Can trauma in early childhood cause autism-like symptoms?
Asking because I'm diagnosed as autistic but have spent the past SIX YEARS questioning if it was a misdiagnosis. I don't relate to autistic people. I understand allistic people well. I don't have most autistic traits. But I have a diagnosis.
In early childhood, there was body shaming. There was body dysmorphia. There was quite possibly emotional neglect.
Because of this, I had a few traits that could have been mistaken for autism. I barely ate (ED), I had social anxiety and selective mutism (probably caused by ED and bullying at school), I was alone most of the time, I allegedly struggled with change (although I don't remember this at all and actually remember being excited about big changes), I allegedly had limited facial expressions (although I do remember teaching myself to hide my emotions from a young age so it could have been that), I sometimes had outbursts (described as meltdowns but they weren't meltdowns), and I never asked for help.
But throughout my whole childhood, instead of actually looking into my individual issues and trying to get me genuine help, everyone just blamed these things on autism and instead got me "help" for my autism which didn't help at all.
Could these things have been caused by trauma or am I just autistic and deluding myself again? Obviously I'm not asking for a diagnosis or anything. I'm just interested in your opinions.