flammfederfiligranfarn
New Member
Hello there,
I'm a twenty-four year old woman who's wondering whether with my kinds of experiences, I may identify as having highly functional autism. To be more specific, I'd like to know if I'm overstepping my boundaries by doing so (kind of like cultural appropriation, except with autism). I'm asking because people rarely see me as "different" anymore, I'm quite well-adapted and usually know my way around social situations, and I don't suffer from being who I am. Even the online tests say I'm not likely to be autistic. However, I really do feel that I am, at least to some extent.
For example, my parents tell me that as a child, I did not speak for the longest time. They actually don't remember my first word because of that. I also played alone and with a set of maybe four or five common household items for hours on end, daydreaming about imaginary worlds. I still do that for at least a few hours every day, but since I'm doing it while riding the tram, taking a walk and so on, nobody notices unless I tell them.
As a child, I also had huge trouble finding friends; and people actually told me to my face that they thought of me as rude (which I think was pretty rude of them). My parents felt embarrassed for me sometimes because I didn't get a certain social interaction and reacted weirdly and my entire life I was told that I'm simply "not good with people". Which is patently untrue by now (and maybe, I wouldn't have been so "bad" at it if people hadn't constantly told me, making me doubt my abilities). Though I gotta say that my parents never made me feel inadequate or different in any way, they gave me amazing support.
Well. However that may be, nowadays I do have plenty of good friends, I study a subject related to my passion (environmentalism), I usually understand facial expressions, hidden meanings and so on and so forth. I'm still considered extremely honest (even for a German, lol, and we're thought of as super-direct) and my enthusiasm for the protection of the environment goes far and beyond even what my fellow students feel, so I'm still all-or-nothing. I also change my opinion in an instant if someone gives me a logical reason to. I'm being told that's not usual.
So I guess what all this comes down to is: Do you think I might be autistic and just learned to compensate (meaning it'd be okay to call myself autistic, which would be kind of important to me) or was I never autistic to begin with and shouldn't go around telling people so since they might get a false impression of autism?
Thanks a lot in advance!
I'm a twenty-four year old woman who's wondering whether with my kinds of experiences, I may identify as having highly functional autism. To be more specific, I'd like to know if I'm overstepping my boundaries by doing so (kind of like cultural appropriation, except with autism). I'm asking because people rarely see me as "different" anymore, I'm quite well-adapted and usually know my way around social situations, and I don't suffer from being who I am. Even the online tests say I'm not likely to be autistic. However, I really do feel that I am, at least to some extent.
For example, my parents tell me that as a child, I did not speak for the longest time. They actually don't remember my first word because of that. I also played alone and with a set of maybe four or five common household items for hours on end, daydreaming about imaginary worlds. I still do that for at least a few hours every day, but since I'm doing it while riding the tram, taking a walk and so on, nobody notices unless I tell them.
As a child, I also had huge trouble finding friends; and people actually told me to my face that they thought of me as rude (which I think was pretty rude of them). My parents felt embarrassed for me sometimes because I didn't get a certain social interaction and reacted weirdly and my entire life I was told that I'm simply "not good with people". Which is patently untrue by now (and maybe, I wouldn't have been so "bad" at it if people hadn't constantly told me, making me doubt my abilities). Though I gotta say that my parents never made me feel inadequate or different in any way, they gave me amazing support.
Well. However that may be, nowadays I do have plenty of good friends, I study a subject related to my passion (environmentalism), I usually understand facial expressions, hidden meanings and so on and so forth. I'm still considered extremely honest (even for a German, lol, and we're thought of as super-direct) and my enthusiasm for the protection of the environment goes far and beyond even what my fellow students feel, so I'm still all-or-nothing. I also change my opinion in an instant if someone gives me a logical reason to. I'm being told that's not usual.
So I guess what all this comes down to is: Do you think I might be autistic and just learned to compensate (meaning it'd be okay to call myself autistic, which would be kind of important to me) or was I never autistic to begin with and shouldn't go around telling people so since they might get a false impression of autism?
Thanks a lot in advance!
