I have an ASC assessment next week and I’m scared of the outcome

Hi

Firstly, apologies for the long post, I have a lot of thoughts swimming in my head. 

I’m a 30 year old female in the north east of England. I have always felt odd to those around me. I started to really struggle when I hit secondary school, coming from a small primary school of 20 kids in a class to this huge place with different classrooms, teachers and sooooo many other children was overwhelming. I was often bullied for being weird, which got worse when we relocated to Cheshire when I was 13. The bullying became horrific, and I started hiding my ‘quirks’ as I call them and avoiding most other children as much as possible. I made one friend in secondary school, someone who is still a huge part of my life to this day, so I stuck with her in school. If she wasn’t in my class, I wouldn’t speak with anyone. 

At university, I really struggled being away from my lovely parents and friend, and fell into a very deep depression. I misused alcohol to cope in social situations, and being unable to cope in shared accommodation, my parents funded a studio flat so I wouldn’t drop out of university. 

When I left education and joined the workforce, I suffered sexual harassment, workplace bullying, and intimidation from authoritative figures. This exasperated my anxiety in the workplace, something which I struggle with to this day. 

Finally at the start of this year, I found a job that isn’t toxic to the core. My managers are supportive, and my team members are mostly okay. However, I was still struggling with depression and anxiety, which made me realise there was something internal I was overlooking. I started to believe anxiety and depression were asymptomatic of something else. I had tried many things to manage them over the years, but had gotten nowhere.

After 3 minor changes were made to workplace processes, I found myself having a very emotionally reactive meltdown on my manager, who was kind and patient with me. He put me in touch with a therapist through work, who after speaking with me said she had picked up on signs of autism. I don’t like change, can have extreme emotional outbursts, sometimes I can shut down, have sensory sensitivities, extreme social anxiety, repetitive behaviours etc. I mulled on this for a while, it was the first time someone mentioned autism to me and I did not know how I felt about it. The symptoms made total sense to me, however I’m extremely high functioning, happily married, can hold down jobs and do daily activities, so I almost felt like I was an imposter saying I think I have autism?

I decided to get a general psychiatric assessment done, and within 7 minutes, the recommendation was made to me to seek an ASC diagnostic, a recommendation he repeated several times throughout the assessment. He diagnosed me with recurrent depressive disorder mixed with anxiety, but looking at my timeline of events, he pinpointed both conditions first presented themselves during significant periods of change in my life. Depression when I moved away from home to university, and anxiety when I left education and joined the workplace.

I did express my doubts with myself being able to function, and he took the time to explain to me what high functioning autism could look like, and it makes so much sense. So I took the plunge and booked the ASC assessment on his recommendation. 

When filling out the prescreening form, it was so odd to me to write about all my ‘quirks’. I can’t make eye contact when talking, when people talk at me I look at the bridge of their nose, I mimic gestures, facial expression, voice tones of those around me, if a topic doesn’t interest me I will sit in silence or change the topic, I have cyclical obsessions on the same few interests, I cannot watch my favourite YouTuber if they have a collaborator I don’t know because it makes me feel so physically uncomfortable, I’m crazy exhausted after office days, I miss social cues (big one for my job on phones all day!), I miss hidden meanings, I don’t pick up on peoples emotions, being told all the time I’m too blunt….the list goes on.

To me, I do now believe I am autistic. It makes a ridiculous amount of sense. I am so scared for the assessment though.

If I am diagnosed, I can nose dive into research, research, research so I can finally start understanding my brain. I fear that I won’t be diagnosed, because then I won’t have an explanation or reasoning for all my ‘quirks’. What if I’m misdiagnosed because I’m very good at masking? I find it really difficult to bring down my mental walls unless I know the person I’m with very well, but I’m going to try to be completely myself for this assessment. 

My head is all over the place worrying over this assessment and overthinking about every possible outcome and reactions I could have to these outcomes. Did anyone else feel like this whilst waiting for their assessment? 

Again I apologise for the long post. I’m hoping this community is a good place to share all my thoughts, and I wonder if anyone relates?

Becca x