The constant background hum

This is the fourth post in a series for autism awareness month. Previous posts covered the neurological vs. psychological distinction and what "spectrum" actually means (see link in the comments). This week: what runs in the background, all the time. My mother often reminds me that when I was a child visiting friends, I would tour every room and every corner of their apartment before I could sit down and play. I had no idea I was doing it. I just couldn't settle until I had a complete map. That pattern never went away. There's a well-documented phenomenon in autism research called intolerance of uncertainty (IU): the nervous system's difficulty tolerating absent information. The research links it directly to how the autistic brain builds predictions: less automatically, less reliably than in neurotypical brains. The result is a system that needs more explicit data to feel oriented. So it collects data, constantly. Everyone experiences some anxiety about the unknown. The difference in a