What is Autism by Alex

 

Autism is a neurological condition that affects how a person socialises, communicates and sees the world around them. It is a hidden disability so you can’t usually tell that someone has it just by looking at them. It is also a spectrum condition so it’s very different for every person who has it. People on the spectrum have different levels of support needs. Some autistic individuals can’t talk but others have no obvious language difficulties at all. 

 

I remember hearing someone explain the difference between autistics and allistic (a fancy word for people who don’t have autism) is comparable to the difference between an Apple Mac and a Windows PC. Both operating systems do important things but in very different ways. Just like allistic people: many autistic people have things they’re very good at but they often present themselves differently from allistic people. Allistics are usually better at socialising, reading non verbal communication, eye contact, etc but autistics can also have things that they’re very good at. For example I’m autistic and I have great long term memory and can remember many years back like they were yesterday. I can do this better than the majority if people but other things they can do easily are not so easy for me. 

 

Another thing I also find with autism for me personally is I tend to have my full attention absorbed to one thing at a time whereas many other people are focused on the big picture. This is the case for many other autistic people as well. I believe this fixation on one thing is actually a very big aspect of autism and causes a lot of the autistic traits we all know. Many autistic people will spot details and patterns that other people miss and many will have special interests they focus on and excel at. These features are likely caused by the hyper-focus on one thing at a time. 

 

Many autistic people experience high levels of anxiety too which also tends to mean we are hyper focused on the things that are causing anxiety. Things like common social interaction also tend to take focus on multiple things like listening to what they say, taking in their non verbal communication, making eye contact and more. So I do believe this focus on one thing does play a big factor in the traits of autism, at least in my case. 

 

Thank you for reading this blog article. I hope it gave an insight into what autism is from an autistic person’s perspective.