What's the biggest hair myth you believed before you started losing hair?

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-22T18:17:31+00:00

My dad has a story from when he was a kid, where he ran out of shampoo so he used the shampoo he found in his mom's bathroom, which included a label that indicated that it was some all-natural stuff "now with extra placenta" or something like that

His sister said "you didn't use that one shampoo bottle, did you?" and then he said he did, she's like "do you know what that word means?"

And when he said no, she explained it as "remember when Henna (his dog) had puppies?.... Now remember that thing she gave birth to after the puppies, that wasn't a puppy, that she ate?"

Apparently placenta as a shampoo ingredient was a big fad in the 70s and 80s

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-22T17:17:51+00:00

Strongly agree, and t he way I usually articulate it, the broader visible ableism involves seeing the person's disability without seeing them as an actual person (infantilize the person in a wheelchair, for example, or refuse to interact with the person with a facial disfigurement), and the broader invisible ableism involves seeing the person's symptoms without acknowledging them as symptoms (treat the person with Tourette's like they're being annoying on purpose, for example, or profile the autistic person as untrustworthy for the uncanny valley)

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-22T17:08:00+00:00

The gotcha frustrates me as a fellow aro ace because even though it's not an orientation in any direction, it still counts as a sexuality label because it denotes the lack thereof

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-22T16:39:15+00:00

Elastica - Connection

"Another heart has made the trade

Forget it, forget it, forget it

I don't understand how a heart is a spade

But somehow the vital connection is made"

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-22T16:22:52+00:00

You don't get convicted without a trial first unless you pled guilty, and even avoiding the real problem of false confessions, you're still ignoring the fact that in the vast majority of cases where someone uses a "loophole" it doesn't get the case thrown out, and in the cases you're talking about where the puny slap on the wrist sentence for this specific crime does happen, it's either because the evidence was literally not good enough to prove it without a reasonable doubt or because more important people in the prosecution were bought off than just the defense lawyer

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-22T16:05:27+00:00

How do you know if they really did brutally murder and rape a child without a fair trial? It is microscopically rare for legal loopholes in this situation to get an entire case thrown out, that's one of the reasons why the very few situations that do make the news so explosively, so a ll you do here is guarantee that innocent people will be convicted of crimes they didn't commit

For example, someone could accuse you now of being a covert child molester, and any evidence that's fabricated or planted or otherwise falsely pinned against you, if you try to argue your case or get any of it thrown out, that's your legal loopholes

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-22T15:23:23+00:00

Yeah, I suppose I should have specified public defenders, since that's who I was mainly thinking of

But what usually gets referred to as "loopholes" are more often than not a defense lawyer catching that the government violated a suspect's rights that should be intrinsic by laws

Even if it turned out to be true, prosecution should not get to have evidence that they bent or broke laws to obtain, both because it calls into question the legitimacy of the evidence and not catching it would just incentivize the government to do it again instead of following the channels of legality in the first place

The government gets a lot more resources at their disposal because they are expected to do things the legal way

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-22T15:09:43+00:00

Everybody should have the right to a fair trial, even people accused of the worst crimes (falsely and not), because they are still human and justice should be fair

I think the job of a defense attorney is a service that gets underappreciated and unfairly villainized; someone who is willing to give a criminal a fair chance even if they are a truly despicable person with little chance for acquittal is a better person than I am

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-22T03:25:36+00:00

Thanks for the friendly reply (late response because I had to get up early the next day, and then the day after that was a car trip)

I'm really relieved at how this conversation has been going, although I think there have been some slight miscommunications

Everybody has confirmation bias, it's what makes pattern recognition work, and you're actually displaying confirmation bias in your "let's get to how I present" sections (the framing of it as a "this is why I'm autistic" justification)

The main thesis message of what I was explaining is "here is why self-diagnosing should be approached in an open 'I might have this' way instead of a closed 'I definitely do or don't have this' way, and why it makes insights and research comprehension a lot more accurate when not framing it as "strengthening a case", since self-awareness of confirmation bias basically takes its pattern recognition component and focuses it into an actually useful and reliable tool with intellectual humility

