Hello NAS community,
My name is Deleuze and I am new here. I have so many questions and thoughts and worries buzzing through my head right now I am struggling to know where to start so I'm just going to keep it breif and work the rest out later.
I'm a 28-year-old male and have been struggling with communication skills and social intuition, interaction and imagination for my whole life - or rather for my whole life as I have only just discovered, seeing as I have kept myself sheilded from others and at a certain distance making my difficulties less apparant.
Over the past six months or so with ongoing discussions with my wife it has become clear that there is something seriously wrong. Doing research it seems that ASD is a strong possibilty. For their worth I have done a few of the online diagnostic surevys scoring AQ 42; EQ 10; 71 SQ (I find these tests fairly clumsy, ironically enough, becuase I tend to over analyse or interpret literally the meaning of each of the questions). We have undertaken more qualitative approaches too.
Also my wife attended a conference on Autism (run by people on the ASD spectrum) as part of her employment which pretty much cermented our thoughts. Everything from the mineut stims and mannersims to life experience and learning processes that were discussed corresponded with me.
My one fear and worry is how this will affect my wife as my behaviour and lack of empathy put an unimagingable level of stress upon her.
My questions:
I am planning on speaking to my GP within the next 4-5 weeks to arrange to see a clinical psychologist for a formal diagnosis/assessment. In order to prepare myself I'd like to ask the community what members' expereinces have been of diagnosis.
I understand that it will hardly be quick, but how long can I expect to be having diagnosis for, will it be a few weeks of meetings and assessments or months or longer? I'm sure it will vary, what time scales have people here experienced?
Also, upon reading NAS information, I understand that a meeting/interview with a parent or sibling would be likely. This is what worries me the most, my parents are lovely, but they have a strong tendancy to seeing myself and my brothers in the most positive light and I am scared they will not be as honest or truthful in their depictions of my childhood.
I really appreciate you taking the time in reading my post, and I'd be grateful if you could post your comments and thoughts.
Was that breif?