I’ve been wondering for quite a while if I have autism or not as I seem to hit a lot of the commonly reported symptoms and experiences. I recently tried some of the self-tests out there, including the ones on Embrace Autism, and yeah, I hit every single one I tried for mild to even moderate autism. Scored 49 on the rbq-2a for example.
Now, I know that none of those tests are conclusive and I could easily be a false positive, so I’m not directly claiming I have autism. But I’m thinking the next step is probably to talk to my primary care doctor, but to be honest I’m really hesitant to/don’t completely trust the mental health system in Canada. Genuinely asking because I don’t really have anyone in my personal life who has similar experiences or I think would understand: what do people here think about getting a formal diagnosis? Is it always something one should pursue if they suspect they’re on the spectrum? Are there any major drawbacks? I’m especially concerned about it affecting my career prospects (which already aren’t great tbh, my fault for getting a science degree in an already niche field which I deeply regret but that’s a different story) or my ability to take out loans or rent an apartment by myself. I don’t personally see my autism (if I have it) as a disability, but unfortunately in Canada it is still very much seen as such. Who am I required to disclose an autism diagnosis if I am diagnosed?
I’m really sorry if any of this comes off as insensitive. I have never really participated in the autism online community and I am in no way trying to put down people with autism, I’m honestly just kind of scared about what this means for me. Anyone else in a similar situation, or were in a similar situation? Care to share your experiences or have any advice?
in practical terms (and im not sure how this works in canada but we both live in western neo-liberal countries so I cant imagine there will be much nuance to this)
you can likely expect with a formal diagnosis;
- harder to fire at work
- considerations will be made and granted to you in an employment setting
- positive discrimination
- either harder or easier to find work; in more formal settings easier because of diveresty, in casual settings harder because discrimination
- extra benefits like disability payments
I’d say go for it, just dont tell people you have it if you’re applying to work in a casual setting like a bar ect.
Science fields and more professional settings wont discriminate against you for being autistic, at least when it comes to giving you a job, they will want to hire you to inflate statistics that make them look good.
Preface to say self diagnosed currently.
Dumb question but is there any research about people with autism getting fired more frequently?
E: I totes didn’t mean to stear this convo away from OP. Homie get a diag if you are able to. My first therapy session is today and I’m gonna talk to her about doing just that. Solidarity.
It’s not because employers find out and fire you, it’s because they place nerotypical expectations on you that might be unrealistic and lead you to “performance” issues that lead to your firing.
By getting a official diagnosis you become a protected class and they have to reasonably accommodate you. I don’t know exactly how it works in Canada. In the US you’ll be protected by the ADA.
It’s the difference between getting written up for wearing headphones while you work, to being legally protected for doing so.
So the good news, if I got a diag, is that I am in the States(never thought I’d say that is good news lol). Really wish I would have known about this like a decade ago.
I feel you. I’ve been officially diagnosed with ADHD for maybe 10 years now, but only recently learned that having ADHD is explicitly covered under the ADA. It’s one of the main reasons why it’s still called ADHD even though Attention Deficit Hyperactivity isn’t an accurate description of the actual underlying mechanics of the disorder (and disorder is also contested because often there as just as many positive traits as there are negative traits in people with ADHD). If anyone wants to read more opinions on the naming of ADHD, I found these two articles just now that are pretty informative:
It’s one of the main reasons why it’s still called ADHD even though Attention Deficit Hyperactivity isn’t an accurate description of the actual underlying mechanics of the disorder
I really feel you on this aspect. My wife is getting diagnosed with ADHD, and I would haven never pegged her for having it but she’s super forgetful and loses her keys and phone all the time. After some TikTokking and talking with her therapist it’s pretty much a sure thing that she has it. I have a friend that has pretty severe ADHD and he fidgets a lot and has other traits but wife and friend have virtually no shared traits. I think it’s currently assumed that ADHD is also a spectrum, right?
