recurring doubt about diagnosis

Post Reply New Topic

I was diagnosed many years ago now. I still wonder if it's true, though it probably is. I ran from it for a number of years, though I should not have, as I think I needed the support open to me.

In some social situations I am fine, others I am very tense, sometimes to the point of shutting down. I find organising very mentally taxing. I am relatively clumsy. I dislike change, instinctively, not through any rationality. Sensorally I appear to have difficulty processing sound - my hearing is fine, but background noise makes it very difficult to distinguish words, much more than for other people it appears.

Yet, I do not have 'special interests'. if anything I am a dilletante. I can actually be a very good communicator one on one. Despite my dislike of change I can be slightly impulsive. Intellectually I have no problems, at least none worth mentiong.

I just can't seem to shake the worry I have deluded myself, that there has been a mistake, that I am just weird. Perhaps I just needed to vent, and this is all egocentric, but thanks for reading.

I think the way you feel is probably not outside the norm for anyone who doesn't fit the textbook description of the diagnosis (or used to, but doesn't anymore).

About half the time, I'm not even sure whether my ADD (ADHD-I, primarily inattentive) dx was 'earned', even though I have major problems with EF when stressed, trouble with noises, etc. and the diagnosis is very recent.

I'm still on the fence on whether or not I'll actually go in for ASD assessment because I'm even more unsure there. Some days I'm like, yeah, not textbook, but definitely not allistic. Other days, I'm not so sure. I might have disregarded the idea entirely by now, only doctors and therapists keep bringing it up as a possible cause for social inadequacies in childhood and teenage years.

I try to remind myself that professionals agreed with my assessment that I have more trouble with some areas of daily life than the average NT. That's why I have one diagnosis and go told to seek an opinion for the second. I'm not 'appropriating' anything. I'm not the most severely affected case, but that doesn't mean I'm unaffected or neurotypical.

You sound like you have it. You don't need to have all the symptoms and it's not one of the requirements in the criteria just as long as you meet the other two in the second part of the DSM 5.

I don't always have special interests either unless computer and my Nintendo 3DS count. I just call those hobbies. I am also not textbook as the poster mentioned above.

Why do you think you don't have it?

It's good to hear that I am making sense and not alone in my feelings.

Like I explained above, it's more of a fear and not anything rational.



That's very much how I feel. Though I can recognise now that a few years ago some would have said I was incapable of living independently. I've grown since then, but it was hard. I've put a lot more pressure on myself and others by refusing to accept help.