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Autistic imposter syndrome

Autismman

I’ve posted about this before I’m sure but I am still fighting the feeling of being a fraud daily. I hope one day I just accept it and move on but at the moment I’m trying to get as much information on imposter syndrome as possible. I found a YouTuber who did a video on the subject and one of the lines in the script were as follows; 

“I think that you have ignored your needs and limitations for so long that to listen to them now you need to amplify them which feels like exaggeration and now you are acknowledging the things that overstimulate you in the day it’s not building up in your system where you take it out on the people you care about” - GenericArtDad

After a diagnosis I suppose it’s only natural to look more inward than you did before, especially if you are not sure you can fully accept it or move on swiftly after or have any doubts. The spectrum is almost like looking up at the stars and trying to find one no one’s ever seen before then claiming it for your own. To find your own place on the spectrum can be tricky, well for me it is because as I may have mentioned in previous posts I do not have every single typical autistic behaviour.

Parents

  • Yeah I’ve had Autistic imposter syndrome, too. That’s why it took me a few years to join this forum despite knowing about it around the time I was diagnosed. When I was diagnosed my psychiatrist said that she considered me “borderline” for the ASD diagnosis, which only made the imposter syndrome a little worse. As my wife has pointed out before: The issue is that I am Autistic, but I don’t look/act the way people generally expect from an Autistic person.

    All that to say, you’re not alone in that.

Reply

  • Yeah I’ve had Autistic imposter syndrome, too. That’s why it took me a few years to join this forum despite knowing about it around the time I was diagnosed. When I was diagnosed my psychiatrist said that she considered me “borderline” for the ASD diagnosis, which only made the imposter syndrome a little worse. As my wife has pointed out before: The issue is that I am Autistic, but I don’t look/act the way people generally expect from an Autistic person.

    All that to say, you’re not alone in that.

Children
  • in reply to profdanger

    I get this too, there are times I read posts and threads and even though I know it's a syndrome which means we all have different points on it and not an illness where everybody has the same symptoms, I still sometimes feel that there's been a mistake adn I'm not really autistic. 

    I wonder if part of the problem is that we're older and so much information is aimed at the young? It can seem like theres little acceptance of life before diagnosis and that we're encouraged to think about the things that we've struggled with rather than on the things we've been good at because of or despite our autism. I think autism made me a better counsellor because I looked at other peoples problems through a different lens and saw them differently and was able to help my clients see a different path through their difficulties.

    Of course diagnosis and why we go for diagnosis is because we're struggling and often feeling near collapse and burnout, we end up rebuilding ourselves from a very different ground level, a diagnosis can feel like an emotional landslide and the ground we're rebuilding ourselves on is different. But we should sift through the rubble and keep those things we're good at, the things we enjoy and that make us happy, but to often it feels that it's all been bulldozed away.

    Maybe a good idea for another thread is to list all the symptoms on the spectrum and see which ones fit us and which don't. I wouldn't be surprised if there's more differences between us than we might expect, given that we all have the same or similar diagnosis. I think we're encouraged to see the spectrum to narrowly and a wider view might help all of us as well as wider society and our families.

  • in reply to profdanger

    How did you get your head around it and finally accept it for what it is? Just time?