Arctic Autism

This is another small rant.

So a common thing for a lot of people who are recently diagnosed with Autism or start looking into Autism for self-dx, is that they tend to go down a rabbit whole of "reasearch" for what Autism is and what symptoms it has.

They then start to realise that these symptoms really do match their experiences and after that start "seeing" these symptoms in other people, especially those around them.

Upon a quick google, there seems to be a name for what I'm thinking about. The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. It's where when you have an increased awareness to something and you start feeling like you see it everywhere.

As good as it is that you finally feel like you're learning more about yourself, it can be dangerous to start making assumptions about other people and then go and tell those people that they might have Autism too.

Autism is one of those conditions that have a lot of other conditions that overlap with that. When you don't have the information on those other conditions and only have information on Autism, that's where it can be dangerous to go around telling people that they might have Autism. Because the truth is, they may not have Autism at all and telling that person may cause them distress or make them question themself or go through unecessary things when there's aboslutely no need.

When you don't have all the information, you should not be going around telling people about something they may or may not have.

"Oh, you do this thing? That's an Autism thing!" - yes that may be the case but it's often a thing of so so many other things. Making generalised sweeping statements about things you don't have all the information on should not be something you do.