Such a funny memory to show up. I was so confused, having been sent to a child psychologist by the NHS despite being an adult. Tried to be positive about it for everyone but inside I knew it was wrong, I knew having been on a plane wasn’t a good enough reason to not be autistic.

That nagging feeling kept on at me for months, and with Tim’s support we decided to go private, and it was only when the NHS therapist I had been referred to for potential BPD therapy said everything screamed autistic that I knew I was doing the right thing.

The thing i try to impart on other autistics is that because we’ve had a lifetime of people telling us our instincts and experiences are wrong, combined with a slower processing time, so often we trust what we’re told because our internal confidence is so battered.

When I saw my specialists, who I had sent a 13 page dossier of information to before hand, they told me at the end that they were 100% sure I was autistic after about five minutes of meeting me. I can’t explain to you the relief of someone saying yes you were right about yourself

NTs might find this hard to grasp, but autism basically underpins everything. It’s not only how we communicate, but how we process the world. Missing out that step missed out everything, so if you know someone who is adamant on getting their ND dx first, this is why.

If I had been sent for that trauma therapy without the understanding of autism beneath it, I have no doubt it would have caused problems. In fact I know, because I had trauma therapy prior to dx that traumatised me arguably more than the trauma they were supposed to treat.

Sorry for getting a bit deep on the TL before lunch, but I think sometimes it can be hard to grasp that if you’re not looking at everything at a neurodiversity level first, you’re just treating symptoms and often treating them wrong.

It has been such a long journey and I’m so glad I stuck to my guns, and have encouraged my friends in similar places to do the same. There is nothing sweeter than the feeling of clarity about who you are, and for me, for various reasons, I needed that piece of paper.

A lot of people do not, which honestly is great and I support self-dx entirely because getting an autism dx is nightmare mode for anyone not a cis white straight man (and even then it’s hard). I had at the time too many health conditions in the wobbly margins, so it helped.

okay, i'm going to go have a little cry, a cup of tea and kiss the dog, and get back to writing stories about kids that have been taught to doubt themselves. x