I don't know if I'm autistic--no diagnosis, but I sure have a lot of the traits
I will use whatever authority is conferred by my Official Diagnosis On Paper and status as An Author In The Field to say:
I think the best test is whether or not autism is useful to you as a concept in making sense of how your brain works and why other humans can be so weird, and that if you have the "oh shit this is describing me" sensation when you read stuff by and about autistic people, that's as as reliable as anything.
Technically, there's a grey zone where you might have some autistic traits but not necessarily enough to cross the threshold for a formal diagnosis -- but also, that's a distinction that's largely devoid of practical meaning, unless you need the official piece of paper to get access to services. It's an arbitrary cut-off being placed somewhere along a spectrum, you know?
And being one cm from the arbitrary line on one side, versus one cm from the line on the other side, makes minimal difference to your experience, not to mention that the line sometimes gets moved from one edition of DSM to the next.
And exactly how many boxes you do or don't tick can be dependent on the whims of whoever's doing the assessment anyway.
So yeah: if autism as a way of understanding your experiences is useful to you, I say grab it.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2023-09-01 05:38 am (UTC)I will use whatever authority is conferred by my Official Diagnosis On Paper and status as An Author In The Field to say:
I think the best test is whether or not autism is useful to you as a concept in making sense of how your brain works and why other humans can be so weird, and that if you have the "oh shit this is describing me" sensation when you read stuff by and about autistic people, that's as as reliable as anything.
Technically, there's a grey zone where you might have some autistic traits but not necessarily enough to cross the threshold for a formal diagnosis -- but also, that's a distinction that's largely devoid of practical meaning, unless you need the official piece of paper to get access to services. It's an arbitrary cut-off being placed somewhere along a spectrum, you know?
And being one cm from the arbitrary line on one side, versus one cm from the line on the other side, makes minimal difference to your experience, not to mention that the line sometimes gets moved from one edition of DSM to the next.
And exactly how many boxes you do or don't tick can be dependent on the whims of whoever's doing the assessment anyway.
So yeah: if autism as a way of understanding your experiences is useful to you, I say grab it.