 Good day everybody! Welcome back to my channel. My name is Thomas Henley. I make a lot of autism and mental health related content and today I'm bringing you a dressing r slash fake disorder cringe. You may have heard it before, you may have seen it, you may have seen some content on it. On Reddit, shared on Reddit, one of those subreddit-y places, it's not something that I've ever really been to often by this video and I'm kind of glad but today we're going to be talking about this very strange subreddit and thinking about whether they actually have a point or not. You may be surprised, you may not be. We're also going to be having a look at self-diagnosis which tends to be one of the big things that this subreddit tends to focus on. Let us talk about what exactly this subreddit is. What is a subreddit? A subreddit is a section of a social media site called Reddit whereby people can basically post to different threads, different boards. A lot of this content under this fake disorder cringe channel tends to be very surface level critiques of self-diagnosis and experiential content, mostly from TikTok or Instagram Reels so these people have downloaded them, they've shared them onto this subreddit, they've put a little title saying how cringy it is for some reason or asking like a very, you know, tongue-in-cheek humor as they like to call it but I've also seen some channels who have been engaging with this type of content. There was a YouTuber that I watched a few videos from particularly because they made some stuff that was like dunking on TikTok called Retro Phantom, I saw them make a few videos and this content tends to focus primarily around dissociative identity disorder, DID, something that you may know about through films like Split, it's very much a glamourized thing, it's very much made a lot of controversy both within the scientific community and people and it makes for a good TV show, good concept. A lot of people don't necessarily agree or believe it and especially when people are open about it online, that opens them up to a large amount of criticism, a large amount of people saying that it's cringe and it's weird saying it's strange, particularly in the context of this video which is autism, they take the diagnostic statistical manual of mental health as the holy bible and we're going to be talking about why that is a very silly thing to do, just letting you guys know me and my dressing gown, I wasn't initially going to wear a dressing gown for this video but I'm very self-conscious about showing my nips in this tank top that I've gone, so we're going with the dressing gown, you know obviously I'm going to get into it but there is very varying degrees of certainty and facts depending on which discipline you're talking about, I come from a biomedical sciences background so I'm very fully well aware of it, I'm quite an atheistic person, I like looking at philosophy, I like looking at psychology and sociology and you know I understand the significance of facts and understand the significance of statistics and having a method and a process, so just putting that out there for anybody who is wondering like what kind of video this is going to be and we're also going to have a look at some of the examples at the end of the video, some of these different videos that people have posted within this forum, so why is it popular? Why is it popular to post cringe content about autism? Well number one, I think it's the most glaringly obvious thing, it's fun to dunk on TikTok, everybody dunks on TikToks, everybody has YouTube commentary channels where they talk about people doing TikTok things, it's very much seen as like an adolescent like young generation kind of thing, you see a lot of articles about it rotting people's brains in all sorts of fashions, not saying that that isn't founded in any evidence, it's just saying that people very much like to dunk on TikTok because it's basically you being a content creator by creating very short videos and people don't seem to like that, neither do I, but it's not the reason why I would find it cringe. Disability cringe, what exactly is that? Why do people find being autistic cringe? I don't think a lot of people do to a certain extent, like the majority of stuff related to autism, I can see that as not necessarily being cringe, I think when some people are very open about things that a lot of society, a lot of other people deem as abnormal behavior, they sort of experience this secondhand embarrassment which we characterize as cringe, you know they think to themselves why would they post this, this is like the most embarrassing thing, I would never be, I would never post anything like this, I can understand if you're not within the spheres of autism and you're not trying to normalize being disabled, I can understand that but it is very much something that we do for that reason of you know making other people feel less alone, showing parts of ourselves, immediately I think of things like stim dancing or showing tics or like showing the experience of masking versus masking, showing the experience of going to a shutdown, talking about stuff, being open about your emotions on the internet, or things that some people characterize as being cringy and what is this stuff, it tends to be things that people latch on to, they tend to be things that are designed for the in-group, for over autistic people, they can be jokes, they can be memes, they can be trends, they can be references, not everything out there is always educational, it's not always people's experience either, it could be people's thoughts and opinions and they land pretty well within the autistic communities but they don't necessarily land well with people outside of that group, which is understandable, there is also a very strong opposition to self-diagnosis and a heavy glorification of the medical system, the psychiatric systems that we have, the common thing is you are not qualified to diagnose yourself, particularly in the context of self-diagnosis, you're not qualified to talk