7 ms·

I’m not a woman but I do this too. It really just came from others’ negative reactions to certain behaviors I would do, which taught me that it’s not acceptable

I’m not a woman but I do this too. It really just came from others’ negative reactions to certain behaviors I would do, which taught me that it’s not acceptable to behave in those ways around “normal” people. (Like some of the women in the article I knew I wasn’t normal but didn’t know why.) Ironically, I have gotten so good at this that I sometimes get annoyed when a person I am talking to acts “weird”. I feel “lucky” in that I’m not too far off from normal, whatever that is, on the spectrum. But I still find it exhausting and depressing, like they do. I have also had the feeling that certain friendships and relationships are fake because I act differently to who I am when around those people. I don’t feel that anyone at work really knows me. I don’t think it is worth trying to be yourself at work, even disregarding the spectrum stuff. The bit about the difficulties with diagnosing autism in women is also interesting. There are many similar situations in regard to mental health, for example women are diagnosed as borderline much more often.

watwut 9y ago
Why are women more likely to be diagnosed borderline?
- rosser 9y ago
  Not least because of gender assumptions (see, e.g., implicit bias) on the part of the clinicians.
- draw_down 9y ago
  https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2007/10/the_diagnosis_of_borderline_pe.html https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2007/10/the_diagnosis_of_bor...
- Geeek 9y ago
  The same reason why schizophrenia, ADHD and a plethora of others are more likely to be diagnosed in men? We diagnose on symptoms not on biological origins.
- SolaceQuantum 9y ago
  I found a googleable meta study about it that concluded that BPD traits were associated with women, but also that women who don’t express gender normal behavior are perceived as BPD by men. Although men scored higher in individual BPD behaviors, they were not perceived as BPD by themselves or others unless they behaved outside of gender normal behavior (acted more “feminine”). There’s a genetic component by a twin study, but it’s unknown it’s causative effect to gender. There’s studies that women score higher in neuroticism(anxiety, depression, etc) as a personality trait. It is also known child trauma has a causative effect, and may be related to how women are sexually assaulted as children at higher rates than men. Basically, a complex mix of social expectations, social bias, how women are treated in society, and biological aspects of women’s personalities may contribute to an overall significantly higher rate of BPD diagnosis being a female diagnosis. Interestingly, a disorder on the same axis (antisocial personality disorder) has an exact opposite gender disparity (3:1 men over women) and that is also investigated in other studies. http://www.sakkyndig.com/psykologi/artvit/skodol2003.pdf http://www.sakkyndig.com/psykologi/artvit/skodol2003.pdf [2003]
  - lulmerchant 9y ago
    How people perceive others is irrelevant to the question. Women are more often clinically diagnosed with BPD, not simply perceived by others to express it. The rest of your post is mostly unsupported speculation. Apart from the parallel you've drawn with APD, which has a lot of similarities to BPD, except with inverse gender distribution.
    - SolaceQuantum 9y ago
      Nothing I wrote wasn’t a conclusion of a paper or genetic study, as according to the meta paper that attempted to understand all facets of why women make the majority of the BPD diagnosis. I understand that because humans are not formally mathematically provable, some conjectures may be made from surveys, genetic relations, and studying behavior to attempt to reverse engineer the program that produced this societal result.
      - 9y ago
opportune 9y ago
> It really just came from others’ negative reactions to certain behaviors I would do Isn't this how everyone learns social skills? Maybe for you (and me) this just occurs a little later in life than most.
- draw_down 9y ago
  Maybe. It just seemed to me as a child that I would rather often do things that other kids wouldn't think to do in the first place, and then get mildly made fun of for it.
  - sudosteph 9y ago
    I can relate. I think kids are actually much better at grasping when something is "off" with other kids than adults are. They know who the weird ones are, and they'll definitely let you know if it's you... though if you're like me you may be oblivious to a lot of it. The worst was always when they would pretend to be nice so they could get you to make an even bigger fool of yourself when you finally felt safe enough to be yourself :(
- watwut 9y ago
  To some extend. Neurotypical people do this without effort or thinking, it happens "automaticaly". You might even be unaware of the process, you just sorta kinda feel weird or bad after doing whatever caused negative reaction previously. Autistic have to think about situation and memorize it the same way as normal people memorize writers and their books for school.
  - fps 9y ago
    I don't believe you. Either that or I've never in my life encountered a "neurotypical" child. Figuring out which behaviors are appropriate/inapproriate and changing accordingly, through self awareness and peer feedback, is most of what growing up is. Some people don't outwardly display as much effort, but it requires effort from everyone.
    - 9y ago
mar77i 9y ago
When I was in school I noticed I was off and completely not up to other people's magic sauce - whatever they did that I wasn't able to compete with. As for school it always left me a bit dizzy by cramming in all the subjects and leaving out all the cool details at a pace that just blurred everything for me. I only got to know fun with people in various subcultures, and the more off people around me were, by looks or by spirits, the less I needed to worry about fitting in and learned to simply enjoy myself. Until I realized what the actual problem was. Most people tend to make life hard for themselves by needing to fit in and pretending and aspiring. It's okay. Let go and drop your misery and do whatever the hell you happen to think is best. If you want to build a UFO and take over the world, please go do it. Autism is a terrible name for whatever slight - or not so slight - imbalance of mental traits, and seeing the shit that regular people mutter you're probably better than that anyway - because you wouldn't believe what an autist's mental hygiene is like.
- kasey_junk 9y ago
  I’m not trying to argue against your premise about fitting in. I would like to point out that autism is an actual specified condition. Being socially different or feeling inept about social situations does not put you on the autistic spectrum. In some ways it’s incredibly insulting to imply that any discomfort in social settings is a sign of autism. Not least because is implies that autistic people can’t be capable, extroverted and able in social settings, which they absolutely can be.
  - itronitron 9y ago
    A result of articles like this one which describes experiences of people with autism is that many of the readers without autism will attribute some of those adaptation behaviors as an indicator for autism. It would be nice if the article provided more detail on the actual condition, the tests for it, and how it differs from the common 'i am a human' anxiety. Virtually everyone, men included, has experienced the same things that the article describes as being experienced by women with autism. I think there is a risk with these sorts of articles that many people will make a lot of unwarranted assumptions about other peoples' abilities and behaviors.

