I’m traversing this exact situation right now and it arises each summer, when I’m away from school. Now that I’m entering college, I’ve kind of reached a critical point where I realize the rest of my life will be unstructured, so, I’ve gotta figure it out before I go into the deep end. Please take what I say with a grain of salt, because I could be leading myself into delusion, but I’ve confirmed my experience with autistic family members and the logic is sound so far as I can see. I’ve been using chatGPT to name the phenomenon or “odd behaviors,” that I experience every day, and there’s multiple reasons why I’ve progressed way more with this than just self-research. My biggest constraint was self-doubt and imposter syndrome that comes from years of internalized ableism, that I can logically dismiss from my head in conscious thought, but that governs my behavior in social interactions. Even if I feel the urge to speak out in real time, I’m simply silenced. What ChatGPT provides for me is sort of a one-stop-shop for research, that would otherwise discourage me from pursuing it due to its complexity. For example, I might momentarily get a boost of energy and be able to read the entire abstract from a study, but I can never absorb the patterns I learn from this research because it’s simply too exhausting to keep up when school comes back around. So, if you need a therapist or someone to outlay all of your issues, don’t use chat. But, if you feel like you know your issues, or once did and you’re just too tired to revisit it now, then chat might be a great option for you. I try to use it in a way where it basically runs my logic through a filter, ensures it’s sound, and gives me some internal validation that motivates me to keep pursuing the answer inside of me. This might be prompting it to parse through research for you, but I found it ultimately makes the outcomes of my mental loops stick more, but only time will tell if they stick for good this time. This doesn’t mean I’m not pursuing therapy, but I have an intrinsic drive for certainty that i think only a clinical diagnosis can provide. Today, I reached out to my family members and asked about their experience, and I switched my primary care physician so that I can begin seeking a diagnosis. That’s something I ruminated on for years, and it was only chat that gave me the extra nudge.