What Is It Like To Be Autistic?

We spend a great deal of time in neurodiversity spaces advocating and educating around neurodivergent experience, and yet, I believe we miss the truth of the matter. In considering what it is like to be Autistic, or any kind of “neurodivergent from birth” existence, we miss the limited nature of our own experience.

Allow me to elaborate.

I can tell you what it's like to be Autistic. I can explain my experience in great detail. However, I can only tell you MY experience. Of course I can draw on what others tell me of their own experience. I can understand statistics, and qualitative descriptions from others. But I will never have a precise point of reference within the others worldview.

This is the nature of the double empathy problem. We are ships on the surface of others deep ocean of experience. I can only know my own truth in such intimate detail. My knowledge of anothers truth will always be somewhat superficial. So, when I explain what autism is like, what I mean to explain is what it's like to be me. In my world, I am Autistic, and autism is me.

I have nothing to anchor me in the experience of neurotypical performance. As such, my explanations of me for a neurotypical person are entirely hypothetical in nature and interpreted at the discretion of the observer. That's what others are, observers. No one else is partaking in my experience of being Autistic, and as such they can not fully empathise with my world.

And so, to answer the titular question: What is it like to be Autistic?

There is no singular answer. Being Autistic is a diverse and varied experience. Much like humanity itself. Because Autistic people are humans too.