28 May 2025 4 min read

Am I Really Autistic, or Just Making Excuses?

Even now—after a diagnosis, after beginning to unmask, after finally starting to understand myself—there are days, many days, when doubt creeps in and settles like a dense fog.

Maybe I’m just being dramatic.
Maybe I’m lazy.
Maybe I’ve just made myself believe I’m autistic to explain why I feel so out of step with the world.

And then comes the cruelest one of all:
Maybe I don’t deserve support.
Maybe I don’t even deserve connection.

I said something out loud recently that hit me harder than I expected:
“I don’t deserve to be treated differently by anyone, or deserve to interact with humans in any way.”

That wasn’t the truth speaking. That was the masking. That is burnout. That was the weight of years spent performing a version of myself so others would tolerate me—years spent assuming that being accepted meant being less me.

When Doubt Becomes the Mask

I used to think masking was about behavior.
Eye contact. Tone of voice. Scripted conversations, practiced in the mirror.
Sitting still when I wanted to bounce and rock. Smiling when I wanted to leave.
The eyes, they never do smile with you though, do they?

But doubt—that internal voice that says maybe you’re just being difficult, maybe you are just extra—is masking too.
It’s not the one people see.
It’s the one that lives inside of us.
The one that whispers: You don’t need help. You’re just not trying hard enough.
You’re not really struggling. You’re just being sensitive.
You’re not autistic—you’re just broken.

And I believed it.
Because the world reinforced it.
Because people praised me when I suppressed myself.
Because “You’re so high-functioning” was said like a compliment, not a warning sign.

So I wore doubt like armor.
If I questioned myself first, maybe no one else would.
If I pretended I was fine, maybe I could be.
Maybe I wouldn’t lose anyone. Maybe I wouldn’t lose myself.

And I demanded perfection from myself—every task, every conversation, every line of an email.
I didn’t allow myself to get things wrong.
Not because I thought I was better than anyone else,
but because I thought being flawless was the only way to be enough.

Mistakes often didn’t feel like learning.
They felt like exposure.
Proof that I wasn’t trying hard enough. Proof that maybe I am just inadequate.

I became my own harshest critic.
Held myself to standards no one asked of me.
And for a long time, I called that discipline.
I called it drive.
I called it being responsible.

But really—it was self-punishment dressed up as virtue.
It was fear of being unmasked.

You know what, in reality it never made me safer.
It just made me smaller.

In protecting everyone else from my truth, I stopped protecting me.

The Grief of Believing the Lie

There’s grief in realizing how long I lived by a lie that wasn’t mine—but felt like it had always been.

That I had to be easy to love.
That I had to manage everyone’s comfort before I could ask for any of my own.
Put on my oxygen mask first? Not a chance.
That the version of me who stims, cries too easily, zones out in loud rooms, needs breaks, needs stillness—was somehow unworthy of care.

And I grieve not just the lie. I grieve how deeply I believed it.
I repeated it to myself like gospel.
Wrote it into the story of who I thought I was.
I called it strength. Independence. Stoicism.

But it was just self-erasure.
It was the survival of a self I thought I had to become—because the real one didn’t feel safe.

I don’t know if I can ever fully forgive myself for the way I used to talk to me.
But I’m learning to speak to myself softer. To give myself grace and kindness. To treat my inner child the way it needed to be all those years ago.
Even when the doubt returns.
Even when the grief catches me off guard.

Because now I know better.
And now—some days—I believe better, too.

Remembering the Truth (Even When It Feels Far Away)

Here’s what I try to remember on the hard days:

Just because I learned to hide my needs doesn’t mean I don’t have them.
Just because I can survive without support doesn’t mean I should have to.
Just because others couldn’t see my pain doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.
And just because the doubt is loud doesn’t mean it’s telling the truth.

💬 Reflection

Do you ever find yourself questioning whether you’re “really” autistic—or deserving of support at all? What helps you remember what’s real?

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Thank you for being here. If this post resonated with you, feel free to share it, or just know you’re not alone on this journey. We’re all learning to come home to ourselves—one soft step at a time.