Once you learn that you’re autistic, it can feel like you’re becoming more autistic than you were. This often contributes to imposter syndrome, and feeling like you’re faking having autism. That you’re only acting autistic because you think you have autism, when really you’re just putting on some act.
The truth, however, is that you’re most likely just autistic. You’ve learned more about autism, so now you’re noticing all these “new” autistic behaviors that have been happening subconsciously. And if those behaviors are actually new? You’re still just autistic. A lot of times when people learn about autism, they give themselves more leeway to be autistic. They let themselves stim more, they let themselves act in ways that feel more natural. A lot of times this leads to discovering a whole new set of behaviors that you haven’t had before because they had been suppressed for so long.
It’s important to not gaslight yourself during this process. Sometimes you have to take a step back and see if this is you just noticing more because you know what to look for, or if this is maybe you noticing more because you’re not suppressing everything anymore. Imposter syndrome isn’t fun to deal with, so it’s important to try and be gentle, kind, patient, and open-minded with yourself while it’s happening.
It is also possible that once you know what is happening, and even a label for it, that you are no longer suppressing actions that are often associated with self regulation. This can include physical and/or verbal stimming. Previously, you may have been stopping this, often due to previous punishment for doing such things, but now there is a diagnosis that explains it, you no longer stop yourself.
This is actually very good, because those are action, either physical movements or the making of sounds, that help people with Autism to mentally process the information and/or emotions that they are experiencing. While you may be doing these stimming actions more, you may notice a decrease in the number and severity of meltdown.
when w. h. auden said “evil is unspectacular and always human” and ursula k. leguin said “this is the great treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain”
when toni morrison said “i just think goodness is more interesting. evil is constant. you can think of different ways to murder people, but you can do that at age five. but you have to be an adult to consciously, deliberately be good – and that’s complicated.”
when simone weil said “imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”
love when Windows is like “this plaintext log file has no file extension. would you like to open it with uhhh… lets see.. Titanfall 2?” like yes. duh. obviously
witches in old fairytales had the right idea. living alone, unmarried, in the middle of the woods, and if a hero stumbled across their cottage they’re like “maybe I’ll give you a magical token to help you out. maybe I’ll fuck up your entire life. depends :)”
