Published on 12, July, 2020
I recently went for an ASD assessment through the NHS and the outcome was that I’m not autistic. She said to me that if it had been picked up when I was a child then I probably would have gotten a diagnosis but because of my intelligence (apparently, although I am yet to find my brain! Haha) I have become very good at hiding it and adapting. I am also a woman which makes it a lot harder to diagnose. So I don’t have a diagnosis. A assessment was started when I was a child but it was never finished for some reason. I know it sounds weird but I feel so upset by this. I feel like I don’t fit in anywhere in the world and this felt like the answer. The assessor said she thinks I may have ADHD so that means another wait list for however long to find out how my brain works. I don’t want this to come off like one of those people who wants to have ASD because I don’t. I want to be normal and to be able to live like my peers and I don’t.
Years ago I was misdiagnosed, as a female as it was thought females don't "get" autism. It was humiliating. Like you, as a child it was mentioned, in front of me even, and considered but there was no support for AD females at all at the time. I would get another opinion and practice, in the meantime, not masking. If you mask at the interview and the interviewer are clueless, and you are a female, it's will mean a lot of un-ticked boxes.
I was never really good at masking. I wish I had been in my youth. I could/can mimic behavior and speech - thought patterns, even- when faced with NT sorts of exigencies for a short time before having to hide in the ladies. It may have been why I was given a disability, albeit the wrong one. I now have the right one.