about autism, we need to listen to someone with a degree who comes from this place and actually knows what they're talking about, that tends to be the approach that a lot of people make when they criticize what autistic people are putting out there, I'm not absolved from finding particular things about craters, cringe, weird, a little bit out there perhaps, I'm very aware that that's something that happens, but all of this stuff that I see on these subreddits, they're not necessarily really out there things, they're just things that seem pretty common knowledge, pretty understandable, not cringe, but that's just my personal experience. So let's go into self-diagnosis, let's talk a little bit about it because that's the the elephant in the room that's the Thomas wearing is dressing down in the room, identifying as autistic without a formal diagnosis, that is the best way of explaining it. Someone has said I'm autistic, they don't have a piece of paper from a psychologist, an occupational therapist, a doctor, which says that they are autistic and confirms that legally. From my experience, it tends to be split into three types of people that I come across who are self-diagnosed. The majority of people are exploring, the majority of people who would say that they are self-diagnosed are kind of like I'm not sure if I'm autistic. That tends to be the majority of the people, it's something that they're wanting to explore, they're wanting to listen to content, they're wanting to engage with content online because autism can be inherently quite isolating, just because we're so different in the way that we see and behave and act within the world towards people. So the majority of people land in this large majority category of people who are just not sure and they tend to have a lot of respect for autistic people, autistic creators. They're wanting to learn, they're wanting to engage, they're wanting to be a part of it because it's something that has helped them. Perhaps some of the knowledge and the experiences that people have had, they're able to learn from that and apply it to their own life, a lot of use in that. And that is the majority of people that I come across. Some people identify online as being autistic, they will say within communities I am autistic, like you can't tell me that I'm not autistic, they are self-diagnosed individuals, they don't have a formal diagnosis. I don't really see many people like this and the thing is that a lot of these individuals, they're usually in places where diagnosis isn't really accessible or a smart idea. And we will obviously get into why it's not always the smartest idea to go and get a formal diagnosis. But for now, let's leave it at that. These individuals, they tend to have a lot of reading into things, they've got a lot of accumulated knowledge on the topic of autism, read up a lot about the science behind it and the experiences of other people. It's very much a long thing, a long kind of journey, long path that they've been on to try and understand if they are autistic or not. And the reason why things like autistic and post-syndrome occur so often is because there's a lot of stigmas around autism and there's a lot of worries and thoughts that even I have sometimes about, you know, am I really autistic? Is this what an autistic person is like? So there's a lot of that going on still even for those people. And there is very, very minority people that I've ever met who openly, you know, they join autism groups and they say that they're autistic, they're self-diagnosed, hardly ever happens. When it does, they're usually again quite respectful and the like, you know, they do say that they're autistic, but they're also wanting to learn from other autistic people as well. I hesitate to say never because there will always be some people who are just like, you know, very militantly self-advocating and all that stuff. But the majority of people I hardly ever come across, people who say that they're self-diagnosed in real life, when they do, it tends to be when I have shared that I'm autistic and they say that, oh, I'm kind of thinking that I'm autistic. So that's that's even smaller group, I would say. And a lot of people who are on these forums who kind of read a little bit, like, hear about the concepts of self-diagnosis, they think everybody's just picking up autism, you know, they just see something on TikTok, they see a YouTube short, they see a post, and they see other people saying, oh, I guess I'm autistic now. Oh, I didn't know this was an autism thing. Oh, I guess everything is autistic now. They see those types of comments and they're like, hey, this is a clown show. How dare these people do this? How disrespectful to autistic people that there is a community of autistic people called the actually autistic community. And this is kind of like a counter community countergroup to a lot of the stuff that you see, typically under the label of autism awareness rather than autism acceptance. A lot of people within the actually autistic community, they are either autistic themselves or they're self diagnosed. And the people outside of that group, like organizations, scientists, parents, people like that, a lot of people within the actual autistic community, very all for for people outside of that group, the other people, probably going to be a little, a little bit less accepting of that. What is some of the criticism? Because, you know, I understand some of the criticism that people have towards it. You know, at some point in my life, I might have agreed and said the same and said that self diagnosis was silly. Let's get let's dive into some of the reasons. It's not official. It's not a formal diagnosis. It hasn't been confirmed by a registered psychologist, a registered occupational therapist. Understandable. You know, we have a system for diagnosing people. You know, sure, people have to go through that system in order to be diagnosed. It works to a certain degree. But the thing is that it's not always accessible. And we will go into that when