Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi, I’m 30, I’ve struggled my whole life with Aspergers (I think) but never been diagnosed. I work in customer service and I used to do written communication only at work which was ok but recently they’ve started putting me on the phones loads. Has caused me lots of anxiety and I feel I’m struggling loads.
Symptoms are; socially awkward, struggle to make eye contact, like a set routine even though I’m poorly organised, struggle with empathy (even get in trouble at work for it), don’t really have many facial expressions, struggle to understand people’s emotions, don’t go out much especially nights out as it’s loud and just awful, very narrow interest in hobbies, food etc, probably loads more things but I won’t bore you.
Went to doctors today to ask for a referral for a diagnosis and the GP said it can take 2 years for a referral and sometimes they can even reject it (is this true?). She then offered me a mental health session or something.
It seemed rather dismissive and my Mum said when I got home (she didn’t know I’d asked for a referral) lots of people have those symptoms. I’ve heard that from quite a few people over the years too (everyone’s on the spectrum etc etc). Makes me doubt myself a bit.
Would it be worth asking for another GP appointment or will that just annoy them and get me on a blacklist? I heard something about an AQ10 but was never asked to fill one out.
If anyone can advise I’d be very grateful, sorry to blabber on so much.
Brad
Hi Brad.
As someone who has very similar symptoms but was a decade younger when I was diagnosed, it definitely sounds like it's worth looking into. I waited the full 2.5 years in my area to get a diagnosis and it was 100% worth it, despite the wait.
What is worth taking to a GP is a list of ways this is affecting your life, this is usually the bit that autism assessment trusts will reject you on. So that it is impacting your work, how it's affecting your mental health (taking them up on a mental health assessment isn't an entirely bad idea either, it's a foot in the system and some additional paperwork evidencing that you're struggling).
There are also AQ10s and AQ50s online, along with something called RAADS-R. I'd do these and take the results into your GP too. Just because the wait is long doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.
For me a big impact was definitely being able to tell people 'I'm autistic' because a lot of people looked at my body language and attitude to social events and decided that it meant I hated them. If you don't have an explanation people make up their own.
Hope that helped, and feel free to ask more questions if you have them
Hi Fibonacci, thanks for your reply.
I’ve done the AQ50 and scored 48/50 and did the RAADS-R test and scored 216/240.
Think I’ll request the referral even if it means waiting a long time as it sounds like it’s helped you a lot. I’ll maybe do a list like you say and hopefully that will speed the process up a bit and stop them rejecting me.
Thanks for the help,