My Autistic Mode (Part I)
Welcome to the Full Version: I’ve already shared a structured adaptation, "The Autistic Mode: A Way of Thinking," designed for ease of engagement. But this is the original—the way my thoughts take shape naturally. It prioritizes internal coherence over external rhythm, offering the fullest expression of how I experience autism—not as a disorder, but as a way of being.
If you are reading this, you may already have a picture of autism—one shaped by distance, by diagnosis, by external definitions. But autistic cognition is not isolation. It is self-sustaining. Perhaps, it is enough to say that the 'aut' of autism comes from the Greek autós, meaning 'self,' and for too long, autism has been framed as isolation or detachment. But autistic cognition isn’t a withdrawal—it’s self-sustaining. I will only tell you what I know: that my mind moves in a way that does not flicker in and out with social approval, that my thoughts do not require witnesses to remain intact, that I do not translate my choices into something more palatable unless I choose to. This is how my mind moves through the world—my ontological framework.
I have a name for it—my autistic mode. I coined it for myself, not to create a concept, but to name what has always been true. It is not a deficit, nor a dysfunction, nor even a quirk of personality—it is simply how I process the world. A state of deep coherence, where grounded reasoning leads and social noise falls away. In my autistic mode, thought is neither scattered nor tentative. It moves directly, without obstruction, toward what is real. There is no static interference of "What will people think?" or "How am I being received?" no instinctive scanning for social affirmation, no unconscious pressure to ease discomfort. Instead, there is a seamless, fluid engagement with the problem at hand.
It is not a lack of something but the presence of something—a clarity that does not bend to expectation. When I am in it, I am fully there, immersed in a state of coherence that is neither rigid nor reactive, but precise. This is not an effortful state. It is not forced. It is simply how my mind orients itself when left undisturbed.
And yet, I live in a world where most people—kind, intelligent, principled people—do not move this way. Their attention is shaped by an unseen current of social expectation, an invisible tide that pulls them toward what is accepted, familiar, and comfortably mirrored. They navigate not only by what is true but by what will be received. Their reasoning is not untethered, but weighted—gently adjusting, adapting, anticipating. In contrast, my autistic mode is steady and internally aligned. It does not turn toward the expected path, nor does it seek friction. It simply moves toward what makes sense. It values coherence over comfort, integrity over performance. It is, at its heart, an intimate relationship with reality—a permission-less abiding.
Neurotypicals can enter something that looks like the autistic mode, but there is a very different flavor—perhaps even a different color. I’ve seen it: a classical musician practicing alone, refining a passage with absolute focus, or a philosopher deep in thought, turning an argument over and over in their mind. From the outside, it seems like the same full immersion, the same clarity, the same experience of flow. But there is a difference. The musician, though physically alone, plays within a lineage—centuries of instruction, theory, and interpretation shaping the very way their hands move. The philosopher, however solitary their inquiry, is never truly alone in it; their thinking moves within a current of discourse, tested and refined through the generations. Even the most brilliant NTs, for all their depth, do not sustain this mode in isolation. Their reasoning, at its strongest, remains a dialogue. It does not rest within itself but seeks reinforcement, seeks response. Thought, for them, is something held between minds, not contained within one.
Not all expressions of the autistic mode in NTs are neutral. Some take on a particular distortion, one I’ve come to call the Atticus Finch turn. I chose the name carefully. Atticus Finch, the iconic figure of To Kill a Mockingbird, stands for a kind of moral clarity—but one that unfolds within a social arena. He does not merely live by his principles; he performs them. He makes his case to the town, to a jury, to his children. His convictions, though deeply reasoned, are never held in isolation. They are always spoken, demonstrated, put forth to be seen. And then comes the slide into incoherence and dissonance, as the unblemished hero turns out not to have been unblemished at all in Go Set a Watchman—the performance collapses, and what remains is something far less certain.
This is the pattern I recognize: an NT may begin in clarity, moving with the kind of structured reasoning that resembles the autistic mode. But at some point, the need creeps in—the need to externalize, to be reflected in the mirror of other minds. A principle does not feel settled until it has been recognized by another. Instead of resting in direct application to their lives, their mind turns outward: Is anyone with me? they seem to ask—not always in words, but in posture, in tone, in the subtle hesitation that seeks assurance, and is implicitly answered by others. It is the native language of social confirmation—a language I didn't realize until recently was imperceptible to me.
And in that moment, something shifts. What was once steady begins to disperse. The clarity they held is no longer a presence to inhabit, but a stance to defend. The center of gravity moves from being to performing, from acting upon a principle to proving its validity. It is not always obvious, this turning outward. Sometimes it looks like thoughtfulness, like engagement, like an openness to discourse. But beneath the surface, there has been a quiet loosening—a slow dissolution from diamond clarity to mercurial fluidity.
