Poll of the Day > I've been seeing a therapist and she told me I was autistic

(+) Yeah! (+)

I was just trying to get an adderall rx

I mean, I guess she's not wrong.

I've been eating taco bell almost everyday for almost 2 years now

Nifty

It's been misunderstood and consequently underdiagnosed for a long time. Still is, but it's actually changing for the better. Slowly...

I thought this was the beginning of a joke...

Lanzol posted...

I've been eating taco bell almost everyday for almost 2 years now

L O L WHAT
Imagine if that was an actual criteria for being autistic.
I used to work in a podunk town where the ONLY fastfood was McDonald's and Taco Bell, so several people at my job ate Taco Bell daily, including my boss.

My family and I suspect I'm on the spectrum, but no point in worrying about a diagnosis at this point.

hockey7318 posted...

My family and I suspect I'm on the spectrum, but no point in worrying about a diagnosis at this point.

Yeah I never understood adults who changed their entire lives after being diagnosed with something they had their entire lives. Happened to a guy I know with apparent ADHD.

I did at least reach out to my therapist to get a referral to get formally diagnosed with ADHD and I'm glad I did because medication has helped a lot with that in my life.

I can't imagine what the benefit would be to getting diagnosed with autism though at this point of my life. Might have helped to be aware of it when I was starting college, but whatever.

Welcome to the club

hockey7318 posted...

I did at least reach out to my therapist to get a referral to get formally diagnosed with ADHD and I'm glad I did because medication has helped a lot with that in my life

Don't get me wrong, I'm not downplaying the significance of relevant medication, but the guy I knew suddenly decided that everything in his life that didn't go his way was as a result of his ADHD and the fault of his parents for not getting him tested as a kid. Basically used it to absolve himself of any responsibility for his past actions while continuing to do the same shit.

AltOmega2 posted...

Yeah I never understood adults who changed their entire lives after being diagnosed with something they had their entire lives.

Damn you don't have to call Mead out like that

AltOmega2 posted...

Yeah I never understood adults who changed their entire lives after being diagnosed with something they had their entire lives. Happened to a guy I know with apparent ADHD.

It sounds like your guy is just using it as an excuse and not actually trying to move past it, but for many people it can be pretty liberating to put a name on symptoms that they thought were just them being defective at a personal level. By naming it, you identify that other people have felt the same way, there's an underlying pathology to it that you can blame for things you've done wrong in the past that you'd thought were moral failings, and you can draw on the therapeutic and research history associated with that name to figure out how to work with and overcome the limitations you've been facing.

There's a very distinct difference between "I can never get anything done" and "my ADHD makes it hard for me to get things done." The latter is a personal problem, not a personal failing, and it provides a framework via which you can overcome it. It's also just reassuring to know that you aren't alone in your experiences and that others have been able to overcome them.

AltOmega2 posted...

I thought this was the beginning of a joke...

L O L WHAT
Imagine if that was an actual criteria for being autistic.
I used to work in a podunk town where the ONLY fastfood was McDonald's and Taco Bell, so several people at my job ate Taco Bell daily, including my boss.

Taco Bell is the only place here open past midnight

The spectrum has become so expansive that basically anyone can be diagnosed with autism.

have panic and anxiety disorder? Must have autism. Low self esteem and cant maintain eye contact? Must be autism. Do you enjoy sticking to a daily routine? Must have autism

this is why people talk about an outbreak of autism diagnosis. Its because the guidelines for diagnosing people have become so large. I read a book about autism after being diagnosed, and it basically taught me that anyone and everyone has a little bit of autism in them

RFK Jr keep saying its a massive outbreak, why are people becoming more autistic?!

its not about autism at all. Its about the diagnosis guidelines that have been growing. It reminds me of the passive diagnosis of children and ADD in the early 2000s

While it's not exactly a diagnostic criterion, excessive attachment to routine can be a hallmark of autism, at least in cases where deviating from the routine is an option (which it isn't, in the case of "lunch can be McD's or Taco Bell"). That's less "if you do X you're probably autistic," though, and more "I'm autistic? Guess that explains me doing X."

