Re:On emotional authenticity and masking as an autistic person
by mercer on Sunday April 30, 2017 @03:41AM
(#14230566)
Consider social anxiety. Many autistic people suffer from it. One cause might be that they were bullied in childhood. But they were bullied because they were autistic.
You could argue that the cause is being bullied as a child, but you can also argue that the cause is autism. I'd say both are true, but as long as the solution is the same it doesn't really matter.
Unfortunately it's a bit more complicated than that in reality. Many high-functioning autistic people are often initially misdiagnosed with bipolar, borderline, ocd, add, narcissism, schizoid, etc, for example, because their symptoms appear the same. But the underlying causes, or internal mechanism can be quite different, and the same goes for solutions. On top of that, it's quite common for autistic people to have both autism and, say, ADD.
Personally I feel that we often spend too much time thinking about causes, perhaps because of the history of psychology. Causes are only relevant insofar that they require different solutions, and spending too much time dwelling on a cause can often itself become a problem.
You could argue that the cause is being bullied as a child, but you can also argue that the cause is autism. I'd say both are true, but as long as the solution is the same it doesn't really matter.
Unfortunately it's a bit more complicated than that in reality. Many high-functioning autistic people are often initially misdiagnosed with bipolar, borderline, ocd, add, narcissism, schizoid, etc, for example, because their symptoms appear the same. But the underlying causes, or internal mechanism can be quite different, and the same goes for solutions. On top of that, it's quite common for autistic people to have both autism and, say, ADD.
Personally I feel that we often spend too much time thinking about causes, perhaps because of the history of psychology. Causes are only relevant insofar that they require different solutions, and spending too much time dwelling on a cause can often itself become a problem.