What is Autism? A Journey Through a Kaleidoscope of Meaning

What Is Autism? A Journey Through a Kaleidoscope of Meaning

The DSM-5 calls autism a "genetic neurodevelopmental condition," like saying a symphony is "organized sound waves." True, but missing the music entirely.

Join host Anita for a revolutionary exploration that shatters everything you thought you knew about autism. Using five distinct lenses, we'll discover why autism isn't one thing with one explanation, but multiple simultaneous truths happening at once.

🧠 The Attentional Lens: Meet Maya, a data scientist whose story reveals monotropism - how autistic attention flows in deep, powerful channels rather than wide streams.

🤝 The Communication Lens: Discover the double empathy problem - why communication difficulties between autistic and non-autistic people are bidirectional, not deficit-based.

🌟 The Sensory Lens: Explore Intense World Theory - autism as reality experienced in ultra-high definition, not reduced functioning.

🧬 The Evolutionary Lens: Uncover archaeological evidence that autism-like traits contributed to humanity's greatest innovations and survival.

🎭 The Identity Lens: Understand why "autism is me" represents a fundamental shift from medical pathology to neurological identity.

From cutting-edge theories by autistic researchers to evolutionary perspectives that reframe autism as cognitive specialization, this episode reveals autism as a "symphony of simultaneous truths."

Whether you're autistic, love someone who is, or simply curious about human neurodiversity, prepare to have your understanding transformed.

Perfect for: Anyone questioning what autism really means beyond clinical definitions.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction: What is Autism?
• 0:44 Challenging the Textbook Definition
• 1:17 A New Journey: Understanding Autism Differently
• 4:42 The Intentional Lens: Monotropism and Cognitive Landscape
• 10:56 The Communication Ecosystem Lens: Beyond the Empathy Myth
• 15:01 The Sensory Universe Lens: Living in High Definition
• 18:56 The Evolutionary Tapestry Lens: Autism's Role in Human History
• 22:38 The Identity Constellation Lens: Autism as a Fundamental Identity
• 26:42 Conclusion: A Symphony of Simultaneous Truths
• 30:54 Closing Remarks and Call to Action

