ASD focus now

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Hello, I haven't posted on here in a bit,

I am having bad meltdowns again lately...

I got assigned a new case manager after my old one retired, she had a long talk with me today...

The subject, she very experienced with ASD adults and has determined it's my primary issue, not bipolar disorder, they're going to shift their treatment focus more toward ASD.

She said it's very obvious in me, as in I don't seem to have the ability to mask. This should've been caught sooner. She's going to try to find me an ASD group locally and better therapy. My current therapy is already focusing on ASD more, but she seems to have stereotypes. My new worker suggests a new therapist

Please let this work!! ! I need help for my real issues!! !

In the meantime I need more trigger tolerance and meltdown adversion tips.

Just thought I'd let you guys know what's up.

this is great news. So many of us have got false diagnoses because the professionals doing the diagnosis were not informed about autism and they put us in the slot where we 'seemed' to fit best among the things they were informed about. Often people with autism will be assigned a diagnosis of "atypical" bipolar, "atypical" borderline, "atypical" Schizoid tendencies, "atypical" ADHD/ADD. Standard "treatments" for those diagnoses fail because of course the diagnosis is incorrect. That is a good clue that maybe we are indeed autistic instead of whatever diagnosis we have been saddled with as "atypical". Glad to hear you have found somebody to guide you through this period of self adjustment and learning with new self understanding. Cheering you on. Keep us posted!

The focus should always be on what the patient identifies as their biggest concern.

For me, that's never been my autism - my PTSD has always been more bothersome to me, because it actually makes me unhappy, whereas autism makes my life harder but doesn't overall affect my happiness. Even my meltdowns seem to be a mix of both PTSD and autism put together, and treating the PTSD greatly reduced them. My only experiences with therapists who focused more on autism than PTSD has been very negative - they tended to identify a bunch of totally harmless quirks I see no reason to change as their primary focus while ignoring the fact that I was actively suffering from real problems unrelated to those quirks. It felt kind of like when an LGBTQ person with a mental health issue gets conversion therapy instead of therapy actually focused on the mental health issue.

I hope your experience is better, and you feel that the issues being focused on are actually the primary problems causing you unhappiness.