Autism

I had a similar experience. The more I learned about autism the more excited I became about finally having an answer to all the things that didn't make sense the last 30+ years. After obsessing over articles and videos about how other people on the spectrum dealt with things like burnout and rage, I started to feel peace about who I was for the first time in my life. I went back and forth questioning whether or not I should get a formal diagnosis and ultimately made the decision not to for this one simple reason: It didn't matter. If the "solutions" that worked for autistic people worked for me, then everything else was just semantics.

If believing I was on the spectrum improved my quality of life, it didn't matter whether it was true or not.

Join us, we seek nothing less than world domination. Are you up to the task?

Read “Unmasking Autism”, it is what confirmed it for me! I am 100% certain, so far beyond any shadow of a doubt. Bonus points also if you have a local library and can check it out from there! Yay libraries!!

https://embrace-autism.com/autism-tests/

Start here and see where this takes you. This is what I did. I'm older and don't see a reason for a full eval. I've also been reading and searching to see if some things I do are autistic. If you aren't sure, start here, or find some other online tests.

Read as much as you can on autism, preferably written from autistic and neurotypical perspectives. There are things about autism that seem to be common knowledge among autistic people that NTs and science seem to be completely oblivious about. There are also things that autistic people attribute to autism but are result of usual comorbidities.

When thinking about what is normal it is common to be thrown off by what your family is like. Autism is highly heritable and it’s very likely that if you’re autistic then at least one of your parents autistic is too even if they don’t know it.

If you’re after something objectively verifiable on your own then look into joint hypermobility - if you can dislocate some of your joints at will then it’s surprisingly likely that you’re some form of neurodivergent. My mind was blown by some of the recent studies in that area. I wasn’t that angry about not being diagnosed earlier when it comes to how my mind works because I found ways to cope. I was angry because it turns out that there’s a whole slew of physical conditions that seem to be specific to autism that doctors aren’t aware of usually and will never consider because of their own misconceptions about autism.

Once you understand how autism works you’ll know. By the time I got formally diagnosed I didn’t have any doubt about it myself even though I would laugh at the idea couple of months before.

I admit I skimmed your account and maybe “pretend” isn’t quite the right word for what you’re saying?

Putting yourself in the mindset of “maybe I am” and unmasking, and that feels authentic, seems to be my understanding of what you’ve written in context.

But this is above Lemmy’s paygrade. Unfortunately the only way to be 100% sure is to get a diagnosis, which can be very difficult financially/logistically.

Even if you are or aren’t autistic, if you do find that coping behaviors, interests etc. that are often associated with the autistic community work for you and make you feel like yourself then I personally would say that’s okay.

The human brain is a weird thing and neurotypes are all over the place. Being ND isn’t just autism so you may find kinship with other communities too. Keep an open mind.

What does pretending to be autistic look like when you do it?

Welcome to the club! It's not very popular. We have meetings but no one ever shows up!

If you have to pretend to be autistic then you probably aren't autistic. Go get diagnosed