: "I think I'm a little autistic, too."
"We're all a little autistic."
It's always good when someone tells me they do one thing and that that means they're a little autistic. Quiz them on the other stuff, and ask if they have most or *all* of the, and then the convo gets awkward for them real fast.
I'm not autistic at all, not even a little bit; but if I'd grown up in the modern era, I might have been misdiagnosed simply because I was a bright, introverted child who was intensely interested in finding out about things.
It's a bit chilling to realize that people don't know the difference between "being interested in things" and being autistic. Like, dull and apathetic is "normal"?
@DavidSalo: I doubt you would've been dx'ed autistic, truly. To get dx'ed autistic as a boy you pretty have to be consistently trouble and even borderline self-destructive. That's the power of conventional wisdom tectonics. I wasn't finally dx'ed until I was 44. Prior to that I'd been dx'ed with everything *but* that. Several of my shrinks and my neurologists apologized for it taking so long. Why? I "seemed so normal; intelligent, well-spoken, amibiverted, sociable, good hygeine."
@DavidSalo: Autism diagnoses are usually misdiagnosed, even by the best. The late Dr. Rondeau Laffitte is who dx'ed me hyperactive and more, from my age of 7 and through early high school. He was one of the top in his field in childhood and educational psychology. It wasn't until the 2000s that the seeming vast majority of psych and neuro professionals began to figure out autism isn't *one singular* thing but one thing with a grab-bag of associated conditions, many of them physical/medical
Probably not diagnosed by a competent doctor but mis-'diagnosed' by well-meaning but ignorant people who think that everything that's weird (i.e., outside their prejudices of the normal) is autistic or at least should be investigated as such.
I'm sorry your diagnosis took so long and I'm glad you have some of the answers you were searching for.