What is the Validity of Autism Diagnoses?

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i am perfectly capable of being polite. i consider myself more mannerly than most people i run into. the "traits" i'm talking about are, for instance, not being able to read between the lines and understand what would be perfectly obvious to a neurotypical. i have to expend an extraordinary amount of effort paying attention to clues like tiny deviations in facial expression, tone of voice, posture, etc., combine it with non-intuitive knowledge and experience gained over several decades of observation and therapy, and on-the-fly produce a workable, accurate, fluid assessment of what is expected and appropriate to the interaction, AND reference my memory banks for appropriate responses, body language adjustments on my part, tone of voice on my part, eye contact, everything that comes naturally and instinctively. that is just ONE example of "compensating" for my social deficits. it's an adaptation, sure, but it doesn't change my inherent trait of being unable to intuit as an NT does in these situations. it means my brain is having to operate at a much higher RPM, to borrow a term, than the NTs i'm encountering. which is literally exhausting the glycogen that fuels my brain. when the glycogen runs low, i feel physically tired and can't think straight. that is why i call it "compensating" and not just "adapting." Adapting to me implies a permanent adjustment has taken place that no longer requires significant effort. "Compensating" acknowledges the ongoing effort required for me to uphold the change. And the minute my brain runs out of juice-forget it, if i don't remove myself, meltdown gonna come sooner or later.

Ok, I understand the sentiment here but from my own perspective, being social has become less of a contrived effort even though in the beginning that was how it was. I didn't mean to insinuate that you were impolite but I realised from experience that there is a wealth of interaction when you look someone in the eyes and give them a warm "thank you" or "please", something I wasn't aware of before. And then there are other subtleties like whether to say, "kind regards", or "best wishes" in an email. Reading between the lines also isn't something that happens nearly as often as people on the spectrum think it does, people will drop quite an obvious hint if they want to be left alone, for example but they don't expect you to read between the lines for every small thing. Following small talk has been difficult for me in the past I think because of my obsessional focus on certain activities. When you make that effort to have a broad array of interests and activities - the simple, ordinary things most people like - so that they become a part of your everyday routine, it is less difficult to follow these conversations. I don't feel like I need to dig into a complicated matrix of social knowledge anymore because I feel like what I've learned has become more and more instinctive - and I am still learning more - and that it is better to just keep everything as simple as possible. I used to go into lots of detail on certain subjects but the reason for that was because I felt I needed to prove myself because I wasn't able to make the same contributions throughout a conversation as everyone else. When it became clear to me that all I was doing was showing off, I stopped it and actually withdrew socially, engaged myself in lots of hobbies and activities that I could relate to other people with.

In short, I'm not a master at this whole thing yet, but I've had more than a taster of what a relaxed, conscientious effort to improve your relations with other people can do and I'm positive that other individuals with HFA can do the same. What's more is that because individuals with HFA are analytical and look at things from numerous perspectives, once they overcome their social hang-ups they actually have a great advantage in social situations because they can pack even simple, ordinary conversations with rich, subtle meaning when for most other people, they're just talking about the same old, same old.