Wow it’s been a while. I just wrote out a bunch of stuff and wanted to share it somewhere, so here you go. Maybe I’ll post it to reddit or something sometime.
I’m trying to understand whether I could be considered autistic. I can identify that I have plenty of traits in each of the broad categories, and I find many autistic experiences I’ve read of relatable, particularly those specific to AFAB people. My parents used to point out autistic characters when I was growing up, telling me they thought my father and I were “a little bit that way”. I also find it easy to understand and connect with those of my friends who are autistic.
On the other hand, I don’t think any of it causes much difficulty for me any more, or at least my difficulties at this point are more or less within the range of neurotypical experiences. I have control over my life now, so I stick to activities that I like and prefer to socialise with the “weird” people I get along with, and generally live my life the way I want. The issues that do crop up are limited and not difficult to deal with - I’ve learned to do small talk in the workplace, push through my (fairly mild) social anxiety most of the time, head to a quiet place for a bit when a situation becomes a bit too much, and so on.
None of this is particularly major, and the diagnostic criteria for autism are all about significant struggles faced, so I suspect I wouldn’t qualify for a diagnosis even if I wanted to and were able to find someone who deals with adults. On the other hand, perhaps I might have received a diagnosis if I saw someone back in my teens, as needing a small amount of support which could have helped me reach where I am sooner. If I was diagnosed then, I would still be just as autistic now, just with coping methods - but since I’ve already reached that point by myself, does that mean I’m not?
And does it even matter? All this reading and researching, and identifying with others’ experiences but not presenting as a stereotypical case, and my subjective experiences that aren’t extreme enough to be instantly clear-cut but are enough that I keep coming back to them, and wishing someone could just “give me the answer” but not trusting anyone external to it all to be right, the fear that I’m just exaggerating it all to justify being part of some “special” and “different” group… well, it reminds me a lot of my early questioning of my gender. The conclusion I reached back then was to put the labels and theoretical questions aside for a time, and to simply judge which courses of action worked best for me in a practical sense. So I worked my way through changes in presentation and pronouns and eventually physical transition, having found each step to be right for me in itself, with the label “trans” being more of a consequence than a cause.
In the case of autism though, I don’t think there’s much to do. Perhaps I could look into advice for autistic people despite not knowing whether I’m autistic or not, in parallel with the idea of exploring gender before identifying as trans, but this time that wouldn’t lead me to an answer anyway. It’s just about understanding in the theoretical sense with very little practical implication. It’d be nice for my own self-image, and as an explanation to offer to others when they find something about me odd.
TL;DR I like the idea of autism as an explanation for some of my quirks and difficulties, but I’m not totally convinced I’d be justified in claiming it as none of it is significant enough that I need support.
lol guess which nerd got diagnosed yesterday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