It took 24 years for me to harness my autistic traits into something useful, and I have grown to regard them as a kind of superpower. Cooking, to me, is akin to algebra, and my mind a pocket calculator.
Autistic people's disabilities are widely known, but one of their best-established strengths is their attention to detail.
And I'm autistic, which means I can be hyperfocused but also all over the place at the same time. I think I'm very lucky to have found cooking because it's the one area where a brain like mine really thrives.
With the right support and reasonable adjustments, autistic people make wonderful employees.
We might want to figure out what are the positive effects of autism - mild cases.
If you have high-functioning autism, you may well have a lot of autistic traits but if you've got a particular lifestyle where it's possibly an advantage to be leading a solitary lifestyle and be quite obsessive, you're clearly able to function and maybe even make valuable contributions in your work, so arguably you don't need a diagnosis.
Autistic peoples' excellent attention to detail means they may make fewer mistakes, and their narrow focus may mean that they are not satisfied until a task is completed.
I think that autistic brains tend to be specialized brains. Autistic people tend to be less social. It takes a ton of processor space in the brain to have all the social circuits.
People with autism flourish in domains where the information is consistent and predictable, and struggle most in domains where the information is ambiguous and unlawful.
