This will run on a little bit.
Recently, my younger brother, 17, was diagnosed with HFA. I helped my Mum out with the assessment because I have a knack for keeping track of the family medical history and I am more confident around doctors than my Mum is. In my part of the world, people need 2-3 (depending on age) certified professionals to agree on a diagnosis in order to be diagnosed with any kind of ASD.
During the assessment with the psychologist, I was recommended that I seek assessment for myself, which is currently underway. It had been something that occurred to me before, not just in wondering, "Do I have an ASD?", but even before that occurred to me I was aware that I wasn't really cutting it socially, if nothing else but through consistent feedback across the board that I was socially inept.
(I have ruled out this just being people nitpicking, because when unrelated people with no contact with each other keep saying the same thing, it seems that there must be something real going on.)
I have tried to seek help for my social difficulties in the past, but it has been difficult. For unfathomable reasons, some psychologists outright disbelieved that I had any problems of the sort. Without entering into any discourse on the matter it was immediately dismissed as "you're just anxious/shy"/"you just overthink everything"/"it's all in your head", unwilling to even consider that not only might social anxiety might be secondary, it was not the issue I was seeking help for! I can only imagine this occurred because I am female and well-behaved, as I understand that demographic is usually overlooked.
I'm sure that as much as I could go on, the rest of the details are probably boring.
So, um... hi?
18 Apr 2011, 3:03 pm
