tl;dr I was abused for not adhering to scripted socially acceptable behavior by family concerned with their social image and control over me. This makes it hard for me to know what parts of my behavior/experience is possible autism versus the target of/result of narcissistic abuse. Can I have some input on disambiguating these issues, or help with figuring out if a clinician would be able/willing to fairly evaluate me for autism despite possible conflation of these issues?

I've been wondering if I'm on the spectrum since I was a teenager, so more than a decade now. I have not sought out official diagnosis for several reasons, but my biggest concern is that a psychiatrist may just assume that my behavior/issues are the result of narcissistic abuse instead of considering that abuse of this kind and autism can coexist. I would really love some input here from you all, I have yet to meet anyone who has any ideas on disambiguating autistic traits from the effects of narcissistic abuse.

I was raised by my birth family and spent the most time around my mother's family. I was officially diagnosed with depression/anxiety as a teenager, and had poor mental health since I can remember. When I was a young adult seeing a therapist on my own, the therapist brought it to my attention that I was being abused, and my mother's family (including my mother) may have Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). I still strongly suspect that they do.

Before I go into this, it's important to say that I have always been very sensitive, and I was a shy child. I can remember being 4-6 and being scared to talk to people, retreating into myself in social situations, and choosing to not respond when approached by adults who scared me. From my own understanding and memory, other than being hyperlexic (reading by myself at 3) I developed "normally."

The type of narcissistic abuse I experienced from my family as a child focused on appearances, social acceptability, and control. Not only was I being abused by my mother, her siblings, and her mother, they also groomed my cousins into becoming my abusers. I was constantly being made fun of for being "weird," accused of being "a sensitive crybaby," and shamed for showing any part of my personality/interests/needs, especially if they were deemed abnormal. They would bait-and-switch everything with me because my interests/needs were unimportant or socially unacceptable to them.

With regards to my own mother, I was often severely scolded for not behaving "correctly" in social situations. It's important to note here that I spent most of my time outside of school in contexts with only adults due to childcare issues, and I was hardly ever allowed out of my mother's sight/earshot. One of her most common scoldings involved accusing me of being a very rude person. As I said, I was a very shy child, I hated being touched, and I wouldn't respond when people talked to me because I was unsure and afraid. She explicitly "taught" me how to conduct myself during social interactions, usually spurred by her being upset with the way I acted. This involved teaching me conversation scripts and the hug/kiss greeting, and practicing them with her. I was not allowed to deviate from the scripts or express my boundaries. She enforced this to the point that when I deviated for a totally reasonable reason (like not shaking hands because a bird pooped on my hand right before my hand made contact with the other person's), my mother would rush me away to scold and spank me for being rude. I eventually became no more than a doll, always "present and available" at my mother's social function, not saying anything other than a script, and purposefully dissociating to deal with how uncomfortable I was. These learned behaviors and scripts last to this day even though I hate them and I know they involve crossing my own boundaries. I feel weird if others do not follow them even though I know that's not reasonable, and I have the impulse to teach them to others when I think they don't know how to conduct themselves in a social situation.

Of course, this is not an exhaustive list of my behaviors/experiences that I believe line up with autistic traits, but these are the most relevant to this post.

This all makes it extremely difficult to know if
A. I was an autistic kid and wasn't behaving in a "socially acceptable manner" that "required intervention," but happened to also be born to an already-abusive family.
B. I was just a NT kid who was abused by family because of their desire for control and socially acceptable appearances.

Now here's the kicker. In addition to all of this, soon after I moved out of my parents' house I tried to have a conversation with my mother about autism, and she said "Don't you remember you were diagnosed with Asperger's when you were in kindergarten?" I remember being tested at least once at that age for something because my behavior at that time did not "line up" with my "intellect," but the most concrete result was being labeled as gifted in school. The only time I ever remember her talking to me about autism was when I was maybe 10. She said something like "Did you know there's a condition that makes children unable to empathize with their parents? This child didn't feel any emotion and didn't help their mother when their mother was hurt." She scared the hell out of me in that moment, but I don't recall her connecting this "finding" with my behavior. I do not remember having any kind of external behavioral or health intervention, or having any other adult in my life talk to me about having that diagnosis. Even if it's true that I was diagnosed, it will be impossible to recover any kind of diagnosis paperwork. She is not trustworthy, lies to make herself look better (she plays up how marginalized I am to get sympathy), and has lost many of my important documents. It would be impossible to try to find the doctor who might have diagnosed me, it's been several decades. I did ask her to produce the documents for me a couple of months ago. She said she'd try, then she said "Do you think you are autistic?" I said yes. She said "Me too. I always thought you were." She hasn't brought this up again or produced the documents.

I also recognize that there's a "strong genetic component" to autism. I did always think my mom behaved unlike other women in ways that were not necessarily tied to possible NPD. This makes it extra hard to determine if the way she abused me was just narcissistic abuse, or she might also be on the spectrum and is dealing with rigid thinking intermixed with narcissistic abuse from her own mother. The rest of my family never forced scripts on me, they just punished me, and also thought my mother was very weird.

Thanks for reading this far. I don't know how else to explain without all of this wordiness!