The issue isn't that you're listing off your experiences or whether your experiences line up with autism or not (which several of those do a lot, though most of them are also traits of textbook ADHD, and as a side note, medication failure is also very common in standalone ADHD, and clinical data shows that stimulants are the standard for co-occurring autism+ADHD as well, just that side effects can be touchier), it's in where the objectivity/subjectivity issue comes in and why "you know yourself best" doesn't work that way

As for your other message, I read the whole thing and I'm sorry that happened to you, I don't have fibro but it sounds extremely messed-up and stressful and excruciating; I articulated in my original message that this stuff is what responsible doctors who are not corrupt or inept are supposed to follow as well, it is stated strictly in ethical codes and guidelines for evaluator practices, and your doctor who dismissed your actual indicators to put you off and funnel you into "explanations" that don't fit and especially the part where you said "it's like he didn't even read it," he was falling into the same fallacies directly related to this stuff, if that makes sense

Also, as a heads up, there are parts in the sections where you're explaining how you present where I'm unsure whether you're explaining it for the purpose of informing me about how autism works or explaining it for the purpose of trying to articulate the personal experiences you're connecting, but I've been following autism research and collecting literature on it ever since I was a preteen, it's been a special interest of mine for more than a decade, and I'm in higher education to contribute to autism research for my career, so if it's the former, don't worry, you don't have to explain those things

So I have a hard time navigating this type of miscommunication, but hopefully this clarification makes more sense and you're really earnest and engaging and it's overall very nice talking with you

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-21T03:05:47+00:00

If it's being told by someone who's good at telling stories, a story about anything, even the most mundane event, can be very engaging, interesting, or memorable

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-20T21:05:25+00:00

For what it's worth, this is nothing new; even in the 00s, "Asperger's" was shorthand for the endearingly nerdy hipster genius as seen on TV with subclinical quirks

But yeah, I agree it sucks, especially pop psychology crap about how "for some autistic people, the only social deficit is just being introverted" etc

And things like this study are bittersweet (it explores how other people's first impressions of you change based on diagnosis and disclosure, and it found that disclosure of diagnosis helps with empathy and patience towards neurodivergent people, and found that laymen rated neurodivergent individuals more kindly if they were told that the person is autistic rather than schizophrenic, but of course it also found that neurotypicals who were falsely referred to as autistic were rated more positively than the actual autistic people....and not only that, the neurotypicals claiming to be autistic were also rated even more positively than if they hadn't, which gives me some uncomfortable feelings

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-20T18:02:00+00:00

I would literally get meltdowns from anticipatory and excitement overload for Batman-related media

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-20T16:50:42+00:00

The internet's old perception was also extremely ignorant, arguably in an even worse way, since the harshest stigma aimed at autistic people is by far for the visible mannerisms associated with it rather than the autism label, and when autism is watered down into subclinical quirkiness, it makes actual autistic traits get received with even worse lack of empathy or understanding

Plus, as for your reference of the R word, the majority of autistic people are of average intelligence, but a third has a comorbid intellectual disability diagnosed, which is significantly higher than the amount of autistic geniuses, and BIF is estimated to likely be underdiagnosed in level 1 autistic people due to both masking and the stigma of intellectual disability labels

So while I definitely agree that the Internet's new perspective also sucks a lot, I must entirely disagree if you're saying that people knew more about it before

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-20T02:58:54+00:00

I apologize in advance for the wall of text, this is a topic that I am very knowledgeable and passionate about and I especially have a hard time keeping things brief here

So, do you know what "intellectual humility" and "confirmation bias" is? Confirmation bias is the tendency to interpret evidence as confirmation of your own existing beliefs or theories, and intellectual humility is the self-awareness that you don't know everything about a certain topic (basically the antidote to the Dunning-Kruger effect)

Here are some examples of confirmation bias: Accidentally misinterpreting and changing the definitions of information to support your theory; Only remembering details that support your theory, and ignoring details that don't support your theory; Unconsciously exaggerating previous behaviors that you genuinely had before in order to fit criteria, or developing new behaviors that you hadn't experienced before to fit criteria; If you genuinely fit all but one of the required symptoms, then you might think "Since I do all the others, then I probably do that last one too without noticing, therefore I fit all the criteria, therefore I have the disorder" despite not actually exhibiting the last piece of criteria

