Is it even possible for someone to fake autism?

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The only reason I know of for someone subconciously pretending to be autistic is bad anxiety and depresssion. Not wanting to face that the symptoms came from bullying induced social anxiety, an abusive family, or so on, leading to someone latching onto something they would prefer it being. It would be nicer to be autistic than have psychiatric disorders to some people in some situations, despite the lack of treatments.

However, this is rare, and it takes sharing symptoms to be able to fake (and copy other symptoms), in my experience.

What is possible is to be mistaken, and to think your symptoms from other reasons are because of autism.


I don't think its a worry you should be worried about. I think its technically possible, rare, and what you really need to think about if you're worried about if you are autistic or not when it comes to identification, is whether your symptoms come from autism, not whether you are faking.

I think it's easier to fake it online than in real life because all you have to type is words and no one can see your body language and your movements and your tone and how you are living your day to day life.

I don't think anyone can really fake being autistic, they can try but they will always get caught and when NTs fake it for a movie or TV show, they are not doing it 24/7 and they are just using scripts and once the director yells cut, they are back to being NT again and then back to being autistic when they call "action."

I think hypochondria is different than Munchausen (Munchausen by proxy just means making another victim sick or pretending they have a condition to get attention) because the person with it truly believes they have that condition so their "symptoms" are very real.

I don't think it's really faking if someone mistakenly believes they have autism because they mistook their symptoms as autism when really it could be depression or social anxiety or ADHD or something or if they were misdiagnosed. I would call it faking if they did it deliberately. There have been a few members here who have been honest with themselves about it like they had exaggerated their symptoms so he went back and got re evaluated and it turned out he didn't have it and there is a member here who was misdiagnosed and realized she may not have it and there was another member here who thought she did but it turned out she had SPD when she went for a diagnoses. I remember another member years back who was also diagnosed but she started to question it so her mom took her and got her re evaluated and she had NVLD but still stayed on this forum for a while. I wouldn't say all these members were faking it when they were claiming to have it.

It's not people faking it that is a problem. It is the widespread perception there are hordes of wanabees faking to be trendy, make excuses for bad behavior, or for benefits is the problem. I worry that in the next DSM fictitious disorder will be considered a comorbid of Autism or psychs will start to diagnose autistics with fictitious disorders much more often.

I am always told "be yourself" so when I actually do be myself around people, a small minority of them would say why do you put it on so much i know you are

well thats ignorance for you ahah

For quite a while, I was really worried that I was subconsciously faking (or at least exaggerating) my autistic traits. This lessened, though, because several times when I told people who have known me for years (including a couple of people who work with people on the spectrum) that I think I may be autistic, their reactions ranged from "I'm not at all surprised" to "I thought for years you may be!" This was a huge relief, and the feeling that I may have been subconsciously trying to convince myself that I'm autistic went away.

Wondering if I may have somehow been deluding myself into thinking I'm autistic was horrible. I hated not knowing for sure! Getting my diagnosis was one of the best feelings in my life.

I spent a lifetime learning to fake NT-ism. Now, I should learn to fake Aspie/Autie-osity? [sigh] Actually, I suppose it could happen, but why would someone want to do that, even subconsciously? And, unless the individual was in frequent contact with one or more Spectrumites, how would the individual know what needed to be learned for fake's sake? Like I wrote about mistaken self-diagnosed individuals, after a while, I imagine most fakers would find a new sparkly piece of their personality to emphasize and move on from having AS or another ASD.

I would, however, like to meet an NT who could act convincely Autie.

For me, the thought of "Faking" autism came from my OCD - the catastrophic thinking that I am doing everything to myself and this is all my fault, WHEN IN REALITY - it is not like this. If i was actually faking autism, don't you think my life would be more entirely fuller, I would have graduated high school, I wouldn't be hyper graphic, I wouldn't get obsessed with details - hear things internally echo. So, of course you can't fake it unless you're conscious in an acting role but god do not believe the thoughts that you are faking it or that you are just some burnout in society. It's not real. Surrender from those evil thoughts.

There is apparently a weird and, to me, really gross trend called "trans-ableism" in which people who do not have disabilities claim they have "always felt like they had a disability" and argue that treatment should include things like amputating healthy limbs or intentionally blinding them. I've never heard of autism being part of this but it wouldn't surprise me, there are some strange people out there. Still, like others have said, I think it would be hard to convincingly fake autistic traits, especially over the long term, and there isn't any way to medically induce them.

Then I think there are also the people who claim to have autism at some level because "OMG, I'm sooo socially awkward" which to me is akin to those who claim they have OCD because they like to keep their house very neat and organized. It cheapens the diagnosis even for those who are medically diagnosed and makes people not want to believe ANYONE who self-diagnoses, so these people are actually really harmful.

...Eh...........