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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1318 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for April 22, 2026

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I am in my late 30s and I have discovered that I may be somewhat neurodivergent. I am suspicious of fad disorders, dislike therapy culture, and am skeptical of psychology, so I'm not your average self-diagnoser. I'm also one of the last people folks would suspect of being ND, as I am apparently "high-masking," and I successfully present as normal and likeable to other people 100% of the time--I've never had "social burnout" in front of others (though the crash does come hard afterwards when I am finally alone). While I'm still skeptical of this self-diagnosis, the explanatory and predictive power seems too specific and consistently correct for it to be cold-reading/horoscope style fluff.

I also have to laugh at myself a bit here, because I can recall more than once thinking thoughts along the lines of "how unusually open-minded I am, I can appreciate even the manifestos and effortposts of those loveable turbo-autists in the ratsphere and on The Motte." Welp.

In the grand scheme of things, this discovery is not a big deal because I'm no different than I was before I discovered this. I'm still a husband, son, father, friend, the same guy everyone has known and liked all along. It is a useful framework for understanding my own feelings and actions more clearly, though. It has made me feel less guilty about needing a lot of decompression time, and it has made me feel less pressure to socially "perform" in front of my wife (who I'm quite sure is even more ND than I am, though in different ways -- birds of a feather). It has been a weird but overall positive experience. Though I would be lying if I said there wasn't a tiny part of me that is sad that I'm not as "normal" as I once believed.

Have any of you realized this later in life? What was your experience?

I don't know that autism was ever firmly suspected in my childhood, but my mom did have several books on her bookshelf whose titles rounded off to "What To Do If Your Child Is A Weirdo" -- I believe some were about "Sensory Processing Disorder," which I understand was never in the DSM and the symptoms that were purportedly in the syndrome are understood to be more diagnostic of autism, and my social development was somewhat stunted. I was definitely a 'little professor', then and now, but my father is a professor, so perhaps that's not unexpected.

I didn't have friends as a kid, I had two friends in primary school and junior high, both of which were not great people who didn't care about me as a person. The neighbor kids tried to steal from my house. I didn't have a good friend until junior high, then only for a brief time -- a Latino guy who joked about Herman Cain with me. A nice guy, god bless him. In high school I made more friends, but it was hard, I came off as awkward and sheltered. I hung out with the math geeks but I was bad at math and I didn't like the kind of video games they enjoyed. I can't disambiguate my experiences between "neurodevelopmental problem that led to peer rejection that led to social anxiety" or "peer rejection that led to social developmental delays that led to social anxiety."

As far as I know, I don't have any relatives with either suspected or diagnosed autism. I do have first cousins with OCD, which would probably explain my excessive concern for contamination and orderliness. And I was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder and GAD as a teenager, and by no means are these fad diagnoses, and my answer to the miracle question would be "these things would be gone." If you actually have a mental disorder that interferes with your life and functioning, it's a source of shame and dysfunction rather than an identity marker.

My girlfriend asked me once whether I thought she was autistic, which came out of the blue and didn't seem likely to me -- she's more socially fluent than she thinks, and often notices nuances in people's communication that others don't notice. I think we're at a point where the "weird is good" millennial worldview has run its course, and social atomization has eliminated many of the ways that 'weird' people were integrated into and sustained by society, and so 'weird' people are desperate to find some kind of an explanation for why they don't fit in, when it may be partly biological, partly psychological, and partly civilizational. The fact that normies are starting to look like me scares me, a lot.

I think the autism rights people have actually won, in a lot of ways -- we're at a point where people with basic social anxiety disorder like to speculate about whether or not they're autistic, because autism feels like a good diagnosis, like unlocking a secret way of being human rather than an incapacity to engage in normal activities because of fear. It also means that the outcome is "baked in" rather than conquerable with effort: if you struggle socially because you have anxiety, it means you have all the right hardware to function normally but are afraid to use it and are behind on your software updates.

If you struggle because you're autistic, it means you're special and neurodivergent and you get to ask for accommodations instead of taking responsibility for your social development into your own hands. Unfortunately, I think there are many neurotypical people who wish to gain the compassion that the informed often feel for autistic people, without the struggle that autistic people often have to go through to function.

