Adult Diagnosis? (Long)

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Hey everyone. I wasn't sure where I should post this, so if there is a better spot please let me know. I tend to be overly wordy and draw out stories that could have been a lot shorter, so sorry if this comes across like a novel. This is only my 3rd post.

I'm having a really hard time coping with what it takes to get accurate medical help these days. I'm 22, female, uninsured, and work freelance so I basically don't have enough money to even dream of having insurance, let alone meeting most place's "sliding fee scales". I've made and missed many appointments throughout the years, out of sheer fear of someone probing my brain. I'm also somewhat agoraphobic, I only leave the house under very certain circumstances where I feel "in control", which is due to untreated social anxiety and panic attacks, I wasn't always afraid to leave my house, it's something that happened over time and just keeps getting worse. I feel like I've been sitting in one spot for years just watching my life not happen while everyone else's life passes in a crazy swirl around me.

Not only that, but I also have a sort of fear, maybe even a phobia, of doctors and doctor's offices, including the dentist and hospitals. This is complicated by the fact that my mom is the same way, so I was basically raised only being taken to the doctor when it was absolutely necessary. As far as my childhood goes, I was only ever at a hospital once because I tripped on a parking block and broke a couple ribs, other than that it was only ever for shots required to get into school. This has only gotten worse over time. Even now I find myself trying to encourage my mom to go to the doctor since her mom died pretty early of cancer. I wish she would make sure she gets annual checkups, because I don't know what I would do without my mom, but she won't.

So basically, I'm a hypocrite, I badger her about the doctor but have been avoiding it myself for 10 years, granted I was a child for most of those 10 years and my mom should have forced me to go to the doctor but she never did. Well she did once when I was 12, because in junior high I became very depressed and suicidal, and was having issues with OCD, from both my dad cheating and then leaving us, and from bullying in school, and they recommended an inpatient/outpatient day program for me, but I refused to go out of fear of the unknown. She didn't make me go, probably out of her own fear of hospitals, and then I spent the next 10 years avoiding what I knew I needed to do to improve my life. My OCD and the suicidal feeling eventually subsided without treatment, but not the depression or anxiety, and I got through high school with good grades. But it was hard, and I had panic attacks in school almost daily, which lead to an attendance problem. I had insurance during this whole time, until I was 19, but my dad was very opposed to my seeking mental health treatment because he didn't want it on his insurance, or maybe he didn't want his work seeing my insurance claims out of his ego/pride issues. Because I was put in a gifted program early in school, my dad would tout me around his office like some prize, and he had, and still has, a great difficultly accepting that I may be "flawed" in some way. He would also constantly push me into social situations that I feared, and would make fun of me if I messed up or went mute, even as a very young child, which I believe made me fear socializing all the more. I had a real big problem understanding adult's facial expressions and usually interpreted them as being scary or mean, then I would hide from them for no (apparent) reason. I also did not understand the whole "give and take" thing in a conversation, for example, I knew what hi, bye, thanks, and please meant, but I never understood when to employ them, I never knew when I was really supposed to insert them into my conversation, and my dad would give me hell for this, or people would think I was impolite. He would make me feel 100x's worse than I needed to, and call me out on all of these things, for years. I still don't like making small talk, don't know how to hold a "small talk" conversation, and still struggle with when I'm supposed to say certain conversational things, like I often have a very hard time initiating a conversation, introducing myself, or ending a conversation. Because of the criticism from my dad, I don't really have a relationship with him anymore, we haven't even talked for two years.

So when I finally realized that it wasn't just a fear of socializing that I had, but that I actually had problems processing or understanding spoken speech (like I miss words, or mix up words, or have to guess the words, or stupidly answer someone's question totally wrong because I think they said something else, oh, how it's embarrassed me!) my mom wanted to make me an appointment. I still didn't know of autism and had no real direction in going to the doctor, but we ended up missing that appointment anyway, and I was upset about missing it because of how I have to mentally prepare for doctor appointments (was out of my control why we missed the appointment) so I refused to reschedule it, and kinda had a bit of a breakdown, shut myself in even more.

So here I am, after being painfully shy all my life, becoming avoidant of most every social situation, losing good jobs I was qualified for, and dropping out of college despite my good grades and motivation for school.

I'm not sure how most adults come to realize they may be autistic, but for me it happened in terribly confused, drawn out, self-discovery process that occurred after my ultimate downfall of getting arrested for pot, leaving my abusive boyfriend, and dropping out of school due to stress from the aforementioned situations, thus I ended up living with my mom again.

I spent so much of my life being told I was "fine, "okay", "you'll grow out it of, "it will get easier", "you'll learn", "you won't always be so anxious", "it's all in your head", "you're so smart, I don't understand why you have these problems". I believed all of these things for a very long time, I held myself to standards that I now realize I never could have met no matter how hard I tried, and after spending all that time telling myself it was all in my head, one day it finally dawned on me that it was very far from being "all in my head".

The only problem here is that it took me until I was 20 to finally realize what my main problem was, after having a panic attack and quitting a job over a silly misunderstanding of directions, which I now know from self observation is simply an auditory processing and sensory issue combined. When I realized this, and was finally able to articulate it in a way that it made sense to another person who doesn't experience these issues, it still didn't really help because neither I, nor my mom, had any clue what the problem could be, or that it even had a name.

