Diagnosis as adult - for or against?

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I second what Kirayng said. I am still having those "ah-ha" moments. At first, the barrage of realizations was almost overwhelming. I have processed most of it now, but there are still random moments when something else will click into place.

I highly encourage you to document these "thoughts" as the mystery clicks into place. They will be very helpful to you as you continue to process, alone and with your therapist.

I feel it's a sort of difficult necessity that should be provided for because of cases like mine.

Basically, my mom consistently told me that "oh, you were gifted" and because of this I mirrored the problems of an ASD. When I was in preschool they claimed that I had PDD but she rejected the diagnosis and basically scooted me along with my life, using my IQ score as motivation to do well in class.

Well, things got worse, I didn't really have any friends until high school, I felt depressed ect. I mean, I really just didn't get why I wasn't making friends with people. When I got into college I was kinda at the point where I realized I was doing stupid things but at the time I wasn't aware of it until later, causing for a lot of guilt in my life. Well, someone suggested to me that there might be some sort of issue in the brain, so I started to do some investigation and discovered AS.

My family, because of their first experience with the school, was very negative on any ASD and considered it almost taboo, and that only "rainman types" were the real ASD's. My mom in particular seemed to have this belief. It was difficult because I felt like I had to go behind her back because of this idea.

I recently received an evaluation result and I need to discuss it with the evaluator, but it said that I had an unidentified ASD (non-AS). Dad helped participate for the early childhood development stuff. I might be getting reevaluated later to get a more succinct result but it feels good to know that my issues weren't just me being stupid or being unwilling to learn, but more because a fundamental way that I was.

Thanks, I do anticipate significant 'aha' moments, whether being on the autism spectrum is ruled in or ruled out. I'm hoping that they'll be able to tell me you are / are not on the spectrum; what will be hardest I guess is if they are unable to give a definitive answer, I think I might find that frustrating so I'm trying to mentally pre-prepare for that too.

In some ways I'm sort of prepared as I've been though this once before when I was finally diagnosed with a very rare mild chronic genetic physical condition in my early 30s. I had to change a number of behaviours to lessen the impact of the condition, and learn to accept that some things I was maybe stuck with and could not make accommodations for. That had a lot of impact on my self-identity too, so in some ways this is well worn territory for me, I'm kind of lucky as I've been through something a bit like this before.

And, corvuscorax, I strongly identify with your experience of struggling to connect with others at school.

I have been trying to understand why this happened to me too. For a long time I could not understand what went wrong, and was not just able to
'put it behind me' no matter how much I really really wanted to.

I have a lot of pieces in place now, and feel like I have a much greater self-understanding and self-acceptance. I no longer feel wrong or bad which is a big step forward for me, finding WP has helped with this, but a professional autism assessment (which hopefully I will get) would also help a lot with completing the self-jigsaw as it were.

Well, it's official now. I've posted an installment in my blog to conclude the documentation of the process and updated my profile. My assessment is over, I've gotten my result, and I've been given this (the explanation of the cake is in my last two blog posts, near the end of each):



I'm exhausted. All the stress of the past year's journey has caught up with me. I'm now taking some down time to recover from my fatigue crash / pain flare-up and to digest all this before making my next move, whatever that will be. It still hasn't entirely sunk in yet. I feel almost as though I need to keep hearing it over and over before I'll truly believe it's real. I'm so used to either not knowing or waiting to know. but I was very excited on Tuesday, and I really enjoyed that "high" while it lasted.

I don't know what the future will bring, but I feel it was worth it to go through all this. I got the explanation of why I have an Asperger's diagnosis now, why other things being considered were ruled out, and why certain things constitute previous misdiagnoses. The written report will come in September. They're starting to get very busy already, dealing with providing the things parents will need for students returning to school in the fall. But I can wait. In the meantime, I already have my answer.

Congratulations!! !

It's great you've finally got the answer.

That is a truly wonderful cake :D

That cake is awesome and hilarious.

That looks like a yummy cake.

Today I got my results after months of waiting and I have Autism and some other conditions. It feels good that I have a answer now and it was not a waste of time pursuing.

Congratulations, wonderboy!

My sister rocks! It was a sunny yellow cake she made from scratch, with store bought chocolate frosting. A lot of it got eaten by my sisters, my nephews and niece, and me on Tuesday night. I took most of the rest home with me from my sister's house. My girlfriend and I had some of what was left last night, and I think we may finish the rest tonight. Mmmmm!

So it looks like, not only I am definitely being referred to the adult autism centre for assessment, but also now the clinical psychologist who I was seeing will be writing a letter supporting my referral, even though they had originally said they would not.

I get the impression the clinical psychologist directly intervened to ensure I did not get lost in the referral system, and since the CPs views would be sought at some stage anyway decided they might as well write a letter now. All in all a very helpful thing to do.


I'm glad the CP was looking out for me. Also I wonder, if I had not had someone looking out for me, could I have been lost seeing the wrong people for a while, could my search of diagnosis have gone badly off track. I'll never know for sure, but I'm very grateful the CP is now helping.


It appears the clinical psychologist is also now much less sceptical that I might have Aspergers or High Functioning autism now they have seen the results of the online tests (and actually took some of the tests themselves - to see what the results were for them - I guess to check them out for themselves) and also read my long list of reasons. Yet more good reasons for building an evidence case before seeking diagnosis as an adult it appears.

So, I discovered an interesting thing about the way it appears the diagnostic process works in the UK in my region today. It seems that who knows you may speed it up, or at least prevent it going off track...

I've written some more details about this on my blog here.

That's good news! You're on your way! I'll check out your blog soon.