which is fine if you’re using it in interpersonal convos or to explore a concept but using it as a genuine and objective comparison to autism & in a way to question the validity of someone’s diagnosis, is not okay
Yes it was a rabbit hole I went down, due to people having this negative view of autism. Oh you are too smart for autism. They think they are being empathetic because they dont know. People in Gen X (they werent wanted so majority werent cared about) and Xellinals (oldest mellinals that grew up when the childhood of someone gen x and saw the beginning of the technology we had today) were misdiagnosed because the Karen mom who points to high needs as Autism and the lower needs arent autistic. That was touted by doctors at one point. Teachers with no qualifications would get psychologists to agree this kid ADHD when your mom is saying I think it might be autism. My dad would deny what my mom said because his mothers brother had it and died in an asylum. Theres stigmas about mental health for a reason. And its pushed by wrong messaging for political reasons. People with thinking differences are scary to neurotypicals its the boogeyman. People dont look into mental health. Thier view is mental health issues makes someone dangerous or somehow less than they are. Which turned into a lot of subconcious self hate which caused more problems then just not giving a fuck about other peoples perceptions and doing my own thing my way.
@@thethoughtspot222 idk if my original point came across - it just seems convoluted and pedantic to suggest to someone that they’re all these other things instead of just autistic. I have had people diminish my autism diagnosis with the whole HSP / trauma thing, so it just made me side eye when the commenter said that!
The person who coined the HSP label spoke in a very negative and ableist way about autism, and some young relatives she labeled as HSP turned out to be autistic. It's not a real thing it's just an old outdated term someone made up.
@@ann18o96 yes this is an important nuance. It doesn't have to be autism regardless of the traits shared. The question often becomes "at what level do you reach the diagnostic criteria to make the diagnosis" and that's a very difficult question to answer. Often the answer is simplified to "when it starts to negatively impact your life" but that's also a strange way to classify a neurodivergence because in the right setting there is the possibility of no negative impacts (rare in our society but theoretically true). So then if we're just measuring differences how much of a deviation from the "norm" (and across how many variables) would mean someone would reach the threshold for autism. Additionally what "norm" are we measuring against. All very difficult questions to answer and honestly in part you kind of can just choose what feels most right based on what helps you the most. Obviously medically there are boundaries but these things are revised time and time again. It's important to remember that conditions are diagnosed because they can then be treated in ways that hopefully helps a large number of people who share similar issues, there is no other concrete reason for these sorts of classifications. I think someone can have many traits of HSP and not be autistic. The same is true the other way round too.
Right?! What's the point of saying this label is useful when saying you're sensitive is good? Being challenged daily with things not commonly experienced by nonautistics, having a label to identify what problem(s) I am experiencing is super helpful for finding and learning tools. I need to acknowledge what's going on in order to face and to make it manageable. To not acknowledge the difference in how my brain fires is a medical erasure that is painful as an intersex individual as well. Having to fight for our existence in medicine and to have prove our legitimacy in society is really rough on someone who already experiences this life as so challenging....
Please please never stop posting content. I’ve moved away from the community because I kept feeling like I was a fraud and not actually autistic. This persons comment shows how easy it is to convince ourselves it’s everything BUT autism.
If engaging with the autistic community is negatively affecting you, please do take a step back for your own sake. But once you feel you've reached a point where you feel more comfortable in your autistic skin, please do reconsider reengaging. On the whole, things are moving in a more positive direction; and if you yourself aren't one to contribute to the toxicity, the autistic community very much needs people like you. The greatest boom in ASD-related knowledge and ASD-related societal acceptance has come from the fact that the imbalance of women properly getting diagnosed is finally being accounted for. Not only do women represent the numerically largest pool of potentially undiagnosed individuals (and thus the biggest source of unlearned knowledge about the spectrum), women also disproportionately pursue careers in mental health, meaning that the more autistic women we've got out there, the more autistic mental health professionals helping other autistics we'll have.
MBTI yes, Jungian typology (temperament) which MBTI is based on no, Dr. Dario Nardi actually did brain scans of the 16 types and discovered 4 subtypes for each type with distinct and measurable and repeatable thinking patterns/styles
Not really, Astrology is like 0.01% valid (100% valid only for entertainment and personal purposes that don't make monoliths of others) The things surrounding the 16 personality types are 50/50.
As someone who is in the process of being assessed for ASD and have been matched with the INFJ personality type, and have explored HSP and CPTSD this comment is very triggering for me. I am constantly feeling like I am gaslighting myself and that I am lying about my struggles and that I am just one of those people who want to have ASD for clout (even though that doesn’t make sense of me as a 34 year old, critical thinker who hates labels). Looking forward to finishing this video, your content has been so valuable to me ❤
I hate the term HSP, I’ve never seen it in a way that isn’t (directly or indirectly) straight ableism. People use it because they don’t want to say autism, they don’t wanna say mentally ill, they don’t wanna say anything that might have any weight to it. It’s gained a sense of hysteria to it, too. I have been trying to get a chronic pain diagnosis for years. Every time I have just been told I am sensitive, and that because I am sensitive, that must be why I’m losing my ability to walk. I know for sure there’s a thousand autistic people out there who’ve tried to seek a diagnosis and had the same experience I did. Disabled isn’t a dirty word, and people use “highly sensitive person” to deflect from the truth all the damn time. You can call yourself autistic. Someone else’s stigma of a truly harmless word doesn’t change your life experience.
@@Eosinophyllis I am sorry that this is happening! However I identify as hsp and I lack other key symptoms for autism. It explained a lot for me. A false diagnosis that's based on weird stereotypes or downplaying suffering is bad, but that shouldn't invalidate the other diagnosis that doesn't fit for you.
Same, I keep flipping back and forth on it, wondering if I am being self-delusional and I just want the autism diagnosis because it's easier than to think you're messed up. Well, I think I'm both, lol, so it doesn't make sense that I'd just want the autism diagnosis to hide behind.. and still, I can't shake it, exactly because autism is so stereotyped it's insane. But when you really deep dive into autism, you find out how diverse it is and how insanely misinformed and ignorant most professionals are on autism, and that we've hardly begun to truly understand it. I think if you're a high-masking autistic person, you're just enormously used to gaslighting yourself, and that's what we'll probably always be fighting to stop doing.
Another pre-vid comment: I can understand how someone might see you on your public videos and see your obvious eloquence and poise and professional presentation skills. After my ADHD assessment, I mentioned all this to my neuropsychologist assessor in reference to my self and my extraordinary speaking and communications career. I could not believe I had autism, let alone ADHD, given my social accomplishments. This is what she said, "Everything you are is autistic. Had they known back then what we know now, you would have had a formal diagnosis before the end of first grade. You can speak at a professional level about my specialty with me and it's as if I'm speaking to another PhD colleague. And yet, you have no formal training, just self study. Your depth of knowledge and the skills you have as a presenter (skills that you learned both by some formal training, but mostly by testing different approaches with perhaps thousands of different audiences over a life of being a professional communicator. Yet, when done communicating you would go into isolation until you needed to turn on again. All these things and more are actually evidence for your [provisional] autism diagnosis, not part of a proof against it." Irene, when I saw you, largely unmasked on your latest member video, I saw the autism that your masking so effectively shunts aside to get your communicating done in your public videos. That seemed far closer to 'the real' you. It is so very different from your 'professional mode'. Yes, we have a lot to talk about and so much more to do. The largest question is how we find and for whom we craft the messaging. We all know physicians in general are not well trained nor knowledgeable of the latest findings. One YT psychiatrist had this to say earlier this summer, "If I had another medical colleague come to me with an autism 'fact' and an autistic patient overheard and corrected that 'fact', I would far and away trust my autist to have the most current and correct answer." I have a ND friend in the hospital with a life threatening condition and I cannot get the doctors to respect and treat the ND side of his existence as well as his biology. They are the same. They.are.the.same! Yet, one-by-one, they and the other health professionals say and do the most inappropriate things that put him in such levels of frustration! And then, they can't figure out why the drugs aren't working to limit his stress factors whenever they come in unannounced every two hours with multiple people, different every time, to check his vitals and take more blood. That would cause allistic folks frustration. Imagine being neurodiverse, highly kinetic, with a strong presence of pathologic demand avoidance coupled with absolute distrust of strangers from years of abuse for being who he is! Let's not even go into the psychopharmacology decisions they are making that may not be the most effective for his neurotype. Looking forward to this episode!
I really, REALLY relate to the whole “everything you are is autistic” quote because it sounded like it was describing me, how I study and learn things- and how people show so much respect to my masked way of speaking on their level of expertise, but when they either find out the way I learned these things is a “what, like it’s hard???”, or that I have learned other things this same way that contradict their own beliefs, ALL the respect I was given when I was agreeable is thrown away. People also don’t like that I can observe that, and instead of trying to get back into their good graces by modifying my behavior to please them, I just kinda go “cool im done with you if this is what you’re bringing to my table now.” I spent most of my life conditioned to seek praise and approval through having malleable/no boundaries- im still figuring out how to even speak alone with myself when something makes me uncomfortable for fear of being abandoned. I don’t just have autism, but im kinda grateful I do sometimes, because it can help balance out that drive to erase myself to keep other people around. I wish I’d had access to the resources for autistic people that are starting to exist now in my childhood :/ I sometimes think my family kept those away from me because they worried it would slow me down, and I was raised with a very omnipresent sense of being Good because I was “barely disabled.” (Narrator: he was not “barely” disabled) One parent still isn’t interested in hearing im autistic when she thinks I should instead direct all of my focus to my rare chromosome disorder that “is just like autism” so like why would it matter if im functionally autistic or literally autistic. I hate people using autism as a dirty word when understanding myself through an autistic lens in the only way i was even able to communicate my boundaries and figure out i needed to and deserve to be able to unmask. The assumption that masked or not we can’t mimic allistic and/or NT people better than they can mimic each other is insulting tbh. It serves a similarly white supremacist “WOW, you’re SO articulate, you’re so well spoken! You’re supposed to be stupid bc you were born wrong. I will consider giving you the opportunity to ‘rise above’ (read: betray) your assigned class to sit at my Good Baby table with me!” Eugh.
I hope your friend begins receiving better care, I'm sorry to hear that he's having a bad experience. This is why ongoing research in Autism is so important. This is something I've been talking with one of my doctor's about--how my Autism impacts my care. Luckily he cared enough to want to bring this issue up at his doctor's conference. And yes, you made a lot of great points! We use certain attributes to discount the Autism but in reality it's just proof of our specific spectrum. We really need to continually deepen our understanding of what SPECTRUM means. Thanks for being a member and supporting this channel! You're greatly appreciated. & yes, I was a lot more unmasked in the recent member's only video
I told my family I was considering a ADHD/ASD diagnosis a year ago and they made me feel so ashamed and misunderstood by even bringing it up. A year later I take 2 tests online without telling them. I scored very high on ADHD 3 times in a row and scored consistently as low spectrum/Asperger's 3 times in a row. I regret ever involving them in my process of self discovery. I'm with an ADHD specialist now and this medication I'm on has changed my life for the better. The more I educate myself about these conditions (something none of them do) the more I find myself.
I've had peers tell me im autistic, but my first therapist didn't believe me. "You speak very well and you look me in the eye, there's no way you're actually autistic" maam...I was conditioned to look people in the eye by my parents. If i didn't, I'd get in trouble for being disrespectful.
I feel you. I was 12 when I first told my parents i thought i was autistic (after TWO YEARS of proper research, which I told them about) and the topic didn’t even get considered until a year later. Lo and behold, I now have an autism diagnosis.
I still remember shortly after lockdown started. I work retail and was walking from the far end of the parking lot back to the building and I couldn't help but notice how quiet it was. There was just...no background noise anywhere because nobody was going out. It was the most serene moment of my life. I actually ENJOYED the restrictions during Covid. Less crowded places and I didn't have to worry about my flat affect because of wearing masks. Everything was just so much more quiet as well, like I mentioned. I feel like how crazy people felt during lockdown was how I feel nearly all the time during "normal" societal operations. It made it quite obvious that I'M not the problem. Things just aren't built for me.
17:21 I think people are assuming you're self-diagnosed as many of us have had to resort to self-diagnosis. There's a constant discourse on the validity of self-diagnosis and it seems like the commenter is on a specific side. Those are the kinds of comments people who self-diagnose often receive in order to invalidate our self-diagnosis. But as you said, it's incredibly hard to get an official diagnosis. I have been trying for a while but I'm unemployed and the few free resources are backlogged with requests. So all I have is myself and my intuition.
If you live in the US, please be aware of PsyPact legislation if you aren't already. As someone working his way into the specific areas of psychology who deal with autistic people in particular (not just neurodiverency in general), I've never met a single one who doesn't understand and support self-diagnosis. Half of my diagnostic process was *me* explaining to my clinician (whom I chose because she herself was a late-diagnosed individual) why *I* came to the conclusion that I'm on the spectrum. Autism and introspection go hand-in-hand. Having a self-diagnosis and no clinical one is *far superior* to the inverse. So even if you ever do successfully pursue a clinician's assessment, your internal understanding of your autistic mind will still take precedence over any piece of paper that, in the words of my clinician, "confirm what you already know." The only reason I pursued my own clinical diagnosis is to lend myself some semblance of legitimacy for the "less-in-the-know" folks in the area of psychology on my path towards my future career goals.
Yes my son says he's doesn't need one and I get it but I had an issue with a Neuropsychologist that excused to something else completely. If it wasn't for my actual assessment later on specially my EEG that showed my autism and ADHD I probably would've got stuck on impostor syndrome and not believe myself.
Ironically, the subjects of the original HSP tests (the nephew of the person who invented the term) got diagnosed with Autism. Even now, there's a debate in the HSP subreddit about it. Many people who qualify for HSP are autistic, including me.
But isn't that just because being sensitive in that way is also common for autistic people? Like for example fatigue is a symptom of depression, but the actual diagnosis could also be something completely different.
Interestingly enough, not all autistic people see themselves in the traits of HSP. There are so many of the autistic traits that can be either hyper-sensitive or hypo-sensitive. It may be that what Aron mapped out turns out to be the kind of autistic who has primarily hyper-sensitive traits, and professionals are only just now starting to realize this.
@@ZeonGenesis For me, the best way to think of HSP's relationship to autism is a phenomenon like savantism. Not all people who are autistic have savantism, but most savants are autistic. It seems to be similar for HSP: only the hypersensitive portion of autistic people seem to be HSP, but a large portion of the HSP community are made of autistic people with a hypersensitive profile.
@@randomtraveler8594Yeah I think this is correct. I only meet some points for being considered an HSP. Personally I have less overwhelming hypersensitivity to sensory things than other autistic people, and most of my "abnormal" sensory experiences as a child were actually sensory seeking, not sensory avoidant which is what I hear addressed a great majority of the time. I do have situations where I am catapulted into overload and become distressed, but they happen less frequently than I hear many other autistic people discuss. As a kid I bit and chewed on pencils until they snapped in half, because I liked the squish of the soft wood in my teeth. I would frequently challenge other kids and adults into spinning contests so I could have an excuse to spin over and over. In middle school I switched over to chewing my hoodie strings, I always kept them tucked inside so others wouldn't see them soaked in saliva. I would use the swings for the entire time we were allowed outside in elementary, swinging as high as I could and then jumping off, falling from so high my knees would buckle and then standing right back up to do it 15 more times. I had tons and tons of sensory seeking behavior as a kid, which to a certain degree is typical, but it was definitely pervasive and showed up in ways that were not typical or were not ideal. can't really have any pencils to write with if you've chewed them all into being useless lol.
Seriously I would qualify for both hsp and autism and it's driving me crazy. I just want a professional to actually diagnose me but it's so hard to find a therapist here
People who say you can't be autistic because you're so articulate and self-aware, forget to take into account that autistic people can also be hyper verbal. So that means talking is literally a way of processing things. Or that your special interests like psychology, or mental health in general have taught you how to express certain things. These traits are the outside, not the process. People are quick to rely on what they see on camera. They forget that autistic joy is a real thing. Yes, autistic people can also be regulated and feel joy. Fortunately, some of us are not always miserable! Unfortunately, according to the DSM V, diagnosis is still based on deficits, while I hope that researchers will take more of the whole picture into account. Which allows someone to experience joy, and perhaps THANKS to autism, rather than in spite of it. Most autistic people are dysregulated because they have to hide parts of themselves. I say this from my own experience.
As a white male, I didn't receive my autism diagnosis until 31. I was able to acquire a clinical diagnosis in the span of 4 months from initial phone call to receiving "my papers." My expedient diagnosis had absolutely nothing to do with my race or gender and everything to do with the fact that I went out of my way to purposefully select a late-diagnosed female clinical psychologist. Not only did she let me take the standardized testing portions at home (and thus did not bill me for time spent on them) and answer any questions I may have had about the ambiguity of the wording of said tests, the entire diagnostic interview was essentially *me* explaining to *her* why I am on the spectrum. I did use the DSM criteria as my main lens of analysis; and although I do agree that a less deficient-oriented set of criteria would be the best and most logical step of changes they could make to the next edition, I am convinced that the primary factor behind why my assessment went so smoothly was because I was able to explain myself to someone who understood first-hand that it isn't all about deficits.
