Aspen ♡

Hi there! 

So I don't know that this is the response you were hoping for, but I am actually self-diagnosed autistic. There was a time though that I really wanted to get tested and just search for that official approval, to have somebody else tell me that they believe I'm autistic too. But I discovered that my insurance won't cover adult autism assessments, and I don't have the financial privilege to afford to pay for it out of pocket. And I have been terrified of the stories of poorly educated doctors who don't know autism outside of its stereotypes and outside of children. So, I never got tested.

There are some things that have helped me to accept my own self-diagnosis though. 

The autistic community, for instance, is extremely accepting of self-diagnosis. I actually used social media platforms to find autistic creators to hear their experiences. I would save all of the posts I related to, to have my own collection of "proof," so I couldn't invalidate how much everything applied to me. 

I also at one point wrote down the diagnostic criteria for autism, and for each criteria, I wrote examples from throughout my life of how it applied to me. And I added to that list for months, allowing it to build up each time I remembered something from my life that would apply, or each time I would learn something new. 

While I know this isn’t always an option, I sat down with my mom and my friend and showed them everything. All the research I collected, all the behaviors I had written down. I talked about my life, and how I interacted with them and the world. Both people gave me examples of behaviors they noticed that I had never noticed. They both had big "Oh! This all makes so much sense!" moments.

I had other personal things that have helped me too. I have a bachelors degree in psychology. I have years of experience working closely with a couple of neurodivergent kids. I have a good relationship with myself and am confident in my ability to understand myself. 

So, I haven't ever been tested. Getting tested is a privilege, since for many people it's not accessible for a variety of reasons. But I found other ways to help myself be certain in my self-diagnosis. I found that having a collection of evidence is what helped me to soothe my anxiety and imposter syndrome. And for me, that's been enough.

But if you have access to an assessment, and that's the best option for you, then I would either start by talking to your primary care provider, or your current therapist. If that's not an option, you can try to find providers in your area that do autism diagnoses, if you're an adult try to find some that also do adult diagnoses. 

It was an exercise about finding the positives in otherwise neutral or bad situations. So I'd talked about my coping mechanisms in a store when I'm overwhelmed.

I had this with an old friend, and when I wanted to get back into the special interest, I had to reclaim it as mine, not ours. I actually had a lot of fun reclaiming it because I got to explore how I really felt about things. My opinions weren't influenced by theirs, so I really did get to make it my own.

People communicate their experiences through the frameworks they've been taught. If we don't educate people about different frameworks, then they are limited on how they can describe their experiences.

When I was thirteen, I told my parents this big life changing event was going to make me more "bitchy." Bitchy was the best framework I had to describe my experiences with mood changes, negative emotions, difficulty with changes, feeling overwhelmed, and other struggles with being stressed. I understood bitchy and could communicate that because that's how people referred to me. My family said I was being bitchy.

I found out a couple years later that everything I was describing could be called depression and anxiety. I had discovered new frameworks to understand and explain my own experiences. I was able to communicate that to a doctor because I had learned about depression and anxiety. Using my old framework, being bitchy was never a good enough reason to seek help. Being bitchy was just a personality trait, it was fundamental, unfixable.

I used depression and anxiety to describe my life, until they stopped being enough. I learned about cptsd and developed another framework to describe and explain my life. I was able to communicate that I was experiences triggers, not just experiences generalized anxiety.

Again, my ability to describe my life and my experiences changed when I learned about autism. I developed another framework to see my life through. And I am able to see that autism better describes my depression and anxiety, autism better describes why I was so "bitchy."

No doctor told me about depression, anxiety, ptsd, or autism. I had to learn about it for myself. I always accepted things as normal until I learned that it could be something else. Without learning about these things, I would still think that I am just bitchy, and that's why life is hard. I'd never think to seek help or a diagnosis. I'd never know that what I was experiencing had a name, that there were others like me, with the same experiences.

You spend your entire life learning and mirroring and adopting allistic communication styles in order to communicate with them. And when you find out you're autistic, those adopted behaviors don't just go away. So, as an autistic person talking with another autistic, it can be hard to tell if the other person is unmasked and semi-verbal, or if they are being passive aggressive because they've learned how to communicate that through a lifetime of being surrounded by allistics.