watwut 9y ago

Why are women more likely to be diagnosed borderline?

rosser 9y ago
Not least because of gender assumptions (see, e.g., implicit bias) on the part of the clinicians.
draw_down 9y ago
https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2007/10/the_diagnosis_of_borderline_pe.html https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2007/10/the_diagnosis_of_bor...
Geeek 9y ago
The same reason why schizophrenia, ADHD and a plethora of others are more likely to be diagnosed in men? We diagnose on symptoms not on biological origins.
SolaceQuantum 9y ago
I found a googleable meta study about it that concluded that BPD traits were associated with women, but also that women who don’t express gender normal behavior are perceived as BPD by men. Although men scored higher in individual BPD behaviors, they were not perceived as BPD by themselves or others unless they behaved outside of gender normal behavior (acted more “feminine”). There’s a genetic component by a twin study, but it’s unknown it’s causative effect to gender. There’s studies that women score higher in neuroticism(anxiety, depression, etc) as a personality trait. It is also known child trauma has a causative effect, and may be related to how women are sexually assaulted as children at higher rates than men. Basically, a complex mix of social expectations, social bias, how women are treated in society, and biological aspects of women’s personalities may contribute to an overall significantly higher rate of BPD diagnosis being a female diagnosis. Interestingly, a disorder on the same axis (antisocial personality disorder) has an exact opposite gender disparity (3:1 men over women) and that is also investigated in other studies. http://www.sakkyndig.com/psykologi/artvit/skodol2003.pdf http://www.sakkyndig.com/psykologi/artvit/skodol2003.pdf [2003]
- lulmerchant 9y ago
  How people perceive others is irrelevant to the question. Women are more often clinically diagnosed with BPD, not simply perceived by others to express it. The rest of your post is mostly unsupported speculation. Apart from the parallel you've drawn with APD, which has a lot of similarities to BPD, except with inverse gender distribution.
  - SolaceQuantum 9y ago
    Nothing I wrote wasn’t a conclusion of a paper or genetic study, as according to the meta paper that attempted to understand all facets of why women make the majority of the BPD diagnosis. I understand that because humans are not formally mathematically provable, some conjectures may be made from surveys, genetic relations, and studying behavior to attempt to reverse engineer the program that produced this societal result.
    - 9y ago