The "autistic people often end up with a cluster B wife" thing is funny, but more precisely I do wonder whether a lot of people who suspect they may have autism are actually people who may be closer to cluster A and C themselves. I do wonder if there are a lot of Avoidant and Schizoid folks who feel 'weird' in a way that overlaps somewhat with autism but are clinically and psychologically distinct.

If I had to say, I suspect I line up with the broader autism phenotype, and I do have concern that any children I may have may struggle neurodevelopmentally. I share your dislike of fad diagnoses, and I suppose my suspicion and dislike of people who do this is why I've written thousands of words across posts, comments, and journal entries trying to talk myself out of any conception that I might be autistic. If it's true, there are few to no adult accommodations, and autism evaluation in adults isn't a thing, and regardless of where I'd land I'd still be the same guy with the same problems; nothing would be fixed or improved by it.

Yes, this happened to me in my early 30’s too. I made a longer post about it when I joined this site.

It was a series of small things that added up over a long time, then one day I looked back and made the connection that it was likely autism.

  • I was heavily into Magic the Gathering for a ten-year period starting in high school.
  • I struggled with social milestones, especially romantic ones.
  • I am awkward in social situations. When I was younger it was giving short answers, fearing that I would run out of things to say, and trying to come up with social scripts to follow. Now it is noticing that I cycle through a lot of perspectives and think about wierd patterns/connections.
  • Frustrations with small talk, tribal political discussion, and people trying to peer pressure me into being on the right side and getting offended when I ask them to provide logical evidence for the belief they want me to go along with.
  • Ruminating over past social interactions and getting frustrated that I have a hard time saying the right thing at the right time.
  • Frustration when people use social manipulation to bypass the agreed upon rules, then I become obsessed with figuring out the actual unwritten social rules.
  • Openness to odd ideas and questioning the status quo.
  • Watching content about autistic people (like Asperger’s Are Us) and recognizing that it sometimes overlaps with my own behaviors.
  • Watching a streamer with a formal autism diagnosis and realizing he was high-masking and many people didn’t notice his autism unless he told them about it. His story matched a lot of my own experience.

It has made it easier to navigate life and look for situations where I fit in rather than trying to mask to prevalent social norms.

Though I would be lying if I said there wasn't a tiny part of me that is sad that I'm not as "normal" as I once believed.

I wrote something long and deleted it.

Your instinct to avoid fad diagnosis is in all likelihood spot on. People have an intense variety, you may have some things that you enjoy and are good at it and some that you do not.

Putting a label on it and embracing a diagnosis that may not be appropriate is poison. Enjoy your life and don't do that!

Well crap, maybe I am ND too. Is posting and enjoying other Motte posts a sign of ND? I feel similarly about that "open minded" thing.

Is posting and enjoying other Motte posts a sign of ND?

Yes. Not definitive, but it's a sign.

Sigh. Bit of a letdown to my ego, I rather enjoyed thinking of myself as open-minded.

The way I would describe myself (having been armchair diagnosed with autism by multiple acquaintances, much to my irritation) is that there's a difference between "kind of an autist" (guilty as charged) and "diagnosable as autistic" (The shrink I saw never brought it up, so if that's the case it isn't that obvious, and the guy was otherwise fairly dramatic with his assessments.). Whatever happened to being a bit weird, anyway?

If anything (I've always been something of a motormouth.), after getting a job at a bar I discovered that I am a lot more extroverted than I thought I was. It's still not perfect, runs hot and cold, and I'm not the best at approaching strangers, but I get bored sitting at home alone after awhile.

Mind you, there are other problems like pathological aversion to conflict and/or a screwed up attachment style, but I don't think those are an autism thing, more of a fucked up mommy issues thing (gag!).

I am in my late 30s and I have discovered that I may be somewhat neurodivergent.

Posting on TheMotte

Uh, anon...

Kidding aside, I had my own realization in my early 20s before it was such a common thing, and it was when I read about Dr Asperger's "little professors" and thought "oh shit." Turned out to be more complicated, but unsurprisingly parents in the all-too-common autist/cluster B pairing managed to produce a bunch of weirdo kids.

And really, that would be my main worry about someone figuring it out later in life: that they would've already fallen into the cluster B trap. It sounds like you avoided that, so everything else that stems from your realization can probably be managed.

Uh, anon...

lol, deserved.

