Is this the case that was being watched because, as part of the settlement, the Sackler family was likely to be granted immunity?

I appreciate this community and am grateful for the work you do to organize it and support its growth!

My anecdotal experience is that my pain threshold is much higher when I’m in a particularly critical phase of my depression

Thank you, hearing that my words were valuable to you is probably the most valuable gift you could have given

What you describe is eerily similar to my story. In summary, being so good at masking all the various symptoms of depression/anxiety/autism that I never considered it possible I was autistic. My entire life I’ve never belonged to the group I was participating with, I was always a step removed because the “language” of the group wasn’t native and took a degree of effort/concentration to use. That’s a tangent…

The question was raised by a new friend a few years ago and I finally got professionally evaluated a few months ago. Yeah, I’m obviously autistic.

Having that label, in my experience, has been intensely validating. No longer was my status as a social failure an implication of my lack of effort or disrespect for others or oversensitivity. Now I knew that I didn’t fit for a reason, a reason outside my control and not just laziness or selfishness.

That separation–being other, not belonging–absolutely still exists and it still is painful but now the difference I guess is that I know I’m not imagining it.

To your case; maybe getting evaluated could be a good idea. It opens up access to workplace accomplishments [EDIT: accomodations] that can, so easily, make a living less painful to earn. Or it can just bring a sort of peace-of-mind like mine did.

The label itself isn’t terribly important. So long as you understand yourself and are comfortable with who you are, maybe you don’t need a doctor to certify that you are exactly this-kind-of-weird. I went into my evaluation expecting I wouldn’t qualify for an autism diagnosis but rather satisfied already with my own conviction that I was not neurotypical.

I am lost too
~ English Native Speaker

God fuck, this is such a beautiful illustration of how well you understand each other! I hope the two of you enjoy to the fullest the time that you share!

Congratulations!

That first exception was the exact reason I dismissed my first Mental Health Professional’s suspicion that I might be autistic. I could understand others’ emotions and I could reliably recognize them. These are stereotypically weaknesses of individuals with autism and so clearly I must not be autistic.

Roughly five years after that question was raised I was finally evaluated at nearly thirty years old and diagnosed as Definitely Autistic.

As my (entirely layman) understanding of autism / Autism Spectrum Disorder has evolved I’ve come to realize that this set of DOZENS of symptoms that has collectively been associated with what is referred to as Autism cannot be independently relied on for the diagnosis of autism. The presence or absence of any single one of them, or even any particular group of them, isn’t a reliable indicator of the verifiability of a diagnosis.

(It is my impression that-) Autism is a large umbrella that has been given to a vaguely associated set of symptoms which may or may not be truly related to each other but do appear together an apparently significant fraction of the time.

(It is therefore also my impression that-) The diagnosis of Autism by a mental health professional is little more than a legal loophole for the purposes of seeking professional and medical accomodations etc. I recognize that some mental health professionals have studied this far more than I have but I don’t believe the common understanding of even the bleeding edge of medical knowledge is capable of determining the “healthier” side of what is referred to as the “Autism Spectrum”.

\

I was mostly sober when I began typing this comment but I think I lost the point I intended to make about halfway through my last drink.

Holy fucking goddamn christ your description of how you parent your child is so incredibly heartwarming! God, if every parent could care like you the world would be a paradise within two generations!

naturally…

Sir… (said I, “or Madam truly-”)
I believe you have identified the issue exactly. How does a person do this “natural” thing or, if it does somehow happen, how does a person avoid interfering with its progress?