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
