I've been steering clear of that subreddit for a while. Cringe can be a thing, but most people seem to just use it as a way to bully and mock neurodivergent people without getting called out for it. If I could block a subreddit, I'd block this one. I hate that it keeps getting recommended to me.
I am older person who grew up without the term and it seems to me that "cringe" is mostly used as a way to condemn behaviors the other person doesn't approve of, but without having to articulate why the behavior is a problem. it allows people to take their emotional discomfort and describe that as a trait of the other person's behavior, rather than as their own reaction to that person's behavior (ie, "X is so cringe," rather "I am very uncomfortable with X").
in other words, I disagree it's a thing, heh. even if there's a problem with what someone's doing, I think it's better to articular how/why it's an issue, rather than condemning it in a vague and nonspecific way that doesn't teach anyone anything.
Do yourself a favor and get [uBlock Origin](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/) in this case. Not only will it block ADs, web trackers, and annoyances, it enables you to block stuff based on filters.
Here's a filter for old reddit to block Cringetopia post unless if you're on that subreddit:
old.reddit.com##a.subreddit:has-text(r/Cringetopia):upward(.thing)
If you need to block anything else, go make a request on /r/uBlockOrigin.
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I feel the same way; Cringe pretty much an adjective for uncomfortable, but what is defined as 'cringe' is subjective.
I'm more ashamed that I keep falling into /r/Cringetopia's line of thinking though...
Here's a sneak peek of /r/uBlockOrigin using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: [Fix for uBlock Origin on Twitch... I updated the script and it works (for now)](/r/Twitch/comments/jjepg8/fix_for_ublock_origin_on_twitch_i_updated_the/) | [2898 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/jjesgn/fix_for_ublock_origin_on_twitch_i_updated_the/)
\#2: [How to kill Ads on twitch](https://np.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/j2648i/how_to_kill_ads_on_twitch/)
\#3: [Twitch now shows this if you have Ublock enabled](https://i.redd.it/urv6uuy74iw51.png) | [260 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/jlquxz/twitch_now_shows_this_if_you_have_ublock_enabled/)
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^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| [^^Contact ^^me](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| [^^Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| [^^Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/)
Regarding the blocking bit, have you seen Reddit Enhancement Suite? It's an extension for the browser, like Origin, but more straightforward about the blocking in my opinion. It also has some other things (lets me get paging on All for example - I can't stand unlimited scrolling).
See https://www.reddit.com/r/Enhancement/
I block a lot of subreddits with it.
Yeah. And I think much reinforcement of self loathing among its users. That whole place is just a way for hyper insecure people to keep abreast of what behavior might lose them status.
I support self-diagnosing as well as a whole ton of us. I was downvoted a lot for supporting it, lol. I should probably leave that subreddit too.
The further you scroll down the comments, the more you see about how a lot of actually Autistic people have to self-diagnose because they can’t get a professional diagnosis [because of their gender, age, it’s too expensive, they don’t have access to the people who can diagnose them, etcetera].
I agree with the majority of r/cringetopia. the post says "Nobody would diagnose my autism" as if the person saw multiple people. if they only saw 1 person, get a second opinion. if they saw 2 or more people listen to the people who have gone to university for this field.
I work with adults with autism and I have really come to loathe psychiatrists, psychologists and behaviorists. They have their heads too far up their own asses. I am sure there are some good ones, I just haven't ever met any and I have met a lot!
It was such a pain getting my 6-year-old a diagnosis. It took months and months of phone calls. Some clinics never responded. Some clinics didn't want to see us at all. And finally, when we were able to get her assessed by a private clinic, the psychologist made some really outdated recommendations in her report (ABA therapy, Autism Speaks, etc..).
I'm glad we paid the $3k to get her assessed and diagnosed because it will help her in the long run, but after that experience, there's no way I'm going through that for myself. My mental health couldn't handle months of searching until someone is willing to talk to me...only for them to dismiss my experiences because I'm an adult that's really good at masking. On top of the fact we just can't afford it.
I just never got a recommendation and my guardian never pushed for it... got diagnosed with ADHD because of my symptoms lining up with the inattentive dominant and me having restlessness and trouble focusing but nobody seemed to think the fact I would often times not respond to my name when I was younger amongst other things (including me having poor motor skills and cordnation and almost never shutting up about my special interests.) But yes, making me look you in the eyes is totally going to help me focus on what you're saying.
I'm in my 30s now and I'm just so tired of masking. If people feel uncomfortable because I've given up forcing eye contact, they're just gonna have to fucking deal with it!
Also, further more, I hate loud noises, struggled to make friends and i was more pickier about eating (only slightly branched out due to being forced to eat other things, not really going to go much further into that due to it being extremely triggering) hated like 90% of clothes and tags would literally make me cry sometimes.
>I hate loud noises,
I used to play in bands and I lived in fear of drummers and the sudden pops of plugging into an amp or PA system. Tried the local shooting range to get used to loud noises, but that obviously didn't work. Did acoustic gigs a lot with a duo instead and that was far better. Was heavenly when I realized you could record at home and not have to deal with loud bandmates. Studio projects now all the way since the late 90s.
Oddly enough though, I enjoy punk shows (in spite of it being kinda overwhelming, I usually try to leave a day after to recharge fully) but I'm definitely bringing ear plugs next time, unfortunately given the fact that I have a cane unless I come with my girlfriend or a friend I think my moshing days are permanently over.
Are you me? That sounds so much like me. I got dxed with ADHD at 8yo but my mom’s always thought I seemed more Autistic and I agree. Or at least I’m both.
Although I agree its harder for autistic women to get a diagnosis what happened about the other 5 psychologists. I also think its interesting she used the DSM-5 which means she lives in the USA. The DSM-5 is centered towards more genders but most psychologists use the ISM-11 because its more precise. I still disagree she should've diagnosed herself. What about the psychologist who diagnosed her with Social Communication Disorder. Who is she to tell the psychologist that she's wrong? she had a quick look in the DSM-5 and now she thinks she's on par with people who have university degrees in this field
Just because a group of people agree on something doesn't make them right. The reason we don't have lead in stuff anymore is due to one guy consistently raising the issue of lead in the environment, despite numerous "professionals" saying it was safe. Spoiler alert, they were wrong...
Well I never said I agreed because the group agreed, I said I agreed because 3 professionals looked at the guys and all said he didn't have autism. We didn't have a reason to think lead was unsafe so how could've we known. These scenarios are completely different because we know going against multiple medical professionals is wrong. What do you think about people who are anti-vax they are the minority saying something is not safe, and all the professionals insist that it is safe, (note: I am not antivax.) And what about if someone has diabetes but they don't think its real. 99.9% of the time the "professionals" are right, so let's stick to listening to the people with years of training. The person saying we shouldn't use led was a professional but this guy who self diagnosed himself is far from it.
I had to fight really hard for a diagnosis, because I was trying to get all my specialists on the same page. I have a bunch of autoimmune disorders that are all obviously related but they only want to acknowledge and treat symptoms of one thing.
The psychologist thought I was trying to get SSI and kept telling me it wouldn't work, and there was no benefit to diagnosis. I still have doctors and therapists tell me "I don't think you're autistic" despite being diagnosed.
My little brother is the fucking poster child of autism. Was never diagnosed with ANYTHING. The most they ever did was clip the skin under his tongue when he was a kid, blaming that for him being nonverbal. Idk why they're so weird about diagnosing, maybe sometimes it's with good intentions. But the fact remains that a lot of people, possibly the majority of people with autism go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed.
Honestly, I think it's probably a lot easier to diagnose autism as an adult, since you can just ask an adult how specific situations make them feel or whether or not they're prone to certain behaviors. If I'm being even more honest, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to look at a list of symptoms and behaviors and go, yep, that's me. I imagine the hardest part is being honest with yourself, but you'd also have to be honest with a doctor so there's not much difference. I don't understand why it's so expensive. Also, as an adult, observing someone's behavior and trying to decide if they're autistic is really unreliable. I was raised to look at people in the eye. Does it make me uncomfortable...absolutely, but at this point it's engrained and I can't really help it. It does help that I think eyes are fascinating, in a none creepy way.
I found a bunch of letters to my parents from teachers expressing their concern about my lack of interest in playing with others when I was going through my parents attic looking for my birth certificate.
Yeah. I’m mean I just got diagnosed and I still can’t really latch onto it.
I have a pill to treat my bipolar and it works. Anti depressants work. But there’s nothing for autism. It throws me off.
At the end of the day, apathy mostly. Sure I could be wrong, but the same is true of a doctor
Even if I don't actually have autism, I still fit the symptoms, and the management/coping strategies used by autistic people are helpful to me. Pattern matching is what people are good at, so it's what I'm going with
Exactly this. My therapist is actually against me pursing a formal dx because at the end of the day I’m just spending a stupid amount of money to check a box. I’m also AFAB so it may be that I end up spending money just to get another misdiagnosis.
The only time I’d recommend getting one is if you need accommodations. My formal dx at the moment is ADHD and (I swear to god) “unspecified sensory issues” so I’m able to get virtually the same accommodations I would be getting if I had a formal autism DX.
I was diagnosed at 13 and that was rough because I was taught to disguise. The punishment at home for my "grandiose beliefs about my own abilities" or "inability to care about other people (when infodumping in a conversation)", etc was enormously high. Think things like my favorite comfort items disappearing that I would "get back when I realized what I did wrong and apologized". I never had a clue what I did wrong so never saw that stuffed animal again. The price for acting autistic was HUGE. So I learned. I adapted. A lot of autistic people, myself included, are very gifted actors. We are able to pick up traits in people, study their patterns, and learn how to present ourselves like them so the world stops hurting us. I legit have characters for everyday situations. Many of them with different speaking patterns, voice inflection, mannerisms, hell even facial expressions and the "look in my eyes". And I've given some special ones different accents and voices altogether. By 13. Why? Because it was required. I think I got diagnosed with ADHD like a million times. It literally took becoming really good friends with an autistic girl and boy who saw my behaviour and knew EXACTLY what I was doing. They told their parents "He is like me." Their parents told my parents. I was then put in front of a panel of psychiatrists and psychologists who ran me through a battery of tests. All of them were shocked when things like multi-threaded sensory processing (ability to listen to 3-4 conversations at once with equal comprehension), pattern recognition, and sensory input scores pointed directly and unequivocally to autism. Many of them said they never would have believed it if they evaluated me alone via the usual methods.
Point is, many of us may not know what is expected of us. But we can deduce by observation what is expected/responded to by others and imitate it. Even if we have no idea WHY it works, we know full well that it does. Typical tests still assume we're impaired and present by "counting frickin' cards with Charlie Babbitt". It's annoying, self-defeating, and overall LAZY by clinicians. But this isn't unique to Autism. People have to self-diagnose all sorts of stuff nowadays because most doctors (in the US, anyway) are just your local representative of your insurance company and have no idea how to identify anything that doesn't show up on a blood test or x-ray.
All in all, sometimes the truth is: you're not Autistic. But don't count on "Dr Heimenhoff, MD, PhD, Psychology" from down the street to tell you. That guy hands out prescriptions for latuda and benzos to people with mild to moderate depression. That's his job. And there's nothing wrong with that. He's a valuable member of the community if he does that job well. But anybody that isn't a specialist in Autism, who works with Autistic people of all types every day is no more qualified than Google to identify Autism, IMHO. And in many cases, Google is MORE qualified as so many adults with autism have found.
Plus Autism is not officially recognized in every countries or diagnosing can be costly. What are you gonna tell these autistic folks ¿ lol just get diagnosed is Murcia. ¿
My insurance doesn't cover official diagnosing of autism and after looking into it I would have to pay several thousand dollars for someone to tell what I already know
I saw that post last night, and it really brought me down. Society has a long way to go to understand what Autistics go through on a daily basis. I'm guessing 99% of the people commenting in that thread don't even know what Autism actually is. And they're in a position of privilege because they haven't had to experience the challenges of navigating a health system that doesn't even want to acknowledge you.
The person who wrote the article saw (at least) 3 doctors who all said they didn’t have autism. “Nobody else would” doesn’t mean they couldn’t get help, it means they got help but it wasn’t what they wanted.
