Good evening,
I went to my GP last week and told him that I suspect that I'm on the spectrum. I've wondered for years but after watching Chris Pakham's TV show I thought that I should find out for sure.
Since I watched those two episodes, I've become somewhat obsessed with learning as much as I can about autism and keep coming across traits that I have, that are common in people on the spectrum.
The main traits that made me seek a diagnosis are:
Difficulty with eye contact with everyone except for my wife.
Social awkwardness and Difficulty making small talk unless I know the person well
Planning conversations ahead of a social event (often weeks before, over and over again). I also replay previous conversations in my head.
I have limited interests that I get obsessed with, entomology being the main one and professional wrestling and comedy being the longest lasting. It isn't enough to just watch wrestling and comedy, I delve deeply into why and how everything works. Same with music too, I can't just listen to it, I have to find out everything about the artist and if there's a song I like, I'll listen to it on repeat for weeksI'm very fussy with food, particularly certain textures. If you put a lasagne in front of me and told me that was my dinner, I'd look at it the same way as someone would react if you put a pile of poo in front of them. This has caused a lot of issues in my life, it's very restrictive and I have to completely avoid social events that take place in places that exclusvely do food that I don't like.
I often fiddle, finger tapping, picking and chewing the skin around my finger nails
I could carry on writing but I should probably leave it at that. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get a proper diagnosis because mental health services here in Guernsey are rubbish and I know that none of you can give a diagnosis but it would be great to have someone sort of confirm it and help me to stop ruminating before I have a meeting with the local autism charity at the end of the month.
I haven't told most of my family about this yet, my wife knows and so does my GP (who I happen to work with) I will "come out" if I can get a diagnosis. Part of the reason for seeking it is that I've recently had a promotion at work which will require more social interaction, which obviously could cause issues for me. I've already completely failed to show any compassion to a Imember of my team who fell and broke her wrist. I just couldn't figure out what to say to her.