Transcript

Anita English: 0:01

So what is autism? Let's start with what we think we know from within the prison walls of definitions. If you spent any time reading about autism, you've encountered the familiar refrain. Autism is a genetic neurodevelopmental condition characterized by challenges in social communication and restricted repetitive patterns. I said it, the definition has been carved into stone tablets of medical textbooks repeated in countless articles and whispered in clinical corridors. But here's what troubles me about this definition. It tells us absolutely nothing about what it means to be autistic. It's like describing the ocean as a large body of water containing salt and thinking somehow you've captured the essence of the ocean. With that Adam two, what is your 20? So before you answer the question, what is autism? With a tire textbook definition, you've heard a thousand times. I want you to do something radical with me. I want you to throw out everything you think you know about autism. And join me on a different kind of journey. Yes, autism is a genetic neurodevelopmental condition. It is that, but saying that's all autism is would be like saying the ocean is just H2O. Technically true, but completely insufficient because here's what I've discovered in my years of research, advocacy and lived experience, asking what is autism with only one lens is like trying to understand a symphony by analyzing only the sheet music. You might learn about musical notation, but you will miss the emotion, the cultural context, the way it moves people to tears or joy, and the entire experience of what music actually is. But here's where it gets revolutionary. What if autism isn't just one thing that looks different from different angles? What if autism actually requires multiple simultaneous explanations to understand it at all? Today, we're going to pick up that kaleidoscope and turn it, but this isn't just about pretty patterns. Each twist will reveal not just a different perspective, but a different type of truth about autism. Sociological truths, cognitive truths, evolutionary truths, phenomenological truths, and by the end, you'll understand why the question, what is autism can only be answered in the plural because autism is many things all at once, depending on which lens of inquiry you choose. Welcome to Neuro Rebel, the podcast where we challenge everything you thought you knew about Neurodivergence and celebrate the beautiful complexity of different minds. I'm Anita, your host, retired law professor, Fulbright Scholar, and late diagnosed autistic adult who spent decades thinking she was broken before realizing the world's instruction manual was just incomplete. This is where we dismantle stereotypes, question the status quo and explore what it really means to be neurodivergent in a world built for neurotypical brains. Today we're going beyond definitions toward a kind of understanding that might just change how you see human minds entirely. Let's start by putting on our first lens, what I call the intentional lens, and we're going to talk about monotropism and the cognitive landscape. And to understand this, I want you to meet Maya. Maya is a 32 year old data scientist working for a tech company in Austin. She has a PhD in statistics and can spot patterns in massive data sets that entire teams miss. She's the person, colleagues turn to when they need someone to find a needle in the haystack. The anomaly in the algorithm or the signal hidden in the noise. But Maya's Workday is a study in contradictions. She arrives at the office at 7:00 AM a full hour before most of her team, specifically to avoid the sensory chaos of a busy workplace by the time her colleagues arrive. She's already deep into her analysis. Noise canceling headphones on three monitors filled with cascading data. Here's what's fascinating. When Maya is in her element that is analyzing patterns, building models, diving deep into complex problems, she can work for 6, 7, 8 hours straight without a break. She loses track of time completely. Her manager has learned to set gentle reminders for her to eat lunch and take a break because Maya's focus is so intense that hunger signals simply do not register, but interruptions. Those are devastating when a colleague taps her shoulder to ask a quick question. It's not just a momentary distraction. Maya describes it as having someone yank the emergency break while I'm driving 80 miles an hour. It can take her 20 even 30 minutes to get back to that deep level of focus. Maya discovered she was autistic at age 29 after years of wondering why she felt like she was playing a game where everyone else knew the rules except for her. Her, the fluorescent lights that gave her migraines, the open office design that made her feel like her skin was crawling. Even the small talk that felt like speaking a foreign language, suddenly it all made sense to her. This is where we encounter our first revolution in thinking, courtesy of autistic researchers who understand autism from the inside. Imagine your attention is like water. Most people's attention flows like a wide shallow river spreading across the landscape, touching many different areas at once. Easily redirected when something blocks its path. But Maya's attention flows differently. It carves deep, narrow channels, incredibly powerful, intensely focused, but harder to redirect once it's found its course. This is Mono Tropism, a theory developed by autistic researchers, Dina Murray, Mike Lesser and Lawson. It's not about having attention problems, it's about having a fundamentally different architecture of attention. Dr. Gwen Lawson himself, autistic describes it beautifully. He says, the mono tropic mind tends to focus on smaller number of interests at any given time, and to have more processing resources dedicated to that interest. So when Maya is analyzing patterns, she's not just paying attention. She's experiencing what researchers call a tunnel of attention that blocks out irrelevant stimuli and allows for incredibly deep focus. The fluorescent lights don't disappear because she's learned to ignore them. They literally fade from conscious awareness as her cognitive resources flow entirely toward the data. This isn't a malfunction. It's an entirely different cognitive architecture, like the difference between a laser and a floodlight. Neither is better or worse. They're simply designed for different purposes. But here's where it gets fascinating. This attentional architecture explains so much more than just special interests. It explains why switching tasks can feel like changing the course of a river. Technically possible, but requiring enormous energy and why unexpected interruptions can feel jarring. You are not just shifting attention, you're literally redirecting a powerful cognitive current. Damian Milton, another autistic researcher, puts it this way. Rather than seeing autistic people as lacking in some way, mono tropism suggest a different cognitive style, one that prioritizes depth over breath. So what is autism through this first lens? Well, autism is a different cognitive architecture where attention flows in deep powerful channels rather than wide flexible streams. Creating extraordinary depth of focus