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Not able to get diagnosed/not taken seriously as a woman

octymph

Hi everyone,

I'm a current college student and I realised I had autism about a year ago and that's when everything suddenly seems to make sense. 

I'm not the type of person to convince myself on unnecessary things (which probably is an autistic trait as well) but no one around me seems to believe me on anything I said that's meant to be serious. 

And when I was finally brave enough to try to get a diagnosis, the [removed by mod] therapist basically read out the dsm-5 to me and told me I don't have autism because I don't "check the boxes". Did anyone else experience this?

To be frank with you I am so worried about getting comments that still doesn't believe me as I'm writing this down. 

Parents

  • Hi, welcome to the community. 

    It's hard, I also experienced a lot of disbelief when sharing my experience with others. So I stopped doing it, I do only here in this forum. That therapist might not be trained to recognise autism in high functioning autistic adults,  especially women that are not so stereotypical. You may try to find other therapist or ask your GP to refer you. They might give you some quick est like AQ10 for example, the result might convince them to refer you.

    There is the stereotype of a boy with the trains, honestly I was a girl with trams and tram lines and still many don't believe I might be autistic,  because I'm not a boy.

    You may also try self report tools such as tests: AQ50, RAADS,  print the results out and show them to therapist/GP.

    Anyway you can stay here in this forum with or without formal diagnosis, explore yourself and connect to others.

Reply

  • Hi, welcome to the community. 

    It's hard, I also experienced a lot of disbelief when sharing my experience with others. So I stopped doing it, I do only here in this forum. That therapist might not be trained to recognise autism in high functioning autistic adults,  especially women that are not so stereotypical. You may try to find other therapist or ask your GP to refer you. They might give you some quick est like AQ10 for example, the result might convince them to refer you.

    There is the stereotype of a boy with the trains, honestly I was a girl with trams and tram lines and still many don't believe I might be autistic,  because I'm not a boy.

    You may also try self report tools such as tests: AQ50, RAADS,  print the results out and show them to therapist/GP.

    Anyway you can stay here in this forum with or without formal diagnosis, explore yourself and connect to others.

Children
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