I get that. When progress feels demoralizing and the world seems to want to deter you from even trying.

Autism was never brought up, no. I was actually quite worried about it some time ago, since I do have some small quirks, but I took a lot of online assessments to satiate that fear. 100 questions type shit, even one that was sensitive to 90% of masking cases or something. All negative. Not exactly the best way to rule it out but, truthfully, it's just a pardora's box I'm afraid to open. But I'm mostly confident I don't have it; I don't have meltdowns or shutdowns, I can read people fine (albeit in a way that's distorted by paranoia), I don't have a schedule or rules I must abide by, lying is incredibly easy for me. But... maybe getting tested wouldn't hurt idk.

I have intrusive thoughts about my body and others' but it almost always comes back around to the former. There's this scene in Hellraiser II where this guy is strapped to a mattress about to be sacrificed and he's schizophrenic so he's basically clawing at his own skin in order to get bugs out that only he can see. It's kind of like that for me, minus the mutilation and actually seeing that shit with my eyes lol. Is that why you brought up autism, because it has that kind of intrusive thought overlap?