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"Everyone is on the Autism Scale!" - is this right?

Mweekie

Hi.

I don't often post on here, but I have been getting very frustrated by some people who I know...

The other day, I was talking to someone in particular and about my (currently undiagnosed) autism and she turns round and I quote... "Well...everyone is on the autistic scale on one end or the other. No one is a 'normal' person. Everyone has some autistic trait...". She continued on this track for well over an hour and I felt myself getting more and more upset by her.

So my question is - is everyone in the world on the scale in one sense or another.

I know what I feel about it and I know that yes some people are on the scale (whether diagnosed or not) but I don't feel every single person is on it.

Thank you for letting me a) rant and b) ask this question.

Mweekie xx

Parents

  • No, we are not all on "the scale!"  Anyway autism isn't a scale, I hope you put her right, LOL

    I think that is sometimes said by people who want to minimise our problems, probably so they don't have to take our needs into account.

    However, there is a ven diagram in my head.  Our autism is largely or entirely genetic. Those genes come from somewhere.  Some people in our family are quite NT, but may have a trait or two without it amounting to autism, a few may only narrowly miss the mark for a diagnosis, but yet share some, but perhaps not all our experiences.  I do think most of the population is NT, but likewise there are some folk on the fuzzy line around the boundary of the spectrum.

    In my ven diagram I  see us in the middle, with it's fuzzy boundary, but intersected by other groups with other sometimes co-occuring characteristics, some of which are neurodivergent, which you don't have to be autistic to have, but are statistically much more common if you are:  for instance, being dyslexic, or having ADHD, being ambidextrous, having synaesthesia or an eidetic memory, identifying as LGBTQ+ and a whole lot more... all seem to be statistically way more likely if you are also autistic.  Furthermore, a lot of these characteristics are common to a lot of my friends. This makes me wonder whether there are like ways of thinking in this corner of humanity (even if the individuals aren't all autistic) which attracts me to them.

    It takes all sorts to make a world, but I am left to wonder that whether rather than a simple NT/ND divide there aren't cluster types of neurological make up, some of which are closer together than others and prone to intersect.  Of course, I've nothing really to back that up with.  It's just the pondering of my mind.

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  • No, we are not all on "the scale!"  Anyway autism isn't a scale, I hope you put her right, LOL

    I think that is sometimes said by people who want to minimise our problems, probably so they don't have to take our needs into account.

    However, there is a ven diagram in my head.  Our autism is largely or entirely genetic. Those genes come from somewhere.  Some people in our family are quite NT, but may have a trait or two without it amounting to autism, a few may only narrowly miss the mark for a diagnosis, but yet share some, but perhaps not all our experiences.  I do think most of the population is NT, but likewise there are some folk on the fuzzy line around the boundary of the spectrum.

    In my ven diagram I  see us in the middle, with it's fuzzy boundary, but intersected by other groups with other sometimes co-occuring characteristics, some of which are neurodivergent, which you don't have to be autistic to have, but are statistically much more common if you are:  for instance, being dyslexic, or having ADHD, being ambidextrous, having synaesthesia or an eidetic memory, identifying as LGBTQ+ and a whole lot more... all seem to be statistically way more likely if you are also autistic.  Furthermore, a lot of these characteristics are common to a lot of my friends. This makes me wonder whether there are like ways of thinking in this corner of humanity (even if the individuals aren't all autistic) which attracts me to them.

    It takes all sorts to make a world, but I am left to wonder that whether rather than a simple NT/ND divide there aren't cluster types of neurological make up, some of which are closer together than others and prone to intersect.  Of course, I've nothing really to back that up with.  It's just the pondering of my mind.

Children
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