 Good day and welcome back to my channel, my name is Thomas Henley and I make a lot of videos on autism and mental health. Today we're going to be talking about Autistic Imposter Syndrome. Do you feel like you are faking autism, that really you're trying to put it on for attention or that you are something else and they've got it wrong or you know you might be late diagnosed or you might just be coming across the autistic community and just not really feeling like you identify with a lot of the things that people are talking about. Some people are loving all these stim dances and have boxes of stim toys everywhere. They only like eating specific things and the list goes on and on and on. The thing is with Autistic Imposter Syndrome is that it's kind of similar to the experiences that you get when you're in the workplace. You know this is where you probably have heard of it before. Where you feel like your position of high competency or your position of authority in the workplace isn't really matched with who you are. You don't feel like you deserve it. You don't feel like you're responsible or talented enough. This is the kind of experience that you have when you're autistic and you don't feel like you're autistic. You feel like you're faking your autism. Autistic Imposter Syndrome can be really damaging because it can make you feel like you're not really a part of the community and one of the wonderful things about the autistic community is that you can come across like-minded people who think similarly to you, feel similarly to you, perceive things in a similar fashion. Obviously there's variety and variability from person to person, but in general you kind of need to experience that to feel like you're a part of society. Or else, you know, being surrounded by neurotypicals, your whole life and sort of not really fitting in, not really understanding, not being able to connect to people so much, it's quite a lonely life. And so having this barrier of not thinking that you're really an autistic person can do a lot of harm to you. So today I'm going to go through four things, four possible things that you may experience that may be contributing to your Imposter Syndrome. And hopefully by the end of the video, if you do in fact have Imposter Syndrome, you'll feel a lot more validated and you will feel a lot more confident in the fact that you are an autistic person. Further to that, if you want to go check out a video after this, or even now and then come back to this one, you can look up my autistic stereotypes video. And I go through all of the things that is to do with autism, but they don't apply to me. Number one, masking and self-growth. If you've been doing a lot of masking, if you've been hiding your autism so much for such a large portion of your life, or even just a short while, a few years, a few months, it can have a lot of mental health effects on you. It can make you feel like you're not really connected to the world around you, connected to people. You feel like all of your interactions and relationships are fake because the thing, the person that you're putting out there in the world, it's not in line with how you actually are and how you feel and how you think and what you, your opinions on certain things. And so it can feel very, very isolated. One of the other things about this is that, you know, once you remove that mask, you may get comments from people saying that, oh, you're acting a bit more autistic. Are you okay? Or, you know, you're acting a bit weird. It's like, why have you changed so much? Why are you becoming like this? It's like, it can sometimes feel like maybe you are putting on the autism mask rather than removing it. Get your head around that one. On the other side, you may do a lot of self-growth. You may work on yourself in the areas. You may not even know if there were common things for autistic people, but you may have learned through life to pull up your deficits and amplify your positives just in general. And so when you do this, when you come across the autistic community or talk to other autistic people, you don't really identify with the negatives that they're talking about, or at least not to the extent that they're feeling those negatives. So sometimes with masking and sometimes with self-growth, it can have an impact on your perception of yourself as being autistic. And that's something that I've struggled with quite a few times in my life, definitely. I can't tell you how many times I've looked up really, really horrible concepts like psychopathy and sociopathy, things like that, the dark traits, the dark personality types, the dark conditions. And this was all because I didn't really identify with a lot of what people were talking about. I indebtified with some of it from certain people, but just some things just didn't really seem to connect with me in the way that others described. You know, another important thing to note is that some of the traits that you had in childhood may not be so apparent in adulthood. And it may mean that if you go back for another autism diagnosis, or you think about the things that you were diagnosed with as a child, they may not always be the same. And it doesn't mean that you've become not autistic, it just means that you don't have enough of the traits that they look for. That's a really important thing. It can be quite confusing, obviously. But let's go into the second point, which is different environments. You may be from a completely different culture, country upbringing, political spectrum area of the world, community part of person, you know, there could be a large variety of input that you're getting from different places. The way that your social norms are sort of set up in the place that you are, or in your community, can dictate a lot how you act, and a lot how you behave, a lot of what you say. And there can also be some cultural experiences that you don't experience. So for example, I'm white, I'm not going to be able to experience what it's like to be black, or I'm not going to be able to explain what it's like to be gay, or pansexual, you know, there's so many things that could sort of influence your experience of the world, your expression, your, you know, that there's a lot of different variables involved. You know, it's constructed by our genetics and our environment, our genetics sort of program the way that we interact with the world in the first instance, and sort of as a baseline, and the world moulds us and how we think about things, and how we behave and how we perceive. So when you have a difference in environment, it can have some impacts on the way that you express as an autistic person, especially if you're from another culture and you are, you're watching a video of someone from the UK talking about what it's like to be autistic in society, whereas your society might be completely different. Number three, this is going to be a video about variability. Some of the creators, the autistic creators that you follow could have other neurodiverstities. They could be ADHD, they could be OCD, they could be anxious, they could be depressed, they could be, have some kind of schizophrenic type disorder. There's a lot of variability from person to person, and there is also a lot of variability in the co-conditions that they have, the