnosed autistics and diagnosed autistic synesthetes, because they blur, cloud, and distort the common understanding of what real autism and what real synesthesia is.   One

To call oneself a journalist when one has no established qualifications is “bad”, but to tack the “autistic” qualifier onto title is worse in my opinion, and potentially more misleading. Assuming the “autistic journalist” actually has autism and is not self-diagnosed, why should the fact that someone has autism make them qualified to write about autism and bill themselves as an autistic journalist? On the surface, it makes perfect sense. A person has autism. They know what it is to live with autism. They are therefore qualified to write about autism. But

And, in the case of Rainman, Kim Peek, the autistic man upon whom Rainman was based, shares only a few qualities with Hoffman's character. Thus while Hoffman's Rainman isn't exactly a lie or a fraud, it's not exactly true either. Hoffman and Danes didn't instantly fall into their roles. Rather, they were coached, and told how to behave. In fact, Hoffman was actually coached by Temple Grandin. It is not so much of a stretch, then, to posit that, like Hoffman and Danes, anyone could learn how to imitate someone with autism and carry out this act for an extended period of time, and perhaps a lifetime, if the people carrying out the act were particularly manipulative. Realistically

If it's a boy, parents often elect to abort. The reasoning is that with autism being more prevalent in boys than in girls, one stands a fair chance of getting rid of a potentially autistic child if you abort the boy. The actual “figures” vary, depending on which source you look at, but some estimates say autism is four to five times more likely to present itself in boys than in girls. The

Most autistics will reveal their perseverative interests when they are interested in finding someone else to talk to about them. Sometimes, however, self-diagnosed autistics, misdiagnosed autistics, and wannabees will come into the conversation and try to “best” autistics with their own supposed perseverative interests. After a little bit of time goes by, it usually becomes apparent that the “perseverative interests” of these self-diagnosed autistics, misdiagnosed autistics, and wannabees are actually just “interests.

Increasingly, lawmakers and law enforcement authorities are not being fooled by the “autism made me do it” defense. This may actually be a bad thing, however, because real autistics, with real compulsions which cause them to accidentally or deliberately break the law, wind up being treated the same way the account hijackers -who may not be autistic at all- are treated if they are caught. But

Even autistics who are self-assured, self-actualized, and happy with who they are, recognize that not all of their traits are spectacular, or advantageous to have, and that some of their traits cause them trouble. They may see wannabees as having an unrealistic and uninformed view about what autism really looks like. Wannabees

It seems as though autism is being portrayed in literature less as a diagnosis, and more as a minority lifestyle. Sometimes it is even portrayed as a culture or cultural imperative. Much of what is written by “autistics” is actually being written by “self diagnosed” autistics, and no matter who is doing the writing (autistic author or self-diagnosed author), plots, characterization, and other elements, are many times being drawn and presented based on observation of “autistics” with unconfirmed diagnoses in informal venues rather than upon observations of real, diagnosed autistics in realistic or controlled settings. The

The number of diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder almost certainly went up dramatically for another reason, one that hasn’t gotten as much attention as it should: a typographical error. Shocking but true. In the DSM-IV, the description of pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified that was supposed to appear in print was “a severe and pervasive impairment in social interaction and in verbal or nonverbal communication skills” (emphasis added). What actually appeared, however, was “a severe and pervasive impairment of reciprocal social interaction or verbal and nonverbal communication skills” (emphasis added). Instead of needing to meet both criteria to merit the diagnosis of PDD-NOS, a patient needed to meet either.

#ActuallyAutistic

It was as though I had even to trick my own mind by chattering in such a casual and blase manner; any other way stopped at the point of motivation. It was as though I were emotionally constipated and the words could not otherwise escape my lips. If it were not for the methods I had devised, my words, like my screams and so many of my sobs, would have remained silent. People would push me to get to the point. When what I had to say was negative, this was quite simple. Opinions that had nothing to do with my own identity or needs rolled off my tongue like wisecracks from a stand-up comedian. ....Hiding behind the characters of Carol and Willie, I could say what I thought, but the problem was that I could not say what I felt. One solution was to become cold and clinical about topics I might feel something about. Everyone does this to an extent, in order to cover up what they feel, but I had actually to convince myself about things; it made me a shell of a person.

