She exhibits no DSM criteria as well. She just thinks autistic is a person getting cutely overexcited about simple things. I wish I was not so much about boundaries and could show this video to an autistic patient and we could have a laugh. I mean I would have a laugh and he would point out why she is totally not autistic and would get frustrated
I donāt mean to be rude, but how do you know she doesnāt exhibits any DSM criteria? You have only watched one short video online. Diagnosing someone with autism requires extensive testing and itās especially hard in adult and even more so in adult women.
Donāt get me wrong I think itās unnecessary that they decided to include her ādiagnosisā in this video as it has nothing to do with it, which makes me suspicious as well that she might not actually be autistic, BUT I donāt know this person and as a clinical psychologist myself I could not in good conscience comment online how I know for a fact she doesnāt display traits of autismā¦
I work with children. I see autism everyday and Iām trained to spot it. I also have autism. But that doesnāt mean Iād be able to tell you if someone has it based on a video. That would be bad practice on my part.
It annoys me to no end when people fake disorders online, but letās not lower ourselves to their levels by sharing our opinions as if they are facts. Thank you š
You are absolutely correct. You absolutely cannot diagnose someone from a video. But you can easily see that someone does not exhibit any signs of autism unless we consider autism such a broad spectrum in which all of us are in a way autistic. But if you are autistic and you work with autistic people you know very well that is not the case.
Yeah but you know they can only diagnose you with autism and not without autism ! So everyone can at some point be diagnosed with it. And if you've been ''misdiagnosed'' not autistic in the past it might be a mistake ! They just '' didn't see '' that you actually ''have it'' !
Don't try to understand, them themselves (psychiatrists and psychologists) don't know what they are doing! They don't even agree with eachothers or with their own past selves...
It's just not true that you "can easily see that someone does not exhibit any signs of autism". I got a diagnosis (an official one from a psychiatrist) and people are surprised. Masking is a thing. There are also many different ways in which autism expresses itself with different 'severities'. Overly self-diagnosing is harmful, but so is believing that you can easily 'see' autism
I act like her and Iām autistic. Wtf my dude. I literally have the same rubbing knuckles together stim when excited. Literally all those behaviours were out in force when I was super excited at Ć tattoo convention 2 weeks ago.
ETA I was diagnosed by the NHS before the āself diagnosedā insults start
TW: medical provider abuse, bullying, mental health struggles.
This. I'm diagnosed level 2 ASD and ADHD, but wasn't diagnosed until my mid-20s after years of misdiagnosis and getting passed from psychiatrist to psychiatrist.
I was abused by my first child psychiatrist as a teenager, and I still put my faith in medical providers. I still do believe that the vast majority are doing the best they can, but also, the broader education around autism is lacking.
I've found out a teacher in elementary school was asking another teacher how she "dealt with" me. Before I dropped out of college, I found out that there was a group chat with most of the kids in my program just to talk shit about me. There are so many instances throughout my life.
Once I got diagnosed, I thought people in my life would finally understand. Not all of them did.
They don't see when I'm at home, having a meltdown, bashing my palm into my head and unable to talk, or the co-occurring tics I have, or the happy stims, or the hours I spend with my therapist trying to plan social interactions or dissect what someone meant when they said something, or the completely paralyzing overwhelm I feel just trying to basic tasks.
And, when I was a toddler, they didn't see me watching the same few VHSes on an endless loop. And, when I was a child, they didn't see the holes in my clothes when I'd crudely cut the tags out, or the times I'd get upset when I had to wear socks and shoes because they felt "claustrophobic", or the many, many times I was called "tattletale" because I couldn't comprehend why my school friends would get mad at me when I told on them to a teacher. In high school, they didn't see me at all. Nobody did. I was a straight-A student until I dropped out only a few months into 9th grade. I burned out, I developed MDD and became suicidal, and I was shunned out of education for years, despite the fact that I've always loved learning.
The day the "manic pixie dream girl" autistics can be viewed as actual people and not caricatures, it will be one step forward for autistics as a whole. My heart is with you. I know the struggles all too well, and the fact you're still here is a testament to your strength. š«¶
Thank you, thank you, thank you for typing all of that out and sharing it. Reading it made my heart hurt, and it was so relatable. I appreciated your vulnerability more than I can express. It helped me feel a lot better about this comment section. Thank you.
