Things You Need to Know About Autism - a thread for sharing.

I try to raise awareness, understanding and acceptance of #autistic people. Have a read and hopefully it will help.

#thread #autism

1. Autism has always existed, as far as we can tell. Any increase in the number of autistic people is due to better diagnosis and growing population. There are historic figures who display many autistic traits, such as Isaac Newton. #autism

2. Autism is not an illness or disease. It cannot be caught, nor does it appear to spontaneously happen. You are born autistic and you will die autistic - it is not 'curable'. #autism

3. Autistic people do not lack empathy, nor are we emotionless robots. We often struggle to communicate emotion, and we can have alexithymia, making identification of emotions hard, though. #autism

4. Autism affects the entire demographic - doesn't matter your gender, sexuality, age, class, skin colour, culture. Autism is a human condition. #autism

Is Autism Self-Diagnosis Valid? A Very Long Thread

TL, DR: Yes. It’s valid.

Now for the long version: there are some folks on Twitter that say that some of us have no right to claim we are #ActuallyAutistic without an official diagnosis by a medical authority of some kind.

There are some problems with this mentality. One of the biggest is that some of us simply do not have adequate access to the formal diagnostic process. There are many things that can affect access:
lack of financial resources, social anxieties or phobias —

— which may make it difficult to persist in going to offices and clinics that may be frightening, some of us may have trauma that makes it difficult to approach these places at all.

Some of us may have had specific negative experiences with the medical community already, we may have lost valuable trust, & we might feel discouraged from even trying to obtain a diagnosis for this reason.

Not to mention there might also be sensory issues associated with medical facilities and government institutions (waiting rooms can be an ordeal in themselves, sensory-wise!)

Thread: If you don't think that those who have to self-diagnose aren't #actuallyautistic then you really don't understand #autism or how hard it is to get a diagnosis. It took me years to get diagnosed, but that doesn't mean I wasn't autistic before I was. 1/

People I respect who talk advocate far more than I do have already spoken about this today, but it can't be said enough. It's incredibly hurtful, and can be harmful, for people to make judgements about anyone they don't know, but particularly autistic individuals 2/

We talk about #autism spectrum as if it's a straight line. It really isn't. Autistic children grow into autistic adults and things change. Yours, mine and someone else's experiences will be different. It's not a straight line you can put a pin in and say you're here on. 3/

I don't care who you are or how righteous you think your cause, you don't have right to tell #actuallyautistic people you don't think they are, whether they have a formal diagnosis or are self-diagnosed, and I will block anyone who does for starters. Just leave people alone. 4/

There's enough misinformation doing the rounds making it harder for #autistic individuals as it it. The last thing anyone needs is someone claiming to be advocating for them feeding that misinformation and hurting people who are #actuallyautistic. 5/

As an autistic person I’ve decided that I don’t struggle to read social cues. It’s that I’m hyper aware of and see through non-autistic people’s bullshit. And the “problem” is responding to what I really see (as opposed to playing along) essentially clocking them.