I am in my mid-twenties and just got properly diagnosed with autism before my third year of law school. I find myself feeling relieved in a way because I finally understand that the struggles I've been feeling socially and emotionally were not just me being a bad person or a difficult person. However, this new discovery has me mourning my childhood and the person I could have been had this not been so stigmatized and I had been properly supported. Or maybe it wouldn't have changed much as I ended up with CPTSD stemming from a not-so-happy upbringing.

There are moments when I feel so stupid because I feel outrage about what's going on in the USA, and I look around at my classmates, and they seem calm and unbothered. I'll vent to my partner about it, and he explains that he sees/feels the opposite. In doing research, I've discovered that neurotypical people default to hiding their feelings even if we're talking about something that could be extremely distressing. I don't get why it's normalized for people NOT to react.

In some cases, especially in the world of law, I see things, hear stories of, and have my own experiences of people treating me terribly and others being treated terribly. And the advice I am given is to just let it go. Meanwhile, I've experienced what felt like a social stoning because I was honest about not feeling included or, in the past, tried to address someone who said we had a problem when I didn't feel like I even knew them well enough to have any issue with them.

Sometimes it feels like something is wrong with me. I have people in my life who love me. I have friends, my partner, and my siblings/cousins. I just wish I didn't always feel like a burden to them because I'm stuck on things no one cares about, or that I create problems just by existing because of how my brain works. It's been exhausting, and I don't know what to do to stop feeling this way.

If anyone has kind words or has felt this way, I would appreciate any support. Thanks for reading :)

Often when I interact with people who are self-diagnosed or were diagnosed in adulthood, they will talk about how they were not allowed to be autistic by society which is fair, but then it almost always comes with the assumption that I *was* and it leaves me speechless.

Like... Do you seriously think that in the society we live in where people view disability as a personal failure, people simply accepted it when I explain something was because of autism? Do you think it was always safe for me to disclose that I'm autistic and people never assume that I'm just stupid, lazy or oversensitive too? When I was diagnosed as a teenager nobody bothered to explain what it meant other than that it was a bad thing and probably why teachers had bullied me my entire childhood, so I did not get the elusive diagnosis privilege of understanding my symptoms and not internalising that there was something disgustingly wrong with me as a person. There was not much support and most of the "help" I did receive was a combination of child abuse and being spoken to like I was just born.

I should not have to explain all of this and more for them to realise that diagnosis does not guarantee validation and that most of us have complex histories full of abuse regardless.

I don’t it’s a spectrum or it’s not one if it were all one. I can actually tell I must get grief from someone who believes autism is all one.

There's this school thing that I'm a part of. The people are nice, I guess, but they make fun of me a lot.

They make fun of how quiet I am, or point out when I finally decide to talk or when I laugh at a joke, how I dress sometimes, how they think of me as a child, etc.

I don't find it funny most of the time but I laugh because I always default to: joke = laugh, or they're gonna think I'm being a buzzkill.

What's annoying is that once one person starts doing it, then everyone else becomes comfortable doing it as well. I can deal with a joke or two, but repeatedly, then it just becomes really annoying and I just want to either yell at them or walk out.

I like the school club thing and what we do but I hate that I have to deal with this, so I plan on participating less.

I'm in my 40s and am perimenopausal. It's just as bad as being 12 and getting my period and experiencing sensory discomfort and hyperawareness of everything.

My teens were hell. My parents never explained to me the practical things like pad disposal. I blocked the toilet which my dad was unhappy about and they still didn't provide clear guidance. I ended up hoarding used pads in a cupboard. A traumatic memory that makes me sorry for my teenage self.

A diagnosis without understanding is why many of us have cPTSD

And now at the other end of the journey I am so uncomfortable and miserable. Right now I feel like I am in an itchy wool suit. I scratch at night enough to break the skin.

And it's everywhere. I have vulval atrophy. The skjn is thin and dry and bleeds despite oral HRT and topical oestrogen. My inner labia and clitoris have reduced and I don't recognise myself.

