Published on 12, July, 2020
I’m very confused about who I am and want to know if any Autistic people relate to any of my traits/behaviours.
I’m a 35 year old woman, in a happy long term relationship, good job and have a large social circle and enjoy social events. However I’ve always felt like I’m “not being myself” and always obsessed over personality type quizzes to try and find out who I am, always searched for the solution, yet never found it. More recently I’ve thought maybe something bad happened in my past that I don’t know about, and that is why I didn’t feel right and felt different - however nothing proves this point.
I’ve recently become fascinated in researching into late diagnosis of autism in women. I possess many traits of autism and masking, however I don’t (that I know of) have any problems with eye contact or interacting with people - this makes me question whether I am or not. To save going into too much detail I’ve bulleted below some of my current and past traits and behaviours. Some of these I’ve always just thought are weird or was just something I do so I’d love to hear if anybody else has had similar experiences.
The above are just a select through that have a personal impact on me, however there are more traits that are fitting. I’d be grateful to learn of others experiences.
My advice, if you want more clarity, would be to take some online autism tests. AQ10 and AQ50 (sometimes called just 'AQ') are the most commonly used by clinicians in the UK, but the RAADS-R is the most definitive. They can be found here: embrace-autism.com/.../If you score in the autism range it will give you more certainty about possible autistic status.
Thank you I’ve taken quite a few tests - some I score higher than others. On the AQ50 and RAADS-R I scored just slightly over the threshold for Autistic. However I took a masking/camouflaging test and scored very high. I am quite confused about what is really me and what I mask.
If you are borderline on autism tests, a formal autism assessment could go either way. There are many people who have autistic traits, but do not have enough or to a sufficient degree to pass the threshold for a diagnosis.