Seeking diagnosis

Hello

so

Last year I went on a music course to teach music for autistic young people and there was a woman there I knew in my childhood and she recounted a story about late or adult diagnosis in someone and spoke about how that person was as a child - and it was very similar to how I was perceived.

In any job I do I am always seen as different - people describe me as special and other times challenged. 

This event along with bumping into a stranger that day who we both decided we knew each other somehow but couldn’t find out how - till we spoke about autism - and she said she has it - made me really think about perhaps I do too. it was like I had met someone who I just instantly recognised as knowing very well. She wasn’t part of the course - she worked in a cafe outside and we were walking silently by each other’s side but something clicked immediately and she came up to ask me how she knew me and I said the same thing - I know, I know you too…

It was a real awakening or like a light had been switched on that day.

I went for a screening but the mental health nurse was not trying to help me. She wanted to keep me as past diagnoses.

I remembered recently though that in school and not just working life - from a young age I was seen as different - outbursts that don’t seem to fit my normal character - I was frustrated - highly emotional - bored - anyway I got moved up a year after seeing an educational psychologist. They decided I was advanced for my age. Then in high school they kept asking me to join the special education classes and I refused because I was a young girl and I didn’t want the stigma along with trying to survive socially amongst other high school girls. 
They told me it wasn’t just for people who find it difficult to read that it was for intelligent people too and had no reflection on intelligence - just that the teachers were extra attentive and they really tried to persuade me to go. They kept insisting. I think in classes I was just staring out the window. But I refused to join the special Ed classes. I remember this woman kept insisting to me she really thought I’d benefit and wouldn’t have to do it forever etc … 

So … doesn’t this see like there’s some kind of special need here ? How would I get diagnosed considering Society Iikes to keep a label on a female if there already is one to have some kind of  control or power - when studies show prior misdiagnosis for late diagnosis in adult autism is prevalent especially with females ? And that I do have a good theory of mind ~ I don’t even fit the box for autism ! but I do still have some kind of special need as far as I can tell because the world always puts it to me when I go into new places like school or work/jobs  -

can you help me please ? 
thank you 

  • Hello there, and welcome to the forum.

    The only way to know for sure whether you are on the spectrum or not is to get assessed, although I should point out that many are satisfied with a self-dignosis. I was not.

    I was assesed as ASD High Functioning aged 67.  I went privately and only waited a matter of weeks.  It was the best thing I had ever done. My lifestory has similarities with yours, but there are differences. Like you, I have had a lifetime of being  'different' or 'odd' or any one of the many synonyms.  I'd always struggled and was never sure why I didn't quite fit the mould. I'd been diagnosed many times with anxiety, and once had a serious breakdown. 

    Later, after feeling amazing relief upon discovering that stimming actually had a name, I decided to research autism. (I've stimmed my whole life, usually in private as in childhood the other kids mimicked and taunted me so much that I learned to hide away to do it, and still do), Firstly, I read a library book of another man's story which was very very like my own.  I felt more and more emotional as I read, and just couldn't put the book down. I did some on-line tests, and then started researching whom to see. There is a lot of choice out there and prices vary, so if you want to go private you need to look around.

    It was the best thing I ever did -  I shall never doubt that. I only wish I had done it years, or even decades, earlier.  There is no treatment and no cure, but knowledge brings tremendous relief.  I now know who I am.  Many past mysteries have been resolved as things just keep falling into place. Quite simply, I have never felt so good.

    Think about things, take as long as you like, and make your own decision.

    Whatever you do, or don't do, I wish you well.

    Ben