co-morbidities as some people call it, the co-occurring things, the co-occurring neurodiversities. And so there is always going to be some interaction with that, with the way that people express, the way that people think about things, the way that people act, the advice that they give, the negative things that they highlight, the positive things that they highlight. They could all be an amalgamation of multiple different conditions, multiple different states of being, multiple different diversities. If you get a diagnosis and then you come into this community and you start, you know, you're just autistic and there's a man coming in telling you that he struggles to cook and clean and sort out his bed and stuff, it may not be just by the fact that he's autistic. You may struggle with a little bit, but not to the extent that I do, but because I have quite severe depression and anxiety, those executive functioning difficulties are amplified. You know, it's, there is such variability in the conditions and sort of neurodivergencies that people have. And so it's always worth to keep that in mind and get a range of experiences, a range of perceptions and ideas from multiple different people. Even if you think you're just following someone who's autistic, there could be things that they're not telling you about and they don't want to tell you about, and that's, that's, that's up to them. And it could also be that they have no idea and they could, they could just be talking from the autistic experience and not taking into account these other neurodivergencies that they have. So the last one, which is probably a little bit tough, a little bit tough, tough of a topic to cover, trauma. Yeah, trauma and gaslighting influences how you think about yourself in relation to other people. That was a poor use of prosody. So you may feel like everything that you are identified with, everything that you are diagnosed as is an opportunity, you know, you worry about your paranoid about it, that this is an opportunity for you to seek attention, you know, that, that thing that everybody talks about when someone tries to, you know, take their life for, you know, do something really bad to themselves. Some people just naturally, just nasty people who don't really see the bigger picture will say that they're just seeking attention, just ignore them, you know, just anything like that. That can happen as well with autism. If you say that you need a certain thing, you can't be in this ring because it's too bright and everyone's telling you to suck it up and stop being such a wimp, you're going to feel like your experience is invalidated. And it's going to be a lot more socially acceptable because they're speaking in the frame of a neurotypical world. They're not speaking in the frame of being an autistic person. Even if you're having an argument, they may pull up on the fact that autistic people struggle with sensory things. And so you can't do this certain thing. Or they said struggle of communication. So they need, they need sort of babying and pampering in order to get a point across or someone speaking over them or speaking for them, God forbid. You know, there's all of those different types of dynamics that can, that can happen. And sometimes when you've been gaslit for such a large portion of your life, and everything that everybody's telling you around you, you know, you take on board very, very seriously, even if they don't fully understand your situation. So in that way, if you've experienced all of these things, you can sometimes feel like your own brain is out of your hands and that you're in control and you don't feel confident in the thoughts that you're having. You don't feel confident how you feel about things in your experience of life. So it may be that you feel like you're not autistic because of this, because of these horrible negative experiences. So that's kind of an in the nutshell, the types of things that may contribute to autistic imposter syndrome. And it's not an extensive list. It's me thinking of things that I've possibly experienced, you know, I've heard other people talk about it as well. And it's something that I get now in a game. It's not something that's consistent all the time. But sometimes if I'm a really low place, and I feel I feel like I've had some difficulties with another person in my life, I can feel sometimes very, you know, self critical, sort of judgmental of myself. And you know, I question whether I'm a good person or not sometimes, even if I've done absolutely nothing wrong. And then I get such a such a backlash from it. It's like, oh my God, do I really understand this situation? Am I have I really grown up into and learn and all my social skills and understood neurotypicals as much as I thought I did? And usually, in the majority of cases, I do. I do understand I really deeply understand sometimes more than the people around me. And they think that I understand less, because they don't agree with me. There's a lot of things that that they can contribute into thinking you're an imposter. And I think the main thing is, is to listen to other artists, listen to a range of autistic people, get their experiences, talk to people, join groups, find friends, talk to them about the experiences. Quite often, us in isolation trying to analyze our own brain, it's a really bad idea. And it can lead us to getting very paranoid, stressed and anxious over something that is quite obviously us. It's we are autistic for the people who are kind of watching this and they're like, I don't know if I'm autistic or not, I'm on diagnosed, try and get a diagnosis if you can. If you can't do all the things I've said, talk to but talk to even more people learn even more. It can be really hard in some places of the world to actually get forwarded for a diagnosis, or in some places you might even have to pay for it. So I completely understand that. And I think always the best course of action is to understand autism from other people's perspectives, their experiential knowledge, as well as understand the theoretical side of things as well. And that kind of gives you a good picture of what autism is and whether these experiences are in any way related to your experiences of life. And quite often you'll find that you are autistic and you don't need to worry about it. Alrighty, I hope you have enjoyed this video. Make sure to check out the socials, check out the new website. I've redesigned it. It's not fully there, but it looks a bit cooler. It's a bit more branded with my colors that I've come up with. It's looking pretty fresh to be honest. And also check out the social medias, particularly Instagram, I can't remember which side it's on. Check out the Instagram page at ThomasHanleyUK. All of the links are of course on the screen, so you can check those out. Have you ever experienced autistic imposter syndrome? Let me know down in the comments. Just to let me know that you've watched it to the end of the video and you're not just kind of skipping off when you've got all the juicy stuff out of it. Not that there's anything wrong with it, I do it too, but I want to give you a bit of notoriety if you know. Just a little bit of notoriety, just for yourself. Obviously, there's no positive impact on me to leave a like and a comment on the sub. Not at all.