and unique challenges in a world designed for attentional multitasking. Now let's twist our kaleidoscope and look through what I call the communication ecosystem lens. Let's go beyond the empathy myth. This is where we encounter one of the most groundbreaking insights in autism research. One that completely refrains the tired old empathy deficit narrative. Here's a revolutionary idea. What if the problem isn't that autistic people can't communicate or empathize? What if The problem is that we've been studying communication as if it were a solo piano performance, when really it's a duet. Enter the double empathy problem theorized by autistic researcher, Dr. Damien Milton. Imagine you have two computers, both sophisticated, both powerful. But running different operating systems, when they try to interface without proper translation, software data gets corrupted, messages get lost, and connections fail For decades when this happened between autistic and non-autistic people, we blamed the autistic computer. We said it had a communication disorder or an empathy deficit. But Milton asked a different question. He asked, what if both operating systems are working perfectly well? They just need better translation protocols. Milton's research reveals something extraordinary. When autistic people communicate with other autistic people, they show high levels of rapport, good information transfer, and social reciprocity. The so-called communication problem only emerges in cross neurotype interactions. It's like discovering that Spanish speakers don't have a language disorder when they struggle to communicate with English speakers. They just need a translation mutual effort and respect for both linguistic systems. But here's the deeper insight. Empathy itself isn't one thing. It's an ecosystem. Cognitive empathy, which is the understanding of what someone might be thinking. Affective empathy, which is the feeling of what someone is feeling, compassionate empathy, which is being moved to help others. And these are different rivers in the empathy landscape, and they flow differently in different minds. Research by Dr. Kristen Gillespie. Lynch shows that autistic people often have heightened emotional empathy. That is, they feel others' emotions intensely, sometimes overwhelmingly so the difference isn't in caring. It's in the translation between different emotional languages. As autistic researcher Arian Aman observes the question isn't whether autistic people have empathy. Rather, the question is whether non-autistic people have empathy for ways of being that differ from their own. So what is autism through this lens? Well, autism is one dialect in the diverse language of human social communication. A dialect that's been systematically misunderstood because we've been using monolingual dictionaries to interpret multilingual conversations. Let's turn our kaleidoscope again, and now we enter what I call the sensory universe lens and living in high definition. Here we need to fundamentally reimagine what it means to experience reality itself. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine you're wearing a pair of those high definition headphones that musicians use in recording studios. Suddenly you can hear every breath between the notes, every tiny vibration of the guitar strings. Every whisper of air in the background, the music isn't louder, it's infinitely more detailed. This is what autistic researcher, Dr. Camila Markram calls the intense world theory. She proposes that autistic brains aren't broken sensors receiving too little information. But rather they're incredibly sensitive instruments receiving reality. In ultra high definition, Dr. Markram explains what we are seeing is not a deficit, but rather an excess of neuronal processing. The autistic child may be withdrawing, not because they don't care, but because they care too much. Think about it this way, if your nervous system is like having a satellite dish that picks up not just standard television, but also radio waves and cell phone signals and electromagnetic fields from every electronic device in a three block radius, well that is an A malfunction. It's just incredible sensitivity. And it can be overwhelming when the world isn't designed for your reception capabilities. This intersects beautifully with mono tropism. When your attention flows in deep channels and your receiving sensory information, in high definition, you develop extraordinary abilities to notice patterns, details, and changes. That others might miss entirely. The challenge comes when you're forced to process multiple high definition channels simultaneously. Temple Grandin, one of the first autistic voices to be widely heard, described it perfectly. She said, I think in pictures, words are like second language to me. I translate both spoken and written words into full color movies. Complete with sound, which run like a VCR tape in my head, but here's what's revolutionary about current research. Scientists are discovering that these sensory differences might actually be evolutionary advantages, not deficits. Dr. Michelle Dawson's research shows that autistic people consistently outperform non-autistic people on tests of pattern recognition and detailed analysis. So what is autism through this lens? Well, autism is a neurological configuration that processes reality in higher resolution. Revealing details, patterns and connections that standard definition processing might miss, but requiring different environmental accommodations to thrive. Now let's twist our kaleidoscope toward deep time and look through what I call the evolutionary tapestry lens. This is where autism's story becomes part of humanity's greatest adventure. Here's a puzzle that evolution poses. If autism were truly just a collection of deficits, then why do the genetic variants associated with it persist across cultures and millennia? Evolution is ruthless with maladaptive traits. So why is autism still here? Dr. Penny Spikins an archeologist offers a fascinating answer. She's found evidence in ancient cave paintings and toolmaking that suggests autism-like traits may have contributed to some of humanity's greatest innovations. The obsessive attention to detail, the pattern recognition, the ability to hyperfocus for hours. Perfecting a spear or tracking astronomical movements, those existed for millennia. Imagine an early human group. You need people who can manage social dynamics, negotiate alliances, keep everyone coordinated, but also you desperately need people who can spend 16 hours straight observing how water flows to design better irrigation. Or who notices that certain starred patterns always appear before the rains come. Dr. Jared Resser proposes what he calls the solitary forager hypothesis that autism represents an alternative evolutionary strategy. The solitary forager would have been equipped with enhanced local perceptual processing systematizing capabilities. An increased capacity for obsessive preoccupation, he explains. Does that signify someone? You know, it's like evolution, designed both generalists and specialists. You need the big blade for general cutting, but when you need to remove a splinter, you also need those tiny, precise tweezers that most people