I’m pretty sure I’m autistic but I’m scared help

Hi! I’m  19 and I basically struggled all my life with multiple things, specially the difficulty in creating and maintaining relationships. I always felt like I was broken. I thought I was borderline, bipolar and even a sociopath at some point because I barely have any empathy, which honestly kind of sucks. I got really, really depressed, got eating disorders and a couple of other things until finally, one day a found a youtube video talking about autism in girls and it finally clicked. I had everything the woman on the video was telling me about and I just started crying, it all made so much sense. I did a lot of research, focusing on autistic woman. The more I looked into it the more convinced I was. The fact that woman are usually diagnosed later, masking, special interests, stimming and literally every tiny thing I found out about it was fitting in more and more with me and all the struggled that I have. 

Yet, the minute I got out of my little research utopia, I started noticing how the world doesn’t see it like that. My sister is a psychologist and I started noticing she constantly talks about how too many people are misdiagnosed with autism just so they can put them on meds and that a lot of them aren’t “autistic enough” or “don’t even look autistic, therefore they aren’t” and that made me really, really scared. I’ve been looking into getting a diagnosis but I’m terrified that the therapist will say I’m making everything up, even though I struggled so much with this my whole life. I’m scared they’ll say I’m “not autistic enough” ,mainly because I’ve been heavily relying on masking for a really long time, and send me away. If that happens I don’t think I’ll ever have the courage to talk to a therapist again. Do any of you have some kind of advice? Please I’m desperate.

Thank you so much

Parents
  • Your sister is one psychologist of many. What does autism look like? There are good therapists out there. As far as I know, therapists don't diagnose. It has to be a specialist clinician.

    If you don't do anything about it now, there may come a point when you're older and you find it difficult to cope. I'm 35 and speaking from experience. 

    If you did something about it now, you would know what you're working with. This would then inform any future therapies you have. 

Reply
  • Your sister is one psychologist of many. What does autism look like? There are good therapists out there. As far as I know, therapists don't diagnose. It has to be a specialist clinician.

    If you don't do anything about it now, there may come a point when you're older and you find it difficult to cope. I'm 35 and speaking from experience. 

    If you did something about it now, you would know what you're working with. This would then inform any future therapies you have. 

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