“We are all a bit autistic.” Not.

 

Did you know there is such a thing as “autistic culture? Well, I’ve seen the phrase used by #ActuallyAutistic people. I’m not quite sure what it means but I think part of it must be the way that we talk among ourselves (online, at least) and share ideas and experiences.

When we share things, one of the common themes is “what not to say to an autistic person”. Because we’ve all heard them.

Things like “you don’t look autistic”, “you must be high functioning” or “your autism doesn’t count because you’re not like my family member who is actually disabled”. (OK, that last one wasn’t the actual wording, but it was the subtext.)

Mostly we repeat the same things to each other, because we all hear the same things so often.

One of the most common is “Aren’t we all a bit autistic?” Chris Bonnello of Autistic Not Weird has answered this well by turning the question around.  “If everyone were ‘a little autistic’, people like me would pass job interviews,” he writes. (Yes, it's a sore point.) And there’s a whole list like that. Because if autism was normal, autistic people wouldn’t be treated as if they weren’t. 

I was asked the question recently in a safe setting with people I liked and trusted, so I answered it a different way. It helped me to work out what I think.

The question was something along the lines of “isn’t everyone on the spectrum?”

Talking about “the spectrum” is problematic in itself. A spectrum is not a line, but somehow that’s how people visualise it. High functioning people at one end and low functioning (how could you even use that to describe a fellow human being?) at the other. 

That’s a big issue so I ignored it. What I said was something like this.

Some years ago, before I got my autism diagnosis, I was watching a TV programme about autism. At the end, one of the experts said “You might have autistic traits but that doesn’t necessarily mean you are autistic.”

People think of autistic traits as things like being socially awkward or geeky (lots of humans are like that, not just autistic ones). But they are seeing it from the outside.

That is not what being autistic is like from the inside. It’s not defined by your external symptoms, it’s about how you process the world.

Autism and communication

We process communication differently. 

What you see: someone who says the wrong thing, misunderstands instructions and doesn’t get jokes.

What we feel: people are not talking our language. How can we process something properly when we don’t understand the underlying grammar?

That is why we struggle to understand the way neurotypical people share information or what they expect back from us. When someone tells me something, I take the words at face value. If they want me to do something (or, more likely, not do something) and haven’t explicitly said so, it’s likely I won’t notice. To me, that seems logical but it’s not normal. Most people are not “a bit like that”.

Autism and sensory overload

We process sensory inputs differently. 

What you see: someone over-reacting to something that doesn’t bother you. 

What we feel: unbearable stress.

Some of us can’t stand noise, or scratchy clothes or food with strong tastes or unusual textures. For me, it’s noise and smells. Especially noise. Background noise makes me anxious and distracted. Unexpected noises make me stop what I’m doing and walk off in search of the source (it’s not so bad once I know what it is.) Branded “radio” in shops can give me a meltdown. It’s very disruptive to normal life. Most people are not “a bit like that”, either.

Autism, emotions and empathy

We process emotions differently. 

What you see: someone who doesn’t express emotion. 

What we feel: emotion.

When I got my autism “diagnosis” (they still call it that, even though it’s not an illness), I got one follow-up appointment to talk it through. I'm still cross that at this meeting, the “expert” who diagnosed me tried hard to convince me that autistic people don’t have empathy. This is actually a myth. 

This myth is one of the things autistic people talk about a lot among themselves. A lot of us say we are actually hyper-sensitive to other people’s feelings, able to pick up emotional atmospheres and easily distressed by other people’s emotions. The problem is that we don’t always know what is expected of us socially in these situations, and we may not display our empathy in the socially accepted way.

Another common problem, which I’ve got, is a thing called alexithymia. It’s when you know you’re feeling something but you can’t tell what it is. I liked this graphic from Autistic Bride (the image is at the top of the blog; the link goes to a Facebook post). 

"My brain: Hey, just so you know, you're feeling an emotion." Me: Well, what emotion is it?" My brain: (shrugs).

It’s actually quite hard going through life feeling vaguely uneasy and uncomfortable but not knowing why, or what is behind it. Most people are not “a bit like that”, although alexithymia does affect non-autistic people too.

Those are just examples, and it’s different for everyone. But I hope it makes the point that being autistic isn’t about what it looks like, it’s about what it feels like. And I can guarantee that the people saying “we’re all a bit like that” don't actually feel like that at all.