So fast forward two years, after having neighbors move next door who had two autistic sons, having a cousin who exhibits similar problems as I did as a child being put into a "watch for problems" special education class, and finally discovering what autism really is, it was like someone turned on the light in my very dark life. Social anxiety had never been a good enough explanation for my problems and I was constantly frustrated by people having this attitude with me that since I'm competent in X area of my life, I must not possibly be allowed to have any problems. I finally took a stand and told my mom how I felt, explained to her what autism was, because she had all the common stereotypes in mind, and why I think I have it. At first she was almost alarmed, but now she agrees, though I don't like to discuss it with her because it always turns into a conversation about how she "should have noticed", and a lengthy episode of feeling guilty and blaming herself for ignoring all my oddities as a child. I don't blame my mom for anything, she had it hard with my dad, he isn't the nicest person and was a major drug addict (cocaine), and it took even myself years to realize what my problem actually was, so surely I wouldn't blame anyone for not noticing something that they don't even know about anyway. I do have a little bit of bitterness towards my school system from elementary school, because of how schools "diagnose" kids sometimes, especially because my issues "should" have been pretty evident to them, but again, I was passed off as just overly shy and quiet, but a smart girl and well behaved student. In 1st grade the school told my parents I was hyperlexic, but they took it as being a good thing, put me in gifted classes, and from that point on I never had any help with learning, they just expected me to know everything. My teachers would call me shy and quiet on a daily basis, constantly ask me to speak up or participate in group conversations, told my parents I did worse in group activities than I did by myself, and that I never smiled. I was also extremely clumsy, avoided sports and always got hit in the head with the damn dodgeball (flying balls=inevitable bad outcome), had a habit of staring into lights, chewing on everything including pencils, erasers, and my own hair, walking on my tiptoes, walking pigeon-toed and dragging my feet (which I was teased excessively for), and fidgeting with little objects in my hands. Hello?! I wonder to myself how no one realized there was something up with me. So they had no trouble pointing out my shortcomings, but because I was smart and behaved, no one put two and two together. I hear this often happens and leads to girls going undiagnosed? When I first heard of Asperger's it was from an article called "little professor syndrome" and that's ultimately what had my mom convinced, considering she can remember encountering a teacher in a department store one day when I was like 7 years old, and the teacher told my mom that I sounded like a professor in the way I talked. Throughout the years, up until I hit junior high and being smart became uncool, I was outwardly obsessed, I mean OBSESSED, with book collecting, book reading, book writing (young authors contest, 2nd place, woo! lol), dinosaurs, astronomy, Einstein, archaeology, fossils, tornadoes and Egyptology, among other things. I learned to talk before I was 1, and could read very early because of the hyperlexia, which is odd because my dad is dyslexic. When I hit Jr. High, I was seriously called out on all my "odd" interests, and the girls I tried to be friends with didn't accept me until I hid all of my sciency stuff from my bedroom, so I basically faked my way through junior high, and boy did it end badly with bullying. This began my identity crisis, which I was having until just about a year ago when I finally started putting together all the pieces of my life.

There are a lot more reasons why I believe I have this, not restricted to what I just typed, I have a lot of sensory issues with lights being too bright, being able to hear the lights, and seeing them flickering. Certain fabric textures and noises bother me; I'm constantly unable to tune out noises, and often think things are loud when others don't, and getting dressed is a big hassle daily, in terms of comfort. Going into a Walmart-type store is like a personal hell for me. I also have ritualistic behaviors, like writing things over and over until it's right, or things like listening to the same song over and over, or watching the same movies repeatedly. I also have a tendency to make too many mental and physical lists, for just about everything you could imagine. I personally love making lists of lyrics from songs, or quotes from things like books, movies, history, etc.

So now to get to my point
I finally sucked it up and made a doctor's appointment all on my own, and managed to take myself there, too, as I felt it was something I just needed to do alone. The reason I feel that I need a diagnosis, instead of just remaining self diagnosed, is that I really struggle with the auditory issues, it affects school, and my ability to work, keep a job, and not mess up at a job due to misunderstandings. But the problem is that my only option was to go through my county's mental health service center place, and they are way backed up with clients right now. I had my initial assessment (a little over 2 hours) with a therapist, and she definitely marked down panic disorder as a preliminary diagnosis, but also suggested the autism be looked into by the psychiatrist. So now I have to wait until December 23rd for my next appointment, which will be the first with the psychiatrist, and only a 30 minute appointment. This immediately set my mind into a negative thought process, 1) because the appointment feels so far away and I'm afraid I may talk myself out going by the time the day gets here, 2) because my understanding of the county services is that they basically decide what's wrong with you in 2.5 hours and then prescribe you medication, which I'm afraid of, 3) 30 minutes does not feel like enough time to tell me what's wrong and give me medicine, 4) will they ignore my suspicions of autism because it can't be medicated, and just diagnose me with the obvious things 5) I believe all the doctors there are doing a mandatory like 8 month internship, so are they going to be experienced enough to see what's wrong with me? I hate my need for preplanning everything.

I guess my question here is, have any of you dealt with county mental health services while trying to get a correct diagnosis? How did it turn out? Should I be hopeful, or assume that I'll just be pushed through the assembly line with everyone else?

For any of you who went through getting a diagnosis as an adult, was it hard, did you lose hope, did people disagree with you and tell you that you would have been diagnosed as a child if you really had it?

I feel like I'm losing hope already and nothing has even happened yet, lol. I shouldn't be so negative or impatient, but I feel like I should just crawl back into my hole, and forget about ever finishing college. But mostly, I just want an explanation and a better understanding so that I can move on with my life, put the past where it belongs, and focus on what I need to work on to attain a better quality of life. After living this way for so long, it feels like that's too much to ask for.

Any thoughts or advice would be really appreciated, and I'm sorry that this is so long. Thank you, so, so, so much for reading this.