I was trying to figure out a way to describe autistic-ness if someone asked me, ”So what’s it like being autistic?” And I decided that the easiest way to sum it up is, everything is just MORE!
Table of Contents
Intensity of sensations
For example, I love the beach! It’s amazing! The joy I feel being at the beach… I can feel EVERYTHING! I can feel the wind! I can hear the seagulls! If I imagine it alone, it’s really amazing.
But it also means that really loud noises are even louder. Really annoying noises, even louder. All the things are just so much more, in a good way and a bad way.
Magnified feelings and experiences
It’s like neurotypicals are playing Minecraft, and we autistics are in the real world – which isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes I wish I could share with others what it feels like to live in this brain because I experience things in such a big way.
And then people ask, ”Are you reacting like this is a joke?” So that seems like a really big reaction.
It’s a big reaction because I have big feelings! I have a big experience! I can’t have a small reaction to the big thing.
@dinkumtribe Replying to @JenandJuice90 yup. Definitely a mixed bag. #autistic #sensoryissues #autism #autismawareness ♬ original sound – DinkumTribe ADHD family travel
If you compare how a mountain would look in Minecraft – you know, made of blocks – that’s really nice. That’s really fun. You could do a lot of cool complex details.
But then you go to an actual mountain in real life and it’s amazing! There’s so much detail! There’s a lot of sensory input.
For autistic people, there’s so much detail to real life! Sometimes that can get really overwhelming, but it can also be really beautiful.
The limits of language
Because of how much more everything is, it’s so hard to just describe it in normal person words. There aren’t enough words for it. There are not enough words in any language.
I find that it’s easiest to express my big emotions through drawings and poetry and just writing in general. And people have said that my writing and poetry is really good, and also that I talk like I write poetry.
If I could converse with someone through poetry that would be so much easier, because I reread my old poetry and I can still feel an echo of whatever emotion I was feeling at the time.
Sensory overload
In talking about these big feelings, that’s the sort of thing that can lead to sensory overload.
For many autistic people, because they’re taking in so much more information, they have so many more sensory issues. They’re hearing way more and they don’t have the same kind of filters that a neurotypical person has.
It’s really easy for them to become overwhelmed. And if they’re going through life in a constant state of sensory overload…
@dinkumtribe Replying to @Torako expressing your feelings shouldn’t result in threats of vi0lence! #autismacceptance #autism #autisticcreator #autistictok ♬ original sound – DinkumTribe ADHD family travel
If you imagine an autistic person going to a high school of a thousand students. They’re running across half of those students in a regular day, and they’re doing eight classes, and it’s very overwhelming if you think about all of that input.
Underdeveloped filters
Neurotypical people learn to filter most of it out, but many autistic people can’t. The thing with ADHD and autism is, there is no internal filter.
Neurotypical people develop these filters that help them experience emotion less strongly.
Do I wish I wasn’t autistic / ADHD?
At times I feel bad because I wish I could share it, but at times I’ve wondered if life would be easier not having autism or ADHD. I’m sure there are some things that would be easier.
It becomes much harder for you to speak sometimes when you’re overwhelmed. When I’m really overwhelmed sometimes I prefer to use ASL (American Sign Language), but most of the time I don’t even want to use ASL. I don’t want to even interact with people.
When I get too overwhelmed, I just go in my room and I turn off the lights, and I turn on the sound machine, and I just have to reset completely. Just laying on the floor in the dark.
Being alive is just too much! It’s fun but it’s also too much.
The concert example
I’m sure there are people who go to a concert and afterwards they’re not that tired out.
But there are plenty of people who will go to a concert or some big loud event where everything’s awesome, and fun, and it’s a great experience.
You treasure it for the rest of your days and you’re so glad you went because that’s amazing. but you’re drained for like at least another few hours.
So take that feeling and apply it to any social experiences. That’s life with autism. I don’t know about other autistics but I get completely drained. I can’t do it.
I’ll go to a party, or even just to youth group, and I’ll have so much fun and it’s amazing. And then I get home and I’m like “Love y’all. I’m going upstairs. You’re not going to see me for three hours.”
Autistic burnout and shutdown
Autistic burnout is what happens when that overload has happened so much, and so long, and so often, that it can even lead to some skill regression.
That’s where there are things that an autistic person is no longer able to do because they’ve done too much, had too much, for too long. So that’s important to recognize.
Mental health struggles
Many autistic people struggle with mental health as well, especially those who are considered high-functioning because what it really is that they’re high masking.
They still experience more of everything but it’s internal. We have to do the mental calculations every time we do social stuff. And the better we are at social stuff the more we have to do those, because the better we are social, the more people want to spend time with us.
