Diagnosed and still feeling insecure
I'm having a rough time getting all of this out of my head, so I hope venting it here will work. I thought that the idea of being diagnosed without even asking ahead of time nor saying much about my childhood before the diagnosis would be a relief. But it isn't, because sometimes I wonder if I deserve the diagnosis. I know I should be comfortable accepting myself unconditionally as I am but it's hard for me to do.
Many of my friends and family members don't believe I have AS because I am a social introvert and have a wide range of interests/hobbies. However, I do have obsessive thoughts. Other autistic people I've met have had mixed opinions about me. During the time I went through my phase when I was scared about being diagnosed as autistic because of the possibility of being handicapped, I talked to another girl who also has AS, and she agreed with the diagnosis and said that I might have it more severely than her because she said that I tend to speak in a slightly monotonous voice and have a rough time dealing with abstract concepts. However, on my IQ test I did well with metaphors and analogies.
Then, I went through a phase in which I liked being considered autistic. Right after I went through this phase, I joined an AS meet up group, and some of the people in the group didn't think I was autistic because they said I have reciprocal conversations and good eye contact. What do you guys think? I hope I won't make this too long.
When I was a baby, I was delayed with my language learning. I was kicked out of a regular preschool and taken to special ed because I wasn't talking enough nor socializing enough with my other classmates. When I looked at my baby pictures I realized that I had weird facial expressions of staring a lot. I was in special ed only classes until 3rd grade. Then I was placed in a regular school. Among the normal students, I had a much harder time making friends, and appeared very weird. For instance, I would repeat the same weird jokes and pace around and daydream. Also, in 4th grade, I had imaginary conversations with shadows in the house, and I had seriously convinced myself that I could fly because of another weird fantasy I had. Every time my parents saw one of my strange behaviors, they blamed it on the people who put me in Special Ed, because they mistakingly thought that I picked up my behaviors from them. In Junior High, even though I had normal eye contact when talking to people, I would stare a lot whenever I daydreamed.
Also, I have done many things in slow motion. In college it took me 3-6 hours on average to type a 2-3 page, double spaced, 12pt font essay, and I qualified for extended test taking time. At age 13 I learned to tie my shoelaces, in 5th grade I learned my multiplication tables, I learned to tell time, and I learned to blow bubbles with gum. I also used to talk very slowly and drag out a lot of syllables. And after high school, I was coordinated or confident enough to stop drinking with a straw.
I know that there might not be a lot of doctors on this website, but what do you guys think?
Additional information is that I don't have any sensory overloads, nor emotional melt downs. In my IQ test, I scored with a verbal comprehension index of 138, performance IQ of 115, and processing speed of 106. I think I might have mild prosopagnosia (problems with facial recognition), I tend to be a bit of a klutz, and I have a slight problem with sense of direction/spatial perception. My former boss told my job developer from the Department of Rehabilitation that I have poor communication skills, but he did write me a very good reference letter. Also, even though I was bullied, picked on, or ignored throughout 5th - 12th grade, and went through a temporary phase of extreme shyness, I went to a psychotherapistin high school that gave me the skills necessary to meet a lot of friends in college. However, I've never been in a romantic relationship before, because of fear, due to past experiences of sexual abuse.
When I looked at the pages in the books about girls on the autism spectrum, I thought a lot of it described me (other than the fact that I didn't control others in relationships), because I used to play with my stuffed animals in High school, as a substitute for hanging out with friends.
Finally, I brought the issue up with my parents, and they said that they had a professional psychologist follow me around and watch my social interactions for a few years, and he said that I wasn't autistic. He also said that my language learning delay was because of my parents trying to teach me 2 languages at the same time. Then again, when I was in colllege, I was seeing another psychotherapist for a few years, before I was diagnosed as having AS. I snapped at him because I was angry and maybe delusional about him, and he interepreted that as a lack of reciprocity. I noticed that he was meaner to me after the diagnosis.
So anyway, I don't feel fully comfortable with being/ trying to be neurotypical for the rest of my life because I fear that even if I try, I will come off as weird. Sometimes, I try to be funny, and sometimes other people tell me I'm funny without trying to appear that way. At the same time, if I'm not autistic, then why am I so weird? If I can't view myself as autistic, and if I'm not neurotypical, then by default I might view myself as a freak.
I have all the same feelings that you do, but I thought they'd surely go away once I do finally get diagnosed. I guess that's not always how it works.
If you were diagnosed without even having to bring it up, or share a lot of info, then I think it's a safe bet that that you are indeed autistic. A lot of what you said sounds like AS, or even possibly HFA to me. Eye contact is not the end all of the ASD criteria. My son can make eye contact, but it's not as frequent as NTs. Also, I would think, that it would matter why you're making eye contact. If you're doing it because you know it's expected, or if you're doing it to communicate non-verbally with the person you're talking to.
I can imagine that it would be hard to accept a diagnosis if your family is telling you that they don't believe it. Parents accepting the diagnosis can be a tricky one, because for reasons of their own, they're often in denial. Their opinion on the matter may be more about them, and their feelings about the matter, than it is about whether you really are on the spectrum or not. It would be really upset me if I had gone to an AS group, and they told me that I didn't have it, too. However, one thing that I'm realizing is that the autism spectrum is really, really diverse. It seems that we all have different struggles, and skills that also play along with our own personality, as well as the environment that we were raised in.
The one thing that I do know is that self doubt can be your worst enemy. It's really hard to quiet that voice inside of your head that is always saying negative things about you. It can really bring you down way more than others can, because it's like a collection of all the negative things that anyone has ever said to us.
If it would help, and it's viable, you can always get another professional opinion, to ease your mind. In any event, I do hope that you make peace with yourself, and that you feel better.
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