Autism

Hi! Welcome to our community! I appreciate you sharing your persona experiences. They help me understand other autistic individuals' experiences and my own. In particular, we both share our families telling us we were odd. My family even had a nick name for me: Arnold Mal (I bet you can imagine how difficult it was to not only live with them, but be raised by people that nickname kids to make fun of a mental condition). My family are immigrants from Latin America, and I was the only US-born family member. Being that I was anglophone and odd, the name had double meaning. One, it's in English. The other is that when read in Spanish, it sounds like they are calling me abnormal in Spanish.

Since middle school, I knew I was different, but my family told me that I too sensitive or overly emotional and picky. Once I ran away as soon as I graduated high school, I tried to adjust, but still ran into difficulties, again blaming myself for being sensitive or socially dumb. I tried learning a lot about mental health disorders as a special interest, and figured I had a personality disorder that wasn't defined. It wasn't until I saw a relationship therapist that I asked her what was wrong with me. I said, "I know I'm different. I read the personality disorders in the DSM like 10 times, and I don't relate to any of them. What's wrong with me?" She was the first person in a long history of seeing psychiatrists, therapists, and getting misdiagnosed, that told me I wasn't broken, but instead seemed like a highly sensitive person. She had me investigate the phenomenon. She also told me to test out a lot of different social settings and told me to notice the people in settings I felt the most comfortable. She was guiding me to realize I was autistic.

While going through that journey, a friend that was a psychologist and also autistic finally told me that he thought I was autistic. I sought a professional assessment from an autism specialist that confirmed it. Getting diagnosed was so helpful at making sense of my life and how to adjust it so that I can finally be happy without always wondering the the hell is going on. I say all this to relate and give some personal experience on the benefits of a diagnosis because I saw that in another comment you ask if that was worth it. For me, it has been more than worth it. I would happily have paid double for the evaluation. It has been so impacting, that I can divide my life to before and after diagnosis.

Again, welcome to the community!