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The Autistic's Guide to Self-Discovery: Flourishing as a Neurodivergent Adult

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Sol Smith

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“If coming out as autistic as an adult is hard, it’s only because of the resistance of those around you. It doesn’t change the actual challenges you have in your job, your relationships, or your perception. Which is just such a perfect fact because the challenges you’ve always faced haven’t been due to the autism either — not really. They’ve been due to the way the world has been structured based on neurotypical thinking and socialization. In most cases, autism is a social disability, not a medical one.”

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Book:The Autistic's Guide to Self-Discovery: Flourishing as a Neurodivergent Adult
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“We did our best to fit in, be typical, or control the narrative, and kept this ruse up for years and then decades, usually developing some really unhealthy coping skills to deal with the resulting anxiety. Expectations were always high, and we worked harder and harder to meet them, exhausting ourselves and deteriorating our quality of life.”

AutismAutisticAutism SpectrumNeurodiversityNeurodivergenceAutism AwarenessNeurodivergentAutistic AuthorAdult Autism
Book:The Autistic's Guide to Self-Discovery: Flourishing as a Neurodivergent Adult
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“They’ll explain why you can’t be autistic by producing the very evidence you would use to prove that you are — how smart you are, how social you are, your expert and intense eye contact, your terrific grades and amazing knowledge about niche subjects, your charm during social events. All things that were hard-fought parts of your masked identity.”

AutismAutisticAutism SpectrumNeurodiversityNeurodivergenceAutism AwarenessNeurodivergentAutistic AuthorAdult Autism
Book:The Autistic's Guide to Self-Discovery: Flourishing as a Neurodivergent Adult
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“After all, simply saying “We’re all on the spectrum” is a cognitive roadblock. It’s absolutely efficient, in an energy consumptive way. We see this method used all the time when people use thought-terminating clichés to end a problem-solving process and settle their thinking: It is what it is. Don’t rock the boat. That’s not how we do things here. It’s above your pay grade. Let’s agree to disagree. YOLO.”

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Book:The Autistic's Guide to Self-Discovery: Flourishing as a Neurodivergent Adult
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“We should also address this term neurotypical, as it is too often used as a substitute for the word normal, even though this was not the original intention. Simply stated, it refers to someone whose neurological structure developed in a way that is typical of the field of study.”

AutismAutisticAutism SpectrumNeurodiversityNeurodivergenceAutism AwarenessNeurodivergentAutistic AuthorAdult Autism
Book:The Autistic's Guide to Self-Discovery: Flourishing as a Neurodivergent Adult
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“Now in my forties, often I look around a room of adults and wonder how many others are faking it. If so, who are we playacting for? Who would be offended if we didn’t wear the right clothes? Which person sees themselves as an actual grown-up, would judge our handshake, comment sincerely on a wine, and expect a sense of achievement and pride to blossom within them for proving their adulthood? Who is motivated by power, believes that money is real, and insists the social structure is a meritocracy that sprouted from the ground when George Washington chopped down a cherry tree to ratify the New Deal at Gettysburg, accompanied by his Rough Riders? Which people are we trying to fit in for? In any given room, it could be everyone but me, or it could be no one.”

AutismAutisticAutism SpectrumNeurodiversityNeurodivergenceAutism AwarenessNeurodivergentAutistic AuthorAdult Autism
Book:The Autistic's Guide to Self-Discovery: Flourishing as a Neurodivergent Adult
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“A game began so long ago that we forgot it was a game at all. We can only see the game and its rules. We can’t see the room where we are playing, nor can we stop playing. Everyone is born into it. We spend the first few years learning the rules, and we know that to win the game, we must become an amorphous, perfect person. If we just follow the right steps, read the right things, and behave in the right ways, we’re certain to become this person. We’ve built pipelines and institutions to encourage this, complete with pre- made goals, graded feedback, moral guidance, an armory of cosmetic solutions, and anything else you can imagine. We are all-in, dead-set on this belief that we can and will become the perfect person. Even though no one has done this before. Ever. It has never happened.”

AutismAutisticAutism SpectrumNeurodiversityNeurodivergenceAutism AwarenessNeurodivergentAutistic AuthorAdult Autism
Book:The Autistic's Guide to Self-Discovery: Flourishing as a Neurodivergent Adult
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