Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi, I'm Charlie.
I went for a private diagnosis yesterday 4/4/17 at the age of 24. My whole family and partner of 5 years attended and we spoke with a consultant and doctor for around 4 hours!
I have to admit, it was my mother who suggested I might be autistic but I always shrugged it off because I felt like I was nothing like autistic people that I had seen through media or social gathering. The majority of people I had seen were male and I genuinely had no idea that it shows in women differently. So when I sat down i was very sceptical but I kept an open mind.
In the end I think we all had our ideas about what autism is broadened by what we were told and a lot of the things I considered to be completely "normal" were actually pretty different compared to the rest of my family, such as thought patterns and reactions to various sensual stimuli.
It seems that a lot of my difficulties make so much more sense to me now and my family seem to realise that a lot of things I did in my past especially dring childhood is far more explainable with this diagnosis.
Im not really sure what else to say or if writing all this out is of any help or use to anyone? I do not feel that I look or act Autistic (In a non-offensive way) So I am also pretty scared that people who have initially the same experiances as I used to think from lack of knowledge will not believe me.
Please feel free to give me a bit of advice or comfort. I really feel strange.
Hi Charlie,
Made me feel a little less upset to read what you are saying, so thought you would perhaps feel a bit reasured too to hear that you aren't the only one (even though people probably told you that but you may not actually know anyone). I'm 1.5 times your age and had the test a month earlier but otherwise lots of similarities, particularly the thing about finding reactions/behaviours normal and now learning and having to accept somehow that they are not. I'm still trying to collect evidence that they got it all wrong, despite knowing that this is pretty useless.
Did you want to be diagnosed with something (ASD or whatever else)? At the place I was sent to I got the impression that they are quite used to people who want to be told that they've got ASD, unfortunately I wasn't one of them. They seemed a bit too keen to find evidence for it. Guess if you are o.k. with that label it can potentially be quite useful, at least you may understand yourself better and your family will understand you better (or they may start attributing all sorts of things to ASD suddenly, even things that actually are totally normal). If it's useful beyond that, I'm not really sure, especially if it was diagnosed fairly late, which suggests that it probably isn't particularly severe.
Do you think you'll tell people other than your family (who already know)? You had your test only yesterday, so it may be a bit too soon to ask/decide, but maybe you had thought about it before already. Think if I knew that people would give me a chance to tell them what it actually means for me I would quite like to tell them because it could prevent misunderstandings before they turn into massive problems, but on the other hand people may have some idea what it's like and may make a lot of assumptions that don't actually apply, or they simply decide that this is not something they want to be bothered with and therefore reject anyone who may cause trouble. I'm quite worried about this given that I got kicked out of a governmental reseach organisation for reasons that have their origin in what is ASD apparently, not in the quality of my work. They knew that a counsellor had suggested I should be tested for this and decided that there would be nothing they could do if that turned out to be the problem. I'm sure they know that this is rather big bullshit but if that's their attitude then it's never going to work. If that's the attitude of HR in a place full of intelligent people who are statistically also more likely than average to have come across someone at work with similar issues then what can you expect in other places?
I don't find it particularly comforting so far, but the people I have told keep saying that this doesn't suddenly make me another person in any way. I find this rather more upsetting because I must have annoyed people for the last 36 years without even knowing, but in case that's not so much of a worry for you this is probably something you should keep in mind, perhaps it reassures you a bit? Having a partner and so on you must have done quite a lot of things right, I guess...
Hmm, sorry, not awfully helpful I'm afraid. Hope I did at least not scare you more, but sorry if I did.
Have a good night, best without thinking about any of that stuff for a couple of hours!