So many people hear that, and they immediately assume I'm an extreme pessimist. Or they'll think that that saying is what makes me so depressed. It makes me extremely frustrated because I don't expect the worst in a "life sucks and the world hates me" kind of way.

I struggle when things go wrong, especially when it catches me off guard. Unexpected bad things can trigger big, out of control emotions, and for my autism (and cptsd) that's hard to deal with. It can lead to things being more traumatic than they need to be if I'm not prepared for the bad outcome. The whole situation feels out of control, and I don't always have a good sense of clarity when I'm having intense emotions or a meltdown, which makes my own response feel out of my control.

So, I try and expect and prepare for the worst. I talk myself through what I will do if something doesn't go the way I want. I make guesses on how I will feel, and talk myself through those emotions before they've ever even come up. I make plans on what my next steps will be, even if those next steps are simply time to recover from disappointment. All the while, I still am hoping for the best. I want things to go well, I want to succeed. I hold my breath, cross my fingers, and wish for things to turn out well.

You're welcome!!

Why doesn’t it apply to me? Because I take the statement too literally. 

I hear it as: Autistic people always take things too literally.

It really means: Autistic people tend to take things more literally than intended.

Children (enough said)

People playing any noise from their phone speakers, rather than using headphones

People talking loudly on their phone

The smell of weed, cigarettes, or perfume/cologne

When there are too many people moving around, and it’s visually too complex to look at

When your clothes start bugging you, but you can’t do anything to fix it (like a bra wire stabbing you, or your underwear sitting wrong)

When a store rearranges things, and you have to go through every isle enduring too much visual input while trying to find something

Humidity/heat when you also can’t get away from people

People who stand too close to you and you can feel how close they are (worse if they’re talking too)

When people are touching you, for whatever reason

When workers constantly ask you how you’re doing and if you need help

We had a puppy when I was four or five years old. And I absolutely loved her to bits, I even picked her out from the farm we got her from. She’s one of my favorite dogs we have ever owned. But just because I loved her so much doesn’t mean she wasn’t overwhelming for me. 

I remember when she was still little, and hadn’t yet learned any manners, she had came into my bedroom and started jumping all over me. She licked me, and rubbed her nose all over my arms, and she kept clawing me whenever she climbed onto my lap. I got really overwhelmed by this, and decided to build a barricade in the doorway that she couldn’t climb over. It was made out of a pile of clothes and this plastic tote. I picked her up and went to put her on the other side of the barricade. Well, I was like four, she was a puppy who did not want to be held, and the barricade was a little too wide for me to safely set her down on the other side. I ended up dropping her over the barricade, which she rolled down, and hit the wall on the other side. And she broke her leg. She ended up being casted for a while as her leg healed, but then after that she went on to live a good life, where I didn’t try to barricade her out of any other rooms. 

The truth, however, is that you’re most likely just autistic. You’ve learned more about autism, so now you’re noticing all these “new” autistic behaviors that have been happening subconsciously. And if those behaviors are actually new? You’re still just autistic. A lot of times when people learn about autism, they give themselves more leeway to be autistic. They let themselves stim more, they let themselves act in ways that feel more natural. A lot of times this leads to discovering a whole new set of behaviors that you haven’t had before because they had been suppressed for so long.

Public speaking when you’re autistic is just learning how to mask in hard-core mode. I didn’t actually learn how to speak to a group, or present my ideas in a better way, or how to engage with the audience more. I didn’t learn anything useful. What I did learn was how to suppress all my own needs. I learned how to ignore my fight-or-flight instincts, I learned how to ignore the warning signs for meltdowns, I learned how ignore my own body for a grade. I learned how to shove everything down for the sake of my teacher’s approval. I learned to be in the middle of a meltdown and smile through it all, while explaining concepts in an upbeat manner that absolutely nobody cared about. 

1) Finding something in the correct shade of my favorite color 🔮

2) When I shuffle my music and all the songs I like are on right away 🎵

3) Being able to just sit and pet really soft fabric (like squishmallows!) 🧸

4) Hearing birds singing before the sun comes up 🐦