True, I was early speaker and talking in full sentence before I was 1 year old. I've heard the tapes of it as it shocked people so much they recorded me speaking. Not perfectly. Calling cucumbers cute numbers for examples. I also talk to myself all the time, try very hard to not verbalize it but as kid I have full conversations with myself. Asking questions and replying. I still do that to this day but try to keep it my head but come out a lot of time mumbling. I just did it now out loud thinking about what I'm writing here. I have people tell me they wish they could be more like me because I take so much joy in small things. Christmas day I got can open in my stocking, I was so excited I ran and opened a can of tuna for the cats.
I think you post such high quality content. I cannot support you fianancially sadly. But I hope you know that your hard work and all the details you try to cover is really helping people
I've been lately trying to adopt the belief that "everyone is doing their best". Because it allows me to see comments that feel disappointing or frustrating but also know that those people are doing their best with what they know. Thank you for educating.
I also wanted to clarify...that's not my natural reaction. Lol It just gives me more freedom to not get irritated and frustrated. I only have so many spoons.
I've never seen as many articulate comments on youtube videos as I do on the pages of autistic creators ❤ (this is literally something I've thought often). I also find a greater level of intellectual honesty and respect in the comments
Thank you for this. So many people think autism is a tragic illness, and can’t fathom that an autistic person can be happy or “fit in with the normies” to any degree. The root cause of the majority of my mental issues stem from medical gaslighting and not understanding my operating system or hardware. I finally got diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos and it validated all of my many physical issues, and wouldn’t you know ADHD and autism are super common in people with connective tissue disorders. I also grew up in a family with a very negative view of autism, so I was labeled as willfully weird and awkward and strange and several other things that are in the autism umbrella… but no, it made more sense that I was just a “normal person” but I wasn’t trying hard enough. I was seeing a therapist for about a year and come to find out that she was a former ABA therapist; she was satisfied when I “acted more functional” and didn’t want to give me a label since I’m so functional, then I had a massive breakdown and had to relearn how to regulate and trust my own gut again.
Also to add- before I get so stressed out that I lose the ability to speak, I choose my own boundaries. Even if it is simply- I don’t want to talk right now. It doesn’t have to be something I push through. I now have a weekly self date where I go and draw at the same bar and just listen to music and generally don’t talk to anyone. I smile, I’m not rude, I keep going back because the bartenders are usually understanding and leave me alone lol If a situation is stressing me out and I can leave, I will. I am allowed to set that boundary. But I feel like many autistic people have gone through life being told to basically hold their hand on the hot stove and deal with it, so it’s hard to say “I don’t like this I don’t want to do this”.
@@ChantalM3 I tried to keep it brief but well, I failed 😂 I’m super prone to spraining/dislocating things, and they turn into forever injuries. It’s definitely different for everyone, but I’m used to pushing through pain which leads to feeling disregulated in some way. Pain scales make no sense to me because me in extreme pain usually just means losing the ability to speak and several other symptoms. Remember that what is normal for you is not necessarily normal. Any little piece of your puzzle can be helpful to know about, even just for self knowledge. (This definitely is why I was in denial at all about being autistic for so long, I thought I was normal and most other people must be sort of similar to me, which made me really confused about why people thought I was being rude/weird/mean… my closer friends are all AuDHD/autistic/ADHD and thank goodness the friend I live with does not find it annoying how I operate) Going to therapy and having the therapist scribble so many notes and peel back the layers… that’s what I’m trying to reenact to figure out what’s going on in my body/mind. It’s all connective tissue that can be affected, and that can mean any part of the body- I’ve had some weird vascular issues so for a while every time I ended up in the ER with chest pains I had to get a CT scan just to make sure I didn’t rip an artery in there from just existing. Most of my issues though are leading to joint degeneration and arthritis, because the ligaments and tendons that hold my joints together are really weak and prone to stretch out or just rip all together. When I was in my 20’s, I was strong enough to lift kegs, but as soon as I had a major hip injury and my muscle strength decreased, it showed all the other issues that was masking. I definitely think it can be useful to keep a sort of symptom journal for yourself and write out everything you can think of - even if it seems unrelated. Headaches? Anxiety? Clumsy/ prone to freak accidents? Sleep problems? It’s much more than just the over flexibility in joints in the Beighton scale. I used to get much more frequent and worse migraines and occipital neuralgia before I did physical therapy on my right shoulder, because the left half of my neck and back were overcompensating and compressing nerves, which definitely is related to spinal degeneration which is also related to hip dysplasia etc etc. But I also spent too long pushing through pain that I have enough permanent damage that limits how many steps I can take in a day, how much I can lift, how long I can sit in a certain position, etc. it’s not possible to ever work back up to lifting kegs again, so as long as I stay within my limits I can slowly do more and more sustainably. I also am reasonably sure that my vision and hearing problems are due to some sort of faulty connective tissue or a nerve problem, so that’s EDS too 😆 ran out of steam after a year + of all the doctors appointments when I had some major things to get under control and now I’m stable and able to work with the issues I have. I think of my body as some sort of space ship that has been through a few battles, and I can’t go over impulse power anymore because of the structural integrity of the ship, and I didn’t have a welding tool so I had to hold things together with masking tape. I can tell when random flashing lights mean I need to go put an ice pack on some old server in the docking bay, or what the random whining sounds mean. Hopefully this was helpful in some sort of way, this is my own specific experience and there’s a wide range of what EDS can look like person to person.
11:44 OMG same! The amount of times I’ve been asked if I’m angry is on the high side. It’s literally just my neutral face, or perhaps I’m pondering something and people have interpreted it as me being angry. When I’m happy, I really have to sell it, otherwise I also get accused of being disingenuous when I SAY I’m happy/glad/joyous or some other positive emotion.
haha same. However I get annoyed more often than angry. Just yesterday I came back from my lunch break totally relaxed because I sat alone in the sun and someone asked me if I was alright because I looked annoyed. I was just thinking about which task I will do next. Receiving gifts is when I struggle the most to convince others that I'm happy 😅
There have been times when people got me gifts for my birthday or holidays, and I have to firmly convince them that YES I'm happy with my gift! They really got me the EXACT thing I wanted, but my face is not selling it. Makes receiving gifts stressful, so that's clearly not one of my love languages 😅
My therapist before I got diagnosed said to me I was too articulate to be autistic. He later apologized after I sent him many resources on why that perspective was problematic
You handled this beautifully. It seems this person was inadvertently projecting without realizing how harmful and disrespectful they were toward the autistic community. I love your channel. I have endometriosis and am neurodiverse. I love that you share your personal experience while acknowledging and respecting the individual experiences of others. The spectrum is so vast and it's wonderful how you offer a safe haven for everyone here on your channel. Thank you for using your platform to stand up for people like me. ❤
Feels weird to comment before the video is even online, but: I was just scrolling through my feed, wondering about this EXACT question in the thumbnail comment, after watching a video of emotional delays in childhood trauma (CPTSD), which I also am diagnosed with. This made me insecure about my neurodivergence, even tho I already have an adhd diagnosis and half of an autism diagnosis. And I am pretty damn sure I have it, but after the video, I was confused about the symptoms, whether they belong to cptsd or to autism, or perhaps both. So I’m so excited for your video, thank you for your channel, this is not the first time I’m wondering about something autism related, and Irene drops the PERFECT video for my question. At this point I feel like it’s meant to be this way I don’t know. Keep doing what you do, you’re so great at it, thank you! 🌟
CPTSD is a type of neurodivergence. So much trauma modifies the brain. If you got an assesment don't doubt about the results. There are many of us who unfortunately have to live with both or even more types of neurodivergence.
@@princessleira2663well my therapist said I likely have it, since it also runs in the family and she recognized some traits in me…took a long time tho. But she can’t officially diagnose me because she does not have the allowance to do so. And then obviously I dived deep and learned everything about it, and put myself on a waitlist (waiting since 3 years almost), and would consider myself half self diagnosed, half diagnosed by a therapist. But I don’t have it black and white on paper yet. That’s what I meant. The adhd and cptsd I have diagnosed, just in Germany it’s really hard to get an autism diagnosis as a grown woman. Sadly!
@@consuelonavarrohidalgo5334thank you for your words, good to hear! It feels like people often gaslight you into believing, that you just like to label yourself with as many mental illnesses as possible to get attention. So this kind of ableismen is stuck in my head, that I must be “faking” it, because having more than one neurodivergence is not possible, or just “too much”. But my intuition says otherwise for sure 🥲😬
One neuropsychologist (!!!) wanted my autism and adhd removed and she told me I was only hsp and infp and had childhood trauma, my psychiatrist was not happy with her, they are not even allowed to mention hsp to patients because it does not even exist…
It is true. Professionals look to see how well spoken people are in assessment. They say if you're well spoken then you're not autistic. A psychologist told me I don't have autism because I spoke in a sequential manner. (I went over my written list many times). So they do look for how well someone speaks. The funny part is when I got my diagnosis I also got adhd, intellectual disability with language impairment and limited verbal. It's very confusing. But actually to be diagnosed all you need is the social issues ( the top three). I think that's what I read. And also people grow and learn and get better. To be diagnosed you need to have social issues as a child too, so it can't be something that happens late.
yeah that’s another part assessors look for, symptoms being present your whole life & they try to get this information through family members or other means.
@@celinahuezo5518 Bless my mother for keeping ALL the notes my teachers sent home with me and their comments to my parents about me. Those alone proved the dx. They do look over time.
Doesn't help that many autistic people will develop a special interest in studying all-things autism, so they wind up being able to speak eloquently about their interest for hours on end. There are professionals out there who legitimately know their shit, and that number is increasing by the day. I have, so far in two cities, combed through the local clinicians offering ASD diagnoses, sent them emails explaining my volunteer involvement, met with them in an one-on-one setting, and vetted them myself to see if they were potentially good candidates for being able to help certain sub-populations of the autism spectrum who go late-diagnosed. In autistic fashion, I walk around with copies of a list of these resources so that when I meet suspecting/self-diagnosed folks in my University who want to pursue a diagnosis, I can give them a list of half a dozen pre-vetted options for them to investigate. If I hear "Oh you made too much eye contact" or "Oh you've got a wedding ring and are happily married" as counterevidence of an autism diagnosis one more time... Well I'll probably just strongly roll my eyes, because I imagine I'll be hearing it dozens, if not hundreds, more times given the career path I've chosen.
It's also, just because someone can speak doesn't mean they don't have autism lol. And I feel like some people with autism had to do lots of thinking constantly in order to be able to explain or express. And you're right, it's not easy to get a diagnosis.
I was diagnosed as autistic about 5 years after being told I was a HSP, and the autism diagnosis has been a lot more helpful. There’s just too much misunderstanding and ableism surrounding autism for people to accept it as being as prevalent as it actually is.
When you said that you tend laugh when you’re sad or angry I could relate because I also do it when I’m uncomfortable, mad, scared, or upset and I don’t know how to stop it but it was nice to hear someone that also does it too 😭
Irene, I really appreciate you making a dedicated video on this comment, and responding to each point thoroughly, because I think this addresses a lot of misconceptions about high-masking autism and the process of clinical diagnosis. If I hear people griping about how “everyone is getting diagnosed with autism these days,” I’m sending them this video! Autism is still really poorly understood by most people, and I genuinely think most people mean well, but like you said, that doesn’t mean their misconceptions are not harmful. I really related to you saying that the lockdown era was actually a really healthy place for you. I remember being baseline-level scared about Covid and worried for my community, but when it came to working remotely and not having to mask all day (though at the time, I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing), I felt a big sense of relief. My department was able to continue WFH and I have observed myself changing my behavior. I began to say “no” to social gatherings if I just didn’t want to go or I just wasn’t up to it that day. I now realize how uncomfortable I was in most of my “professional” clothes and even in cases where I needed to dress up, I began really prioritizing my comfort. There is still some stuff I’m figuring out-in the absence of the day to day work stimuli that I didn’t really like, but I was used to, I now feel like I react more strongly to negative stimuli, even if I could’ve ignored it before. So I can really relate to you saying that your autistic traits started coming out more when you otherwise felt like you were in a good place.
I am autistic and an INTP. It has nothing to do with your 16 personalities test results. My boyfriend is also autistic and is a INFP. Two very different results but both autistic individuals. Autism is a spectrum, not all autistic people are the same. We all have different weaknesses and strengths as an individual as much as people who don’t have autism differ from one another.
Myers-Briggs is astrology for educated people. It sounds like it's constructed around a scientific framework, but there isn't a lot of evidence to back it up as rigid categories in which to place people in any sort of concrete way.
@@cda6590 MBTI yes, Jungian typology (temperament) which MBTI is based on no, Dr. Dario Nardi actually did brain scans of the 16 types and discovered 4 subtypes for each type with distinct and measurable and repeatable thinking patterns/styles
Just got my diagnosis last week. It was easy. I also have really bad cptsd. The psychologist said is was working together. I’ve spent 3 years healing my cptsd. Autism was what was left. Can’t deny it.
I don’t know if it is just that I haven’t personally seen it, but it seems like this is never applied to autistic men. I see plenty of male autistic creators online and I have met several autistic men in my life who have worked hard to develop good social skills, who have had the proper accommodations, and who have college degrees and jobs and even dress nice and look attractive. I never witness them saying, “I’m autistic,” being met with, “But you’re nothing like my autistic child! I don’t believe you could be successful or independent at all and have autism. You must have *insert personality disorder or PTSD* instead.” I only seem to see this response when women say they’re autistic, and it seems misogynistic. But, I don’t know. Maybe men get these comments, too, and I just haven’t seen it.
Late-diagnosed autistic man here. Despite falling through the cracks myself, since my diagnosis I have literally only been told once "Oh but you don't look autistic!" and found myself feeling a little guilty afterwards for my initial internal response being "finally someone said it!" On top of that, despite having a few behavioral problems here and there, a large part of why I went undiagnosed for so long is because whenever I was in trouble and sat down with an authority figure, the response was always "You're clearly so very intelligent. I know you have problems now, but I'm confident you're smart enough to figure it out." But having spoken to so, so many autistic women on account of connecting with the late-diagnosed, I hear constant stories about being gaslit by both medical and mental health professionals, and--this is probably what gets to me the most--hearing these women unable to see themselves for the intelligent (sometimes genius) people they are. I have always prided myself on my intelligence and it irks me to no end how easily I can find women on the spectrum who match me bar-for-bar and yet I find myself having to drag the statement "Yeah maybe I am a little smart" out of them. Although I am in the process of starting an educational path that will eventually lead towards my working specifically with and developing novel therapies for autistic adults processing their own c-PTSD, I have--just from my little internet cave--assisted at least two dozen women either by helping them find the right clinician who won't make the common mistakes, or by helping them appeal misdiagnoses by (sometimes irritably) drilling it into these 'professionals' brains that TRAUMA and PD's are NOT evidence to be used to differentially dx an autism assessment. How flippin' hard is it to see that no group of people on this earth are more susceptible to trauma (the very often-agreed precursor leading up to PD's, particularly BPD) than little autistic girls? When BPD isn't just a flat out misdiagnosis for these women, it is often just evidence in favor of their autism diagnosis. Why the holy fuck would you use a personality disorder which shows signs in adolescence and occasionally beyond to completely rule out a lifelong developmental condition? Because childhood trauma explains the rest? Right, because being an autistic child and trauma surely have no correlation! As someone who may not be a professional but works closely with them in my volunteering efforts, I'm happy to say that this misguided mistake is being overturned, but fuck: It never happened to me and yet its prevalence is still so prolific as to make me angry.
Oh and as someone who doesn't even consider himself a "male feminist," I can tell you straight-up that these things happen because of misogyny. The field isn't biased in favor of men so much as it is explicitly biased against women. The reason why there is such an underrepresentation of autistic diagnoses in women has less to do with them "presenting differently," and much more to do with the same logic that underpinned the existence of diagnoses like "hysteria" back in the day.
@@cda6590 I wish I had someone like you around to help me find the right person to evaluate me! I paid so much money for an evaluation when I was 21 only for most of the evaluation to be a mood and personality disorder assessment, an ADHD assessment, and an IQ test. The doctor even told me she didn’t administer the entire autism evaluation for me because “adults don’t like doing it”, even though I had told her I was specifically concerned about autism. In the end she told me it was all caused by childhood trauma, even though she overturned my BPD diagnosis (which I have little to no issues with now that I’ve been living in a healthy and safe environment for years). Her report of me stated things incorrectly, made up information for questions she never asked me, and ignored all of my concerns regarding my coordination issues and several other things. I had to pay almost $1k after insurance for that. Now I’m on a waiting list to be re-evaluated (which I almost didn’t even want to do because the first evaluation was so heartbreaking) and I am set to be evaluated in April. I just hope this doctor actually listens to me. Trauma cannot and does not explain the breadth of what I experience, and I’m so tired of being told that, especially since I have memories of having these difficulties before my traumatic events even took place. I do still wonder if I am just crazy and they’re right about me, but I’m willing to try at least one more time.
@@cda6590 I completely agree! It’s the hysteria argument all over again! Hence the way they flock towards using a BPD diagnosis. It seems like most of them have their minds made up as soon as they see me walk in the room. When I was 14 and going through thyroid storm, a very dangerous medical condition that causes a lot of distress, a psychiatrist tried to diagnose me as histrionic because he thought I was pretending to be sick to get attention.
