People see me with my heavily made-up face and think I can't be autistic because their kids are autistic and their kids hit themselves.... yeahhhh this makeup is covering bruises that I gave myself. So many of us have spent our lives hiding our autism from others because of the stigma. Getting a diagnosis could have meant losing more friends, being excluded even more, and receiving extra "support" that just makes you more of a target. The stigma starts to fade. We get assessed. We get diagnosed. But we don't get believed because we've had to hide it for so long And I didn't do a great job of hiding it either. People knew. They just didn't wanna say because of the stigma.