Yeah, of course. When a "normal" person asks for a reasonable accommodation--like being able to wear a smooth cotton polo alternative they bought with their own money rather than the piqué fabric one assigned by the company--they get "wow you want to be so special and unique, no you need to wear the shirt assigned by the company and get over it." Is it any surprise that someone would want to go get an autism diagnosis or whatever else so they can... just wear the damn shirt that doesn't make them half-grimace at all the customers?

They're going to be accused of wanting the special and unique stamp in either case, but at least in the second one they can feel somewhat comfortable.

People will, of course, conjure up an unreasonable accommodation (in an attempt to paint all accommodations as unreasonable) in their head to try to justify why this sort of request can't be accommodated, which just increases the fuel for the desire to get the autism diagnosis.

Put another way, if people were a little more accepting, less only-slightly-weird people would be seeking these diagnoses.

> People nowadays are just desperate to have a diagnosis. Everybody wants to be special and unique

I've never managed to understand this when it comes to autism. Autism used to be considered something as extreme as a severe disability (e.g. Rain Man), and latterly with the inclusion of Asperger's into the spectrum, at the very least a collection of undesirable behavioural characteristics. Do people really want to be diagnosed with something wrong with them, or has the perception of autism shifted to at least neutral (if not positive)?

> Everybody wants to be special and unique, everybody wants a stamp on their forehead that says "I have [x]" "I am [x]".

Spend a moderate amount of time with some humans-- e.g., war veterans-- and you'll find that denial of a diagnosis is common enough to trivially disprove this statement.

"unique" and "diagnosis" are opposites. If you have a diagnosis then, by definition, you are part of a group of people with defined attributes.

Upon realizing "I just have anxiety" and there's "nothing wrong with me" it initially reduced my anxiety... then I wondered why I'm so fixated on some mirage of "normal" and my anxiety flared up again thinking about it way too much.

Anxiety with intrusive and obsessive thoughts is definitely a real phenomena, but nowadays it's just a sign I'm getting fussy and need a break or a nap.

People are desperate for an identity. It has always been that people would latch on to things that seem fitting for them - maybe they put a lot of stock in their identity as a soldier, or as a fan of a band, or maybe as a member of a group like skateboarders. And, interestingly, most of these historic manifestations also have an aspect of "stamp on their forehead advertising their identity" - patches, shirts, other identifying aesthetics from their community.

I think it's less a result of a desire to be special and more a result of the way that late stage capitalism will throw away anyone who doesn't fit into its narrow mold of what makes an "ideal employee". When only a small number of career paths provide a good quality of life and employeers can fire people at will, then any divergence from the ideal becomes a disability.