What Autism Is And What Autism Isn’t

Everything you think you know about autism is wrong. It’s a daring statement, but for the overwhelming majority of the population it is a simple fact. Autism is a diagnosis that many people think they know about, but this tends to amount to little more than misinformation. 

If you look up “what is autism”, you will find countless overwhelming and scary descriptions that fail to give the reader an accurate image of it. Autism is a complex diagnosis, so it is impossible to give a very short definition of what it is, but here is my explanation, in simple terms. 

My definition of autism 

Most people’s brains are wired the same way, but not everybody’s is. Those with the most common wiring are referred to as neurotypicals. However, some people’s brains are wired differently: these people are called neurodivergent. Neurodivergent people are then diagnosed based on how their brains are different. These diagnoses include dyslexia, ADHD and autism, among countless other diagnoses. In many cases, neurodivergent people have more than one diagnosis. For example, many people with autism also have dyspraxia or ADHD. 

Autism specifically changes how your body receives and processes information. This can cause us to think in different ways to neurotypical people, but it can also lead to communication difficulties between autistic and non-autistic people. Some people with autism cannot speak, however their inability to speak does not mean that they are any less intelligent than anyone else nor does it mean that they cannot understand what people think of them. 

The fact that autistic people process their senses differently can lead to them feeling overwhelmed in situations when they feel too much of one or more of their senses.  Autistic people also tend to hyper-fixate on certain topics. These fixations are referred to as their special interests (this is stereotypically trains, but I have never met a person with autism that had trains as a special interest). Many autistic people find comfort in routine, and because of this they get upset when their routine changes unexpectedly. 

Many autistic people also like to move their hands or bodies around occasionally. This is referred to as “stimming”. The most obvious example of stimming is flapping and shaking of hands. Also, many people with autism find eye contact uncomfortable, and some avoid eye contact completely or look at something else near people’s faces to give the impression of eye contact. 

Psychologists traditionally were so immersed in their idea that something was “wrong” with people with autism that they failed to see the positive traits. So, I will now talk about the underreported positive traits of autism. Autistic people are very loyal and highly accepting of difference in others, likely due to their own experience of being mistreated. They also have strong focus, attention to detail, and tend to come up with unique perspectives. This is why lots of (but not all) autistic people are well suited to science.  They are also creative and very honest. In fact, we often land in trouble for being too honest. 

Autism is referred to as a spectrum because it affects everybody differently. The symptoms and extremity of these symptoms vary from person to person. However, no two people with autism have exactly the same experience. There is a common saying in autistic circles: “When you meet one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism”, as nobody has the same experience as anybody else. Not everybody has all the traits. What is worth noting, however, is that the word spectrum implies that we can plot autistic people on a line from less autistic to more autistic. This is not the case. Many people have made multidimensional autistic spectrum graphs that have 5, 8 or even more dimensions, but these are only slightly better approximations as it is often too complex to be conveyed by numbers. 

Autism is believed to be genetic, but we know very little about what causes it. We do know, however, that it is not caused by vaccines or bad parenting, as was believed historically. 

So that’s the definition of autism. Unfortunately, many people with autism are judged for being different by neurotypicals and therefore have learned how to hide their symptoms to be more accepted by others. This act is called “masking”. 

Autism and me 

What I have just written down is a bunch of abstract theory. But to truly help you understand it, I will illustrate it with me as an example. 

Sometimes when I am in a room where numerous people are talking loudly (i.e. multiple loud audio sources), sensory issues kick in and I get super stressed and need to get out of there immediately. I have many special interests: right now, my main ones are horror movies and heavy metal, although I have lots of special interests that have changed over time. Whenever I don’t know what is going on, even if I know I will find out in time, the lack of a schedule is a highly stressful experience for me. 

When I am alone, I very visibly stim when I am excited. However, when I am around others, out of fear of being judged, I try to avoid stimming. But I do stim subconsciously every now and then when around others. I am expected to make eye contact in conversation, and I have been told since I was little that I need to at least pretend to make eye contact, so I do make it 90% of the time. Sometimes I don’t have the energy to do it, so I just don’t. 

