Does anyone else feel like it’s sometimes hard to really know how you’re affected by Autism?

I’ve been diagnosed with Autism since childhood but I feel like it’s actually difficult to really know exactly how Autism affects me, or at least difficult to know in ways that I could really explain. The reason I say this is that I know everyone has Autistic qualities to some extent, including the struggles of Autism, to some extent, and so knowing if a certain struggle I face or a certain experience I have is from Autism or if it’s just something that everyone experiences. For instance if there is a loud sound that bothers me that could be from my Autism, but it could also be because it’s a sound that most people would be bothered by. It reminds me of how when I learned that I’m more sensitive to bright lights than others I was surprised and confused because I thought most people would be bothered by the lights I was bothered by. Similarly if I have a misunderstanding it could be related to Autism, but it could also be a misunderstanding that would happen regardless as a result of differences in upbringing or lived experiences, and differentiating between can be a challenge.

Another factor I think that can make identifying exactly how Autism affects me is that effects of Autism aren’t always as blatantly obvious as possible. For instance if I can read faces it could be because my Autism doesn’t affect my ability to read faces, but it could also be because my Autism doesn’t make it impossible for me to read faces but just makes it harder, and if that’s the case it could be difficult to know if I have a harder time recognizing faces.

The third factor that I think makes it harder to know how my Autism actually affects me is that some effects might be in combination with the environment rather than from Autism alone. When that’s the case I think it can be easy to think my environment is sufficient to explain myself without really knowing that it wouldn’t cause certain effects if I wasn’t Autistic.