On autism

Sep 1, 2026 • Yousef Amar • 3 min read

I don't normally publicly write about this sort of thing as I feel like it's pretty private, but I may need to refer to it in future writing. In April of this year, I was diagnosed with ASD Level 1 (low support needs, which is the politically correct term for "high functioning" I believe). This may have been called Asperger's in the past, and in the future it will most likely be called something else, as psychiatrists think that ASD is too broad a term.

I found this quite surprising. I also found it a bit irritating, as the assessment process was frustrating and not very rigorous. The process also took an incredibly long time, but I think it's common knowledge now how long the waitlists in the UK are, so I don't need to bore you with that.

I mainly decided to go through the process to rule out autism, in response to issues I had at work. Incidentally, I was given a list of adjustments to share with colleagues. To this day I'm not truly convinced the diagnosis is accurate. Since then, I've surveyed a diverse range of people who know me well enough to try and identify patterns in their perception of me, and if they found my diagnosis surprising (and if so, why). I was then told that this behaviour was further evidence of autism...

The data was mostly qualitative, but some high-level stats:

Of the dozen people I asked, 8 weren't surprised, 3 were surprised, and 1 was neutral
Around 2 to 4 of them had a skewed understanding of what autism is (notably concentrated among the surprised), so take it with a grain of salt
The trait cited with the highest frequency was around social difficulties, followed by routines and hyperfixation

I should also mention that a lot of the people in my life are either diagnosed autistic, very likely autistic, or have a condition that is co-morbid with autism like ADHD, so the sample is not unbiased. This is apparently not a coincidence, as it's common for people on the autism spectrum to mostly have friends on the autism spectrum. I can say for certain that I did not seek these people out, but that this is just the way it happened. The reasons for this:

Homophily and survivorship bias. You find it easier to befriend people who are more like you (literal/direct, interest-driven, etc) and the ones that are the most compatible with you stick around. See also the double empathy problem.
Diagnosis contagion; when one person gets assessed, others recognise themselves in it and pursue it too. I don't know if I did this, but I do know that many of the people I spoke to said that they think they're autistic too. This may have been some attempt to comfort me (?) or it may be an extension of the sentiment that "everyone's a little autistic".
Frequency illusion; I may be noticing more post-diagnosis, and registering people who are a bit like me as probably autistic. It's like when you learn a new word and hear it everywhere.

I was recommended by the psychiatrist who made the diagnosis to seek out communities of other autistic people, to learn from them. At first, I went to events that are run by Autism Berkshire and similar organisations. It very quickly became clear to me that I was extremely out of place there. The people who attend these events have much more severe challenges than I do, proper support needs, and sometimes other conditions^[1] alongside autism such as schizophrenia. They usually go to these events as one step on the path to finding employment.

I was recommended to join social groups for particular hobbies that have a high likelihood of attracting autistic people, but this seemed like a very roundabout way. I can't really go up to people and ask if they're autistic.

Then, more recently, I attended a conference on autism called Autscape. I figured that it's more likely that the people who attend an event like this share the same curiosities I have, rather than looking for support, and likely have low support needs like I do. I learned a few things that I will write about in later posts, but I don't think I fit in there either.

I struggle to find the words to describe how I feel about this, but essentially, I'm not sure if I'm autistic and pretending to be normal, or if I'm normal and pretending to be autistic. If you're reading this and you find my diagnosis surprising, please tell me why. Anyway, I hope that documenting my journey is useful.

I'm not yet totally familiar with the proper terminology for talking about autism, as different people seem to have different opinions. I do know that people don't like "disorder", which is what my diagnosis says, as it shouldn't be considered a disease, while some prefer to say "I have autism" rather than "I am autistic". I tend to just follow what the person in front of me says. ↩︎