Recently diagnosed - struggling

You are not alone. I am 31 years old and currently going through the process of being assessed. I am struggling to find my place in society and constantly drained as well when socialising with people. It’s not something I want to stop as socialising is my chance to be able to be someone different. I do dance and drama so these allow me to be able to create a different character where I can pretend that everything is okay just for an hour or so a day.

I have recently started on anti-depressants and been on them for around 4 months now. I have found them useful however as with most things they are not going to be the “magic fix”. 

Can I just ask, now you have your diagnosis, do you feel like anything has changed in terms of understanding yourself better?, getting the right support?, being able to just be yourself without getting grief from other people?. I am aware it is very recent diagnosis but I am just curious if it has made other people look and think of you in a different light? This is something I am struggling with at work at the moment. I feel that some of my colleagues are not understanding who I am and see me as just being irritating all the time.

Would love to know how you are getting on since the diagnosis

Hi lovely, good luck with your assessment whenever it may be! 

Anti-depressants are very useful and I honestly cannot imagine my life without them now. 

I haven't actually told anyone that I'm autistic, only my partner knows and it has definitely helped us in terms of understanding my need for planning and routine and my anxiety when things don't go to plan. He's helping a lot of more with that as oposse to 'playing things by ear'. I don't plan on telling my family as my mum would blame herself and my Dad isn't really accepting or understanding of neurodiversity or mental health.

I haven't decided yet about telling my colleagues, I work in a close knit admin team in a GP surgery and we deal with a lot of referrals for autism and even more for ADHD and I think there are some negative views within my team and I'll be honest, those negative views have often come from myself. I always saw people's reasons for wanting an autism referral as kind of silly, because 'isn't everyone anxious with change and drained from being around people and thinks in terms of black and white and....no wait a minute, maybe everyone isn't like that and these people, like me are onto something here.' Maybe it was a form of denial, that all these people were like me so of course they can't have autism! I am actually off sick at the moment with burnout and I'm debating posting a 'hey, I'm autistic' message to our group chat before Monday. 

I will however, be telling my management team because they already treat me like I am irritating and I took some time off with stress last year which was largely triggered by a huge increase in workload and having to move to a new office, they could not understand why I was so stressed and upset by having to work in a new room and I didn't have the 'I'm autistic' understanding or reasoning to give. I will be requesting reasonable adjustments to work from home one day a week and to reduce my workload so we will see how that goes! 

I haven't really decided on telling any friends, the small handful that I do have although one of my friends is definitely neurodiverse she just hasn't been assessed. 

So, I'm kind of in a neurodiverse closet of my own making at the moment. For myself, it's changing how I am understanding and treating myself, I am trying to be gentle with myself, allow myself time to enjoy my interests without guilt and time to recharge my batteries but I'm also making an effort to be social, making friends is such a challenge for me because I mask but I am trying to make an effort to socialize more. 

So lovely to hear from you

My assessments start next week and will be completed by the end of the first week in June. It’s all happened quick. We have gone privately as I didn’t get much help from NHS Mental Health Team and I was not improving so we could not afford to wait years for them.

So glad to hear your partner is being very supportive of you. None of my friends have a good understanding at the moment so it is something that plays on my mind a lot. I love socialising with them but when it gets too much for me I know I need to step out. I don’t think they truly understand why I am doing it and still see me as being “anti-social”. I’d like to think that is not the case but I am too scared to say anything to them at the moment as I don’t have the diagnosis to back it up. There have been a few people who I have tried to talk to about my struggles and I’m always met with “But you don’t have a diagnosis so you can’t say that you are Autistic”. I always tell them that I wasn’t aware I needed a label to be able to explain my struggles to them. Really winds me up so hopefully the assessments go well and I can finally turn around and say “Told you so!”

It’s been a mixed bag with my colleagues. My boss is amazing and has been a rock throughout the whole process. She was the one who was able to see past everything and say that she thinks I could be autistic. Before this I never really thought about it but then I started researching and talking to my mom and it has opened our eyes and made us look at me in a different way. 

Change has always been a hard one for me. My boss is aware of this and where possible tries to avoid too much change (e.g covering lessons) and if it has to happen she will speak to me to explain. I know at work it is difficult to give notice for a lot of things but where possible she will do this.

I’ve always been a social person as this is my outlet since my job is intense sometimes. I like to do dance and theatre as this allows me to be someone else for a few hours a week and no one will judge me like I feel they do at work

Yeah parents are mid fifties-early sixties. It is difficult because when you mention Autism many people attribute it to children. They don’t think that an adult can be diagnosed. I’ve had someone at work recently say to me and my boss “Isn’t it too late to get a diagnosis now?”. I mean that just says it all really about the lack of understanding in the wider community. It’s more of a shock when it comes from someone who works with special needs but is clearly very child centred in their thinking. Unfortunately there’s not a lot I can do about that apart from to teach them. It takes more energy and effort that way but if I want the support then I have no choice but to teach them and show them what I am going through. Again I’m lucky that my supportive boss is helping with that and when I’ve had my assessments I’m sure we can have a meeting with the staff and give them the gist without having to go into too much detail. Just a shame that’s it taken for me to have to go through all this just to understood. Suppose the positive is that it will help me to be able to process and understand the “real” me

I hope your assessment goes well, it sounds very thorough so I'm sure you will get the right outcome! 

It can be so difficult with friends who don't understand, you shouldn't need a label to say you need to step away or need time to yourself but I think having the label does help as people can't really challenge it.

I'm glad to hear your family are supportive. I'm assuming your parents are probably a similar age to mine, mine are late fifties. I think society has changed so much in their time and there's things like autism that they're just not familiar with. My mum works in a primary school so she is quite aware of neurodiversity and learning needs, I'm just not sure it's something she would apply to me. 

I'm so pleased your boss is supportive, that makes such a world of difference in work. Change is the worst, my work have thankfully stopped asking me to cover Reception if they're short because I just point blank refuse to, it causes me too much stress! 

I hope your assessment goes well, it sounds very thorough so I'm sure you will get the right outcome! 

It can be so difficult with friends who don't understand, you shouldn't need a label to say you need to step away or need time to yourself but I think having the label does help as people can't really challenge it.

I'm glad to hear your family are supportive. I'm assuming your parents are probably a similar age to mine, mine are late fifties. I think society has changed so much in their time and there's things like autism that they're just not familiar with. My mum works in a primary school so she is quite aware of neurodiversity and learning needs, I'm just not sure it's something she would apply to me. 

I'm so pleased your boss is supportive, that makes such a world of difference in work. Change is the worst, my work have thankfully stopped asking me to cover Reception if they're short because I just point blank refuse to, it causes me too much stress! 

Yeah parents are mid fifties-early sixties. It is difficult because when you mention Autism many people attribute it to children. They don’t think that an adult can be diagnosed. I’ve had someone at work recently say to me and my boss “Isn’t it too late to get a diagnosis now?”. I mean that just says it all really about the lack of understanding in the wider community. It’s more of a shock when it comes from someone who works with special needs but is clearly very child centred in their thinking. Unfortunately there’s not a lot I can do about that apart from to teach them. It takes more energy and effort that way but if I want the support then I have no choice but to teach them and show them what I am going through. Again I’m lucky that my supportive boss is helping with that and when I’ve had my assessments I’m sure we can have a meeting with the staff and give them the gist without having to go into too much detail. Just a shame that’s it taken for me to have to go through all this just to understood. Suppose the positive is that it will help me to be able to process and understand the “real” me