we talk about the pros to self diagnosis, some of the good things about it. Information from creators isn't recognized in the formal criteria. This is a big one. People saying, oh, this isn't an autistic trait. Look at the DSM. Does any of this get covered in that? Very simple explanation for this. Traits are kind of a little bit further down the line to criteria. The diagnosis criteria is meant to say, okay, catch the autistic people. But the traits, the experiences that people have, those are not things that are looked for necessarily. But there are things that are quite common to autistic people. So they're called traits. So that's the difference between the two. There's not a lot of people out there who was saying just doing content that's primarily on the formal criteria. A lot of it is that background stuff, that stuff that's further down the line that's kind of like the consequences of being autistic and how it manifests in the world and how people behave and how people think, etc. Another criticism is I feel like it's one of the most gray areas for me in terms of like, you know, how exactly do we implement this? I completely understand this point. Taking resources from real autistic people. You have self-diagnosed individuals. Okay, are they allowed to take up resources that would be given to autistic people? Makes a lot of sense, especially if you live in the UK. There is pretty much nothing over the age of 25 when it comes for like, support. And the majority of that support tends to be pre-18, tends to be during childhood that we actually do get any support, to be honest. With those limited resources, should self-diagnosed individuals have those? It's a fair criticism, something to be discussed, not necessarily saying that I'm pro or I'm for or I'm against this statement, but it is a valid criticism. Self-diagnosed people speak over real autistic people. Another thing, are we going to allow self-diagnosed people get speaking events, go to speaking events, talk about autism, to be a large voice or creator within the autistic community? Do we allow that? And I think the thing is, it's very dependent on whether that person is competent at what they do. Do they actually speak facts? Do over autistic people, whether they're self-diagnosed or not? Engross that. And does it really need to be this sense of competition when we're all just trying to improve the lives of over autistic people and perhaps make a living in the process? Another thing is that people see it as a trendy thing, a fashionable thing, which I think is a very strange way to look at it, because there is such a massively heavy negative stigma around autism in pretty much any other circles other than disability, neurodivergent, or autistic circles. Outside of those scenarios, it's going to be seen as a negative thing. It's going to be seen, okay, this person's disabled. Even going to the point where it could impact your dating life if you tell people that you're autistic or the likelihood of people being friends with you, sometimes that is some bias that people have. And so when you extrapolate that to a mass scale, it's going to be very apparent that it's probably not the best like trendy fashionable thing to jump onto, just from an objective standpoint, not saying that it's a bad thing at all. I like being autistic. I think it's great. I think more people should see the good things about being autistic, but it's definitely not a trendy or fashionable thing to do. Another comment that they might give is that it's used to garner attention, views and sympathy. Well, I would say to this, why can't they do it in any other way? People want to garner attention, views and sympathy in a lot of different ways. I don't think that the autistic communities that the disabled community is the most thriving community that you could find that you see a lot. You see a lot of stuff out there, particularly on on TikTok that blows up tends to be stuff related to like relationships and dating. A lot of the views, intentions and sympathy. I feel like you would get that a lot more through other means as well. And even if people did do it through this mean of saying that they're autistic and you know, woe is me and life is horrible and quite often it can be. It's not really a point. It's a non-point because you can get it from other sources. I accept that there might be some people out there who do that. Another thing is that it's an impulsive thing, which I think is the biggest one on this list, that people just have an impulsive little thought. They see a trait online, a TikTok, and they're like, okay, yes, I'm autistic now. I am now self-diagnosed autistic. That is an extreme minority of people who think that way. The majority of people, I would say like the vast majority of people who go down this process of like becoming self-diagnosed in their eyes, it's a very, very long process. People think that, okay, so someone sees a video on TikTok, okay, they immediately go, oh, trace that, right, I'm autistic now. It's not how things go. They go, oh, you know, it seems a bit relatable. I don't know about autism, I'm not autistic. And they scroll and they see some more. And then eventually, over time, they're like, oh, okay, actually, I'm seeing a lot of autism stuff at the moment. Am I actually autistic? And so they read about it. They go online, they search up the formal criteria, they search all the medical stuff, and they read into it a bit more. Perhaps they go on the social media channels, they go to the actually autistic things, they hear about overall autistic people talking about their experiences, giving education, giving knowledge. They see this bustling community, and they're like, hey, you know, I'm going to think about this. And then they go on a whole journey of trying to understand and trying to, like, justify to themselves. It's a whole thing. And it's not, it's not a small, impulsive thing. And do you want to know the group of people who are more likely to do these small, impulsive, like, adopting of labels? Children. Children