It was as though I had even to trick my own mind by chattering in such a casual and blase manner; any other way stopped at the point of motivation. It was as though I were emotionally constipated and the words could not otherwise escape my lips. If it were not for the methods I had devised, my words, like my screams and so many of my sobs, would have remained silent. People would push me to get to the point. When what I had to say was negative, this was quite simple. Opinions that had nothing to do with my own identity or needs rolled off my tongue like wisecracks from a stand-up comedian. ....Hiding behind the characters of Carol and Willie, I could say what I thought, but the problem was that I could not say what I felt. One solution was to become cold and clinical about topics I might feel something about. Everyone does this to an extent, in order to cover up what they feel, but I had actually to convince myself about things; it made me a shell of a person. These were the same tactics l employed when l found it necessary to create Carol in order to communicate all those years ago. Deep down, Donna never learned to communicate. Anything that l felt in the present still had either to be denied or expressed in a form of conversation others called waffling, chattering, babbling, or "wonking." l called it "talking in poetry.

It is important to understand about NT small talk that it is NOT just wasting time, or “about nothing.” If you have tried to mimic it unsuccessfully, it could be that you were actually talking about nothing, and doing nothing else; they would have found you to be dull in that case. Small talk is active discovery.

what’s it actually like?” And I think for a moment, because people don’t actually ask that very often. They tell me what they think I feel because they’ve read it in books, or they say incredible things like autistic people have no sense of humor or imagination or empathy when I’m standing right there beside them (and one day I’m going to point out that that is more than a little bit rude, not to mention Not Even True) or they—even worse—talk to me like I’m about five and can’t understand. “It’s like living with all your senses turned up to full volume all the time,” I say. And I stop and he sort of spins around so he is looking at me. “And it’s like living life in a different language, so you can’t ever quite relax because even when you think you’re fluent it’s still using a different part of your brain so by the end of the day you’re exhausted.” And I think about getting home from school and the effort of making it through the noise and the lights and the people and the change and the cars and the smells and the sun and the rain and holding it together through all that, and then getting home. And how when I get home and I can switch off, that’s when I blow up, because it’s safe.

Clinical research has found that somewhere between 20 and 37 percent of diagnosed anorexia nervosa sufferers are Autistic.[24] Since Autism is underdiagnosed in the populations who are most likely to be diagnosed with eating disorders (women, trans people, and gay men), the actual rate of co-occurrence might be much higher.

Which leaves anxiety and autism…” Oliver tilted his head, deep in thought. “While I do experience intrusive thoughts from time to time, I wouldn’t necessarily categorize it as ‘persistent worry’, which is a key symptom of anxiety. And if you look at the technical definition of the disorder, I’m actually a bit more—” “Autistic!” Kat threw up her hands. “You are aggressively autistic.” “Knock it off,” I warned Kat. “Autistic, of course.” Oliver nodded and returned to his book. “That makes more sense.

the megalomanic view of oneself as the Elect, wholly good, abominably persecuted yet assured of ultimate triumph; the attribution of gigantic and demonic powers to the adversary; the refusal to accept the ineluctable limitations and imperfections of human existence, such as transience, dissention, conflict, fallibility whether intellectual or moral; the obsession with inerrable prophecies … systematized misinterpretations, always gross and often grotesque … ruthlessness directed towards an end which by its very nature cannot be realised—towards a total and final solution such as cannot be attained at any actual time or in any concrete situation, but only in the timeless and autistic realm of phantasy.”1

How can NTs be so powerful? There are two reasons they can do this: One is that their desensitization allows them to balance their attention without being distracted by any one overwhelming stimulus. Second, they reduce the size of the incoming data through symbolic filtering, so they only process the symbols, not the whole. Like the cockpit who is checking the airspeed dial (not actually feeling the air), they only bring in the minute essentials.

