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I’m not autistic

NAS86112

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. 

  • in reply to Ben

    so aplty put, friend Ben!

  • You seem to be saying that if you were less intelligent, you would have been given an autism diagnosis. Intelligence is not mentioned at all in the diagnostic manuals, so should play no part in a diagnostic assessment for autism. If the assessor was unsure about giving you a diagnosis because your behaviour and presentation were inconclusive, due to masking, then your own description of your traits and difficulties should have been conclusive. Personally, I have little faith in clinicians 'divining' the autistic status of adults from observation.

  • But surely, if she said you are 'hiding and adapting it' then she is acknowledging that you have it. You can't hide something you don't have!

    Ben

  • 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.