Waiting on diagnosis

Folks,

This is a new thing for me.  Only joined these forums a few days ago.  To give context, I'm in my late 40's with a teenage kid who was diagnosed with ASD last year. As my wife and I read up on ASD, a whole load of things started to resonate with my personal experience, and so, late in 2021 I asked the GP about it.  After the initial questionnaire, I was referred for diagnosis, and that began with an online interview very early in 2022.  After that interview, and a questionnaire sent to my wife, we have heard nothing more.  Apparently, with the NHS as it is, the process could easily last until 2024 before either an affirmative diagnosis or dismissal.

But the thing is, life has always felt.. and I don't have a useful word for this... odd.  Beyond me.  I wanted a diagnosis to try and finally make sense of the way that almost every day feels like some kind of struggle. Although I suspect the answer, I don't feel qualified to diagnose myself.  I'm going to share some recent musings from my journal, just to see if this sounds familiar to anyone out there.  Thoughts and insights are welcome, but please constructive ones.  This has been a decades long struggle, with numerous interventions through several different counsellors (through which I was told that I was depressed/anxious/secretly gay/traumatised, etc, etc) which has been a mixture of insightful and downright obfuscating.  Here goes.

Autism. Is it finding that even though you have done 'good', the feeling is low? That, at the end of accomplishment and happy interactions, the head just hurts, like thinking is too overcharged and feels like it buzzes, a noise which is almost too much? Recognising that at those moments that even the small 'click' of a phone camera shutter sound feels like a shot of electricity through the brain? Is it knowing that however many times you push aside compulsive thoughts, that lead to compulsive behaviours, they will return without bidding in every quiet moment of the day?  That you are on an inescapable course toward a well-known but unloved destination? Is this autism? Anxiety? Depression? Alexithymia?

Is it an insomnia that wakes 'battle-ready' early morning by early morning? That declares 3, 4, 5 hours enough time asleep? Is it a force that causes arms to spasm and jerk - not in front of others, but for the private audience of the self in unprotected moments and overwhelmed situations? Is it the numbing indecision of circular logic traps that cause the simplest of decisions to take so many minutes, and competing priorities in the fog of now which is desperate for the clarity of the future? Is it in every moment of trying to stay present in a conversation with someone - one moment completely present, the next at greater distance than any physical change of location could create?

Is it in knowing how the next day will start, and yet not knowing, after decades, of how to change this? Is it in the doubt of self? Is it in sometimes genuinely not knowing what could happen next - whether you will go to work or drive 160 miles to a place that feels familiar and home? The ability to be both dedicatedly disciplined and yet disconnectedly impulsive?  Is it the never ending self-imposition of demand? Is it being asked 'how are you?' and genuinely not knowing how to sum up the mix of all the bad and good, all the enthusiasm and all the tiredness? Is it in struggling at such a deep, deep level, to even see yourself, like you know and feel everything and nothing at the same time? Is it feeling that life, if you look at it a little too closely, stare a little too deeply, just kind of doesn't 'add up'?  Either that or, more disconcertingly, that you don't add up?


I don't ever share this kind of stuff with people.  Even here, I'm trying to use the mask of anonymity to protect myself.  These are my thoughts.  Please be kind.