As the George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard, a powerful Washington insider and advisor to two Republican presidents, Martin S. Feldstein was accustomed to being taken very seriously. He taught Ec 10, the introductory economics course at Harvard, for twenty years and this made some of the most powerful people in the USA his former students. So it might have come as a rude shock for Feldstein to be told in Spring 2003, not merely by a bunch of rebellious students but some of his fellow faculty, that his course was not only not good enough, it was misleading. This disturbance was triggered by Students for a Humane and Responsible Economics (SHARE), a Harvard-based off-shoot of the Post-Autistic Economics Network. But significantly, the actual petition demanding changes in Ec 10 was drafted by one of Feldstein’s colleagues, Prof. Stephen A. Marglin, himself a Harvard graduate and a veteran member of the faculty. The petition asked: If this course is meant to be an introduction to basic economic principles and methods, why is its content limited to the neo-liberal variety of economics? Why does it create the impression that there are no other models in the field of economics? Why isn’t there a plurality of approaches adapted to the complexity of objects analysed? By not providing a truly open marketplace for ideas Harvard failed to prepare students to be critical thinkers and engaged citizens, alleged SHARE. Its mission statement went on to argue that the standard economic models taught at Harvard were loaded with values and political convictions which inevitably influenced, if not defined, the students’ worldview as well as their career choices. Above all, said the petition, ‘ . . . by falsely presenting economics as a positive science devoid of ethical values, we believe Harvard strips students of their intellectual agency and prevents them from being able to make up their own minds.

Wall Street: I’d start carrying guns if I were you.      Your annual reports are worse fiction than the screenplay for Dude, Where’s My Car?, which you further inflate by downsizing and laying off the very people whose life savings you’re pillaging. How long do you think you can do that to people? There are consequences. Maybe not today. Or tomorrow. But inevitably. Just ask the Romanovs. They had a nice little setup, too, until that knock at the door.      Second, Congress: We’re on to your act.      In the middle of the meltdown, CSPAN showed you pacing the Capitol floor yapping about “under God” staying in the Pledge of Allegiance and attacking the producers of Sesame Street for introducing an HIV-positive Muppet. Then you passed some mealy-mouthed reforms and crowded to get inside the crop marks at the photo op like a frat-house phone-booth stunt.      News flash: We out here in the Heartland care infinitely more about God-and-Country issues because we have internal moral-guidance systems that make you guys look like a squadron of gooney birds landing facedown on an icecap and tumbling ass over kettle. But unlike you, we have to earn a living and can’t just chuck our job responsibilities to march around the office ranting all day that the less-righteous offend us. Jeez, you’re like autistic schoolchildren who keep getting up from your desks and wandering to the window to see if there’s a new demagoguery jungle gym out on the playground. So sit back down, face forward and pay attention!      In summary, what’s the answer?      The reforms laws were so toothless they were like me saying that I passed some laws, and the president and vice president have forgotten more about insider trading than Martha Stewart will ever know.      Yet the powers that be say they’re doing everything they can. But they’re conveniently forgetting a little constitutional sitcom from the nineties that showed us what the government can really do when it wants to go Starr Chamber. That’s with two rs.      Does it make any sense to pursue Wall Street miscreants any less vigorously than Ken Starr sniffed down Clinton’s sex life? And remember, a sitting president actually got impeached over that—something incredibly icky but in the end free of charge to taxpayers, except for the $40 million the independent posse spent dragging citizens into motel rooms and staring at jism through magnifying glasses. But where’s that kind of government excess now? Where’s a coffee-cranked little prosecutor when you really need him?      I say, bring back the independent counsel. And when we finally nail you stock-market cheats, it’s off to a real prison, not the rich guys’ jail. Then, in a few years, when the first of you start walking back out the gates with that new look in your eyes, the rest of the herd will get the message pretty fast.