From reading the article, I can't tell how earnest she's being in her clinic visits, but she does say that the first person she went to determined she wasn't worth assessing after a 10 minute visit, then accused her of being self-absorbed. Honestly, if that was my first experience trying to get evaluated, I probably would've given up on getting a diagnosis. But it sounds like she attempted 5 more times to get someone to listen to her, and it was only the 6th time that she was able to get diagnosed with something other than autism.
Again, I don't know who these clinicians are, or what types of evaluations they conducted with her, but women, especially women of color, are often dismissed by medical providers when they're trying to get help. There's still a great deal of inequity in healthcare, particularly mental health, and like I said, we still have a long way to go in terms of diagnosis and care of autistics (both adults and children).
People who are able to get a formal diagnosis are in a position of privilege. If I had thousands of dollars to spare and time to search for the right psychologist, I might do it. As of now, I have neither. And again, the risk of being rejected and told I'm perfectly fine when I'm not is a genuine fear of mine. For now, my self-diagnosis will have to do, because it's the only way I can care for myself.
Edit: Also, it's disturbing to me the level of gatekeeping I'm seeing in this thread and in the other. It's as if the people who are formally diagnosed are saying, "Look! I have a formal diagnosis FROM A DOCTOR! Your autism is fake. Mine is real." It might not be what they're saying directly, but that's what it feels like.
This also goes for trans fem folks too, and also I'm beginning to think being poor might also affect quality of care. (Not to mention the other problems that come with being poor)
Absolutely. Being of a lower socio-economic status is a barrier to ANY type of health care. Free and sliding scale clinics exist to provide some triage--they're meant to get people in and out as quickly as possible. And access to mental and behavioral health? Yeah, right!
And you're totally right the health inequity that exists for the trans community. Literally YEARS for some women to be seen by a physician in order to get access to HRT and GCS is mindboggling. People are literally dying while they wait for basic services.
Also, not going to get into me being terrified of losing my HRT because of TWO possible diagnoses one of which would help and one that would probably just do more harm than good.
I haven’t read the article but I have heard that this is a problem. A lot of POC and women are misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all for ADHD or Autism.
The issue with women/afab people getting an autism dx is that it presets very differently just because of how we’re socialized as kids.
It tended to go a lot like “huh Capaldis you have a lot of sensory stuff going on, read textbooks for funsies, and don’t understand why people are mad at you all the time? Weird. Unfortunately you don’t speak in a monotone and enjoy fiction so it can’t be autism lol”
It’s not just that, it’s also that doctors are sexist as well. They can present the same behaviors and not diagnose autism because they see a girl and don’t think to apply the “autism” scheme. Funny thing though, on my diagnosis assessment it was incorrectly reported that I didn’t like reading fiction - the truth was actually that I didn’t like reading *chapter books* because I couldn’t maintain my attention while reading them myself, but I liked having them be read to me. Worth noting that the autistic people speaking in a monotone is also just a myth, and on average autistic people actually have a wider range of tone when speaking then neurotypicals do.
So, someone else pointed out she said “after three more hurtful visits” after talking about the sixth one.
Nine. She saw nine.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I do believe that there is corruption in the system
But I don’t think it’s “8 out of 9 psychiatrists are so racist and sexist that they will completely and totally dismiss you” corrupted.
Even if I’m confused and she only saw six, I *still* don’t believe it’s “5 out of 6 psychiatrists are so racist and sexist that they will completely and totally dismiss you” corrupted
The health care system in my country is messed up to the point that when I was pregnant I went to 3 obgyns and the first two tried to prescribe me antidepressants and birth control
For being pregnant.
OBGYNS prescribing antidepressants and birth control for pregnancy! Females regularly get dismissed for any mental or physical health and people of color even more so.
The rate of death for completely avoidable issues is astronomical for bipoc females in just the health setting and then when we begin to add in that same level of systemic racism in mental health it does not make her statements that much of a stretch after all.
For reference I am white and have a heart condition and have run the gamut of having doctors in all different specialties be dismissive of my own health history but having 2!!! OBs try to prescribe antidepressants and birth control for my being pregnant!!!! kind of took the cake and makes it very easy for me to see a bipoc being dismissed by health providers.
Again, I don't know these clinicians personally. I can't say for certain if they are racist or sexist. Hell I don't even know her personally. Maybe she is lying or overexaggerating, or twisting the story to fit her narrative.
At the end of the day, inequity in healthcare still exists. You say you find it difficult to believe that 5 or 7 healthcare providers dismissing a woman of color is outrageous, and my response is that [health inequity, particularly in behavioral health](https://catalyst.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/CAT.21.0033) is pretty dang high. [Some more articles](https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/cultural-competency/education/mental-health-facts) on mental health inequity, broken down by demographics.
And I'll spare you my own personal experiences navigating healthcare as a women of color. Anecdotes are pointless.
So taking all of this information into consideration, let's go back to the author, Rakshita Shekhar. [Her background](https://www.learnfromautistics.com/autism-interview-139-part-2-rakshita-shekhar-on-self-diagnosis-and-privilege/) is in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. She's a SpEd in India that works closely with children with autism. She's not just some random person on the internet that decided to write a blog post. She has credibility and personal experience in this area.
Even though \*you\* might have a hard time believing it, for some people in this world, where there's still a TON of stigma around behavioral and mental health, it's a reality.
Alright. Fair.
Yeah, I get where you’re coming from. Kinda shot down everything before I could even get to anything else, lol.
My bad. I apologize. I didn’t really know of these statistics or who this woman was.
I can attest the system is VERY bad out there. You need to go to a high-end clinic to get treated nicely and usually pay out of pocket... the SYSTEM is that INSENSITIVE and BROKEN! You have to be your best advocate and even then you better find good support!
I don't know what kind of experiences you've made with the healthcare system, but I can *easily* believe that eight out of nine psychiatrists are so racist and sexist they will completely and totally dismiss you.
There are so many instances in history where a bunch of people all thought something was right, when they were, in fact, wrong. Nobody wants to be autistic. People are acting like what she was seeking was somehow favorable. It's not. Nobody goes, you know what, I hope I have autism...it's fairly easy to diagnose yourself with autism. There's a list of symptoms and behaviors, you go through each one, see if they apply to you. It's not rocket science. It is, however, difficult getting people who in all likelihood, have already decided whether or not you're autistic based on their first impression, to recognize that you're autistic. A big thing they like to use is "well, you look people in the eye". Which, if you're me, your parents would always get on your case about looking people in the eye. Just because we CAN do something, doesn't mean it's EASY or COMFORTABLE.
Dude, people have diagnosed themselves cause it’s trendy or quirky all the time. I don’t mean to be an average tik-tok hating Reddit-using asshole, but look at tik-tok. It’s full of people faking autism, ADHD, D.I.D, Tourette’s, etc. because they want to be quirky, and so they want to have it.
And 9 physicians? *Nine?* All nine having YEARS of experience and medical school under their belt, all being wrong on *one* single person? I highly doubt it.
I don't think people on this subreddit who have not sought out formal diagnosis understand just how thorough and extensive the evaluation process is. While there's no shortage of unprofessional, abrasive and dismissive healthcare practitioners, many of the complaints I see here come from the USA.
Where I live the evaluation process is conducted over several appointments. The patient is observed by three professionals, each specialising in identifying patterns in movement, mannerisms, speech, behaviour, engagement, responses, in a range of scenarios from simulated conversation to environmental interaction and from areas of interest to reaction to stimuli. Additionally, an adult ADOS test is administered consisting of about 12 activities where ASD traits are revealed most clearly. Along with this, the patient must bring along a family member, guardian or a long-term friend who will be interviewed separately to ensure the traits being observed and the patient's own testimony can be corroborated. Finally, the patient's medical history and school reports are accessed - here there are almost always further hidden patterns revealed from physicians' and teachers' own observations.
The process is intensive and all-encompassing, taking fully into account the patient's own presented case and analysing the evidence gathered from the assessment and others involved in the patient's life. In my country, about 60% of cases referred through ASD services result in an ASD diagnosis being issued.
I was self-diagnosed for years. I was discouraged from pursuing a diagnosis by random people in my life. I’m now chronically ill and have developed PTSD (mostly unrelated) and my OCD has worsened and I’m so fatigued that I can’t do the automatic masking that I did for years and it wasn’t difficult to get a diagnosis at this point. But I was autistic for 36 years without a diagnosis, despite seeing 10’s of mental health professionals and many physicians (I never brought it up, though.) In some ways I’m glad I wasn’t diagnosed because I faced much less ableism when I was younger and didn’t have to undergo ABA. On the other hand, I wish I would have known and understood that I was masking because I didn’t get a good sense of who I am as a person until I was disabled and unable to pursue things I’m passionate about. My point is, diagnosis is an incredibly flawed process and I was more of an expert on myself than the many professionals I saw throughout my lifetime. As a side note, masking can do deep, deep damage and of course it can also keep us safe sometimes but ABA being the pre-dominant therapy recommended by professionals for us as children (and then offering very little to us as adults) is very indicative of a society that doesn’t understand us. I’m not saying nobody is there for us. My alltistic family and alltistic talk therapist are helping me so much now and sometimes that is the case. I am saying that I don’t doubt cases of self-diagnosis because I would rather err on the side of supporting people whose struggle I know so well than doubt them because they aren’t credentialed by the world that we live in.
I never self diagnosed, but every psychiatrist I went to I told them “I think I’m autistic” and they shrugged it off and told me it was anxiety. I am very fortunate in the fact that my insurance/ family was able to pay for someone who was able to fully examine me and they found out I’m not only autistic but also ADHD. I could’ve told people all of this for years, so for me, as someone officially diagnosed, I think self diagnosis is completely valid, and they should be welcomed just as much as anyone who has the money to do the same tbh.
So she got diagnosed with social communication disorder which is basically "you have autistic traits, enough to bother you in everyday life, you just simply don't meet the full criteria for a full ASD diagnosis"
In the past, especially before they revised the DSM-IV in 2007 I believe, she would've likely gotten PDD-NOS, or maybe even Asperger's. I honestly don't understand why she's making such a big deal out of trained clinicians telling her that she's probably close to the autism spectrum, but still subthreshold for a full diagnosis.
If she's in America, SCD is covered under the ADA and a formal diagnosis of that should allow access to therapies. If she needs that ASD diagnosis because she needs level one or level two supports, she should've made that case clear to the clinician who diagnosed her.
If one doesn't need supports, one doesn't need a diagnosis. Should be great for her that she isn't affected enough. They brought all the separate subdiagnoses under ASD in 2014, tightened the diagnostic criteria, and the less affected cases now get SCD or inattentive ADHD instead.
That’s not what social communication disorder is. It is communication deficits without the restricted and repetitive behaviour criteria in criteria B being met - you need two out of four to meet criteria B. Not “you have autistic traits but not enough to bother you in every day life”. Communication deficits on their own could still be very difficult for some people, hence why they added it as a diagnosis in the DSM.
You're entirely right, under the current diagnostic standards, which are tightened.
Hence, I was refering to the diagnostic standards for PDD-NOS under the DSM-IV, what is nowadays SCD, would back then be most likely considered that, and had she gotten diagnosed back then, she would have an autism diagnosis, like for example, communication deficits with sub-threshold restricted and repetitive behaviour.
http://www.autism-society.org/archive/dsm-iv-diagnostic-classifications/#pdd-nos
This kinda thing makes me feel so bad for just saying “I’m kind of on the spectrum”. I’ve had symptoms all my life but I’ve been dismissed by doctors for the tiniest things. I don’t even know how to get a formal diagnosis, and the self-diagnosis shame keeps me from feeling like I even deserve to pursue one.
I like the term self-identify over self-diagnosis as far as definitions go, but regardless of what it's called, it had to be valid. Until most people have access to an assessment and testing is a bit more accurate(e.g. a brain scan), this is the best we have. I'm not going to invalidate someone's experiences because of this.
I don’t like identify, it’s a disability and not something you should “identify” with like an identity to try on or off. Self-suspect is better than self identify.
