Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello fellow autistic people! I thought I would share this brilliant article for any of you questioning your autistic identity or if you are at the start of your autistic discovery journey. This article compiles some common autistic experiences and is by the awesomely autistic founder of Ausome Training.
https://ausometraining.com/am-i-autistic/
I hope this helps you on your autistic discovery journey! Good luck! We are here for you.
Thanks for sharing this article. It was really interesting and thought provoking.
As I read through it I was thinking that not every single thing applied to me so I can't be autistic! (Those smart online tests suggest otherwise) I've spent 60 years trying to fit in it's so hard to really know who I am as I've spent so long masking. I even got to the point of following the link for an appointment for an official diagnosis. And now I'm sat here crying - because? What if I spend all that money on an assessment and they say - nah. You're brain just works in the regular way and your self diagnosis is nonsense and actually - you're just a bit odd but not autistic. I'm super sensitive to criticism and rejection and that makes me feel fearful of moving from self diagnosis to official diagnosis. Ah the joys of imposter syndrome :(
While many of the 'Am I autistic' and 'Trauma' examples applied to me, relatively few of the 'Common situations' section applied to me (only 4 or 5). This is not because I'm not autistic, but because I'm intelligent and worked out long ago what other people expect of me, and I conform. I conform because doing so leads to better outcomes when interacting with other people. Some autistics can function extremely well, because we have had to observe and understand social situations using our intellect. This has the downside of social exhaustion, but having to do things using conscious intellect, rather than instinct, does not stop us being capable of social adroitness.