Are You Autistic

March 11th, 2026

Vocabulary

Allistic: Someone who is not autistic

Masking: Suppressing your emotions, behavior, and expression to fit into allistic society

Diagnostic criteria for autism focuses on observable behavior in autistic people rather than the differences in how autistic people think. In fields of psychology, this often involves considering how children behave and develop, leaving adults out of the equation. The professional study of autism is also affected by allistic bias without the full understanding of how autistic people function or the variability in autistic expression. The "observable behavior" that autism is tested against is usually any behavior that is disruptive to allistic people and allistic society, rather than criteria designed for autistic people to identify themselves with. Focusing on outwardly observable behavior also leaves out autistic individuals who have learned—or have been forced to learn—how to adapt to an allistic society and minimize any behavior that's disruptive to allistic people.

In recent years, autistic people themselves have gained a greater voice on the subject of autism. However, many autistic people also fall into the trap of defining autism by their outwardly observable behaviors that often align with autistic stereotypes. This continues to leave many people questioning if they are actually autistic because they don't fit the described patterns of behavior that vocal autistic people tend to share in. This is especially problematic for women and traumatized people who have been forced to learn extensive masking and to adapt to allistic society.

This article is designed for teenagers and adults to more easily identify themselves and their autism, taking into account the variability of expression in autistic individuals.

Dual Process Theory (Intuitive vs. Deliberate Thinking): There have been many attempts at creating a unified theory for autistic behavior. I am not here to posit one myself. However, I will try to apply a form of dual process theory—a general psychological theory on different forms of thought—to autism in an attempt to explain the differences in autistic thinking vs. allistic thinking. The goal here isn't to be entirely accurate to real life, but to be a useful framework for discussing the topic.

The dual process theory splits thought into two forms: intuitive (fast) thinking, and deliberate (slow) thinking. These aren't oppositional forms of thought, they typically work together in tandem during processing and decision making. When applied to autism, the theory is that autistic people struggle more with intuitive thinking, relying on deliberation more often to navigate scenarios. Some people claim that autistic people have superior deliberate thinking, but I don't care to give credence to the "autistic superpower" idea. Rather, autistic people can develop very complex webs of pattern recognition to make up for their struggles in scenarios where intuition would be more helpful. Recognizing those patterns and building up a large library of prior experiences to reference during a new situation or during communication with others can take a very long time, and even be a lifelong endeavor.

Intuition is helpful during communication as it allows us to quickly parse the information of body language, tone, facial expression, and language itself, informing how we should act or respond. Intuition is also helpful when encountering new and unknown situations, where prior knowledge may not be enough to navigate them. There are many more applications for intuitive thinking, including parsing which details are important and meaningful in artistic or technical fields. If autistic people struggle more with intuitive thinking, you can begin to see where they might struggle in daily life.

With this understanding, we can adapt these ideas to how they effect autistic people on a daily basis and how it informs their behavior.

Preface

Adaptation/Repression: Every form of behavior listed below is heavily affected by how much an autistic person has learned to adapt to allistic society. This adaptability could be an intentional effort or forced through authority figures and oppression. Whenever I describe this facet of autistic behavior, I will choose to use the word adaptability. I define adaptability as an autistic person's ability to adjust to what allistic society expects of them and their ability to circumvent their struggles through various means.

Autistic Behavior

Special Interest: Special interests are not simply a "thing you really like", nor is it restricted to a single piece of media. This is a very capitalistic and consumerist mindset that ignores the reality of what special interests mean to autistic people. Special interests are inner worlds in which things always make sense to the autistic individual. This provides comfort and satisfaction that isn't always experienced in the outer world. Autistic people tend to use special interests to cope because of what it provides them. For autistic people with high adaptability, they may find that special interests aren't as vital to their functioning and happiness, but for people with low adaptability, they may seem very outwardly obsessive with their special interests and engaged in them consistently. A special interest can be as specific as a single piece of media or type of object, or as broad as an entire field of study or concept. These are usually long term or even lifelong interests and pursuits, rather than the shorter form of "hyperfixation". My example: My special interest is art in general. I'm not limited to a particular medium, but video games and anime/manga are often of particular interest to me due to their inherently high autistic appeal. I maintain a spreadsheet of every work I experience, listing their date of release and their creators. I use this to trace the line of inspirations and to help understand the cultural context of a work when it came out. This is an interest I've had all my life in one way or another that gives me fulfillment and feels simple for me to navigate when other things aren't.

