Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi everyone,
I'm 38/F, and after years and years of recurring problems in interactions at work and in personal relationships, and no real diagnosis of anything but intermittent anxiety and depression, lots of therapy, lots of isolation, and another failed relationship due to my 'behaviour', I started looking at asperger symptoms in women (my sister once suggested I was on the spectrum). (*see my list below)
I've made an appointment with my GP to get referrals to get some actual answers and a diagnosis so I can get proper help and support. Feeling pretty alone right now.
Question is - what do I say or ask for when I talk to my GP? Where do people normally get referred to for this and how does it work?
Thanks guys!
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* list...
- don’t do social chit chat, small talk, fitting in with social convention, when I do very formulated and awkward, like rehearsed lines, mask, my mind is somewhere else- always struggled with social groups and dynamics, meta communication, don’t understand how they work, don’t understand or trust their motives, try and keep out of it on the periphery, always ends up failing to integrate somehow- always felt like I don’t belong anywhere particular, like alien, because of my interests and way of thinking that people do not understand or find weird / intense / too much- obsession with theories, analysis, everything is a case study and how I manage social confusion, can talk about it at length while losing people, count everything (colours, patterns, steps, objects), - excellent detail memory when other people do not remember, excellent memory of structure and systems, connecting various fields of knowledge, love systems and categories - repetitive behaviours: pulling hair, touching individual hairs for texture, touching face; thoughts (counting) - can be very blunt, direct, because I think direct line to information makes most sense, not think it’s impolite, but perceived as rude or aggressive - can’t initiate conversations well, like to withdraw from longer social situations- bad at eye contact, always felt people didn’t like me / trust me because of it - can seem emotionless and not show reaction to external stuff, shut it out, just be in my head, way to manage external stimuli, can’t deal with too much social demand or noise- feel very isolated, hard to make and keep friends, always outsider at work despite being nice and competent, people always treat me like I’m weird- struggle in relationships because of emotional overload, uncertainty, problems with change, emotional meltdowns, anxiety- struggle to adapt to change in routine, competing demands, or when something that has been set is altered, really upsetting- staying alone helps manage my own environment without stressors and feel safe, but very isolating- been to therapy all my life, no difference, most problems related to interpersonal problems in work, friends, relationships - problems with touch (overly ticklish or painful, intrusive), sounds, smells, can all be too much- AQ score is 38
You could be my identical twin...
I put a lot of this stuff as well as childhood behaviours in an excel sheet and took it along. I even put my traits into categories. I resisted the urge to make a pivot table. My first appt was like, I'm stuck in my life and I can't get better after spending thousands on cbt. I showed the patterns of frequent depression and I included some written comments from my partner.
My assessor wanted it all.
By the way, in the assessment you have to remember to drop your mask, so to speak and remember to be your real self, even if it's counter intuitive or at least contrary to your learned habit.
Hey yeah I made a long list and was half reading off it when at my GPs, but I've since found more material and identifiers and it is just so weird to read them and think, wow this had either become so ingrained in me that I thought it was just me, or so pathologised that I thought that there was something very wrong with me and it was my fault, and I had to change it. Especially the stuff around how autism presents differently in women is so relevant.
I was brought up in a very small village by very old parents, so I was taught to blend in, what shall the neighbours think, think positive, pull yourself together, don't stand out, don't be so sensitive, be normal etc, all the old school stuff that is thankfully being replaced by valueing individual and diverse experiences and knowledge. I'm becoming more aware of my masking now and less inclined to do it - in a way even previously I thought of it as, I had anxieties and challenges that other people didn't have and in order to get somewhere in life, I had to surpress and push myself into situations, and copy others to take the edge off my social interaction but it would only work so long, or only if I had enough opportunity to withdraw and recover for a while, so then I'd have enough energy to go out there and blend it again.
What you said about the "self-pathologising" is so true. I think that in reality, most of us, no matter how long it's taken for us to make the connection with autism, understand the workings of our own minds very well - we have no choice, as the way that the outside world rubs us up the wrong way forces us to introspect about why we struggle so much.
But we face a constant barrage of people telling us that our behaviours and our internal ways of thinking about the world are faulty; from parents, teachers, schoolmates, employers, colleagues, even professionals who claim to be autism experts. So we come to believe that our innate ways of processing the world are pathological, to the point even of questioning our own sanity (my executive functioning traits in particular were always something that I was only ever able to explain to myself as insanity).
When I was putting together my own lists of traits and behaviours for my assessment, I realised that I was getting a really strong sense of deja-vu. I felt like I had already been through this process before, and that what I was writing was uncannily familiar. So I decided to dig out my little personal archive of diaries, poems, songs, rag-mag articles, cartoons, etc.
Sure enough, I had written all the same things before, albeit in different forms. It was all there; songs with titles like "Disconnection" (the void between me and other people), "Waste" (my talents going to waste because I approach problem solving differently), "Diversity" (why does society want everyone to think the same way?), "In Two Minds" (why do I feel like a completely different person when I'm alone?), and many, many more. I realised that, as far back as my teens at least, I had already understood myself perfectly well, and nothing about that analysis had changed substantially. In the mean-time, so many people had tried to convince me that these were faulty ways of thinkng that I'd explained it all away as merely immaturity, pretentiousness, or lunacy.
When my diagnosis was finally announced at the last of my assessment sessions, the psychologist told me quite explicitly that my assessment had been an easy one because I was so self-aware of the workings of my own mind. The accuracy of all that self-analysis when I had written those songs and poems as a profoundly disturbed teenager was finally recognised - after three decades!
Yes, it's a void, basically
I'm with you on that, too. I find that state of not being able to do things impossible to describe or even understand, really.
It's not like I don't want to be social, etc, it just becomes inexplicably impossible.
I was diagnosed with clinical depression years ago, and I've always assumed it to be a symptom of that, which seems to come and go but I've learnt to deal with it. But I have been wondering lately if there was something underlying everything that was the true cause, hence why I've been researching autism lately.
Plectrum said:I even have to shut down after doing too much on this site
Likewise; hence my little sabbaticals where I disappear from the forums for a few weeks or months every once in a while.
I find it one of the hardest things to explain to people that when I'm burned out, I don't choose not to communicate - I really can't do it. Some people will say that "Hi, I'm alive" would be enough to reassure them and they don't expect an essay..But I can't stand even to look at my inbox or open a letter; just the thought of having to communicate, even to try comprehending what they have to say, is unbearable. And if a shut-down has temporarily robbed me of my language abilities, it may not even be possible at all, no matter how hard I might try.
I even have to shut down after doing too much on this site ! which is why I sometimes reply and don't follow up. This is the most social thing I do. Thanks to Trog for joining in.