I HATE that people always assume I have a mental illness.

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Because I am Autistic, and because I experience a lot of sensory and social trauma on a daily basis, people always assume that I have general anxiety disorder or that I have general depressive disorder or both. I have neither. It is true that 85% of Autistic people have one or both of these things but that also means that 15% do not. Despite popular opinion, the fact that that is a true statistic means that some Autistic people have to be part of the 15%.

The problem is actually a theory of mind issue. People can't believe that I don't have one of these mental illnesses because they can't believe that an Autistic person can go through what we go through and not have these issues. I had a situation where my congenital heart arrhythmia was acting up so I had to go to the ER to get a precautionary EKG. It ended up being fine but when I got the summary of the visit, I noticed that the ER doctor had also added a diagnosis of general anxiety disorder to my chart. He had not done a psychological evaluation of any kind at all. When I asked him about it he said, "You are Autistic so that means you also have general anxiety disorder because all Autistic people are anxious." I was furious with him and it took me a couple of years to go through all the bureaucratic red tape to have that diagnosis removed from my record. When I told one of my coworkers what had happened, she said, "What does it matter if he added that diagnosis since you already have an Autism diagnosis?" I could not believe what I was hearing so I asked her how she would feel if that had happened to her. She said that she would also be furious and that she would do whatever it took to have that diagnosis removed. So I asked her why it was ok for that to happen to an Autistic person but not to an NT. Once I asked her that, she realized her hypocrisy and apologized.

But I am so tired of people assuming that I have a mental illness because I am so socially isolated. Many people, including some medical practitioners, still think that Autism is a mental illness or even a mood disorder. It is neither.

I had a friend suggest that I to a support group and she was so adamant about me doing it that I went three times just to get her off my case about it. It turned out to be a support group for people with mental illnesses and most of there were bipolar. Even though they were incredibly nice and lovely people, I had to quit because they spent so much time talking about their mental illnesses that it became traumatizing for me to have to listen to them because it was so overwhelming.

I try to explain to people what my actual disabilities are and how they work, and the kind of support that I actually need, but because people do not have well developed theory of mind, most of them cannot understand what I am talking about so they have to interpret what I am saying into something that they are familiar with and that makes some kind of sense to them. So they choose anxiety or depression. Then they have to push their opinions and suggestions on me and when I tell them that their suggestions and opinions are inappropriate and will not help me because I do not have general anxiety disorder or general depressive disorder, they get upset that I am not taking their advice and then they insist that I am being defiant or they go so far as to "diagnose" me with PDA even though they do not have medical or psychological degrees and they have no actual understanding of what PDA even is. I have even had idiot people insist that I have borderline personality disorder because I told them that they advice the were trying to push on me is inappropriate so I will not follow it.

I hate how everyone has to have an opinion even when they have no idea what they are talking about. And it seems that many people really believe that because we are Autistic, we have no idea how our own personal brains and bodies work so they think we have to take and apply every idiotic suggestion that they want to force upon us and if we choose not to, they say that that means we have a mental illness or a personality disorder. Frankly, I am really tired of this. It's really getting old. I know people think that they are being well intended but just because they think that it does not erase the damage that that kind of behavior does. And it is incredibly condescending and destructive. That is one of the reasons that I have chosen to socially isolate myself as much as possible.

I hate that assumption too.

At worst, they'd assume I have some particular mood disorder when it's actually just a solvable unprocessed emotional response, a hormonal issue that only happens on particular weeks or a response to stress AND physical illness/hurt/combination of anything else because it takes up my processing.


I'm very, very wary of diagnosis overshadowing myself.
Even more wary of stereotypes and assumptions such as those and more.


Thankfully, anxiety is clearly the furthest thing one would imagine me to be.
Some would assume I'm depressed; turns out I'm just fricking hormonal.

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I totally understand what you mean. Especially as women, sometimes we have hormonal issues that we are working through. Those do not equate mental illness. And as an Autistic person, I also have a lot of delayed emotional responses, which I believe you mentioned. These are normal for us, not a sign of a mental disorder. I also think that people assume that my flat affect which is pretty often is a sign of some kind of psychopathy or something. It's so frustrating.

I can relate

I have level 1 autism, and peoole have often insisted that I have anxiety. I really don't and often these people don't really know me at all.

I don't like this assumption, but on the other hand I've yet to meet an adult with ASD who didn't have some sort of comorbid mental health issue.

ASD is found in the DSM-V so by that definition, having it means you have a mental illess.

I agree with the OP. I don't think anybody would ever be able to reach me with such an "I'm OK, society is OK, you're not OK" attitude. I think the PDA thing is often wrongly applied to people when the health professional simply can't deal with the fact that their demands and robustly-applied advice are deemed inappropriate by the client. Well done for getting that glib diagnosis removed.

True, the fact that ASD is in diagnostic manuals does suggest it's a mental illness, but I think there are other equally valid ways of looking at the matter. DSM is just what the shrinks say. The only shrink I ever knowingly met struck me as arrogant and miserable.

Yes, the DSM is based on opinion by a commitee apparently dominated by neurotypical men. Psychiatrists have a lot to gain from AS people, financially, and the totally negative framing by them of AS people is oppressive. Creating a totally negative stereotype is othering and dehumanising.

ASD does not equal mental illness.