So, about Autistic Self-Diagnosis.
I’ve seen people who question self-dx mention the people who giggle about their tidy desks with “I have a touch of the OCD.” This leads me to wonder, though: When someone says that, are they REALLY diagnosing themselves with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, or are they making a casual, arguably callous and dismissive, self-deprecating joke?
I think that most of the time, it’s the latter. As in, if you were to follow it up with, “Oh, do you really have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?”, they’d add another dismissive giggle and just comment about how they’re referencing their tidiness.
I might be wrong, but that’s how it’s felt to me.
Ditto Autism: Are there some people who seriously believe they have Autism based on vibing with a few TikToks? Sure, I’ll believe that. Is it a significant portion of the people who are claiming to be self-diagnosed Autistics? That I sincerely doubt.
And part of this point is: It’s “cool” to make an off-hand, joking reference to a behavior that is tied to a neurodivergent condition: “Sorry, I just love this spinny toy, it’s my touch of the ’tism.” “Hey, I just had to straighten your books, it’s my OCD, y’know?” “Sorry I was distracted by my phone, it’s that old ADHD, haha!”
But look them straight in the eye* and ask them, point blank, if they really have whatever condition it is, and I’ll wager most of the time, if it’s one of those superficial joking cases, they’re say no. It was just a joke.**
So if someone genuinely, over a clear period of time, claims to have a particular condition, even if it’s self-diagnosed, I’m inclined to believe them. And the research agrees with me: A recent study showed that people who had made serious self-diagnoses of Autism scored much more consistently like the professionally diagnosed Autistic folks on the RAADS-R than like the apparently Allistic control group. (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13623613241228329)
One more thought: It wasn’t too long ago that people weren’t “allowed” to self-diagnose being transgender. One had to go to a psychiatrist and be diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria in order to be taken seriously. Now, self-diagnosis of being transgender seems to be the norm, not the exception. And yes, just as with that other stuff, there are people who claim to be transgender to be one of the cool kids, but when the rubber hits the road and it costs them something real, they back down VERY quickly. (These are not to be confused with detransitioners, who are serious during their transition but decide, for whatever reasons, that it’s not what they need.)
* Assuming you don’t have the installation of Autism that prevents you from doing this, but hey. My mask has laser beam focus.
** There is also a group of content creators that are cynically exploiting claims of Autism or whatever in order to get monetized clicks. There’s a special place in the non-existent Hell for those people, especially since it leads people who don’t closely follow the #ActuallyAutistic community to think that there are a lot more fakers than there really are. But, really, in my time on TikTok, with my carefully curated Following list, I’ve only spotted two people like that, and several dozen quite legitimate-seeming folks.