Don’t get mad at me for asking this, but why do you like him? I mean, I know you guys have the autistic sibling thing in common, but that can’t be the whole story.” “It’s not.” I want to explain, but it’s not easy. “You know that viral video that everyone was into a few years ago? About the lion who gets reunited with the guy who raised him as a cub? And the lion, like, licks him and hugs him and plays with him? And it’s amazing?” She raises her eyebrows. “You saying David’s a lion?” “It’s just . . . it’s easy to get a dog to love you. But it’s a lot harder—​and cooler—​to get a lion to. Especially if you’re the only person he doesn’t attack.” “I hope there’s a sexual metaphor somewhere in this whole lion thing,” Sarah says. “Because, honestly, that’s the only reason that would actually make sense to me.” “I don’t think either of us has a problem with you leaping to that assumption,” I say with an exaggerated wink. “Seriously,” she says. “Calling him a lion . . . I have issues with this.” “It’s just a metaphor.” “I know. But I don’t want you to be involved with someone who could hurt you.” “He wouldn’t. Not ever. He thinks the world is a shitty place, but he also thinks I’m the best thing in it. Well, me and his brother.” “Great,” she says. “Now you’re making me jealous. I’m jealous of your relationship with David Fields. Could I be a bigger loser?” “I’m not even telling you the best parts.” “Good,” she says. “Spare me

You know why I write books? Because it is the one thing about the outcome of which I don't give a damn. I don't care if they gather dust, I don't care if they don't sell. In fact, among my hundred plus works, there are a few that have sold barely ten copies. Yet, am I bothered! Nope! I don't write to sell books, I write because my mind teeters on the edge of psychosis if I spend a single day without writing. Sure, the ultimate mission behind my legacy is the construction of a humane world, but if you get down to the actual morale of the moment - the only recompense I get out of it all, is the felicity of putting my fervor on paper - thus immortalizing them for eons to come. That's how this one life could produce such an impossibly inexhaustible amount of literature in the first place - because I dream my ideas, breathe my ideas, and live my ideas. Better a lesser read genius, than a misread genius. Or to put it plainer still - I am not a writer, I am an anomaly - for better or for worse, I am an anomaly.

(..) even if you feel you’ve hit rock bottom, you’ve actually started to bounce back, and you never know what little thing might set you on the happier track.

How autistic someone looks doesn’t say much about how autistic someone is. All it does is give an indication of how intelligent someone is and how much that person has been “trained” to show neurotypical behaviour. For that reason, most non-autistic-looking autistics tend to be the people who experience the highest psychological pressure. Their brain is running non-stop on full capacity, their self-monitoring is so internalised the system can’t actually be turned off anymore. A constant flow of information (at best) or heartless self-criticism (at worst) leaves the owner of this brain overworked, burnt-out and depressed.

Jane is autistic. She feels sick, so she goes to the doctor. The doctor asks “How are you?” Jane says “I feel sick. My head hurts and my nose is runny.” It is good that Jane says this to the doctor, because this helps the doctor know what to do. After going to the doctor, Jane goes to a restaurant. The waiter says “How are you?” Jane says “I feel sick. My head hurts and my nose is runny.” The waiter is just being polite, and does not want to know how Jane is actually feeling. Jane could have just said “I am good.

Bob is autistic, and he sees his friend Sally smiling. Bob thinks that Sally is happy because she is smiling, but Sally is actually angry. Sometimes people smile when they’re angry. Bob doesn’t understand that Sally is angry, so he tries to talk to Sally about happy things. This just makes Sally more angry.

The issue autistic people have fought for for years has finally been added – as the very last symptom on list B of the DSM-5. The one thing which, to me and many others, is the most important aspect of our autism: hypo- and/or hypersensitivity to stimuli. It’s the essence of the Intense World Theory and, in my opinion (and that of the Markrams), also the source of all additional problems. All people experience stimuli. Sometimes many, sometimes few, sometimes consciously, but frequently completely subconsciously. Stimuli are the signals we receive mainly through the five senses, even though humans actually have more than five. And then there’s the stimuli that come from your brain itself: thoughts.