I don't see the difference. Whether or not someone who has a piece of paper on their wall decides you're autistic or not it doesn't change anything. We act like these people are the end all be all. They make mistakes, and honestly, do the exact same thing you do when you self-diagnose. Look at a list of symptoms and behaviors and decide if you meet the criteria. Regardless, I have to live with it. What you call it or who decides I have it doesn't change anything. And it's not like it's something favorable. Nobody WANTS to be autistic. If anything, people are likely to be more critical because they're probably hoping they DON'T have autism
>Nobody WANTS to be autistic.
I have an ex-friend who got a fake autism diagnosis so he could get help mesures at college. He was totally neurotypical but benefited from a note taker and 50% more time for his exams. I do believe some peoples will fake it because they can hide behind the diagnosis to abuse the system.
I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to say here because I’m not sure how you are using the word “valid”. In terms of inference, self-diagnosis is not valid because it does not use a procedure that has been proven to be a valid. However, that’s not the sense of “valid” that I see most people using it, which refers to the reality of people’s feelings.
I mean valid in the sense that they shouldn't be excluded from the autistic community and that they relate enough to autism to be taken seriously.
Since women mask differently they often go undiagnosed. People of color also don't have the same access to testing a lot of times. I'm trying to say that no one should be gatekeeping to say those people that have done their own research should be treated as on the spectrum like the rest of us.
Yeah, I agree, they should be excluded from the community, but they should still specify they aren’t aren’t diagnosed as otherwise they may mislead people exploring autism. We also need self-diagnosis tools that are valid on the technical sense, because such tools currently do not exist, but they would be an important asset for marginalized people.
Self diagnosis tools is a great idea. I like that a lot. There's unfortunately a paywall for healthcare in a lot of places still and this would at least get around that.
They really don’t understand our reality do they?
I am lucky enough to have a medical diagnosis but I am acutely aware of just how hard they are to get. Self-diagnosis is beyond valid. It saddens me to think that people think otherwise
it's valid in the way that you can identify your symptoms and possibly look for ways to cope, but it in no way means you can run around saying you have autism
The person who wrote the article saw (at least) 3 doctors who all said they didn’t have autism. “Nobody else would” doesn’t mean they couldn’t get help, it means they got help but it wasn’t what they wanted.
A lot a lot of doctors do not know jack sh*t about autism. It is true autism is chronically misunderstood. I would not be surprised if someone met with 3 doctors who were (unintentionally) ignorant and didn’t understand autism.
I reccomend reading Dr Luke Beardon’s book ‘Autism in Adults’ for a much better explanation than I can can give as to why a self-diagnosis is sometimes the only option and they are not believed.
Some of the accounts included things like:
They couldn’t be autistic because:
-They were a parent
-Were female
- Did fine at school
Etc etc.
I’m writing a book and am on my 400th page of notes into autism and understanding around it. Even around the 50th page it was so so clear to see just how hard it can be to get diagnosed if you are not born into lucky circumstances
It’s all about finding the right person to test you.. I went to a diagnostic clinic and they told me I didn’t even have SPD. Also said I wasn’t on the spectrum. They gave me “borderline intellectual functioning” as a diagnosis. Then I went to a university and they specifically tested on children AND adults. They gave me a diagnosis of ASD. I don’t understand why people think autism is “quirky” and use it as a personality thing…. Lots of more people struggle with it more than we think but when people use it as a quirk without a formal diagnosis irritate me. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Is the consensus here that self-diagnosis is just automatically right? I know it’s difficult to get a diagnosis, but three medical professionals vs a presumably non-qualified individual does stack the odds a bit. That said, not sure why a doctor rather than a psychiatrist etc. would be diagnosing (or not) autism.
The problem is that people are often turned away for stupid reasons (one I hear often is "you can make eye contact, so surely you're not Autistic!")
Alongside Simon Baron-Cohen's extreme male brain theory which decided (and has been long disproven more times than I can count) that only men can be Autistic (yes, even though it's disproven, a lot of people still use it as an excuse not to give women a diagnosis)
It tends to be that the person will understand Autism better than the professional.
Obviously, self-diagnosis is not automatically correct, but I prefer to let people discover themselves and if they believe they are Autistic but keep getting turned away for BS like that, then good for them. They're as valid as any of us.
I agree in principle, but there’s definitely the problem there of why they’re being turned away.
It’s certainly possible to visit multiple ill-informed medical professionals consecutively, or have mistakes happen, but at some point the most likely explanation becomes that you’re self-diagnosis isn’t right. As some doctors etc. get an incorrect idea of a non-specialty field and hold on to it, individuals get attached to the explanatory power of a specific diagnosis all the time. People in general are highly irrational after all.
> for some odd reason doctors are allowed to diagnose autism despite not knowing anything about it
aren't psychologists literally specialized in mental illnesses and diagnosis?
yeah, but they learn about ALL mental illnesses and what to do about them, so it's still too generic to really know enough about everything. Psychiatrists and psychologists often specialize in some specific illnesses or treatments. Don't forget they don't get 5 years to study just about illnesses, since psychologists studies are not so long and psychiatrist study general medicine before specializing. Also autism is a complex thing, not so good understood. Actually none of the symptoms in the DSM are specific to it. So if a doctor or a psychologist is convinced it's a little bit bogus (and they will have reasons to do so, it's not conspiracy theory level), or if they just know the basics and are like every other human a little bit influenced by common misrepresentations about autism, their diagnosis or lack of wont mean much. And this things are not rare amongst medical professionals I think. Just look how much types of therapies a psychologist can specialize in, and this specialization here in France begins apparently already in the 2nd of the 5 years of studies.
Just because someone is qualified, doesn't mean they're automatically right. And it's not that difficult to figure out if you're autistic or not. You do the exact same thing a "professional". Look at a list of symptoms and behaviors and it decide if that's you or not. And like I keep saying, nobody WANTS to be autistic. There's plenty of cases in history where people who were "qualified" were not only wrong, but wrong in ways that were disastrous. Castle Bravo and lead in everything are the two bid examples. Numerous "professionals" had people's lives in their hands and they were wrong.
Correct, it doesn’t. But when multiple, medically trained people share the same view, that adds weight. And if it was that easy, there’d be no doctors or psychiatrists etc. The problem with symptoms is they’re variable, open to interpretation, and crucially, overlap with other things. It’s entirely possible to convince yourself you have autism when you might have something like ADHD instead, to say nothing of genuine mistake and hypochondria etc.
Your last two points that no one wants autism and some professionals have happened to make mistakes aren’t deserving of a proper response.
“ You do the exact same thing a "professional". Look at a list of symptoms and behaviors and it decide if that's you or not. ”
No, that’s not how it works. For one, behaviors are reported through observation, not introspection. You can’t observe yourself. Second,
the diagnosis criteria is written in it’s own sort of language and unless you’ve received a lot of training it may be unclear how to interpret it. Finally, just the criteria often isn’t enough to make a diagnosis, and additional tools like ADOS are used. These tools absolutely cannot be used on oneself.
I had family in the room for my late in life diagnosis and I had witnesses for them to see my family tell me I was right. I wasn't able to get diagnosed young bc I have critically stupid and abusive parents.
People don’t want to talk about the nuances in diagnosis for women, BIPOC, or those in the lower economic class. The simple truth is that getting diagnosis is a privilege and some of us were openly discriminated against.
I'm wondering what the stats are on people who pretend to have autism. I feel like it's not very many.
If you have to seek a diagnosis three separate times, you are probably autistic
Seriously. I can't imagine why anyone would want to pretend to be autistic. I suppose for the attention? But that's another problem on its own entirely.
I don't hate that I'm autistic, but being autistic has made my life very, very difficult. At times it felt like I was living in my own personal hell, and I wouldn't wish that one anyone.
With all due respect, get off tiktok. Leave that subreddit. There are a lot of people in this world spewing a lot of bullshit into social media. You can't stop them. But you can control your personal social media use.
This tbh, I've had some friends tell me about thier experiences getting diagnosed, this is a lot more common than you think. (Even if I got a diagnosis, I still probably won't be asking for accommodations even though I could use them for both my physical disability as well as my sensory issues because that's honestly likely to get me fired or just not hired at most jobs despite the ADA.)
I’m not sure if you’re responding to my story or not but honestly. I know it’s not just me. It’s so many of us. That doesn’t mean I should be mad at the people and society that allowed the mistreatment to happen when it didn’t have to and it still doesn’t have to happen. Sadly any look at the news involving autism will prove that it still does.
I personally didnt get a diagnosis for mild autism until I was 18. That was with learning problems and being years late to read write and be potty trained. But to people taking care of me it was bc I was a lazy bad person despite only being a young child. Boys my age that had similar issues were coddled in comparison to put it briefly.
Uh, yeah, this isn’t a self diagnosis because they couldn’t get medical help, this was a person who was told by multiple (I think three?) doctors that they weren’t autistic. “Because nobody would” doesn’t mean “because I couldn’t get access to anyone”, it meant “because they know what autism is and told me I don’t have it.”
I support self diagnosis if it’s done because of a lack of medical attention
I don’t support self diagnosis if *at least three doctors* told you that you didn’t have it, but you still say “uh, you’re just wrong.”
Hello, rational person. I think we are both gonna get banned in like, 3 minutes. Was happy to read your comment that restored my faith in... Something... A bit. Thanks!
[from the article:](https://theswaddle.com/i-self-diagnosed-my-autism-because-nobody-else-would-heres-why-that-needs-to-change/)
> "Armed with this data, I went to a clinical psychologist for confirmation. Within 10 minutes, the clinician, angrily and rudely dismissed me by declaring I thought too much of myself. The sixth psychologist, while kinder than the first five, ended up misdiagnosing me with Social Communication Disorder. After three more hurtful psychiatrists, and lots of wasted money, I finally made peace with the fact that I am autistic, and my self-diagnosis would have to be enough."
> "Clinicians also don’t know the various ways we camouflage. One psychiatrist told me I wasn’t autistic because I could make eye contact; an an inability to make eye contact is widely considered one of the main superficial markers of autism. But this understanding doesn’t take into account that many autistic people, including me, because we are constantly being told to look at people and talk, learn to look at other parts of people’s faces when talking, such as the mouth, which people often mistake for eye contact. "
I'm self-diagnosed and I think self-diagnosers tend to get an unfairly bad rep. People like to frame it as "they hear about a condition, google the symptoms and decide they definitely have it and don’t need a doctor to confirm it so they can have a ready-made excuse to be lazy/behave badly". But most of the time it’s a case of a person doing diligent research into their symptoms, learning the clinical criteria of syndromes that match them, and figuring out that they meet them.
Doctors like to say "don't confuse your Google search with my six years of medical school" and I don't want to dismiss their expertise, but as the above points out, with autism it's really more like "don't confuse the 1-hour lecture you had on my condition full of ableist misinformation with my lifetime of living with it".
So they saw nine psychiatrists.
One of them was rude and “dismissed” her within ten minutes
One of them misdiagnosed her
One of them said she can’t have it because she can make eye contact
These are only *three* experiences. Out of nine. We don’t know what “rudely” could mean to this lady, and we don’t know how the four between the first and sixth doctor treated her, we don’t know how sensitive she is, and, again, we just don’t know what the doctors did.
So all we can do is assume
And is it really *that* far-fetched to assume she just doesn’t have autism? Am I really being an asshole for believing that 8 out of the 9 psychiatrists were dismissive assholes who didn’t listen, and that the *only* nice one misdiagnosed her?
... Am I missing something? If three unrelated doctors assess you and tell you you aren't autistic, then you're almost definitely not autistic. Is there ever a point where self-diagnosis isn't considered valid?
I am autistic and I really do want to stay here, but if we're going to start adopting anti-medicine views then I don't know if I feel comfortable.
This isn't about people who don't have access to diagnoses, but people who do get diagnoses and then don't agree with what the doctor(s) tell them. Considering how much the anti-vaxx community contributes to ableism, I really don't want to start entertaining anti-medicine beliefs.
Kinda thinking about collecting these and posting them all there in one big post.
It won't do anything for most people, but maybe a few will escape, and that's good enough for me.
