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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • What you describe is eerily similar to my story. In summary, being so good at masking all the various symptoms of depression/anxiety/autism that I never considered it possible I was autistic. My entire life I’ve never belonged to the group I was participating with, I was always a step removed because the “language” of the group wasn’t native and took a degree of effort/concentration to use. That’s a tangent…

    The question was raised by a new friend a few years ago and I finally got professionally evaluated a few months ago. Yeah, I’m obviously autistic.

    Having that label, in my experience, has been intensely validating. No longer was my status as a social failure an implication of my lack of effort or disrespect for others or oversensitivity. Now I knew that I didn’t fit for a reason, a reason outside my control and not just laziness or selfishness.

    That separation–being other, not belonging–absolutely still exists and it still is painful but now the difference I guess is that I know I’m not imagining it.

    To your case; maybe getting evaluated could be a good idea. It opens up access to workplace accomplishments [EDIT: accomodations] that can, so easily, make a living less painful to earn. Or it can just bring a sort of peace-of-mind like mine did.

    The label itself isn’t terribly important. So long as you understand yourself and are comfortable with who you are, maybe you don’t need a doctor to certify that you are exactly this-kind-of-weird. I went into my evaluation expecting I wouldn’t qualify for an autism diagnosis but rather satisfied already with my own conviction that I was not neurotypical.