Hello. I'm James.

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I was also rejected this year when I tried to get an adult diagnosis, though I'm in my 20s. I guess I am good at masking, but social behaviors usually feel put on and I froze trying to explain that to him. Pretty sure he didn't care and was just trying to get me on pills and out the door, don't even think we talked for an hour. But like you it has discouraged me from diving into another psych office.

I flip-flop on it. Sometimes I feel like I'm just making it up and would like to have an 'official' diagnosis. I would like the relief of knowing. But then I think even if I had a diagnosis, it wouldn't stop those doubts. And if a diagnosis said I don't have it, I probably wouldn't accept that either. So what would be the point?

I flip-flop on it. Sometimes I feel like I'm just making it up and would like to have an 'official' diagnosis. I would like the relief of knowing. But then I think even if I had a diagnosis, it wouldn't stop those doubts. And if a diagnosis said I don't have it, I probably wouldn't accept that either. So what would be the point?

I am undiagnosed, but fairly certain I have Aspergers and I'm fairly certain my 6 year old daughter does too. In fact it's been through watching her early years development and behavioural irregularities that I've come to better understand my own behaviour both as a child and into adulthood (I'm 41 now).

Last year I made some attempts at getting a diagnosis - it suddenly seemed important to me. I was referred by my doctor to the local specialists but I got a message back from them a few weeks later saying they didn't want to see me because it didn't sound like my issues were severe enough and they wouldn't be able to do much to help anyway. I spoke to my GP again and he agreed to advocate for me, and I was going to write out a load of stuff to support my case, life experiences and so on...but I never did it.

Why? I felt rejected, a bit I suppose. Like I'd been judged. I'm prone to feeling that people aren't believing me when I talk about anything so it kind of plays into that. Of course they haven't judged me specifically - they haven't assessed me at all. I also felt somehow at that moment that it was less important that I get diagnosed. And with Covid-19 going on I did feel like my problems weren't very serious in light of the bigger picture.

I don't know if I will go back to trying to get a diagnosis. I can't afford to do it privately and I don't know if I have the resilience to get past all the NHS gatekeepers.

I will certainly be trying to get my daughter properly assessed though as soon as Covid-19 is under control. If she can grow up at least understanding why she is the way she is I feel like that has to be better than growing up mystified and increasingly self-critical as I did.

I find it almost impossible to make and keep friends. I have a partner of 18 years who is my sole friend really. There have been other people but they've all fallen by the wayside. It often seems that if I don't make contact with people who I think of as friends, they will never reach out to me. I test this sometimes and it bears out. I assume this means they are happy for the friendship to fade away, like they're not getting enough out of it to make any effort to keep it alive. I've talked to some people about it and they've told me that they're never sure how I feel about them - whether I like them or not. Weirdly, my mum once told me that this was also how my grandmother felt about me. I've concluded that there's something other people do to transmit this information that I don't do. I've not been able to work out what this might be.

I've gone on so I'll stop there. But I'm looking forward to reading more of this forum. What I've seen so far has made me feel a bit less weird, and even more certain I have some ASD going on in here.