I am highly logical and talented with abstract problem solving, and I suspect my autism is part of that, but I can’t know it for sure. The reason is that autism isn’t just an inability to do some things, but rather a complete change of who you are and how you operate. So it’s impossible for me to know at times what’s me and what’s the autism, because they are intertwined inside of me. I like to think that I am loyal and highly accepting of difference too, but I’m probably not the fairest judge of that. 

I have gotten very good at masking. While people can tell something is different about me, nobody can really tell what it is and usually don’t think about it too much. 

Myths 

There is so much misinformation surrounding autism that I do need to dedicate a serious chuck of this article to debunk this information. 

Everybody has a little bit of autism. 

This is like saying everybody is bipolar because we all have mood swings. While many people do say it with good intentions, to try to make us appeal to neurotypicals definition of “normal”, in practice this just makes us feel like our unique challenges are being disregarded. 

Only males have autism. 

People with autism have historically been constantly misdiagnosed, and this problem has not completely vanished. Autism was historically believed to only effect boys, so girls were not diagnosed with it (I say boys and girls as it was previously thought to be a childhood disorder). This was because of some of the traits of autism are less prevalent in girls, and the fact that lots of the people who formulated the original diagnoses were very far off from the reality (they believed that autism was a result of the parents not giving their child enough love and attention, among other things). Many sexist theories have been developed by psychologists such as claiming that autism is an extremified version of the male brain. We don’t know exact numbers on how many males as compared to females have autism due to the extreme misdiagnosis and thus underdiagnosis. But I see no reason why it would be more prevalent in males as compared to females, so I believe that an equal number of males and females have it. 

All people with autism are either highly intelligent or very unintelligent. 

People believe this due to media representation (Rain Man, Big Bang Theory, etc) focusing on the extremes. Nowadays, people favour the view of autistic people as super geniuses rather than unintelligent people, but most people with autism are of average intelligence. It is little more than a myth, however it causes autistic people to be under pressure to appear to be a super genius at all times as it is preferable to the alternative view, so it is a harmful myth. 

Vaccines cause autism. 

The origin of this myth was a study by a discredited academic called Andrew Wakefield that falsely claimed this. He faked a study to “prove” this and has since had his medical licence revoked. It has been proven multiple times that there is no link between vaccines and autism. The reason this myth took off was because autism rates started to increase around the same time as vaccination rates. However, autism rates increased then because that’s when psychologists changed the definition of autism from only extreme cases to all cases. Better diagnosis guidelines led to people who previously would have been misdiagnosed or undiagnosed being diagnosed. Jokes about antivaxxers are common in autistic circles. However anti-vaxxers are responsible for spreading disinformation about autism that demonises it and leads to children dying, so just disregarding them is not a good idea. What is worth noting is that an unusually high proportion of autistic people are scientists, so one could say that autism does cause vaccines. 

Autism is something that is obvious in people. 

I can mask well, and so can countless other people with autism. So, it’s not. Most people only notice the very obvious cases. 

Saying “That’s Autistic” is harmless. 

When I heard this as a secondary school student, I felt offended and unaccepted. But because the attitudes were so universally negative, I felt afraid to stand up for myself. If people knew I was different, I would have been made fun of or judged behind my back. While it may seem harmless, it’s a way that people actively contribute to a society of intolerance, so even if nobody stands up to you, or even if you think there is no autistic people in the room with you (see above), it’s still harmful. 

Autism can be cured. 

It can’t be. Some drug won’t magically rewire your brain. People who claim this do one of two things. The first one is that they scam parents out of thousands by selling them placebo pills and trying to convince them the next ones are the ones that will work. The second one is that they force the kids to appear neurotypical through punishment. They punish them for stimming and not holding eye contact, among other things. It is based on the same pseudo-science that led to gay conversion therapy and is just as damaging, traumatising and ineffective. 

We Grow Out of It. 

While I wish I magically gained better social skills as I grew up, this isn’t the case. Autistic people do typically become better at masking and can sometimes become better at overcoming sensory issues, but this doesn’t mean our difficulties magically disappear. 

Autism is the next step in evolution. 

I heard this sentiment was expressed in the 2018 film “The Predator”. I don’t want to get into this film as I am not a big fan of bad reboots. But this sentiment is, in my eyes, pro-autism eugenics instead of the more historically common anti-autism eugenics. In my eyes, all eugenics is majorly wrong, so I believe this sentiment to be dangerous, while also being misleading. 

This article was written as part of a three part series for World Autism Month.