@@cda6590Both of your comments have been very refreshing to read. It's probably true that your description of "intelligent autistic woman who's ridiculously modest or doesn't have the self esteem to address it" would likely be applied to me by my family. I've been praised and acknowledged for my intelligence since before my double digits, but because of how I was treated by those around me and the expectations they placed on me, the label of being intelligent has never felt like anything but a burden to me. I struggled so much with typical school structure, I scraped by middle school out of pure luck that my teachers liked me (and probably pitied me) and altered my final grades in my favor, but I couldn't get anywhere close to completing high school. It's like because I showed a level of prowess in some areas at some times, any time I really couldn't do something, it was attributed to being a personal character flaw instead of a genuine struggle. That because I could win a district award for writing, it was impossible for me to have actual issues, I was just being lazy or not putting in effort. When I was younger of course I grappled with really communicating how I was having legitimate problems. Telling an adult that I just can't do something and my "brain doesn't work".. well, that's not what they hear. They just hear that I don't WANT to do that, I'm not putting enough effort in, I'm not really trying to focus. I've got ADHD as well as ASD so that's fun, seemingly not a combination of traits your average teacher has even a basic recognition of though based on my experience. I look back on my life so far, I'm 19 so I'm still quite young but I was never devoid of stereotypical or common autistic traits. I've never made consistent eye contact, which I actually didn't notice until it was pointed out to me when I was maybe 16 or 17, because my independent studies teacher made a joke about him being too ugly for me to ever look him in the face. My mom remembers me telling her as a kid that I didn't really understand how to play dolls with girls I knew because they were so fast paced and imaginative, so I would just sit back and go along with whatever narrative they elaborately crafted. Thankfully they never seemed to really mind because many young kids like to be the one in charge of the story. I've done a lot of "abnormal" sensory seeking throughout my life, though I suppose hypersensitivity is more of the hallmark autistic trait isn't it. I would chew pencils until they broke, because I liked the squish of the soft wood. It was such an issue that I almost never had a pencil in class for maybe two years straight. In middle school I moved on to chewing my hoodie strings, which then constantly had to be tucked in so people wouldn't see they were dark with saliva. I often challenged adults or other children to spinning contests so I had an excuse to spin over and over again. My ability to engage in reciprocal conversation through my life has improved, but it's still not easy and it's not something I naturally engage in often at all. There was definitely a point in time where I was very bad at it. I struggle a lot with perfectionism as well as black and white thinking, this has negatively affected all manner of things. I have not had as much suffering on the social side of things as some others, partially due to the fact I met my best friend of nearly thirteen years (who's also now diagnosed autistic) in the first grade. I appear well enough that I managed to avoid any cruel or overt bullying, but looking back it was definitely the case that many people didn't like me and thought I was annoying and a bit weird, especially in elementary school. Compared to my best friend I also didn't have as much of the "cold, unapproachable, standoffish" vibe that people always told me she had but I never saw. I was pretty oblivious to other kids opinions at the time and misconstrued some "laughing at me" as "laughing with me" for sure. I could go on and on about this subject of course, but it is true that I have exhibited plenty of relatively identifiable autistic traits over my lifetime, not solely "female presentation" or even a super high masking presentation. It's odd to see people's reactions whenever they become privy to the fact that I am autistic. I've not always been considered pretty, but I generally am now. A little pretty, good (but distinct/eye catching) fashion sense and general care for my appearance, rather eloquent and well spoken. These are usually things people are prone to questioning when they find out. It's particularly upsetting in two major situations, one where people seem to have never considered that they could find anything about an autistic person relatable, as if I'm not just another human being. And the other being people who seem to have a very hard time grasping that just because they think I'm a pretty, cool looking girl means it's very hard to believe I'm autistic. Which is kind of comical at the same time that it's upsetting because several of my special interests are fashion and beauty based. The existence of typical or normal-seeming traits does not cancel out my autistic ones, or that I fall firmly within the diagnostic criteria. So yes I do like fashion and makeup and skincare, like many girls do. However, not any random girl can tell you that cherry berry bunny heart jsk by niche japanese fashion brand angelic pretty was released in 2009 at 27,090 yen and has never been rereleased. Or that their dream sky series has four releases starting in 2011, and how you can tell when a dress was released based on the difference in the print, color and manufacturing because it was different each time. Not just anyone has lists upon lists (that will probably never be of practical use) of items from favorite clothing brands, hypothetical skincare routines and supplies to curate one specific makeup look. Maybe you do think I'm cool or pretty or cute or whatever positive attribute, but why does a positive or attractive trait need to be treated like the antithesis to autism. Thank you to anyone who's persevered and read this far lol, that's all I have to say.
I’m very self aware, but as you say in a different way. Such as I might not be aware of how the way I dress affects people, or how my facial expressions affect but I am completely aware of my personality, intelligence level and how this relates to others.
Oh my gosh, I also laugh at things that make me sad or angry. I think I interpreted this to mean that such things are ridiculous. It's interesting how the reaction I had is asymmetric to my fully fleshed out feeling on something.
[5:35] I used to think "nonverbal" was synonymous with not being full time mute. But I really haven't spoken much in my life. I used to go days, sometimes weeks without uttering a word. But this, text, this is how I "talk" I can speak and hear, but it's hard. Addin dysgraphia and typing and memeing saved me from never being able to communicate in a meaningful way. If not for the internet, I don't think I could have survived my teens let alone my twenties.
Thank you for responding to this type of comment with such patience! My diagnosis is new and the lack of empathy (ironcic isn't it!) I see and face myself just makes me feel angry, ashamed and very lonely. When I receeived my diagnosis in june I felt an intense sense of relief, but now I'm not sure I want to share it with anyone anymore. One of my closest friend, when I did tell her, looked at me frowned and said "But is she (the neuropsychologist) sure? How can she knows in such a short amount of time?"... Well we had 5 hours of assesment + the hours she spended interpretating the results + the years she spended studying but yeah you know better!!! And a psychiatrist has confirm the diagnosis later. And even if there is no formal diagnosis, and a person identify as autistic why people just don't want to listen to their experience and educate themselves? Honestly I believe that it comes from a place of anger and fear. Mostly fear I would say, like any other minoritie when they speak up, the majority fear for theirs privileges. Sometimes talking about autism to neurotypicals feels the same as talking about feminism and reproductives rights to a white conservative straight male. They know better, they disagree, and they fear that the world will collapse if it's become a little more inclusive... I'm sorry for the cynism, I'm very triggered. Thank you again for your content, you helped me seeking for an assesment and naviguating the diagnosis and every time I watch one of your videos I feel an immense relief, like, physically my shoulders drop and my jaws are unclenching. You are an inspiration. I hope this comment is also articulate, not because I'm autistic but because I'm french lol!
That's really unfortunate that folks can easily equate a personality test to a neurological diagnosis. I went 30+ years before realsizing I could be autistic and am now in the middle of a 2 year process to get an official assessment. Its similar to like you said, I got though life as best I could and got on with what I needed to do and be. But then my problems piled on for far too long, serious loss and truama for 4 years straight and then when my mom went though a mental health crisis and accused me of trying to unalive her, my mind just kind of snapped and I became non-functional. Lucky I'd seen your content by then and had already started the diagnosis process, but that shutdown helped me figure out just how much I was masking.
Pausing at 07:16 to say I am autistic and sometimes I find speaking difficult. In those times I’m usually burned out / tired and my brain and body are feeling fine, but if speaking is required, ie if my phone rings, or a kid comes into my room to ask me something, it’s like the effort of speaking is a monumental thing for me, like having to swim up to the surface from being on the bottom of the ocean. I CAN do it if I have to, but I;d rather not cuz the effort is so great. I definitely need non-speaking time every day and I feel like I’ve a daily limit of words I can both speak and hear / read, and once that’s used up, I’m done. It’s like spoons only with words.
Yeah maybe I dont have autism or adhd, maybe I’m just a sagittarius sun virgo rising combo. I mean when I read about Sagittarius traits it sounds a lot like adhd, and virgo traits sounds a lot like being autistic. So maybe it’s just my birth chart and my quirky personality, and I actually don’t struggle lol. Unfortunately I can’t really get the support I may need or medication based on my birth chart, or based on a personality test I took online. And obviously anyone can have unresolved trauma that may look like something else from the outside. However, I know from personal experience that when I have had good periods where I have felt secure and I’m not that anxious, then I still struggle with daily tasks and habits. Maybe not as much as I do on my worst days. But still, there literally is no cure.
@@cameron9206 yeah I meant it as a joke, but those are my real signs on my birth chart lol.. Maybe it written in the stars that I'm AuDHD 🤣 My moon sign is Libra, which I guess could explain my sense of justice. I don't take astrology too seriously but I think it's fun that it so often feels so accurate.
Irene, you create exceptional content. You have the ability to think broadly and critically and bring information across in an empathetic way. I can’t remember now when algo brought you into my view but in the last year I remember watching your videos. If you do welcome constructive feedback, from my adhd perspective, if you want to (you obviously don’t have to) engage better with people whose attention tends to change quickly - engaging viewers with more bullet point style text on screen while you’re talking could increase engagement as well as help the learning process, and generally keeping up with what you are saying. Overall really love your input! Much respect for your work.
I appreciate the detail and nuance in this video. The things that I love most about your content is how deeply and intricately you think about things and connect them together. I do this too and it's extremely comforting to me to know others also engage in the deep dives 💜
A lot of high-masking Autistics are hyper aware of themselves because we’re constantly monitoring if we’re “acting appropriately”. Their comment is kinda ironic
MBTI yes, Jungian typology (temperament) which MBTI is based on no, Dr. Dario Nardi actually did brain scans of the 16 types and discovered 4 subtypes for each type with distinct, measurable and repeatable thinking patterns/styles
i think personality typing can be fun but it’s just that. a FUN little thing to describe your PERSONALITY, not your disorders, mental illnesses, or disabilities. it should not be used in place of mental health terms. that’s genuinely weird behavior on the part of the commenter. like imagine if we were taking buzzfeed quizzes about which type of cupcake we are and saying we need accommodations because we are “strawberry with sprinkles”😭 -an autistic person who is not an INFJ💀
No! Mbti is not the problem. It's the commenter and their misunderstanding of what autism is and isn't. Mbti (and the cognitive functions) has taught me a lot about other people and their way of thinking, and it has taught me a loooooot about myself and how I function. It can be incredibly helpful if used in the right way. Don't ever say such things again. It's ridiculous, judgemental, and unnecessarily cruel.
When I’m in shut down I can go into a non verbal place when I am extremely disregulated or in melt downs . I am usually hyper verbal and have hyperlexia I am very self aware
You articulated the concern brilliantly! Thank you for saying so clear. People think I'm broken. When I tell them they are misunderstanding, I have to soften the exchange by saying Oh it must be me that doesn't understand. I would love to see a world where people actually listen and realize there is another way seeing things - that is not a wrong way. Thank you so much, this video is awesome!
15:14 Yes, unfortunately, there are people who do think they know more than someone with thousands of hours studying neuropsychology. I’m sorry you had to read that comment. I’m sure they did have good intentions but part of being self-aware imo is knowing when NOT to offer an opinion, particularly an uneducated opinion based on assumptions and limited knowledge. As an autistic, INTJ, enneagram 5 and lover of accuracy, I loathe this phenomenon. It’s called the Dunning Kruger effect, a cognitive bias that causes people with limited competence in a particular area to overestimate their own knowledge or ability. Essentially, it’s those people who believe they’re smarter than they actually are about a particular subject. They lack the self-insight and awareness to recognize their own incompetence, usually due to ego defensive internal structures and ego-protective schemas. It’s not malicious, it’s a very human thing to do, and it is annoying af. (It reminds of people who claim they are “empaths” while mistaking frequent and/or heightened emotional reactivity with having empathy for others.) I also think a lot of people confuse self-awareness with self-knowledge, which are two separate concepts. Self awareness is what leads to building self-insight about feelings, thoughts, behaviors and relationship patterns. Self-knowledge concerns the question of how we are - it’s “actual genuine information one possesses about oneself.” Self awareness concerns the question of what we do and why. Self knowledge is knowing I’m autistic. Self-awareness is knowing how being autistic shapes my lived experiences over my lifetime and influences my interactions with others and how I’m treated by others.
Personally I'd like to throw the whole HSP nonsense out the window because a) the creator started talking about this because she observed family members that were later diagnosed autistic and b) you can also be traumatized into being highly sensitive (aka hyper vigilant) and c) I could have freaking known I was autistic way way earlier without it. Also yes nervous system regulation and trauma healing is very important especially for autistic people BUT it will always be dysregulating and traumatizing for us to be in this world. That's just a fact. So we won't ever reach that magical place of having these two things "fixed" And then it's also how the brain is wired. I mean yeah complex trauma does change that too but I'd argue by far not on the same level🤔 Now I'll watch the rest.
This is another great video from you Irene. When people meet my 10 yr old stepdaughter, they are always skeptical that she has Autism because she talks and appears social. They don’t understand how much she masks (we have been trying to convince her not to but she is not ready or want to yet. The social acceptance and feeling of belonging holds more weight than her mental health for the moment) And to comment on that so many people are getting diagnosed now. This comment is common in the child care field. Some would prefer getting a later diagnosis. I don’t think they understand that a diagnosis is for the person/child and not about the parents or others in the child’s life (this can include pediatricians)
Commenter reminds me of how I was thinking ~1yr ago like, I can't be autistic, I'm too empathetic or good at eye contact or whatever. And HSP is something many people consider ND
it's implied that to be self-aware is to act in a way in which people perceive you favourably. it isn't that i lack self awareness, it is that i lack the care to act as to please the perceptions of other people. i know all my thoughts and feelings and i watch as they arise; i just don't care to be liked or accepted by those i feel don't see me, but instead see only their projected ideas of me.
I would like to add that stereotypes like the ones listed stand in the way of people getting diagnosed even as kids, pushing them into late diagnosis territory or even failing to get a diagnosis altogether. This can cause decades of not getting the help you need, leading to extra trauma.
My personality is not typically autistic. I am diagnosed by multiple psychiatrists. I am very extroverted, love parties, in many ways I thrive in chaos. I feel dead in routine, I like spontaneity. However I am affected by change, I hate unexpected changes, hate being interrupted when I’m in flow. I’m likely enfp but I don’t consider Meyer-Briggs scientific.
Sometimes, I question my own autism diagnosis because when I communicate with others autistic people, I understand how "too good" and "too privileged" I am to be autistic.
7:10 The thing is, I'm not entirely sure there is one "cause" across all autistic individuals. I'm not an SLP, but I've heard formerly nonverbal individuals report that they simply weren't aware that they were supposed to respond when others spoke to them (an extreme case of missing social cues), but I also know one nonverbal individual with severe general apraxia that attempts to communicate but doesn't have the vocal control to manage it. I also know a child who was late speaking (but not quite enough to qualify as "nonverbal") and continues to have trouble articulating certain sounds and to have grammatical oddities that aren't typical for his age and intelligence. So just from what I've listed, we have social, motor control, and grammatical processing issues all showing up.
Loved this rebuttal, it was so skillful and so thorough, as an autistic rebuttal is by definition : D. Learned a couple things to think about for myself as well. Thanks Irene!
Stuff like this is why I spend almost every minute around other people, scared that they are analyzing my behaviors and coming up with bizarre conclusions about who I am and what I'm about. Sharing parts of myself doesn't even help, seeing as how so few people seem curious or open on any level to get to know me. I don't meet any other autistic people in my life. The only people who actually believe me when I say I'm autistic are people from other cultures, who don't have as many preconceived notions about me.
If you’re not seeing other autistic people then you’re not getting out of the house much or you’re not going places where autistic people tend to be (computer companies, comic-cons, star treck conventions, live & loud dance bands who are never off key, or libraries (many autistic librarians and library patrons.) Or perhaps you aren’t really looking. I now actually sit and really look for the autistic people anywhere I go. I look for someone who has a flat affect, someone unusually still or unusual in how they sit, stand or move, I look for somebody who is dressed differently (bright colors or all black) and I look for people avoiding small-talk, sitting alone in a corner rather than with a group and not making eye contact with anyone. I look for that one person in the park or at a festival who is wearing headphones or in some other way avoiding what would be overstimulating ie painful to their senses. I avoid bright lights (fluorescent 🥵) or with loud echoey crashing sounds at random intervals. I look for people with intense special interests…like they spent 10 years after college getting a PhD in something obscure like a specific kind of ant. I look for people who work alone and are self employed like the mechanic in the woods who fixes cars while alone all day in a barn.
Thank you for this conversation. Been struggling for many many years to understand myself, perceptions and behaviors. Many a therapist. Finally diagnosed ASD age 58 F. So hard to accept dx but makes so much sense … 💞💙👊👊
As an autistic person who had a very intense special interest in mbti/socionics for years, it irks me so hard when ppl throw around the label of INFJ as if they know what that means beyond the popularized test & shallow definition. Yes this theory is considered pseudoscience. If ppl believe in the theory, I would like to give the perspective on how it applies in this situation. Mbti / socionics is a very complex theory about how your mind prioritizes different processing functions. INFJ = Ni - Ti & Fe - Se. Arguably someone who matches the INFJ archetype would have the opposite effect as the commenter suggested. Due to having extroverted feeling in the second function, INFJ perform great, arguably perfect, socially. They communicate w/ extroverted feeling that placates to social rules & the feelings of others around them. So how would being an INFJ "look / feel" like autism??? If the commenter is gonna make stereotypical claims about autism at least base them on a somewhat accurate conceptualization. Yes INFJ can still have autism, but theoretically it would be harder to diagnose due to a near perfect social mask (they would need to unmask during diagnosis which would be exceptionally uncomfortable for them given how they prioritize social rules due to their function order). All bc ppl think INFJ is "special / different" doesn't mean that it has any correlation to looking autistic.
