What Is Autism, Really?

When most people hear the word autism they picture something pretty specific. Usually a young boy. Usually someone with very obvious social difficulties. That's one presentation. But it's a really narrow slice of what autism actually looks like, and it's the reason so many adults go completely undetected for decades.

In this episode I go through the DSM criteria for autism one by one, but not in a textbook way. In a real life, this is what it actually looks like in the adults I work with every day kind of way.

In this episode:

• The official DSM definition in plain language
• Deficits in social emotional reciprocity, what this looks like beyond "not making eye contact"
• Nonverbal communication differences and why compensatory strategies hide them
• The truth about relationships, friendships, and the unspoken rules nobody explained
• Stimming in adults, the subtle version most people don't recognize
• Insistence on sameness, rigid routines, and black and white thinking
• Special interests in women and why they often look socially acceptable
• Sensory differences, hyper and hypo reactivity in everyday life
• Why autism gets missed in adults, especially women and high masking folks

Resources mentioned:

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