this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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Autism
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A community for respectful discussion and memes related to autism acceptance. All neurotypes are welcome.
We have created our own instance! Visit Autism Place the following community for more info.
Community:
Values
- Acceptance
- Openness
- Understanding
- Equality
- Reciprocity
- Mutuality
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Rules
- No abusive, derogatory, or offensive post/comments e.g: racism, sexism, religious hatred, homophobia, gatekeeping, trolling.
- Posts must be related to autism, off-topic discussions happen in the matrix chat.
- Your posts must include a text body. It doesn't have to be long, it just needs to be descriptive.
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- Be respectful in discussions.
- Do not post misinformation.
- Mark NSFW content accordingly.
- Do not promote Autism Speaks.
- General Lemmy World rules.
Encouraged
- Open acceptance of all autism levels as a respectable neurotype.
- Funny memes.
- Respectful venting.
- Describe posts of pictures/memes using text in the body for our visually impaired users.
- Welcoming and accepting attitudes.
- Questions regarding autism.
- Questions on confusing situations.
- Seeking and sharing support.
- Engagement in our community's values.
- Expressing a difference of opinion without directly insulting another user.
- Please report questionable posts and let the mods deal with it. Chat Room
- We have a chat room! Want to engage in dialogue? Come join us at the community's Matrix Chat.
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- Are you seeking education, support groups, and more? Take a look at our list of helpful resources.
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You're correct, but so is the comment you're replying to. Lack of a professional diagnosis does not make an autistic person neurotypical, but a self-diagnosis is not the same as a professional assessment.
People are absolutely horrid at objective self-evaluation. Even if someone's making a sincere, good-faith effort to describe a set of problems they're having (i.e., not to impress TikTok) and they arrive at "I'm autistic", there are so many overlaps between disorders. Sure, you may have a lot of conditions that overlap autism, but are you sure the core reason is that you're autistic and not that you have avoidant personality disorder, or OCD, or reactive attachment disorder, or social communication disorder, or sensory processing issues, or even lead poisoning, or sociopathy, or a learning disorder, or...?
It is correct to make a distinction between "I believe I'm autistic" and "I am autistic". Self-diagnosis is potentially harmful in many ways, not the least of which being that the self-diagnosed person may have a different and treatable condition that goes untreated because of their self-diagnosis.