I had such an intense interest on mbti and enneagram for years and I hate the 16personalities test so much OMG It’s not even mbti. It’s based on the big 5 but uses the mbti letters for some reason?? It hurts even more when this is where people stop and don’t even bother to learn about the cognitive functions. Also I see way to many people use it to justify shitting on others. They just turned it into astrology 2.0 at this point.
@@Somecreacher yes I 1000% understand your frustration. For people who are interested in conceptualizing personalities, others & their own, it's so worth it to take time to learn about the cognitive functions & even enneagram as you mentioned. It's really a lost potential when ppl use it as an ego boost & to judge others or misapply it, especially when they probably aren't even typed correctly since the test is so shitty
I liked the video 30 seconds in because it's so relatable. I'm self-identified and I also find this comment incredibly offensive. I've lived the better part of my existence being told what I am not, and going on all sorts of medication that haven't worked because that wasn't the issue. I cannot afford a diagnosis, nor do I want to put myself through the trouble of getting one because I know how difficult it is from others who describe the process. When I realised I was Autistic, I spent months researching it, and I am still doing so to this day, 9 months later; not to mention that I've lived with it for 47 years. This person's comment is just another one of those mis-diagnosis, and not to mention from another person with another non-existent medical degree (I assume, either or). Up to now, medical professionals have looked at all the individual traits separately. When put together, as a whole; Autism.
Sorry I won't be watching this, cause topics like this are really frustrating to me and I just don't have the spoons for that. Thank you anyway for talking about stuff like that, it's really important!
15:24 So im not saying this to discount what you are saying at all, but I was actually never given a full psych eval and was still diagnosed with autism. Unsure what thay means exactly, but my doctor does have it in my chart. I haven't gotten a full psych eval, even though I would like one, because of the cost. This is despite having been to SIX different psychiatrists over the years. I was also diagnosed with ADHD and given medication very quickly by a psychiatrist. Literally one session. I didnt like that so I went and got a second opinion, but she only gave me one test, not a full psych eval. I am extremely confident in both diagnosises, specifically because of how my life has changed dramatically since accommodating myself accordingly (seriously just having access to earmuffs when i was younger would have saved SO much trauma alone). However, the ease of my experience does make me doubt the psych industry in general.
I haven't been able to see a psychiatrist at all, but when I hear my partner talk about theirs... they would just see the psych for a short appointment and then be given/renew a prescription. It was quite removed from being a personal visit. Even my own family doctor (before they retired) had given me an anxiety checklist and wrote me a prescription the same day. The medicine didn't help me, and eventually I realized I might be autistic, not anxious. The kicker is that the same family doctor who wrote me that prescription basically just said "I don't know anything about autism" and wouldn't even look into if they could refer me anywhere... it sucked.
I've gotten some imposter syndrome after I've gotten more comfortable expressing my needs, and learning how to communicate better with others(not just in a masking way, I mean genuinely). I have to remind myself that I haven't become less autistic, I've just grown as a person! And you know - autistic people are.. people! And should be allowed to become more functional (more or less) and grow without being told we're lying to ourselves
lol your initial reaction 😂 I felt it 😭 I see this all the time where someone speaks very ‘articulately’ and people immediately jump to ‘this person is so intelligent, so valuable, so right…’ even though that person’s obviously very full of themselves and their message is quite shallow; people only listen to the way they speak, not what they’re saying. It’s the same in France where I’m from where you won’t be taken seriously or even heard if people consider you don’t speak good enough French (whether you’re foreign or native French).
I think about the double-empathy problem a lot and worry I don’t fit. I often feel unable to read people accurately if there are not obvious signs of emotions or if it isn’t stated clearly. It confuses me when someone is either always seemingly happy and polite or has a flatter affect. I have a negativity bias and worry I did something wrong in response to ambiguity in social situations. This confusion extends to other autistic people and neurotypical people alike.
My 18 yr old son is undiagnosed autistic. We never had him tested but he exhibits every symptom of autism. He never spoke in class and the teachers labeled him shy and gave him speech classes and reading classes so he might speak up in class but never worked. Problem in high school when there were 60 or more in his classes and they would call attendance in every class rapidly and everyone answered here except my son who didn’t talk in school and was marked absent every day and lost senior privileges. I complained to the principal and told him we are autistic but he didn’t care and said it’s my son’s fault for never answering here.
If you have given them documentation of a disability then they can’t do that, legally, it would be denial of FAPE and you could sue the crap out of the district (and they would try to settle very quickly) Sometimes an ADHD or anxiety disorder is easier to get. Same laws apply though.
damn just seeing that comment pissed me off. i don't care if it was a "good place", ppl like that rarely change their view on this. they prob won't listen to us anyway
As someone with the privilege of having my cptsd diagnosed (which is how I learned I even have it) seeing a fucking Meyers-Briggs next to cptsd like they’re remotely comparable is going to make me choose violence 🫠 “Are you sure you have the dirty bad sickness? You might just be traumatized with a buzzfeed sticker” we are enemies now op
same! MBTI is all fun and games but at the end of the day, it's a pseudo-science created by two racists who one had correspondance with Jung and the other a fiction writer in poli-sci. to pair that with C-PTSD, which many professionals are pushing to legitimize in the DSM, is belittling
The self-awareness thing is weird. Most people I meet have almost no self-awareness. They're just aware that I'm different and call my faux paus a lack of self-awareness. But, all the self-delusions or self-destructive coping behaviors I see them exhibit are just a nothingburger I guess.
"Do people think they know more than a psych. professional?" No, and it IS shallow like you say. Most people just put ZERO thought before they speak and generally do not make sense with their words. I still have to find peace with this fact but it's helping... It's like an instinct rather than a way to actually communicate ideas. They don't mean it and don't realise how unnerving what they say can sound.
Thanks for making a video like this; I'm autistic and was officially diagnosed in high school but my psychiatrist told I wasn't and then went on to say it wasn't even in my patient file. Misdiagnosing can be harmful because yesterday I had a meltdown and felt completely alone because just didn't understand that it was linked to overstimulation.
I hate how much emphasis is put on speech when it comes to intelligence and that sort :( my brain struggles to formulate sentences when not in my best mindset yet I can resolve patterns and games like Sudoku pretty normally but because society is the way it is, I'm deemed not smart or capable because I tend to go non verbal
If you live in Washington, it can be easy to get set up for a diagnosis. I got help from a family member to get through the paperwork. I have state insurance, I didn't pay any money. However, self diagnosis is super valid! You are valid! Do your best to ignore anyone telling you otherwise. They are simply mistaken.
Everything you mentioned in this video has been running through my thoughts for several weeks now. I'm an empath who is also autistic/adhd and know empathy extremely well. I sense and feel peoples energy around me as well as sense pain it can be overwhelming sometimes. I am very autistic forward I stim constantly by rocking or bouncing on my toes, also I have vocal stims for self regulation. Now here is where I am gonna boggle your mind. My autism did not speak before a year ago and on several occasions in grade school. After unmasking my thought process opened up and my autistic voice started being who speaks most of the time now. So now when I speak I am thinking while I'm speaking and this is new and I stutter and stammer as well. When my adhd speaks my entire life voice I do not stutter or stammer. So if I get angry my adhd speaks fluid as can be, when I sing my adhd I don't think while I speak and i can feel the difference. So my 5 year old granddaughter started non verbal but is starting to use words this will be her 3rd school year so great support for her. So I am extremely self aware and one of my abilities is I am extremely introspective and have been trying to figure out how my thought to speech works and is there a way for me to figure out what triggered it or stimulated it to restart. Stimming is key, don't mask it causes bad anxieties and panic attacks as well as depression. I'm still not gonna give up. Also we need to start sharing the special abilities we have that far exceed the typical brain. I have a slew of abilities that far exceed my disabilities and yes every day is a journey and long but my thoughts are in good hands as another ability I have is being able to rationalize every step of my day and give me great perspectives just by thinking. Thanks for the validation another important thing that we need and lots of it because it validates my existence to keep going. I'm healthy not wealthy but extremely wise and hope good health to all!! #myabilities 👻🤪🌶🤘😎♾️
A very well expressed understanding of autism as of the current era, but for someone like myself who was born in 1944 when autism was not at all seen as it is today, my view is more nuanced. I survived by masking because before 1980, when the first recognized autism spectrum was recognized, many of today’s views were then treated as a ‘mental illness’. Knowing what I do today, I am not sure that I would have been better served with a autism diagnosis, than my use of thespian skills to keep out of reach of a culture of modernity that seeks to homogenize everyone with a name or letter salad of initials. Again thank you for a very well expressed view. 🌹
INFP-T, sagitarrius sun sign, snake Chinese sign, autistic here👋😅 Also college grad with 2 Bachelor degrees but still only able to work part time because of autism.
What's more likely: this one concept that explains all symptoms and characteristics perfectly, or an exact blend of hypersensitivity, complex trauma, and a personality type from a test that has no scientific basis? WHICH ONE?!
Your last few minutes is why I find neurotypicals so frustrating. Some can be so clouded by bias that they can’t see the obvious. People are very ingroup/out group minded. So if they perceive you as different you are an out group and therefore “the enemy”. As you say when people speak different languages people can see them as inferior when they speak their own language beautifully.
I would love a video on how to educate othes. I am having such a hard time getting the coordinators in my college program to understand the reality of my autism and the gravity of the risk of burnout.
Stereotypes I associate with autistic adults (especially women): 1. "Pathological" empathy in the sense that their levels of empathy can sometimes immobilize them and--in the worst scenarios--endanger them. Despite this, they never seem to be able to stop. 2. Stupidly smart. For every "should you really be behaving that way at your age?" behavior they have, there are 2-3 "people twice your age would be so lucky to have this much knowledge or wisdom" behaviors. 3. Highly-sophisticated and deeply introspective self-images. Particularly when they have reached the stage of self-acceptance in their diagnostic journey, nobody knows more or takes the time to figure themselves out more than autistic adults--oftentimes starting in adolescence. 4. A level of trauma only matched by their levels of willingness to either forgive, or at least try again with others. 5. A history of being gaslit not only by mental health professionals, but medical as well.
It’s scary being raised in a world where nothing is actually set in stone. Information is so hard to find that is helpful that I can’t even trust the advice that people give me because I was misdiagnosed before. I don’t trust the doctors or my family’s help because they raised me anti-vax and didn’t try to get me help sooner. I don’t even really want to be tested anymore, I just want to be left alone now. I had surgery this year and an organ was removed, and it’s exhausting. My mental health wasn’t ready for that this year at all. I hope others are doing better🌸
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) was made by Katharine Briggs and her daughter Isabel, who were interested in understanding people and used ideas from Carl Jung. Even though many people use it, the MBTI is not seen as scientific because it doesn't give consistent results and simplifies personality too much.
I watched a video by CerosTV where he talked about his experience of going on a date with a nonspeaking woman, and honestly he understood why she does not use verbal language better than most people outside the disabilities community, was very nice to see and he wasnt at all condescending i just wish that was the standard.
Im tired of people saying you cant be autistic if you have OCD, BPD, ADHD, etc. They are PART of autism, thats why theyre COMORBID. Im tired of being cast down as non-autistic when i say i have ADHD and BPD, my psychiatrist and i are trying to figure out a diagnosis.
I bet that person has that diagnosis. It's very common for people to do that. It's not limited to mental health either. A stranger told me about Flo-max while I was trying to use the restroom.
I’ve made a video about being autistic and have received similar comments about being well spoken and no way I could be autistic. I think the things those commenters forget in regards to my experience: 1. You are seeing a snippet of me talking about something I have heavily scripted and outlined to create a video…. 2. I’m an actor I literally have been studying talking and interacting and how to pretend to be other humans for OVER 15 YEARS. So yeah I might be well spoken now but that is a skill I have honed for over half of my life not necessarily something that comes innately. That’s the difference.
Hii, would you consider adding your videos on rumble or Spotify again? I'm getting tired of RUclips tbh and you're on of the reason I'm still on this platform.
Have you heard about Buddha meditation where you focus on the separation between you and for example the flame of the candle? I'm currently testing it as someone feeling other people's emotions too strongly all my life. To be resilient and more immune, to not get enmeshed. A healthy detachment kinda. Of course the sensitivity to sensory input doesn't help. I can only say for myself that my findings were fascinating (I was diagnosed with ADHD).
hello, it is very interesting about the language, i had think a lot about apparatus of voice, i am autistic my self, and struggle to speak, unless i speak in frazes, not to mean it as simple frazes only. to my experience i relate this difficulty to certain physicality of speaking, to manifest the language out, to me it seems related to almost the 'executive disfunction' and synapses connecting the parts, to what other people seems like a simple act, i feel how in my body it is not so simply connected the actual all the activities that make it possible, they are not smoothly incorporated in my body . as well as at times i would say 'demand avoidance'. i work a lot with the body and movement, and i see how the physicality of the language coming out is not the same as processing language, and vice verse, i also work a lot with autistic children, i facilitate creative movement research workshops together with other artists, and it is very obvious to me that so called non speaking autistic individuals are very super incredibly sensitive to language. also where i live we speak Latvian, and it is rather complicated language to get out of the mouth, so many children prefer to speak English actually, it is less consuming of energy, or they understand many languages, even they don't talk trough mouth or talk very little, or struggle to communicate in that way,, but that is not the only way, that is just ableist way! it is almost like how the NT people use language is too simple for us, why would i even speak to waist my energy on most of the times pretty shallow imitation of language. :) and thanks for your content, you are incredible with your work and contributions.
Don’t let it invalidate your diagnosis! MBTI is just a way to categorize people based on cognitive functions but its not legitimate in anyway and is just another fun way for us as humans to categorize and understand ourselves. Also CPTSD is often co-occuring with Autism for a good chunk of autistic folks!
Oh dunno if you watched the video yet so sorry if I just repeated what Irene said in the video 😭 i commented this midway thru the video before she went over that part.
I’m an adult with NLVD (nonverbal learning disability) I don’t get non verbal cues I only understand tone of voice and I have a clinical diagnosis there. I’m not sure if I’m autistic or not. One does not simply ‘outgrow’ your neurological wiring no matter how ‘healed’ you are. I’ve dealt with my traumas and I’m still very much an adult with NLVD and maybe 🤔 autism? I say my brains 🧠 different operating system very unique wiring! I also have auditory processing disorder and I have a huge vocabulary. My interests are spirituality, crystals, animals, nonfiction sci-fi and fantasy and art and art history. 😂I’m an INFJ ironically enough what a beautiful irony it is here I did the MBTI in highschool! 😂 That comment you shared in my opinion is so cringe 😬! Meyers and Briggs type and HSP and all the self help tests should not be the determining factor in the validity of someone’s DX as a lay person I think there’s something very wrong and intuitively one dimensional in this and very invalidating and so very wrong for someone dxed with a learning disability I felt offended too on your behalf. I have a huge amount of empathy. I hate the overgeneralization about autism and lack of ‘empathy.’ I do agree with you in different presentations of empathy and self awareness. ❤I love your channel keep it up! Thank you for ALL your hard work, educating and advocacy! Keep it up! 👍 😊
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“INFJ HSP CPTSD COMBO” is a very yassified way to say “I’m autistic”
which is fine if you’re using it in interpersonal convos or to explore a concept
but using it as a genuine and objective comparison to autism & in a way to question the validity of someone’s diagnosis, is not okay
Imagine thinking that the MBTI is somehow equally/more accurate and valid than an autism diagnosis. Couldn't be me.
Yes it was a rabbit hole I went down, due to people having this negative view of autism. Oh you are too smart for autism. They think they are being empathetic because they dont know. People in Gen X (they werent wanted so majority werent cared about) and Xellinals (oldest mellinals that grew up when the childhood of someone gen x and saw the beginning of the technology we had today) were misdiagnosed because the Karen mom who points to high needs as Autism and the lower needs arent autistic. That was touted by doctors at one point. Teachers with no qualifications would get psychologists to agree this kid ADHD when your mom is saying I think it might be autism. My dad would deny what my mom said because his mothers brother had it and died in an asylum. Theres stigmas about mental health for a reason. And its pushed by wrong messaging for political reasons. People with thinking differences are scary to neurotypicals its the boogeyman. People dont look into mental health. Thier view is mental health issues makes someone dangerous or somehow less than they are. Which turned into a lot of subconcious self hate which caused more problems then just not giving a fuck about other peoples perceptions and doing my own thing my way.
@@thethoughtspot222 idk if my original point came across - it just seems convoluted and pedantic to suggest to someone that they’re all these other things instead of just autistic. I have had people diminish my autism diagnosis with the whole HSP / trauma thing, so it just made me side eye when the commenter said that!