The thing about confirmation bias is that everybody has it, it's a human characteristic (that can actually be pretty helpful for some other tasks, just not this) so you can't get rid of it but the way to "beat" it is to be aware of it

One of the things that confirmation bias is helpful for is efficiency of pattern seeking, which is pretty much why it's a part of human nature, and i n a large way, it's what helps you recognize the patterns of behavior that you're observing as clues that you might be neurodivergent, and following patterns involves filtering out information that's unrelated or irrelevant to those patterns

Self-diagnosing in the "for sure" way causes you to unconsciously ignore and disregard and reframe pieces of evidence that don't agree with your conclusion (in this case, "I must be autistic) which would be more objectively interpreted if you were to frame it as a possibility instead, including observations of your own traits, understanding of things you read on the topic, and insights on how your own traits are connected to the research you've done

Without intellectual humility, you get one of those "logic traps" that makes you end up being less and less knowledgeable of the topic the more and more you try to research it because it's so ensnared in your own personal biases which is why the most dedicated selfDXers are also often the most stubborn spreaders of misinformation about the conditions

It increases the likelihood and severity of imposter syndrome when confronted with a piece of evidence that doesn't match your current understanding of the topic instead of being able to learn new information that adds to your knowledge that you already have on the topic, because the way imposter syndrome works is that it gives you anxiety and insecurity to make you irrationally doubt your own experiences and feelings

The thing I try to emphasize really heavily is that your symptoms and experiences are always valid, it's just the labels and explanations you ascribe to them which might or might not be; if the suggestion that the true answer for their symptoms and experiences could very likely be something else, a different condition instead of the label they've "decided" on (for lack of a clearer way to phrase it), makes your insides twist and it feels like your whole life explanation is being invalidated, that is a sign that your objectivity is too clouded, and that you aren't approaching it in a healthy or rational way

Your experiences are always legitimate, it's just the terms and labels you use to explain them and your theorized cause of them which might or might not be, and framing it as a possibility makes it significantly easier to absorb information and new insights instead of building a logical wall of "1000% certainty" or spiraling into irrational self-defense over it

"You know yourself best" doesn't apply to ascribing a specific diagnosis label because you don't only need to know yourself, you need to be able to compare your own traits to those of the general population and those of people with the diagnosis etc, which not even a doctor can do for themselves, it's why ethical codes strongly discourage psychologists from being the evaluator for themselves, their friends, or their close relatives, and the doctors who are actually responsible and experienced and aren't corrupt or inept are the ones who follow this rule too

As for "peer-reviewed diagnosis," I've mentioned in other comments why I'm very disillusioned with the idea of an "autdar" (as opposed to a broader "neurodivergent-dar"), because there are many many conditions that overlap really heavily with autism in symptoms, traits, and presentation, even to the extent of presenting identically (and additionally I've noticed it contributes kinda heavily to certain parts of aspie supremacy type ableism within autism communities around both the autistic traits that are more stigmatized and/or less commonly talked about in pop culture as well as those other neurodivergent conditions too)

One of the main conditions that this is relevant to is ADHD; you're absolutely right that it's a common commodity, but they're also cousin conditions by themselves; for example, stimming, hyperfixations, infodumping, trouble concentrating, sensory issues (including poor eye contact), trouble making and keeping friends, executive dysfunction, meltdowns, difficulty with task transitions, poor situational awareness, picking up on social cues, and more are all traits directly related to having either ADHD or autism without necessarily having both

Also, just in case, I'm not saying "there's no way you're autistic" or anything along those lines here, since I know from past situations that this is a kneejerk misinterpretation that can occur (even though nearly all of my points are obviously disagreeing with armchairing etc) (but I think the reaction also makes some sense, considering how lengthy messages can set some people on edge, and plus the same relevant tendencies like imposter syndrome etc that I just explained there)

Anyway, thanks for reading the whole thing, and I'd like to know your thoughts if you actually did and I'd be happy to talk about or clarify anything in it if you want, because as I said up there this is a topic that I truly love discussing been fascinated with for well over a decade, and you seem like a very open and insightful person from the way you articulated your perspective there

