Are Autistic Traits Superpowers or Weaknesses?

First I would like to talk about this through ADHD, because I find it simpler. Then I’ll get into autism, okay? There is a lot of overlap between autism and ADHD and the superpower consideration applies to both.

Is ADHD a Superpower?

There is an age-old debate in the ADHD world about whether the characteristics of ADHD, such as the ability many of us have to hyperfocus, is a symptom/weakness, or whether it is a superpower.

And I want to respect how anyone makes sense of their lived experience. If you find something to be a burden, then it’s a burden. If it’s your superpower, then I love that for you. I’m not writing anything prescriptive.

With ADHD and my own hyperfocus, I think back to being an AP Reader. I read and score AP Psychology essays for one week a year. Even with taking a ton of ADHD breaks and walks, when I went to the AP Reading in person before 2020, I could score student responses faster than almost anyone. I mean out of the 400 or so AP Psychology Readers, there were about 3-4 of us who could read at an exceptionally fast rate while maintaining high inter-rater reliability.

While the average reader may score 100 exams, we could score 500 exams in the same amount of time.

And I did that with hyperfocus. In that sense, one could easily call the ADHD trait a superpower, right? Most people do, as it’s celebrated and rewarded.

Here’s the thing though. My own personal bodymind only has the capacity to hyperfocus when given stimulants. It turns out that I self-medicated ADHD in my younger days with copious amounts of caffeine and nicotine, to get through daily life even if not to hyperfocus. And where hyperfocus was rewarded? I would drink more coffee and smoke more cigarettes to help make it happen.

Today I can have no coffee and no nicotine. And to my great dismay, I’m allergic to all of the ADHD medications, both stimulant and non-stimulant-based. To put that differently: I can no longer hyperfocus. I guess it wasn’t a superpower for me so much as it was a result of what I could do when my brain got stimulants.

But even if I could still drink coffee, for example, is hyperfocus a superpower? Can we think of something as a superpower when we can’t really fine tune our control of it better than this? From talking to others who can hyperfocus, I’ve heard others report that they may sit down to accomplish something, hoping to hyperfocus, yet be unable to make it happen. Or they might hyperfocus on something other than what they had hoped to accomplish.

So in my experience, with ADHD and superpowers, they seem erratic at best. And the ADHD superpowers list is much longer than hyperfocus too. We are known for our ingenuity and creativity, our quick problem-solving and our deep-dive, information-gathering skills.

It’s actually unfortunate that we tell children who have ADHD that they have a deficit and a disorder. (Yes, I know ADHD is an acronym.) The whole collection of abilities and experiences that comes with ADHD and how the brain does its thing is kinda amazing.

We should tell kids about that, and maybe help them manage the distractibility aspects without pathologizing them quite so much. I’m telling you, if I wasn’t allergic to ADHD meds, you could give me the occasional walk and a regular prescription for ADHD meds, and I could cure some diseases. They can too if we can stop suspending them for what gets labeled as behavioral issues.

Is Autism a Superpower?

This discussion feels more complex to me, more like that double-edged sword that cuts a bit no matter what. Again, I don’t intend to contradict any autistic person’s experience or opinion, as I’m doing self-reflection. Please share yours with me. I’d love to hear from you, for real.

For me, one of the things I spend a ton of time thinking about is, well, thinking. (I know; please stay with me.) I think about thinking – how I think, how you think, why you think what you do, how you think what you do, why I think you think, etc.

And this definitely influences my work as an educator! Right? Of course. I think through all the ways a student in my class can struggle, and I am open to all the ways they can learn and grow and thrive.

I have actual, graded assignments built into my courses that invite students to evaluate the course itself, specifically through the learning objectives, applying program evaluation tools (a course topic) to the course itself. I use all of this to enhance and refine how I teach, striving to leave no one behind.

Because of autism, I can see patterns and gaps that an allistic person might miss. What does this result in? I cover all known angles of a topic in my classes with tutorials, explainers, and copious resources for students. Students in my classes are so supported, with examples, demonstrations, videos, walk-throughs, and all of it results from needs I perceived from former students.

Does this work? Is this functional? Yes. I say that confidently based on high student success and favorable student feedback. My students have gone on to be super successful and have been well-prepared to do so.

And although I abhor the website for several reasons (which I’m very glad to discuss if you ever meet me and want to invite the conversation), I was literally the #1 rated professor at my university, of the 2,000+ faculty rated on “ratemyprofessors”. (2025 update: They deleted my whole page when I was laid off for Summer 2025, so depending on when you are reading this, you might not see me on there at all.)

But my student course evaluations are consistently favorable. And I’m not even easy. I have reasonably high expectations of students. But, I’m fair, and I support them in their work.

So is my really good teaching a superpower? Yes and no, I feel, and I want to discuss why I add the no.

It takes way more time and labor than one should spend to do what I do. And, to be blunt, I cannot turn it off or I would, because I’m not compensated for most of the labor I do for all of this. But I literally cannot teach half ass. I can’t just do the regular amount of support, or make a regular syllabus without an accompanying video explainer and interactive web app tool.

I cannot opt out of the extra. And that recaps the autistic influence in my experience, and why I’m reluctant to call it a superpower.

I regularly mentor and consult with newer faculty, and that always goes well, but I caution my faculty advisees to not necessarily try to emulate me, because I don’t want them to risk burnout. Higher ed is tough enough without all this extra. If you can opt out of being extra? I love that for you.

I’ve been teaching since 2001, in higher ed since 2004, no burnout, but I only maintain all the extra because I cannot opt out of it. As much as I love my students and want to support them, I wish I didn’t need to be so extra.

That’s just one illustration of my considerations about whether autism is a superpower. And anything else that we think of as a potential superpower, in my experience, has this sort of cost-benefit analysis to accompany it, along with the inability to opt out.

For example, I can remember sooooooo many things. That memory capacity did serve me well when I worked at UPS and had to memorize thousands of zip codes. (I still have them, and I still love them.) That memory capacity did not serve me well with a traumatic childhood.

It’s the inability to opt out, in my mind, that makes me question the superpowerness…

Bonus: AuDHD Superpowers?

When you have both ADHD and autism in one brain, your mileage may vary but a fun conversation I often have with other AuDHD adults is about time-blindness, and whether they tend to be late or early for different things. You can check out my comedic take on time-blindness, if interested.

Want to discuss this topic?

*There is this post on bluesky and this thread on facebook*