What I Mean When I Say I'm Autistic: Unpuzzling a Life on the Autism Spectrum

by Annie Kotowicz

At first glance, my interests seem to cover a wide range of topics—art, literature, psychology, and music, to name a few. But after reading enough anecdotes from autistic women, I realized that everything I find deeply exciting falls into one of two specific categories. One is phenomenology, which involves noticing and analyzing how various experiences feel from the inside, such as whether you think in words or in pictures. The other category is aesthetic tropes, or the sensory elements that accompany a predictable story, such as the characters, setting, and soundtrack of a fairytale.

Little by little, I came to realize that I must be fully autistic. What a significant discovery! It explained nearly every problem I’d had in life, as well as many of my quirks and talents. It was like learning for the first time that I’m actually an elf or mermaid or fairy—moreover, that there’s nothing wrong with that, and that there are others like me.

I thought communication was hard because I’m awkward and annoying. It’s actually hard because I put extraordinary effort into processing and analyzing words, meanwhile missing the hidden meanings in gestures and tone.

the more I’ve realized that what makes me autistic is not my outer actions, but the inner neurology that produces them.

Autistic people process information differently, because our brains are hyper-connected in some places and less connected in others. This difference is visible on brain scans—we have neural pathways that others don’t, like secret passages all over our brains. This results in a torrent of information for each of us to process, including physical sensations and pattern recognition. By default, everything is intense, which has been called “Intense World Theory.” We survive by filtering some parts out. It’s as if every form of input has a volume knob, and ours are all the way up by default—so we turn some down to compensate, but can’t control which ones. And here’s what creates the variety: Different people filter out different kinds of information. Then, what we don’t filter out becomes our focus. It’s comforting, and often necessary, to drown out the noise by turning all of our attention to one thing at a time, which has been called “Monotropism.”

With such intense focus, we often miss clues about what will happen next in our environment and interactions. Thus, a lot of autistic distress comes from living in a state of constant surprise. This is one application of “Predictive Coding Theory,” also known as “Predictive Processing Theory.”

Autistic people tend to notice spoken language more than body language and tone. Most of us notice surprising sights and sounds more than consistent ones, and pay more attention to sensory input in general than the average person does.

However, my favorite way to think of autism is this: I miss what others catch, and I catch what others miss.

notebooks are portals of possibility that cause my imagination to soar.

A benefit of avoiding sensory distress is that it increases my ability to handle everything else. When a situation gets easier on a sensory level, it gets easier on an intellectual level too.

Deeply feeling what others feel is, I believe, one of the greatest gifts autistic people have to offer the world. When others are in pain and I feel it too, it comforts me to remember that such empathy is a beautiful thing, because it moves me to help.

When autistic people ignore the power games that others play, we sometimes unintentionally threaten their power structures.

A meltdown doesn’t always mean that I’m upset. Often, it simply means that I’m depleted.

A big reaction to a big feeling isn’t an overreaction—it’s an accurate reaction. It’s only overreacting if it’s a big reaction to a small feeling, because then it isn’t communicating how the person really feels.

too much focus on bravery can obscure unmet needs.

I push myself too hard when I assume that my current self is the same as my recent self. It’s not. My abilities fluctuate wildly, a trait I’ve heard other autistics call “spiky functioning” because of how it would look on a graph.

If you want to be kind to us, then the only way is to be kind to everyone, giving the benefit of the doubt when people behave in ways you don’t understand.

Treating others as you’d like to be treated works if they want exactly what you want, but no two people think exactly alike. When possible, I prefer to treat others as they would like to be treated. A person’s neurotype can sometimes imply what they’re likely to prefer, but kindness requires curiosity about their individual preferences. This variety of preferences, perspectives, and processing styles is called neurodiversity.