Published on 12, July, 2020
I've never had any reason to think I might be autistic but I did a test that popped up on facebook in an idle moment and was a bit surprised when it told me I was highly likely to be autistic. I didn't take it very seriously - facebook is hardly an authoritative source - but it niggled me a bit so I've taken every AQ test I can find online, repeatedly, and consistently get scores of 35-38. The main reason I think it unlikely that I could be autistic is that I am not a creature of habit, I'm untidy and don't like routines, in fact I like things that break routines, which doesn't sound very typical of autism from what I've read. But for some reason all these tests have unsettled me and I can't put my finger on why. I was just wondering if this resonates with anyone or if any of you have any thoughts to share on my experience?
Thank you everyone for the replies. all very helpful and insightful. I agree with those comments that say I shouldn't take online tests too seriously, I don't know why I got so upset by this and did every test available, each time thinking it would come back with a low score and each time coming back with a high one! I don't have anyone else to talk to about this so it was good to get the collective insights and wisdom of this community who have been through all this already.
I don't know what to think at the moment. I took the advice to dive more deeply into the experiences of those who have late diagnosis of autism to see if anything resonates and the answer is ... quite a lot. An awful lot as it happens. I then started proactively searching my various quirks and eccentricities to see if they would be thought of as 'autistic'. My picky eating and various food aversions? Yes. The fact that I don't like being touched? Yes. That I hate going to the hair dressers? Yes. That I get overwhelmed and exhausted by social chitchat? Yes. Things got so silly at one point that I wondered if my lifelong struggle with shoelaces could be ... yes, whole youtube videos on this. It never occurred to me that my problems with shoelaces could be in any way related to my inability to flirt, but there you go.
I have reflected on whether there were any signs in my childhood. I remember that my middle school wanted my parents to let me see a child psychologist for behaviours that I now know (new word for me) are called 'stimming.' For awhile my parents would use sending me to the psychologist as a threat. I also remember lots of hearing tests when I was young, which is odd as I had (and still have) excellent hearing. So maybe there were signs that weren't picked up properly.
On balance I'm glad I didn't go through an assessment and am unlikely to go through one now. Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I think I would have been stigmatised rather than helped. Maybe it would have been reassuring to know that my failure to get a girlfriend until my late 20s was not my fault, on the other hand I can see from this forum that a diagnosis doesn't make people any happier about being unlucky in love. And I'm still skeptical about being autistic - I have all the symptoms of Covid too but am (thankfully) testing negative, correlation doesn't equal causation.
Whether or not an expert would assess me as being on the spectrum, it's certainly been enlightening to find out that there is a whole community of people in the world who have experiences that I thought unique to me. Have a good Christmas everyone.
On stigma: yes, it was true. Me, 70yrs old. I was given a diagnosis ( I am beginning to resent that word), just not the right one. In hindsight I would have preferred ND to what they did label me for, but it was common, then to assume females, even if they ticked all the boxes, were not part of the ND paradigm. There are other tests and a few good channels on youtube that you can, quietly and on your own, explore. that is how it begins for many of us. Here is one of my favs:
Se if the shoe fits. ..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXz9TpKGd5g
Wait, you're 70 years old...
And this thread is 3 years old.
Hmnn, okay, ...