#i'm pretty sure i'm not autistic im adhd but the reality of adhd is a lot more like autism than we are acknowledging

[sunspira]

Im laying my bets now. the entire idea that autism (and adhd) is more common in men and boys is pure myth created by poor science, backwards statistics and faulty parameters of the condition itself. in another 50 years we will understand it was never a gendered condition. just a highly gendered and biased measurement system. i'm absurdly confident on that

the rates of autism in girls is "rising" exponentially. it is rising even more exponentially in girls than in boys. not because girls are becoming more autistic. but because the "science" is just getting better at measuring and accurately acknowledging autism in girls.

autism often does present differently in girls, due to how girls are raised or personality differences. the literature and criteria was based on boy sample groups. the entire research data was done on white men as if that is a standard default person and control group.

not only that, doctors and teachers and parents literally were not looking for it in girls under the false widely propagated belief it was rare in women in girls. it is a self fulfilling prophecy. that's not science.

we will soon have to reckon with the lost generations of autistic girls and women and children assigned female at birth* who never got diagnosis and early intervention. we should be forcing the world to reckon with it right now. a great deal of autistic millennial women are brilliant minds who dropped out of STEM and the workforce due to their untreated and misidentified disability overtaking their life. the impact of never Knowing you or your child is autistic or adhd is difficult to comprehend for autistic and adhd people who did get diagnosed as children. even when the awareness and interventions were unhelpful or harmful. the harm of not knowing means the child trying even harder to become neurotypical and a level of autistic burnout few others on the spectrum can comprehend, often taking place after the woman is a legal adult, and there are no legal protections in place for this disabled person.

the unmitigated stress of being developmentally delayed and never knowing it, simply hating and blaming yourself and fighting day in and out past your limits to become neurotypical, limits your don't know you should have because you have never been so much as briefed on what adhd or autism can feel like. you don't know the distres and tiredness you're feeling is "dysregulation". this is why we see women in nervous breakdowns. psychiatric wards. treatment resistant depression. electric shock therapy. hard drug addiction. cutting. homelessness. personality disorders. dissociation. psychosis. early death by accident or suicide. (obviously people who are not autistic or adhd have these illnesses but my point is untold and disproportionate numbers of them are undiagnosed neurodivergent with unprocessed trauma. i'm telling you. more than you think).

it's why we see young people on tiktok not faking DID per say, but describing a dissociated experiences and fractured sense of self and escapist alternate personalities, a mental illness that has much less in common with traditional DID, but has much in common with struggling and under-treated autistic people. DID is a very rare condition. autism is very common. autism can create out of body experiences and self protective blurring of reality and fantasy so extreme, no person can be expected to understand it is autism if they never been advised about their own disability and the knowledge that should he available to them. it's no wonder we have people with mislabeled rare disorders like DID who are clearly very sick but instead of showing real DID signs, are sick with all the signs of severe unassisted autism they have been completely barred from understanding or coping with in any other way. for those lucky enough, we see unemployed young women with severe chronic pain in their 20s and 30s who look and feel like they're elderly and gave up their dreams when they hit 21 or 25 and their brains stopped working and their bodies shut down. now they mostly scroll tumblr and tiktok and try to remember to open the blinds. they have a roof but people scorn them for entitled laziness and worst of all derided for "self diagnosing".

