Shelena

I am sorry to hear that. I think your mother ignoring autism can be as harmful as her telling you have it while you don't. In both cases, you are not seen and accepted for who you are.

I have an official document stating that if I am incapable of making decisions, my parents are not allowed to make decisions for me and they cannot be with me in the room by themselves or touch me. I feel quite guilty about that, but I just cannot deal with what will happen otherwise.

Yes, definitely. I did have a lot of symptoms of trauma as a child, in hindsight. This provided an explanation for that in which my parents weren't blamed for it and it was just all on me again.

No apologies necessary, in my opinion. You did not mean anything negative and you did not know. I just wanted to explain the other side.

I can see that you did not mean anything offensive by it. However, I have had similar things happening to me (misdiagnosis of autism so my parents did not have to take responsibility for tramuatising me) and I might have responded similarly.

When someone imposes a diagnosis on you that is wrong and does it for selfish reasons, when you are a child, it is very harmful. It hurts your feeling of self worth to the core and makes you constantly question yourself and who you are. It takes a lot of strength to stop the selfdoubt and finally conclude that you do not have autism and that what you feel and think is correct and not what you have been told all your life by the people you were supposed to be able to trust. That is really a very difficult thing to do, because the anxiety that something is "wrong" with you after all is always there. It takes courage.

If you have been struggling with questioning yourself in this way and if you state that you are not autistic after all, then it is difficult to deal with a response suggesting that you might be wrong. That is almost painful.

I know that you did not mean it that way. There is no way you could have known if this is something you have no experience with. Also, I cannot say something about why someone else responds in a certain way. I might be wrong about that. However, when I read your question, I immediately got quite triggered as well. I guess I just wanted to explain where a response like this can come from in some cases.

Are you still in that situation or do you mean that that happened in the past? For me it got better once I left home. Although I was still in contact with her. Now it is much better, because I only occasionally have contact with her and only via text. It took me years to get there, but I did. I hope you do too if you have not already.

The same thing happened to me. I did not know it is a common thing! I was told I am autistic, but it turns out I have CPTSD. I think telling me I was autistic it was just an easy was to blame the ways in which I responded to being traumatised on me again.

I thought I was the only one! I really did not know that this is something that happens more often.

My mother managed to convince her psychiatrist to diagnose me with autism when I was 13. He told me that I had autism and that if I did not get treated, I would be alone forever and I would never be able to make friends. He also called it a handicap. No treatment was started, there was no help or anything after that. The psychiatrist told me and I never saw him again. My mother told everyone around her I was autistic and they all felt very bad for her, including me. I felt really sad she had me for a daughter and I hated myself for being who I was. I also was bullied in school and I thought it was my own fault because I was autistic and therefore I did stuff that made others bully me. I was the one in the wrong and it was just a response to that, I felt.

Turns out I am not autistic at all. Like, I had it checked out thoroughly and there was no doubt about it. I actually an able to emphasise with others better than average etc. I also have some really close friends, which I made once I was able to leave home. I do have CPTSD though from severe emotional neglect and psychological abuse.

It is so weird to see similar stories here. I know my social skills are fine, but I still feel insecure about my social functioning. I am always looking for stuff I might do wrong that confirms that I am autistic after all. I also still feel like something is fundamentally wrong with me and as if my existence is somehow an enormous burden for others. (This is not how I feel about autistic people, but it is how I was made to feel about myself by that diagnosis.) It is a feeling that is very difficult to change.

Thanks! Was looking for something more privacy focused. I had not found this one.

I actually agree with this. This technology should be open. I know that there are arguments to keep it closed, like it could be misused, etc. However, I think that all the scary stories about AI are also a way to keep attention away from the fact that if you have a monopoly on it, you have enormous power. This power will grow when the tech is used more and more. If all this power is in the hands of a commercial business (even though they say they aren't), then you know AI is going to be misused to gain money. We do not have clear insight in what they are doing and we have no reason to trust them.

You also know that bad actors, like dictatorial governments will eventually get or develop the technology themselves. So, keeping it closed is not a good way to protect it from that happening. At the same time, you are also keeping it from researchers who could investigate how to use and develop it further to be used responsibly and to the benefit of humanity.

Also, they relied on data generated by people in society who never got any payment or anything for that. So, it is immoral to not share the results with that same people in society openly and instead keeping it closed. I know they used some of my papers. However, I am not allowed to study their model. Seems unfair.

The dangers of AI should be kept at bay using regulation and enforcement by democratically chosen governments, not by commercial businesses or other non-democratic organisations.

Really nice! I like most of them, actually. I think the comic book ones are the best. Thank you and also thanks for the explanation. I have not that much experience with generating images yet. This definitely helps!

Why is mine so boring? :-(

Here it does a great job of reducing a text of 174 words to 172 words. 👍

(I do not want to complain too much. Usually it works and it is short enough for me to quickly read it.)