Did your doctor pick up on your autism on their own?

I wonder how many times we have been to our GP with different complaints and masked. I went and told him I was suffering with depression, he remarked that I normally visited the surgery every 8-10 years, I was given antidepressants, it wasn’t his fault, he worked on the amount of information I was prepared to give, apparently I wasn’t producing enough serotonin. After 6 months I knew I didn’t feel any better, my old GP had just retired and I had a new young kid on the block, I did worry about a young GP, my adult son actually put me right, He told me that a young GP would have been to school, University and has most probably autistic friends, he was right.

When I first went to ask about AS the doctor asked me if I wanted meds, I said “no”, he said “good choice”..

Good doctor, I’ve read posts on here for over a year, some GP’s  are very receptive, others don’t even accept autism. It really shouldn’t be a lottery, how many older people have been asked, “ what do you hope to gain from a diagnosis?”

Yeah they tell us we are ‘wired differently’, that we have a social impairment, and in a sense they are right.
We do not understand people who do not think like us, we don’t understand in a neurotypical way, but that doesn’t mean that we cannot empathise with our own. 
We do a better job of acclimatising to the neurodiverse than neurotypicals, because we know how to play with a handicap, and we can pick up a second mask rather quickly.

Sorry for not replying, my previous reply has only just been posted, the SPAM software NAS use picked it up as offensive, autism is to be embraced, we aren’t the strange ones. I’ve had strange responses to letting people into my autistic life, I told someone recently who I thought I trusted, yes that’s an oxymoron. I explained that a diagnosis in the 1970’s or 80’s would have never happened. The reply was, “ yeh, I bet when you were at school, they just thought you were thick.” I did bite, why would being ‘thick’ assimilate to autistic traits. I was playing chess in infant school while the rest of the class were playing with plasticine!  The world ‘thick’ is a nasty inaccurate word, try learning difficulties. Autistic people are quite good with other autistic people.

Yeah, infantilised to make up for their ignorance, take sounds about right. 
The weird thing about my journey is that; family, managers, and friends; have insulted me with ‘autism’ for my whole.
It’s seems rich that I was what they called me, no one thought to act on it positively, all of my friends had learning difficulties (two of them had AS)!

The problem isn’t weakness, older people never even knew autism existed. We had to mask, hide, be bullied and some unfortunately ended up in mental institutions. Life was often hell on earth. I’m really glad you were able to be taken seriously, doctors never even knew what  autism was, when I was younger, the GP in most cases wouldn’t even acknowledge autism, words like feeble minded, depressed or delicate. The favourite was, he’s just a bit tired and exhausted! 

The problem isn’t weakness, older people never even knew autism existed. We had to mask, hide, be bullied and some unfortunately ended up in mental institutions. Life was often hell on earth. I’m really glad you were able to be taken seriously, doctors never even knew what  autism was, when I was younger, the GP in most cases wouldn’t even acknowledge autism, words like feeble minded, depressed or delicate. The favourite was, he’s just a bit tired and exhausted! 

Yeah they tell us we are ‘wired differently’, that we have a social impairment, and in a sense they are right.
We do not understand people who do not think like us, we don’t understand in a neurotypical way, but that doesn’t mean that we cannot empathise with our own. 
We do a better job of acclimatising to the neurodiverse than neurotypicals, because we know how to play with a handicap, and we can pick up a second mask rather quickly.

Sorry for not replying, my previous reply has only just been posted, the SPAM software NAS use picked it up as offensive, autism is to be embraced, we aren’t the strange ones. I’ve had strange responses to letting people into my autistic life, I told someone recently who I thought I trusted, yes that’s an oxymoron. I explained that a diagnosis in the 1970’s or 80’s would have never happened. The reply was, “ yeh, I bet when you were at school, they just thought you were thick.” I did bite, why would being ‘thick’ assimilate to autistic traits. I was playing chess in infant school while the rest of the class were playing with plasticine!  The world ‘thick’ is a nasty inaccurate word, try learning difficulties. Autistic people are quite good with other autistic people.

Yeah, infantilised to make up for their ignorance, take sounds about right. 
The weird thing about my journey is that; family, managers, and friends; have insulted me with ‘autism’ for my whole.
It’s seems rich that I was what they called me, no one thought to act on it positively, all of my friends had learning difficulties (two of them had AS)!