It’s not considered a spectrum and that’s mostly because, when you get down to brass tacks, we all live within a spectrum of behavior. Instead, ADHD is a comingling of interoperating dysfunctions within specific systems of a person’s brain that relate to how the brain rewards your behaviors (to my understanding anyway). Ultimately, while everyone can experience moments of forgetfulness, inattention, anxiety, or hyperfocus, what matters most is if those things happen at a frequency enough to become a detriment to your everyday life.
ADHD can be broken into 3 types from my understanding:
- Inattentive ADHD (often most diagnosed in girls):
- Trouble paying close attention to details, such as making “careless mistakes” in schoolwork, including missing or inaccurate details in work
- Has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities, such as staying focused during lectures, in conversations, or reading lengthy items
- Seems not to be listening when spoken to directly and may seem to be daydreaming or not be “in the moment”
- Does not follow through on instructions; has trouble finishing tasks such as schoolwork, chores, or other duties; and may start tasks but lose focus and get sidetracked
- Often has difficulty with organization, such as managing tasks and keeping work or home spaces neat, as well as problems with time management and missing deadlines
- Avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort, such as schoolwork or homework, preparing reports, and filling out forms
- Loses items they need for tasks or activities, such as pencils, books, tools, glasses, and keys
- Easily distracted by things around them or by unrelated thoughts
- Forgetful in daily activities and may forget to do chores and errands, return phone calls, pay bills, or keep appointments
- Hyperactive/Impulsive ADHD (often most diagnosed in boys):
- Experiencing extreme restlessness, difficulty sitting still for extended periods, and/or wearing others out with one’s activity
- Fidgeting with or tapping hands or feet or squirming in the seat
- Being unable to engage quietly in leisure activities
- Talking excessively
- Answering questions before they are asked completely
- Having difficulty waiting for one’s turn, such as when waiting in line
- Interrupting or intruding on others
- Combination ADHD (skewed more to boys than girls): This is, as the name suggests, a combination of the two above, where no one of the trait groups is dominant but collectively is still impacting the patients day to day life.
I definitely suffer from a combination of both. I have intense moments of hyperactivity, and I can be easily wound up into an excited state (It’s like an energy feedback loop), but I’m constantly misplacing things, and I’m awful at future sights and sensing the passage of time. I’m very fidgety and can talk excessively, I have to bite my tongue to not interrupt people if I think I know where their question is going. I have reminders for all kinds of daily and weekly tasks to ensure I never forget them. I have a whiteboard in a prominent place where we can place future events so I can mentally prepare for them. Finishing tasks is super hard, once I get through the “interesting” guts of a project, all the “finishing touches” that make it “done” are boring and a real grind to do. Reading is still a very hard task for me, if I’m not medicated it’s almost impossible for me to get through several pages of a book at a time.
Maybe you know all this already, maybe not. For a long time, it was very rare for girls to get an ADHD diagnosis because of how it presents for girls. But this is the first step in understanding how the adhd mind works, which allows you to build around it so you can midgate the bad parts and harness the good parts.
I knew quite a few of the traits but wasn’t aware of the categorizing of them like you did. The first almost describes my wife to a T but she also has a few from the second one as well.
Thanks for the time to write this up and please keep being awesome! Gonna share this with her.
- Inattentive ADHD (often most diagnosed in girls):
Not exactly what you’re looking for, but in this report employment is already scarily low (25%). Keep in mind some possible selection biases because the “milder” ones can often live a long time without even knowing they’re autistic.
On personal experience employers also have this weird belief that every autistic person is some Sherlock Holmes savant, so as soon as we disappoint by being mere mortals they change their tune very quickly. I myself am unemployed because I can’t work a full time daily office job without getting burnt out, so even quitting might be interesting to account for besides firing.
Gonna read the link, but out of curiosity, about how long into a job would you say you burn out at? I will start a job and then after about 6 or so months “the shine wears off” and I always fall back into this going through the motions and day dreaming mode.
