Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi, my name is Emily. I am 21 from the UK and I was diagnosed with autism last year. I always struggled as a child, in primary school I was referred for a diagnosis however due to circumstances not under my control, this did not happen. As I was leaving high school I had a lot of stress; my dad passed away a month before my GCSEs and I had an abusive home life. Due to this I experienced what I am now aware is autistic burnout. I barely scraped my GCSEs despite being predicted all 9’s (A*) and I quickly dropped out of college. For the next four years I was under mental health teams and had extreme depression that left me unable to leave the house. Despite this, I was forced to move out at 17 and became homeless. I spent time in psychiatric wards due to dangerous behaviour towards myself and I got even worse. I was diagnosed with EUPD (something I’ve learned is a common misdiagnosis with autistic adults, mostly females). The stigmas behind EUPD by those in the medical field and out left me without support or help and I got much worse. It wasn’t until I saw another doctor that autism was brought up and I did a test with him which indicated that I had autism, I was then put on the pathway for a diagnosis and a year later I got it. This is an extremely common story for autistic adults, mainly females that ‘mask’ well. I almost died several times due to a misdiagnosis that meant that the care I was given was inappropriate and left me vulnerable. I am wondering if anyone else has experienced anything like this in terms of misdiagnosing Autism for a psychiatric disorder and wether your diagnosis impacted your care?
It's really hard to split out which condition is which in some cases. So EUPD would likely be linked to the '"onset" period of your symptoms. Misdiagnosis hurt because they can mean you recieve wrong or dangerous treatments.
Personally speaking, I have both ASD and cPTSD, and can only seperate their impacts due to some very careful descriptions of when and how specific experiences impacted me.
For example, since being very young, I was literal, a rules follower, oftem focused for long periods, didn't understand breaking the rules.
Then I had some fairly major trauma around 13, that had a long term impact on my life. Diagnosed as "depression" for nearly 3 decades aftet that, having the cPTSD diagnosis is a life changer for me in tackling my symptoms.