Hi everybody,
Just wanted to introduce myself as I am newly diagnosed with both autism and ADHD. I've had significant mental health issues for most of my life but am fortunate to have a great GP who has always had my back. After discussing my case with the mental health multidisciplinary team (MDT), they recommended that I be evaluated formally for autism and ADHD. My GP was an effective advocate and I was able to get assessed much quicker than I had feared. At the end of it all, I was diagnosed with both.
This is all very recent still, so I think I am still trying to process it. But it is making me reevaluate many of the struggles I've had with depression and anxiety since I was 12 years old. I always felt like I wasn't a real person and I always wondered how others manage to go through life as real people. It makes me wonder how much of my depression and anxiety has been linked to unknowing masking and autistic burnout. I also wonder how much of the harmful behaviours (to myself - I'm trying to phrase this carefully because I don't want to trigger) I have could actually be maladaptive self-soothing or stimming. These behaviours are certainly habitualised (ritualised even) rather than driven by emotion in the moment. In fact, I believe it was this element that started the discussion in the MDT about whether I might be autistic.
One thing I do know is that it actually felt like a relief to be diagnosed. Reading my diagnostic report felt like seeing myself through different eyes. Where I think I'm struggling with my feelings is around a sense of grief or loss about how life might have been less of a struggle if I had been diagnosed earlier. I'm sure the struggles would have been different, but at least I might not have become so alienated from myself.
Anyway, that's my long-winded way of introducing myself.
