Survey: Are You Officially Diagnosed with ASD?

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My sister is a speech pathologist who works with autistic children and saw it in her brother.

I got diagnosed at age 55.

At the time I was going nowhere in life, just going through the motions from what I now understand to be autistic burnout.

I am very grateful to all of you who have taken the time to answer this survey and elaborated on your personal experience with your ASD diagnosis...

Thank you, reading you all gives me great insight into the struggles of 1) not knowing why you feel different with all that entails; 2) being subjected to scrutiny when undergoing an evaluation; and 3) being 'marginalized' (for lack of a better word) after getting an official diagnosis...

Most importantly, thank you for highlighting some of benefits that came with your official diagnosis...Greetings to you all wonderful people...Please stay safe...

I got formal diagnosis 3 days before my 68th birthday. I am 69 presently. I struggled all my life and never knew why, had diagnoses of depression and anxiety, got therapy, meds, etc but never "performed as expected" leading to a feeling of being a failure all my life. All those "whys" ! !! I watched a video from the UK about autistic high school students with my adult daughter about 4 years ago and found myself crying uncontrollably ( I never cry!) and saying "that is me, that is what I experienced) Daughter sent me the RDOS self test about a year later and I realized I might be autistic. I began to research autism and read studies, papers, follow blogs, everything I could for hours daily to try to understand about autism. After over a year of study, I was pretty sure of my autism and I began a search for diagnosis as an old lady in the USA ... that alone was such a struggle, misdiagnosis along the way, but the neurological tests from that failure showed my autism plainly to the doctor who finally gave me diagnosis. It showed very uneven neurological performance/ development. Dr explained that uneven neurological development is the basis of autism. Made sense to me. What a relief to finally understand the years of trauma and self blame. Having diagnosis has helped me tremendously to understand my traumatic past and all my struggles. Knowing my weakest neurology/ my autism struggles defined has helped me make self accommodation that have helped me tremendously.

A person probably doesn't need to have formal diagnosis to understand their own autism, one can probably make accommodations for oneself without that, certainly all the emotional homework of sorting out the troubles of the past can be done with no more than the knowledge of ones autism without a diagnosis. I found as I explored autism that almost all questions of my past were explained by looking at how autism was involved without my knowing it. I achieved that before I got diagnosis.

Whether one goes on to seek diagnosis is a personal decision, and depends on many things. In many autistic communities, self diagnosis is well accepted simply because so many of us have experienced multiple misdiagnoses and we know how hard it is to obtain a professional opinion through lack of medical training on the part of the would be diagnosis givers, lack of access to experienced professionals, lack of opportunity or having the financial wherewithal to travel or pay for diagnosis, etc. Best wishes, only you can make the decision that will be right for you.

I was diagnosed with AS when I was 13.

When my specialist diagnosed me, I had no idea what my specialist was talking about.

I had other issues on my mind at the time of my diagnosis.

-Coping with the passing of my father, who passed one year before at the age of 43.

-Bullies who took pride in giving me (and other misfits) a difficult experience. In fact, two teachers decided to join in believing bullying was a good thing.

-Wanting to know more about the opposite gender.

Diagnosed with AS in 1996 @ age 16.

I picked "I was diagnosed as a child or adolescent as a result of a commorbid medical condition" because my mom said my anxiety is what got me diagnosed.

I was diagnosed with "infantile autism" back around 1964.

There was no doubt, back then, that I was autistic. It would have been very difficult for me to "slip through the cracks" because of my behavior.

I got diagnosed as an adult because my primary doctor referred me for evaluation after finding out that I have an auditory processing diagnosis (her observations of my behavior probably also affected her decision).

This happened after I'd spent years trying and failing to get a fair evaluation for myself (I had several sh***y and unprofessional evaluations before diagnosis).