Not Just Different. Autistics are different from each other, too!
It has become clear that autism has a strong inherited genetic component, with eccentricity and quirkiness in the parents often quirking downstream, so to speak.
If you’ve ever met a big family, you might have noticed that siblings can be wildly different from each other, as if they couldn’t possibly have come from the same parents.
My totally unscientific opinion is that autism is already widely and thoroughly mixed into the gene pool and can manifest strongly into any personality type that exists across the gene pool.
Anyone who has owned and lost a pet of a specific breed and tried to “replace” that pet with another of the same breed, they are frequently disappointed because even within a “breed” there are wildly different “personalities” in each “identical breed” animal.
Autism is not defined by personality, it is defined largely by cognitive processing differences.
Not all of these differences will manifest in all autistic individuals.
For instance, I am hypo-sensitive to external stimuli, not hyper-sensitive like the stereotype suggests. I love loud concerts with tons of lights and a crush of dancing bodies. I can block out background noise that makes neurotypicals freak out!
So, my autism-affected visible personality has been defined by outsiders much differently than it would if I was hyper-sensitive. I wouldn’t be known as that guy who goes to Phish and Dead concerts as a way to relax!
So, even as an individual person, if the sperm-egg-epigenetic pathways traveled during my development were slightly altered my personality might be completely unrecognizable, even to my family and close friends. My outward behavior in exactly the same situation (a concert) would be almost exactly the opposite!
Instead of running into the crush to get closer to the stage, I might be finding the quiet corner near the basement bathroom to hide.
Would you recognize both “me” versions as the same person?
So, my unproven and largely unsubstantiated theory is that autism affects people and people have different personalities.
Some other conditions, like Downs Syndrome, come with a relatively stable set of physical and mental handicaps that are caused by the syndrome. These individuals are still all different but their syndrome overwhelms some characteristics making it even more challenging to see the unique beauty in each Downs individual.
The funny thing? I’m learning that autists, ones who know they are autistic, are often pretty good at recognizing others on the spectrum, even uber-”high-functioning” super-maskers like myself who are thoroughly autistic and struggling like hell to stay afloat each day.
Autistics can often recognize those of us who are largely Invisibly Autistic.
We are all different. But autistics can often see similarly struggling and often misunderstood individuals.
And almost every autist whose writing I have read has used the word Different in describing how they have felt all their lives.
Autists have all kinds of personalities but each of us is still Different.
We have the full range of human personalities, all wearing autistic challenges, often invisibly but inevitably we eventually fall into the same “uncanny valley” that makes some computer graphics generated humans just “somehow not right.”
For example, The Polar Express movie was creepy because the characters were portrayed as “close to real but not real enough.” It triggers an “alien” and “danger” warning in many people that “something isn’t quite right.”
When neurotypicals detect our autism, they will give us The Look.
It usually looks to me like “Why on earth would you say that out loud? What is wrong with you?”
Or other times it’s just that my face didn’t respond with the proper emotional response.
Ugh. I hate The Look.
The Look always means I’m going to have to explain myself … again.
I hate having to explain myself. It is exhausting and demoralizing, especially when your sense it won’t make any difference. “Oh. Crud. They never understand.”
To neurotypicals, we look like people … until we don’t.
And then they try to put us into Big Bang Theory, Rain Man, Atypical, The Good Doctor, or some other visibly autistic stereotype.
Even if you consider yourself visibly or obviously autistic there will always be “new introductions” to people who won’t know you are autistic … until they do.
And then it gets weird.
Again.
People are baffled by us all being Different.
They are also baffled because we are not quite Different enough.
Each of us is uniquely baffling!