Specificity: To put it simply, preferring consistent and expected things. Autistic people tend to like having consistent schedules and will go out of their way to perform things in specific ways every time, because this reduces the amount of new scenarios and the processing this requires. This is a way to manage energy and stress, because new things are hard to account for and navigate. This is related to minimizing unusual sensory input such as new fabrics, food, smells, etc. Anything that's consistent and unchanging in your life is something you can get through automatically without spending any energy or stressing you out. Special interest applies to this category, because a special interest is a field where everything is consistent and doesn't put stress on the autistic individual. If you have a high amount of adaptability, keeping everything consistent may not be as necessary and dealing with your schedules and processes being interrupted may not be as stressful. My example: I don't have to schedule my entire day, but things like my morning and afternoon routines suddenly being disrupted by an unexpected event stresses me out. When I know in advance that an outing or event is scheduled for a particular day, I will have a mild amount of anxiety about accounting for it until it happens.

Sensitivity: Autistic people have difficulty filtering out what sensory input is important and which can be ignored. This results in processing everything all at once and therefore becoming overstimulated and experiencing sensory input more intensely than others. Through adaptation, autistic people can learn what sensory input is necessary to process and become used to prolonged exposure to uncomfortable sensory inputs. My example: I can handle loud places and plenty of loud noises, but several people talking at once overstimulates me due to my inability to separate out which sources of speech I should pay attention to and process. Many other sources of uncomfortable and overwhelming sensory input I've gotten used to over time, such as new fabrics.

Stimulation: Self regulating stress and overstimulation through repetitive actions called stimming. Stimming reduces stress and works off nervous or excited energy by routing that energy through repetition. Stimming can be verbal, such as repeating a sound or phrase, or physical, such as tapping or rocking back and forth. For autistic people with high adaptability, stimming is usually done in ways that are hidden to allistic people and doesn't disturb them. My example: I stim in hidden ways such as grinding and tapping my teeth to a beat, picking at things, or pressing objects or my fingers to the surgery scar on my chest. When playing video games, I'm constantly managing the placement of my character's feet to align with certain details or avoid lines in the floor.

Communication: The culmination of all of these factors is communication. Communication with others is a consistent area in which autistic people face challenges. Every conversation and interaction with another person involves new input and processing, which is a stress test on our intuition. Language itself is also complex and presents challenges to autistic people. More than anything else, applying our knowledge of language to sounds, words, and sentences in real-time is heavily demanding on those who struggle with intuitive thinking. A large amount of autistic people are affected by an auditory processing disorder: essentially a difficulty in interpreting sound as words. Plenty of autistic people also experience a language disorder or apraxia of speech (difficulty in planning the motor functions of speech). Autistic people with high adaptability often repeatedly recycle phrases or learned words to apply to their current scenario as shorthand to limit the language processing required to speak. They pull from their library of phrases and contexts to apply them to their current situation. The other part of communication is recognizing the body language, tone, and social rules that build a social interaction. This is a lot of information for an autistic person to process. Autistic people with high adaptability might learn to focus on specific important details to follow a conversation without overwhelming their processing. My example: I need an intense amount of concentration to speak, usually planning out my sentence and rehearsing it in my head several times before actually speaking. If my concentration drops at all during speech, I will make an error or struggle to continue the sentence, or both. This means my speech is full of "um"s and "uh"s and plenty of long pauses. I recycle phrases I've heard often so I don't have to think of the words myself. Additionally, I've observed other people and their behavior all my life to recognize their patterns and predict how my words will affect them. This is probably the most extensive web of pattern recognition I've developed to handle everyday life.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but hopefully this highlights some of the more prominent things autistic people experience and is helpful for those questioning if they have autism. If anything, hopefully it affects how you think of autism and diagnose it in the future.