Autism Question.

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What parts of me are autism and what is my own personal character?

I wonder the same thing. I couldn't tell you. Autism is a brain difference thing and it affects my personality and more about myself than I could necessarily pinpoint.

were I not autistic, I would be a completely different person. It follows that autism is part of me

I think the other folk in this thread are correct.

Autism and personality are inextricably linked, although I would add that there are characteristics such as temperament, sexual preferences, neuroticism level and such that aren't necessarily tied to autism.

I feel like this is equivalent to asking a glass of orange juice how much of it is water and how much of it is juice.

You can't have juice without water. You can't have an autistic person's personality without autism. Autism is always serving as a lens for your experiences as well as how you reflect upon them and learn from them.

Same goes for other stuff like personality disorders, high intellect or intellectual impairment, etc. There's no way to control for those factors and remove their impact from your character and development because of how entwined with one's character and development they inherently are.

With other conditions that have nothing to do with the brain, it can make more sense. People associate things from the assumption that people can think and see life like they do which is understandable, so it can be difficult to even know how to explain in ways when one can't even work out how one is different but just knows one is different but can't explain it.
I have been studying others in a way through my life and I thought this was a normal thing to do. What I mean by this is studying how they think. This is why I reasoned before the assessment that I was somewhere in the middle of autistic or allistic. I am reading the assessment report and the surprize came in how deeper on the spectrum I am then I thought. Is an odd feeling because the report is true. And yet I somehow struggled through life and did things that most autistic people can not do. (I knew it took much greater effort than non-autistic people as somehow I had to REALLY put the effort in to reach their "Mediocre" standards that they just did without even trying! (This does not apply to everything as many things I could breeze through that a non-autistic person would have difficulty in so is swings and roundabouts for some things!) But it was some things in normal life that was puzzling as I could never work it out! Like why was I never popular unless I acted thick (Masking) and why was it so hard for me to find a girlfriend when others just somehow didn't see it as an issue! (I was often asked why I didn't pick up on girls that were obviously flirting with me and I didn't know! I was just puzzled why they were acting differently around me ad think "What's wrong with her?" (Oops! Was really sad to later find out and blamed myself for not noticing and upsetting them because I didn't realize).

Also a lot of autism traits are also human traits, just more extreme

This was a question that bothered me when I first was diagnosed. Also how much is me faking myself. I eventually decided that at my age everything is so fused together that it is futile to figure it out. It’s just me.

https://iamcadence.com/2018/03/26/what- ... it-is-not/

Thank you for the link.

My autism colours my personality. It colours everything that I do.

Me too. I had reasonable explanations for most of my problems before I even knew what ASD was, and picking out what's ASD and what isn't can be somewhat futile. And this "masking" concept can hinder more than it helps. I notice some aspect of my behaviour upsets innocent people, so I modify it. According to some definitions, I'm masking, and according to some people, masking is unhealthy. But I'd say I'm just being duly attentive to the feelings of others. I'm not trying to conceal autism, and as long as my behavioural change isn't harmful to me, it's a healthy change.

Frankly, I've never seen a source of information on ASD that hasn't been mostly a waste of time with perhaps one or two useful nuggets buried in it.

Masking per se is not bad. Some of my masking helped me as far as learning useful skills. And everybody masks at one time or another. The problem is we need to do too much of it. That can exhaust people which can cause the mask to slip suddenly in a big-time way, cause depression because can't always hide their 'bad' real self, and the disassociation-type problems I was mentioning.

During burnout/breakdown I would glitch when masking was concerned. Masking actually feels scary when this happens as one does not want to be discovered!

Yep, nearly all autistic traits are like that. Everybody gets meltdowns or shutdowns if pushed hard enough, it's just that most people aren't 6 steps closer at all times and are triggered by things that are considered to be "normal."

Personally, I don't know how I'd even start to untangle the ND traits from me as they are definitely integral to my person and my life experience.

I think about myself, my personality and autism this way:
If someone offered me to get rid of my autism there are personal traits that I really don't want to lose. Before I'd go through with this "cure" I would need an assurance that these traits wouldn't go away with my autism. Otherwise I would have to really think this offer through. These traits, regardless if they are regarded as typical for autistic people or not, is in my view part of my personality.
Other traits I see as a problem and would like to get rid of. I see this as autism and not my personality.