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.
I worry about the same happening, as I've been referred, having thought for a long time that I'm autistic based on most of my friends being autistic/neurodivergent, having reverse engineered socialising after being effectively friendless as a child, scripting every conversation and interaction, training myself to be more expressive, needing to understand the why of things. I expect it'll be really disorientating if I'm assessed as not autistic so I imagine that's probably how you are feeling.