On Explaining One’s Being Autistic

Navigating the disclosure of being autistic often feels like embarking on a journey with two distinct paths — each leading to a realm of understanding, or as I often find, confusion.

My daughter draws to express feelings or engage in sensory regulation through an outlet that serves as a visual focus and tactile stimulation

So, I’m at the barbershop and a casual conversation unfolds. My comfort level shrinks. Something with my sensory processing and social anxiety disorder makes me look different to the barber. I muster the courage to share my neurodivergent truth. "I’m autistic," I say. A brief pause ensues, a furrowed brow from what I can see from the mirror, and then an unexpectedly humorous response: "Is that like a professional auto driver?"

It’s in moments like this that I stand at a crossroads, armed with two narratives that paint vastly different pictures of my being autistic.

One path follows the familiar lanes of the medical model, where you delve into the deficits and deviations from the societal norm—a script written in diagnostic terms highlighting challenges in social interaction, communication, and behavior, per Lorna Wing’s diagnostic triad.

The other path, a more personal and empowering journey, embraces the self-advocacy model, which digresses from deficits or deviations and focuses on neurological differences. Here, you unlock the door to your unique neurocognitive landscape, inviting others to explore the labyrinth of a mind that thinks, feels, and acts in beautifully distinct ways. This is, in fact, a path that sheds light on how the qualifier ‘spectrum’ is a misrepresentation of the autistic being: far from being a straight “hot-to-coldč line, from some level 1 to some level 3 (see DSM-5), it’s a multidimensional map of one’s existence across features such as executive functioning, sensory processing, social interaction, communication, behavior, emotional regulation, theory of mind, motor skills, hyperfocus, abstraction skills, etc.

Two paths, two approaches to communicate one’s being autistic — each shaping the perception of autism in the eyes of those who witness the disclosure.

And each serving, perhaps, to better exhort acceptance without prejudice.

Feel free to connect with me: https://linktr.ee/undaautistica.