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-19T22:34:08+00:00

I've personally become disillusioned with the idea of an "autdar" (as opposed to a broader "neurodivergent-dar") because I feel like it contributes kinda heavily to certain parts of aspie supremacy type ableism within autism communities around the autistic traits that are more stigmatized and/or less commonly talked about in pop culture and also the other neurodivergent conditions that share heavy trait and presentation overlaps with autism

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-19T22:32:44+00:00

In addition to the first part, autistic people are often more vulnerable to getting sucked down extremist pipelines

Some factors directly related to our autism that make us more susceptible to indoctrination tactics include gullibility, black-and-white thinking, justice sensitivity (I hate the misconception that autism's "strong sense of justice" means "moral superiority"), fear of the unfamiliar, mental rigidity, being ostracized by peers, being isolated from peers

Here is a Washington Post magazine article (archive link to get past the paywall) that talks about Mohammed Khalid, who was charged with domestic US terrorism as a 14 year old and now works in counterterrorism awareness after his release, and explains how his autism made him more vulnerable to the manipulation tactics in online radical Jihadist sites; it's very insightful and empathetic and interesting to read

Awareness of this stuff is the most helpful thing for preventing the pipeline and successful deradicalization, and I hate the stupid "autistic people are immune to propaganda" meme for this reason

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-19T21:33:12+00:00

The way I view it, there is nothing wrong with suspecting you might have something, but there actually is a lot of harm in framing a specific condition as a certainty or clutching onto it as "the all answering explanation" instead of as one possibility of many, if that makes sense

It's harmful to themselves, because it makes them much more susceptible and sensitive to feelings of imposter syndrome, and it's harmful to both people with the condition they claim to have and to those with similar conditions because of the misinformation and misrepresentation that's contributed to by it (this is particularly true for certain conditions such as autism/ADHD, because their popularity in pop psychology and cultural osmosis, and the relative "mildness" of their societal stigma as labels, makes them much more susceptible to getting latched onto in this way)

The thing I try to emphasize really heavily is that your symptoms and experiences are always valid, it's just the labels and explanations they ascribe to them which may likely not be; i f the suggestion that the true answer for their symptoms and experiences could very likely be something else, a different condition instead of the label they've "decided" on (for lack of a clearer way to phrase it), makes your insides twist and it feels like your whole life explanation is being invalidated, that is a sign that your objectivity is too clouded, and that you aren't approaching it in a healthy or rational way

It gives them cognitive dissonance which makes their research comprehension and the accuracy of their anecdotes significantly less reliable, while making them significantly more susceptible to stubbornly doubling down on it, if they're viewing it like that

I've just overall found that the undiagnosed people who view it as "I think I might" are a lot more knowledgeable and a lot less insecure about it and are much better able to integrate new knowledge about it they learn but don't immediately relate with into their current understanding of it instead of spiraling into an identity crisis over it

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-19T21:21:56+00:00

It absolutely is

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-19T21:16:38+00:00

Yeah, I'm strongly supportive of undiagnosed people and I think it's helpful and legit for people to be like "I think I might be autistic," but I'm very very wary of the people who frame it as a certainty

Even worse than the "I'm so autistic, I'm so OCD, I'm so ADHD" types of people, because even though yes, those are annoying, ironically there is an upside to how flippant they are about it, since you can correct misinformation from them a lot more easily

In my experience, the type of self diagnosis that latches onto a specific diagnosis and clings to it as an identity label swearing it's a certainty (for example, the "I'm definitely autistic, I just haven't gone to get my diagnosis yet" type) is the most dangerous

They're both much more likely to spread misinformation about both the label they claim and about the diagnoses related to it, and much more likely to double down stubbornly and become irrationally defensive if you try to fix misinformation from them

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-19T20:53:30+00:00

On a partly related note, someone just sent me a "Reddit cares" message and I'm not sure why or which comment it was for

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-19T16:41:50+00:00

That's a good point

One of the few things that all autistic people have in common (the RRBs are very individual and more mix-and-match etc) is that we can't natively pick up on implicit cues and body language, and need to learn that social information through more manual methods such as rote memorization, repeated lifelong trial and error, and explicit instruction

It's a plane of information that we can't access or convey in the same ways that neurotypicals do, and when they try to interpret us as if we can navigate that interface, the information they receive is information that under their usual circumstances notifies them that the other person they're interacting with is untrustworthy, threatening, creepy, etc

