Another post about why I support self-dx folks
Let’s say we have 2 people, Bobby and Betty.
Bobby does not have autism. Bobby is 13 and Bobby thinks he has autism. Bobby identifies with a lot of the posts in the actuallyautistic tag and it makes him feel good to be part of it. He took a few tests online and some of them said he’s autistic, although not all. Bobby will hang out until he grows up and realizes he wasn’t autistic after all, and it was all just circumstance, but at least he found a community that made him feel better when he was unsure.
Betty does have autism. She’s 22 now, still noticing symptoms in her everyday life. But she was never officially diagnosed and struggled enormously with the lack of accommodations and lack of knowledge of how to deal with her symptoms. She has read the DSM-5 and a whole heap of information available to her online and after weeks of research and note-taking on her behavioral patterns, she has come to the conclusion that she is autistic.
I’d support both these people, because you never know which one is a Bobby and which one is a Betty.
Maybe they’re faking it for attention, but who cares? If some kid is faking it for attention, I guarantee they’ll grow out of it. But if you act like a jerk to every self-dx person you come across, you’re being a jerk to a whole lot of people who actually are autistic.
Personally, I’ll always give self-dx people the benefit of the doubt, because they could be autistic, and that’s enough for me.
