- Okay, so welcome to Part 2 of my diagnosis story.
Part one, I looked at how I went for 30 years
without realizing that I was on the spectrum,
and so in this part, I'll be looking
at what was the trigger and how I suddenly
over a relatively short amount of time
came to be very sure that I was on the spectrum
and started identifying as having Asperger's.
So, I guess the biggest trigger at the start
was I ready a book called
Look Me in the Eye: My Life With Asperger's,
which is an autobiography
of a man with Asperger's in the U.S.
Called John Elder Robison,
and he was describing all of these things
in this book that I just seemed to understand
at a really, really deep level,
and he was explaining them to the reader
as if the reader wasn't supposed to understand.
So, I'll give you an example,
something like his psychologist would write down
in his notes, oh, Johnny doesn't like to play
with the other children, and he would explain
in his own language, Johnny would love to play
with the other children.
The other children are really mean to Johnny.
Johnny would prefer to sit by himself
than to put up with the meanness of the other children,
so you can see how there's the outside perspective
that the rest of the world sees,
and then his inside perspective,
whereas I found that I could really easily relate
to his inside perspective, and I didn't need him
to explain it to me before I understood it.
So, there were a lot of things that were a bit
of triggers for me and thinking oh, wow,
I do that, too.
So, I got about halfway through this book.
I didn't even finish it, put it down,
started researching Asperger's online.
I did an online test, I found the autism quotient test
and the official diagnosis was probably,
so that wasn't very helpful,
but then I found, I was still quite motivated,
so I found a group called Aspergers Victoria
and they had a support group meeting the next day
or something like that, so I sent them an email
and I said hey, I'm thinking, I'm not sure,
I might be on the spectrum.
Can I come along to your meeting?
And I got back a very, very welcoming yes,
of course you can.
Just turn up.
You'll be fine, no issues there at all.
I had massive reservations thinking can I really
just tag along to a support group meeting
about this condition that I know virtually nothing about
and the Internet diagnosis said probably,
but I went and I was really worried about being an imposter
basically so I overcompensated by introducing myself
hi, my name's Paul, I diagnosed myself yesterday,
and that was supposed to be a joke,
but no one took it like a joke.
They basically said welcome, you're one of us now!
And that really, really threw me.
I was expecting some resistance.
I was expecting people to say hang on, hang on,
you need to prove that you're one of us.
You can't just come in here with no knowledge of anything
and expect us to be welcoming of you,
but I found the exact opposite,
and I was quite frankly shocked.
There was just no judgment there.
It was all 100% welcoming.
Anyway, so, the next question for me,
in my state of shock, thrown off guard
by this reaction I didn't expect,
the next question was so, do I?
Maybe I do belong here.
How do I know if I belong with this group or not?
And I was looking around the room and everyone
was so different to each other, and I was thinking
to myself how on earth am I going to figure out
if I belong with these people
when they're all so different to each other?
And then something quite magical happened.
We were having a discussion, and the discussion topic
was what to do when you go to the supermarket
and the thing that you were asked to buy isn't there?
And we probably talked about this for a good 20
or 30 minutes, and in that discussion,
I found that all of these other people
had been asking themselves similar questions
that I've been asking themselves
that had similar issues that I had been having,
and most importantly,
they really loved all of my strategies
because obviously I had spent a lot of time
thinking about this, and I had a strategy
for ever situation.
All right, if this, then give 'em a call,
if you're not sure about this, then do this,
so yeah, so that was really good.
Okay, okay, okay, what else, what else?
So, that really was quite a magical moment
when I realized that I had found my tribe.
I have been looking for a place to belong
for a very, very long time,
always feeling like I'm on the outside
and I don't quite fit in anywhere,
and all the sudden with this group,
I feel like I'm supposed to be there,
and I guess from that moment on,
I was just sure that I was on the spectrum,
and it wasn't because of any kind of intellectual reasoning,
it was just from an overwhelming feeling of wow,
I've never been in a place with people
that I've felt so similar to in my entire life.
There must be something to this.
I must be one of them that are in Asperger's support group.
I must have Asperger's, so that was the kind
of emotional logic that was going on,
and it was only afterwards that I started obsessing
about actually reading up about Asperger's and okay,
what is it?
Does this apply to me?
How is this working?
And what I found was I was so sure from that experience
that I was on the spectrum that I started
reading this books and telling off the books
and going no, that's not what's happening.
That's what it looks like on the outside,
but that's not what's happening on the inside,
a little bit like this autobiography that I was reading,
and that's partly why I was inspired
to start this blog, Asperger's from the Inside
because I felt so strongly that from the outside,
we get misjudged all the time, and I'd finally found
people that validated my perception of the world
and said you're not crazy, this is actually a thing.
I'm rambling a little bit, but that's okay.
So, what I learned at that support group meeting,
and what I've continued to learn
for the three years ever since is that if you want
to understand Asperger's, autism,
you need to meet people on the spectrum in real life
because if you just read about it in a book,
it's not gonna tell you what it actually looks like
in real life, and that was my experience,
and that was the biggest thing that showed me
that I was on the spectrum,
was reading about this guy's autobiography
and then meeting other people
on the spectrum in real life.
So, the next question I had to ask myself
is okay, so I know I'm on the spectrum.
Are other people gonna be as accepting
because what I found was that the Asperger's community,
no one wanted an official diagnosis.
That was the last question on their mind,
whereas when I spoke to others who didn't really know
anything about Asperger's or autism,
they were pretty skeptical.
They were like, what do you mean
you're on the spectrum?
You can't just diagnose yourself.
You need to go see a psychologist and stuff for that.
So, I was reading up a lot, and a big, big question
is the pros and cons of getting a diagnosis,
and there are plenty of them,
and the one that really, really stood out to me
is that it's a common experience,
and it was definitely my experience
to feel as though I've spent my whole life
not being believed when I say I don't work that way,
when I say this particular thing
that you've asked me to do,
I can't do it for these reasons or I need to do it
this way because your mainstream way
doesn't work for me for all of these reasons
are not really believed, and I felt like the label
of Asperger's gave me something to point to and say see,
I told you I wasn't crazy.
Not crazy, I'm not insane.
My mother had me tested,
which is quote I like from the Sheldon Cooper character.
"I'm not insane, my mother had me tested."
So, I really appreciated that validation
that I felt from the community
of other aspies that I've met,
but what was I gonna do in the rest of the world
if I didn't have a piece of paper to back me up like that,
and what I realized is there's always going to be people
who don't believe you, even if you've got
a piece of paper and you say look, this is a document
that's recognized by the government.
Don't tell me that I'm not on the spectrum.
That's still not enough for people sometimes,
so I was umming and ahing about it for a long time,
and I decided that because the diagnosis
meant so much to me in terms of that validation,
it was really important for myself
to be sure to get a professional opinion to be sure
that I wasn't crazy essentially
because I had decided that I belong
and that I have Asperger's,
but I can very easily doubt myself.
So, I decided to seek a diagnosis
and that will be the topic of part three
of this series of my diagnosis journey,
so stay tuned for that.
Okay, bye.
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