Hi all,
First of all, I feel terrible writing this because I know loads of people wait years for an ASD diagnosis. However this has been troubling me for a while so I wanted to find out whether anyone has ever taken a second opinion to dispute an ASD diagnosis?
I’m 38 and was diagnosed with Level 1 ASD just over a month ago following assessment by Psychiatry UK. This was on completion of an hour-long video appointment, which in itself followed the completion of lengthy questionnaires by my wife and I. I also completed the AQ50 test and scored 38/50.
I understand that a bit of imposter syndrome is normal, but I keep hearing experiences from autistic people both on this forum or YouTube which seem a world away from my experience.
It’s true that I’ve always struggled socially, and from a young age I do recall never quite “getting the rules” on how everyone interacted. I always tried my best but people never really seemed to get me. If I did have friendships, I would often only have one friend at a time and would get intensely anxious/jealous if that friend invited other people out with us as I would find myself getting cut out of conversations.
More recently I’ve found that I struggle with family events. My wife is from a really sociable family, and there seems to be something going on every weekend. It’s caused tension in the past because after a week at work, I would see a supposedly fun family event on a Saturday as equivalent to another day of work due to how stressful I found it. Luckily my wife and her family are very understanding, and even pre-diagnosis it was recognised that I couldn’t cope with attending every single one of these events.
So on the social side I see the ASD traits, but where I’m struggling with is the sensory challenges and special interests. I’ve always felt like I get lost in a group of people talking and struggle to “tune in” on a single voice when having a conversation, but having not lived in someone else’s head I don’t know whether that’s just the same for everyone!
And with special interests, I do develop strong interests in singular topics/activities which often persist for months at a time. But they’re not really all-encompassing, so I’m not sure whether they “count” or not?
My head has been all over the place since the diagnosis and I don’t know what to believe any more. I took the decision to tell one of my oldest friends about the diagnosis the other day, and even as I was explaining it to him I felt like I was still having to convince myself of what I was saying. For what it’s worth he was really supportive, but I’m just really struggling with things at the moment.
I feel like I’ve rambled on forever. I started off writing this post with the intention of asking whether anyone had received a diagnosis from Psychiatry UK and subsequently got a second opinion which went the other way? I’m not even sure what that would achieve at this point - I’m just so confused.
Sorry everyone, this just feels ridiculously self indulgent to even be asking about. Just a bit lost about what to do next.
