For reference, I thought I'd describe my unsuccessful first attempt at getting an ASD diagnosis.
Several years ago now - over seven or maybe eight years ago, I think - I began my first attempt to get an ASD diagnosis. I don't remember all of it terribly clearly, though.
I went to my GP surgery, and saw one of the GPs there. I told him I wanted to be referred to a psychiatrist as I strongly suspected that I had Asperger's Syndrome. He said he couldn't just refer me straight to a psychiatrist like that, and referred me to a counsellor for counselling instead.
I saw the counsellor for just a few sessions, and I really couldn't see the point of it. I told the counsellor I didn't know why I was there, in the counselling, and she told me she didn't know, either. I decided to stop going.
But before that, the counsellor had asked me if I'd be interested in trying a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) group. I decided to try it out, partly out of curiosity, and also so that I couldn't be told that I hadn't tried it. While I attended all the sessions, it only really helped confirm that some of my difficulties weren't due to the sort of 'distorted thinking' that CBT was about. I was also exceptional in the group in that I clearly had much less need of CBT than anyone else there anyway.
After having stopped seeing the counsellor (but while continuing to attend the CBT sessions), I returned to my GP surgery and saw the same GP again. This time, he referred me to see a social worker as a first step on the way to seeing a psychiatrist. From what I remember, this was to make sure that only those who really did need to see the psychiatrist did so.
I saw the social worker, but while he said that he wasn't able to make any sort of diagnosis himself - he was a social worker after all - he told me to my face that it was clear to him that I wasn't on the Autistic spectrum! His explanation for this was that he knew some Austistic children, and that I was nothing like them. Since I was in my mid-thirties, and since it's a spectrum, and since we're still individuals anyway, this was quite a strange comparison for him to make.
I don't remember challenging this then and there, since I didn't really know quite how to. It wasn't something I was prepared for. I do remember being concerned that if I did a good job of challenging his dismissiveness, he might twist that round as evidence that I couldn't be in any way Autistic, since someone who was genuinely Austistic wouldn't be able to do that. After all, he already considered me too capable to possibly be on the Austistic spectrum. So, I just decided I'd have to go back to my GP about it.
I got a letter from that social worker, telling me that I wasn't being referred on to see the psychiatrist. I took the letter to my GP surgery, and saw a different GP (it's just how that surgery worked at the time). I showed her the letter, and told her that I disagreed. She read the letter, and told me that the letter said I could reply, and that I should do that.
So, I wrote a letter, and attempted to print it. However, for some, unknown reason, my printer wouldn't work. I was determined to overcome this technical, non-medical problem, and got bogged down with it.
Since then, I've actually used this particular instance as an example of the sorts of problems I can end up having.
I didn't go back to my GP, since this particular problem was a computer problem, not a medical problem. I didn't write my reply by hand instead, though, as I was determined to solve the problem and print it. But I didn't manage to solve that problem, I got increasingly distracted by other things, and time passed without me sending my reply.
The more time passed, the less I felt I would be able to explain why I hadn't just replied sooner. Not replying with a hand-written reply simply because I was determined to print it out properly seemed obviously silly, and something I couldn't really, sensibly explain. But at the same time, I refused to give up and write the reply by hand anyway. I still don't know how to explain this, though, and can't remember it terribly clearly now, either. But I just really had to do it in that particular way, where I printed out the reply I'd written. I do remember that I really disliked the untidiness and inconsistency of hand-writing my reply when normally it would be printed. It's something I found really annoying.
I've since come to more consciously realise that one of the big problems I have is explaining or describing the problems that I have, and that, in this kind of way, it's a self-compounding problem.
Anyway, getting bogged down with the printer problem, with time passing and with me getting increasingly distracted by other things, I lost momentum, and gave up with that attempt to get a diagnosis.
Eventually, at the start of 2012, I started my second attempt to get a diagnosis. I saw a locum GP this time, but this time I was patiently very insistent that I be referred to see a psychiatrist for a proper assessment. Nearly two and a half years later, I've finally received a summary of the DISCO assessment I ended up having with a clinical psychologist, and am hoping to receive the full, written report of that assessment by the end of this month. I do indeed have an ASD, and it's Asperger's Syndrome.