It usually doesn’t last longer than an year, but depends on a couple of factors. I generally hate trying to concentrate while surrounded by other people, so during the pandemic I actually had a way better time due to working from home. It also doesn’t help that in the area I’m trying to leave (Machine Learning and Data Science) a lot of the good-paying work is very useless, so keeping any illusion of purpose is very hard.
I also have ADHD, so I wish it was more normalised to be able to just “take a break” every once in a while instead of having sprint after sprint to appease the Trello Gods. I’ve been even devising in my head a work routine of “playing support” every once in a while where the worker can reduce their workload and only focus on helping out the other ones during slow weeks.
I used to be quite a workaholic and to obsess over doing the best work, but right now I’m just looking into freelance gigs and part-time jobs to keep me fed with less effort. I think if I still manage to have time to do something actually interesting by myself on my terms, actually working only to pay rent might be manageable to my mental health.
I recently got fired from my software dev job and am really considering going freelance at this point. I’m working on learning Kotlin and wanna build a few small apps over the next year or so to fill out a portfolio and then will go from there. My last job was remote and I thought that wold have fixed the “working with a bunch of people” issue but then my boss put me on support calls and I wasn’t able to focus on the programming like I wanted to.
Also the “playing support” idea is really great and I don’t know why people don’t consider it. I can see it help especially with junior level developers like myself but also help you as the tutor, so to speak.
my boss put me on support calls
Your boss is a demon.
No fucking joke man. I think you are a dev so like, imagine being in a flow state, working 2+ hours on something, super focused, then BAM! phone rings and it’s some field tech trying to figure out why our software won’t run on Ubuntu 18 when we switched support to Ubuntu 20 last year.
On the flipside, I just spent 3 hours uninterrupted, working on a persona project, so hey…
Good luck on Kotlin and the freelance sites!
I think the employers are resistant on the idea there because becoming “management” is supposed to be a promotion for the “good ones,” and that’d take away from their roles. In their eyes you’re either an important manager or a disposable developer.
I call it “support” specifically to counter the notion of being a superior. Lots of newer workers will already know things others don’t yet, so in a sense it’s just a worker solidarity thing, with the added bonus of a change of pace for people who are a bit tired but not enough to warrant sick leave.
But you probably already know how techbro CEOs feel about solidarity…
But you probably already know how techbro CEOs feel about solidarity…
Especially after the whole Twitter thing. At my last job we were a bit more cohesive, but our boss was pretty laid back too. I don’t think I’ve experienced “code monkey” culture so much.
Dumb question but is there any research about people with autism getting fired more frequently?
not a dumb question, mostly just vibes on my end but yeah id wager if looked at that people with autism tend to be fired more frequently.
https://www.autism.org.uk/what-we-do/news/new-data-on-the-autism-employment-gap
according to this study only 22% of autistic people are in employment, so I would say at a glance yes.
So I have a tendency of not holding a job for more than 2 years and then will often have gaps in between. I never considered this as part of the equation.
Thank you for the information!
Ok so I am going to start off by saying no as far as I know there is no real drawback to getting diagnosed,
But Fuck New Zealand and Australia, they will not, or atleast last i heard, someone with as autism get citizenship if they are not a citizen already as they would be " a drain on the healthcare system" if im wrong someone please correct me
Any sort of medical issue is seen as an instant denial in basically all immigration processes.
Any sort of mental disorder such as ADHD , Autism, BPD, Schizophrenia, etc make immigrating impossible.
Don’t bother trying to hide it either, the checks are insanely invasive and thorough, and the doctors will find everything.
That’s the norm unfortunately. Immigration is not about the person immigrating, it’s about if you’re useful to the country. It’s also the norm that typically the only real way to be let in on a work permit long term is if they specifically need people in your field (usually highly skilled white collar work and/or jobs that they have trouble filling locally). Speaking from experience as someone that immigrated as a young child from China to Canada with parents that got in through this exact route. There’s a reason developing countries are experiencing brain drains, where do you think they’re going? Too often do I wonder if our lives would be better if we stayed in China since we’re not exactly doing superb over here, but I’m already a Canadian citizen, went through all of high school and university here, barely know how to read and write Chinese and am pretty far removed from the culture back there, so that ship has sailed.
