I went through assessment for ASD and my husband had to fill out a collateral form. It came back that he hadn't endorsed enough items to classify me as ASD. He has known me almost 40 years and he says that when he met me he would have endorsed a lot more and I was probably ASD then, but not now. Our 30 year old son who had ASD died of cancer 3 years ago. I saw a lot of me in him when I was a teen and young adult. We both had compulsions to talk, talked too loudly, interrupted conversations and had difficulty reading social cues. Over the years I have worked very hard at "pretending to be normal" and don't show a lot of these anymore. However, I have severe, recurrent depression which I can only attribute to all those years that people told me I was "inappropriate" or got angry at me and didn't understand why. Though I am a professional woman, I still see myself as that bullied kid that adults were always telling that I was "inappropriate" or interrupting conversation and I didn't understand why. I have been told by authority figures all my life, including at work, to "try harder" but didn't know how to try. Now that I don't have an ASD diagnosis, I can't even attribute it to my diagnosis. Has anyone else had this situation?
29 Mar 2016, 12:53 pm
