No longer seeking a diagnosis under the current administration. Me and my children will do our best to stay out of concentration camps. In the meantime we’ll manage as we have been.
I was diagnosed with ASD around when I was fifty. Five-Oh. I’m still wending the administrative labyrinth to get appropriate support.
As for ADHD, I only really noticed my executive dysfunction when playing Subnautica and Satisfactory, both of which feature periods where there are big lists of tasks I can engage in right now towards large goals, and my brain would freeze up.
Folks and teachers and peers noticed I was a bit odd since I was six.
(at least as far as the ADHD parts…)
The answer to the question of treatment is
Yes.
Nobody deserves to suffer like that without help.
You don’t have to let this shit ruin your life and steal opportunities from you. You CAN feel better than this, DO better than this, BECOME better than you thought yourself capable of being, with a competently administered treatment plan. And you aren’t the only one who will benefit from it.
Being able to casually remember commitments and promises and personal details of people you care about, and actually sense the passage and “distance” of time; being able to STOP doing something you don’t even want to be doing right now and START doing something you WANT to get done; being able to more quickly and decisively make choices without becoming staggered by the multitude of options–all of these will make you a more helpful, more thoughtful, more beneficial, and overall better presence in the lives of every single person you care about.
You don’t have to languish in helpless, hapless, hopeless DESPAIR unable to trust yourself to follow up and follow through while gaslighting yourself about being a useless burden on the lives of everyone you care about like I did for DECADES. Please. PLEASE DON’T MAKE MY MISTAKE.
This is NOT a thing in which the myth of bootstrappy rugged individualism will bear any fruit.
I can tell you from personal experience that there is NOTHING to be gained from neglecting yourself.
Seek treatment.
This! I was diagnosed as a child but only started getting treatment a month ago, it’s incredible. I feel like I spent my whole life with the target lock on, bouncing from one focus to the next, and now I can choose when to lock on and when to free look.
I will say that in the US treatment has been made more difficult due to fail first treatment policies enforced by insurance companies. They will only give you effective medicine after you first try a non-stimulant with low efficacy and lots of side effects.
If I could do it again with what I know now I would have just thrown away the guanfacine and told them it gave me the side effects with none of the benefits. It’s a norepinephrine agonist, it does the opposite of the highly effective ADHD medication, and it was mostly only tested on children who had negative reactions to stimulants. If you have low norepinephrine to begin with (which many people with ADHD do) the effects are agonizing.
Why you gotta call me out like this
I am in this photo and do not like it
Came here looking for this. Was not disappointed
I’m unsure if I am, so what does that mean?
I considered getting it officially confirmed for both, then RFK made his concentration camp comment.
100% same!
And also after Trump just the other day decided to unban insane asylums.
If it wasn’t the fascists doing it I would have welcomed having more mental healthcare facilities. But these are probably gonna be 1920s style hell holes instead.
100 years later - “oops we found a mass grave in the basement”
definately. the idea is poor to homeless to prisons/asylums and for the prisons/asylums to be profitable so just enough to keep you alive to keep up the payments from the state but no more than that.
Yes, but I used the term “insane asylum” specifically due to its history in the US. Trump spent a lot of his campaign ranting about “Hannibal Lector” after all.
I look at it like alcoholism. I have been functional in my life so im fine where I am at (to some degree but that is more about US societal issues around a functioning society).
Let’s say I do book an appointment, get the test(s), and it’s positive. Now what? Do I show it to my boss the get easier tasks? How much can/will an official diagnosis affect my life? (In Australia if it helps)
I can only speak from my experience (USA based), but:
You can get access to drugs you may or may not wish to use.
Any new life insurance plan’s premiums will go up as soon as you get prescribed those meds.
You will probably go through a period of post diagnosis regression as you reevaluate unhealthy coping mechanisms you’ve developed. Even if you think you already accept your brain for its difficulties and quirks.
You might spend a couple months being really annoying about your diagnosis as you figure out how to incorporate it into your identity. This lines up with a lot of the post diagnosis regression.
On the far side, you might end up redeveloping new coping strategies that are slightly less shame driven. But the demands of the world around you probably won’t flex around your new diagnosis.
TBH if you’re old enough to be on here you probably already know how to manage your environment and needs to live in the world, it’s just a question of if you can actually acknowledge you have special needs and if you’re capable of being kind to yourself while addressing them. And a diagnosis does help with quelling the anxiety around “do I actually have special needs or is everybody like this”
I got autism diagnosis as an adult mostly because of my long struggle with depression and physical health problems. Having the official diagnosis helps when interacting with health care; it is a confirmation that my needs differ from a neurotypical and they have to act accordingly. Now I can point to the diagnosis whenever needed, so they don’t for example try to force stuff on me that just won’t work (like group therapy).
From my experience: Only an ADHD diagnosis is useful, and only because the medications really do help.
For autistic children it’s sometimes worth diagnosis to get additional help in education.
Its not. Dont let anyone put that diagnosis on your permanent file. There is no benefit to it and lots of downsides.
That’s basically where I’m at, though I did get the ADHD diagnosis and medication has been life changing.
Ok, some benefit if its bad enough you need medicine. But most people in OPs mental loop probably are not bad enough to need medicine and a diagnosis would just adversely affect them via insurance and employment.
Glad the medicine is helping you!
What’s difficult here is that I’ve done the meds, and I feel so much more productive and generally “better” and less in my head. However, I already do well at work and thus it’s hard to justify (literally what I was told by a psychiatrist the one time I went to talk about it)
Why?
Hah jokes on you im like 95% sure i have adhd just it came out really late so everyone thinks im lazy but thats my master plan because if ww3 breaks out the usa wont put me in a concentration camp for neurodivergents.
I arrived at “it’s just another weird C-PTSD quirk” and leave it at that
…Or…all three :D
Please don’t ಥ‿ಥ
:D
I’m certainly all 3, and more, it’s been quite the ride.
That’s been me for a bunch of years. Ever wondering what was wrong with me (parents were not really keen on seeking a diagnosis for me even if the signs were evident) until one day I decided to go to a therapist and ask what the hell was going on in my head. It was autism, and it explained
SO
MANY
THINGS.
I feel resentful towards my parents because they never cared and I probably could have got an easier life knowing what was going on instead of trying to figure things out without any help.
I’ve been there. Today officially I have the proof of not having adhd, which is great so I can focus on autism.
Seeking a ‘treatment’ (strictly speaking autism isn’t treated) is an on and off thought but over decades the effort of high masking hits so hard it’s unbearable.
Off to waiting a VERY LONG TIME in a fucking so called first world country for a critical diagnosis just because I’m atypical.
Edit: btw it gets worse… Not even getting appointments. Guess I’ll just just suffer then.
It gets “easier” if you have kids on the spectrum. They get diagnosed, you recognize all the same signs in yourself. Easier in quotes because figuring out you’re looking at Au/DHD is hard on everyone.
Going through this now at 31, have I even met someone neurotypical???
Hey, that’s me! At more than 30yo I finally emailed a psychologist specialized in ADHD and autism to get a diagnostic. Still waiting for an appointment though
Good for you. Fingers crossed you’ll get some answers and help :)
Ooh then have someone describe OCD symptoms and it gets really fun
