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.

ADHD Superpowers

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 that’s cool too. This is my reflection only, nothing prescriptive.

With ADHD and hyperfocus, I used to be an AP Reader. I’d read and score AP Psychology essays. Even with taking a ton of ADHD breaks and walks, I could still score them 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, maintaining high inter-rater reliability.

I mean 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 can 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 life even if not to hyperfocus. And where hyperfocus was rewarded, I would drink more coffee and smoke more cigarettes.

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 some 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.

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

It’s actually unfortunate that we tell children who have ADHD that they have a deficit and a disorder. 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 distractability 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.

Autism Superpowers

This discussion feels more complex to me, more like that double-edged sword that cuts a bit. Again, I don’t intend to contradict any autistic person’s experience or opinion, as I’m just sharing my own here. Please share yours with me. I’d love to hear from you.

For me, one of the things I spend a ton of time thinking about is, well, thinking. I know, but 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.

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 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 there are issues with the measure, you can also check and see that I am literally the #1 rated professor at my university, of the 2,000+ faculty rated on ratemyprofessors. I’m not even easy. I ask a lot (or, I’d say a fair amount) of students. But, I’m fair, and I support them in their work.

So is this a superpower? Yes and no, 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 from my perspective, and why I’m reluctant to call it a superpower.

I 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 on today’s faculty without all this extra.

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.

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 served 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 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…

So, autistic friends or those of you with ADHD, what’s your opinion about superpowers? 

Want to discuss this topic? There is a thread about it on the facebook page.