Self-diagnosis

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Any diagnosis of self or otherwise no matter how accurate it is if it helps a person have a better life is a success. A diagnosis self or otherwise that is significantly wrong likely to make a person unhappy in the long run.

In a medical context, the purpose of a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder is to get the patient proper "support". It says that right in the DSM 5 diagnostic manual. "Support" is designed to help people with their autistic symptoms. If they are helped they will most likely feel better. If people feel better they are more likely to have better outcomes or in a medical context, treatments are likely to be more successful.

Same with the most official diagnosis. A diagnosis is a document that may or may not reflect the reality. With my history of a drastic misdiagnosis, I'm painfully aware of it.

"Autism" is a package of such symptoms - social processing aberration, sensory issues, executive disfunction, being prone to meltdowns and/or shutdowns...
Yes, only the parts do explain anything but when you observe enough of the parts, it's reasonable to assume the whole.

+1 This is an old routine, Starkid was at this othering of the self diagnosed in 2014. In fairness though, that was the accepted culture back then, I remember that her and StarTrekker weren't diagnosed when I joined but they like many on the site vehemently defended the anti self diagnosis climate. Any non conformists had better be good at fighting their corner.

We lost good people because of the discrimination and ageism here and lost many more that never posted/joined because they would be ostracised and experience more of the discrimination that they had already had a lifetime of, for being an "other" or simply different.

At one stage it was strangling the life out of this site, as the environment was hostile to all older people on the spectrum who even hinted that they were sure they had autism. Threads discussing autism were dominated by people who had an official diagnosis and led to a censoring of other voices through techniques such as above.

A "successful" diagnosis (official, unofficial or self) is one that leads to improvement of one's functioning and/or quality of life.
An "unsuccessful" diagnosis (again, official, unofficial or self) does not lead to any improvement, even if correct.
Some very unsuccessful diagnoses (like my past misdiagnosis) can lead to serious worsening of one's condition.

Yes, I'm a pragmatist in this resort.

I wanted a dx to confirm that I wasn't wrong in my thinking that there was more going on than just severe mental illness . Has it improved things , separate from being near my stepdaughter(who provides great support) and being under a less blinkered and less hostile mental health trust? I don't think so. There's only so much that can practically be done to reverse the long standing ,43 years+ of poor psychiatric treatment .

That having been said the diagnosis hasn't made my life worse. I'm less cynically and readily dismissed as just another late middle aged, non-acute, patient with severe mental illness . The kind that gets pushed to the back of the queue , and treated like a second class service user. There should #chronic severely mentally ill people's lives matter.

Does not a diagnosis help with the understanding part?
My bad self-esteem stemmed from being shamed and bullied for stimming, for "being difficult" because of sensory issues, for being "weird"; in short for being autistic. So yes, my self-hatred had everything to do with autism. I had already worked on my self-esteem for years, but the understanding about autism really helped in finally accepting those parts about myself.



"I'm professionally diagnosed with autism" explains nothing either, unless you go into detail about how your autistic traits manifest or what effect they've had on your life.

Saying "I'm autistic" is just way more convenient than providing you or anyone with a list of autistic traits that I have as "evidence" whenever I enter into a conversation with someone new. Most people will either have a general idea what being autistic might entail or they'll ask for further information.