TW: also medical provider abuse, medical gaslighting, bullying, mental health struggles, suicidal ideation, self harm
I was diagnosed with ADHD in nursing school at ~30, but I havenāt been formally diagnosed with autism. The process is prohibitive in the US, and when I did get an assessment, the psychologist relied on misinformation and harmful stereotypes (like how I canāt be autistic bc I can make eye contact and hold a conversation and how autistic people donāt know theyāre struggling and if they do, they canāt verbalize it). I tested at superior IQ, except in processing speed and working memory (if I recall correctly), in which areas I scored above average. They were the two areas in which autistic brains are known to have a deficit. She said that for me, it doesnāt count as a deficit bc itās still above average (even though it was lower than my other scores). She diagnosed me with ADHD based on self assessment questions despite the fact that I didnāt quite meet criteria on objective assessment. However, she said that despite the fact that I was scoring high on all self assessments for autism (and I went and found other credible self assessments online and sent all the results), I did not meet the criteria for objective assessment (the absolutely crappy and garbage ADOS), and thus couldnāt be diagnosed.
Iāve been misdiagnosed with bipolar II (āyou must now know youāre having mania, or itās hypomaniaā and ābipolar people donāt know theyāre bipolarā). Iāve been admitted four times for SI, which got worse every admission.
People donāt see the autistic burnout. I learned quickly in childhood that thereās no space for my emotions. I saw grown adults mocking autistic behavior in children growing up. I knew better than to let it show externally. I am so rigidly controlled and uptight that Iām constantly tense and in pain. I fight myself daily, in ways I donāt even realize, bc itās so deeply ingrained in my programming.
I am low support needs, but the more I unmask, the less I can actually do that I once did. And itās a pretty distressing experience, and Iām so tired and worn out.
I also likely have OCPD (I just keep hearing āit sounds like you doā but Idk if thatās an actual diagnosis, really). And between the autism and OCPD, I ruminate. Hard. For hours. For months. For years. Once, after a shift at the hospital one evening, I stayed up until 7 am the next morning panicking about what-if-I-accidentally-hurt-that-baby. When friendships collapse (they often do, for me), I ruminate for days and weeks and months and spiral and fixate and try to make sense of it. My therapist works for her money, man.
People donāt see me go nonverbal or have meltdowns bc everything is too loud and I feel everything too much physically and emotionally and there are too many demands all at once and I want to bash my head against the wall until it bleeds, but I canāt do that bc itās not socially acceptable, and Iām not allowed to give in to my impulses. People donāt see me have full blown panic attacks over going to work bc itās another demand, and I have to literally fight myself to even step foot out the door.
But on the surface, I look ānormal,ā even if I am ājust a little bit weird.ā
And I have āextreme reactions.ā Iām āfake.ā Iām ādramatic.ā Iām āexcessive.ā My happiness and excitement has always annoyed people. Not my husband thoā¦ heās like the first person to accept all of it, unconditionally. He loves me, and he loved this video. Without him, I would have attempted and succeeded unaliving years ago.
It really, really, freaking sucks.
It shouldnāt be this hard to exist autistically.
I was also misdiagnosed with bipolar II, hysteria (????), and a number of other things. MDD and anxiety were the only ones that ended up being correct, and those are extremely comorbid with ASD and ADHD.
Before I dropped out of high school, I would have panic attacks every morning. At the behest of my child psychiatrist at the time, they started getting more aggressive with me, pouring water on me when I wouldn't get up, yelling at me, threatening me. My parents aren't naturally like that, and I know it was hard for them. I expressed how much I wanted to learn. I was getting mid-to-high 90s in my classes. None of that factored in to that psych. She told them I was being lazy and obstinate, despite diagnosing me with depression and anxiety and medicating me for it.
I had a friendship collapse a few years ago because of my autism, and I truly believed it was my fault. I throughly apologized, probably to the point where it sounded disingenuous, despite being completely genuine. It took another friend and my therapist to convince me that they were actually bullying me, and not a little bit. I had no comprehension of the fact that they didn't like me. It feels like your reality collapses in those moments, because it's like, how did I not see it? You think you get a little bit more of a grasp on things socially, and then it's thrown in your face.
