Have you ever caught yourself wondering whether you’re really autistic because there’s a stereotype you just don’t relate to? I have.
For me, it was the idea of having a “special interest” — the ones we’re all familiar with: trains, dinosaurs, astronomy, memorising endless facts about a single topic. Since my diagnosis, I’ve spent far too much time quietly thinking, Well… I don’t have one of those. And every so often, despite the diagnosis and a much deeper understanding of myself, I’d find myself wondering whether I was somehow missing something.
Then I realised something. I wasn’t comparing myself with autism — I was comparing myself with a stereotype.
Part of that idea came from my own experience of parenting. Both of my sons are autistic, and growing up they each had interests they could happily immerse themselves in for hours. But that’s where the similarities largely ended. One of my sons is wonderfully hyper-verbal about the things that fascinate him — give him the opportunity and he’ll happily talk at length about them. My other son, who also has ADHD, is almost the opposite: much quieter, with his own interests but no real need to talk about them.
The differences were there all along. But my understanding of what a special interest “should” look like had also been shaped by something much bigger. For decades, much of our understanding of autism was based on research involving boys and men, and that inevitably influenced how autism came to be recognised and portrayed — reinforced by the fictional characters and historical figures often speculated to be autistic: brilliant, eccentric men with remarkable memories and highly specialised interests.
Those portrayals aren’t wrong, and many autistic people recognise themselves in them. But for others, they became the picture of autism we couldn’t quite relate to. There were times when everything I read, watched and heard about autism — sometimes even from respected experts — left me quietly wondering whether my sons had really been diagnosed correctly. Not because I doubted them, but because I was comparing them to a stereotype neither of them fully embodied.
When I was diagnosed myself, much later in life, I realised I was measuring myself against exactly the same picture: Am I really autistic if I don’t have a special interest like that? What if I’ve got it wrong?
I suspect I’m far from alone in thinking that. So what actually is a special interest? The more I thought about it, the more I realised I’d been asking the wrong question — I’d never stopped to ask where my idea of one had come from in the first place. I’d assumed it had to be lifelong, obvious, highly specialised: something you could talk about for hours and other people would instantly recognise.
That’s just another stereotype. Some autistic people do have deeply focused interests that stay with them for life. Others have interests that come and go, or several at once. Some are highly visible; others are quiet and private, never shared. And some autistic people don’t identify with having a special interest at all — something that had never occurred to me while I was busy searching for mine.
That was strangely liberating. It meant I could stop trying to force myself into yet another box, and instead get curious about the things that have quietly captured my attention over the years — the rabbit holes I’ve happily disappeared down, the satisfaction I get from creating order, noticing patterns, and refining a piece of writing until it finally says exactly what I mean. Maybe those things reflect a particular way my brain engages with the world, maybe they don’t. This was never about proving I have a special interest after all; it’s about recognising I don’t need to.
Perhaps you’ve always known what yours are. Perhaps they look nothing like the stereotype. Or perhaps you don’t identify with having one at all. None of those things, on their own, tells us whether someone is autistic — they just remind us how easy it is to mistake a stereotype for a rule.
Looking back, the biggest question I needed to answer wasn’t whether I had a special interest. It was why I’d spent so many years believing autism had to look a particular way in the first place. That’s a question worth asking whenever we find ourselves wondering if we’re “autistic enough”.