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"Why do you want a diagnosis anyway?" and other things

Malfeas

Heya guys, I just want to talk for a moment about what's been going on as there isn't really a place for me to go over this and get opinions from people who might get it.

So, I'm a 'somewhat older' woman who was diagnosed with ADHD last year. After a fair amount of time doing very well on the medication, I realised that the problems I am having in life go quite far beyond how ADHD can mess you up, and so I have been looking to get an Autism assessment. The NAS is currently pretty fully booked so I tried my luck with the NHS, and it's not been great :/

I was mistreated by a service that is supposed to help patients get signposted to different places, and as an apology they got me an appointment with a Psychiatrist. Not just any Psychiatrist, but the guy who is apparently in charge of Mental Health for my region. That was very unexpected, but here we are.
I went to my appointment with this guy and I told him about the ADHD, the process of diagnosis, my (positive) response to the medication, my current problems, and the guy pretty much immediately starts casting doubt on the things I'm saying.

When we got to the question of him doing an ASD assessment for me, he refused for multiple reasons. He said that he has 'worked with Autistic people' and that I "may have traits, but don't seem Autistic" to him. Earlier in the session (before we got to the ASD thing) he said "I can tell you're Neurodivergent, have you ever noticed the way you talk differs to others?" and things like this - so I started to argue with him as to why I should be given an assessment, seeing as I am apparently so Neurodivergent he can mystically hear it in how I talk to him.

He challenged my ADHD diagnosis (and the medication I am on for it), which is a threat to me because getting that diagnosis + medication was extremely difficult, and so someone threatening to mess with me like that is a direct attack from my point of view, but he didn't see it like that. It was no big deal to him - he didn't care that I poured blood, sweat and tears into brute-forcing my way through to an ADHD assessment, paying for it privately out of necessity in the end, and fighting dozens of NHS doctors along the way who each did something uniquely horrific to me - they mainly accused me of wanting the diagnosis for the medication and things like this, but they all did it in such horrible and spiteful ways :/
He said he wanted to take me off my medication so he could "see how I respond to anti-depressants" (I told him I wasn't depressed and that they didn't work on me, but he.. argued with me that I was depressed? I don't get it). I argued with him some more and told him he wasn't going to take me off my ADHD medication, and he relented because I was getting really worked up by this point. If he really did know the things he (went on at length) claimed to know, then he probably saw me on the cliff-edge of a meltdown and it probably wouldn't have been a passive one. I was waving my arms around all over the place and crying as he sat there arguing with me about the many reasons I shouldn't be assessed for Autism.

I asked him again just to do the ASD assessment to rule it out if he wasn't sure if it was "just the ADHD" or something. He asked me a bunch of really awful and stereotypical-sounding questions e.g. "do you like trains", "do you like numbers", which I said no to (I'm a woman with a maths based learning disability, no I do not like these things really), and he basically used that as his "gotcha" to go to me "see, you're not Autistic", and then he refused to do my assessment again. He says to me, "why do you want a diagnosis anyway? Ok you'll know yourself better, but it won't do anything for you", and I said "you're wrong, it'll allow me to get into the support groups who only accept people with a diagnosis, and I can get the things I need to make any jobs I get better to work in" and so on, but he just kind of groaned and I think he thought I was trying to 'get something' out of getting a diagnosis - in a shady way, like he asked me if I was "deliberately not making eye contact" and his entire attitude can be summed up like this: "I am on to you" Disappointed, except I'm not actually hiding anything. There's nothing to discover other than that which I am asking him to discover anyway. I don't get it.

It took me like, 2 weeks to realise he'd been horrible to me instead of just 'perplexing' (I couldn't / can't understand why he refused my assessment). The things he said have been really seriously rattling around in my brain since then and I can't get them out - it's like an echo of him is a mini-voice in my head just jumping in front of all my normal thoughts and repeating the things he said to me. I can stop thinking about what he said for a while maybe if I e.g. paint some Warhammer, but then it just comes back in huge floods of emotion and I can't seem to move past them. A long time ago when I was very much depressed all the time, I had a really horrible internal voice (it was me, hating on myself), and I did actually get over that in time - but now I feel like that negative self-talk thing is back but instead of me, it's him and the other doctors I've had to endure all saying the shitty things they said to me on repeat.

There was a lot more things that he said to me than what I put here (my appointment lasted for about 30 mins, and he was saying things for 90% of that time that were awful in retrospect). Does anyone have any opinions on any of this?

I have to see this guy one more time before he'll refer me to someone else and I'm scared of what bullshit he'll try next. I also don't know what to say to him when I have to go back there, nor why he is demanding I come back for a 3rd time (or be discharged completely from seeing other NHS psychiatrists). I can't get an advocate because they all just advocate for elderly people around here (I already asked), so I'm on my own (that's ok). Does anyone have any survival strategies / counterpoints for someone who is very stereotypically-minded / arrogant / egotistical and convinced he's 'right?'. I don't want to win an argument against him because there is no winning with someone like this, but I refuse to just let him walk all over me again, the guy is really shitty (he seems so nice when you talk to him though, it makes you believe he's saying these mean things 'to be kind' or something) and also really powerful, and I guess I just want some self-defence tips or something. 