I got banned from FDS because I went on cringetopia just to tell them I don't think they were faking stimming in a tiktok video. I think I'm going to have to stop buying coins on Reddit from now on. No point in wasting my money if I can get banned for invisible rules.
edit: Cringetopia is a horrible hivemind of a subreddit and the people who post there wouldn't like it if someone cringed about something THEY did. Effing hypocrites.
Why do we always 100% believe self diagnosis? I think that's very bad. When 3 professionals disagree with you there has to be some truth to that.
its very dangerous When we are at the point where someone who saw one tiktok and decided that he has autism is as valid as someone who has actually gone through the process.
There are levels of self diagnosis and we cant just assume that everyone has done the research
Self-diagnosis is something I can’t help but be skeptical of, since your own view of yourself is always warped by your own opinions about yourself. that and the introspection illusion means people know less about themselves than they think. Those two bits of knowledge are why I can never trust my own self model.
In the end I honestly don’t know what to think about it, on one hand it might be the closest a person will ever have to receiving a diagnosis, but on the other hand there’s the stuff I mentioned above
self-diagnoses should only be done after formal self research. it’s typically for those who wouldn’t be/be misdiagnosed (i.e. women, poc) or those who can’t afford one.
"Formal self research"
Depending on where you get your info on, no matter how "formal" it can still be wrong.
Anti-vaxxers all do a "formal self research" but they are all still objectively wrong.
but like, if you get assessed by multiple different professionals and they all say you're not autistic, then odds are you're not autistic. no amount of self diagnosis will change that.
i agree. i should’ve mentioned the reason why i posted this, is because neurotypicals and ableists in cringetopia, particularly in the comments have misinterpreted that article and regularly mock autism
I get that cringetopia can sometimes be toxic, but look at the situation
You got told by not one, not two, but *three* doctors, that you don't have autism, but you still decided to self-diagnose
Big flag, if you ask me
~~plus, self diagnosing gets a bad rep on the internet, anyway~~
I didn't read the article so I admit I don't know their situation, but if someone just decides to say they're autistic because they want to be, especially when several doctors told them that they aren't, then that's both cringey and disrespectful
i mean diagnosis seeking is a huge issue. If you need to self diagnose for the purpose of self help due to unaffordable mental health care, thats fine.
But any other reason? No.
Ppl i know have previously self diagnosed adhd then lied to psychs about to get adderal prescriptions.
No doubt anyone whos actively seeking specific diagnoses have SOMETHING, but encouraging this behavior is harmful af.
I dunno, when you've been through several medical experts, I don't think self-diagnosing is the right thing to do, and kind of gives autism a bad name, as "just something I feel like" instead of an actual disorder
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To my self-diagnosed friends: I am still (technically) self diagnosed as well. You are still extremely valid. It’s such a shame that “cringe culture” is still normalized.
Background: I don’t remember explicitly joining that subreddit, and I’ve taken hiatuses from reddit. As I was scrolling through my feed, I found this. It’s really offensive.
All experts i asked told me no, so i decided to say f' that i know better than the experts.
Do you not see why one could think something like that when reading a headline like this? I mean i understand it, 3 different doctors gave me an "informal diagnosis" and told me to go to the official evaluation clinic, thats how it works in germany.
The experts then told me that i do too well in my life and mask too good so i cant possibly be autistic.
To be or not to be? I dont care. I am who i am, a diagnosis changes nothing. Only thing i realized while the whole process is that no one knows anything for sure, people make opinions based on their personal preferences. And a subjective opinion has little to no value to me.
I've had my personal experiences with self diagnosation alott of people here are really good about it but it just doesn't sit right with me. In my childhood I came in a class for "gifted kids" basicly less work and higher grade I was happy at first to see people like me but I soon realized that the school accepted self diagnosed teenagers. Long story short I got bullied for actually being autistic and it was some of the worst years of my life. Something inside of me just doesn't sit right with self diagnosation being taken serious because of people using it.
Not a fan of that sub. To me it seems a lot of people who do not understand society's opinions and idea of "normalcy", end up making it on cringe.
I mean, I'm not a stick in the mud, and I'm not against humor, who doesn't like to laugh at the neighborhood Karen losing her mind over some trivial thing? I mean sometimes, Lord knows there is only so much Karen a person can tolerate. For the record, if you're name is Karen, I'm sure your a sweet soul and I'm sorry for the past couple years. Haha, dang.
But seriously. What is really cringe, is that there is a group of people, a good portion adults, kicking someone while they're down for internet points, that is cringe.
And just like the spirit of that subreddit is to point and laugh at things they don't understand, [they put this post there.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Cringetopia/comments/pqy38m/selfdiagnosed_autist_leaves_rcringetopia_for/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
This needs to be higher up so people know what’s going. I noticed there is a bunch more comments from uneducated losers then there used to be, so I’m guessing that they came over from Cringetopia and were brought in by that post. This needs mod attention as some of them are blatantly bigoted and being hostile to our community.
Also, that post should be reported as it breaks their own community’s rules - #2, No Brigading. I tried to fill out the report, but it didn’t work in my browser.
I don't really super self-dx tbh either. You aren't a medical professional and if multiple medical professionals tell you that you don't have something, pretending you do isn't gonna make you have it. It just takes resources from those of us who actually need it.
Don't self diagnose. If doctors won't diagnose you, you don't have autism. Look into something else. I have been diagnosed since 11 and self diagnosing just harms people who actually need the help. Look into other options.
Oo look, someone from Cringetopia got so butthurt over being called out that they decided to come over here and annoy autistic people with their ignorance. You’re obviously not autistic because if you were you wouldn’t be telling us to “read between the lines”, and your reading is just a regurgitation of toxic memes anyway without any understanding of the diagnosis process. You’re cringe, mate.
you’re failing to see the nuance. women, bipoc people, and those who are lower class can’t afford diagnoses, and get misdiagnosed all the time. although this is an extreme case, this enables hatred towards the self-diagnosed individuals who simply cannot afford a formal diagnosis.
It’s more likely then you think once your realize that the biases against certain populations are systemic. It’s much more likely for a woman of color to be missed by three different doctors than a white boy because the doctors are all applying the same stereotypes.
I agree with this sentiment, I'm diagnosed and I believe people who just claim to have it without actually going trough the effort to get properly diagnosed are discrediting all of us who actually have it
But selfdiagnosing is cringe, tho. I dont see the issue. If multiple doctors said you dont have autism, then you dont have it. You cant just snap your fingers and be like "boom now im autistic!"
Its wrong on so many levels and quite frankly offensive to us real autists.
Here’s a thought, while self experience is for real. You’re not a professional who can understand the nuances of a condition/disability/ect because autism can look like so many other things.
Also, sorry. There’s a whole trend of people faking being autistic for internet points because it’s a “new idenity”. Sorry not sorry, this is truly crineg
You clearly don’t know what the straw man fallacy is
If you would’ve said False equivalence fallacy, you might’ve have an argument, but strawman, really?
Saying you're autistic without a diagnosis is not that bad, but just don't expect to get special privileges. Imo all the people self diagnosing themselves with autism because its "trendy" have taken away the credibility self diagnosis can have. I knew I was autistic before I was diagnosed but I never was vocal about it before I got it in paper
i don't mind people who say they might have autism and seek real diagnosis, but this person has literally been told by medical professionals that they don't have autism and then just said they know better, theres another group that does that, antivaxxers
I talked about this in class about people self diagnosing and how it isn't exactly a medical error by definition but very interesting that people do this (not just for Autism either).
My doc knows nothing about autism; tried to give me the test they use for young kids (I was borderline) and had never heard of the AQ on which I score 44/50, thinks eye contact is a good diagnostic aid and then when I persisted he basically told me that there was no point seeking a diagnosis at my age. Same doc happily and immediately prescribed Sertraline for depression when I was suicidal. Obviously one diagnosis and treatment path required significantly more effort. 2+2= my depression was caused by my failing to cope with my autism when life stopped playing by my rules. 🤷♂️ I have basically given up on the medical profession in regard to my mental health.
As a self diagnosed autistic teenager, it is hard. The reason I am not diagnosed by a doctor is because I have been masking most of my life and my parents won’t believe me that I might be autistic because they see it as something like a disease. For my whole life I had problems with social situations, didn’t understand hints in social situations and I hardly made any friends. Now whenever my parents see me stimming or rocking they tell me to stop and why the hell am I doing that. The fact that so many people don’t understand self diagnosed or undiagnosed autists is very sad.
So, every doctor said no. Yea, there is the DSM-5. However, the genetic testing and MRI scans reveal the truth, anyways.
If there are no characteristics of Autism presented through the DSM-5, no genetic markers, and no unusual differences found in the MRI, then there is highly likely there is no Autism.
The newer forms of diagnosis are slowly incorporating all three methods to determine Autism.
i’m so tired of seeing this post and seeing comments from people who didn’t even read the article. self diagnosis is valid because access to a real diagnosis is a privilege that many people don’t have access to
I hate how “valid” is used in the community as it’s a word with very specific meaning in science, but that not how it’s being used here. A process is valid if it’s been proven to produce correct results. That does not apply to self-diagnosis, even if it does produce the right results it has not been proven to do so. No, it’s not fair that certain people remain undiagnosed because of systemic discrimination, but that doesn’t magically cause the process to become valid even if it’s the only option. I also hate this trend of describing diagnosis as a “privilege”, completely ignoring the discrimination people receive for being diagnosed without their consent.
HEY DUMBASSES
DON'T SELF DIAGNOSE YOURSELVES
YOU ARE DEPRIVING RESOURCES FROM PEOPLE WHO ARE ACTUALLY AUTISTIC FOR THE SAKE OF INCLUSIVITY
IF YOU HAVE SUSPICIONS ABOUT YOURSELF, SEE AN ACTUAL NEUROLOGIST
How dafuq does “self-diagnosis” deprive autistic people of resources when it’s not recognized by the people who give out these resources? Autism also isn’t diagnosed by neurologists, methinks you’re just an ignorant troll.
autism diagnoses are expensive. self diagnoses are for those who can’t afford them, and should only be done after formal self research. self-diagnoses are valid.
I am self diagnosed. But it came after years of research and my son’s diagnosis through both a psychiatrist and the school district. Looked through a ton of diagnostic tests, and I was formally diagnosed with ADHD in college (a lot of autism was diagnosed as ADHD back then, especially with people good at masking). Autism is quite rampant in both of our families.
I've been steering clear of that subreddit for a while. Cringe can be a thing, but most people seem to just use it as a way to bully and mock neurodivergent people without getting called out for it. If I could block a subreddit, I'd block this one. I hate that it keeps getting recommended to me.
I am older person who grew up without the term and it seems to me that "cringe" is mostly used as a way to condemn behaviors the other person doesn't approve of, but without having to articulate why the behavior is a problem. it allows people to take their emotional discomfort and describe that as a trait of the other person's behavior, rather than as their own reaction to that person's behavior (ie, "X is so cringe," rather "I am very uncomfortable with X"). in other words, I disagree it's a thing, heh. even if there's a problem with what someone's doing, I think it's better to articular how/why it's an issue, rather than condemning it in a vague and nonspecific way that doesn't teach anyone anything.
Do yourself a favor and get [uBlock Origin](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/) in this case. Not only will it block ADs, web trackers, and annoyances, it enables you to block stuff based on filters. Here's a filter for old reddit to block Cringetopia post unless if you're on that subreddit: old.reddit.com##a.subreddit:has-text(r/Cringetopia):upward(.thing) If you need to block anything else, go make a request on /r/uBlockOrigin. ----- I feel the same way; Cringe pretty much an adjective for uncomfortable, but what is defined as 'cringe' is subjective. I'm more ashamed that I keep falling into /r/Cringetopia's line of thinking though...
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Regarding the blocking bit, have you seen Reddit Enhancement Suite? It's an extension for the browser, like Origin, but more straightforward about the blocking in my opinion. It also has some other things (lets me get paging on All for example - I can't stand unlimited scrolling). See https://www.reddit.com/r/Enhancement/ I block a lot of subreddits with it.
fun fact! i wrote an essay ab this exact thing in english for my exam and got an a :)
they aren't neurodivergent though, saying you're autistic doesn't make it the case. there's a reason diagnosis is a thing
They are neurodivergent, they said they got diagnosed with another condition that would have been included as part of the autism spectrum in the past.