overlook. And here's where it gets even more interesting. Recent genetic research by Dr. Simon Barron Cohen's team shows that genes associated with autism also correlate with enhanced performance in mathematics, physics, and engineering in the general population, the same genetic variations that create autism also contribute to human innovation and discovery. Michelle Matron, an autistic researcher, puts it beautifully. Autistic people are not failed normal people. We are people whose cognitive architecture is optimized for different kind of tasks. So what is autism through this lens? Well, autism is an ancient cognitive specialization that has contributed essential skills to human survival and advancement. A reminder that diversity of mind isn't a flaw in our species. It's one of our greatest evolutionary assets. Let's turn our kaleidoscope one final time and look through what I call the identity constellation lens, because ultimately autism isn't something you study from the outside. It's something people live from the inside. When you ask autistic people what is autism, you often hear something that sounds simple but contains multitudes. Autism is me You don't hear. Autism is something I have like you'd say about a cold or a broken leg. You also don't hear autism is my challenge. Or my difference. Autism is woven into the fabric of identity itself. Dr. Dari Naman, founder of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, explains it this way. For many of us, autism is not something that can be separated from who we are. Our autism affects how we think, how we process the world, and how we relate to other people. It is part of our neurological infrastructure. It is who we are, and this is why the puzzle piece symbol meant to represent autism feels so wrong to many autistic people. It suggests incompleteness something missing a problem to be solved, but autistic people aren't puzzles and they're not missing pieces. They're complete humans whose minds work differently. It's more like the difference between watercolor and oil painting. Both create profound art, but you can't judge a watercolor by oil painting standards. The watercolor isn't a fail oil painting. It's a completely different medium with its own techniques, beauty and purpose. Listen to this insight from autistic writer and researcher, Julia Bascom. She says, autism is not something a person has or a shell that a person is trapped inside. Autism is a way of being. It is pervasive. It colors every experience, every sensation, perception, thought, emotion, and encounter every aspect of existence. But here's what is revolutionary about recent research. When autistic people learn about autism from other autistic people, like through social media or through autistic led organizations, that is through community. They develop stronger, healthier autistic identity than when they learn about autism. Only through medical professionals or family members, Dr. Monique Botha's research shows that identity first, language and community connection are associated with better mental health outcomes and a stronger sense of self in autistic adults. It's like the difference between learning about your culture from someone who lives it versus someone who studied it in a textbook. Both perspectives have value, but there's something irreplaceable about recognition and validation from your own community. So what is autism through this lens? Well, autism is a fundamental neurological identity that shapes how someone experiences every moment of their existence. It is not something to overcome, but something to understand, accommodate, and celebrate as part of the magnificent diversity of human consciousness. So what is autism then? It is a symphony of simultaneous truths. It is a different cognitive architecture where attention flows in powerful focused channels. It is one dialect in the diverse ecosystem of human social communication. It's a neurological configuration that processes reality and higher resolution. It's an evolutionary cognitive specialization. That has contributed to human advancement. It's also a fundamental identity that shapes how someone experiences existence itself. It is all of these things simultaneously. Not one or the other, but one and the other and the other. But here's the secret. Our kaleidoscope reveals. Autism isn't one phenomenon that looks different from different angles. Autism is multiple types of phenomena, cognitive, social, sensory, evolutionary, experiential that are all happening at the same time in the same person. And this is why every attempt to find the explanation for autism fails. Autism requires what philosophers call multiple realizability. It's real across multiple levels of analysis Simultaneously, you need sociological explanations and cognitive explanations and phenomenological explanations and evolutionary explanations. As autistic researcher Dr. Damian Milton puts it. Autism is not a single entity with a single cause, but rather a complex interplay of neurological differences, environmental factors, and social dynamics. And here's what I want you to walk away with today. The poverty isn't in autistic minds. It's in our impoverished ways of thinking about complex human realities. For too long, we've been trying to answer the question of what is autism, as if it were a simple, single level phenomenon. But autism like consciousness itself, like love, like creativity, exists simultaneously across multiple dimensions of reality. The beautiful truth is this, when we learn to think in multiple dimensions. We don't just understand autism better, we understand what it means to be human better. We realize that all human neurodiversity, the full spectrum of ways the minds can work is far too rich and complex for any single explanation to capture. Every human mind exists simultaneously as a biological system. A cognitive architecture, a social phenomenon, an evolutionary inheritance, and a lived experience. Autism just makes this complexity visible in ways that challenge us to think more sophisticatedly about minds in general. So the next time someone asks you, what is autism? I hope you'll remember our kaleidoscope. Turn it gently. Let the multiple patterns emerge and share the richness of what you see. Because autism isn't one thing with one story to tell. Autism is a symphony of simultaneous truths, and that's exactly how it should. This has been Neuro Rebel, where we celebrate the beautiful complexity of different minds. I'm Anita, your host, reminding you that the most profound questions don't have simple answers. They have richly layered ones that reward deeper investigation. Thank you so much for listening. If this episode resonated with you, help us reach others who might enjoy listening to it. Share it. Leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Follow us. Find us on social media at Neuro Rebel Podcast. Do you have burning subjects you'd like us to cover in upcoming podcasts? Would you like to be a guest? Write to us on our website@neurorebelpodcast.com to continue this conversation. Until next time, keep questioning, keep learning, and keep expanding your kaleidoscope of understanding because in a universe this fast and beautiful, there's always another lens worth exploring.