Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello,
I'm finding this hard to do, but thank you for being patient with me. If you could reply, that would be great. I am in my 49th year and female with no children. I have been through numerous jobs and every time I struggle to be comfortable in them after a period of time. I have worked for the NHS (in the background) for 5 years though I left about a year ago. This is the longest I have been in a job and felt the most confident until it all seemed to go wrong (mental health and physical burnout). I don't know if I made the wrong choice in leaving, but my self esteem and confidence is at an all time low especially at my current work. I feel pretty much ignored at work, and although I like to knuckle down and get on with my work, I do like to have a feeling of congeniality surrounding me.
Of course I may well be overthinking things which is a common problem, but it compounds the social anxiety to the point where I am struggling to cope with just getting to work now. I am ok at talking with people, but I tend to let them start conversations unless I ask a question to someone. Am I being rude? I'm unsure. I feel ridiculously sensitive to how other people react to me, and I don't know if this feeling supports or contradicts the possibility of Autism. For several years I have felt this way and I have looked into Autism and tried to understand it. If I am confused by it, does this mean I don't have it? I'm sorry for appearing a bit dense.
Hi, I’m an older autistic person, anxiety is very common in autistic people but not exclusive. My wife is an NHS nurse and went through a meltdown and then a burnout, we were lucky, the gp signed her off in the end for a year. The NHS helped her with therapy. She now is based in the community and loves it. Working in NHS is a bit like Marmite.what I would suggest is doing an AQ50 test online or a raads-r test. It will give you some indication of asd. I can’t give you a female perspective but apparently you ladies are very good at masking or camouflaging your behaviour, especially if you have had a whole lifetime to perfect it. I found a really good series of podcasts called Aut-hour, they are hosted by an autistic author, she interviews other mostly late diagnosed women who are are authors and have written books around autism and they explain how they realised that they are autistic and their journeys. I listened to Laura James book on audiobooks,”Odd Girl Out.” She is interviewed by Sara, it’s actually more informal that interviewing, more chatting.
Thank you for your reply and I will look at your suggestions and try to build some kind of profile for the doc. I'm not very organised though so will do my best.