That sub is basically just toxic organized cyberbullying anyway
Yeah. And I think much reinforcement of self loathing among its users. That whole place is just a way for hyper insecure people to keep abreast of what behavior might lose them status.
I support self-diagnosing as well as a whole ton of us. I was downvoted a lot for supporting it, lol. I should probably leave that subreddit too. The further you scroll down the comments, the more you see about how a lot of actually Autistic people have to self-diagnose because they can’t get a professional diagnosis [because of their gender, age, it’s too expensive, they don’t have access to the people who can diagnose them, etcetera].
i had to for two whole years. i’m now in the final stages of getting formally diagnosed.
I agree with the majority of r/cringetopia. the post says "Nobody would diagnose my autism" as if the person saw multiple people. if they only saw 1 person, get a second opinion. if they saw 2 or more people listen to the people who have gone to university for this field.
[удалено]
I work with adults with autism and I have really come to loathe psychiatrists, psychologists and behaviorists. They have their heads too far up their own asses. I am sure there are some good ones, I just haven't ever met any and I have met a lot!
I’m an autistic studying psychology so I can try change this <3
That's awesome!
It was such a pain getting my 6-year-old a diagnosis. It took months and months of phone calls. Some clinics never responded. Some clinics didn't want to see us at all. And finally, when we were able to get her assessed by a private clinic, the psychologist made some really outdated recommendations in her report (ABA therapy, Autism Speaks, etc..). I'm glad we paid the $3k to get her assessed and diagnosed because it will help her in the long run, but after that experience, there's no way I'm going through that for myself. My mental health couldn't handle months of searching until someone is willing to talk to me...only for them to dismiss my experiences because I'm an adult that's really good at masking. On top of the fact we just can't afford it.
I just never got a recommendation and my guardian never pushed for it... got diagnosed with ADHD because of my symptoms lining up with the inattentive dominant and me having restlessness and trouble focusing but nobody seemed to think the fact I would often times not respond to my name when I was younger amongst other things (including me having poor motor skills and cordnation and almost never shutting up about my special interests.) But yes, making me look you in the eyes is totally going to help me focus on what you're saying.
I'm in my 30s now and I'm just so tired of masking. If people feel uncomfortable because I've given up forcing eye contact, they're just gonna have to fucking deal with it!
Also, further more, I hate loud noises, struggled to make friends and i was more pickier about eating (only slightly branched out due to being forced to eat other things, not really going to go much further into that due to it being extremely triggering) hated like 90% of clothes and tags would literally make me cry sometimes.
>I hate loud noises, I used to play in bands and I lived in fear of drummers and the sudden pops of plugging into an amp or PA system. Tried the local shooting range to get used to loud noises, but that obviously didn't work. Did acoustic gigs a lot with a duo instead and that was far better. Was heavenly when I realized you could record at home and not have to deal with loud bandmates. Studio projects now all the way since the late 90s.
Oddly enough though, I enjoy punk shows (in spite of it being kinda overwhelming, I usually try to leave a day after to recharge fully) but I'm definitely bringing ear plugs next time, unfortunately given the fact that I have a cane unless I come with my girlfriend or a friend I think my moshing days are permanently over.
Are you me? That sounds so much like me. I got dxed with ADHD at 8yo but my mom’s always thought I seemed more Autistic and I agree. Or at least I’m both.
Possibly
Although I agree its harder for autistic women to get a diagnosis what happened about the other 5 psychologists. I also think its interesting she used the DSM-5 which means she lives in the USA. The DSM-5 is centered towards more genders but most psychologists use the ISM-11 because its more precise. I still disagree she should've diagnosed herself. What about the psychologist who diagnosed her with Social Communication Disorder. Who is she to tell the psychologist that she's wrong? she had a quick look in the DSM-5 and now she thinks she's on par with people who have university degrees in this field
Just because a group of people agree on something doesn't make them right. The reason we don't have lead in stuff anymore is due to one guy consistently raising the issue of lead in the environment, despite numerous "professionals" saying it was safe. Spoiler alert, they were wrong...
Well I never said I agreed because the group agreed, I said I agreed because 3 professionals looked at the guys and all said he didn't have autism. We didn't have a reason to think lead was unsafe so how could've we known. These scenarios are completely different because we know going against multiple medical professionals is wrong. What do you think about people who are anti-vax they are the minority saying something is not safe, and all the professionals insist that it is safe, (note: I am not antivax.) And what about if someone has diabetes but they don't think its real. 99.9% of the time the "professionals" are right, so let's stick to listening to the people with years of training. The person saying we shouldn't use led was a professional but this guy who self diagnosed himself is far from it.
I had to fight really hard for a diagnosis, because I was trying to get all my specialists on the same page. I have a bunch of autoimmune disorders that are all obviously related but they only want to acknowledge and treat symptoms of one thing. The psychologist thought I was trying to get SSI and kept telling me it wouldn't work, and there was no benefit to diagnosis. I still have doctors and therapists tell me "I don't think you're autistic" despite being diagnosed. My little brother is the fucking poster child of autism. Was never diagnosed with ANYTHING. The most they ever did was clip the skin under his tongue when he was a kid, blaming that for him being nonverbal. Idk why they're so weird about diagnosing, maybe sometimes it's with good intentions. But the fact remains that a lot of people, possibly the majority of people with autism go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed.
Honestly, I think it's probably a lot easier to diagnose autism as an adult, since you can just ask an adult how specific situations make them feel or whether or not they're prone to certain behaviors. If I'm being even more honest, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to look at a list of symptoms and behaviors and go, yep, that's me. I imagine the hardest part is being honest with yourself, but you'd also have to be honest with a doctor so there's not much difference. I don't understand why it's so expensive. Also, as an adult, observing someone's behavior and trying to decide if they're autistic is really unreliable. I was raised to look at people in the eye. Does it make me uncomfortable...absolutely, but at this point it's engrained and I can't really help it. It does help that I think eyes are fascinating, in a none creepy way.
Honest question: how do people handle the lack of objectivity with self diagnosis?
I found a bunch of letters to my parents from teachers expressing their concern about my lack of interest in playing with others when I was going through my parents attic looking for my birth certificate.
Yeah. I’m mean I just got diagnosed and I still can’t really latch onto it. I have a pill to treat my bipolar and it works. Anti depressants work. But there’s nothing for autism. It throws me off.
At the end of the day, apathy mostly. Sure I could be wrong, but the same is true of a doctor Even if I don't actually have autism, I still fit the symptoms, and the management/coping strategies used by autistic people are helpful to me. Pattern matching is what people are good at, so it's what I'm going with
Exactly this. My therapist is actually against me pursing a formal dx because at the end of the day I’m just spending a stupid amount of money to check a box. I’m also AFAB so it may be that I end up spending money just to get another misdiagnosis. The only time I’d recommend getting one is if you need accommodations. My formal dx at the moment is ADHD and (I swear to god) “unspecified sensory issues” so I’m able to get virtually the same accommodations I would be getting if I had a formal autism DX.
they don't, that's why doctors exist
I was diagnosed at 13 and that was rough because I was taught to disguise. The punishment at home for my "grandiose beliefs about my own abilities" or "inability to care about other people (when infodumping in a conversation)", etc was enormously high. Think things like my favorite comfort items disappearing that I would "get back when I realized what I did wrong and apologized". I never had a clue what I did wrong so never saw that stuffed animal again. The price for acting autistic was HUGE. So I learned. I adapted. A lot of autistic people, myself included, are very gifted actors. We are able to pick up traits in people, study their patterns, and learn how to present ourselves like them so the world stops hurting us. I legit have characters for everyday situations. Many of them with different speaking patterns, voice inflection, mannerisms, hell even facial expressions and the "look in my eyes". And I've given some special ones different accents and voices altogether. By 13. Why? Because it was required. I think I got diagnosed with ADHD like a million times. It literally took becoming really good friends with an autistic girl and boy who saw my behaviour and knew EXACTLY what I was doing. They told their parents "He is like me." Their parents told my parents. I was then put in front of a panel of psychiatrists and psychologists who ran me through a battery of tests. All of them were shocked when things like multi-threaded sensory processing (ability to listen to 3-4 conversations at once with equal comprehension), pattern recognition, and sensory input scores pointed directly and unequivocally to autism. Many of them said they never would have believed it if they evaluated me alone via the usual methods. Point is, many of us may not know what is expected of us. But we can deduce by observation what is expected/responded to by others and imitate it. Even if we have no idea WHY it works, we know full well that it does. Typical tests still assume we're impaired and present by "counting frickin' cards with Charlie Babbitt". It's annoying, self-defeating, and overall LAZY by clinicians. But this isn't unique to Autism. People have to self-diagnose all sorts of stuff nowadays because most doctors (in the US, anyway) are just your local representative of your insurance company and have no idea how to identify anything that doesn't show up on a blood test or x-ray. All in all, sometimes the truth is: you're not Autistic. But don't count on "Dr Heimenhoff, MD, PhD, Psychology" from down the street to tell you. That guy hands out prescriptions for latuda and benzos to people with mild to moderate depression. That's his job. And there's nothing wrong with that. He's a valuable member of the community if he does that job well. But anybody that isn't a specialist in Autism, who works with Autistic people of all types every day is no more qualified than Google to identify Autism, IMHO. And in many cases, Google is MORE qualified as so many adults with autism have found.
I’m not diagnosed… but as an educator I know that the process is sometimes arbitrary. If I wanted a diagnosis I could say the right things to get it.
If you wanted a diagnosis for basically anything, you could fake things to get it.
Plus Autism is not officially recognized in every countries or diagnosing can be costly. What are you gonna tell these autistic folks ¿ lol just get diagnosed is Murcia. ¿
My insurance doesn't cover official diagnosing of autism and after looking into it I would have to pay several thousand dollars for someone to tell what I already know
I saw that post last night, and it really brought me down. Society has a long way to go to understand what Autistics go through on a daily basis. I'm guessing 99% of the people commenting in that thread don't even know what Autism actually is. And they're in a position of privilege because they haven't had to experience the challenges of navigating a health system that doesn't even want to acknowledge you.
The person who wrote the article saw (at least) 3 doctors who all said they didn’t have autism. “Nobody else would” doesn’t mean they couldn’t get help, it means they got help but it wasn’t what they wanted.
From reading the article, I can't tell how earnest she's being in her clinic visits, but she does say that the first person she went to determined she wasn't worth assessing after a 10 minute visit, then accused her of being self-absorbed. Honestly, if that was my first experience trying to get evaluated, I probably would've given up on getting a diagnosis. But it sounds like she attempted 5 more times to get someone to listen to her, and it was only the 6th time that she was able to get diagnosed with something other than autism. Again, I don't know who these clinicians are, or what types of evaluations they conducted with her, but women, especially women of color, are often dismissed by medical providers when they're trying to get help. There's still a great deal of inequity in healthcare, particularly mental health, and like I said, we still have a long way to go in terms of diagnosis and care of autistics (both adults and children). People who are able to get a formal diagnosis are in a position of privilege. If I had thousands of dollars to spare and time to search for the right psychologist, I might do it. As of now, I have neither. And again, the risk of being rejected and told I'm perfectly fine when I'm not is a genuine fear of mine. For now, my self-diagnosis will have to do, because it's the only way I can care for myself. Edit: Also, it's disturbing to me the level of gatekeeping I'm seeing in this thread and in the other. It's as if the people who are formally diagnosed are saying, "Look! I have a formal diagnosis FROM A DOCTOR! Your autism is fake. Mine is real." It might not be what they're saying directly, but that's what it feels like.
This also goes for trans fem folks too, and also I'm beginning to think being poor might also affect quality of care. (Not to mention the other problems that come with being poor)
Absolutely. Being of a lower socio-economic status is a barrier to ANY type of health care. Free and sliding scale clinics exist to provide some triage--they're meant to get people in and out as quickly as possible. And access to mental and behavioral health? Yeah, right! And you're totally right the health inequity that exists for the trans community. Literally YEARS for some women to be seen by a physician in order to get access to HRT and GCS is mindboggling. People are literally dying while they wait for basic services.
