Published on 12, July, 2020
Im not officially diagnosed with autism, but I am mostly sure that i am autistic or at least neurodivergent in some way. I have always felt like there was something wrong with me, even when i was young I realised that there was something different about me, the way I thought, behaved and communicated was different than other kids. As i grew up, i just thought i must be doing something wrong, so i just tried to pretend to be more normal by copying people around me.
A few years ago, i was looking up something about autism, i don’t remember why, and I realised that autism is actually a lot different than what I thought and saw before on tv or media. And I also realised that i fit into most of traits and it explained a lot about my life and how I felt. I didn’t tell anyone about this, but I kept thinking about it ever since.
Around 3 years ago my younger brother got diagnosed with autism, so my mom started to learn more about it to be able to help and understand him better. And she told me about how she thought that i actually have shown a lot of signs since my early childhood.
At first i ignored it and thought i was just overthinking, but then i kept seeing things about autistic people and their experiences and i keep thinking about how much i relate. I also did a lot of research into the subject and even tried multiple online tests, so im mostly sure i have autism. But since i am still undiagnosed, it feels a bit wrong to actually call myself autistic or tell anyone. Can i still say i am autistic even if i dont have an official diagnosis? Would that be morally wrong or offensive to diagnosed autistic people? Sorry if i said anything rude or wrote too much.
The only real “problem” I see with you self diagnosing yourself is that it can’t really get you any legal help or support that you can get if you have been diagnosed on paper. Though you don’t really get a lot of support if you are only on the spectrum and not diagnosed with the whole thing apparently.
I myself was going through the process of testing for both ADD and Autism at the same time and as they have some similarities, they couldn’t see which of the similarities came from which diagnosis so I got ADD and was placed in the spectrum category instead of getting the whole diagnosis to see if anything would remain when they got me on some medication. I knew deep down that I had Autism and wasn’t just on the spectrum and didn’t understand why they couldn’t just give me the diagnosis at the time until way later when I realized that they share some aspects making it hard to know. When I got the full diagnosis years later I realized how badly I needed that support and how inconvenient it was to just have the spectrum on paper without the support really was. So I really recommend getting officially diagnosed to get that support.
Autism can be really challenging in a lot of aspects other than the social interaction part which Autism is so commonly known for that the internet doesn’t really provide or mention, but some content creators do so I would recommend to look some of them up.
Some may be really sensitive when it comes to people self diagnosing themselves but that can’t be said for everyone, might be a personal issue in that case.
Calling yourself autistic imo indicates that you have been diagnosed on paper and I don’t think I’m alone in that but I don’t really see a problem in it, might cause some form a misunderstanding at some point tho since hidden meanings can be pretty hard to understand for some autistic people as far as I know.
Spikey said:if you are only on the spectrum and not diagnosed with the whole thing
Spikey said:spectrum category instead of getting the whole diagnosis
Spikey said:I knew deep down that I had Autism and wasn’t just on the spectrum
Is being autistic different than being on the spectrum? Its called Autism Spectrum Disorder so wouldnt you be on the spectrum no matter how many autistic traits you have?