@@innocentnemesis3519 it came across, I was trying to add to your point, not dispell it
The person who coined the HSP label spoke in a very negative and ableist way about autism, and some young relatives she labeled as HSP turned out to be autistic. It's not a real thing it's just an old outdated term someone made up.
But what am I if I fit the hsp description perfectly and lack key signs of autism?
I thought she herself later recanted the label and came out as being autistic?
Thank you 🙏
@@ann18o96 yes this is an important nuance. It doesn't have to be autism regardless of the traits shared. The question often becomes "at what level do you reach the diagnostic criteria to make the diagnosis" and that's a very difficult question to answer. Often the answer is simplified to "when it starts to negatively impact your life" but that's also a strange way to classify a neurodivergence because in the right setting there is the possibility of no negative impacts (rare in our society but theoretically true). So then if we're just measuring differences how much of a deviation from the "norm" (and across how many variables) would mean someone would reach the threshold for autism. Additionally what "norm" are we measuring against. All very difficult questions to answer and honestly in part you kind of can just choose what feels most right based on what helps you the most. Obviously medically there are boundaries but these things are revised time and time again. It's important to remember that conditions are diagnosed because they can then be treated in ways that hopefully helps a large number of people who share similar issues, there is no other concrete reason for these sorts of classifications. I think someone can have many traits of HSP and not be autistic. The same is true the other way round too.
Right?! What's the point of saying this label is useful when saying you're sensitive is good? Being challenged daily with things not commonly experienced by nonautistics, having a label to identify what problem(s) I am experiencing is super helpful for finding and learning tools. I need to acknowledge what's going on in order to face and to make it manageable. To not acknowledge the difference in how my brain fires is a medical erasure that is painful as an intersex individual as well. Having to fight for our existence in medicine and to have prove our legitimacy in society is really rough on someone who already experiences this life as so challenging....
Please please never stop posting content. I’ve moved away from the community because I kept feeling like I was a fraud and not actually autistic. This persons comment shows how easy it is to convince ourselves it’s everything BUT autism.
If engaging with the autistic community is negatively affecting you, please do take a step back for your own sake.
But once you feel you've reached a point where you feel more comfortable in your autistic skin, please do reconsider reengaging. On the whole, things are moving in a more positive direction; and if you yourself aren't one to contribute to the toxicity, the autistic community very much needs people like you.
The greatest boom in ASD-related knowledge and ASD-related societal acceptance has come from the fact that the imbalance of women properly getting diagnosed is finally being accounted for.
Not only do women represent the numerically largest pool of potentially undiagnosed individuals (and thus the biggest source of unlearned knowledge about the spectrum), women also disproportionately pursue careers in mental health, meaning that the more autistic women we've got out there, the more autistic mental health professionals helping other autistics we'll have.
The Myers-Briggs test thing is like astrology for the corporate world.
MBTI yes, Jungian typology (temperament) which MBTI is based on no, Dr. Dario Nardi actually did brain scans of the 16 types and discovered 4 subtypes for each type with distinct and measurable and repeatable thinking patterns/styles
No fun allowed!
Not really, Astrology is like 0.01% valid (100% valid only for entertainment and personal purposes that don't make monoliths of others) The things surrounding the 16 personality types are 50/50.
"You perhaps have the INFJ HSP CPTSD COMBO"
Jesse what the fuck are you talking about
That is some serious alphabet soup, right?!?
As someone who is in the process of being assessed for ASD and have been matched with the INFJ personality type, and have explored HSP and CPTSD this comment is very triggering for me. I am constantly feeling like I am gaslighting myself and that I am lying about my struggles and that I am just one of those people who want to have ASD for clout (even though that doesn’t make sense of me as a 34 year old, critical thinker who hates labels). Looking forward to finishing this video, your content has been so valuable to me ❤
Thank you so much for this comment. I’m 32 and this is also my current internal struggle. Glad we’re not alone!
thank you so much for sharing.
I hate the term HSP, I’ve never seen it in a way that isn’t (directly or indirectly) straight ableism. People use it because they don’t want to say autism, they don’t wanna say mentally ill, they don’t wanna say anything that might have any weight to it. It’s gained a sense of hysteria to it, too. I have been trying to get a chronic pain diagnosis for years. Every time I have just been told I am sensitive, and that because I am sensitive, that must be why I’m losing my ability to walk. I know for sure there’s a thousand autistic people out there who’ve tried to seek a diagnosis and had the same experience I did. Disabled isn’t a dirty word, and people use “highly sensitive person” to deflect from the truth all the damn time. You can call yourself autistic. Someone else’s stigma of a truly harmless word doesn’t change your life experience.
@@Eosinophyllis I am sorry that this is happening! However I identify as hsp and I lack other key symptoms for autism. It explained a lot for me. A false diagnosis that's based on weird stereotypes or downplaying suffering is bad, but that shouldn't invalidate the other diagnosis that doesn't fit for you.
Same, I keep flipping back and forth on it, wondering if I am being self-delusional and I just want the autism diagnosis because it's easier than to think you're messed up. Well, I think I'm both, lol, so it doesn't make sense that I'd just want the autism diagnosis to hide behind.. and still, I can't shake it, exactly because autism is so stereotyped it's insane. But when you really deep dive into autism, you find out how diverse it is and how insanely misinformed and ignorant most professionals are on autism, and that we've hardly begun to truly understand it. I think if you're a high-masking autistic person, you're just enormously used to gaslighting yourself, and that's what we'll probably always be fighting to stop doing.
Another pre-vid comment: I can understand how someone might see you on your public videos and see your obvious eloquence and poise and professional presentation skills.
After my ADHD assessment, I mentioned all this to my neuropsychologist assessor in reference to my self and my extraordinary speaking and communications career. I could not believe I had autism, let alone ADHD, given my social accomplishments. This is what she said, "Everything you are is autistic. Had they known back then what we know now, you would have had a formal diagnosis before the end of first grade. You can speak at a professional level about my specialty with me and it's as if I'm speaking to another PhD colleague. And yet, you have no formal training, just self study. Your depth of knowledge and the skills you have as a presenter (skills that you learned both by some formal training, but mostly by testing different approaches with perhaps thousands of different audiences over a life of being a professional communicator. Yet, when done communicating you would go into isolation until you needed to turn on again. All these things and more are actually evidence for your [provisional] autism diagnosis, not part of a proof against it."
Irene, when I saw you, largely unmasked on your latest member video, I saw the autism that your masking so effectively shunts aside to get your communicating done in your public videos. That seemed far closer to 'the real' you. It is so very different from your 'professional mode'.
Yes, we have a lot to talk about and so much more to do. The largest question is how we find and for whom we craft the messaging.
We all know physicians in general are not well trained nor knowledgeable of the latest findings. One YT psychiatrist had this to say earlier this summer, "If I had another medical colleague come to me with an autism 'fact' and an autistic patient overheard and corrected that 'fact', I would far and away trust my autist to have the most current and correct answer."
I have a ND friend in the hospital with a life threatening condition and I cannot get the doctors to respect and treat the ND side of his existence as well as his biology. They are the same. They.are.the.same! Yet, one-by-one, they and the other health professionals say and do the most inappropriate things that put him in such levels of frustration! And then, they can't figure out why the drugs aren't working to limit his stress factors whenever they come in unannounced every two hours with multiple people, different every time, to check his vitals and take more blood. That would cause allistic folks frustration. Imagine being neurodiverse, highly kinetic, with a strong presence of pathologic demand avoidance coupled with absolute distrust of strangers from years of abuse for being who he is! Let's not even go into the psychopharmacology decisions they are making that may not be the most effective for his neurotype.
Looking forward to this episode!
I really, REALLY relate to the whole “everything you are is autistic” quote because it sounded like it was describing me, how I study and learn things- and how people show so much respect to my masked way of speaking on their level of expertise, but when they either find out the way I learned these things is a “what, like it’s hard???”, or that I have learned other things this same way that contradict their own beliefs, ALL the respect I was given when I was agreeable is thrown away. People also don’t like that I can observe that, and instead of trying to get back into their good graces by modifying my behavior to please them, I just kinda go “cool im done with you if this is what you’re bringing to my table now.”
I spent most of my life conditioned to seek praise and approval through having malleable/no boundaries- im still figuring out how to even speak alone with myself when something makes me uncomfortable for fear of being abandoned. I don’t just have autism, but im kinda grateful I do sometimes, because it can help balance out that drive to erase myself to keep other people around. I wish I’d had access to the resources for autistic people that are starting to exist now in my childhood :/ I sometimes think my family kept those away from me because they worried it would slow me down, and I was raised with a very omnipresent sense of being Good because I was “barely disabled.” (Narrator: he was not “barely” disabled)
One parent still isn’t interested in hearing im autistic when she thinks I should instead direct all of my focus to my rare chromosome disorder that “is just like autism” so like why would it matter if im functionally autistic or literally autistic. I hate people using autism as a dirty word when understanding myself through an autistic lens in the only way i was even able to communicate my boundaries and figure out i needed to and deserve to be able to unmask.
The assumption that masked or not we can’t mimic allistic and/or NT people better than they can mimic each other is insulting tbh. It serves a similarly white supremacist “WOW, you’re SO articulate, you’re so well spoken! You’re supposed to be stupid bc you were born wrong. I will consider giving you the opportunity to ‘rise above’ (read: betray) your assigned class to sit at my Good Baby table with me!” Eugh.
I hope your friend begins receiving better care, I'm sorry to hear that he's having a bad experience. This is why ongoing research in Autism is so important. This is something I've been talking with one of my doctor's about--how my Autism impacts my care. Luckily he cared enough to want to bring this issue up at his doctor's conference.
And yes, you made a lot of great points! We use certain attributes to discount the Autism but in reality it's just proof of our specific spectrum. We really need to continually deepen our understanding of what SPECTRUM means.
Thanks for being a member and supporting this channel! You're greatly appreciated. & yes, I was a lot more unmasked in the recent member's only video
You’re a great friend
I told friends I might be in the spectrum (working on diagnosis), nobody believes me in the slightest. I hear the same irritating phrases.
we believe you :)
I told my family I was considering a ADHD/ASD diagnosis a year ago and they made me feel so ashamed and misunderstood by even bringing it up. A year later I take 2 tests online without telling them. I scored very high on ADHD 3 times in a row and scored consistently as low spectrum/Asperger's 3 times in a row. I regret ever involving them in my process of self discovery. I'm with an ADHD specialist now and this medication I'm on has changed my life for the better. The more I educate myself about these conditions (something none of them do) the more I find myself.
I've had peers tell me im autistic, but my first therapist didn't believe me. "You speak very well and you look me in the eye, there's no way you're actually autistic" maam...I was conditioned to look people in the eye by my parents. If i didn't, I'd get in trouble for being disrespectful.
I feel you. I was 12 when I first told my parents i thought i was autistic (after TWO YEARS of proper research, which I told them about) and the topic didn’t even get considered until a year later. Lo and behold, I now have an autism diagnosis.
I still remember shortly after lockdown started. I work retail and was walking from the far end of the parking lot back to the building and I couldn't help but notice how quiet it was. There was just...no background noise anywhere because nobody was going out. It was the most serene moment of my life. I actually ENJOYED the restrictions during Covid. Less crowded places and I didn't have to worry about my flat affect because of wearing masks. Everything was just so much more quiet as well, like I mentioned. I feel like how crazy people felt during lockdown was how I feel nearly all the time during "normal" societal operations. It made it quite obvious that I'M not the problem. Things just aren't built for me.
Same!!! Lockdown and masking was bliss for me.
17:21 I think people are assuming you're self-diagnosed as many of us have had to resort to self-diagnosis. There's a constant discourse on the validity of self-diagnosis and it seems like the commenter is on a specific side. Those are the kinds of comments people who self-diagnose often receive in order to invalidate our self-diagnosis. But as you said, it's incredibly hard to get an official diagnosis. I have been trying for a while but I'm unemployed and the few free resources are backlogged with requests. So all I have is myself and my intuition.
If you live in the US, please be aware of PsyPact legislation if you aren't already.
As someone working his way into the specific areas of psychology who deal with autistic people in particular (not just neurodiverency in general), I've never met a single one who doesn't understand and support self-diagnosis. Half of my diagnostic process was *me* explaining to my clinician (whom I chose because she herself was a late-diagnosed individual) why *I* came to the conclusion that I'm on the spectrum.
Autism and introspection go hand-in-hand. Having a self-diagnosis and no clinical one is *far superior* to the inverse. So even if you ever do successfully pursue a clinician's assessment, your internal understanding of your autistic mind will still take precedence over any piece of paper that, in the words of my clinician, "confirm what you already know."
The only reason I pursued my own clinical diagnosis is to lend myself some semblance of legitimacy for the "less-in-the-know" folks in the area of psychology on my path towards my future career goals.
Yes my son says he's doesn't need one and I get it but I had an issue with a Neuropsychologist that excused to something else completely. If it wasn't for my actual assessment later on specially my EEG that showed my autism and ADHD I probably would've got stuck on impostor syndrome and not believe myself.
Ironically, the subjects of the original HSP tests (the nephew of the person who invented the term) got diagnosed with Autism.
Even now, there's a debate in the HSP subreddit about it. Many people who qualify for HSP are autistic, including me.
But isn't that just because being sensitive in that way is also common for autistic people? Like for example fatigue is a symptom of depression, but the actual diagnosis could also be something completely different.
Interestingly enough, not all autistic people see themselves in the traits of HSP. There are so many of the autistic traits that can be either hyper-sensitive or hypo-sensitive. It may be that what Aron mapped out turns out to be the kind of autistic who has primarily hyper-sensitive traits, and professionals are only just now starting to realize this.
@@ZeonGenesis For me, the best way to think of HSP's relationship to autism is a phenomenon like savantism. Not all people who are autistic have savantism, but most savants are autistic. It seems to be similar for HSP: only the hypersensitive portion of autistic people seem to be HSP, but a large portion of the HSP community are made of autistic people with a hypersensitive profile.
@@randomtraveler8594Yeah I think this is correct. I only meet some points for being considered an HSP. Personally I have less overwhelming hypersensitivity to sensory things than other autistic people, and most of my "abnormal" sensory experiences as a child were actually sensory seeking, not sensory avoidant which is what I hear addressed a great majority of the time. I do have situations where I am catapulted into overload and become distressed, but they happen less frequently than I hear many other autistic people discuss. As a kid I bit and chewed on pencils until they snapped in half, because I liked the squish of the soft wood in my teeth. I would frequently challenge other kids and adults into spinning contests so I could have an excuse to spin over and over. In middle school I switched over to chewing my hoodie strings, I always kept them tucked inside so others wouldn't see them soaked in saliva. I would use the swings for the entire time we were allowed outside in elementary, swinging as high as I could and then jumping off, falling from so high my knees would buckle and then standing right back up to do it 15 more times. I had tons and tons of sensory seeking behavior as a kid, which to a certain degree is typical, but it was definitely pervasive and showed up in ways that were not typical or were not ideal. can't really have any pencils to write with if you've chewed them all into being useless lol.
Seriously I would qualify for both hsp and autism and it's driving me crazy. I just want a professional to actually diagnose me but it's so hard to find a therapist here
People who say you can't be autistic because you're so articulate and self-aware, forget to take into account that autistic people can also be hyper verbal. So that means talking is literally a way of processing things. Or that your special interests like psychology, or mental health in general have taught you how to express certain things. These traits are the outside, not the process. People are quick to rely on what they see on camera. They forget that autistic joy is a real thing. Yes, autistic people can also be regulated and feel joy. Fortunately, some of us are not always miserable! Unfortunately, according to the DSM V, diagnosis is still based on deficits, while I hope that researchers will take more of the whole picture into account. Which allows someone to experience joy, and perhaps THANKS to autism, rather than in spite of it. Most autistic people are dysregulated because they have to hide parts of themselves. I say this from my own experience.
As a white male, I didn't receive my autism diagnosis until 31. I was able to acquire a clinical diagnosis in the span of 4 months from initial phone call to receiving "my papers." My expedient diagnosis had absolutely nothing to do with my race or gender and everything to do with the fact that I went out of my way to purposefully select a late-diagnosed female clinical psychologist.
Not only did she let me take the standardized testing portions at home (and thus did not bill me for time spent on them) and answer any questions I may have had about the ambiguity of the wording of said tests, the entire diagnostic interview was essentially *me* explaining to *her* why I am on the spectrum. I did use the DSM criteria as my main lens of analysis; and although I do agree that a less deficient-oriented set of criteria would be the best and most logical step of changes they could make to the next edition, I am convinced that the primary factor behind why my assessment went so smoothly was because I was able to explain myself to someone who understood first-hand that it isn't all about deficits.
True, I was early speaker and talking in full sentence before I was 1 year old. I've heard the tapes of it as it shocked people so much they recorded me speaking. Not perfectly. Calling cucumbers cute numbers for examples. I also talk to myself all the time, try very hard to not verbalize it but as kid I have full conversations with myself. Asking questions and replying. I still do that to this day but try to keep it my head but come out a lot of time mumbling. I just did it now out loud thinking about what I'm writing here. I have people tell me they wish they could be more like me because I take so much joy in small things. Christmas day I got can open in my stocking, I was so excited I ran and opened a can of tuna for the cats.
