I so strongly agree with this and it's not just based on my own experience, but many people I know.
Growing up broke and in sketchy places with sketchy people will induce plenty of anxiety. Then I managed to get out of all that as an adult and starting a career.
The anxiety never fully went away, but it now presents itself the way one would expect instead of "weirdness". Maturing and having a more stable life happened to my friends also and nobody says "I think I'm autistic" anymore like we did in high school and college. Now it's hard to distinguish if we were saying that to ourselves as a slur in self-deprecation, or if we really believed it. Young people are just awkward and too many people get older without letting go of the things they told themselves a long time ago.
Make of that what you will. I know my story is super common, but the only reason I bothered to write this is that it doesn't get said enough.
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.
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)?
It may genuinely be that their dog is their emotional support, but it's ultimately a bit of selfishness and wanting to be treated preferentially in a world that feels crowded and rigid.
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.
Either deliberately or because that's how all of the other train spotters/board gamers/coders they've ended up hanging out with are.
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.