Do You Really Need a Diagnosis to Be Autistic?: A Conversation with Neuro Awesome Life
Scientific evidence Autistic traits don’t need a doctor’s permission slip to be legit and how community gives them back to us. Join our conversation about autism, culture, joy, and self-identification
Yesterday, I sat down with
If you’d like to jump straight to the parts of the conversation that interest you most, here are the key highlights with timestamps so you can fast-forward:
📌 Key Topics & Timestamps
2:13 – Color as Resistance
Why color and joy matter, even in difficult times. “Color is my resistance movement… you can’t take everything. You can’t have color.”
8:03 – The 10 Pillars of Autistic Culture
How Autistic identity can be understood like Italian-American culture — rooted in values, traditions, and shared experiences, not just diagnosis.
15:08 – Self-Diagnosis is Valid
My research showing that self-identified and medically diagnosed autistic people scored the same on the AQ10. “The numbers were phenomenal… you don’t even have to know statistics.” This section breaks down why self-identification is accurate and empowering.
22:19 – Intergenerational Autism
How recognizing autistic traits helped Dawn make sense of her own life, her father’s quirks, and the hidden patterns running through her family.
26:04 – Everyday Accommodations
From carrying tea cups to calendars, small adjustments at home can make life easier without needing a formal diagnosis.
36:55 – Autism is a Culture
The moment of recognition when meeting other Autistic people: shared vocabulary, pace, humor, and values — just like any other cultural group.
47:48 – Autistics in History
Autistic people have been here as long as humans have. I like to trace our history back 160,000 years and imagine a Roman child obsessed with Spartan helmets or water wheels. “You don’t have to believe them — you just have cultural awareness.”
56:00 – Rethinking Inclusion at Work
How workplaces can ditch “special treatment” and instead design environments that benefit everyone, from lighting and scent surveys to job descriptions that align with neurotypes.
1:02:02 – The Big Takeaway
“Autistic traits do not in any way, shape, or form require a medical diagnosis.” Trust your self-identification, put supports in place, and stop waiting for broken systems to validate your reality.
I loved talking with Dawn-Marie Clayas for this episode. We connected right away — two women in our 50s, both from the Northeast U.S., both part of that “lost generation” of Autistic people who grew up without a diagnosis. We were the kids who were labeled dramatic, difficult, or too much, when what we really were was autistic. Sitting down together felt like recognition across time: we know each other’s story before we’ve even told it.
Our conversation wandered through joy and resistance, research and culture. We started with color — how something as simple as wearing bright orange or pink can be a form of survival in a bleak world. From there I shared the research I’ve been doing on self-diagnosis, showing that people who identify as autistic score just the same on the AQ10 as those with a medical diagnosis. It was validating to see the data prove what so many of us already know in our bones: we can trust ourselves.
We also talked about autism as culture, drawing on my Italian-American upbringing, where identity was in the traditions, the language, the humor, even the food, not something you had to prove with paperwork.
What ties it all together is that Autistic joy and monotropic focus have always been here. We’ve always existed and we have always had accommodations. (Now we also had a whole lot of us killed or institutionalized which is an awful legacy of our culture, but we have persisted. Our genetics are here and they are stronger than ever because we are a resilient people! While we didn’t have the word autism until the last 100 years or so, we have always been here, a necessary part of the human family. And that is why self-identification isn’t just scientifically valid (it is…) but it’s real because we have been a people and a culture much, much longer than the word has even existed.
Community, connection, and culture give us back what systems of dominance and colonization have taken away.
What Should We Discuss Next?
Dawn and I would love to keep having conversations like this if you find them helpful but we’d love to know: What other topics do you want us to dig into in future videos? Drop your thoughts in the comments. Your input helps shape the next conversations.
🔗 Inspired? Here’s What You Can Do Now
You don’t have to do everything. Just pick what seems most joyful for you as your next step.
🎧 Listen to the Podcast:
📝 Take the Quiz: bit.ly/autisticculturequiz
📚 Get the Am I Actually Autistic? Book: books.by/autisticculture (cheaper than Amazon and no oligarchs)
📄 Read a Summary of Angela’s Research on Self-Diagnosis: Is Autistic Self-Identification Valid?
✍️ Join Neurodivergent Narratives Therapeutic Writing Circle: Subscribe here
🖋️ Enjoy Autistic Haikus: @haikuwouldntyou on Instagram
