Hi, I found this community today. I received my ASD diagnosis today and I’m honestly not really sure how to feel.
I had been waiting for around two years for this assessment, and I went into it without much idea of what to expect. If I’m honest, I thought I would leave with them saying, “No, you don’t have it, it’s better explained by XYZ.”
Instead, I spent around four hours going through school reports, childhood experiences, and different parts of my life history. I was told that the things I described aligned with ASD and, importantly, that it wasn’t something that had only appeared in adulthood. There were signs that had been present since childhood.
For most of my life, I thought I had a mild learning disability or some kind of developmenta/learning delay. A lot of this came from having a speech delay when I was younger, being behind other children at school, and finding subjects like maths particularly difficult. Despite my speech delay in my younger years and having speech therapy, I eventually became quite articulate articulate but academically poor overall. However, socially I struggled. I didn’t really mix well with others and often didn’t understand how to.
I was later told that these difficulties were more related to specific learning difficulties (SpLD) in maths and english, along with being diagnosed with dyslexia during my college years. This helped explain some of the challenges I had experienced academically.
I always tried my best, but now I’m finding myself feeling like a bit of an imposter. I keep going over things in my head asking myself: “Did I put it on?” “Did I exaggerate how I experienced things, either in childhood or even now?” I feel a bit like a fraud, especially because part of me thinks, “Surely someone would have picked this up when I was younger?” especially now that I’m in my 30s.
Before the assessment, I had convinced myself that I wasn’t autistic and that everything could be explained by simply being a shy child with some learning differences and was generally odd.
I think I’m just trying to process what this means and come to terms with a new understanding of myself.
