I have been recently diagnosed as autistic, and now I seem to see autism everywhere in my social circle. My brother, a daughter, at least two friends. . . Either there are a lot of undiagnosed autistic people out there OR I tend to become friends (more comfortable) with fellow autists, OR I am just being silly and am attributing autism to NT people with strong interests. Fellow neurodivergent folks of all types, what is your experience? (Edit: changed ND to NT. oops!)
Nearly everyone in my discord server is somewhere on the spectrum. We seem to gravitate towards other ND people when we can
I think we do it automatically. I only realised recently how prevalent we are, to the extent where my favourite comedian ‘came out’ to me in a conversation with him the other month.
gestures all around
Uh… Yeah?
I think it’s a multitude of things:
- autistic people tend to gravitate to other autistic people since we share strong interests and other traits
- although there is a cutoff for diagnosis, autistic traits are everywhere and if someone has them, they might not be diagnosed but still have some traits
- autism is hereditary. So some people in your familiy will have it too
- a lot of people don’t get diagnosed for vaious reasons so they don’t necessarily identify as autistic but they might be.
I could name many more but those are the top reasons I could think of.
Summary: It’s awesome to see that people actually are like you in a way. You‘re in a brave new world. Try to enjoy.
In my experience, I tend to feel more comfortable around other autistic people, but there are some types of autistic people where I feel the opposite way. It’s called a spectrum for a reason!
Legit, tho.