"That's not exclusive to autism"

If I describe a common autistic sign or trait and your first reaction is...

"That's not exclusive to autism," or

"Just because a person does that, doesn't mean they're autistic"...

I'd like to explain something to you...

No SINGLE sign or trait of autism is exclusive to autism.

Autism is a combination of numerous signs and traits that must exist together and meet a certain threshold in order to be considered autism.

Also, most individual signs and traits of autism can be due to other neurological conditions... like social anxiety disorder, ADHD, OCD, GAD, and even things like PTSD and depression.

And for those reasons, the signs and traits need to be evaluated as part of a larger picture in order to be determined as related to autism or due to something else.

But just because they can be due to something else doesn't mean they're not common autistic signs or traits either.

And the only way an undiagnosed autistic person can possibly become aware that their experiences are related to autism is if someone tells them they can be.

And if you expect autistic people to not talk about signs and traits of autism because they can also be signs and traits of other things...

You're actually expecting struggling undiagnosed autistic people to remain struggling, undiagnosed, and without answers... indefinitely.

And for what? So autistic people don't accidentally point nonautistic people to autism only for them to immediately discover they're not actually autistic because the other traits of autism don't apply to them?

Really think about that for a minute.

In the meantime, I'll continue sharing common autistic challenges because my struggling undiagnosed younger autistic self finds it healing... and because I care deeply about my fellow struggling undiagnosed autistic neurokin. ❤️‍🩹❤️