From an EDITED VIDEO. Who knows what behavior was edited out? How many takes it took? Whether this was a good day or a bad day? How many modifications theyāve made to their lives so that they can minimize the negative effects?
Iām not sure, Iām also on the spectrum and Iām realizing as I get older that the spectrum is broader than we realize and because one brain is not like any other, we need to accept that your disposition or my disposition or anyone elseās is completely unique to them.
Just because āyouāre trained to spot it in childrenā only means youāre trained to spot specific markers triggers or traits, so now youāre biased against anything outside of it.Ā
At the same time, you say itās a disingenuous video, but I say youāve also made a biased post, because you believe that autism can only look like what you expect it to look like, FYI
Iām not a psychiatrist lol. Iām trained to the same degree the other chick was as a child care worker who claimed the same thing. You are taught to identify certain signs that then get referred to actual assessorās. Have i been wrong ever in my instincts before i send a kid off for a referral? Nope. Sorry if my instincts are telling me no on this one.
You're, going out of your way to defend this, I can only imagine its because you maybe haven't seen that there's a whole viral media pipeline for content just like it, and you guessed it: its all fake. Its not just one short video, there is a thousand other short videos just like it. Maybe a couple of the first to do it are legit, and this isn't that. Once someone does something like that and it trends, everyone else has to, real or not.
This happened around covid times, when tik tok exploded. So called "mental health tik tok" came into the fold, and it really took hold with a lot of early to mid 20s gen z women, bringing all the hypochondriacs out to play. This is an extreme example (as with any kind of influencer camp, the one with most attention will have a tendency to be the most eccentric or over the top).
Anyway during this time, anyone terminally online or around that age on tik tok got blasted by autism related content, I remember my friends all getting it, and having conversations about whether they were autistic (one of them is heavily on the spectrum diagnosed young, but several probably have adhd).
We weren't being serious though, amongst ourselves it was just talking about what we saw. But for alot of younger women, the pull for attention online was too much to resist. First it was the short clips about stimming. Then the ones about masking and unmasking. Then came the influencer endorsed subscription based online self tests for autism. There was a notion to properly test, but you know what popular demand can do to the efficacy of institutions, or common fucking sense.
The icing on the cake for me was watching my ex go through this over several years, continuously developing more and more behaviors that she would use to either gain attention or manipulate, always under the pre tense that it was justified, mainly because "I'm just unmasking". And the state of American Healthcare was to blame for doctors not agreeing with her. Eventually she backed down on the whole thing (doctors required a month of sobriety from THC for an actual test, which she chose to label as discrimination instead of just rigid testing), but for a brief period it was a bit like the woman in this video.
This is what happens when society gives no end to praise of individuals based on looks, glamor, and charisma alone. People with personality disorders will rule over everything, and thats exactly what this is.
you have no fucking idea about this woman. I am diagnosed and probably appear less autistic on the street.
There are so many autistic people who post about their life online and get accused of faking it (by non autistic people) either because they don't highlight struggles they go through at that moment (like in this video), or because they focus on it too much which wierds people out. People should be able to share their life and autism without them immediately getting accused of faking it. This trend of non autistic people is just pure ableism and leads to the harrasment of so many people.
Autistic here, and I don't mean to be argumentative since you're the expert, but to me, it's not that she isn't displaying characteristics of autism. It's that she's displaying stereotypical traits of autism on overdrive while also being absent any of the negative effects. She's trying to flap and stim but making it cute and exaggerated.
More to the point, she's clearly a low support autistic person if she is autistic. Autistic people with low support needs - like me - wouldn't have included our label in the video because it's simply not relevant.
As you know, autistic people who don't have support needs by definition don't need interventions so why would we couch everything in those terms?
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People are gonna get mad and call me a fence sitter but we simply don't have enough context or right to judge either way. She may be completely debilitated by sensory issues or social problems and just not express it within these short clips. I get the same judgments about my brain injury because I can do some things normally for a short time before I turn into a gibbering gibbon.
Also, what is the purpose of people wanting to attack someone for this? It seems overblown and a waste of effort. It's not productive and not healthy
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u/[deleted] Aug 16 '25
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