I decided to speak up about me thinking I may be autistic after a year of research, I have been told that I’m just depressed and that I never showed any sign, a part from been read an oudated book that mentioned a bit about autism. Now I just feel like I’m faking it, even if I don’t know how I could have been faking things I have done all my life.
You’re not faking it. Getting a professional diagnosis, especially as an adult, is so IMPOSSIBLY DIFFICULT, that the autism community at large accepts and advocates for self-diagnosis. If, when you read about autism symptoms, you go “Oh, that’s me. Oh I so am that. Wow, I’ve never felt so understood before.” and if you talk to the autistic community and go “For the first time in my life, I feel like I belong. I feel like the things I do make sense.” THEN YOU ARE AUTISTIC.
One idiot doctor telling you that you’re not autistic, you’re depressed, doesn’t change the fact that you’re autistic. Our community is LITTERED with people who were misdiagnosed as having some other thing, rather than autism, because autism is so POORLY understood by doctors it’s pathetic.
The truth of the matter is, the access for all people who want to get professionally diagnosed for autism just isn’t there. And, unless you want to get services, you don’t need it. (and I have a professional diagnosis and I have to fight tooth and nail for a scrap, a pittance of services and it frankly doesn’t feel worth it most of the time).
And, one day when you finally DO get professionally diagnosed, you realize that it’s complete bullshit anyway.
Here’s how I got my professional diagnosis. I spent 2 YEARS, with both me AND my therapist (God bless her) calling doctor after doctor, facility after facility, trying to find one, ANY one, that diagnoses adults. We finally found ONE, a two hour drive away in the city, but they charged $15,000. HAHAHAHAHAH I’m not rich.
So then she signed me up for some kind of study at a local university. For the study, they wanted to see where on the spectrum the participants fell, so a diagnostic test was given for free. I did it. They never got back to me.
Then my therapist finally, finally found a state-run facility that was willing to test me, an adult, for $245. I did not have that kind of money, but I was desperate to get that piece of paper, so that I could get hired at a government job (without the diagnosis I would have to compete with the “regular” applicants for the job, and had failed several times to land the job in this manner).
So, with the specific goal of “Get the paper so I can get the job”, I went. All the doctor did was ask me questions, which I answered the “right” way in order to get the paper. For example, I’ve never had a problem with eye contact. But during that meeting, I made DAMN SURE to never look him in the eyes ONCE. I knew the stereotypes. I played into all of them, to get my paper.
I got it. I paid the money. I got my paper diagnosis. I got the job.
Two years later, the university finally sent me my results, from the real test that I’d done, the one where I was honest and answered truthfully.
Guess what. I was autistic. Which I had now known about myself for five years, having spent that long in the autistic community online.
So, in the end, what did I learn from being “professionally” diagnosed? I learned that professionals don’t know shit. They’re just stabbing in the dark. But you know your own mind. You know what it’s like to live as you. And if you look at your mind, and you look at autistic people, and you go “I feel home.”
Then you are home, my friend. And you don’t need a paper to say so.
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