Living as autistic isn’t exactly great (it’s a disability after all). But I know plenty of autistic people who are great, and autism probably contributed to their personality in some way
I agree with this - the majority of our autistic traits lead to a net defecit in quality of life but some can be turned to our advantage.
Our special interests can be powerful in allowing us to persue a career that really interests us.
Our hyperfocus can allow us to run rings round out NT counterparts in certain specific situations.
Our heightened senses can allow us to spot things that elude most NTs, whether it is pattern recognition, smells etc, making us good in some detectiving (is that even a word?) situations.
These have quite narrow applications and often require us to endure a lot from out other autistic traits so we don't always get the joy from them that we could.
On balance I would say it isn't so great - I think I would happily swap a few of my "superpowers" for much less mental stress in life.
I agree with this - the majority of our autistic traits lead to a net defecit in quality of life but some can be turned to our advantage.
Our special interests can be powerful in allowing us to persue a career that really interests us.
Our hyperfocus can allow us to run rings round out NT counterparts in certain specific situations.
Our heightened senses can allow us to spot things that elude most NTs, whether it is pattern recognition, smells etc, making us good in some detectiving (is that even a word?) situations.
These have quite narrow applications and often require us to endure a lot from out other autistic traits so we don't always get the joy from them that we could.
On balance I would say it isn't so great - I think I would happily swap a few of my "superpowers" for much less mental stress in life.
Our special interests can be powerful in allowing us to persue a career that really interests us.
That’s only if you’re lucky enough to have a special interest that is a career. …I mean probably anything can technically be a career, but someone whose SpIn is technology is more likely to get a job in tech than someone whose SpIn is the color blue. And even then there’s a fine line between being able to hyperfocus on it to be a good employee vs only hyperfixating on certain aspects which makes you not getting the right tasks done on time and thus being a bad employee.
Our heightened senses can allow us to spot things that elude most NTs, whether it is pattern recognition, smells etc, making us good in some detectiving (is that even a word?) situations.
One time I kept complaining that the carpet felt different (even while always wearing socks, it felt kind of warm and different way it felt while walking on it), nobody else could feel a difference. 2 months later and it turned out there was a leak and a bunch of water gathered under the carpets. There have been other times where I noticed issues way before other people did because I could hear/smell/see/feel some difference, but I’ve had so many times where people dismissed my observations that most of the time I don’t bring it up because I assume I’m just being sensitive. So that could be helpful sometimes I suppose but mostly it’s just being overstimulated constantly.
