Anxiety and depression are really common for autistic people but autism often brings experiences of executive dysfunction, burnout, and catatonia which can resemble depression very closely. My hunch is that there’s a good percentage of autistic people who experience these things but they are under the impression that they are symptoms of depression and so they find antidepressants don’t work for them.

In a similar way, symptoms of anxiety can closely resemble experiences like overstimulation and being exposed to noxious stimuli, masking, suppressing stims, and not meeting your need for stability and predicability in your environment.

i would not be surprised if that is the situation i am in, i probably have both burnout/depression and anxiety/overstimulation though

especially when it comes to anxiety. i’ve always described and felt anxiety differently than how other people describe it, to me it’s kind of like an inability to do a task, complete freeze at the idea of doing something unfamiliar or without clear instructions. i do also experience what most of people would describe anxiety to be more like, the panicky fast heart rate inability to stay still kind of deal. but i always though of those as two different reactions to the same emotion. kind of like fight, flight or freeze situation. the first feeling just being the freeze response to anxiety while the second being the flight response to anxiety. i never thought of those as two separate things, so i just lumped them into together, but i guess it does make sense to differentiate

if this is the case and i don’t actually have depression and anxiety and it is just autism symptoms, will medication still work?