 You may never know what it's like to feel and experience the world the way that I do, both the setbacks and the advantages, but please remember that it can be hurtful to minimize and brush off someone else's experiences and struggles just because you don't personally experience them. That's right. Today, we're going to be asking, is this YouTuber faking autism? What is up, everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul, where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And what I like to do is pull different topics from the YouTube community, try to teach you how to improve your mental and emotional well-being. So if you're into that stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell because I also like to spread awareness and try to de-stigmatize this thing. All right. So at this time, as you're watching this, you probably already know, I'm out of town. I'm not in Las Vegas. I'm in Florida. All right. But while I'm out of town, what I like to do is give a platform to smaller creators who are talking about mental health and trying to spread awareness and help other people out. Like I try to give back what I've gained from this awesome platform. So I've asked Stephanie, some of you might remember her from another video she did while I was out of town, I asked Stephanie to come over here and talk about dealing with the stigma around people thinking that she doesn't have autism because she doesn't fit the typical description of it. And I know that her and I have talked about this and it's something interesting because like I know a lot of you know of Molly Burke here on the platform and people like there's like entire Reddit threads, like accusing her of faking blindness. And this stuff is just brutal. So I wanted Stephanie to come over and share her experience about that. And especially because a lot of you asked me to make more videos about autism. I'm not well versed in it. So I brought Stephanie over here. So here is her story. Hi, rewired soldiers. For those who don't already know, my name is Stephanie and I was diagnosed with autism at age 23. What? Are you surprised? Actually, a lot of people are pretty surprised when they hear that from me. You see in this video, you don't see me flapping my hands. You see me looking at the camera. You might consider that eye contact or maybe I just don't look autistic, whatever that means. A lot of people aren't really aware of what it really means when we say that autism is a spectrum. So most people, when they think of autism, they think of severe or low functioning autism, where someone maybe can't communicate verbally and they might be like flailing their arms around all the time. And so if you're thinking of that and you're looking at me, it doesn't seem like I would have autism. But I'm at the other end of the spectrum, what they call high functioning or mild autism. But regardless of where someone is on the spectrum, autism is still autism. One of the biggest battles that I fight is other people's perception of me. Being late diagnosed, I held myself to the standard of being normal or neurotypical and other people did the same. I'm actually pretty good at something called masking. And this is basically where you pretend or you kind of fake a normal facade with other people. Even though people have meant well when they've said things like I would have never imagined that you would have autism or you don't seem autistic, those things can be hurtful for a variety of reasons. When people suppose that I don't have autism because I don't seem autistic or look autistic, it feels like both an accusation and a denial. An accusation that I'm a liar for whatever reason that it would somehow gain me something. And also a denial. A denial of the person and existence that throughout my life I've constantly tried to hide. For a lot of my life I felt like there was some sort of fracture on the inside. Some kind of break or something wrong that only I could feel or even really see. I learned how to fake in social interactions and conjure up a laugh that still is exhausting to this day. I pretended that I got what people were saying or implying and I pretended to feel the way that they felt because I didn't want to look stupid. And if I did venture out and say something of my own accord I could feel the immediate shift from me being someone that they saw as agreeable to someone that they saw as weird or awkward. It was like all of a sudden they were just tolerating my existence in the conversation. I didn't know I was stimming but when I got really excited I would draw unwanted attention because I would bounce up and down and often do large movements with my hands and my arms. And for that I would get weird looks. I hated more than anything not being able to understand. I knew I was smart and I clung to that as my only relief. I couldn't understand people and their motives and the intricacies of a social situation. But I was good at academics. At home I would experience pretty uncontrollable rage if I didn't understand a concept for homework or school. When I got into the higher grades and things weren't coming as easily to me and also of course puberty was happening so there were a bunch of hormones wreaking havoc in my body and the way my mind worked those sorts of what maybe people would call fits were becoming pretty normal and they wouldn't just happen like with my mom or with my family members they would happen just with me alone in the house. Of course at that time I didn't know what meltdowns were. I was normal. I didn't know that anxiety dictating much of what I did in my life wasn't something that everybody else experienced. I didn't know that singing to myself to calm myself down was actually called vocal stimming and that most people didn't do that in public. I didn't know that I wasn't just a sensitive person. I kept trying to be normal with the promise in the back of my mind that one day I would be