I think you post such high quality content. I cannot support you fianancially sadly. But I hope you know that your hard work and all the details you try to cover is really helping people
I've been lately trying to adopt the belief that "everyone is doing their best". Because it allows me to see comments that feel disappointing or frustrating but also know that those people are doing their best with what they know. Thank you for educating.
I also wanted to clarify...that's not my natural reaction. Lol It just gives me more freedom to not get irritated and frustrated. I only have so many spoons.
I fully agree here.
I've never seen as many articulate comments on youtube videos as I do on the pages of autistic creators ❤ (this is literally something I've thought often). I also find a greater level of intellectual honesty and respect in the comments
Thank you for this. So many people think autism is a tragic illness, and can’t fathom that an autistic person can be happy or “fit in with the normies” to any degree.
The root cause of the majority of my mental issues stem from medical gaslighting and not understanding my operating system or hardware. I finally got diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos and it validated all of my many physical issues, and wouldn’t you know ADHD and autism are super common in people with connective tissue disorders. I also grew up in a family with a very negative view of autism, so I was labeled as willfully weird and awkward and strange and several other things that are in the autism umbrella… but no, it made more sense that I was just a “normal person” but I wasn’t trying hard enough.
I was seeing a therapist for about a year and come to find out that she was a former ABA therapist; she was satisfied when I “acted more functional” and didn’t want to give me a label since I’m so functional, then I had a massive breakdown and had to relearn how to regulate and trust my own gut again.
Also to add- before I get so stressed out that I lose the ability to speak, I choose my own boundaries.
Even if it is simply- I don’t want to talk right now. It doesn’t have to be something I push through. I now have a weekly self date where I go and draw at the same bar and just listen to music and generally don’t talk to anyone. I smile, I’m not rude, I keep going back because the bartenders are usually understanding and leave me alone lol
If a situation is stressing me out and I can leave, I will. I am allowed to set that boundary. But I feel like many autistic people have gone through life being told to basically hold their hand on the hot stove and deal with it, so it’s hard to say “I don’t like this I don’t want to do this”.
If I may, can I ask what physical issues you have that Ehlers-Danlos covers? I'm looking into it for myself, but I still don't understand enough.
@@ChantalM3 I tried to keep it brief but well, I failed 😂
I’m super prone to spraining/dislocating things, and they turn into forever injuries. It’s definitely different for everyone, but I’m used to pushing through pain which leads to feeling disregulated in some way. Pain scales make no sense to me because me in extreme pain usually just means losing the ability to speak and several other symptoms.
Remember that what is normal for you is not necessarily normal. Any little piece of your puzzle can be helpful to know about, even just for self knowledge. (This definitely is why I was in denial at all about being autistic for so long, I thought I was normal and most other people must be sort of similar to me, which made me really confused about why people thought I was being rude/weird/mean… my closer friends are all AuDHD/autistic/ADHD and thank goodness the friend I live with does not find it annoying how I operate) Going to therapy and having the therapist scribble so many notes and peel back the layers… that’s what I’m trying to reenact to figure out what’s going on in my body/mind.
It’s all connective tissue that can be affected, and that can mean any part of the body- I’ve had some weird vascular issues so for a while every time I ended up in the ER with chest pains I had to get a CT scan just to make sure I didn’t rip an artery in there from just existing. Most of my issues though are leading to joint degeneration and arthritis, because the ligaments and tendons that hold my joints together are really weak and prone to stretch out or just rip all together. When I was in my 20’s, I was strong enough to lift kegs, but as soon as I had a major hip injury and my muscle strength decreased, it showed all the other issues that was masking.
I definitely think it can be useful to keep a sort of symptom journal for yourself and write out everything you can think of - even if it seems unrelated. Headaches? Anxiety? Clumsy/ prone to freak accidents? Sleep problems? It’s much more than just the over flexibility in joints in the Beighton scale.
I used to get much more frequent and worse migraines and occipital neuralgia before I did physical therapy on my right shoulder, because the left half of my neck and back were overcompensating and compressing nerves, which definitely is related to spinal degeneration which is also related to hip dysplasia etc etc. But I also spent too long pushing through pain that I have enough permanent damage that limits how many steps I can take in a day, how much I can lift, how long I can sit in a certain position, etc. it’s not possible to ever work back up to lifting kegs again, so as long as I stay within my limits I can slowly do more and more sustainably.
I also am reasonably sure that my vision and hearing problems are due to some sort of faulty connective tissue or a nerve problem, so that’s EDS too 😆 ran out of steam after a year + of all the doctors appointments when I had some major things to get under control and now I’m stable and able to work with the issues I have.
I think of my body as some sort of space ship that has been through a few battles, and I can’t go over impulse power anymore because of the structural integrity of the ship, and I didn’t have a welding tool so I had to hold things together with masking tape. I can tell when random flashing lights mean I need to go put an ice pack on some old server in the docking bay, or what the random whining sounds mean.
Hopefully this was helpful in some sort of way, this is my own specific experience and there’s a wide range of what EDS can look like person to person.
11:44 OMG same! The amount of times I’ve been asked if I’m angry is on the high side. It’s literally just my neutral face, or perhaps I’m pondering something and people have interpreted it as me being angry.
When I’m happy, I really have to sell it, otherwise I also get accused of being disingenuous when I SAY I’m happy/glad/joyous or some other positive emotion.
having to “sell” your happiness is so exhausting and ultimately ruins your joy 🙃
haha same. However I get annoyed more often than angry. Just yesterday I came back from my lunch break totally relaxed because I sat alone in the sun and someone asked me if I was alright because I looked annoyed. I was just thinking about which task I will do next.
Receiving gifts is when I struggle the most to convince others that I'm happy 😅
There have been times when people got me gifts for my birthday or holidays, and I have to firmly convince them that YES I'm happy with my gift! They really got me the EXACT thing I wanted, but my face is not selling it. Makes receiving gifts stressful, so that's clearly not one of my love languages 😅
My therapist before I got diagnosed said to me I was too articulate to be autistic. He later apologized after I sent him many resources on why that perspective was problematic
You handled this beautifully. It seems this person was inadvertently projecting without realizing how harmful and disrespectful they were toward the autistic community.
I love your channel. I have endometriosis and am neurodiverse. I love that you share your personal experience while acknowledging and respecting the individual experiences of others. The spectrum is so vast and it's wonderful how you offer a safe haven for everyone here on your channel. Thank you for using your platform to stand up for people like me. ❤
Feels weird to comment before the video is even online, but:
I was just scrolling through my feed, wondering about this EXACT question in the thumbnail comment, after watching a video of emotional delays in childhood trauma (CPTSD), which I also am diagnosed with. This made me insecure about my neurodivergence, even tho I already have an adhd diagnosis and half of an autism diagnosis. And I am pretty damn sure I have it, but after the video, I was confused about the symptoms, whether they belong to cptsd or to autism, or perhaps both.
So I’m so excited for your video, thank you for your channel, this is not the first time I’m wondering about something autism related, and Irene drops the PERFECT video for my question.
At this point I feel like it’s meant to be this way I don’t know.
Keep doing what you do, you’re so great at it, thank you! 🌟
What do you mean by "half of an autism diagnosis"? /gen
CPTSD is a type of neurodivergence. So much trauma modifies the brain. If you got an assesment don't doubt about the results. There are many of us who unfortunately have to live with both or even more types of neurodivergence.
@@princessleira2663well my therapist said I likely have it, since it also runs in the family and she recognized some traits in me…took a long time tho.
But she can’t officially diagnose me because she does not have the allowance to do so.
And then obviously I dived deep and learned everything about it, and put myself on a waitlist (waiting since 3 years almost), and would consider myself half self diagnosed, half diagnosed by a therapist. But I don’t have it black and white on paper yet.
That’s what I meant.
The adhd and cptsd I have diagnosed, just in Germany it’s really hard to get an autism diagnosis as a grown woman. Sadly!
@@consuelonavarrohidalgo5334thank you for your words, good to hear! It feels like people often gaslight you into believing, that you just like to label yourself with as many mental illnesses as possible to get attention. So this kind of ableismen is stuck in my head, that I must be “faking” it, because having more than one neurodivergence is not possible, or just “too much”.
But my intuition says otherwise for sure 🥲😬
One neuropsychologist (!!!) wanted my autism and adhd removed and she told me I was only hsp and infp and had childhood trauma, my psychiatrist was not happy with her, they are not even allowed to mention hsp to patients because it does not even exist…
It is true. Professionals look to see how well spoken people are in assessment. They say if you're well spoken then you're not autistic. A psychologist told me I don't have autism because I spoke in a sequential manner. (I went over my written list many times). So they do look for how well someone speaks. The funny part is when I got my diagnosis I also got adhd, intellectual disability with language impairment and limited verbal. It's very confusing. But actually to be diagnosed all you need is the social issues ( the top three). I think that's what I read. And also people grow and learn and get better. To be diagnosed you need to have social issues as a child too, so it can't be something that happens late.
yeah that’s another part assessors look for, symptoms being present your whole life & they try to get this information through family members or other means.
@@celinahuezo5518 Bless my mother for keeping ALL the notes my teachers sent home with me and their comments to my parents about me. Those alone proved the dx. They do look over time.
Doesn't help that many autistic people will develop a special interest in studying all-things autism, so they wind up being able to speak eloquently about their interest for hours on end.
There are professionals out there who legitimately know their shit, and that number is increasing by the day. I have, so far in two cities, combed through the local clinicians offering ASD diagnoses, sent them emails explaining my volunteer involvement, met with them in an one-on-one setting, and vetted them myself to see if they were potentially good candidates for being able to help certain sub-populations of the autism spectrum who go late-diagnosed.
In autistic fashion, I walk around with copies of a list of these resources so that when I meet suspecting/self-diagnosed folks in my University who want to pursue a diagnosis, I can give them a list of half a dozen pre-vetted options for them to investigate.
If I hear "Oh you made too much eye contact" or "Oh you've got a wedding ring and are happily married" as counterevidence of an autism diagnosis one more time... Well I'll probably just strongly roll my eyes, because I imagine I'll be hearing it dozens, if not hundreds, more times given the career path I've chosen.
It's also, just because someone can speak doesn't mean they don't have autism lol. And I feel like some people with autism had to do lots of thinking constantly in order to be able to explain or express. And you're right, it's not easy to get a diagnosis.
I was diagnosed as autistic about 5 years after being told I was a HSP, and the autism diagnosis has been a lot more helpful. There’s just too much misunderstanding and ableism surrounding autism for people to accept it as being as prevalent as it actually is.
When you said that you tend laugh when you’re sad or angry
I could relate because I also do it when I’m uncomfortable, mad, scared, or upset and I don’t know how to stop it but it was nice to hear someone that also does it too 😭
Irene, I really appreciate you making a dedicated video on this comment, and responding to each point thoroughly, because I think this addresses a lot of misconceptions about high-masking autism and the process of clinical diagnosis. If I hear people griping about how “everyone is getting diagnosed with autism these days,” I’m sending them this video! Autism is still really poorly understood by most people, and I genuinely think most people mean well, but like you said, that doesn’t mean their misconceptions are not harmful.
I really related to you saying that the lockdown era was actually a really healthy place for you. I remember being baseline-level scared about Covid and worried for my community, but when it came to working remotely and not having to mask all day (though at the time, I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing), I felt a big sense of relief. My department was able to continue WFH and I have observed myself changing my behavior. I began to say “no” to social gatherings if I just didn’t want to go or I just wasn’t up to it that day. I now realize how uncomfortable I was in most of my “professional” clothes and even in cases where I needed to dress up, I began really prioritizing my comfort. There is still some stuff I’m figuring out-in the absence of the day to day work stimuli that I didn’t really like, but I was used to, I now feel like I react more strongly to negative stimuli, even if I could’ve ignored it before. So I can really relate to you saying that your autistic traits started coming out more when you otherwise felt like you were in a good place.
I am autistic and an INTP. It has nothing to do with your 16 personalities test results. My boyfriend is also autistic and is a INFP. Two very different results but both autistic individuals. Autism is a spectrum, not all autistic people are the same. We all have different weaknesses and strengths as an individual as much as people who don’t have autism differ from one another.
Myers-Briggs is astrology for educated people. It sounds like it's constructed around a scientific framework, but there isn't a lot of evidence to back it up as rigid categories in which to place people in any sort of concrete way.
@@cda6590agreed
@@cda6590 MBTI yes, Jungian typology (temperament) which MBTI is based on no, Dr. Dario Nardi actually did brain scans of the 16 types and discovered 4 subtypes for each type with distinct and measurable and repeatable thinking patterns/styles
@@cda6590Some evidence is better than none, 16 personallties is not a 100% thing but has some valuable aspects.
Just got my diagnosis last week. It was easy. I also have really bad cptsd. The psychologist said is was working together. I’ve spent 3 years healing my cptsd. Autism was what was left. Can’t deny it.
I don’t know if it is just that I haven’t personally seen it, but it seems like this is never applied to autistic men. I see plenty of male autistic creators online and I have met several autistic men in my life who have worked hard to develop good social skills, who have had the proper accommodations, and who have college degrees and jobs and even dress nice and look attractive. I never witness them saying, “I’m autistic,” being met with, “But you’re nothing like my autistic child! I don’t believe you could be successful or independent at all and have autism. You must have *insert personality disorder or PTSD* instead.” I only seem to see this response when women say they’re autistic, and it seems misogynistic. But, I don’t know. Maybe men get these comments, too, and I just haven’t seen it.
Late-diagnosed autistic man here.
Despite falling through the cracks myself, since my diagnosis I have literally only been told once "Oh but you don't look autistic!" and found myself feeling a little guilty afterwards for my initial internal response being "finally someone said it!"
On top of that, despite having a few behavioral problems here and there, a large part of why I went undiagnosed for so long is because whenever I was in trouble and sat down with an authority figure, the response was always "You're clearly so very intelligent. I know you have problems now, but I'm confident you're smart enough to figure it out." But having spoken to so, so many autistic women on account of connecting with the late-diagnosed, I hear constant stories about being gaslit by both medical and mental health professionals, and--this is probably what gets to me the most--hearing these women unable to see themselves for the intelligent (sometimes genius) people they are.
I have always prided myself on my intelligence and it irks me to no end how easily I can find women on the spectrum who match me bar-for-bar and yet I find myself having to drag the statement "Yeah maybe I am a little smart" out of them.
Although I am in the process of starting an educational path that will eventually lead towards my working specifically with and developing novel therapies for autistic adults processing their own c-PTSD, I have--just from my little internet cave--assisted at least two dozen women either by helping them find the right clinician who won't make the common mistakes, or by helping them appeal misdiagnoses by (sometimes irritably) drilling it into these 'professionals' brains that TRAUMA and PD's are NOT evidence to be used to differentially dx an autism assessment.
How flippin' hard is it to see that no group of people on this earth are more susceptible to trauma (the very often-agreed precursor leading up to PD's, particularly BPD) than little autistic girls? When BPD isn't just a flat out misdiagnosis for these women, it is often just evidence in favor of their autism diagnosis. Why the holy fuck would you use a personality disorder which shows signs in adolescence and occasionally beyond to completely rule out a lifelong developmental condition? Because childhood trauma explains the rest? Right, because being an autistic child and trauma surely have no correlation!
As someone who may not be a professional but works closely with them in my volunteering efforts, I'm happy to say that this misguided mistake is being overturned, but fuck: It never happened to me and yet its prevalence is still so prolific as to make me angry.
Oh and as someone who doesn't even consider himself a "male feminist," I can tell you straight-up that these things happen because of misogyny. The field isn't biased in favor of men so much as it is explicitly biased against women.
The reason why there is such an underrepresentation of autistic diagnoses in women has less to do with them "presenting differently," and much more to do with the same logic that underpinned the existence of diagnoses like "hysteria" back in the day.
@@cda6590 I wish I had someone like you around to help me find the right person to evaluate me! I paid so much money for an evaluation when I was 21 only for most of the evaluation to be a mood and personality disorder assessment, an ADHD assessment, and an IQ test. The doctor even told me she didn’t administer the entire autism evaluation for me because “adults don’t like doing it”, even though I had told her I was specifically concerned about autism.
In the end she told me it was all caused by childhood trauma, even though she overturned my BPD diagnosis (which I have little to no issues with now that I’ve been living in a healthy and safe environment for years). Her report of me stated things incorrectly, made up information for questions she never asked me, and ignored all of my concerns regarding my coordination issues and several other things. I had to pay almost $1k after insurance for that. Now I’m on a waiting list to be re-evaluated (which I almost didn’t even want to do because the first evaluation was so heartbreaking) and I am set to be evaluated in April. I just hope this doctor actually listens to me. Trauma cannot and does not explain the breadth of what I experience, and I’m so tired of being told that, especially since I have memories of having these difficulties before my traumatic events even took place. I do still wonder if I am just crazy and they’re right about me, but I’m willing to try at least one more time.
@@cda6590 I completely agree! It’s the hysteria argument all over again! Hence the way they flock towards using a BPD diagnosis. It seems like most of them have their minds made up as soon as they see me walk in the room. When I was 14 and going through thyroid storm, a very dangerous medical condition that causes a lot of distress, a psychiatrist tried to diagnose me as histrionic because he thought I was pretending to be sick to get attention.