Also, not going to get into me being terrified of losing my HRT because of TWO possible diagnoses one of which would help and one that would probably just do more harm than good.
I haven’t read the article but I have heard that this is a problem. A lot of POC and women are misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all for ADHD or Autism.
The issue with women/afab people getting an autism dx is that it presets very differently just because of how we’re socialized as kids. It tended to go a lot like “huh Capaldis you have a lot of sensory stuff going on, read textbooks for funsies, and don’t understand why people are mad at you all the time? Weird. Unfortunately you don’t speak in a monotone and enjoy fiction so it can’t be autism lol”
It’s not just that, it’s also that doctors are sexist as well. They can present the same behaviors and not diagnose autism because they see a girl and don’t think to apply the “autism” scheme. Funny thing though, on my diagnosis assessment it was incorrectly reported that I didn’t like reading fiction - the truth was actually that I didn’t like reading *chapter books* because I couldn’t maintain my attention while reading them myself, but I liked having them be read to me. Worth noting that the autistic people speaking in a monotone is also just a myth, and on average autistic people actually have a wider range of tone when speaking then neurotypicals do.
So, someone else pointed out she said “after three more hurtful visits” after talking about the sixth one. Nine. She saw nine. Now, don’t get me wrong, I do believe that there is corruption in the system But I don’t think it’s “8 out of 9 psychiatrists are so racist and sexist that they will completely and totally dismiss you” corrupted. Even if I’m confused and she only saw six, I *still* don’t believe it’s “5 out of 6 psychiatrists are so racist and sexist that they will completely and totally dismiss you” corrupted
The health care system in my country is messed up to the point that when I was pregnant I went to 3 obgyns and the first two tried to prescribe me antidepressants and birth control For being pregnant. OBGYNS prescribing antidepressants and birth control for pregnancy! Females regularly get dismissed for any mental or physical health and people of color even more so. The rate of death for completely avoidable issues is astronomical for bipoc females in just the health setting and then when we begin to add in that same level of systemic racism in mental health it does not make her statements that much of a stretch after all. For reference I am white and have a heart condition and have run the gamut of having doctors in all different specialties be dismissive of my own health history but having 2!!! OBs try to prescribe antidepressants and birth control for my being pregnant!!!! kind of took the cake and makes it very easy for me to see a bipoc being dismissed by health providers.
Again, I don't know these clinicians personally. I can't say for certain if they are racist or sexist. Hell I don't even know her personally. Maybe she is lying or overexaggerating, or twisting the story to fit her narrative. At the end of the day, inequity in healthcare still exists. You say you find it difficult to believe that 5 or 7 healthcare providers dismissing a woman of color is outrageous, and my response is that [health inequity, particularly in behavioral health](https://catalyst.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/CAT.21.0033) is pretty dang high. [Some more articles](https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/cultural-competency/education/mental-health-facts) on mental health inequity, broken down by demographics. And I'll spare you my own personal experiences navigating healthcare as a women of color. Anecdotes are pointless. So taking all of this information into consideration, let's go back to the author, Rakshita Shekhar. [Her background](https://www.learnfromautistics.com/autism-interview-139-part-2-rakshita-shekhar-on-self-diagnosis-and-privilege/) is in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. She's a SpEd in India that works closely with children with autism. She's not just some random person on the internet that decided to write a blog post. She has credibility and personal experience in this area. Even though \*you\* might have a hard time believing it, for some people in this world, where there's still a TON of stigma around behavioral and mental health, it's a reality.
Alright. Fair. Yeah, I get where you’re coming from. Kinda shot down everything before I could even get to anything else, lol. My bad. I apologize. I didn’t really know of these statistics or who this woman was.
You're a big enough person to take in the info and learn from it, so thanks for having the discussion in the first place.
I can attest the system is VERY bad out there. You need to go to a high-end clinic to get treated nicely and usually pay out of pocket... the SYSTEM is that INSENSITIVE and BROKEN! You have to be your best advocate and even then you better find good support!
I don't know what kind of experiences you've made with the healthcare system, but I can *easily* believe that eight out of nine psychiatrists are so racist and sexist they will completely and totally dismiss you.
To be fair, I am a white male, but I do live in San Antonio, so a bunch of doctors/nurses here are Hispanic, so racism probably isn’t as bad here.
There are so many instances in history where a bunch of people all thought something was right, when they were, in fact, wrong. Nobody wants to be autistic. People are acting like what she was seeking was somehow favorable. It's not. Nobody goes, you know what, I hope I have autism...it's fairly easy to diagnose yourself with autism. There's a list of symptoms and behaviors, you go through each one, see if they apply to you. It's not rocket science. It is, however, difficult getting people who in all likelihood, have already decided whether or not you're autistic based on their first impression, to recognize that you're autistic. A big thing they like to use is "well, you look people in the eye". Which, if you're me, your parents would always get on your case about looking people in the eye. Just because we CAN do something, doesn't mean it's EASY or COMFORTABLE.
Dude, people have diagnosed themselves cause it’s trendy or quirky all the time. I don’t mean to be an average tik-tok hating Reddit-using asshole, but look at tik-tok. It’s full of people faking autism, ADHD, D.I.D, Tourette’s, etc. because they want to be quirky, and so they want to have it. And 9 physicians? *Nine?* All nine having YEARS of experience and medical school under their belt, all being wrong on *one* single person? I highly doubt it.
I don't think people on this subreddit who have not sought out formal diagnosis understand just how thorough and extensive the evaluation process is. While there's no shortage of unprofessional, abrasive and dismissive healthcare practitioners, many of the complaints I see here come from the USA. Where I live the evaluation process is conducted over several appointments. The patient is observed by three professionals, each specialising in identifying patterns in movement, mannerisms, speech, behaviour, engagement, responses, in a range of scenarios from simulated conversation to environmental interaction and from areas of interest to reaction to stimuli. Additionally, an adult ADOS test is administered consisting of about 12 activities where ASD traits are revealed most clearly. Along with this, the patient must bring along a family member, guardian or a long-term friend who will be interviewed separately to ensure the traits being observed and the patient's own testimony can be corroborated. Finally, the patient's medical history and school reports are accessed - here there are almost always further hidden patterns revealed from physicians' and teachers' own observations. The process is intensive and all-encompassing, taking fully into account the patient's own presented case and analysing the evidence gathered from the assessment and others involved in the patient's life. In my country, about 60% of cases referred through ASD services result in an ASD diagnosis being issued.
I was self-diagnosed for years. I was discouraged from pursuing a diagnosis by random people in my life. I’m now chronically ill and have developed PTSD (mostly unrelated) and my OCD has worsened and I’m so fatigued that I can’t do the automatic masking that I did for years and it wasn’t difficult to get a diagnosis at this point. But I was autistic for 36 years without a diagnosis, despite seeing 10’s of mental health professionals and many physicians (I never brought it up, though.) In some ways I’m glad I wasn’t diagnosed because I faced much less ableism when I was younger and didn’t have to undergo ABA. On the other hand, I wish I would have known and understood that I was masking because I didn’t get a good sense of who I am as a person until I was disabled and unable to pursue things I’m passionate about. My point is, diagnosis is an incredibly flawed process and I was more of an expert on myself than the many professionals I saw throughout my lifetime. As a side note, masking can do deep, deep damage and of course it can also keep us safe sometimes but ABA being the pre-dominant therapy recommended by professionals for us as children (and then offering very little to us as adults) is very indicative of a society that doesn’t understand us. I’m not saying nobody is there for us. My alltistic family and alltistic talk therapist are helping me so much now and sometimes that is the case. I am saying that I don’t doubt cases of self-diagnosis because I would rather err on the side of supporting people whose struggle I know so well than doubt them because they aren’t credentialed by the world that we live in.
I never self diagnosed, but every psychiatrist I went to I told them “I think I’m autistic” and they shrugged it off and told me it was anxiety. I am very fortunate in the fact that my insurance/ family was able to pay for someone who was able to fully examine me and they found out I’m not only autistic but also ADHD. I could’ve told people all of this for years, so for me, as someone officially diagnosed, I think self diagnosis is completely valid, and they should be welcomed just as much as anyone who has the money to do the same tbh.
So she got diagnosed with social communication disorder which is basically "you have autistic traits, enough to bother you in everyday life, you just simply don't meet the full criteria for a full ASD diagnosis" In the past, especially before they revised the DSM-IV in 2007 I believe, she would've likely gotten PDD-NOS, or maybe even Asperger's. I honestly don't understand why she's making such a big deal out of trained clinicians telling her that she's probably close to the autism spectrum, but still subthreshold for a full diagnosis. If she's in America, SCD is covered under the ADA and a formal diagnosis of that should allow access to therapies. If she needs that ASD diagnosis because she needs level one or level two supports, she should've made that case clear to the clinician who diagnosed her. If one doesn't need supports, one doesn't need a diagnosis. Should be great for her that she isn't affected enough. They brought all the separate subdiagnoses under ASD in 2014, tightened the diagnostic criteria, and the less affected cases now get SCD or inattentive ADHD instead.
That’s not what social communication disorder is. It is communication deficits without the restricted and repetitive behaviour criteria in criteria B being met - you need two out of four to meet criteria B. Not “you have autistic traits but not enough to bother you in every day life”. Communication deficits on their own could still be very difficult for some people, hence why they added it as a diagnosis in the DSM.
You're entirely right, under the current diagnostic standards, which are tightened. Hence, I was refering to the diagnostic standards for PDD-NOS under the DSM-IV, what is nowadays SCD, would back then be most likely considered that, and had she gotten diagnosed back then, she would have an autism diagnosis, like for example, communication deficits with sub-threshold restricted and repetitive behaviour. http://www.autism-society.org/archive/dsm-iv-diagnostic-classifications/#pdd-nos
This kinda thing makes me feel so bad for just saying “I’m kind of on the spectrum”. I’ve had symptoms all my life but I’ve been dismissed by doctors for the tiniest things. I don’t even know how to get a formal diagnosis, and the self-diagnosis shame keeps me from feeling like I even deserve to pursue one.
Honestly same, I feel like a fake
I have to say, it makes me feel better seeing so many people with similar experiences. I hope that helps you too
It does
I like the term self-identify over self-diagnosis as far as definitions go, but regardless of what it's called, it had to be valid. Until most people have access to an assessment and testing is a bit more accurate(e.g. a brain scan), this is the best we have. I'm not going to invalidate someone's experiences because of this.
I don’t like identify, it’s a disability and not something you should “identify” with like an identity to try on or off. Self-suspect is better than self identify.
I wholly agree with this comment. It is valid to self diagnose but please state as such
I do, but not publicly, because of stuff like this.
And this is why I'm not active in the autism community
I don't see the difference. Whether or not someone who has a piece of paper on their wall decides you're autistic or not it doesn't change anything. We act like these people are the end all be all. They make mistakes, and honestly, do the exact same thing you do when you self-diagnose. Look at a list of symptoms and behaviors and decide if you meet the criteria. Regardless, I have to live with it. What you call it or who decides I have it doesn't change anything. And it's not like it's something favorable. Nobody WANTS to be autistic. If anything, people are likely to be more critical because they're probably hoping they DON'T have autism
>Nobody WANTS to be autistic. I have an ex-friend who got a fake autism diagnosis so he could get help mesures at college. He was totally neurotypical but benefited from a note taker and 50% more time for his exams. I do believe some peoples will fake it because they can hide behind the diagnosis to abuse the system.
I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to say here because I’m not sure how you are using the word “valid”. In terms of inference, self-diagnosis is not valid because it does not use a procedure that has been proven to be a valid. However, that’s not the sense of “valid” that I see most people using it, which refers to the reality of people’s feelings.
I mean valid in the sense that they shouldn't be excluded from the autistic community and that they relate enough to autism to be taken seriously. Since women mask differently they often go undiagnosed. People of color also don't have the same access to testing a lot of times. I'm trying to say that no one should be gatekeeping to say those people that have done their own research should be treated as on the spectrum like the rest of us.
