Published on 12, July, 2020
I will keep this brief but I was diagnosed as not autistic. Here’s why....
good eye contact despite struggling (can only keep eye contact in one eye)
good childhood apparently, loved school....had friends. perfectly normal apparently according to my mum (I wasn’t)
I don’t flap my hands or dance in circles. I do other stuff
i didn’t notice pictures that were not straight in room
didnt talk excessively about special interests (I don’t want to bore people)
can communicate well, when people are asking my questions
I had friends but can’t maintain them now don’t want any.
can play football
despite struggling with a raft of problems since I can remember. I was just told......your not autistic. Goodbye
i very well may not be autistic but......I feel they were looking for an extreme case. I hide my stuff well and had to too survive.
I just feel like I’ve been given no help and just basically told, yeah....you’re just not very good at stuff and maybe it’s trauma? I felt different since a kid and this was brushed off. Rant over.
anyone else had something similar?
I just wish that clinicians who diagnose adults would take far more notice about what their patients tell them, and show a lot less misplaced confidence in their observational skills. Diagnosing a 4 year old is necessarily largely based on observation, but a 40 year old can tell a clinician much more about themselves than can be gleaned from any amount of looking at them.
Absolutely! Especially when they misdiagnose with something else. I've had that... they trotted along with what they thought and then blamed me when it didn't work! Meanwhile, looking back through the notes and my corres, I was so very clearly telling them about an autistic experience throughout without realising that was what I was describing, only for everything I said to be dismissed as delusional.
But hey! Why listen to me? I was only the patient. Nothing I said had any relevance apparently, only their fixed ideas.