again i'm asking why CFS chronic fatigue syndrome is so responsive to adderall. i'm asking why professionals are reluctant to test women for adhd if she does well in school because she is very bookish and why experts in the field are openly amused and doubtful to test a woman for autism if she has a long term boyfriend. why is ability to mask or function a disqualification. why is inability to function in women, who later turn out to be autistic or adhd, so aggressively mischaracterized as BPD, bipolar, depression, OCD, schizophrenia. why is autism and adhd clinically diagnosed and defined by distress and dysfunction and not by intrinsic traits and qualities that present while still functional for preventative care. why are all people, men and women forced to wait until their lives and minds are deteriorating and they have experienced some irreversible disasters and pain before they can be diagnosed. why must girls and boys wait until their daily life as children have become unbearable hell for them before their disability can be treated and acknowledged. and if these policies are changing now, why are doctors and psychiatrists not eagerly and urgently reaching out to find the vulnerable adults they missed during more archaic screening methods. we aren't rising in adhd diagnosis because of tiktok you assholes. adult onset adhd and autism don't exist. those people were always adhd. adult onset skill regression and increase in severity due to stress DOES happen in adulthood. modern day stresses like loss of structure during the pandemic and social media is advancing to become more attention span draining. everyone is feeling the effects but these are causing adhd and autistic people to cope less and mask less effectively so they are running into significant problems, their loved ones are noticing, they are getting referrals and suddenly forced to google their rapidly worsening mental issues for the first time and seeing they line up with a known neurological condition . this is obvious. doctors blaming it on some sort of trend are being willfully clueless

*because autism especially is screened identified diagnosed and first intervened ages 2-5, before a child has an internal concept of self or gender and above all before they can express their gender, diagnostic practices and criteria are based on how adults perceive a child via birth assignments. and the studies are overwhelmingly beholden to data only on children assigned male at birth, rarely accounting for their actual future gender either. as part of the warped science insisting that autism is as if somehow linked to the y chromosome and not a universally likely human quality, you see amab kids laser focused on as candidates and afab kids fucked over most of all. all children assigned female have the worst chances of their developmental disability being identified and acknowledged in a timely manner and disproportionately experience late diagnosis in later adolescence or adulthood. tho i wouldn't be surprised if trans womens rates of accurate diagnosis is lower than cis men. as trans girls may present autism differently and characteristic of girls autism, even while still in the closet or before she knows she is trans. regardless adults are very vigilant for signs of autism, even atypical ones, in any child they perceive as a boy. so any millennial or gen z child identified female at birth had significantly worse chance at receiving autistic support compared to peers

in particular women assigned male at birth might have a better chance at being identified for types of autism that are often labeled "high functioning", involves high masking, and often receives few services. these more invisible types of autism often need to be diagnosed before age 5 in order to qualify under the criteria at all. and so in the days where autism was believed to be 20x more common in the genetics of xy children, any chance of being considered and diagnosed would come down to almost purely birth assignment dependent. with the less outwardly visible types of autism, a person who misses this window will remain autistic all their life but once they learn a certain level of skills and masking, no matter how late they learn these, the person will no longer qualify for diagnosis, either not until they have a nervous breakdown or possibly not ever qualify. it's this type of more hidden autism we see struggling across the board as undiagnosed adults including both trans and cis women especially, tho we are seeing it disproportionately even more so in undiagnosed afabs of any gender. who are dropping out of schooling and work and succumbing to severe mental illnesses during what should be the prime of their lives. overall tho birth assignment is not everything this is an issue that disproportionately impacts cis women. trans women. trans men. non-binary people. likely doubling for those that are afab. and then tripling and quadrupling for children who are not white.

bit of an understatement in that last part there. gender likely isn't even the biggest barrier to proper diagnosis and treatment. probably race is even more so. but since gender is such a big disparity in itself across race and one i relate to and can speak on from experience ive focused on it here. a more in-depth look is needed on the neglect of adhd and autistic children of color especially black native and latino kids. but for now do keep in mind the points i'm making increase exponentially for kids who aren't white across all genders including cis boys

#this is dramatic and long but it's a dramatic situation that is completely slept on in the public eye #it's not just about me this is about people who had it so much worse. tho my insider experience obviously brought it to my attention #i'm pretty sure i'm not autistic im adhd but the reality of adhd is a lot more like autism than we are acknowledging #a topic for another day #autism in women #adhd in women #atypical autism #adhd inattentive #undiagnosed autistic #undiagnosed neurodivergent #undiagnosed autism #undiagnosed adhd