For starters, I am self diagnosed. I have brought it up to my family doctor, therapist and psychiatrist a few times. Each time I was shut down because I either didn’t have problems with communication (or some other dated reasoning) or that there was no point to be diagnosed as an adult because there are no support systems for that. Which was disheartening to say the least. I always knew I was not neurotypical but I didn’t have the words to describe it yet. I was just quirky, weird, introverted but also out spoken with a strong sense of justice. I began going down that rabbit whole because of tiktok, honestly. It had been on my radar before hand but I had an ignorant view on what autism was before that, I had never even heard of a female being diagnosed. I was however diagnosed with ADHD when I was 26. As well as schizotypal, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder. To name a few. None of them felt right to me. Until that is, I started listening and reading about autistic women when I was around 28. I had just had a 6 week trip to the mental health ward and was unknowingly on the road to the end of the bad relationship I was in (a blessing). That’s when I started seriously thinking I might be autistic. Four years later at 32 I have accepted my self diagnosis as truth and don’t doubt it nearly as often. I do sometimes wish I had an official diagnosis but I understand that’s asking for alot. Most doctors dont have the knowledge of what autism can look like in women, let alone that it is a spectrum.
I look forward to hearing your stories!
On the possibility that no one will respond to this post since our group is just beginning and I often ramble, I hope I will have the confidence to try again to begin some sort of engagement here. Thanks for taking the time to read this. Take care!
*Artwork done by me, @ strange.roots on Instagram. Just thought this post could use some colour.
My autistic dad frequently said that I was on the spectrum (always that exact phrase) but refused to have me diagnosed. I grew up just assuming that I had a high-functioning (as I need relatively few accommodations; my apologies if this is an outdated term) form of autism.
Now as an adult, I still don’t have the resources to get a professional diagnosis. I feel very much at home in groups like this; I have many of the symptoms of autism though not all; I got 136 on the RAADS-R test. That test was the tipping point that pushed me mentally from “strongly suspecting I’m autistic” to “self-diagnosed autistic”.