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non-autistic people do this all the time though.
I have ADHD, not autism, but this is something I hear a lot, and I think this is a mischaracterization of what these conditions are and how they impact daily life. Most mental illnesses/disorders/etc aren’t just defined by unique and niche symptoms, but also by issues most people have experienced, but cranked up to 100 and present all the time.
Take depression for example: we’ve all felt sad at some point, and maybe even had times where we had low motivation and felt empty due to grief or stress, but if these struggles are permanent and all-consuming to the point where you struggle with life, you may have a disorder.
Some of the things listed in the image make sense when done in response to a certain stimulus, or in a specific context. But if you’re living your entire life in this way, something is clearly off-center.
There’s also a lot of overlap with symptoms between different disorders, but understanding the source of these behaviors can be crucial in learning how to deal with them. Just because ‘hiding ones feelings’ isn’t unique to autism, that doesn’t make it less unhealthy.
So I have MDD, ADHD, and possible BPD. Are you saying I might autistic as well?
Not at all; that’s not something I can know. But if you struggle with the things outlined in this post to an unhealthy degree, it might be worth talking to somebody much more educated than me to figure out the source of your symptoms and learn how to handle them within that context.
Right, lots of people have felt depressed too. That doesn’t mean they’ve got clinical depression. It is clinical when it is so extreme that it impacts every facet of your life.
Think of it this way: lots of people can’t see well, but not seeing well doesn’t mean blind. If you don’t see well you can improve your life by wearing glasses. If you’re blind glasses aren’t going to help. The whole way life functions revolves around dealing with being blind. There are all sorts of things you’ll need to do to cope with blindness that people who aren’t blind, or simply don’t see well, don’t have to do or think about. So it isn’t quite right to equate not seeing well to blindness, even if people who don’t see well can imagine what not seeing at all might be like since they can partially experience not being able to see.
I do have clinical depression. and ADHD. Are you saying I’m autistic too? maybe we’re attributing too much to any one disorder.
I have no idea how you arrived at that conclusion. You have depression and ADHD. You’re diagnosed with this because of their significant impact on your life. What does that have to do with autism? My analogy is meant to say many people can experience something to some extent without it being so significant that it’s diagnosed. I’ve been depressed but I don’t have depression. A person with glasses can’t see well, but they’re not blind. You’ve experienced some of the things in this post but it doesn’t mean you have autism.
If you do suspect that perhaps some of your behaviors put you on the autism spectrum such that it has a pervasive and constant impact on your life then you should seek out a professional to be evaluated.
Edit: As an aside, this post isn’t describing autism. It’s giving examples of “Masking” which is only one set of behaviors. These behaviors in and of themselves are not specifically autistic, but this combined with many other behaviors together create a pattern that is attributed to autism.
