Starting to understand myself

Hi everybody,

Apologies this may be a bit long...

I'm a 27 year old male, I have a good career, did well at school and university and can probably be considered "successful". Underneath all of this I have ALWAYS struggled in life. People I work with have the image of me as calm, methodical and outgoing, however this is all just a mask and one that is extremely tiring to constantly wear.

A bit of a back story...

For my entire adult life I have struggled with severe depression, anxiety and when things become too stressful would have breakdowns where I would just want to shut everything out and hide. Quite often these resulted in being sign off work and causing problems with relationships. My brother died in a car crash when I was 18 and this always seemed to be a likely cause.

As a child I had friends, did well in school and had no real behavioural problems. I was very quiet and my school reports always pointed to me "being shy", "needs to come out of his shell". Emotionally I was behind my peers, it did not take a lot to make me upset and cry and I often felt bullied but in this was quite often simple jesting and I was told I needed to toughen up. My mother kept trying to enrol my in clubs and activities but this was always met with tears and severe worry.

I was quite obsessive as a child and had to organise my room so all objects were aligned and at exact right angles to each other and could tell if something had been moved. When furniture was re-arrange I would find this distressing. At any time I would have fixed hobbies and would only want to collect and play with the same things. An example being some figures called "Monster in my Pockets" that I would organise in colours and groups for hours on end and had several hundred... I knew them so intimately if I got any new ones I could tell people if I had it, in what colours and quantities. My mum often doubted me and checked, I was always right.

I am absolutely rubbish at making friends and actively hate social occasions. Most of my friends I have now, I have known for 20 years and do not really see the need for more. At parties and gatherings (which I hate) I am always really quiet and isolated and people’s attempts to converse with me are met with short specific responses.

I have highly sensitive hearing and hate both loud noises or lots of different noises. I can hear the electricity buzzing in plugs and standby appliances, I can also hear the high pitched frequencies furbies use to communicate with each other that others cannot. I am often told by people I am deaf as I always mishear or have to ask people to repeat. However, I have had a hearing test which came back as perfect.

People often say I am cold, aloof and grumpy all of the time and show little emotion or caring-ness. Which hurts.

Fast forward to the present

Although struggling I have got through life and weird things about me were just attributed to other things. Fairly recently my son who is 5 started primary school and had extreme difficulty settling in and was excluded several times. CAMHS and CDC became involved and he was diagnosed with ADHD and has been referred for a CDAC for Autism Spectrum.

My current boss and I always joke about how similar we are in many ways and most often we come to the same conclusions separately as though we are telepathic. His wife is an autism life coach and she was advising me about my son and said it sounds like he had HFA or Aspergers. She then made a comment about my boss and how she thinks he definitely has Aspergers and started talking about things he does. As she was doing this the penny dropped for me, it sounded like me!!!

After this I have done extensive research and the more I read the more I believed I could have aspergers. Reading people’s stories were like reading something I had written about myself. All of these little things I attributed to other issues and being odd were all traits of autism.

I did an AQ50 test and scored 42. I started consciously monitoring my behaviour and there were several "weird" moments. Twice at work people tried to shake my hand and ended up with me giving them my cup of coffee and a piece of paper I was holding... This was all several months ago and last week I plucked up the courage to see my GP. I have now been referred for an assessment. I am both scared and confused. I don't know whether I will be happy or distraught if I am diagnosed. The good is it finally makes me understand why I struggle with things people find natural. Distraught as it means that is the way I am and always will be.

If you have read this far then I'll be really surprised and grateful I did not mean for it to be this long...

For those who have do you have any advice or experience from the assessment process that may help me? Also how long from referral to diagnosis does it normally take?

Thank you

Grant