spectrum

Our species broadly doesn't think in terms of spectrums or nuance.

I burned years of my life trying to make arguments from reason and explain how there can be simultaneous truths or that issues are not black-and-white. It has NEVER stuck, not with friends, not with family, not with strangers on the internet.

People's minds largely do not work that way. We all HAVE to digest this and mourn it and let it pass through us so we can stop trying to argue with these blockheads in ways they can't even grasp. We can change them if we tell them stories about feelings, if we make them feel validated or heard, we can change them with careful, patient one-on-one care like a parent telling a child bedtime stories... but this takes a level of energy, empathy and patience that few of us have. Some do, I give massive respect to those who have dedicated their lives to this kind of outreach. I wish we had more.

I'm a woman in my 40s who is probably autistic, but back then I was the wrong demographic and "too well behaved" to even consider diagnosis. I'm a typical example people think of when thinking about under diagnosis.

On the other hand, I work with people who have severe learning disabilities who also evaded diagnosis, or were diagnosed well into adulthood as diagnosis is difficult in someone so impaired. In another time, they would have been labelled with a grossly offensive term and just left. Better treatment of disabled people is probably another reason we see rising rates of diagnosis.

They're basically banking on people still thinking, autism is "intellectual disability, but quirkier and more difficult", while I have met "more severe" cases who did not had the ID part, they just were lucky to avoid the diagnosis for long, and thus people didn't pretend they're "too dumb to even learn to count to 10".