@@cda6590Both of your comments have been very refreshing to read. It's probably true that your description of "intelligent autistic woman who's ridiculously modest or doesn't have the self esteem to address it" would likely be applied to me by my family. I've been praised and acknowledged for my intelligence since before my double digits, but because of how I was treated by those around me and the expectations they placed on me, the label of being intelligent has never felt like anything but a burden to me.
I struggled so much with typical school structure, I scraped by middle school out of pure luck that my teachers liked me (and probably pitied me) and altered my final grades in my favor, but I couldn't get anywhere close to completing high school. It's like because I showed a level of prowess in some areas at some times, any time I really couldn't do something, it was attributed to being a personal character flaw instead of a genuine struggle. That because I could win a district award for writing, it was impossible for me to have actual issues, I was just being lazy or not putting in effort. When I was younger of course I grappled with really communicating how I was having legitimate problems. Telling an adult that I just can't do something and my "brain doesn't work".. well, that's not what they hear. They just hear that I don't WANT to do that, I'm not putting enough effort in, I'm not really trying to focus.
I've got ADHD as well as ASD so that's fun, seemingly not a combination of traits your average teacher has even a basic recognition of though based on my experience. I look back on my life so far, I'm 19 so I'm still quite young but I was never devoid of stereotypical or common autistic traits. I've never made consistent eye contact, which I actually didn't notice until it was pointed out to me when I was maybe 16 or 17, because my independent studies teacher made a joke about him being too ugly for me to ever look him in the face. My mom remembers me telling her as a kid that I didn't really understand how to play dolls with girls I knew because they were so fast paced and imaginative, so I would just sit back and go along with whatever narrative they elaborately crafted. Thankfully they never seemed to really mind because many young kids like to be the one in charge of the story.
I've done a lot of "abnormal" sensory seeking throughout my life, though I suppose hypersensitivity is more of the hallmark autistic trait isn't it. I would chew pencils until they broke, because I liked the squish of the soft wood. It was such an issue that I almost never had a pencil in class for maybe two years straight. In middle school I moved on to chewing my hoodie strings, which then constantly had to be tucked in so people wouldn't see they were dark with saliva. I often challenged adults or other children to spinning contests so I had an excuse to spin over and over again. My ability to engage in reciprocal conversation through my life has improved, but it's still not easy and it's not something I naturally engage in often at all. There was definitely a point in time where I was very bad at it. I struggle a lot with perfectionism as well as black and white thinking, this has negatively affected all manner of things. I have not had as much suffering on the social side of things as some others, partially due to the fact I met my best friend of nearly thirteen years (who's also now diagnosed autistic) in the first grade. I appear well enough that I managed to avoid any cruel or overt bullying, but looking back it was definitely the case that many people didn't like me and thought I was annoying and a bit weird, especially in elementary school. Compared to my best friend I also didn't have as much of the "cold, unapproachable, standoffish" vibe that people always told me she had but I never saw. I was pretty oblivious to other kids opinions at the time and misconstrued some "laughing at me" as "laughing with me" for sure.
I could go on and on about this subject of course, but it is true that I have exhibited plenty of relatively identifiable autistic traits over my lifetime, not solely "female presentation" or even a super high masking presentation. It's odd to see people's reactions whenever they become privy to the fact that I am autistic. I've not always been considered pretty, but I generally am now. A little pretty, good (but distinct/eye catching) fashion sense and general care for my appearance, rather eloquent and well spoken. These are usually things people are prone to questioning when they find out. It's particularly upsetting in two major situations, one where people seem to have never considered that they could find anything about an autistic person relatable, as if I'm not just another human being. And the other being people who seem to have a very hard time grasping that just because they think I'm a pretty, cool looking girl means it's very hard to believe I'm autistic. Which is kind of comical at the same time that it's upsetting because several of my special interests are fashion and beauty based.
The existence of typical or normal-seeming traits does not cancel out my autistic ones, or that I fall firmly within the diagnostic criteria. So yes I do like fashion and makeup and skincare, like many girls do. However, not any random girl can tell you that cherry berry bunny heart jsk by niche japanese fashion brand angelic pretty was released in 2009 at 27,090 yen and has never been rereleased. Or that their dream sky series has four releases starting in 2011, and how you can tell when a dress was released based on the difference in the print, color and manufacturing because it was different each time. Not just anyone has lists upon lists (that will probably never be of practical use) of items from favorite clothing brands, hypothetical skincare routines and supplies to curate one specific makeup look.
Maybe you do think I'm cool or pretty or cute or whatever positive attribute, but why does a positive or attractive trait need to be treated like the antithesis to autism. Thank you to anyone who's persevered and read this far lol, that's all I have to say.
I’m very self aware, but as you say in a different way. Such as I might not be aware of how the way I dress affects people, or how my facial expressions affect but I am completely aware of my personality, intelligence level and how this relates to others.
Oh my gosh, I also laugh at things that make me sad or angry. I think I interpreted this to mean that such things are ridiculous. It's interesting how the reaction I had is asymmetric to my fully fleshed out feeling on something.
[5:35] I used to think "nonverbal" was synonymous with not being full time mute. But I really haven't spoken much in my life. I used to go days, sometimes weeks without uttering a word. But this, text, this is how I "talk" I can speak and hear, but it's hard. Addin dysgraphia and typing and memeing saved me from never being able to communicate in a meaningful way. If not for the internet, I don't think I could have survived my teens let alone my twenties.
Thank you for responding to this type of comment with such patience! My diagnosis is new and the lack of empathy (ironcic isn't it!) I see and face myself just makes me feel angry, ashamed and very lonely. When I receeived my diagnosis in june I felt an intense sense of relief, but now I'm not sure I want to share it with anyone anymore. One of my closest friend, when I did tell her, looked at me frowned and said "But is she (the neuropsychologist) sure? How can she knows in such a short amount of time?"... Well we had 5 hours of assesment + the hours she spended interpretating the results + the years she spended studying but yeah you know better!!! And a psychiatrist has confirm the diagnosis later. And even if there is no formal diagnosis, and a person identify as autistic why people just don't want to listen to their experience and educate themselves?
Honestly I believe that it comes from a place of anger and fear. Mostly fear I would say, like any other minoritie when they speak up, the majority fear for theirs privileges. Sometimes talking about autism to neurotypicals feels the same as talking about feminism and reproductives rights to a white conservative straight male. They know better, they disagree, and they fear that the world will collapse if it's become a little more inclusive...
I'm sorry for the cynism, I'm very triggered. Thank you again for your content, you helped me seeking for an assesment and naviguating the diagnosis and every time I watch one of your videos I feel an immense relief, like, physically my shoulders drop and my jaws are unclenching. You are an inspiration.
I hope this comment is also articulate, not because I'm autistic but because I'm french lol!
That's really unfortunate that folks can easily equate a personality test to a neurological diagnosis. I went 30+ years before realsizing I could be autistic and am now in the middle of a 2 year process to get an official assessment. Its similar to like you said, I got though life as best I could and got on with what I needed to do and be. But then my problems piled on for far too long, serious loss and truama for 4 years straight and then when my mom went though a mental health crisis and accused me of trying to unalive her, my mind just kind of snapped and I became non-functional. Lucky I'd seen your content by then and had already started the diagnosis process, but that shutdown helped me figure out just how much I was masking.
Pausing at 07:16 to say I am autistic and sometimes I find speaking difficult. In those times I’m usually burned out / tired and my brain and body are feeling fine, but if speaking is required, ie if my phone rings, or a kid comes into my room to ask me something, it’s like the effort of speaking is a monumental thing for me, like having to swim up to the surface from being on the bottom of the ocean. I CAN do it if I have to, but I;d rather not cuz the effort is so great. I definitely need non-speaking time every day and I feel like I’ve a daily limit of words I can both speak and hear / read, and once that’s used up, I’m done. It’s like spoons only with words.
Yeah maybe I dont have autism or adhd, maybe I’m just a sagittarius sun virgo rising combo. I mean when I read about Sagittarius traits it sounds a lot like adhd, and virgo traits sounds a lot like being autistic. So maybe it’s just my birth chart and my quirky personality, and I actually don’t struggle lol. Unfortunately I can’t really get the support I may need or medication based on my birth chart, or based on a personality test I took online. And obviously anyone can have unresolved trauma that may look like something else from the outside. However, I know from personal experience that when I have had good periods where I have felt secure and I’m not that anxious, then I still struggle with daily tasks and habits. Maybe not as much as I do on my worst days. But still, there literally is no cure.
oof i know this is a joke but im autistic and that sun rising combo lmao
@@cameron9206 yeah I meant it as a joke, but those are my real signs on my birth chart lol.. Maybe it written in the stars that I'm AuDHD 🤣 My moon sign is Libra, which I guess could explain my sense of justice. I don't take astrology too seriously but I think it's fun that it so often feels so accurate.
Irene, you create exceptional content. You have the ability to think broadly and critically and bring information across in an empathetic way. I can’t remember now when algo brought you into my view but in the last year I remember watching your videos.
If you do welcome constructive feedback, from my adhd perspective, if you want to (you obviously don’t have to) engage better with people whose attention tends to change quickly - engaging viewers with more bullet point style text on screen while you’re talking could increase engagement as well as help the learning process, and generally keeping up with what you are saying.
Overall really love your input!
Much respect for your work.
thank you for this 🌻
I appreciate the detail and nuance in this video. The things that I love most about your content is how deeply and intricately you think about things and connect them together. I do this too and it's extremely comforting to me to know others also engage in the deep dives 💜
A lot of high-masking Autistics are hyper aware of themselves because we’re constantly monitoring if we’re “acting appropriately”. Their comment is kinda ironic
The moment they start with the Meyer-Briggs crap, you can already just let it go.
Its a cute concept, but realistically, I dont think people and their behaviors over time map very well onto it XD
I think it’s a good tool. It helps me. It’s when they use it as a bible that’s a problem
MBTI yes, Jungian typology (temperament) which MBTI is based on no, Dr. Dario Nardi actually did brain scans of the 16 types and discovered 4 subtypes for each type with distinct, measurable and repeatable thinking patterns/styles
i think personality typing can be fun but it’s just that. a FUN little thing to describe your PERSONALITY, not your disorders, mental illnesses, or disabilities. it should not be used in place of mental health terms. that’s genuinely weird behavior on the part of the commenter. like imagine if we were taking buzzfeed quizzes about which type of cupcake we are and saying we need accommodations because we are “strawberry with sprinkles”😭 -an autistic person who is not an INFJ💀
No! Mbti is not the problem.
It's the commenter and their misunderstanding of what autism is and isn't.
Mbti (and the cognitive functions) has taught me a lot about other people and their way of thinking, and it has taught me a loooooot about myself and how I function.
It can be incredibly helpful if used in the right way.
Don't ever say such things again. It's ridiculous, judgemental, and unnecessarily cruel.
This ressonates so hard with me as a late diagnosed woman with ADHD. Thank you so much for speaking up.
i feel so safe here 🥺❤
When I’m in shut down I can go into a non verbal place when I am extremely disregulated or in melt downs . I am usually hyper verbal and have hyperlexia I am very self aware
You articulated the concern brilliantly! Thank you for saying so clear. People think I'm broken. When I tell them they are misunderstanding, I have to soften the exchange by saying Oh it must be me that doesn't understand. I would love to see a world where people actually listen and realize there is another way seeing things - that is not a wrong way. Thank you so much, this video is awesome!
15:14 Yes, unfortunately, there are people who do think they know more than someone with thousands of hours studying neuropsychology. I’m sorry you had to read that comment. I’m sure they did have good intentions but part of being self-aware imo is knowing when NOT to offer an opinion, particularly an uneducated opinion based on assumptions and limited knowledge. As an autistic, INTJ, enneagram 5 and lover of accuracy, I loathe this phenomenon. It’s called the Dunning Kruger effect, a cognitive bias that causes people with limited competence in a particular area to overestimate their own knowledge or ability. Essentially, it’s those people who believe they’re smarter than they actually are about a particular subject. They lack the self-insight and awareness to recognize their own incompetence, usually due to ego defensive internal structures and ego-protective schemas. It’s not malicious, it’s a very human thing to do, and it is annoying af. (It reminds of people who claim they are “empaths” while mistaking frequent and/or heightened emotional reactivity with having empathy for others.)
I also think a lot of people confuse self-awareness with self-knowledge, which are two separate concepts. Self awareness is what leads to building self-insight about feelings, thoughts, behaviors and relationship patterns. Self-knowledge concerns the question of how we are - it’s “actual genuine information one possesses about oneself.” Self awareness concerns the question of what we do and why. Self knowledge is knowing I’m autistic. Self-awareness is knowing how being autistic shapes my lived experiences over my lifetime and influences my interactions with others and how I’m treated by others.
yes! I loved how you expanded on some of these points
Personally I'd like to throw the whole HSP nonsense out the window because a) the creator started talking about this because she observed family members that were later diagnosed autistic and b) you can also be traumatized into being highly sensitive (aka hyper vigilant) and c) I could have freaking known I was autistic way way earlier without it. Also yes nervous system regulation and trauma healing is very important especially for autistic people BUT it will always be dysregulating and traumatizing for us to be in this world. That's just a fact. So we won't ever reach that magical place of having these two things "fixed" And then it's also how the brain is wired. I mean yeah complex trauma does change that too but I'd argue by far not on the same level🤔 Now I'll watch the rest.
This is another great video from you Irene. When people meet my 10 yr old stepdaughter, they are always skeptical that she has Autism because she talks and appears social. They don’t understand how much she masks (we have been trying to convince her not to but she is not ready or want to yet. The social acceptance and feeling of belonging holds more weight than her mental health for the moment)
And to comment on that so many people are getting diagnosed now. This comment is common in the child care field. Some would prefer getting a later diagnosis. I don’t think they understand that a diagnosis is for the person/child and not about the parents or others in the child’s life (this can include pediatricians)
Commenter reminds me of how I was thinking ~1yr ago like, I can't be autistic, I'm too empathetic or good at eye contact or whatever. And HSP is something many people consider ND
it's implied that to be self-aware is to act in a way in which people perceive you favourably. it isn't that i lack self awareness, it is that i lack the care to act as to please the perceptions of other people. i know all my thoughts and feelings and i watch as they arise; i just don't care to be liked or accepted by those i feel don't see me, but instead see only their projected ideas of me.
I would like to add that stereotypes like the ones listed stand in the way of people getting diagnosed even as kids, pushing them into late diagnosis territory or even failing to get a diagnosis altogether. This can cause decades of not getting the help you need, leading to extra trauma.
My personality is not typically autistic. I am diagnosed by multiple psychiatrists. I am very extroverted, love parties, in many ways I thrive in chaos. I feel dead in routine, I like spontaneity. However I am affected by change, I hate unexpected changes, hate being interrupted when I’m in flow. I’m likely enfp but I don’t consider Meyer-Briggs scientific.
Sometimes, I question my own autism diagnosis because when I communicate with others autistic people, I understand how "too good" and "too privileged" I am to be autistic.
7:10 The thing is, I'm not entirely sure there is one "cause" across all autistic individuals. I'm not an SLP, but I've heard formerly nonverbal individuals report that they simply weren't aware that they were supposed to respond when others spoke to them (an extreme case of missing social cues), but I also know one nonverbal individual with severe general apraxia that attempts to communicate but doesn't have the vocal control to manage it. I also know a child who was late speaking (but not quite enough to qualify as "nonverbal") and continues to have trouble articulating certain sounds and to have grammatical oddities that aren't typical for his age and intelligence.
So just from what I've listed, we have social, motor control, and grammatical processing issues all showing up.
Loved this rebuttal, it was so skillful and so thorough, as an autistic rebuttal is by definition : D. Learned a couple things to think about for myself as well. Thanks Irene!
Stuff like this is why I spend almost every minute around other people, scared that they are analyzing my behaviors and coming up with bizarre conclusions about who I am and what I'm about. Sharing parts of myself doesn't even help, seeing as how so few people seem curious or open on any level to get to know me. I don't meet any other autistic people in my life. The only people who actually believe me when I say I'm autistic are people from other cultures, who don't have as many preconceived notions about me.
If you’re not seeing other autistic people then you’re not getting out of the house much or you’re not going places where autistic people tend to be (computer companies, comic-cons, star treck conventions, live & loud dance bands who are never off key, or libraries (many autistic librarians and library patrons.) Or perhaps you aren’t really looking. I now actually sit and really look for the autistic people anywhere I go. I look for someone who has a flat affect, someone unusually still or unusual in how they sit, stand or move, I look for somebody who is dressed differently (bright colors or all black) and I look for people avoiding small-talk, sitting alone in a corner rather than with a group and not making eye contact with anyone. I look for that one person in the park or at a festival who is wearing headphones or in some other way avoiding what would be overstimulating ie painful to their senses. I avoid bright lights (fluorescent 🥵) or with loud echoey crashing sounds at random intervals. I look for people with intense special interests…like they spent 10 years after college getting a PhD in something obscure like a specific kind of ant. I look for people who work alone and are self employed like the mechanic in the woods who fixes cars while alone all day in a barn.
Thank you for this conversation. Been struggling for many many years to understand myself, perceptions and behaviors. Many a therapist. Finally diagnosed ASD age 58 F. So hard to accept dx but makes so much sense … 💞💙👊👊
As an autistic person who had a very intense special interest in mbti/socionics for years, it irks me so hard when ppl throw around the label of INFJ as if they know what that means beyond the popularized test & shallow definition. Yes this theory is considered pseudoscience. If ppl believe in the theory, I would like to give the perspective on how it applies in this situation.
