Pre official diagnosis self diagnosis accuracy

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Got this idea from another thread about self diagnosis and it's efficacy. It got me thinking about the number of people who had received a diagnosis from an accredited mental health professional after having previously self diagnosed.

It is thus unfortunately a poll for those with an official diagnosis only.

If there were a place where you could ask about self-diagnosed people who sought diagnoses and learned they weren't in fact autistic, that would be more relevant, I think. But I don't know how well that would go on WP.

What would be the usual scenario for being diagnosed with autism without having previously suspected autism? Patient: "Doc, there's something wrong with me but I can't quite get it sorted!" Doctor: "Dude it's autism!"

I've sought out a professional opinion twice and both times it came back inconclusive. One of the professionals couldn't give me an answer but still referred me to a social skills group and to a psychiatrist who specialized in autism. Which is perplexing: why would she give me those referrals if it's not autism, so she must think that it is? The second one couldn't make up her mind and came up with another diagnosis I now can't think of the name of, which is like autism but only has some of its characteristics, and then she said I was sub-clinical and therefore she couldn't give me an autism diagnosis. Which also is not useful. I don't care if it's sub-clinical, what I want to know is if my difficulties are due to autism or something else. She had no answer for me. So I guess I have autism-lite?

I can't come up with any other reason for the host of social difficulties and other impairments that I have. Two professionals couldn't tell me one way or the other. (My current therapist and psychiatrist believe that I am on the spectrum, but they don't specialize in autism, though they know me well. Perhaps their knowledge of me carries more weight than the opinion of two specialists who sat with me for an hour or two?)

I correctly self diagnosed ASD (considering you view my official diagnosis as accurate, which one of my doctors disagrees with and believes I have ADHD/social anxiety/sensory processing disorder).

Recently, though, I caught up with a girl I dated briefly in college, and she told me that after we stopped seeing each other, she went to a psychiatrist because she believed she had undiagnosed ADHD and was seeking an evaluation. After she underwent evaluation, the results turned up as ASD, not ADHD like she expected.

That was a very interesting conversation. I wouldn't have assumed she was autistic when we were dating because I didn't know much about the condition at the time, but after familiarizing myself with the criteria, I started thinking about if any of my friends may also be autistic ("They do move in herds" - Jurassic Park) and she was one of the people that came to mind.

Funny enough, she had the same thought about me. When she received her diagnosis, she asked two of our mutual friends who have known me since Pre-K if I was diagnosed, and they said "We always thought [Boogieman] was autistic, but we asked him a long time ago and he said he wasn't, so we've just taken his word for it."

Other people had an impression from me since age 5.
But they never told me and they didn't knew it's autism.

I've noticed that I'm different when I was 8.
I got an impression of autism from another at age 10 and I didn't accepted it.

And then I got officially diagnosed with Asperger's at 14 and even yet to accept it.
This was around 2009, internet isn't that available from where I came from yet.

I couldn't. So...
No self diagnosis here.

Part ignorant, part too angry and prideful, part too young, part not developmentally matured enough to.

I honestly don't know if I can accurately self diagnose myself even if I manage to survive my worst years without a diagnosis for an answer.


If I were some late diagnosed/undiagnosed, and after thousands of hours worth of reading related to such; it'll be something neurodivergent-not-otherwise-specified.

Autism may likely not be at the top of a list of self-diagnosis, let alone identify to be one.
Because I couldn't (and still couldn't) relate to many common circumstances of many autistics have.

I can never accurately self diagnose myself as an autistic based on my own studies, self-reflection and hours of reading countless other cases.

In my particular case, it's a very individual thing.
It's a me thing that even to this day I've yet to have an answer for and autism -- and other autistics (whether or not they have a co-occuring condition) cannot seem to answer it.

Autism is just a part of a bigger picture for me.
Not my biggest issue, but it's an unnamed larger issue that I want to solve so badly...
It's this particular issue will be the reason why I may not able to accurately self-diagnose myself.

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