It can be recognized in familiar scenarios: someone is deeply principled, steady in her convictions. She makes a parenting choice that fits her family perfectly, one grounded in careful thought and lived experience. At first, she moves with ease, unshaken. But then come the raised eyebrows from relatives, the sideways comments at the playground, the subtle resistance from the world around her. And before she knows it, she’s on Facebook, writing a long post explaining why she’s doing what she’s doing. Not for herself, not because she is uncertain, but because some quiet pressure compels her to.
What began as a simple decision has become something else—no longer just an act of living, ...
I have a name for it—my autistic mode. I coined it for myself, not to create a concept, but to name what has always been true. It is not a deficit, nor a dysfunction, nor even a quirk of personality—it is simply how I process the world. A state of deep coherence, where grounded reasoning leads and social noise falls away. In my autistic mode, thought is neither scattered nor tentative. It moves directly, without obstruction, toward what is real. There is no static interference of "What will people think?" or "How am I being received?" no instinctive scanning for social affirmation, no unconscious pressure to ease discomfort. Instead, there is a seamless, fluid engagement with the problem at hand.
It is not a lack of something but the presence of something—a clarity that does not bend to expectation. When I am in it, I am fully there, immersed in a state of coherence that is neither rigid nor reactive, but precise. This is not an effortful state. It is not forced. It is simply how my mind orients itself when left undisturbed.
And yet, I live in a world where most people—kind, intelligent, principled people—do not move this way. Their attention is shaped by an unseen current of social expectation, an invisible tide that pulls them toward what is accepted, familiar, and comfortably mirrored. They navigate not only by what is true but by what will be received. Their reasoning is not untethered, but weighted—gently adjusting, adapting, anticipating. In contrast, my autistic mode is steady and internally aligned. It does not turn toward the expected path, nor does it seek friction. It simply moves toward what makes sense. It values coherence over comfort, integrity over performance. It is, at its heart, an intimate relationship with reality—a permission-less abiding.
Neurotypicals can enter something that looks like the autistic mode, but there is a very different flavor—perhaps even a different color. I’ve seen it: a classical musician practicing alone, refining a passage with absolute focus, or a philosopher deep in thought, turning an argument over and over in their mind. From the outside, it seems like the same full immersion, the same clarity, the same experience of flow. But there is a difference. The musician, though physically alone, plays within a lineage—centuries of instruction, theory, and interpretation shaping the very way their hands move. The philosopher, however solitary their inquiry, is never truly alone in it; their thinking moves within a current of discourse, tested and refined through the generations. Even the most brilliant NTs, for all their depth, do not sustain this mode in isolation. Their reasoning, at its strongest, remains a dialogue. It does not rest within itself but seeks reinforcement, seeks response. Thought, for them, is something held between minds, not contained within one.
Not all expressions of the autistic mode in NTs are neutral. Some take on a particular distortion, one I’ve come to call the Atticus Finch turn. I chose the name carefully. Atticus Finch, the iconic figure of To Kill a Mockingbird, stands for a kind of moral clarity—but one that unfolds within a social arena. He does not merely live by his principles; he performs them. He makes his case to the town, to a jury, to his children. His convictions, though deeply reasoned, are never held in isolation. They are always spoken, demonstrated, put forth to be seen. And then comes the slide into incoherence and dissonance, as the unblemished hero turns out not to have been unblemished at all in Go Set a Watchman—the performance collapses, and what remains is something far less certain.
This is the pattern I recognize: an NT may begin in clarity, moving with the kind of structured reasoning that resembles the autistic mode. But at some point, the need creeps in—the need to externalize, to be reflected in the mirror of other minds. A principle does not feel settled until it has been recognized by another. Instead of resting in direct application to their lives, their mind turns outward: Is anyone with me? they seem to ask—not always in words, but in posture, in tone, in the subtle hesitation that seeks assurance, and is implicitly answered by others. It is the native language of social confirmation—a language I didn't realize until recently was imperceptible to me.
And in that moment, something shifts. What was once steady begins to disperse. The clarity they held is no longer a presence to inhabit, but a stance to defend. The center of gravity moves from being to performing, from acting upon a principle to proving its validity. It is not always obvious, this turning outward. Sometimes it looks like thoughtfulness, like engagement, like an openness to discourse. But beneath the surface, there has been a quiet loosening—a slow dissolution from diamond clarity to mercurial fluidity.
It can be recognized in familiar scenarios: someone is deeply principled, steady in her convictions. She makes a parenting choice that fits her family perfectly, one grounded in careful thought and lived experience. At first, she moves with ease, unshaken. But then come the raised eyebrows from relatives, the sideways comments at the playground, the subtle resistance from the world around her. And before she knows it, she’s on Facebook, writing a long post explaining why she’s doing what she’s doing. Not for herself, not because she is uncertain, but because some quiet pressure compels her to.
What began as a simple decision has become something else—no longer just an act of living, ...
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