Autistics: Why We’re Stressed

Chucking the “disorder” mumbo-jumbo in the dumpster

Out of place, hungry, and hating this outfit. Image by author using Midjourney.

I take in more data. My neurotype is officially called Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and before that, it was called Asperger’s Syndrome, after an ethically flexible doctor who studied my kind and tagged us “little professors” as a backhanded compliment, in German.

I use “AS” and drop the “disorder” because it’s oversimplified BS. I might have a disability, though, from the trauma of not knowing until I turned 58, or because the world is convinced my neurotype is deficient, disordered, deranged, and deviant.

Sensory overwhelm is foundational to the divergent experience, and it leads to processing information differently. There are specific downstream effects that come with heightened awareness of sound. For example, noise doesn’t blend into the background. In a noisy place, I sometimes hear a dozen or more sounds individually. I am acutely aware of visual details in my environment and automatically process them. AS people react to foods, textures, odors, and all manner of touch and tactile sensation.

This richer and busier environment means we also carry a special antenna for People, because other people are noisy, busy, demanding creatures.