Luckily I don't think I'm cluster B. I ended up well adjusted in external presentation, to the point where I can successfully hold leadership positions and be generally "well-liked." The tradeoff is that I have a near constant level of internal stress from maintaining the facade. I'm trying to figure out how to deal with that.

Turned out to be more complicated, but unsurprisingly parents in the all-too-common autist/cluster B pairing managed to produce a bunch of weirdo kids.

So that's why the other kids kept duct taping me to the flagpole...

fallen into the cluster B trap

Been there. Learned my lesson. Never again.

And really, that would be my main worry about someone figuring it out later in life: that they would've already fallen into the cluster B trap.

Do non-diagnosed autists often become narcissists/antisocial/borderline disturbed? Is that what you mean by cluster B trap? If so, how does that work?

No, by trap I mean male autists entering a relationship with a cluster B woman, specifically borderline or histrionic tendencies.

So, why are the autists more susceptible for falling for these women? Because they are more isolated and worse at reading people?

n=1 and those two factors definitely play their parts, but also - those types of woman are usually much less shy of showing direct, explicit interest in a guy and have no qualms about adapting their presentation to suit their interests (autistics tend to entirely miss the "traditional" green flags, and thus have no experience with courtship), and generally do most of the work of forming an attachment for him. The dreaded "I can fix her" impulse is also super effective against autistic-type mons, "reasonable" and "grounded" as they are (how hard can it be, really?). From the inside it definitely feels like a match made in heaven until the downsides slowly become apparent.

t. stepped on a landmine

A match made in heaven (hell). The naive and vulnerable vs the exploiter who can be most effective against such individuals.

I'd think being bad at reading people is exactly the reason why one would want to nope out of any relationship with a high-drama person. At least this is how it works for me. If you're bad at something, why get into a situation where your wellbeing may depend on being good at it?

You'd perhaps not have a benchmark to judge them against, and might be strung along by their interest in you.

Which is why, as a broad generality, I think (male) autists are prone to falling into the trap of a relationship with a cluster B woman. If they don't have a good benchmark to judge against (and perhaps have a bad benchmark like "women are crazy," which leads to "this woman is acting crazy, that's nothing unusual because all women are like that"), then they're less likely to see all the red flags for what the flags really are. They could be naive about other people's motivations (hence the quokka insult) and fail to recognize malicious or destructively selfish motivations under the woman's expressed interest in them.

As for why they might be prone to be targeted, they are likely presenting some behaviors (appearance of emotional stability, internal locus of control, unwillingness to go with the crowd, etc.) that histrionic/borderline types find attractive (see hysterical bonding proposed by McWilliams), and it's only later when the incompatibility in all these traits between the two people causes it all to end in tears.

and perhaps have a bad benchmark like "women are crazy," which leads to "this woman is acting crazy, that's nothing unusual because all women are like that"

Fortunately, I know for a fact it is not so (I am married to one of the counter-examples, but I know more than one). But it could be just my personal luck, could happen that I would never meet any.

Yes?

Id assume "worse at reading people" does most of the heavy lifting therr

I would suggest for, um, reasons, that Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a bigger risk. That thing where they decide that you are The Good Person and then chameleon-cloak themselves to appeal to you is super effective against quokkas.

This is why gatekeeping is super important. "Oh, you're telling me you're really into Curtis Yarvin after I mentioned him? Name 5 kings you'd grant absolute sovereignty."

As you describe it, that sounds more like BPD mirroring, but I'm not a doctor and don't even play one on tv.

The NPD version is more manipulative.

It's always been obvious to me. And to everyone around me. The only thing I realized later on was just how severe it is; how many forms of human activity I'm just fundamentally not suitable for or prohibitively inefficient in on account of my wiring. When I was young, I thought I could manage somehow. Now I see that, yeah maybe, but it's not worth the constantly high level of effort required when "normies" can do it by instinct. Better to focus on what I can do well.

Now I see that, yeah maybe, but it's not worth the constantly high level of effort required when "normies" can do it by instinct.

This was one of the big ones. I will still socialize, but I don't have to be as social as other people. I don't have to keep up with their energy. I'm allowed to go home early. I'm allowed to skip some social events. I'm allowed to be exhausted afterwards. The realization has helped me stop beating myself up so much.

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