but that day never came and it never will. Even though my kind of autism is pretty much invisible to you in this video or when I'm around people I'm comfortable with it still is a very deep part of who I am. I could tell you about the meltdowns, the stims, the overwhelm but honestly I don't owe anyone an explanation for being who I am. It's okay if you don't believe me. In your world people have bad motives all the time. In my world it doesn't really make sense for someone to pretend to have something so stigmatized. To you it could be a ploy for sympathy but to me it's just an answer to a question that I didn't even know I had been asking. I am thankful for my diagnosis because really it's kind of like a protection against people deciding that I'm not autistic because I don't meet what they expect autistic to look like. But for the time that I was only suspecting that I had it before I had my official diagnosis I was swimming in a sea of despair because people thought that I was lying about what I was experiencing or that I was making things up or that I was doing weird things or things that didn't make sense to them on purpose whether it was to get attention or whether it was to get out of something it was like I was always being called a liar for experiencing the world the way that I was and I had no control over it. I didn't want to be this way I wanted to be like everyone else but yet I was a liar and I was making things up so during that time it was really difficult so I'm very thankful for having a diagnosis that I can shove in people's faces and say uh-huh it is true I am not lying to you about this devastating thing that I deal with every single day. Now for physical disabilities it's a lot easier for you to see and confirm that indeed someone is disabled but some disabilities are invisible I don't have a missing arm to show you to prove what goes on in my brain and what goes on in my world but honestly that's not my job it is painful to most people that you some random person demand that they prove to you that they deal with the things that they deal with you may never know what it's like to feel and experience the world the way that I do both the setbacks and the advantages but please remember that it can be hurtful to minimize and brush off someone else's experiences and struggles just because you don't personally experience them it hurts that people feel that they have the right to expect me to prove to them that I go through the things that I go through and at the end of the day they're never going to really be able to experience that to make it real to them just like I'm never really going to be able to experience what it's like to be neurotypical I think it's important for us all to realize that we don't really know the whole story about anyone in any sphere of life just based off of how they are presented to us thank you so much to Chris for letting me back on his channel for some time to talk with you guys I'm gonna go ahead and give it back to him that right there was so so so powerful and like I think the overlying tone in this or like message in this whole thing is just like don't be a jerk to people you know what I mean like it's you know people just questioning intentions and and motives like why why would she fake autism you know like I asked like why would Molly Burke fake being blind and all these things like somebody is struggling like in in my opinion in my humble opinion like like give people the benefit of a doubt of the doubt when it comes to this thing like and I love the how how Stephanie talks about that like like you can't see you know her illness it's not a missing arm or something but that's the thing with mental health and that's why I try to talk about it so much like these are things that we don't see like I've had people meet me I've had people meet me in the last six years and they're like oh you don't seem like somebody who would ever be addicted to drugs like what does that mean you know when people find out like when I go out and hang out and new people are meeting me and like I don't drink or whatever but like I want you to think about your own experience as well with depression anxiety trauma whatever like how like how would it feel if you haven't experienced this yet how would you feel if somebody says oh you don't look depressed you don't seem depressed right you don't seem to be anxious like there's so many invisible signs of mental illness like we need to talk about this and spread awareness so even if you don't struggle with autism even if you don't know somebody with autism like please share this video share Stephanie's channel I like let's help educate people about these things like Stephanie was talking about I've had you know other videos on here another great one is by Carson Geek she's a young woman who has autism spectrum disorder as well but like check these out because a lot of them they deal with anxiety and depression around this thing you know what I mean and we all need to come together and help each other out so again I really appreciate Stephanie coming over here and sharing her experience of doing this guest video and please please please please go subscribe to her channel she makes a bunch of awesome videos I have more guest videos from smaller creators coming out while I'm out of town go show them some love like the YouTube algorithm does not promote mental health channels so please go show them some love and you know share their videos and their channel with other people that you know all right but anyways that's all I got for this video if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you're new make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell and a huge huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on patreon you're all amazing and be sure to subscribe to Stephanie her channel is linked right over there in that corner all right thanks again for watching I'll see you next time