It's essentially a way to describe a personality trait.

And I say this as an autistic person. People act like autistic makes us somehow worse or lessor than others. The reality is we are simply different and for some reason society labels us.

I've known I was autistic for a long time, but was never told the specifics, the what and the why of it. Not all that long ago, I watched a video on the flavors of autism, and not only did I recognize myself when they were going over Asperger's, but my brother who I never heard of being autistic, under PDA (that explains SO much...).

SinisterSlay posted...

It's essentially a way to describe a personality trait.

And I say this as an autistic person. People act like autistic makes us somehow worse or lessor than others. The reality is we are simply different and for some reason society labels us.

Western societies have long pathologized difference as mental illness. Many other examples of this phenomenon are in the news as I type!

I suspect the truth may be what was originally pathologized as disorders such as "autism" and "ADHD" are actually fairly common variations in human cognition and experience.

FrozenBananas posted...

RFK Jr keep saying its a massive outbreak, why are people becoming more autistic?!

Could it possibly be the diagnostic guidelines that changed pretty much exactly when the significant uptick started? No, it must be the vaccinations whose rates have been declining over that same period!

Though given that Jr. seems to be under the impression that every autistic person is non-verbal and helpless, it's not tremendously surprising that he doesn't understand how to contextualize medical statistics.

I have a feeling that in past decades a lot of "eccentrics" were essentially autistic extroverts.

adjl posted...

Could it possibly be the diagnostic guidelines that changed pretty much exactly when the significant uptick started? No, it must be the vaccinations whose rates have been declining over that same period!

Though given that Jr. seems to be under the impression that every autistic person is non-verbal and helpless, it's not tremendously surprising that he doesn't understand how to contextualize medical statistics.

To understand this, you need to look at the Kennedy family. Rosemary Kennedy, JFK's sister, appeared to have autism (they claim she suffered from brain damage due to lack of oxygen at birth but that seems made up). The Kennedy's didn't want their daughter to "embarrass" the family or cause "problems", so they had her lobotomized. And that, I'm not going into it, it's too horrifying.

The Kennedys are obsessed with looking "perfect". They always have been. That one event caused several of the Kennedy family to look down on people who are different (her parents never visited her and hid her away from her siblings for a time), while others, like her sister Eunice, would found the Special Olympics.

RFK Jr is brain damaged, you need to remember that. His brain has literally been eaten by WORMS. Take a family history of hating people who are different, and combine it with literal brain damage, and you get RFK Jr.

As for statistics, did you know there was an explosion in the population of left-handed people when teachers and priests stopped beating children who used their left hand? For ages left-handedness was considered "Satanic" and "unholy" and "wrong", so children were beaten until they switched hands. This makes it look like left-handedness didn't exist until a certain time period. So as people have mentioned, because we know what autism is now, it looks like it didn't exist until a certain time period.

KingInBlack posted...

As for statistics, did you know there was an explosion in the population of left-handed people when teachers and priests stopped beating children who used their left hand? For ages left-handedness was considered "Satanic" and "unholy" and "wrong", so children were beaten until they switched hands. This makes it look like left-handedness didn't exist until a certain time period.

Oh, absolutely. You see people similarly insisting that there are "so many" queer people now because of some "gay agenda," seemingly oblivious to the fact that until relatively recently it was extremely common to assault and/or kill people who were openly queer. Assuming that there's some kind of positive selective force at work because the incidence of a given trait increases after removing the negative selective force that had been keeping the incidence down is really terribly silly, but it's also terribly common, especially among people who never experienced the negative selection first-hand and/or believe that it was a good thing.

Lanzol posted...

I've been eating taco bell almost everyday for almost 2 years now

What's your "go to" order?

Lanzol posted...

I mean, I guess she's not wrong.

I've been eating taco bell almost everyday for almost 2 years now

I have also done that for 2 years straight

It's a really good idea, the food is good cheap and relatively healthy

Maybe your therapist doesn't understand.