opportune 9y ago

> It really just came from others’ negative reactions to certain behaviors I would do Isn't this how everyone learns social skills? Maybe for you (and me) this just occurs a little later in life than most.

draw_down 9y ago
Maybe. It just seemed to me as a child that I would rather often do things that other kids wouldn't think to do in the first place, and then get mildly made fun of for it.
- sudosteph 9y ago
  I can relate. I think kids are actually much better at grasping when something is "off" with other kids than adults are. They know who the weird ones are, and they'll definitely let you know if it's you... though if you're like me you may be oblivious to a lot of it. The worst was always when they would pretend to be nice so they could get you to make an even bigger fool of yourself when you finally felt safe enough to be yourself :(
watwut 9y ago
To some extend. Neurotypical people do this without effort or thinking, it happens "automaticaly". You might even be unaware of the process, you just sorta kinda feel weird or bad after doing whatever caused negative reaction previously. Autistic have to think about situation and memorize it the same way as normal people memorize writers and their books for school.
- fps 9y ago
  I don't believe you. Either that or I've never in my life encountered a "neurotypical" child. Figuring out which behaviors are appropriate/inapproriate and changing accordingly, through self awareness and peer feedback, is most of what growing up is. Some people don't outwardly display as much effort, but it requires effort from everyone.
  - 9y ago

mar77i 9y ago

When I was in school I noticed I was off and completely not up to other people's magic sauce - whatever they did that I wasn't able to compete with. As for school it always left me a bit dizzy by cramming in all the subjects and leaving out all the cool details at a pace that just blurred everything for me. I only got to know fun with people in various subcultures, and the more off people around me were, by looks or by spirits, the less I needed to worry about fitting in and learned to simply enjoy myself. Until I realized what the actual problem was. Most people tend to make life hard for themselves by needing to fit in and pretending and aspiring. It's okay. Let go and drop your misery and do whatever the hell you happen to think is best. If you want to build a UFO and take over the world, please go do it. Autism is a terrible name for whatever slight - or not so slight - imbalance of mental traits, and seeing the shit that regular people mutter you're probably better than that anyway - because you wouldn't believe what an autist's mental hygiene is like.

kasey_junk 9y ago
I’m not trying to argue against your premise about fitting in. I would like to point out that autism is an actual specified condition. Being socially different or feeling inept about social situations does not put you on the autistic spectrum. In some ways it’s incredibly insulting to imply that any discomfort in social settings is a sign of autism. Not least because is implies that autistic people can’t be capable, extroverted and able in social settings, which they absolutely can be.
- itronitron 9y ago
  A result of articles like this one which describes experiences of people with autism is that many of the readers without autism will attribute some of those adaptation behaviors as an indicator for autism. It would be nice if the article provided more detail on the actual condition, the tests for it, and how it differs from the common 'i am a human' anxiety. Virtually everyone, men included, has experienced the same things that the article describes as being experienced by women with autism. I think there is a risk with these sorts of articles that many people will make a lot of unwarranted assumptions about other peoples' abilities and behaviors.