It seems like every day I see someone go on about how harmful self-diagnosis is, or how much they hate self-diagnosis, or asking everyone what they think about self-diagnosis. I'm tired. I'm self-identified and I don't really talk about it much, I'm literally just minding my own business, and Redditors literally can not. shut. up about it. I'm not asking you to be fully supportive of self-identification, but can you just stop obsessing about us?? It's none of your business. But I swear every day on Reddit there's someone blaming the ableism they've faced on self-diagnosed people, or going on about how we're just trying to be quirky and use it as a get out of jail free card, or talking about how if you don't seek out a formal diagnosis you're going to find out you have some sort of hidden medical condition and die, or trying to turn our existence into another tired debate topic, or trying to police how we talk about ourselves. We get it! You don't like us. Can you shut up about us please. I'm not asking you to believe that I'm autistic, if you don't believe me whatever, just stop talking about it. Like everywhere else people either barely talk about self-diagnosis but for some reason Reddit is obsessed with this topic and I don't get it. I also struggle with the same things you do. I'm not trying to be quirky, I don't use TikTok, I think of myself as disabled, I don't use autism as an excuse (although I will get accused of using it as an excuse when I try asking people to please be more upfront with me), I struggle with my symptoms, the main thing separating the average diagnosed autistic people and me is that I never got an autism diagnosis. But every day I see a post about how people like me are all just liars who are harming real autistic people like them. I'm tired! Leave us alone! Stop obsessing about us!

I have one which is pretty up there

The process of job interviews is unethical, unfair and pointless because it is like a test where failure results in not getting a job when it is almost impossible to survive without a job. If such a practice was made illegal, it might be a lot easier for people in general to get jobs.

Here’s another one.

Even though I majored somewhere in the humanities, I find the concept of going to law school silly and lame. Becoming a cop sounds a lot more respectable in my opinion. I can smell the massive disagreement of this thru the screen I’m typing this on.

I was talking to my neurodivergent assistant at work and our conversation made me wonder something; do autistics struggle with parent and teacher relationships in their youth?

I feel like the implied trust/ deference to a parent or teacher’s opinion or instruction might come more naturally to allistics than autistics.

I’m self rx and I really did not get the notion of automatically accepting terms, plans, or facts based on what my parents or teachers dictated. I had no idea why they got some kind of free pass to determine what was right or wrong of me to do based solely on age or title. I expected to be included in plan- making and understand the reason behind any instruction before I would feel comfortable following through with it.

Anyone else?

I am looking for a website that has a huge list of neurodiverse related words, that explains certain traits or behaviour where there is no "mainstream" word for (yet). Catch my drift?
Preferably English or Dutch, but other language might be interesting as wel.

Thenk you.

I somehow keep getting into situations where everyone I talk to thinks I’m flirting with them. Alternatively, I can’t tell if someone’s coming onto me. This has resulted in a lot of sexual harassment and I don’t know how to deal with it. As long as someone’s smiling and not raising their voice I generally can’t tell if what they’re doing is inappropriate. Is there a way I can ward off creeps without being rude to innocent people?

Share yours!

I remember long time ago, one time the topic of jellyfish at the beach came up because there had been stings on the local beaches. I started talking about types of jellyfish, the sea wasp...

Luckily, my autism doesn’t let me develop my infodumps too much, so it was short and my uncanny valley wish moderate, barely 2–3 minutes, but people were looking at me strangely. I mentioned around 10 local jellyfish from my area: “it’s not just those big white ones, huh?” Then I moved on to Portuguese man o’ wars, and then to the Australian sea wasp xD

Okay, this is a really difficult one for me. And I realise it’s a sensitive topic for a lot of people. But I do struggle with understanding other people’s actions, thoughts, and feelings sometimes on my own, until they are explained to me. I do my best to consider them and I really listen when people share their side of things and try not to be defensive, which I find most people don’t do.

But this means that until we are able to have a calm conversation, I am clueless to their perspective. Which also means I may have acted until this point with disregard for it without even realizing. I can see how that can be frustrating and hurtful to other people.

I have another autistic friend who also struggles with this, and he can be really frustrated during conflicts cause while I need validation and understanding he just keeps saying things like “I don’t understand how this word I said made you feel this way” and that the word technically doesn’t mean what I understood. He really struggles with communication and understands things very literally which causes a lot of issues between us, but it becomes especially hard during conflicts cause we can’t even agree on the meaning of words he has to go back to the dictionary so many times which I find very frustrating. I get that for him he is just trying to understand, but when my feelings are really hurt and I need understanding it can be hard to have that patience. I wonder if I come off the same way to other people because I also ask a lot of questions so I can understand their perspective.

It is just generally fucking with my head cause I can’t trust my sense of reality cause I know that I can’t fully consider everyone’s views. Any thoughts?

sorry for bad grammar somehow i cannot write in english even though it’s my native language. anyways. i got a diagnosis at eleven for autism and it said i have autism . and honestly the more i think of it. its probably wrong. idk, i am a social person, can understand social cues quite well, i don’t have any stable “ special interests” since most stuff is over in a week. i really don’t know. adhd sure probably most likely. plus trauma. maybe those two got confused as autism. overall it’s annoying