are more likely to do this. And children do a lot of crazy things. And I don't feel like we should hinge the argument of whether self-diagnosis is good or not based on the impulsive actions of younger people. Not to say that some of them might be right or wrong, but, you know, it's, some people are like that and it can happen with everything. Anything that is good or neutral or bad, people hop onto it. You know, I've seen videos online within the fitness community, which is like trend challenges where a guy goes from being a skinny guy and then works out for a month blasting himself with, you know, a really strong anabolic hormone. You know, they jump on everything. Everything is like, it's not a thing that's isolated to autism. It can just be a general thing and kids can do silly things and young people can do silly things. Some of the criticisms there and a little bit of my arguments against those. But let's go into some of the, that like the actual arguments, some of the things that I wrote. Professionals can be incredibly incompetent, bias and uninformed. Again, I'm going to make a comparison to the fitness communities. You can come across somebody who is a doctor in like exercise and sport, psychology, physiology, nutrition and see another person. You can watch that person on YouTube and you can watch another person on YouTube. You'll find that a lot of the really top channels, although they might have some level of doctorate or profession, they're not always as well informed as each other. Some people are just objectively better. Some people have a lot more practical experience. Some people have just kept up to research, pass their degree, pass their doctorate, pass their profession, and they're generally smarter. It's not necessarily that you get a degree, you get a piece of education and that makes you this ultimate intelligent all seeing being, this kind of godlike creature. It's a string to your bow and it's a very notable string to someone's bow, but it definitely is not everything. And when I say uninformed, I mean that a lot of professionals that I've talked to, they sometimes don't even know some really, really important aspect of autism. They're not really aware of the experiences of autistic people, what autistic people think about things, what's going on in the community in terms of self-advocacy, the terms that autistic people have created that make a lot of sense and have a lot of use and should be recognized and researched into a bit more. And a lot of bias, a lot of people who have been with this in this profession for a long time, and it's developed so much over the years or in terms of understanding what autism actually is and hearing from real autistic people talking about their experiences. It's changed a lot and some people are really like stuck in the past and they have particular biases. Someone might come in and get a diagnosis and because all of the diagnosis that this person's handed out was to people who couldn't make eye contact, they come across someone who hides their autism pretty well, high-maskers, who makes a lot of eye contact and they say, no, you're not autistic. Yeah, but we filled out all of these characteristics. Yeah, but every autistic person that I've come across, they don't make eye contact. So they do also have biases and I've seen this with GPs, general practitioners who have wide amounts of knowledge, but specialities in some areas, but not necessarily every single area. You see it even in specialists, you see it in psychotherapists. Some psychotherapists don't even recognize your input when you talk to them about things because they see you as kind of this poor, disabled, lesser being who doesn't really understand themselves. There's a lot of that that goes on with that and not every single person is like that. It's definitely not what I'm saying and it is definitely a string to your bow to have these things behind you, these lengths of education and going through tests and passing and doing research. I understand that part, but it is definitely a string to their bow. It's not everything. Psychological diagnosis also is not flawless. It's incredibly subjective. It's usually based on traits. It's not like we go and get a blood test. We go and get a brain scan and someone says, okay, that's you've got an autistic blood type. You've got like, you've got a hormone that only goes through autistic people. You have a particular shape of your brain, particularly neuronal connections which would indicate that you're autistic. They don't do that. They look for particular traits, look for things that are set out in the diagnosis criteria. Sometimes they might go above and beyond that and look at some of the traits, but it definitely is not concrete. The way that they go about diagnosing somebody is incredibly subjective. You will see, if you look at the manuals, that there is a lot of subjective terminology in that abnormal social reaction, abnormal social behaviors, abnormal way of thinking, abnormal rigidity, abnormal reactions to emotional circumstances, abnormal social reciprocity, abnormal everything. There is a lot of subjectivity there. Some of them not so much. There are physical things that autistic people tend to do more, like stimming and things like that. But looking at the triad, or I would argue the quadrant of impairments, looking at social communication, social behavior, looking at rigidity, looking at sensory differences, those are just the categories at which we are analyzed through, and it's not concrete. And formal diagnosis anyway, if everyone did everything by the book, is not 100% accurate. When they come up with a diagnosis, they have to at least have a large enough percentage of clinical psychologists, or specialists, or occupational therapists who can accurately diagnose that thing, and they have to test whether psychologists can actually say, okay, this is an autistic person. This is a depressed person, this person has dissociative identity disorder. The funny thing about DID and depression, which I think