Even though those same countries you mentioned literally frame their immigration programs as “look how much we’re doing for those poor people in third world (sic) countries! we’re such bastions of niceness and human rights!”
Honestly the economic situation in Canada definitely does not help. It’s hard enough for a neurotypical person here to live a good life it seems. I know for a fact that the uncertainty of my future here has aggravated my anxiety disorder (diagnosed, medicated which does help at least to prevent panic attacks, but frankly I don’t even know how much is actually anxiety “disorder” and how much is actual reasonable fear for how I’ll survive). Probably interacts negatively with my possible autism too.
You won’t be able to get hired by the police in at least some countries if you have any psychiatrist visits on your document so an absolute win! (Idk how true it is, I was told that by a psychiatrist when I was a suicidal teenager)
Think I can dodge a draft with this?
Only half joking… Not that I think we’re going to have conscription anytime soon but Canada isn’t the most stable right now (and it’s at the beck and call of the US which is even less stable) so who knows?
I don’t know anything about Canada’s laws regarding this topic specifically but I do know that self diagnosis is valid (I’m also self dx autistic!), and that neurotypical people usually don’t suspect they’re autistic at all.
Personally I’m not seeking an official dx cause there aren’t any resources for autistic adults in the US.
Having an external diagnosis helped me fighting imposter syndrome, so worth it tbh
One of us! One of us!
Regarding potential drawbacks, I don’t think there’d be any besides the time. I’m not Canadian but I think any anti-discrimination law would prevent any kind of “obligatory disclosure” and you could just apply without “disability.” It might even be a crime for the doctor to disclose that without consent.
On my personal anecdote regarding self-diagonosis, I’ve been pretty sure I was autistic since fairly young. I generally think of it as “being autistic” or “having autistic behaviours” because I generally don’t like how pathologised it sounds to say one “has” autism. I only got diagnosed literally last month because I was already going through some other harsher stuff and decided I might as well investigate that. The confirmation did not change my life a single bit, but it might be cool if you’re having doubts.
I was also completely misdiagnosed as bipolar some years ago, so be careful that your doctor doesn’t railroad you into some completely unrelated diagnosis that is medicable. I’m not completely anti-psychiatry but you should definitely do a deep dive on whether you really want to take a drug before you take it. Autism is generally not medicated (and most popular medications are actually harmful), so if the medication brands itself as “for autism” rather than some actual issue (i.e. social anxiety), change doctors ASAP.
As a general rule of thumb, if you’re well acquainted with austism, old enough to know yourself well, and seriously thinking you might be autistic, I think it’s very unlikely you’re a complete neurotypical. But you could fit nicer in some adjacent spectrums such as ADHD.
We also have a neurodiverse comm here but it’s rather dead right now. Would be really cool to populate that one again because we neurocooler folk tend to be either forgotten or just outright sectioned under capitalism.
Thank you! I’d honestly love to raise awareness for autism while meeting other autists. Will probably post more about my experiences under this account since it’s far enough removed from my personal life that I feel comfortable doing so as long as I’m careful. Definitely need to do more research and weigh my options and ideally get more than one opinion for my real life diagnosis.
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This doesn’t quite answer your questions, but I think you might get a lot of out this video about the politics of self-diagnosis, institutional power, and marginalization. It’s made by someone who was in a similar position to you and who ultimately did end up deciding to get formally diagnosed with autism (spoilers)
The other comments have covered a lot of the potential positives of a getting a diagnosis. Here’s an article written by an autistic doctor on some of the drawbacks:
https://archive.ph/J6tXc (Archive link because medium wasn’t showing the whole thing.)
In short, there’s a lot of ableism, so it’s important to think about what benefits you will personally receive from a formal diagnosis.
I’m not trying to dissuade you from getting one if it’s something that you want to do you should go for it. I just wanted to share some info that made me think getting a formal diagnosis wasn’t right for me.
