I definitely have autistic traits but always hesitate to talk about; I think there’s a lot of negative sentiment towards undiagnosed folks self-diagnosing.
I can understand some negative sentiment in contexts where it’s used dismissively (e.g. “I’m [self-diagnosed] autistic and I don’t have this issue, so you’re obviously just a bad person”), or if you use it as an excuse to be a shitty person. Although I’d say that a professional diagnosis wouldn’t make any of these scenarios better.
In your case, you’re experiencing problems and you’re trying to solve them. A self diagnosis helps a lot in narrowing down what the causes could be and help you prioritize different potential solutions to try. It makes no sense to handicap yourself and try to fix things like a neurotypical person when you have good reason to believe you’re not.
You are the most qualified person to diagnose yourself since you’re the only one that knows what happens on the inside which is where autistic symptoms predominantly are.
Neurotypicals lump themselves to early with autism and autistic people do it too late since they feel the criteria is very strict. Think NT saying “yes, I have autism because…” and autistic people say “no, I don’t because of…”.
Honestly, just take some tests and use them as a screening tool and take it from there. Good luck!
Autistic people can also struggle with transitions from one task/state to another.
There’s a large overlap between ADHD symptoms and autism symptoms.
I definitely have autistic traits but always hesitate to talk about; I think there’s a lot of negative sentiment towards undiagnosed folks self-diagnosing.
I can understand some negative sentiment in contexts where it’s used dismissively (e.g. “I’m [self-diagnosed] autistic and I don’t have this issue, so you’re obviously just a bad person”), or if you use it as an excuse to be a shitty person. Although I’d say that a professional diagnosis wouldn’t make any of these scenarios better.
In your case, you’re experiencing problems and you’re trying to solve them. A self diagnosis helps a lot in narrowing down what the causes could be and help you prioritize different potential solutions to try. It makes no sense to handicap yourself and try to fix things like a neurotypical person when you have good reason to believe you’re not.
You are the most qualified person to diagnose yourself since you’re the only one that knows what happens on the inside which is where autistic symptoms predominantly are.
Neurotypicals lump themselves to early with autism and autistic people do it too late since they feel the criteria is very strict. Think NT saying “yes, I have autism because…” and autistic people say “no, I don’t because of…”.
Honestly, just take some tests and use them as a screening tool and take it from there. Good luck!