I can't tell if it's real

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You can have peace. You have to do the work to retrain your thinking and control the thoughts that are convincing you that you are faking. You can do it.

Forget about autism for the moment. Its obvious that you DO have obsessive compulsive disorder. So get some treatment for THAT please. You may need medication.

Okay...I am not a doctor but...your intrusive thoughts are of more immediate concern right now than your autism.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 28 Feb 2023, 4:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That could actually be really helpful to you. It can help your thoughts settle down.

Maybe, but I don't want to have to rely on medication. OCD might make sense, as I have a lot of disturbing thoughts, and I have a need to even out my body when I walk on carpet. I also check things multiple times like locks. It comes and goes though, so do you think it is actually OCD?

We are not diagnosticians, and no one is allowed to diagnose on WP but if I were to give an educated guess, I would say yes.

All sound like symptoms to me.

No, I meant that I've somehow changed the way I think.

You have convinced yourself that you are faking Autism. I don't know how you think or used to think in any other circumstance.

When I was a young adult I got annoyed that female butts in tight pants attract my attention. So I "programmed" my brain to avoid giving butts attention. You mean something like that?

Avoiding giving attention to butts is easy, as it doesn't require energy. But I think creating a superficial "autism fakíng program" (so to an observer you would appear autistic) would require lots of energy and constant reinforcement to run. Because you'd basically be lieing to yourself and others all the time. That's not easy.

It's definitely not easy. You can't fake Autism. It's too complex. Even nt actors who play Autistic roles have to do an immense amount of research to get it right and they are only playing that role for a few months at best. It would not be possible for you to fake it over years and a lifetime.

Yes, the fake would only be superificial anyway. I also assume it would be easy to detect the fake for someone with knowledge. Good doctors can likely tell you're autistic even when you're perfectly masking.

But that's one of my points--no one ever thought I was on the spectrum. I always showed some traits of it, but a lot of people said that I seemed to change.

Symptoms can become more obvious with age.

Maybe you can try to appear neurotypical/normal in your behaviours, and see if that costs you more energy than not trying to appear normal?

Interesting. I find that when I'm in environments that require me to act more normal, I get tired much quicker. Also, I was wondering about another thing that happens to me. Every now and then I feel like this isn't my reality, and I get disconnected. It only lasts a short period of time, but it's very strange.

I think it's called derealization. I got this too sometimes as a young adult.

You getting tired quickly can be a sign of stress, I think. Maybe it's stressful for you to try to act normal. Which could be an indicator that you are not normal.

Why don't you ask your parents what they think about your diagnosis? If they think it fits you?

You can ask another person as well, but your parents know you better, and if they accepted to be interviewed by the diagnostician, they might have felt too that you were autistic.

Asking my parents and other relatives made me realize that my self-image was different from others see me.
Before I started to suspect my autism, from my point of view, I was as normal as an NT. When I started to suspect, I asked my mom about my childhood, and she told me that I did most of the things that autistic children do: spinning on the floor, rocking back and forth, hands flapping, echolalia (they saw it as copying, not as echolalia, so I got very scolded for that when I was a kid), not responding to my name, not making eye contact, I preferred objects than interact with my peers, etcetera.
I don't remember all of that. When I started to take ADHD meds at 7, it was like my awareness was turned on, and the ADHD therapy helped a lot with Asperger's traits. Now I think that I don't remember most of it because my brain wanted to keep me safe and help me to keep the neurotypical faking. At 8 years I didn't want to be different, I wanted to be accepted by others. Kids always make bullying to those who are different, even they mocked calling them «Los únicos y detergentes» (Unique and detergent ("detergent" is a wordplay in Spanish for "divergent"), for that reason I think my subconscious "reprogrammed" my thinking to think I'm normal and try to act normal —it didn't work because they continued making me bullying until I entered senior high school and moved to another city.

After the ASD dx (at 21), my father said that he thought I was autistic when I was a kid. My mother said that she wasn't satisfied with my ADHD diagnosis at 7, she continued suspecting I was an Aspie all these years, but she didn't say something because she didn't want to put a tag on me. A friend from college said that I'm a little quirky and now that I have my diagnosis, I should try not to exaggerate.
Of course, some people say that is impossible I'm autistic. My mom says that they say so because they don't want me to feel bad about being autistic. But I ignore them because only my parents know me better.

As I told you before, sometimes I don't believe in my diagnosis. Some months after my diagnosis I thought as well that I faked it. But these memories from my parents and some of mine are what validate it.

I recommend you ask your parents and look for those clues that validate your diagnosis. That may help you to calm your intrusive thoughts.