I feel like I can't get over how unjust it is that he did this to me but I've already complained and I have no idea what will happen as a result of that. I am assuming I'm going to get in there and find out the hard way.

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  • I've heard this "why do you want a diagnosis?" thing so much, and it seems to me to be so lacking in awareness.  There are many conditions that can lead to you feeling different and which may make you suspect that you have autism (ADHD, Depression, Bipolar, and many others).  Sometimes people have a combination of several.  It's complex.  The narrower the definition you can give (with certainty) to your own condition, the easier it is to dig out peer-refereed academic papers and authoritative learning from credible sources, and the more you understand, the better you'll be able to navigate the world.

    I simply do not 'get' why (to so many doctors) this is apparently hard to understand.  It seems like a statement of the B*%£@ing obvious to me.

  • in reply to PersonAnon

    Yeah it felt like I was being accused of something in the way he asked it - like I had some sort of ulterior motive and it was really upsetting. I just wanted an assessment to rule things like ASD out / see if I had it so that I could join the groups in my area that help people with ASD (strategies and such for coping with life), but they all require you to have a diagnosis so you can't just roll up to one and sit there quietly. They're very aggressive about this, it's been hard trying to see if I could get in to one.

    I was really lucky in that the NAS let me join one of their social groups in my area despite the lack of diagnosis, and I told everyone there when introducing myself I don't have a diagnosis or anything (I want to be honest, sorta thing) but no-one cared at all which was nice. I said to them "it might be that I don't have Autism in the end but I definitely do have ADHD, so even if I'm not a sister I'm still a cousin" and people seemed to like that :)
    I kept waiting for the moment where I would realise I was nothing like these people but that moment never arrived. If anything I was really amazed that they understood what I meant when I talked about things that people don't usually have much understanding of - I've never spent any time around any Autistic women, all the people with ASD I know are men and so I felt a bit validated tbh, because they all had empathy and things like me, but 'having empathy' is something that's kinda been used against me when trying to get an assessment and things like this.

    I have been dealing with a lot of bad attitudes from people as I've been trying to get help - it's a bit like on one hand they tell you to "go to support groups" for various things (depression etc), then I go there and someone running it tells me "you're not quite suitable for this group", and so I go to get into the groups they said I should go to and it turns out there's a barrier there e.g. diagnostic requirement, so I end up not even being able to access the usual charity-run things in my area. I'm too 'rigid thinking' (or not mentally ill in one specific way that they deal with) for the usual groups, but HOW DARE I try to get into an ASD group even though they're doing things in there that would actually benefit me .e.g. "how to cope with crowds" or something.

    It's just an endless loop of DENIED DENIED DENIED and then on top of it some weirdly high ranking psychiatrist decides to add to the mix, so now I do feel depressed except none of the things I feel depressed about are really that weird, so the depression groups still can't help me because I'm reacting to sad things vs being mentally ill, meh.

Reply
  • in reply to PersonAnon

    Yeah it felt like I was being accused of something in the way he asked it - like I had some sort of ulterior motive and it was really upsetting. I just wanted an assessment to rule things like ASD out / see if I had it so that I could join the groups in my area that help people with ASD (strategies and such for coping with life), but they all require you to have a diagnosis so you can't just roll up to one and sit there quietly. They're very aggressive about this, it's been hard trying to see if I could get in to one.

    I was really lucky in that the NAS let me join one of their social groups in my area despite the lack of diagnosis, and I told everyone there when introducing myself I don't have a diagnosis or anything (I want to be honest, sorta thing) but no-one cared at all which was nice. I said to them "it might be that I don't have Autism in the end but I definitely do have ADHD, so even if I'm not a sister I'm still a cousin" and people seemed to like that :)
    I kept waiting for the moment where I would realise I was nothing like these people but that moment never arrived. If anything I was really amazed that they understood what I meant when I talked about things that people don't usually have much understanding of - I've never spent any time around any Autistic women, all the people with ASD I know are men and so I felt a bit validated tbh, because they all had empathy and things like me, but 'having empathy' is something that's kinda been used against me when trying to get an assessment and things like this.

    I have been dealing with a lot of bad attitudes from people as I've been trying to get help - it's a bit like on one hand they tell you to "go to support groups" for various things (depression etc), then I go there and someone running it tells me "you're not quite suitable for this group", and so I go to get into the groups they said I should go to and it turns out there's a barrier there e.g. diagnostic requirement, so I end up not even being able to access the usual charity-run things in my area. I'm too 'rigid thinking' (or not mentally ill in one specific way that they deal with) for the usual groups, but HOW DARE I try to get into an ASD group even though they're doing things in there that would actually benefit me .e.g. "how to cope with crowds" or something.

    It's just an endless loop of DENIED DENIED DENIED and then on top of it some weirdly high ranking psychiatrist decides to add to the mix, so now I do feel depressed except none of the things I feel depressed about are really that weird, so the depression groups still can't help me because I'm reacting to sad things vs being mentally ill, meh.

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