But that also means more social calculations. You have to do them even when you’re tired, even when you’ve already talked to like five people and you just want to go home. You got faster at doing it, but it doesn’t make it less draining.
And every time someone says or does something that implies that you’ve done something incorrectly, you have to learn a new calculation to add to that.
Masking and self-esteem
That hits your self-esteem too – that you’re always being told you’re doing the thing wrong, when really all you’re doing is communicating in a different way.
It took me a while to learn how to mask properly: to mask in a way that made sense. But even now, every time I tell someone I have ADHD, or I have autism… every time it comes up casually in conversation, they’re like “Yeah, I figured.” It’s pretty obvious, and that is fine.
To put it really bluntly, I finally learned how to actually shut up when other people are talking, and not talk all the time, and let other people carry the conversational burden. And I felt like I was more accepted by doing that.
It felt kind of like a superpower. Like I’d finally figured out what I was supposed to do!
The high cost of masking
But at the same time, that increases your mental load and your mental burden too. When you learn how to mask, in a way, that makes it feel that, even if it doesn’t make people accept you more, it feels like it does!
You feel like, “Alright, I guess this is who I have to be now.” You figured out who you have to be, and just having to be that all the time, it makes you feel worse about when you can’t mask.
Because instead of just being stuck with, “Well I guess I’ll just never be enough,” you’re like, “I figured out how to be enough,” but it costs you too much. You have to be that all the time.
It makes you feel bad because the whole time you’re wondering, “Is this what they wanted from me?” And it’s also, “This isn’t who I really am but this is more acceptable, so I guess this is who I am now.”
How we’re creating a safe home for unmasking (from Jenn)
That’s something we’re working on too – trying to create an environment in our home that’s safe for unmasking. We have a lot of neurodivergent people in our household – just about all of us!
Maybe all of us; the jury’s still out on a couple. A couple years ago we only thought it was three people, but now we have at least six confirmed neurodivergent people in our family.
We’re working to create an environment here at our home where masking is not something that’s necessary most of the time. A place where our kids feel safe to be who they are, and to take care of their needs appropriately in a lot more circumstances.
Some of that looks like letting our kids wear headphones at the table, or letting our kids eat their meal in a different room if the dinner table with eight people is a bit over much for them.
Difficulties with focus (from Kaiju)
It’s too loud! Even if the food is one of my favorite foods, one of my most sensory good foods – lasagna, for example. If it’s too loud, I can’t eat. I physically cannot.
If it’s too loud I can’t read – I physically can’t read. I actually can’t. “What is this on the page? Who knows?!”
You know how you can’t type very good, or figure out what you’re saying when there’s music playing because there’s something else coming through your brain? There’s other input, and so you’re having to focus on what you have in your brain coming out via the keyboard or via your mouth.
A big thing with autism and ADHD is you have to choose your focus. Neurotypical people (allistics) can usually pick what string of noise they listen to.
So if there’s music, and there’s someone talking, they’re better at it. They can focus on listening to the person talking; I cannot.
I don’t think most autistics or ADHD people can. Our brain chooses for us, and it doesn’t choose the right thing no matter how much you focus. Someone will be talking and there will be a noise nearby and it doesn’t matter how quiet the noise is, it’s that one.
Why it’s so difficult to unmask with autism or ADHD
Just because it just because someone hasn’t completely unmasked around you doesn’t mean they don’t love and trust you. If you’ve tried to set up an environment where they can unmask it may not be your fault.
It may not be that the environment is unfriendly, because we’ve done a lot. Certain parts of masking, depending on how recently you learned it, and how often it’s hammered into you, certain parts of masking become automatic.
And then you kind of don’t know how to NOT do them. It takes a lot of time to unlearn those things.
I’m very good with eye contact and I’ve learned to expect eye contact when it shows that other people are listening. It doesn’t come naturally to me. It has never come naturally to me.
Especially in anything that feels confrontational. I can’t look at the person, I can’t even look at their face at all.
And it’s not like guilt, or whatever. It’s just that the energy coming out of your face is too intense. It’s like you’re trying to look at Cyclops from X-Men without the filter.
So just because they’re still masking, it doesn’t mean you did something wrong. It’s going to take a while.
Society is messed up and we have to mess with ourselves and round down our corners so we can be a circle instead of a triangle.
A message to my fellow neurodivergents
If you are autistic or ADHD – you are amazing! No, you do not talk too much! 100% you’re not too much! I love you. Drink water, because you’re going to forget.
Be your neurospicy self!
-Love, Kaiju
©️ Copyright Jenn Warren and Kaiju 2025.
