The Highly Sensitive Person is Autistic Autistic Autistic

Most people, if not all people, who identify as HSPs are autistic. They don't realize it because most people don't understand what autism is really like. I didn't until two years ago when I got diagnosed.

People find the stigma around autism to be distasteful so they reject that autistic traits could pertain to them. Autism horrifies them because the unknown is scary and being marginalized is hard.

Those of you who identify with HSP and deny you have social or communication differences are likely so highly masking (hiding your autistic traits) that you think you can't be autistic because you are social and have a lot of friends. So was I and so did I.

If you look closely, you may find that you aren't quite as accepted in your social circles as you think you are or you just sort of float from group to group with the appearance that you belong.

If you admit it to yourself, you will realize no one really knows the real you because you keep that person hidden. You may not realize you are autistic, but you know something is off which is why you have latched onto the Highly Sensitive Person label because it fits.

It fits because it's autism.

The Highly Sensitive Person is an illusion and its marginal acceptance in psychological spaces does not make it valid. The practitioners and researchers who believe that HSP is a thing in and of itself are using a very outdated model of autism with which to compare and contrast.

The papers and articles I've read that claim there are differences, all claim that autistic people lack empathy, are unable to read facial expressions, never understand social situations, and blah blah blah repeating myths about autism that have either been debunked in recent research or do not apply to all autistic people on the spectrum.

I cannot reiterate enough that autism is a spectrum and that autistic people have more varied presentations than previously thought. That is why so many women and AFAB nonbinary people are being diagnosed now.

We were missed because they didn't think we could be autistic and now we know better.

The Highly Sensitive Person profile was created at a time (the 90s) when those assigned female at birth were not believed to be autistic. People like Temple Grandin were considered an aberration.

Few researchers or clinicians realized, until the last 5–10 years, what chameleons some of us autistic folks can be. Countless numbers of autistic people have gone stealth for decades and many of us — about 80 percent of autistic people — are still undiagnosed.

We don't realize we are autistic because we have masked ourselves so well that even we can't see it. After all, to see it would potentially cause the house of cards we've built, to fall, and then where would we be?

Society forces autistics who can mask to hide who we are and how we move, think, and communicate because we are ridiculed, rejected, infantilized, and worse if we don't hide our "odd" behaviors.

We have to keep safe. We want to be liked. We become compliant.

Life is harder for those of us who are sensitive people with undiagnosed autism. We are working harder to just do the basic things, and we do not realize that this is not the case for everyone.

We might be hyperempathetic and not realize that current research shows that a huge proportion of autistic people are.

People who come into my comments and argue with me because I say that HSP is just an ableist term for autism, always tell me that they can't be autistic because they don't have social and communication difficulties.

And to that, I always say that I thought that as well.

Incorrectly assuming that I didn't, is why after 5 decades of going in and out of severe autistic burnout (which looked like depression), going in and out of psych wards, working hard in therapy that never helped, and losing friendships, I finally figured out that I am autistic.

HSPers also say, well I can't be autistic because I don't have meltdowns. But you might be having shutdowns instead and not know it.

You might get migraines from sensory overwhelm and go to bed or you might freeze like a deer in headlights and go quiet for a while. Those episodes can be autistic shutdowns. They can look like that for some people.

Dear HSPer, until you thoroughly research masked autism, read a book like I Think I Might Be Autistic by Cynthia Kim or Unmasking Autism by Devon Price, or interact with autistic people, you won't truly know if you could be autistic or not.

I once identified as HSP and I was very very wrong because the psychiatric community was very very wrong and refused to see that female autistics exist. It's time to face the music.

Highly Sensitive Person is an illusion. HSP is autism.

Elaine Aron, the clinical psychologist who created the HSP label, literally based her criteria for the Highly Sensitive Person on autistic family members. She didn't know they were autistic at the time but they were later diagnosed autistic. Therefore, Highly Sensitive Person traits are autistic traits.

Elaine Aron has admitted that she does not study autism, and it shows.

Aron refuses to engage with autistic autism researchers and clinicians who criticize her concept of HSP and call her out for using an outdated profile of autism to contrast with her concept of HSP. That is telling.

Why would she? She has built an entire industry around the concept. She has sold countless books and workshops. She gets attention and makes loads of cash. She has a vested interest in maintaining that HSP is not autism.

White, middle to upper-class women especially love her concept of the HSP because then they don't have to lose face and admit they are struggling. Their perfect, whitewashed social media version of their lives does not have to be "tarnished" by a stigmatized disability.

Aron avoids autistic people because as long as she does, she doesn't have to address her biases and ableism, or the fact that she might also be autistic. After all, autism is genetic and runs in families.

She insists that HSP folks don't withdraw from the world and hyperfocus like autistic people do but monotropism, which has to do with the narrow hyperfocus and intense interests that autistic people have, is a trickster

I have been monotropic my whole life and people just thought I was very studious as I sat at my computer, had my nose in a book, or sat making art for hours without getting up to pee or have something to eat. I just had my "little obsessions" as my spouse called it.

I recently took an online assessment of monotropism and I'm more monotropic than 88 percent of autistics. I never realized how much I was hyperfocusing on interests and neither did anyone else around me.

Aron claims that HSPers do not withdraw from stimuli but can instead tolerate them for a time before it gets to be too much. As if autistic people can't also be like that. Some of us can most definitely do that.

I'm formally diagnosed by an autistic professional, and I can tolerate a certain level of an offending stimulus until I can't anymore and then I will get angry and start yelling at everyone or start crying inconsolably (those are meltdowns).

For decades, I rationalized away my sensitivities because I had no choice. I blamed my sensory issues on POTS or on just having sensitive skin and allergies.

I told myself I was just particular about things and called myself "quirky". I told myself that I just have a phobia about going barefoot. I just have a phobia of heights. I am just agoraphobic because of trauma. I just like comfortable clothes because I am practical.

No, I was having sensory issues because I was autistic and I had no language or blueprint for autism that didn't look like the classic white male, low empathy, socially withdrawn, train-loving autistic (this profile is valid and I am not making fun of it) that was fed to us all these years.

HSPers need to know that they are autistic because not knowing damages your health and can render you permanently disabled.

One day you might go into autistic burnout from pushing yourself too far and you will not recover. Some highly masking people have had heart attacks because of how damaging the stress of masking is to our bodies.

An undiagnosed autistic person may completely give up on life as a result of stress and isolation they don't understand because they have no context.

Holding on to the outdated label Highly Sensitive Person is no longer useful now that we know there is such a thing as masking one's autism.