From NeuroHub: ‘What does autism feel like?’ An Autistic answer

Read the original essay

“What does autism feel like?” is one of the most common questions Autistic people get asked. In an essay on the NeuroHub Connect blog, David Gray-Hammond takes it seriously, and shows why it’s harder to answer than it sounds.

You can’t compare with what you’ve never felt

The essay’s starting point is simple. To say what autism feels like, you’d need something non-Autistic to compare it with. An Autistic person has never had that. As David writes: “I was born Autistic, I am Autistic, and I will die Autistic.”

He links this to the double empathy problem. When two people’s experiences of the world are very different, each can only offer the other a guess at what it’s like to be them, and understanding breaks down in both directions.

Autism as culture and ecology

Rather than looking for autism as a thing inside a person, the essay argues that Autistic people come to know themselves through each other: through shared reference points and recognition within Autistic culture. Autistic experience, in this view, is cultural and ecological as well as personal.

The essay also anticipates an objection: that Autistic people with high support needs can’t be part of that culture. David’s answer is that human cultures have always included people with very different support needs. The real question is whether Autistic culture is accessible to everyone, and why Autistic people are so often sorted by how much support they need instead of having their quality of life improved.

The answer

His conclusion is short: “being Autistic feels like being me.” To be Autistic is to feel human. What is different, he writes, is society’s constant need to make him feel non-human.

It’s a short read and a good one to share with anyone who has ever asked you the question.

This is a From NeuroHub piece: an AI-written summary of our own content. Read the original essay.