Well I think I might be autistic, I’ve wondered why I feel so different from other people, why it feels like I am taking my entire life, why when I lose focus, or am not being focused on i become completely silent and struggle to make even simple comments, and why I have had to watch and learn from others to become remotely social. I guess those are all signs of autism. I took that RAADS-R test and got a score of 141, which is slightly above the mean for autistics, I also took a few other of those quizzes.
But my question is what happens now? What do I do? I don’t feel comfortable asking my parents if I can get examined, I can’t really afford to do it myself, but I guess I could try. I don’t want to just start saying that I’m autistic, and have to mention that it’s self diagnosed because I think we all know the stigma around that.
Heck I’m still in the stage (or I assume it’s a stage because it matches that one post here where they talked about their stages of realizing they have autism, and I related completely to it) where I’m not sure if I am not just faking this whole thing. So what do I do now?
The “imposter syndrome” phase is completely expected. Experience tells me that most people that would take the time to make such an assessment of their self and come away with the assumption that they are autistic, and also follow that up with questioning whether or not they’re faking it, most likely are autistic. The imposter syndrome is a byproduct of masking. We’re so used to having to present an image for others that we still assume we’re doing it when we discover our authentic selves because we’re so discouraged from just being ourselves that we have difficulty recognizing the authenticity of who we are when we aren’t masking.
Welcome to the community, by the way. This is always a safe place to take the mask off, and nobody here will judge you for your questions or your experiences.