forevrdreamingofbetterthings asked:

So I noticed that I was struggling a lot trying to figure out which of my symptoms were from autism & which were from fibromyalgia, when it hit me - there seems to be a LOT of overlap b/w them. And when I did some research I found that I'm not the only one thinking that /perhaps/ afabs like me w/ fibro (something pretty rarely diagnosed in amabs) are the """missing""" autistic afabs? epiphanyasd.blogspot( )ca/2014/01/fibromyalgia-and-perhaps-what-happened( )html - Thoughts?

adulting-with-autism answered:

I mean, I guess it’s possible some people are in that category, but looking at the symptoms of fibro it seems pretty unlikely. Fibro has no social difficulties - which are necessary to be autistic - category (beyond obviously what might be caused by being in pain) and ASD isn’t associated - at least in diagnostic literature - with pain, fatigue or IBS.

I personally think that the “missing” afabs are down to

1) Autism generally presenting differently and so being missed

2) Autism being seen as a little boy thing, including by a lot of medical professionals

Liz

[feministingforchange]

Hey thanks so much for responding Liz, I appreciate it! And yeah you may be right, but I had heard from multiple seemingly reliable sources that autism IS associated with pain, fatigue, & IBS? There’s also all the memory problems, concentration, word recall failures, meltdowns due to sensory overload, anxiety disorders like woah, lots of depression, and more (which all cause me many social problems). Honestly, I think this is still possible but it’s really hard to say at this point, and since I have both I can’t really tell when one stops and the other begins, you know? There really needs to be some solid research done on this, quite honestly. 

All that said, even if my suspicions are true, this still doesn’t explain everything. It just means that ASD may be getting diagnosed differently as fibromyalgia for some afabs, due in large part to social constructions around gender. :/

[sockknitteranon]

I have fibro, and can definitely say I’m allistic for sure. But that’s just my personal experience, I have no idea if I’m an outlier or what. But this is really interesting! I’ll have to ask H (my bff) about it.

[feministingforchange]

Thanks for spreading this post, I’d really like to hear what others have to say!

That said, I just wanna clarify that I definitely believe fibromyalgia exists on its own too, as a real neurological disorder separate from ASD. BUT, I believe that there is so much overlap between fibro and autism, and both are HIGHLY gendered - both in the ways in which health professionals talk about and diagnose them, and also in the ways they are discussed publicly (fibro = mostly women, autism = mostly little boys & men). 

So I’m quite curious about this, and it has become a bit of a special interest for me (since it’s so personal & both are already special interests of mine lol).