you'll probably go along a lot of people's nerves, is that DID is actually more accurate in terms of being diagnosed than depression. It's also very biased against minorities and women. And due to the fact it is primarily built off of studying white boys, white men, is just something that's happened. The diagnosis outlines are very focused on the research that has been done in white boys. And there is a lot of differences in general that occur from men to women, in terms of presentations of autism, things like masking. It's also incredibly dependent on the current times. Go back a few years, go back a few decades a century or so, perhaps the cultural context might be a lot bit different. It might not even be abnormal in some cultures, even some places in the world, it might just be seen as like normal behavior, to have a more autistic style of being. And also, like the social context, because in order for something to be abnormal, you have to at least categorize what is normal. And normal changes, normal is subjective. Diagnosis is not accessible, always. If you're in the UK, you go through the general healthcare routes, you might be able to get it for free. They say that you should be able to get a diagnosis within three to six months. It's not like that. It's probably one to three years, even. Imagine getting to the end of that process, pretty sure that you're autistic and being paired with someone who's quite incompetent at diagnosing and quite biased and uninformed. It's going to be very frustrating. And so a lot of people want to go private, they want to find someone who is competent in that arena, who they can say, okay, this person's a good person to go to. They will have probably the best idea of whether I'm autistic or not. You have to pay for that. And just looking at the autism employment statistics tends to be that we don't do so well in terms of finances, in that sense. Just something general, not everybody, of course. Look at Elon Musk. I think most people could argue he's got a fair amount of money. I'm talking generally in the general population. So it's not always accessible. And masking is very powerful. Hiding autistic traits is something that a lot of undiagnosed adults do. And it's a big barrier for people really noticing that someone is autistic if they're really, really good at masking. And sometimes they can even delude themselves to a certain point that they're not different. It's a very powerful thing masking. And it's not to be underestimated. So let's go through some of the pros and cons of a formal diagnosis. Getting diagnosed, some of the good things about it, actually diagnosed, formal diagnosis, getting that piece of paper, that paper that everyone's chasing, or some people, you get benefits. If you're in the UK, you can get personal independence payment, which can help with certain things to do with mobility, or if you need some sort of support or care. Helpful. Reasonable adjustments within the workplace. I was a little bit blasé about suggesting that people ask for reasonable adjustments in the past, because it is not always something that you can get. And sometimes even if you do get it, the company can be really irritated or annoyed with you and your boss might find some other reason to fight you. It's illiterate within some of the reasonable adjustments that are proposed in the US. If you can't, if it's just not a right fit for your organization, just find some way to fire them. That's considered a reasonable adjustment. Bar that little ramp. That little rant. Accessing programs. A lot of programs nowadays, they include self-diagnosed individuals. They don't necessarily ask you to give you your formal diagnosis, or like a photocopy of it, for you to be accepted into programs that help people with disabilities. And the last thing is that confirmation. Some people who are self-diagnosed would probably be one of these people who would just want to know, like, do I fit the medical systems diagnosis process? That might be something that you just want to go for just to get it out of your mind. You might have made all these changes to your life and it might have improved it, and you might have a friend group of autistic people and talk to them on a regular basis, and you're part of the community. But it might always just be that little fort in the back of your head. Maybe even people outside of the community who make fun of people who say that they are when they're autistic, when they're not. I wonder what kind of places do that. Why don't you want to get a diagnosis? Why is it a bad thing? It's the things that you probably won't know about. Money and time, as I said, very expensive, can take a long time to get. You can be discriminated against. If you want to move to New Zealand, of all places, I think there's a couple other countries, you can't if you're autistic. You just can't. They won't let you. They don't want us our kind. You can have a little bit more bias against you in the court systems when it comes to custody of children and things like that, something that can happen. There's a lot of stigma around autism. Sometimes people painters are being very emotionally dysregulated and not in control, not able to have thoughts or make decisions. It's not the case, but there does tend to be a stigma around it. Cultural location, locational differences. Perhaps you're from a country which doesn't have a lot of well-researched individuals that does have a very biased view of autism. They're very behind the times, if I should say that. Perhaps their culture is a little bit different, so they won't necessarily pick up people like myself. For some people it can actually impact your ability to get gender-affirming care if you are somewhere on the LGBT QA spectrum. If you're wanting gender-affirming care, it might be a little bit more difficult. Some of the arguments that people put across, these are some of the main comments that I see. Is everything autism now? You've said that these traits that I've seen other people do who aren't autistic have these