Pieplup wrote:
NorthWind wrote:
I don't think it necessarily means they faked anything. They might just have slightly misunderstood some of the symptoms of ASD. A lot of online sources they could have read are quite vague, leave a lot of room for interpretation or contradict each other in a few details.
If their anxiety includes social anxiety their problems with socializing might indeed be similar to the problems some autistic people have when interacting with other people - the ones who don't talk a lot and often avoid social contact (sometimes due to anxiety) not the ones who talk too much or about topics no one else cares about. If they generally don't interact a lot with many other people it might be difficult to tell that their problems with socializing are just because of anxiety and low self-esteem and not because of any additional causes less typical of anxiety.
If they don't only have social anxiety but a lot of other anxieties they might be bad at handling stress and unexpected changes just like a lot of autistic people are.
If their anxiety forces them to spend a lot of time at home or on their own they might also indulge in activities or interests that your typical extroverted NT wouldn't spend a lot of time on.
I don't know about the specific person you are talking about. They could have unintentionally faked something. Them exaggerating their symptoms might be quite likely because social anxiety might make them perceive their social skills as worse than they really are. They also could be hypochondriac and easily see symptoms of disorders/illnesses etc. in themselves even if they don't have them. But they mightn't have faked anything and might have simply slightly misunderstood the criterion for ASD.
Looks like noone in the universe has ASD, at this point. I wasn't saying that you can't have anxiety and autism at the same time. Of course you can.
In my case it was the other way round anyway. I didn't know I had autism for a long time because a lot of problems I had could be explained by anxiety and I knew I had anxiety.
As a lot of texts focus on the social aspects of autism and as social phobia and autism can both lead to similar problems with socializing (sometimes they cause rather different problems but in some cases they are similar) there is a chance of mistaking them for each other depending on what exactly you read about autism.
I'm also not saying that you can get diagnosed with autism when in fact you just have anxiety (that would need a very bad psychologist).
This was about whether it is possible or not and not about whether it is likely.