Could my symptoms be autism?

I have bipolar 1 disorder, anxiety, ocd, and ptsd… but some of my symptoms feel like they could be autism. The symptoms are sensory overload and being overwhelmed by my surroundings, food, clothing, etc., and getting very squirmy and fidgety to the point where I might also have vocal tics. This happens in different amounts every day. Sometimes I have very intense meltdowns where I scream and hit myself and can’t stop. But I make eye contact and can hold a conversation and understand facial expressions so my therapist thinks if I am on the spectrum it’s not severe. Thoughts on this? And does anyone experience similar?

Your answer

Gwilla

1y ago

I have sensory processing disorder, but not have not been diagnosed autistic. I get twitchy after being somewhere loud for too long and usually end up crying. I was diagnosed very young because of behavior like hitting myself and screaming, usually ending up with hyperventilating. What you described sounds exactly like what I feel like. Keep talking to that therapist. While I understand putting a name on it feels good, coping strategies are where it's at.

tinker22

1y ago

I recently found these ear plugs for people with sensory issues. They kinda look like ear phones. They are called engage and also loop. Amazon does have them.

Skylarkbard

1y ago

I feel like autism is better considered what does affect you vs what doesn't (i.e. the eye contact, conversations, etc.). Plenty of us can do those thing, but lots still don't like it or find it easy, or maybe they can sometimes but it costs more spoons than it's worth most of the time. Like other folks have said, self-diagnosis is pretty accepted, especially because an austism diagnosis is difficult and potentially expensive and not really worth it for a lot of folks.

Del97

1y ago

There’s a lot of overlap with ptsd and autism, you could have both or ptsd could be causing your symptoms. Also adhd and autism are highly co-occurring and have similar symptoms like the sensory issues, so it’s possible you have adhd and or autism in addition to ptsd. I would talk ab it w your mental health provider! I have c ptsd, autism/adhd, bpd, gad, sad, mdd and pmdd but most of it is caused by my ptsd and autism

Quinniffer

1y ago

I learned this from a social worker but PTSD can mimic autistic traits and symptoms such as you described making it extremely hard to differentiate between PTSD and Autism

Lukaangel

1y ago

makes sense to be autism due to the sensory overload (as well as the tics), and the meltdowns sound very like a common autism meltdown. I wouldn't say it would be adhd due to you mentioning the sensory overload with clothing and such - more common for autism to present this way maybe you need a second opinion from a different therapist/doctor because it's very common for some to have biases based on previous diagnosis (especially bipolar / pstd / bpd) additional note, severity of autism isn't really recognised within the community, and self diagnosis is commonly accepted within the autism community :)

Alyss

11mo ago

regarding the biases, I had to find a specialist in adult and afab diagnoses because I wasn't diagnosed as a kid, and years of masking made it hard to figure out. Just a thought if you wanted to go that route.

tinker22

1y ago

I am autistic you described me. I don't understand some facial expressions. There are songs that don't make sense because of how they are worded. The same with billboards. The sensory is awful. I had a tag that I ripped off of my underwear on Friday. It felt like it was burning my skin. I googled female symptoms for autistics. I know men and women are different. I hope this helps.

DitsyDiabetic

1y ago

Hey, Bipolar 1 and autism here! Based on what you said, i would tend to agree. However, it could just be severe adhd instead of autism… that has the same symptoms you mentioned to some degree, but I’m unsure. You could explore embrace-autism.com for more recourses. Hope this helps

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