traits. They're not autistic. Why do people say this? Well, I think it's important to be aware that not all autism content is the same. As I explained before, traits are very, very far down the line. When you look at a piece of content and you see people talking about traits, you might see them less like 10 traits, perhaps. Just because one person identifies with one of these traits, it does not mean that you're automatically autistic if you do this thing. It's looking at it in a whole picture. If you go on someone's profile, where they talk about these kind of traits, and you fit absolutely everything that they're talking about, it's probably a good chance that you should explore that a little bit more. But not if you identify with one thing and it's just like a flippant thing and you're like, oh, so everything's autism now. I do this. I'm autistic. You could be autistic. You couldn't be autistic. I don't know. It's not how things go. It's not what we're trying to do with this kind of content. It's usually spent into educational diagnostics slash medical signs, which is stuff that I feel like a lot of people would have any problem with when it comes to traits, presentations, challenging stereotypes and myths that people feel are right. Then some people have some things to say about that. Even more so for things like experiences and thoughts, autistic people might share their experiences and you might relate to that experience. It doesn't mean that it's necessarily a part of the diagnosis criteria that you must have this experience. Or if you have this experience, then you're autistic. It could just be a human experiencing something and they're an autistic person. Normalization, reframing, terminology, very in-group things, talking about how we view autism the way that we should see it, normalizing some of the things that we do, some of the things that we experience, we experience things like stim dancing, tics, shutdowns, meltdowns, stuff that some people might characterize as being cringe, being open and emotional on the internet. Some people would say that that's cringe. On memes and jokes, very funny content. I've seen a few of the pages on Instagram who just make memes, jokes that just really help their stuff. Don't lump that into autism education. That's literally just to give people who are in that community some laughs, like any other community. And yes, some people are actually misinformed. You're right. And some people are looking for the next thing that people can look at and be like, oh, I didn't think of that. That's a new thing. I haven't heard about that. That's a new autism thing. Some people are just looking for that kind of thing and they're just shotgunning it, trying to find something that's an autism thing and a lot of the time might be wrong. Possibly, possibly. In the majority of cases, you can really tell the difference between educational based content and this other stuff, which is a lot to do with experiences, false presentations, traits, things like that. And a lot of it tends to be quite subjective, especially if that person is talking about their experiences. It's important that we make this content because it gives more awareness and education about autism. And people only really consider things if they can relate to autism. Like if they have this idea of what autism is, like a lot of people do, they think of like Rain Man or like the good doctor or Sheldon Cooper, and they're like, I'm not like this person. But then you have some like myself, or one of the other autism creators coming onto camera, you know, sharing bits about their life, talking about autism experiences, and you can kind of relate to them a little bit. And it's a little bit easier to digest, like, oh, actually, you know, I kind of feel like I'm a little bit like this person. That's what we want to do. We want to open people's minds, like open their minds to the possibility that they may be autistic so that they don't get a point in the life where the, you know, things go wrong, and they have to look for a reason to why things went wrong. Sometimes they find out that they're autistic, which is a good thing if we can catch them in time for the hammer drops, so to say. People say, stop glamorizing disability. They may come across some people talking about how it's great to be autistic and they love being autistic. And then people are thinking, what the hell? Disability, autism, that's not a good thing. We need to go, we need to make people more normal. The thing is, is that not everybody sees it as a net negative, and not everybody sees it as an inherent thing. So what I mean by net negative is that there are a lot of things about autism that can make life harder. There are also a lot of things that are neutral. There are also a lot of things that are positive. A lot of really positive traits for autism in a lot of different scenarios, particularly in the world of work. And inherent, what I mean by inherent, it's something that we're born with. Medical model of disability says that we are disabled just by part of the fact that we are autistic, that we are different, and so we're going to have a worse life. The social model of disability, which is something that I relate to a lot more and I agree with a lot more, looks at the interaction of someone who is different with the world, the world that is not necessarily built for us, the world that doesn't have all these adjustments, the world that doesn't have all these safety precautions and measures to stop us from being bullied and discriminated against and all of that stuff. We don't necessarily know exactly where all of these negative experiences of being autistic come from. Not 100% could be, but we don't know. And the thing is, it already has a stigma and redefining is important in order to relate to undiagnosed autistic people before they reach that breakdown that I was talking about. We already hear a lot of negativity from people around us, even people that we're close to and that we love, and we don't necessarily receive a lot of support