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  • I voted as "self-diagnosed" -- but that's really an inadequate description.

    I'm an adult with multiple autistic kids who have themselves each been professionally diagnosed... and I share an overwhelming percentage of my personality and characteristics with them. But I'm clearly in the "high-functioning" category, and have managed to reach a certain level of stability and success in my own life; so even ignoring the obvious monetary cost of getting a professional eval, at this point there just isn't much that such a diagnosis would do for me... whereas my kids benefit by having that official piece of paper in their school records; it provides concrete evidence to justify the requests for accommodations which we've submitted on each of their Individualized Education Programs (IEP).

    Which is to say, I believe that there are certainly good reasons to go to a professional -- but there are also circumstances which can significantly mitigate those good reasons.

  • Okay, so I am kinda self diagnosed.

    For once, when I was a child Asperger's wasn't even acknowledged yet and there was still the "girls don't have autism" trope going on. Also, my parents were both addicts and abusive. How things looked on the outside was very important to them though so acting and moving "normally" was literally beaten into me and I learned to mask pretty well at an early age. School was still hell though and I never managed to make any friends.

    Fast forward to the time of the internet and I started meeting people who weren't that different from me. I started to make friends and met my husband.

    Even more years later all that trauma from my childhood reared its head and I went through lots of therapy. At some point my therapist suggested getting tested for ADHD and autism. I had to go private because it was pretty much impossible to get diagnosed as an adult otherwise and after three years of waiting I was finally tested for ADHD and diagnosed. The neurologist who diagnosed me suggested getting tested for autism as well and let me take the RAADS-R test and I scored a whopping 212 points. She was, however, not qualified to give me an official diagnosis.

    Right now, I'd have to wait for three to six years until getting assessed and it wouldn't change anything for me. I don't need accommodations at work because I'm a stay at home wife and there are no other upsides to an official stamp. I simply use workbooks and other information to find ways to make life easier for me.

  • At the time I took this, 40% voted self-diagnosed, 22% adult-diagnosed, 18% child-diagnosed, 18% undiagnosed.

    I voted self.

31 comments