Well I think I might be autistic, I’ve wondered why I feel so different from other people, why it feels like I am taking my entire life, why when I lose focus, or am not being focused on i become completely silent and struggle to make even simple comments, and why I have had to watch and learn from others to become remotely social. I guess those are all signs of autism. I took that RAADS-R test and got a score of 141, which is slightly above the mean for autistics, I also took a few other of those quizzes.
But my question is what happens now? What do I do? I don’t feel comfortable asking my parents if I can get examined, I can’t really afford to do it myself, but I guess I could try. I don’t want to just start saying that I’m autistic, and have to mention that it’s self diagnosed because I think we all know the stigma around that.
Heck I’m still in the stage (or I assume it’s a stage because it matches that one post here where they talked about their stages of realizing they have autism, and I related completely to it) where I’m not sure if I am not just faking this whole thing. So what do I do now?
I’m so glad you’re feeling validated, it’s so miserable to be adrift in thoughts of “what’s wrong with me”!
Stimming is one of those things that everyone does to an extent, since it’s basically just “doing things that feel nice”. The difference for neurodivergent folks is that it helps us emotionally regulate in a way that neurotypical folks don’t need, so we tend to do it a lot more often (or feel extra stressed/anxious/irritable).
Looking back as I try to jusfify having autism, it really is almost funny how many warning signs myself, and my family have ignored. One of them being that every time I get remotely stressed, like being put in a new location or basically someone talking to me I just start spinning my phone rapidly. Like why didn’t I think of why I did that??? And I was talking to my mom and she goes “you know you used to be so scedual oriented as a kid, if we went shopping mid day you would freak out because you couldn’t watch your cartoons, I would have to give you 15 or 20 minute warnings, not five because that wasn’t enough”. Like autism red flag mom geez!
And during this conversation I was trying to find an in into mentioning that I though I might be autistic so I say " oh and I used to love lining up my hotwheels too right?" She said yes. WHAT??? Glad autism awareness is growing nowadays but I’m still shocked I got this far undetected, I’m like the batman of autism.