My Autistic Traits: Difference Not Deficit!

In the episode I share how I rated my own autistic traits on a 1-10 scale and how I'm learning to think in terms of "difference, not deficit." Check out the blog post on charting my autistic traits here: https://barbaragraver.substack.com/p/charting-my-autistic-traits

Check out my blog Writing On The Spectrum here: BarbaraGraver.substack.com

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Full transcript below. If you need closed captioning (or the transcript is cut off), please listen via the podbean app or at AutisticPOV.com (https://www.autisticpov.com/).

Episode 13 Transcript



 












Welcome to Autistic POV. My name is Barbara Graver and I started this podcast to share a bit of my journey as a late diagnosed autistic. Hi everybody, this is Barbara Graver. Thank you for joining me today on Autistic POV. Today I wanted to talk a little bit about autistic characteristics and I'm going to







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be doing this through the lens of the characteristics I've identified in myself. I just try to steer away from speaking for other people because there's such a a wide range of experience and abilities in autism that I feel whenever I try to speak for anyone else, I always feel like I'm getting it wrong.







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So this is purely from my perspective. The disclaimer is these traits are not necessarily going to present the way they aren't going to present the same way across the spectrum as they present in me because we're all different. So I talked a little bit during my autism and psychic ability series,







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I talked a little bit about the idea of a linear spectrum, a spectrum from high to low, as is suggested by the DSM-5. And I talked about why I have problems with that. I think ranking across the board is problematic, although I do think autism is a constellation of traits.







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And I do think it could be useful to do specific individual ranking in terms of trait by trait. I think that's helpful. It gives you a better picture of yourself and what your abilities and what your challenges might be. Ranking people as a whole, to me, I feel that's a little problematic for various reasons,







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such as the many different comorbidities, apraxia, for example, anxiety. all kinds of comorbidities come into play, as well as inherent differences like talents and abilities and intellect. It's just there's so much at play that I think ranking from low to high is problematic. And it's also,







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it causes people to fall into a way of thinking that I don't feel is very helpful. I don't think it's helpful to to think of people as more or less autistic or more or less challenged or more or less worthwhile. I don't think that's a good way to think.







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And I think when you're ranking individuals from low to high, you're always going to kind of suggest that or lead people into that kind of thinking, which I don't like. So I did discuss this before, but I just wanted to put it out there kind of as a disclaimer.







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So what I did, and I have a blog post on this that I'll link to. What I did for myself was I looked at the DSM-5. I don't like the DSM-5. I don't like that it calls autism a disorder. I don't like that it ranks people.







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But I do think it does a fair job of describing observable traits in autistics. I don't find it totally useless, even though I have issues with it. So what I kind of did is I took the traits that were listed in the DSM-5 and sort of adapted them to better reflect me.







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And I used those traits to come up with categories for myself. And I made various charts and put them in my blog, which people seem to like. I'll link to that. And the chart showed my different characteristics. And this is not an idea that's specific to me.







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You could see a lot of people will be looking at autism in this way. It's a spectrum, but it's not a linear spectrum. It's more of like a radial spectrum, which I think is interesting. You know, it's kind of interesting in terms of dimensionality.







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We think of a spectrum as high to low, and technically that's what it is. But that's a linear 2D kind of