52 year old possible autistic

i would like a diagnosis for my sons/my benefit.
Since my wife passed away my son and i have drifted apart and he has mentioned this and is quite upset by it.
I hope that a diagnosis would help him to accept that i am not ignoring him it is just how i am.
I have tried explaining but i dont think he understood or accepted it. 

They did with me just to make sure there was enough reason to be referred I suppose. I scored quite high on the ADHD one also but the two conditions do overlap somewhat. 

Does the the GP run you through the AQ-10 assessment before referring you? I think I remember someone mentioning that a few days ago.

You might also read up on situational mutism. It sounds like it might be related to your "freeze" response. Happens to me all the time, too.

Roy said:

I left a page open on my laptop and just added to it as more realisation came along.

I have one too! I started with a list of Autism traits and then, over months, I've been expanding on the items with concrete examples as I notice them. This is more for my own benefit to detect masking/unmasking, but I could imagine someone presenting something like it to a doctor or psych.

For example, under "Eye contact", I had nothing for a while, but then noticed that, at the dinner table, if someone is speaking, I look down at the table when I'm listening. If I look at the speaker's eyes, I feel startled and lose track of the words. It's more pronounced if there's music on in the background—then I tend to fiddle with something in my hand, like a bottle cork, which seems to help with filtering noise (which is a separate item in the list). So, me listening intently, looks like someone not listening at all.

I would also most likely avoid social situations as much as possible also and eye contact only for those I trust. I would make an appointment and just say you’d like to be referred for an autism assessment, they may ask you a few questions or run through a fairly quickest assessment before referral to see if it’s the right path for you but at the end of the day you are there for a professional reason and the doctors should understand this. Best of luck!

You’re not alone David. I received my diagnosis a few weeks ago and my detailed report yesterday. 

I froze when I finally approached my Gp and forgot everything I wanted to say. I think the awkwardness in itself was something that caught my Gp’s attention. One thing I did do was to get my therapist to write me a letter stating why she thought seeking an assessment might be helpful. 

Because interactions with GPs never seem to go to plan and I was worried about convincing them, plus worried about waiting lists, I just did it privately. If you have the funds that is a pretty easy option.

I thought I'd be marginal or neuro-typical so didnt want to waste the NHS's time, and I thought they would not believe me, but ended up meeting almost all the requirements fairly easily.

The psychologists saw through me, but I am not sure the doctor would have done. 

That’s exactly what I did, I knew I would freeze and not remember anything. I left a page open on my laptop and just added to it as more realisation came along. I did go on my own though, It all  just felt too personal to share with family.

Damojo said:

Write things down. Get a family member to go with you

Great advice. I wish I would have done either of these two things when I got my assessment.

mrdavidjk said:

I have always felt odd, i struggle to talk to people beyond hello because i dont know what to say and often how to respond and i worry what they will think of me, i dont maintain eye contact and will actively go out of my way not to engage in social activities,
i am a world class procrastinator which i really hate because i dont know why i do this, and struggle to focus if there is more than one thing requiring my attention. there is more but this is what bothers me most.

Jeepers! You sound like my long lost clone! Are you about 6'5", athletic, with blond hair and a devilishly handsome and youthful face? No? Me neither. You're definitely my clone!

Tip: Learn as much as you can. Write things down. Get a family member to go with you, or just to help you organise things.

This forum seems to be packed with people who were diagnosed in their 50s or later. I think there is more awareness now that people have "managed so far", but can still be Autistic and/or ADHD, etc., so it will probably be unlikely you'll hear that. If someone feeds you that line, find someone else to deal with.

Hi and welcome to the community!

Many of us here are late self-realised or late-diagnosed, so you’re in good company! 

These NAS resources explain the main signs / symptoms / characteristics of autism, and could be useful for the list I mention later:

NAS - What is autism?

NAS - Signs that a child or adult may be autistic

In respect of getting assessed, this article is a good place to start:

NAS - How to request an autism assessment

It's from the NAS's diagnosis hub, which covers all stages of the process.

For those who live in England, it also includes information about requesting an assessment via Right to Choose (which enables access to private providers who might have shorter waiting lists than the NHS, but with your referral and assessment still fully funded by the NHS).

The NAS articles include links to the AQ-50, which you’ve already seen, and a shorter AQ-10. These seem to be the most frequently used / required by GPs in support of NHS referrals. (RAADS-R might also be helpful, but recent research has thrown doubt on its validity as a screening tool).

I’d suggest using the website below to complete one or both of them. It provides a useful commentary for each questionnaire, and enables them to be completed online (with scores calculated for you), and saved as PDFs.

If the results then support your suspicions, you can then print them off to take to the GP, perhaps along with a bullet-point list of some of the signs / characteristics that you recognise in yourself.

Embrace Autism - screening tests

You might also like to think about some of the reasons why you feel a diagnosis would be helpful for you, and include a few bullet points on this. The benefits listed in this article might be helpful for this:

NAS - Deciding whether to seek an autism assessment

In combination, these element of information are usually sufficient to support a GP referral.