Mbti / socionics is a very complex theory about how your mind prioritizes different processing functions. INFJ = Ni - Ti & Fe - Se. Arguably someone who matches the INFJ archetype would have the opposite effect as the commenter suggested. Due to having extroverted feeling in the second function, INFJ perform great, arguably perfect, socially. They communicate w/ extroverted feeling that placates to social rules & the feelings of others around them. So how would being an INFJ "look / feel" like autism??? If the commenter is gonna make stereotypical claims about autism at least base them on a somewhat accurate conceptualization. Yes INFJ can still have autism, but theoretically it would be harder to diagnose due to a near perfect social mask (they would need to unmask during diagnosis which would be exceptionally uncomfortable for them given how they prioritize social rules due to their function order). All bc ppl think INFJ is "special / different" doesn't mean that it has any correlation to looking autistic.
I had such an intense interest on mbti and enneagram for years and I hate the 16personalities test so much OMG
It’s not even mbti. It’s based on the big 5 but uses the mbti letters for some reason?? It hurts even more when this is where people stop and don’t even bother to learn about the cognitive functions.
Also I see way to many people use it to justify shitting on others. They just turned it into astrology 2.0 at this point.
@@Somecreacher yes I 1000% understand your frustration. For people who are interested in conceptualizing personalities, others & their own, it's so worth it to take time to learn about the cognitive functions & even enneagram as you mentioned. It's really a lost potential when ppl use it as an ego boost & to judge others or misapply it, especially when they probably aren't even typed correctly since the test is so shitty
everytime i see someone using 16p and mbti letters i lose more faith in humanity
I liked the video 30 seconds in because it's so relatable. I'm self-identified and I also find this comment incredibly offensive. I've lived the better part of my existence being told what I am not, and going on all sorts of medication that haven't worked because that wasn't the issue. I cannot afford a diagnosis, nor do I want to put myself through the trouble of getting one because I know how difficult it is from others who describe the process. When I realised I was Autistic, I spent months researching it, and I am still doing so to this day, 9 months later; not to mention that I've lived with it for 47 years. This person's comment is just another one of those mis-diagnosis, and not to mention from another person with another non-existent medical degree (I assume, either or). Up to now, medical professionals have looked at all the individual traits separately. When put together, as a whole; Autism.
Sorry I won't be watching this, cause topics like this are really frustrating to me and I just don't have the spoons for that.
Thank you anyway for talking about stuff like that, it's really important!
15:24 So im not saying this to discount what you are saying at all, but I was actually never given a full psych eval and was still diagnosed with autism. Unsure what thay means exactly, but my doctor does have it in my chart. I haven't gotten a full psych eval, even though I would like one, because of the cost. This is despite having been to SIX different psychiatrists over the years.
I was also diagnosed with ADHD and given medication very quickly by a psychiatrist. Literally one session. I didnt like that so I went and got a second opinion, but she only gave me one test, not a full psych eval.
I am extremely confident in both diagnosises, specifically because of how my life has changed dramatically since accommodating myself accordingly (seriously just having access to earmuffs when i was younger would have saved SO much trauma alone). However, the ease of my experience does make me doubt the psych industry in general.
I haven't been able to see a psychiatrist at all, but when I hear my partner talk about theirs... they would just see the psych for a short appointment and then be given/renew a prescription. It was quite removed from being a personal visit.
Even my own family doctor (before they retired) had given me an anxiety checklist and wrote me a prescription the same day. The medicine didn't help me, and eventually I realized I might be autistic, not anxious. The kicker is that the same family doctor who wrote me that prescription basically just said "I don't know anything about autism" and wouldn't even look into if they could refer me anywhere... it sucked.
I've gotten some imposter syndrome after I've gotten more comfortable expressing my needs, and learning how to communicate better with others(not just in a masking way, I mean genuinely).
I have to remind myself that I haven't become less autistic, I've just grown as a person! And you know - autistic people are.. people! And should be allowed to become more functional (more or less) and grow without being told we're lying to ourselves
Great video. Thank you. 💜
This video is really important! Thank you for explaining these things, now I can send it to whoever needs to understand Autism more.
lol your initial reaction 😂 I felt it 😭 I see this all the time where someone speaks very ‘articulately’ and people immediately jump to ‘this person is so intelligent, so valuable, so right…’ even though that person’s obviously very full of themselves and their message is quite shallow; people only listen to the way they speak, not what they’re saying. It’s the same in France where I’m from where you won’t be taken seriously or even heard if people consider you don’t speak good enough French (whether you’re foreign or native French).
I think about the double-empathy problem a lot and worry I don’t fit. I often feel unable to read people accurately if there are not obvious signs of emotions or if it isn’t stated clearly. It confuses me when someone is either always seemingly happy and polite or has a flatter affect. I have a negativity bias and worry I did something wrong in response to ambiguity in social situations. This confusion extends to other autistic people and neurotypical people alike.
I love your perspective, Irene ❤ very great work.
My 18 yr old son is undiagnosed autistic. We never had him tested but he exhibits every symptom of autism. He never spoke in class and the teachers labeled him shy and gave him speech classes and reading classes so he might speak up in class but never worked. Problem in high school when there were 60 or more in his classes and they would call attendance in every class rapidly and everyone answered here except my son who didn’t talk in school and was marked absent every day and lost senior privileges. I complained to the principal and told him we are autistic but he didn’t care and said it’s my son’s fault for never answering here.
If you have given them documentation of a disability then they can’t do that, legally, it would be denial of FAPE and you could sue the crap out of the district (and they would try to settle very quickly)
Sometimes an ADHD or anxiety disorder is easier to get. Same laws apply though.
damn just seeing that comment pissed me off. i don't care if it was a "good place", ppl like that rarely change their view on this. they prob won't listen to us anyway
i commend you for dealing with it well tho, couldn't be me
As someone with the privilege of having my cptsd diagnosed (which is how I learned I even have it) seeing a fucking Meyers-Briggs next to cptsd like they’re remotely comparable is going to make me choose violence 🫠
“Are you sure you have the dirty bad sickness? You might just be traumatized with a buzzfeed sticker” we are enemies now op
same! MBTI is all fun and games but at the end of the day, it's a pseudo-science created by two racists who one had correspondance with Jung and the other a fiction writer in poli-sci. to pair that with C-PTSD, which many professionals are pushing to legitimize in the DSM, is belittling
The self-awareness thing is weird. Most people I meet have almost no self-awareness. They're just aware that I'm different and call my faux paus a lack of self-awareness. But, all the self-delusions or self-destructive coping behaviors I see them exhibit are just a nothingburger I guess.
"Do people think they know more than a psych. professional?"
No, and it IS shallow like you say.
Most people just put ZERO thought before they speak and generally do not make sense with their words. I still have to find peace with this fact but it's helping...
It's like an instinct rather than a way to actually communicate ideas.
They don't mean it and don't realise how unnerving what they say can sound.
Thanks for making a video like this; I'm autistic and was officially diagnosed in high school but my psychiatrist told I wasn't and then went on to say it wasn't even in my patient file. Misdiagnosing can be harmful because yesterday I had a meltdown and felt completely alone because just didn't understand that it was linked to overstimulation.
I hate how much emphasis is put on speech when it comes to intelligence and that sort :( my brain struggles to formulate sentences when not in my best mindset yet I can resolve patterns and games like Sudoku pretty normally but because society is the way it is, I'm deemed not smart or capable because I tend to go non verbal
If you live in Washington, it can be easy to get set up for a diagnosis. I got help from a family member to get through the paperwork. I have state insurance, I didn't pay any money.
However, self diagnosis is super valid! You are valid! Do your best to ignore anyone telling you otherwise. They are simply mistaken.
Everything you mentioned in this video has been running through my thoughts for several weeks now. I'm an empath who is also autistic/adhd and know empathy extremely well. I sense and feel peoples energy around me as well as sense pain it can be overwhelming sometimes. I am very autistic forward I stim constantly by rocking or bouncing on my toes, also I have vocal stims for self regulation. Now here is where I am gonna boggle your mind. My autism did not speak before a year ago and on several occasions in grade school. After unmasking my thought process opened up and my autistic voice started being who speaks most of the time now. So now when I speak I am thinking while I'm speaking and this is new and I stutter and stammer as well. When my adhd speaks my entire life voice I do not stutter or stammer. So if I get angry my adhd speaks fluid as can be, when I sing my adhd I don't think while I speak and i can feel the difference. So my 5 year old granddaughter started non verbal but is starting to use words this will be her 3rd school year so great support for her. So I am extremely self aware and one of my abilities is I am extremely introspective and have been trying to figure out how my thought to speech works and is there a way for me to figure out what triggered it or stimulated it to restart. Stimming is key, don't mask it causes bad anxieties and panic attacks as well as depression. I'm still not gonna give up. Also we need to start sharing the special abilities we have that far exceed the typical brain. I have a slew of abilities that far exceed my disabilities and yes every day is a journey and long but my thoughts are in good hands as another ability I have is being able to rationalize every step of my day and give me great perspectives just by thinking. Thanks for the validation another important thing that we need and lots of it because it validates my existence to keep going. I'm healthy not wealthy but extremely wise and hope good health to all!! #myabilities 👻🤪🌶🤘😎♾️
A very well expressed understanding of autism as of the current era, but for someone like myself who was born in 1944 when autism was not at all seen as it is today, my view is more nuanced.
I survived by masking because before 1980, when the first recognized autism spectrum was recognized, many of today’s views were then treated as a ‘mental illness’.
Knowing what I do today, I am not sure that I would have been better served with a autism diagnosis, than my use of thespian skills to keep out of reach of a culture of modernity that seeks to homogenize everyone with a name or letter salad of initials.
Again thank you for a very well expressed view. 🌹
Am I autistic or is it my verbal/performal IQ gap, my Gemini sign and the fact that I walked into a lamppost as a child?
Ask my mom
INFP-T, sagitarrius sun sign, snake Chinese sign, autistic here👋😅 Also college grad with 2 Bachelor degrees but still only able to work part time because of autism.
Thank you for sharing! I’m sorry about the comment and appreciated hearing your thoughts.
Holy crap. People really comment that kind of stuff and end it with a heart wtf?
What's more likely: this one concept that explains all symptoms and characteristics perfectly, or an exact blend of hypersensitivity, complex trauma, and a personality type from a test that has no scientific basis?
WHICH ONE?!
Your last few minutes is why I find neurotypicals so frustrating. Some can be so clouded by bias that they can’t see the obvious. People are very ingroup/out group minded. So if they perceive you as different you are an out group and therefore “the enemy”. As you say when people speak different languages people can see them as inferior when they speak their own language beautifully.
I would love a video on how to educate othes. I am having such a hard time getting the coordinators in my college program to understand the reality of my autism and the gravity of the risk of burnout.
Stereotypes I associate with autistic adults (especially women):
1. "Pathological" empathy in the sense that their levels of empathy can sometimes immobilize them and--in the worst scenarios--endanger them. Despite this, they never seem to be able to stop.
2. Stupidly smart. For every "should you really be behaving that way at your age?" behavior they have, there are 2-3 "people twice your age would be so lucky to have this much knowledge or wisdom" behaviors.
3. Highly-sophisticated and deeply introspective self-images. Particularly when they have reached the stage of self-acceptance in their diagnostic journey, nobody knows more or takes the time to figure themselves out more than autistic adults--oftentimes starting in adolescence.
4. A level of trauma only matched by their levels of willingness to either forgive, or at least try again with others.
5. A history of being gaslit not only by mental health professionals, but medical as well.
It’s scary being raised in a world where nothing is actually set in stone. Information is so hard to find that is helpful that I can’t even trust the advice that people give me because I was misdiagnosed before. I don’t trust the doctors or my family’s help because they raised me anti-vax and didn’t try to get me help sooner. I don’t even really want to be tested anymore, I just want to be left alone now. I had surgery this year and an organ was removed, and it’s exhausting. My mental health wasn’t ready for that this year at all. I hope others are doing better🌸
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) was made by Katharine Briggs and her daughter Isabel, who were interested in understanding people and used ideas from Carl Jung. Even though many people use it, the MBTI is not seen as scientific because it doesn't give consistent results and simplifies personality too much.
Thank you for this! Can you make a video elaborating more on the double empathy problem 🙏🏽
Loved this
I watched a video by CerosTV where he talked about his experience of going on a date with a nonspeaking woman, and honestly he understood why she does not use verbal language better than most people outside the disabilities community, was very nice to see and he wasnt at all condescending i just wish that was the standard.
Im tired of people saying you cant be autistic if you have OCD, BPD, ADHD, etc. They are PART of autism, thats why theyre COMORBID. Im tired of being cast down as non-autistic when i say i have ADHD and BPD, my psychiatrist and i are trying to figure out a diagnosis.
Oh god THIS is the way all people respond to me, maybe it's PTSD maybe you're just too shy ohhhhhh god
I bet that person has that diagnosis. It's very common for people to do that. It's not limited to mental health either. A stranger told me about Flo-max while I was trying to use the restroom.
I’ve made a video about being autistic and have received similar comments about being well spoken and no way I could be autistic. I think the things those commenters forget in regards to my experience:
1. You are seeing a snippet of me talking about something I have heavily scripted and outlined to create a video….
2. I’m an actor I literally have been studying talking and interacting and how to pretend to be other humans for OVER 15 YEARS. So yeah I might be well spoken now but that is a skill I have honed for over half of my life not necessarily something that comes innately. That’s the difference.
Hii, would you consider adding your videos on rumble or Spotify again? I'm getting tired of RUclips tbh and you're on of the reason I'm still on this platform.
Using the Myers-Briggs test to question someone's diagnosis... oh boy...
Yea there are some people who like "there isnt anything wrong with you, youre just damaged. Youll be normal when you feel better."
I thought I was an HSP until I burned out, and needed to take a year off work. I am autistic.
Have you heard about Buddha meditation where you focus on the separation between you and for example the flame of the candle? I'm currently testing it as someone feeling other people's emotions too strongly all my life. To be resilient and more immune, to not get enmeshed. A healthy detachment kinda. Of course the sensitivity to sensory input doesn't help. I can only say for myself that my findings were fascinating (I was diagnosed with ADHD).
hello, it is very interesting about the language, i had think a lot about apparatus of voice, i am autistic my self, and struggle to speak, unless i speak in frazes, not to mean it as simple frazes only. to my experience i relate this difficulty to certain physicality of speaking, to manifest the language out, to me it seems related to almost the 'executive disfunction' and synapses connecting the parts, to what other people seems like a simple act, i feel how in my body it is not so simply connected the actual all the activities that make it possible, they are not smoothly incorporated in my body . as well as at times i would say 'demand avoidance'. i work a lot with the body and movement, and i see how the physicality of the language coming out is not the same as processing language, and vice verse, i also work a lot with autistic children, i facilitate creative movement research workshops together with other artists, and it is very obvious to me that so called non speaking autistic individuals are very super incredibly sensitive to language. also where i live we speak Latvian, and it is rather complicated language to get out of the mouth, so many children prefer to speak English actually, it is less consuming of energy, or they understand many languages, even they don't talk trough mouth or talk very little, or struggle to communicate in that way,, but that is not the only way, that is just ableist way! it is almost like how the NT people use language is too simple for us, why would i even speak to waist my energy on most of the times pretty shallow imitation of language. :) and thanks for your content, you are incredible with your work and contributions.
I haven't watched the video yet (saving it for later), but I am a INFJ, HSP, possibly CPTSD too... and now I'm scared my diagnosis might be wrong.
Don’t let it invalidate your diagnosis! MBTI is just a way to categorize people based on cognitive functions but its not legitimate in anyway and is just another fun way for us as humans to categorize and understand ourselves.
Also CPTSD is often co-occuring with Autism for a good chunk of autistic folks!
Oh dunno if you watched the video yet so sorry if I just repeated what Irene said in the video 😭 i commented this midway thru the video before she went over that part.
I’m an adult with NLVD (nonverbal learning disability) I don’t get non verbal cues I only understand tone of voice and I have a clinical diagnosis there. I’m not sure if I’m autistic or not. One does not simply ‘outgrow’ your neurological wiring no matter how ‘healed’ you are. I’ve dealt with my traumas and I’m still very much an adult with NLVD and maybe 🤔 autism? I say my brains 🧠 different operating system very unique wiring! I also have auditory processing disorder and I have a huge vocabulary. My interests are spirituality, crystals, animals, nonfiction sci-fi and fantasy and art and art history. 😂I’m an INFJ ironically enough what a beautiful irony it is here I did the MBTI in highschool! 😂 That comment you shared in my opinion is so cringe 😬! Meyers and Briggs type and HSP and all the self help tests should not be the determining factor in the validity of someone’s DX as a lay person I think there’s something very wrong and intuitively one dimensional in this and very invalidating and so very wrong for someone dxed with a learning disability I felt offended too on your behalf. I have a huge amount of empathy. I hate the overgeneralization about autism and lack of ‘empathy.’ I do agree with you in different presentations of empathy and self awareness. ❤I love your channel keep it up! Thank you for ALL your hard work, educating and advocacy! Keep it up! 👍 😊