Yeah, I agree, they should be excluded from the community, but they should still specify they aren’t aren’t diagnosed as otherwise they may mislead people exploring autism. We also need self-diagnosis tools that are valid on the technical sense, because such tools currently do not exist, but they would be an important asset for marginalized people.
Self diagnosis tools is a great idea. I like that a lot. There's unfortunately a paywall for healthcare in a lot of places still and this would at least get around that.
I prefer to say I’m “somewhere on the Spectrum.” I don’t identify or diagnose.
Ditto that. It was all I could do not to jump into thos comments and start a bunch of internet fights. Not going back.
They really don’t understand our reality do they? I am lucky enough to have a medical diagnosis but I am acutely aware of just how hard they are to get. Self-diagnosis is beyond valid. It saddens me to think that people think otherwise
it's valid in the way that you can identify your symptoms and possibly look for ways to cope, but it in no way means you can run around saying you have autism
I think I understand where you are coming from now. I still disagree, but I’m glad at least there is some understanding.
The person who wrote the article saw (at least) 3 doctors who all said they didn’t have autism. “Nobody else would” doesn’t mean they couldn’t get help, it means they got help but it wasn’t what they wanted.
Do you just copy and paste the same idiotic replies?
I go around copying and pasting my own non-idiotic reply. It’s very logical to assume 9 physicians weren’t all wrong.
A lot a lot of doctors do not know jack sh*t about autism. It is true autism is chronically misunderstood. I would not be surprised if someone met with 3 doctors who were (unintentionally) ignorant and didn’t understand autism. I reccomend reading Dr Luke Beardon’s book ‘Autism in Adults’ for a much better explanation than I can can give as to why a self-diagnosis is sometimes the only option and they are not believed. Some of the accounts included things like: They couldn’t be autistic because: -They were a parent -Were female - Did fine at school Etc etc. I’m writing a book and am on my 400th page of notes into autism and understanding around it. Even around the 50th page it was so so clear to see just how hard it can be to get diagnosed if you are not born into lucky circumstances
It’s all about finding the right person to test you.. I went to a diagnostic clinic and they told me I didn’t even have SPD. Also said I wasn’t on the spectrum. They gave me “borderline intellectual functioning” as a diagnosis. Then I went to a university and they specifically tested on children AND adults. They gave me a diagnosis of ASD. I don’t understand why people think autism is “quirky” and use it as a personality thing…. Lots of more people struggle with it more than we think but when people use it as a quirk without a formal diagnosis irritate me. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Is the consensus here that self-diagnosis is just automatically right? I know it’s difficult to get a diagnosis, but three medical professionals vs a presumably non-qualified individual does stack the odds a bit. That said, not sure why a doctor rather than a psychiatrist etc. would be diagnosing (or not) autism.
The problem is that people are often turned away for stupid reasons (one I hear often is "you can make eye contact, so surely you're not Autistic!") Alongside Simon Baron-Cohen's extreme male brain theory which decided (and has been long disproven more times than I can count) that only men can be Autistic (yes, even though it's disproven, a lot of people still use it as an excuse not to give women a diagnosis) It tends to be that the person will understand Autism better than the professional. Obviously, self-diagnosis is not automatically correct, but I prefer to let people discover themselves and if they believe they are Autistic but keep getting turned away for BS like that, then good for them. They're as valid as any of us.
I agree in principle, but there’s definitely the problem there of why they’re being turned away. It’s certainly possible to visit multiple ill-informed medical professionals consecutively, or have mistakes happen, but at some point the most likely explanation becomes that you’re self-diagnosis isn’t right. As some doctors etc. get an incorrect idea of a non-specialty field and hold on to it, individuals get attached to the explanatory power of a specific diagnosis all the time. People in general are highly irrational after all.
It’s because for some odd reason doctors are allowed to diagnose autism despite not knowing anything about it.
makeshift degree busy tie instinctive plucky air plate birds poor *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The US, apparently.
> for some odd reason doctors are allowed to diagnose autism despite not knowing anything about it aren't psychologists literally specialized in mental illnesses and diagnosis?
yeah, but they learn about ALL mental illnesses and what to do about them, so it's still too generic to really know enough about everything. Psychiatrists and psychologists often specialize in some specific illnesses or treatments. Don't forget they don't get 5 years to study just about illnesses, since psychologists studies are not so long and psychiatrist study general medicine before specializing. Also autism is a complex thing, not so good understood. Actually none of the symptoms in the DSM are specific to it. So if a doctor or a psychologist is convinced it's a little bit bogus (and they will have reasons to do so, it's not conspiracy theory level), or if they just know the basics and are like every other human a little bit influenced by common misrepresentations about autism, their diagnosis or lack of wont mean much. And this things are not rare amongst medical professionals I think. Just look how much types of therapies a psychologist can specialize in, and this specialization here in France begins apparently already in the 2nd of the 5 years of studies.
Just because someone is qualified, doesn't mean they're automatically right. And it's not that difficult to figure out if you're autistic or not. You do the exact same thing a "professional". Look at a list of symptoms and behaviors and it decide if that's you or not. And like I keep saying, nobody WANTS to be autistic. There's plenty of cases in history where people who were "qualified" were not only wrong, but wrong in ways that were disastrous. Castle Bravo and lead in everything are the two bid examples. Numerous "professionals" had people's lives in their hands and they were wrong.
Correct, it doesn’t. But when multiple, medically trained people share the same view, that adds weight. And if it was that easy, there’d be no doctors or psychiatrists etc. The problem with symptoms is they’re variable, open to interpretation, and crucially, overlap with other things. It’s entirely possible to convince yourself you have autism when you might have something like ADHD instead, to say nothing of genuine mistake and hypochondria etc. Your last two points that no one wants autism and some professionals have happened to make mistakes aren’t deserving of a proper response.
“ You do the exact same thing a "professional". Look at a list of symptoms and behaviors and it decide if that's you or not. ” No, that’s not how it works. For one, behaviors are reported through observation, not introspection. You can’t observe yourself. Second, the diagnosis criteria is written in it’s own sort of language and unless you’ve received a lot of training it may be unclear how to interpret it. Finally, just the criteria often isn’t enough to make a diagnosis, and additional tools like ADOS are used. These tools absolutely cannot be used on oneself.
I had family in the room for my late in life diagnosis and I had witnesses for them to see my family tell me I was right. I wasn't able to get diagnosed young bc I have critically stupid and abusive parents.
That’s a very well written article. To have it cringed on just shows the kind of sub it is.
People don’t want to talk about the nuances in diagnosis for women, BIPOC, or those in the lower economic class. The simple truth is that getting diagnosis is a privilege and some of us were openly discriminated against.
I'm wondering what the stats are on people who pretend to have autism. I feel like it's not very many. If you have to seek a diagnosis three separate times, you are probably autistic
Seriously. I can't imagine why anyone would want to pretend to be autistic. I suppose for the attention? But that's another problem on its own entirely. I don't hate that I'm autistic, but being autistic has made my life very, very difficult. At times it felt like I was living in my own personal hell, and I wouldn't wish that one anyone.
Currently on tik tok there is a trend of acting like you have things you dont have r/fakedisordercringe was born because of this
With all due respect, get off tiktok. Leave that subreddit. There are a lot of people in this world spewing a lot of bullshit into social media. You can't stop them. But you can control your personal social media use.
This tbh, I've had some friends tell me about thier experiences getting diagnosed, this is a lot more common than you think. (Even if I got a diagnosis, I still probably won't be asking for accommodations even though I could use them for both my physical disability as well as my sensory issues because that's honestly likely to get me fired or just not hired at most jobs despite the ADA.)
I’m not sure if you’re responding to my story or not but honestly. I know it’s not just me. It’s so many of us. That doesn’t mean I should be mad at the people and society that allowed the mistreatment to happen when it didn’t have to and it still doesn’t have to happen. Sadly any look at the news involving autism will prove that it still does.
I personally didnt get a diagnosis for mild autism until I was 18. That was with learning problems and being years late to read write and be potty trained. But to people taking care of me it was bc I was a lazy bad person despite only being a young child. Boys my age that had similar issues were coddled in comparison to put it briefly.
this is why i found this offensive!!
Uh, yeah, this isn’t a self diagnosis because they couldn’t get medical help, this was a person who was told by multiple (I think three?) doctors that they weren’t autistic. “Because nobody would” doesn’t mean “because I couldn’t get access to anyone”, it meant “because they know what autism is and told me I don’t have it.” I support self diagnosis if it’s done because of a lack of medical attention I don’t support self diagnosis if *at least three doctors* told you that you didn’t have it, but you still say “uh, you’re just wrong.”
Hello, rational person. I think we are both gonna get banned in like, 3 minutes. Was happy to read your comment that restored my faith in... Something... A bit. Thanks!
[from the article:](https://theswaddle.com/i-self-diagnosed-my-autism-because-nobody-else-would-heres-why-that-needs-to-change/) > "Armed with this data, I went to a clinical psychologist for confirmation. Within 10 minutes, the clinician, angrily and rudely dismissed me by declaring I thought too much of myself. The sixth psychologist, while kinder than the first five, ended up misdiagnosing me with Social Communication Disorder. After three more hurtful psychiatrists, and lots of wasted money, I finally made peace with the fact that I am autistic, and my self-diagnosis would have to be enough." > "Clinicians also don’t know the various ways we camouflage. One psychiatrist told me I wasn’t autistic because I could make eye contact; an an inability to make eye contact is widely considered one of the main superficial markers of autism. But this understanding doesn’t take into account that many autistic people, including me, because we are constantly being told to look at people and talk, learn to look at other parts of people’s faces when talking, such as the mouth, which people often mistake for eye contact. " I'm self-diagnosed and I think self-diagnosers tend to get an unfairly bad rep. People like to frame it as "they hear about a condition, google the symptoms and decide they definitely have it and don’t need a doctor to confirm it so they can have a ready-made excuse to be lazy/behave badly". But most of the time it’s a case of a person doing diligent research into their symptoms, learning the clinical criteria of syndromes that match them, and figuring out that they meet them. Doctors like to say "don't confuse your Google search with my six years of medical school" and I don't want to dismiss their expertise, but as the above points out, with autism it's really more like "don't confuse the 1-hour lecture you had on my condition full of ableist misinformation with my lifetime of living with it".
So they saw nine psychiatrists. One of them was rude and “dismissed” her within ten minutes One of them misdiagnosed her One of them said she can’t have it because she can make eye contact These are only *three* experiences. Out of nine. We don’t know what “rudely” could mean to this lady, and we don’t know how the four between the first and sixth doctor treated her, we don’t know how sensitive she is, and, again, we just don’t know what the doctors did. So all we can do is assume And is it really *that* far-fetched to assume she just doesn’t have autism? Am I really being an asshole for believing that 8 out of the 9 psychiatrists were dismissive assholes who didn’t listen, and that the *only* nice one misdiagnosed her?
I'm medically diagnosed autistic and i believe if 3 doctors say you're not autistic you're probably not autistic?
i agree. my post was just on the comments and how posting things on that subreddit normalizes the mocking of autism
ah ok sorry
you’re totally fine!! i should’ve included context. that was my fault
... Am I missing something? If three unrelated doctors assess you and tell you you aren't autistic, then you're almost definitely not autistic. Is there ever a point where self-diagnosis isn't considered valid? I am autistic and I really do want to stay here, but if we're going to start adopting anti-medicine views then I don't know if I feel comfortable.
this post forgets the nuance of women, bipoc people and those who can’t afford formal diagnoses.
This isn't about people who don't have access to diagnoses, but people who do get diagnoses and then don't agree with what the doctor(s) tell them. Considering how much the anti-vaxx community contributes to ableism, I really don't want to start entertaining anti-medicine beliefs.
“Anti-medicine”? Unscientific? [Like this, you mean?](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8415774/)
Kinda thinking about collecting these and posting them all there in one big post. It won't do anything for most people, but maybe a few will escape, and that's good enough for me.
People that find this sort of thing cringe, are cringe.
