Autism isn't a superpower
I was diagnosed high functioning autistic seven years ago, almost to the day. Some people around me said I didn't need a diagnosis because it would be pigeonholing, limiting. But I knew that without a diagnosis I wouldn't know where on the map I was. Sure enough, the diagnosis pinned down some aspects of my own nature and helped me understand why I react the way I do to things. That was vital in being able to function better in the world.
Years later, I noticed a completely different tone around autism. People who might previously have told me that I didn't need a diagnosis were telling me that autism was a superpower. In my experience this doesn't come from the autistic. Instead, it comes more from people speaking for us. And a lot of the coverage of autism is about how hard it is for the parents of autistic children. One group talks on our behalf. The other talks past us. Anyone feel like talking to us?
So here it is from the horse's mouth for once: we don't have superpowers.
To approach this technically, we're no more likely to be atypically gifted than the non-autistic. We have this tendency to develop overly high focus on things that interest us. Special interests they're known as. So it looks like a gift, but really we've directed a lot of run-time to something that may not be practical.
Looked at more poetically, the word superpower suggests something with no downside. People with superpowers can fly, shoot energy from their eyes, read minds, or manipulate metal. That isn't autism. I've had far too many bad times to believe that autism is a superpower. I've had far too many times curled up in tears at home because the world has been too overwhelming for me to process to believe that. Look at the photo below It’s from my time at Shell. It looks like a good photo and I used it for years as my portrait. I stopped using it for a simple reason: I hate it.
That was an appalling day. I was overloaded, in a dark room while a photographer took flash photos and told me to smile. He couldn't have known. But the impact was so severe that the following day I had a massive migraine. Already hurting, it pushed me off the edge.
Portrait of me dated 2019
And the above is the tip of the iceberg. Yes, autism is closely associated with higher levels of creativity, but genuinely creative people are isolated too because we don't fit neatly into structures. We push too many boundaries for that. Yes, the autistic can be good at solving technical problems that require intense focus, but many situations require cooperation more than isolation. Yes, our sensory sensitivity can bring heightened appreciation of art, but even accumulated experiences of beauty can overwhelm us.
And autism is also closely associated with serious mental illness. Combined with social challenges, that can make for a lonely road. So to now be told that I have a superpower isn’t merely wrong. It's insulting.
Perhaps the idea is to induce us to feel better, but feeling better isn't enough to help anyone do better. On every occasion when my mood has been high and I've floundered in a challenging situation I wasn't prepared for, it cut me off at the knees. My expectation of being able to do better was unrealistic and that caused a greater collapse afterwards.
What's enabled me to do better is developing my capabilities over the course of years. It's been learning how to do something better, accepting challenges and struggling through them despite the pain. It’s been developing an ever deeper understanding of my own nature and why I'm responding the way I am to what’s happening. It's been developing an iconclastic toolkit that some people have been only too happy to tell me is wrong because it isn't standard model. I'm not standard model. But that isn't a superpower either. Everyone's different.
In 8 years I went from living with family, unable to get a job, to a product owner level role in a field I hadn't even heard of when the journey began. It wasn't feeling better that brought me here. It was learning how to be better.