for understanding more about ourselves from the autistic angle. Unmasking, a lot of people might characterize us as unmasking, characterize our unmasking as regression, becoming more autistic rather than just being ourselves. A lot of stuff like that that happens. And in general, it's just important to empower people, make people aware that it's not all a bad thing and that there are actually some really solid positives to being autistic and highlighting their strengths and encouraging them to build on those strengths and pull up the deficits and all of that stuff. You are not a real autistic. You have not been diagnosed. Big one. One that we've talked about. The thing is, I have got this before. I've talked to people. I've been on the internet. People have seen me speak and say, oh, you can't be autistic. You're good at speaking to people. You understand social things and emotional things. And I'm like, yeah, I do. And when I was younger, I didn't know jackety anything. Really, I was rubbish in those areas. It was something that I had to learn a lot about in order to become competent at. And, you know, people's functioning levels, people's presentations, very, very differently person to person. And, you know, that's why we have the ASD one, two and three used to be like aspergers and used to be like, what is an spectrum condition? It used to have a lot of different separations. Now, it's just ASD one, two and three. And it sometimes comes with intellectual disability and it sometimes doesn't. The thing is, is that you can't always see support needs. You're seeing what I'm good at, which is communicating, which is talking about autism. That's not representative of every single area of my life. I'm not competent in a lot of different areas. In some areas I need support in, but you can't see that by looking at me. A lot of this we can we can struggle transferring skills from one area to another. Some things that you wouldn't think of as an issue like, you know, hygiene and keeping on track of food. And, you know, there's very minor things can be a lot more difficult for someone like me. So it's not always easy to see that. And there's a lot of contribution from those stereotypes that I was talking about. You know, with Rain Man, you know, we're not all these very, you know, high needs individuals who have these savantist like genius like world breaking skills. It's actually pretty rare for someone to be classified as being a savant. And we're not always weird, kind of nerdy people like Sheldon Cooper, you know, we could have different cultures, we could be brought up in different like areas of society, with different political views and all sorts of different traits and things that mash into, you know, who someone is a human being. These stereotypes definitely do have an impact on whether someone can see like, say like, oh, okay, that's an autistic person that isn't, especially if they haven't had education around it. So as my stomach is rumbling, because I know that I'm hungry, and I need to go to the gym soon. And other aspect is that actually, I've seen within the autistic community is that some people say that you're victimizing yourself. You're a victim. You know that meme that I'm talking about? Yes, you do. I know you do. You're a victim. They say that it's white cis men trying to gain social power through self diagnosis, but we're in an era where there's a lot of social progression going on, a lot of good things for certain minorities and communities, which are important. Some people see white men self diagnosis as a threat, something to say, okay, I haven't had it good, like someone give me sympathy, someone give me social power to talk about things, things like that, which is ridiculous. Like, obviously some people might do that. But like to immediately assume something like that is just a bit crazy. Some people might say that we're making excuses for the things that we do, because we're autistic. You know, some things we generally just find harder. Some people might say that we deflect blame. We might like some level of self reflection, which is strange if we're self diagnosed, because it requires a lot of self reflection. I do want to highlight that being victimized is very different to having a victim mindset. I am being victimized a lot in my life. I'm not asking for approval or validation or like, oh no, I'm so sorry. Thomas, if you're experiencing that, I'm past it. I've processed it. I'm cool with it. I've moved, moved on with my life, but I have experienced those things, but I don't go around just hating on people just because I've had a bad time. I don't go about blaming everybody else, apart from myself, for being so hurt and being so pushed down by society. That's not the view that I have. So let's have a look at some of the clips that I've had brewing for a little bit. I'm just going to check that my camera's still on. Oh thank god. I was so worried about the axis. I've tried to film this video like two times before this. Each time I've spoken for about an hour, I had to call it quits yesterday, so it was just so irritating. Again, I can speak, but making sure that my equipment's working, not so great at that. So we have this first video, which is, you're autistic and you drink water like this. I think this is going to be a very simple one to have a look at. So I have a girl running up, drinking water. Oh, she really likes that water. Is she going to drink it all? Is she going to drink it all? Ah, she did. And I can see the reactions that people would have to this, like, what? Drinking water really quickly. That's an autistic thing. What are you talking about? Everybody drinks water. Sometimes I drink water like that. I get it. I get it. But this is actually founded somewhat in fact, because due to our difficulties with interceptive awareness, we struggle to notice certain bodily signs, things around eating, hunger, satiety, whatever you want to call it. First, sometimes going to the bathroom can be something that we don't do because we don't notice. And then