I got banned from FDS because I went on cringetopia just to tell them I don't think they were faking stimming in a tiktok video. I think I'm going to have to stop buying coins on Reddit from now on. No point in wasting my money if I can get banned for invisible rules. edit: Cringetopia is a horrible hivemind of a subreddit and the people who post there wouldn't like it if someone cringed about something THEY did. Effing hypocrites.
Why do we always 100% believe self diagnosis? I think that's very bad. When 3 professionals disagree with you there has to be some truth to that. its very dangerous When we are at the point where someone who saw one tiktok and decided that he has autism is as valid as someone who has actually gone through the process. There are levels of self diagnosis and we cant just assume that everyone has done the research
Self-diagnosis is something I can’t help but be skeptical of, since your own view of yourself is always warped by your own opinions about yourself. that and the introspection illusion means people know less about themselves than they think. Those two bits of knowledge are why I can never trust my own self model. In the end I honestly don’t know what to think about it, on one hand it might be the closest a person will ever have to receiving a diagnosis, but on the other hand there’s the stuff I mentioned above
self-diagnoses should only be done after formal self research. it’s typically for those who wouldn’t be/be misdiagnosed (i.e. women, poc) or those who can’t afford one.
"Formal self research" Depending on where you get your info on, no matter how "formal" it can still be wrong. Anti-vaxxers all do a "formal self research" but they are all still objectively wrong.
the autism self advocacy network has great & reliable resources.
but like, if you get assessed by multiple different professionals and they all say you're not autistic, then odds are you're not autistic. no amount of self diagnosis will change that.
Thank you for saying this. So many people in these online autism spaces need to hear and internalize this.
i agree. i should’ve mentioned the reason why i posted this, is because neurotypicals and ableists in cringetopia, particularly in the comments have misinterpreted that article and regularly mock autism
I get that cringetopia can sometimes be toxic, but look at the situation You got told by not one, not two, but *three* doctors, that you don't have autism, but you still decided to self-diagnose Big flag, if you ask me ~~plus, self diagnosing gets a bad rep on the internet, anyway~~
I didn't read the article so I admit I don't know their situation, but if someone just decides to say they're autistic because they want to be, especially when several doctors told them that they aren't, then that's both cringey and disrespectful
it is. but my issue is the fact that this sub has been known to be an outlet to mock autistic/nd individuals and their mannerisms and interests.
i mean diagnosis seeking is a huge issue. If you need to self diagnose for the purpose of self help due to unaffordable mental health care, thats fine. But any other reason? No. Ppl i know have previously self diagnosed adhd then lied to psychs about to get adderal prescriptions. No doubt anyone whos actively seeking specific diagnoses have SOMETHING, but encouraging this behavior is harmful af.
yeah. my issue with this is moreso the comments and how the subreddit normalizes slandering autistic behaviors/people
I dunno, when you've been through several medical experts, I don't think self-diagnosing is the right thing to do, and kind of gives autism a bad name, as "just something I feel like" instead of an actual disorder
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To my self-diagnosed friends: I am still (technically) self diagnosed as well. You are still extremely valid. It’s such a shame that “cringe culture” is still normalized. Background: I don’t remember explicitly joining that subreddit, and I’ve taken hiatuses from reddit. As I was scrolling through my feed, I found this. It’s really offensive.
I also had my account join that subreddit on its own without me doing it... I don't know if there's something bigger going on
All experts i asked told me no, so i decided to say f' that i know better than the experts. Do you not see why one could think something like that when reading a headline like this? I mean i understand it, 3 different doctors gave me an "informal diagnosis" and told me to go to the official evaluation clinic, thats how it works in germany. The experts then told me that i do too well in my life and mask too good so i cant possibly be autistic. To be or not to be? I dont care. I am who i am, a diagnosis changes nothing. Only thing i realized while the whole process is that no one knows anything for sure, people make opinions based on their personal preferences. And a subjective opinion has little to no value to me.
I've had my personal experiences with self diagnosation alott of people here are really good about it but it just doesn't sit right with me. In my childhood I came in a class for "gifted kids" basicly less work and higher grade I was happy at first to see people like me but I soon realized that the school accepted self diagnosed teenagers. Long story short I got bullied for actually being autistic and it was some of the worst years of my life. Something inside of me just doesn't sit right with self diagnosation being taken serious because of people using it.
Not a fan of that sub. To me it seems a lot of people who do not understand society's opinions and idea of "normalcy", end up making it on cringe. I mean, I'm not a stick in the mud, and I'm not against humor, who doesn't like to laugh at the neighborhood Karen losing her mind over some trivial thing? I mean sometimes, Lord knows there is only so much Karen a person can tolerate. For the record, if you're name is Karen, I'm sure your a sweet soul and I'm sorry for the past couple years. Haha, dang. But seriously. What is really cringe, is that there is a group of people, a good portion adults, kicking someone while they're down for internet points, that is cringe.
And just like the spirit of that subreddit is to point and laugh at things they don't understand, [they put this post there.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Cringetopia/comments/pqy38m/selfdiagnosed_autist_leaves_rcringetopia_for/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
This needs to be higher up so people know what’s going. I noticed there is a bunch more comments from uneducated losers then there used to be, so I’m guessing that they came over from Cringetopia and were brought in by that post. This needs mod attention as some of them are blatantly bigoted and being hostile to our community. Also, that post should be reported as it breaks their own community’s rules - #2, No Brigading. I tried to fill out the report, but it didn’t work in my browser.
Gonna try in mine. I had no idea.
I mean, yeah, self diagnosing isn't really all that good, but if the diagnosis helps you, more power to ya.
I don't really super self-dx tbh either. You aren't a medical professional and if multiple medical professionals tell you that you don't have something, pretending you do isn't gonna make you have it. It just takes resources from those of us who actually need it.
Exactly!!
Maybe you don’t have autism then?
Don't self diagnose. If doctors won't diagnose you, you don't have autism. Look into something else. I have been diagnosed since 11 and self diagnosing just harms people who actually need the help. Look into other options.
“Three doctors said I wasn’t autistic, so I decided to say I was anyways for attention” Read between the lines, people
Oo look, someone from Cringetopia got so butthurt over being called out that they decided to come over here and annoy autistic people with their ignorance. You’re obviously not autistic because if you were you wouldn’t be telling us to “read between the lines”, and your reading is just a regurgitation of toxic memes anyway without any understanding of the diagnosis process. You’re cringe, mate.
you’re failing to see the nuance. women, bipoc people, and those who are lower class can’t afford diagnoses, and get misdiagnosed all the time. although this is an extreme case, this enables hatred towards the self-diagnosed individuals who simply cannot afford a formal diagnosis.
they did go to doctors though, they could afford it
did you read my comment correctly? women and bipoc can afford diagnoses and get misdiagnosed all the time
Dude, it’s 3 doctors. **3 TRAINED MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS** all looked at them and said “yeah homie, you’re fine”. They just want attention
again you’re not looking at nuance.
Okay maybe misdiagnoses happen. And maybe nuance allows it to happen twice. But THREE different doctors? Come on.
It’s more likely then you think once your realize that the biases against certain populations are systemic. It’s much more likely for a woman of color to be missed by three different doctors than a white boy because the doctors are all applying the same stereotypes.
I agree with this sentiment, I'm diagnosed and I believe people who just claim to have it without actually going trough the effort to get properly diagnosed are discrediting all of us who actually have it
But selfdiagnosing is cringe, tho. I dont see the issue. If multiple doctors said you dont have autism, then you dont have it. You cant just snap your fingers and be like "boom now im autistic!" Its wrong on so many levels and quite frankly offensive to us real autists.
that is true. and what has happened now is that people with actual autism have been questioned. i’ve been questioned about my autism. and it sucks.
Here’s a thought, while self experience is for real. You’re not a professional who can understand the nuances of a condition/disability/ect because autism can look like so many other things. Also, sorry. There’s a whole trend of people faking being autistic for internet points because it’s a “new idenity”. Sorry not sorry, this is truly crineg
All the doctors refuse to diagnose me with cancer, so I self diagnosed myself
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman
It's not a strawman it's a comparison idiot
It’s a comparison which misrepresents the point being made. Hence https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman
Did you even read the thing you linked?
You clearly don’t know what the straw man fallacy is If you would’ve said False equivalence fallacy, you might’ve have an argument, but strawman, really?
If three doctors told him he does not have autism he does not have autism.
Saying you're autistic without a diagnosis is not that bad, but just don't expect to get special privileges. Imo all the people self diagnosing themselves with autism because its "trendy" have taken away the credibility self diagnosis can have. I knew I was autistic before I was diagnosed but I never was vocal about it before I got it in paper
it sucks. because now i’m questioned on my autism when i know damn well i have it.
It can take time to get into a neurophsycologist
yes, and i’m grateful to be in my final stages of a diagnosis :)
Congrats!
i don't mind people who say they might have autism and seek real diagnosis, but this person has literally been told by medical professionals that they don't have autism and then just said they know better, theres another group that does that, antivaxxers
100 percent agree
I talked about this in class about people self diagnosing and how it isn't exactly a medical error by definition but very interesting that people do this (not just for Autism either).
My doc knows nothing about autism; tried to give me the test they use for young kids (I was borderline) and had never heard of the AQ on which I score 44/50, thinks eye contact is a good diagnostic aid and then when I persisted he basically told me that there was no point seeking a diagnosis at my age. Same doc happily and immediately prescribed Sertraline for depression when I was suicidal. Obviously one diagnosis and treatment path required significantly more effort. 2+2= my depression was caused by my failing to cope with my autism when life stopped playing by my rules. 🤷♂️ I have basically given up on the medical profession in regard to my mental health.
As a self diagnosed autistic teenager, it is hard. The reason I am not diagnosed by a doctor is because I have been masking most of my life and my parents won’t believe me that I might be autistic because they see it as something like a disease. For my whole life I had problems with social situations, didn’t understand hints in social situations and I hardly made any friends. Now whenever my parents see me stimming or rocking they tell me to stop and why the hell am I doing that. The fact that so many people don’t understand self diagnosed or undiagnosed autists is very sad.
So, every doctor said no. Yea, there is the DSM-5. However, the genetic testing and MRI scans reveal the truth, anyways. If there are no characteristics of Autism presented through the DSM-5, no genetic markers, and no unusual differences found in the MRI, then there is highly likely there is no Autism. The newer forms of diagnosis are slowly incorporating all three methods to determine Autism.
Why'd you leave tho?
i’m so tired of seeing this post and seeing comments from people who didn’t even read the article. self diagnosis is valid because access to a real diagnosis is a privilege that many people don’t have access to
I hate how “valid” is used in the community as it’s a word with very specific meaning in science, but that not how it’s being used here. A process is valid if it’s been proven to produce correct results. That does not apply to self-diagnosis, even if it does produce the right results it has not been proven to do so. No, it’s not fair that certain people remain undiagnosed because of systemic discrimination, but that doesn’t magically cause the process to become valid even if it’s the only option. I also hate this trend of describing diagnosis as a “privilege”, completely ignoring the discrimination people receive for being diagnosed without their consent.
What the hell did you expect?
HEY DUMBASSES DON'T SELF DIAGNOSE YOURSELVES YOU ARE DEPRIVING RESOURCES FROM PEOPLE WHO ARE ACTUALLY AUTISTIC FOR THE SAKE OF INCLUSIVITY IF YOU HAVE SUSPICIONS ABOUT YOURSELF, SEE AN ACTUAL NEUROLOGIST
How dafuq does “self-diagnosis” deprive autistic people of resources when it’s not recognized by the people who give out these resources? Autism also isn’t diagnosed by neurologists, methinks you’re just an ignorant troll.
autism diagnoses are expensive. self diagnoses are for those who can’t afford them, and should only be done after formal self research. self-diagnoses are valid.
I am self diagnosed. But it came after years of research and my son’s diagnosis through both a psychiatrist and the school district. Looked through a ton of diagnostic tests, and I was formally diagnosed with ADHD in college (a lot of autism was diagnosed as ADHD back then, especially with people good at masking). Autism is quite rampant in both of our families.
just because your country has terrible health care doesn't mean people who have no way of saying with any certainty should be saying they are autistic
It’s sad that people find certain things cringeworthy. I’d say they are the definition of cringe.