Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi all,
I am a male in my late 30's. As a child I was diagnosed with ADD and medicated on Ritalin. I remember having to see a load of counsellors and I was even banned from eating sugar and E numbers for a whole year. My childhood was awful. I always felt completely misunderstood and could never understand how what I had said created so much drama. I had literally no friends, self-harmed and generally hated myself. My IQ was very high, and my spatial reasoning was graded in some high percentile. But school was out for me. Also, as a result I hardly speak to any of my family.
As an adult I have been extremely high functioning. I get extremely obsessive. I remember completing a masters degree and locked myself in a room for three months. I got a distinction but also developed some agoraphobia. My life is filled with similar stories where I have taken things to the extreme and then had to get counselling to bring myself back to homeostasis. However, I have been told I have Asperger's on many occasions, usually preceded by "I can't believe you just said that you must have ...". my usual response is to look confused having completely missed any social cues.
I saw a presentation a while back about autism having been misdiagnosed as ADHD back in the day. I evaluated every online test I could find and scored 44 out of 50. I then asked my wife, best friend and mum to complete the test on my behalf and scored very high again. My wife said, "I always knew you had autism" and my mum said, "this makes so much sense now".
I could have cried when I did the test...textures, yes toilet paper packaging makes me want to throw up. Numbers, yes I multiply numbers in the weirdest way I have ever heard. Struggle socially, literally this is my life. Anxiety in new situations...do panic attacks count. And so on...
I am finding it hard to comprehend and really don't know where to turn or what to do now. It feels quite overwhelming and emotional to know that something that literally destroyed my childhood and relationship with family was completely mis diagnosed. I've learnt so many coping mechanisms as an adult, I've literally read How to wind friends and influence people dozens of times. Just knowing there's a community out there who feel the same is ... I can't even find the words it's so amazing. Any advice would be greatly appreciated? Am I even allowed to say it's autism without a formal diagnosis? I feel like I am wasting the GPs time as an adult, do I pay private? Is there any benefit to mentioning it to work or will it throw up more issues?
Simple answer? Yes.
Well, technically, probably.
The number of different posts like this in online groups I've been in is huge. People who think they might be autistic, have done some kind of deep research dive into what being autistic is like and felt it resonate, and then dropped a huge infodump on all the reasons they think it applies to them.
This kind of obsession is an autistic trait.
I'm not a medical professional or any kind of qualified assessor.
But yes. You probably are.
(And I'm going to copy and keep this for the next time this question appears.)
I was going to go into more depth about how I evaluated the online tests before disseminating the one I selected to my nearest and dearest. Then how, after they had completed it on my behalf, I interviewed each of them at length to gather some usable qualitative data to cross-reference against my own answers. I swear this is the truth but when I wrote it, even I thought it looked like I was taking the p***.
Thanks Glitter, it's great to feel supported and not alone.
haha. Repetition is autistic trait too. :D You should love typing it again and again everytime. LOL
Btw People find that kind of joke I've just made the most annoying among my jokes. I'm not sure if it's true for autistic, You are my first subject to be tested.