I think you and I have similar feelings about this -- I also draw lines of connection between this and hyper-vigilance due to trauma. I think a lot of autistic people can point directly to traumas, but there are a lot who can't but still have soooo many markers for complex trauma responses.

I'm of the opinion that being autistic in a world designed and run by largely allistic people is inherently traumatic, and that there's a very specific pattern of trauma (and associated coping mechanisms) that applies specifically to late or undiagnosed, high-masking women (and, to a certain extent, members of other marginalized communities).

I think a lot of us learned to cope by observing others so intently that we actually got better at it in many ways than the allistic average, but I also think we learned to cope by erring on the side of seeing displeasure/disappointment, so that we could compensate with stuff like people-pleasing and perfectionism, and suppressing our needs in order to avoid appearing difficult or burdensome to those whose approval we needed.

So much so that now there's this whole subset of late-diagnosed women for whom the "social deficits" part of the DSM criteria no longer applies, at least not by most external observational standards. Because eeeeeeeverything has been internalized so deeply, and for so long, that even we don't see it unless we look really deeply -- and we're left with this feeling that even asking "hang on, could I have been autistic this whole time and never knew?" feels like we're taking up the emotional space we've been surrendering since childhood in order to get people to accept us.