TW
Trigger Warning
sexual assault mentioned warning
This is something I have genuinely been thinking about for years. Based on what has happened to me, it is extremely likely that I have cptsd, which I know has some similarities to autism which makes it difficult to tell. I’m going to try to keep this post on the shorter side, because I could go on for a long time about why I think this.
First off, why I think I have cptsd, is due to multiple separate traumatic events primarily in my childhood.
This is what the TW is for
When I was a young kid, I was raped multiple times.
- I have religious trauma (related to me being queer).
- I am trans, and growing up experiencing gender dysphoria but not knowing about it, and then also having to live in this world right now… I guess there have been worse times in history, but that doesn’t make this time less worse.
I feel like going through all those things and not having cptsd would be very rare.
These are the things that make me think I have autism.
- I have consistently gotten high scores on a variety of different online autism tests.
- I have difficulty being in areas with too much noise, smells, movement, etc. When I was a little kid I would get sick in the restroom when I went to restaurants because of this. Also working in noisy places, even for just a few hours, really wipes me out.
- When I was younger than 5, I would rarely speak and instead physically bring my parents over to something I wanted to show them, or use other actions instead of words to communicate.
- IDK if this is a developmental delay, but I used to get really bad grades when I was in elementary school but when I entered middle school I suddenly started getting straight A’s.
- I have difficulty socializing and have been called rude many times, although I don’t understand why I was called rude. I also always come up with a script before I enter social interactions. The script not going to plan makes me very anxious.
- I hate being interrupted in the middle of a task or having extra things being appended after I have made a plan for how I want to deal with that task.
- I have a few focused interests that I get very into.
- I have comorbidities. I am diagnosed with anxiety and depression and I take meds for it (could be from cptsd though). Also I was born to older parents and I’m trans. I know autistic people are more likely to be trans.
- Other people think I’m autistic. When I was about 12 I was at the zoo with my mom and some lady came up to my mom and said something about how she has a kid with autism and that she knows what it’s like. I genuinely have no idea what I did that made that random lady think I’m autistic. Also one of my old coworkers told me that I remind her of her autistic kid. I have met them and we are now friends. I feel like they are easier for me to talk to than other people.
Does it really matter? You could be. But Autism is not something that can be cured, you’re just a bit different and have different needs. Getting your needs met and expressing your unique personality is something anyone should do, regardless of being autistic or not.
You have certain traits that cause certain effects. For the way of handling these traits you can get inspiration from professionals or from people with similar traits. If those similar people are autistic, then you can likely be helped for the similar traits even if you aren’t autistic, as long as you have shared experiences.
You can just look how you feel when you act like you’re on the Autistic spectrum. In the end, those labels don’t really mean anything. They’re just a way for people to get to know certain people, to get help, to feel seen, among other things. As long as you don’t portray any toxic behavior like using autism as a scapegoat to not grow as a person, or gatekeep people, or purposefully invoke pity or similar shit like that, you’re completely fine.
You don’t even have to tell anyone, you can just look at resources and participate in discussions for autistic people and see if it helps you. If it helps, that’s the most important thing, and your label doesn’t matter.