Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello, I don't know if we are allowed to use real names so I'll introduce myself as Jim. I'm a 29yo male who is on the waiting list for an adult autism assessment. Naturally I have been doing a lot of research and autism is something that describes my life experience very well, more accurately than anything else I have come across so far. However I have come across some stuff that makes me doubt myself constantly, and that would be the differences between how Autistic males and females present. I relate with the female representation heavily even though I identify as a man. I've been using online recourses available to me like the tests on embrace autism and I test very highly in all the relevant areas but the problem I'm facing is that I test abnormally high in area's where autistic females historically test higher than males, such as masking and camouflaging. It's not by a little either, I test higher in those area's than the average autistic female's score. I have tried to look into this but all I find is the differences between males and females and the reasons why females have historically been misdiagnosed because of those differences. I'm afraid that the same is going to happen to me but in reverse, that because I'm a male but perhaps present more female autistic traits, I will be misdiagnosed. I know that people present differently and that autism can be very unique between individuals but I am scared regardless. Does anyone have any experience or knowledge they are willing to share on this?
I also present more as female autistic than male autistic despite being cis male and am good at masking. I still got diagnosed. I would just make clear to the assessor that you are good at masking and state the difficulties that you have in masking, that it's an effort and is draining.