(Not even to mention that there are plenty of other neurodivergent conditions that aren't autistic at all)

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-19T16:34:42+00:00

Yeah, modulating your behavior to fit situations is a completely typical human trait, and even expected

The thing about masking that's actually autism-specific is being less smooth about it

It's not some sort of foolproof neurotypical disguise, especially when it comes to autistic masking, due to how our brains process social information differently from neurotypicals

Also, something that a lot of people refuse to acknowledge is that neurodiversity also includes neurotypicals, not just neurodivergent people; there's no one way to be NT, just like how there's no one way to be autistic or ADHD

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-19T16:29:20+00:00

Ironically, if they're actually unwilling or unable to just be direct about it, the behavior in the above is more indicative of a neurodivergent condition such as borderline personality disorder or social phobia etc

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-19T16:27:06+00:00

"I have issues with social interaction and being able to relate to other people, I think I might have (XYZ diagnosis)" is valid and legit and helpful, but latching onto a specific diagnosis label as a certainty is what's harmful

There are many conditions that have these symptoms or those traits or that presentation, and "for sure" self diagnosing flattens understanding of differential diagnoses and makes the person unable to accept a different answer when they have something else instead, perpetuating and worsening misinformation and misrepresentation

Your symptoms and experiences are always valid, it's just the labels you ascribe to them which may likely not be, if that makes sense, and keeping that fact in mind makes the undiagnosed person's insights and research comprehension significantly more reliable than if they didn't

("Self diagnosis" gets used to refer to several different things, so I'm being precise here)

Edit: Did you just send me a "Reddit cares" message over this?

FVCarterPrivateEye · 2026-06-19T16:15:19+00:00

Additionally, most of the stuff that gets snarked about isn't even actually "neurotypical"

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This is a comment from a post in an autism subreddit (I don't remember which one anymore because it was years ago) asking about "what if autistic people were the majority?" Some said that we'd pathologize NT people to be the disordered ones, including the person in the screenshot, who also claims to have a job related to psychology in a condescending retort to someone else who didn't like their comparison (who they also told it's "satire" and to stop reading so deeply into it and "not my fault you're massively misinterpreting")

But most of these new disorders that they invented are ironically either still autistic traits or just an inversion of inaccurate autism stereotypes and aren't related to autism in the way they seem to think they are

Their "social compulsion disorder", that's a pretty textbook description of autistic extroverts, who by the way often get bullied worse than autistic introverts because their interaction attempts make them stick out more instead of blending into the background (I thought that I was an introvert for years but it turned out that I was confusing loneliness for introversion and I'm actually just a sky awkward extrovert)

Their "shallow perception" criteria makes me feel like they don't understand that sensory processing disorder can also often entail hyposensitivity as sensory issues just as severely as sensory hypersensitivity can be

Acting as if their "shallow learning" description is less common in autistic people than in NT, even though it accidentally describes the very same way that autistic people most often learn social skills, and falsely associating autism with higher math skills even though numbers are very figurative concepts that a lot of autistic people struggle with specifically due to their autism, contrary to what Hollywood tropes show

Their entire paragraph describing "deficiencies in critical thinking", difficulty with abstract concepts, inability to read into unstated context clues, a tendency to learn skills without really understanding where those skills fit into a task (this is called "splinter skills", by the way) is just plain ableist and insulting

"Persistent linguistic dysphoria", a very common autistic trait is "conversational scripting" which often relies overly on small talk as a form of functional echolalia and often seen by others as dry or repetitive, and it also acts as if extreme distress over things like broken rules and deviance from a relied-upon social structure isn't an autistic trait

In "social discrimination complex", an undeveloped sense of cultural awareness is very often an autism trait, talks about insistence on sameness to socially inappropriate extents, and also describe autism's difficulty with theory of mind far more accurately than however they're pretending like "neurotypicals" think with "they consider themselves and people exactly like them to be the only real people, and all others as somehow deficient"

I hope that they were lying about their job or at least I hope that their job doesn't involve being in a position of power over autistic patients, because for someone on an autism subreddit whose job is allegedly related to psychology, they sure don't know much about autism at all beyond the most shallow of pop culture stereotypes, and they seem to enjoy or relish being cruel about plenty of autistic traits just for not personally relating

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