Am I improving too much to be considered autistic?

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So I'm back from New Zealand and the trip went very well... maybe too well. My anxiety was at an all time low, including my social anxiety. It started out pretty high but as the trip went on I became more confident about talking to people and even talked to strangers on the bus. I still didn't make eye contact with anyone though. And I only had two or three major sensory overload issues. I navigated the bus system more or less by myself (working through a panic attack or two) and wasn't driven to a meltdown by living with so many other people for so long. I even booked tours by myself. I feel like I improved too much too fast, which makes me wonder if I even have autism at all. Maybe I just have anxiety which would explain the lack of eye contact and the awkwardness. When I asked my mom, she seemed offended that I consider autism to be a part of my personality. She's never denied the fact that I have autism but she doesn't like when I use it to describe myself.
Anyway, I'm worried that I've been lying to myself and everyone and that my perception of myself is completely wrong. If it is, where do I go from here?

You're improving----but you still have some autistic manifestations.

Many high-functioning autistic people can navigate transportation systems, and otherwise adapt to their environment. Autistic people don't always have meltdowns and shutdowns. They might only suffer from symptoms under some sort of stress.

Anyway.....once somebody is born autistic, they usually don't "lose" their autism. At the most, they become "subclinically autistic."

From the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for ASD:

"Symptoms...may not become fully manifest until social demands exceed limited capacities, or may be masked by learned strategies in later life"

So, if you've learned to deal with your ASD so it affects you less, that's great. But it doesn't mean you don't have ASD any more; it just means you've learned how to live with it.

Hmmm... after further thought I think it might have been my state of mind and the change in environment that made the trip go so well. I love nature and Polynesian culture has been a minor special interest of mine ever since I saw Moana, so I was eager to learn. And because of that, any potentially anxiety-inducing situation ended up being recontextualized as a learning experience rather than a potential danger (buses were still very anxiety-inducing, as were crowds, but the latter was not much of an issue). I was mostly focused on the fact that I was finally on a real adventure. In fact, the professors running the trip said that I was one of the most independent and adventurous people in the group. That state of mind is hard to keep up for long and by the end of the trip the stresses were starting to weigh on me. On the other hand, in my daily life I am not flying halfway around the world (yet... LOL).

This thread is interesting. I reminds me of the time I took a cruise in 2012 and 2013. The first time especially, I was floored by how easy it was to navigate the social scene. Everybody was very warm and welcoming; I made friends within a day of being on the ship, and approached women without difficulty. (By "friends", I mean people I hung out with throughout the cruise.) Mind you, the ship was constantly crowded, except late at night, and sometimes noisy. There were long lines in food venues and in the theater. In the mornings, I often heard loud noises in my cabin, presumably from the ship lowering its anchor in port. And yet, I was happy as a clam, and felt right at home in the social scene that even some NTs dislike.

I think what helped me in part was the ship's movement; it provided a continuous calming stimulation that let me plow through any and all situations I encountered. In fact, I remember reading this in cruise reviews: one mother wrote that her aspie son was very calm and relaxed on his cruise too. She wrote that he practiced foreign languages with crew members, navigated long lines easily, and even invited people for a pick-up game of basketball, albeit unsuccessfully. (It was a different ship than mine; mine didn't have a basketball court.)

I'm really glad to hear you enjoyed your trip and got a lot out of it, rats_and_cats! That's wonderful!

Don't draw big conclusions about your diagnostic status based on a short segment of life. It is something that has to be looked at over time. Maybe what has really happened here is that you discovered some new strengths and interests. And that's a good thing!