The decision of when and how to self-disclose puts Autistic people in quite a double bind. In order to be known, we have to come out, but we’re usually coming out in a harsh cultural landscape where it’s likely that people won’t actually understand us. By coming out, we help to counter ignorant images people have of our disability, but because those stereotypes are so pervasive and long-standing, it’s impossible for a single counter-example to undo all the harm that’s been done. Often, when a person from the majority group encounters information that runs against their stereotypes of an oppressed group, they respond by either discounting the information (for example, by saying “you’re not really that Autistic!”) or by subgrouping the people who deviate from stereotypes (for example, by telling them “you’re not like those other Autistic people, the ones who are really impaired. You’re one of the smart ones!”).

The baffled families of transgender people and adult Autistics alike tend to claim there “were no signs” of these identities when the person was young.[1] In actuality, there were often many signs, which the child’s family either did not know to look for, or didn’t wish to see.[2

I urge you to read books, articles, blogs, poetry, and whatever else you can get your hands on authored by actual Autistic women. These people, these Autistic women, are the experts in growing up Autistic. A hundred degrees on the wall from top universities may make you an expert in the field of a disorder, but they will never make you an expert on being Autistic.

All the scientists out there seem to be just churning out little puzzle pieces from their little area of expertise, and almost nobody is working on the puzzle! In fact if you look at the all the science journals out there, you will find that about 99% of them deal with results of experiments or clinical observations. I only know of one medical journal devoted to theory-Medical Hypotheses! That should tell you how dysfunctional our science community actually is! I believe most scientists are borderline autistics that love repetition, sameness, and are generally pedantic (enjoying correcting others) and, like autistic children , they get mad when the furniture is rearranged!

When I’m not “productive” (according to my own harsh standards), I struggle with guilt and a wilting sense of self worth. I often have to remind myself that this attitude is actually ableism, embedded deep in my thoughts—that I would never be so hard on an autistic friend as I am on myself.

Which leads me to this point: the myth of the unfeeling autistic who cares about no one but herself is, in fact, just that—a complete and utter myth. Actually, it’s far more and far worse. It’s an ill-informed stereotype built on incomplete understanding and bad science, carrying with it serious moral, ethical, and practical implications for millions of people around the world.

relationship. The mothers of autistic children in their studies started out warm, but actually became more reserved when they did not get positive feedback from their children. The kind of love that is critical to making the parent-infant bond work is reciprocal.

If coming out as autistic as an adult is hard, it’s only because of the resistance of those around you. It doesn’t change the actual challenges you have in your job, your relationships, or your perception. Which is just such a perfect fact because the challenges you’ve always faced haven’t been due to the autism either — not really. They’ve been due to the way the world has been structured based on neurotypical thinking and socialization. In most cases, autism is a social disability, not a medical one.

One of the most maddening things you’re going to hear is “Well, we’re all on the spectrum.” Usually, this will be someone close to you, and you’ll have just disclosed to them that you are autistic. Their reply takes this disclosure and — seemingly — integrates it into their worldview while actually dump- ing it in the garbage.

Now in my forties, often I look around a room of adults and wonder how many others are faking it. If so, who are we playacting for? Who would be offended if we didn’t wear the right clothes? Which person sees themselves as an actual grown-up, would judge our handshake, comment sincerely on a wine, and expect a sense of achievement and pride to blossom within them for proving their adulthood? Who is motivated by power, believes that money is real, and insists the social structure is a meritocracy that 5 The Autistic’s Guide to Self-Discovery sprouted from the ground when George Washington chopped down a cherry tree to ratify the New Deal at Gettysburg, accom- panied by his Rough Riders? Which people are we trying to fit in for? In any given room, it could be everyone but me, or it could be no one.

Now in my forties, often I look around a room of adults and wonder how many others are faking it. If so, who are we playacting for? Who would be offended if we didn’t wear the right clothes? Which person sees themselves as an actual grown-up, would judge our handshake, comment sincerely on a wine, and expect a sense of achievement and pride to blossom within them for proving their adulthood? Who is motivated by power, believes that money is real, and insists the social structure is a meritocracy that sprouted from the ground when George Washington chopped down a cherry tree to ratify the New Deal at Gettysburg, accompanied by his Rough Riders? Which people are we trying to fit in for? In any given room, it could be everyone but me, or it could be no one.