imposter syndrome whilst waiting for a diagnosis

I am getting diagnosed later in life (27 years old) and every step I progress into the diagnostic journey, I keep getting a paranoid feeling that I am lying, I am a fake etc and I know I am not, but does anyone have any advice on how to stop these feelings? Everyone in my life who I have spoken to about going forward with a diagnosis has been saying that it's clear I am autistic and without a doubt I have no worries about the diagnosis coming back lacking but I still worry. I think it stems down to not knowing what I will do if I get the answer that I am not autistic because I have more or less accepted it (I've been thinking I could be for at least half of my life now) and I know that is a silly feeling because my GP (who is experienced in autism luckily) wouldn't have put me forward for a diagnosis if they disagreed AND my friends who are also autistic wouldn't be supporting me in going for this but yeah.. any advice?

Parents
  • This is what I dealt with too. The feeling if being imposter was strong to thepoint of madness. I decided some time ago  to stop reading and watching about autism and went back to my aliens and space. This way I don't feel imposter,  I'm just me again, although being a social outcast, I feel much better in my vast inner world. Today I told my mom one story I wrote 2,5 years ago about aliens and time travel and she told me, that Netflix could pay me for my stories. That was nice. So maybe you can also try to go back to your previous intrest and if autism became your kind of Obsession (it was in my case), then it would automatically fade after some time. Overthinking and analysing every possible moment, trait and situation will nit help unfortunately.  I myself am not diagnosed,  suspected autism and lexical gustatory synaesthesia, so I don't know how I will feel if I'm on my way, which is going to probably happen, because my husband and my daughter's teacher and her psychologist are trying to convince me to get myself tested for autism. My teachers in my childhood had these suspicion years ago (becausei was mute, they thought i dont speak at all and tgere were also meltdowns whenever they tried to force me to play with other kids) but my mom dismissed and was very angry that someone dares to say that her daughter is defective. Then I got multiple times misdiagnosed and mistreated and ended up as 37 y/o woman with suspected autism. 

  • This is great advice thank you! I think I definitely have been getting obsessed with autism, especially when filling out my forms (the final step for me before my actual assessment) so every spare second I've had has been associated with autism in some way, more than usual haha! I need to just get back to my Doctor Who and history and try not to think about it too much. 

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  • This is great advice thank you! I think I definitely have been getting obsessed with autism, especially when filling out my forms (the final step for me before my actual assessment) so every spare second I've had has been associated with autism in some way, more than usual haha! I need to just get back to my Doctor Who and history and try not to think about it too much. 

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