other times, we can have a tendency of getting very focused on things. So if I'm doing a project, I'm doing something, I might be so focused on this project and have such a low interceptive awareness, because I'm autistic, that I go for a long time without having a glass of water drinking. I go downstairs, I'm like, I'll give a reminder to myself, oh, I actually haven't had any water today. I go to drink some water. And then I'm like, oh my God, I am absolutely, I am so thirsty, I've got to down this thing. And I've done that before. And I've downed like three glasses, full glasses of water, probably like a liter. It's probably not very good for me to do that. I get it. Sometimes it makes my tummy hurt a little bit. Very unfortunate. And so that is somewhat based in fact. And so we've had to look at this one. I can understand where people come from, why people might think this is silly, but it does actually have some level of like, evidence behind it. So let's have a look at the other one. The other one that I've got lined up for you, lovely chaps, peeps, ladies out there. Let's have a look at the next one. This is a reminder of what autism can look like. So we have someone having some physical tics. I have these as well when I'm very anxious. It can be beautiful and curious. It can be overwhelming sometimes, stimming there. It can be cool and pretty. It can be draining and depressing. It's true. Big crossover with autism. It can be happy and free. Autism is not a line or a scale you can place people on. It's a wave. It's a way mine and many of us brains works. And it can be so many things. Disability needs are important and support needs are too. I believe because it's kind of cut off at the bottom. So yeah, it's basically made in order to say that autistic people are not a functioning label and that it can look like many different things to one lookers, depending on how we're feeling on a particular day, what side we're showing, whether we're masking, basically just bog standard autism content about normalizing being autistic and saying like, okay, you know, we don't we don't always look a certain way. You can't always just say, hey, I can see that guy is doing something weird. He's autistic. It's not always like that. You can't always tell. And that is the main reason behind it. It's some people might find it cringe because the person is saying like they're cool and pretty or they're quirky and curious and people are saying positive things about yourself. That's a bit cringe. And to be honest, on some level I do as well, to like a little bit of an extent, if I'm just being honest, but definitely not like a place to, you know, ridicule someone for being autistic or not autistic. So it seems very silly to me, especially if someone's being open about them stimming or them, you know, having ticks, physical motor ticks, not something that I've put out there. I'm thinking of it and that's usually when it happens, but I'm going to stop going to try not to and I'm feeling very calm. So I feel like I can hold them back and I'm going to move on before they come on. Conclusion. Yes, people can be wrong. So can the medical system? Perhaps you could argue medical system has a little bit more accuracy, but I think is very contingent on a lot of these factors that we talked about a lot of the social implications, you know, what are the social norms at the moment? What kind of person is diagnosing you? What are they like? Are they competent? Got any bias, etc, etc. It's not glamourizing. It's normalization and trying to improve relatability and also sometimes just like reality, just sharing what someone is like, which sometimes goes against some of the stereotypes that people have. Many people self-diagnose to interact with the community, not to say like, hey, look, I'm autistic. Give me attention. It's not why people do it. Often they have a lot of hesitations and a lot of respect for other autistic people and people within the community. They find a lot of use in it. It helps them with their lives. They feel heard. They feel understood. They feel like a lot of the things that people suggest actually helps them in difficult situations. Can't really blame them. And even if they did, say that they're autistic, self-diagnose, it's something that I respect. I feel like that's fine. I feel like I'm all good with that as an autistic person or power to you go for it. Autism is not a trend or a fashion. It carries a heavy stigma with it still. So this is kind of a non argument. It's not seen as a good thing by most people. You know that. Most people know that generally doesn't have the best stigma attached to it. So it's not trendy. It's not fashionable. You can do that in other ways if you want to. Autistic people generally don't care about self-diagnosis unless they have this mentality of I struggle more than you. And how dare this person who hasn't been formally diagnosed say that they have anywhere near the experiences that I have. I've had such a bad life and I've had such problems. People who are autistic themselves thinking like, how dare they take my diagnosis away from me and minimize it. You get that with some people. At one point I probably was like that at some point. But we all learn and we all move on and we all try and understand a little bit more about ourselves and the world and others. And I hope that you have today. And if you have please make sure to like, subscribe, share this video with other people. Share it with someone who really needs to see it if you want to. And consider becoming a member for as little as 99p a month. You get a nice little infinity badge that levels up every like tier of months that you subscribe. It's only 99p. You don't get anything for it. It just encourages me to make more of these types of videos. It's as low as I could put it. And it really helps helps me out in my self-employed journey, YouTube journey, whatever you want to call it. I hope you guys are having a good day. Make sure to drink some water and I'll see you in another video. See you later.