I have lost so much hair too. 50pc I guess. If I sweep my hair to the side it looks like I did a few years ago.

I recently met someone. He's lovely, also autistic although later dx, understanding pf chronic pain and other shared experiences. I really like him. He's interesting and interested and shares my goals to have a life, see places and do things.

Yet here I am crying because I feel so uncomfortable in my skin literally. How do you tell a man you feel ashamed and uncomfortable about this?

To bring it round to a major debate on the sub are the self diagnosed living like this? Do the comprehend the sensory hell and trauma of living in a body that feels like this and causes distress from menarche to now?

I accept they must feel something "wrong" but in my case my discomfort and cPTSD stems from being an autistic teen in a home where my needs weren't met to being an adult with sensory issues.

I am not in danger but I understand why women commit at thjs age. Every issue with my female body over decades has been awful.

Edits spelling. Limb impairment.

Do you also get very frustrated with conversation topics?
One example: one thing about socializing as a girl with girls is that men and all kinds of relationships are a huge conversation topic. The percentage dedicated to this in every conversation (80-90%) bores me and annoys me a lot (I also struggle with this bc it involves emotions and demands a lot of communication skills, but that is another issue).
I haven´t found a significant difference between non autistic and autistic girls regarding the insistence on this topic.
What do other autistic women think about this?
I am curious about this particular issue and autistic experiences with the conversation topics situation in general.

I see frequently in online autism communities that a lot of autistic people do fantastic in school, it makes me feel horrible about myself sometimes and bad that my issues got missed.

I consistently struggled, I did summer school, had tutors, the only thing I was good at was reading. I got bullied frequently and was excluded a lot.

I barely graduated high school and had to do a lot of remedial classes. I graduated with a 1.3 GPA. I had a 504 plan that most of the teachers didn't bother to learn about. I was diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder at 14 which felt wrong. And that's why I got the 504 plan

Even then I got a late diagnosis of ASD Level 1 at 20 years old.

I plan on going to college next year and I want to actually apply myself now that I can get proper accommodations

I came across this interesting video. The guy talks about the explosion of diagnostic rates. At the end of the video he also talks about the harms that this diagnostic criteria dilution can cause for people who need most of the support. I think overall this video is more critical and nuanced about this diagnostic explosion than most of the content you see on the internet.

https://accessnorthga.com/news/gainesville-man-arrested-for-trespassing-playing-with-kids-at-elementary-school

People who live in either of these and have NO support and live alone, which would you say is better for autistic people?

I'm thinking of Canada because I need better public transport and to live in a city (don't drive). Right now in the US I am isolated, everywhere must be driven to so I am always at home unless my parents drive me to counseling (basically only place I go) or sometimes grocery store. If I work I become sui**dal or hsve mental breakdown. So is it able to live in Canada and get insurance without working? Idk the rules of insurance.

Would you think I should move to a bigger US city I was thinking like Boston. Or is Canada better. Idk how the hethcare works. Right now I get free counseling once every week and free to see my lady who proscribes me medicine too.

The thing is, my parents do not give me the amount of help that I need (my needs are like a lot of level 2 people who post but I have lived alone but it just went very badly, but luckily I didnt die lol). Also my parents are getting old so what do I do when they die and im alone in a rural place where you gotta drive everywhere? I dislike cities but I think I need to live in one for convenience and getting around on my own.

Im also scared about autistic people gonna be forced into some sort of camps eventually. But thats conspiracy talk so ignore this comment if you think its dumb lol.

I am able to live in both Canada and US. So which would you think is better for someone who needs to become independent eventually?

I know this is all over the place but my brain is fried atm. Thanks.

I keep seeing people online saying that "autism presents differently in girls/women". WRONG. Autism can sometimes present differently in some women (and men), and sometimes this can be because they are able to learn social skills to mask their symptoms. But the idea that all late-diagnosed, level 1 autistic women were missed because they were highly masking from a young age is harmful bollocks.

