Published on 12, July, 2020
I'm recently diagnosed both adhd (in December) and autistic (3 weeks ago) and, while I can see my autistic traits as an adult, I really can't remember a huge amount in my childhood. I'm 49 so it's been a long time since I was even a teenager and my mum has been filling in a few things, but I really don't remember a lot. I remember social stuff, like only having a small group of friends and preferring to be in the library rather than out in a huge group, but I don't remember how anything made me feel. Like I don't remember any sensory issues or meltdowns or anything like that. My mum says I was quite an anxious kid and I would get upset about odd things, but I really don't remember any of it. Anyone else late diagnosed and understand this? It's really frustrating when I'm trying to piece everything together.
Metalmumma said:It's really frustrating when I'm trying to piece everything together.
Funnily enough, I've just posted about this on another thread - to hopefully help someone with gathering assessment-related evidence (I appreciate that you're already diagnosed - woohoo!):
I have similarly limited memories of my childhood. One thing that helped me enormously in preparing for my assessment was requesting a copy of my full medical records from my GP. After some initial miscommunication, they eventually provided me with photocopies of all of it, including everything from my old, archived paper records.
This helped in two ways. Firstly, it prompted various forgotten - and relevant - memories to resurface. Secondly, it provided hard, third-party evidence from various stages of my childhood. To share just one example: there was clear evidence of sensory sensitivities that had proved an issue during physical examinations.
Might be of help for Inactive account, too?