Does anybody here feel like they actually understand what it means to be autistic?

I wonder if I'm a bit of an outlier. I was diagnosed AuDHD as an adult 23 years ago and did NOT accept I was Autistic until last year. A big problem at the time was a complete lack of any support, explanation or information. I had sought an ADHD diagnosis and figured they just tacked on Autism because they assumed it would apply to anyone working in IT! I just felt stereotyped, so I rejected the idea. I was put on stimulant medication for ADHD and that was it in terms of "support" for the next 20 years or so.

I continued living in a "fog" and didn't understand myself and I just sort of muddled through life until I burned out last year. It wasn't a new experience for me, but I never understood what was causing it. This time, I decided to change how I related to being ADHD. I stopped fighting it and started accepting it more. That helped a lot, but I was still struggling. I decided to look again at my Autism diagnosis to see if there was actually anything to it.

Nowadays, there is a lot of really good information available on Autism. I've spent a year deep-diving into Autism as my new passionate interest. There are lots of first-hand accounts from wonderful Autistic people in podcasts, blogs, books, websites, forums, etc. I had always thought I was somehow uniquely broken, so I was astonished to find that Autistic people are *exactly* like me. The professionals got my diagnosis right all those years ago after all. What helped me more than anything else was my self-directed (and ongoing) education on all things Autism, accepting I am Autistic, and just giving myself a bit less of a hard time.

[INFODUMP WARNING!] One thing that has been going round and round in my head all year is a script (very Autistic) where I try to explain to someone (perhaps a family member) how I might differ from them. I always settle on explaining the difference between polytropism (them) and monotropism (me). I like how predictive monotropism is as a theory and how it describes a different brain, rather than a disordered or deficient one. My brain is very good at doing one thing at a time, and will do it with great intensity, but it gets overwhelmed if I try to make it do several things at once. For example, I can listen to the words a person is speaking, or I can watch their facial expressions and body language, but I find it hard to do both at the same time, so I tend to break eye contact when I'm listening. I can consciously force myself to hold eye contact (i.e., mask), but it requires much greater concentration and is stressful and tiring. ... Then my script begins to develop into something more elaborate and there I am lying awake at 4 am (again) wondering if I'll ever get back to sleep! It's a work in progress. I recommend learning about monotropism, though.

So, do I know what kind of Autist I am? No. I haven't got a clue. I don't even understand the question. I don't understand what is meant by "kind". I don't have enough context to go on. Perhaps I could just answer with "level 1" or "average" or "not very sporty", but is that the kind of answer the questioner was looking for? This is something that I think I won't lose much sleep over. My education, OTOH, will continue. I recommend it.

Damojo said:

I always settle on explaining the difference between polytropism (them) and monotropism (me).

Do you try to use these terms to explain it? I suspect you will find their eyes glossing over quickly if you do.

My experience has been to keep it really simple and in laymens terms. I describe things like being a bar with many conversations going on around me, music from the jukebox and cars driving by outside - I struggle to filter out the conversaion with the person in front of me from eveything else because my filters for it never cut in.

Also the thing about developing social skills as a child was affected by the same lack of filters - most other kids learned from observation and mimicing when I was struggling to work out what I was supposed to be observing because there was no rule book to follow.

Hyperfocus is one other positive traits and if you have it then it can be incredubly useful. It is one of the few times we can shut off other inputs and go deep down the rabbit hole, but only really if the subject is a passion of ours.

In essence I find it important to keep it simple, short and relatable for them as most people are honestly not really very interested in learning about it and just ask to be polite.

Damojo said:

I always settle on explaining the difference between polytropism (them) and monotropism (me).

Do you try to use these terms to explain it? I suspect you will find their eyes glossing over quickly if you do.

My experience has been to keep it really simple and in laymens terms. I describe things like being a bar with many conversations going on around me, music from the jukebox and cars driving by outside - I struggle to filter out the conversaion with the person in front of me from eveything else because my filters for it never cut in.

Also the thing about developing social skills as a child was affected by the same lack of filters - most other kids learned from observation and mimicing when I was struggling to work out what I was supposed to be observing because there was no rule book to follow.

Hyperfocus is one other positive traits and if you have it then it can be incredubly useful. It is one of the few times we can shut off other inputs and go deep down the rabbit hole, but only really if the subject is a passion of ours.

In essence I find it important to keep it simple, short and relatable for them as most people are honestly not really very interested in learning about it and just ask to be polite.

No, I haven't used those terms. I have yet to try out my script on anyone. Mostly, I imagine that I'll go with an all-my-brain-eggs-are-in-one-basket kind of approach: "Your brain can take a task like talking to a another person and break it down unconsciously and allocate some brain cells to filtering out background noise, some to reading body language, some to understanding spoken words, etc. My brain can't. All my brain cells focus intensely on just one part of the task at a time."

Anyway, it's more for a situation where I am asked to explain it, so my victim will only have themselves to blame!