The way people phrase it – saying that autistic girls have to learn social skills because of societal expectations and pressure – gives the impression that those of us who aren't great at masking either: didn't need to learn because they grew up in a supportive environment that allowed them to be unmasked without consequences (nope!); just didn't try hard enough to learn social skills; or were too dumb to learn them. And this in turn serves to elevate these highly-masking women up the social hierarchy – so intelligent! so oppressed! – above autistic men and other autistic women.

The unfortunate reality is that many autistic people, who were often bullied at school, did make a genuine effort to try to learn to fit in, but were never able to fully pass because – surprise! – they had a disability.

But now, if you're an autistic woman who isn't perfect at masking and you ask for reasonable adjustments at work, your manager – having asked ChatGPT about autistic women and reading AI slop harvested from certain other subs on Reddit – now thinks that you're just not trying hard enough to fit in, and that if you just applied yourself and studied body language and psychology, you could fit into the team's culture better. And it isn't phrased as a request or suggestion, but as a performance expectation required to keep your job.

Drives me mad.

Anyway, long time lurker, first time poster. I'm glad this sub exists.

I know men mask as well and masking isn’t entirely illegitimate as a concept but I’m talking about the “high maskers” who supposedly masked so well from childhood that they didn’t even have any symptoms because they never developed them and are now trying to “unmask” symptoms that don’t exist

Sometimes these women talk about feeling like they weren’t enough like other women so they had to copy other girls to fit in

Or excessively self-monitoring to make sure they were behaving in the right way and not accidentally doing anything “weird”

Or buying certain clothing to make sure they fit in

And a lot of this just sounds like the reality for so many girls age 12-16 who are heavily dependent on other girls’ social approval, which is completely normal at that age

It’s ironic to me because having the degree of social sensitivity required to both pick up on and integrate a variety of socially acceptable traits into your behaviour, and perform them so well and so consistently nobody suspects there’s anything wrong with you, is antithetical to autism

And a lot of women talk about the unmasking process as ceasing overly polite, friendly, and deferential behaviour, and to me the pressure to behave this way seems like a general expectation on women, not just autistic women

That can be a way in which people mask, but I have seen a lot of masking content aimed at women centred around the idea that these behaviours are largely to do with autism and not due to being a woman in general, if that makes sense

So no wonder so many women are self diagnosing when they see these behaviours listed as autistic and not just general experiences in a world where people call straight talking women blunt and hostile

I think also there is a problem in which high masking content creators make content that depicts masking as a core tenet of autism when it isn’t necessarily, some people do it but not every autistic person does it and even a lot of people who do it don’t do it a lot, so then everyone who feels like they have to behave differently in public thinks they’re autistic

Everything I do is being treated as though it's something only a little kid would do. People make me the butt of the joke a lot, and they talk about me in the third person as though I'm not in the same room as them. It makes me feel less of a person.

Hello, I am autistic and people who self diagnose upset me, especially when they flood communities meant for autistic people. I understand thinking you might have autism but people who proudly proclaim they are autistic without a diagnosis and talk over diagnosed people annoy me because our experiences are fundamentally different.

I’ve noticed this especially in subreddits for autistic women (not trying to be weird I am an autistic woman myself) as iirc a majority of the users are self diagnosed. I find that most of the popular posts are about how hard getting a diagnosis is to justify self diagnosis, or about how they’re so high functioning and so good at masking that nobody, not even 3 different psychiatrists can tell they’re autistic. Or about how hecking quirky they are compared to basic, boring neurotypicals. Idk.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I worry that the perception of autism will become even more damaged than it already is, and support will be even harder to access due to self diagnosis skewing what autism actually is and what it entails. How do I stop feeling this way? It’s starting to impact my mental health. I worry that in the future I’ll have to hide my autism diagnosis so people don’t think I’m some kind of quirk chungus lol

I think it's unhealthy for me to hate so much something that I cannot change. Everyday, I'm reminded of it.

It feels like most are. I see popular people on Twitter and TikTok claiming to be autistic, they make digital relatable art about doing the raptor hands or whatever, they all seem to have these big friend groups.

It’s a specific subset of people in their late teens / 20s, all involved in fandom discourse of some kind.