Hi all. Relatively new to Hexbear, but I was scrolling through the community and saw this, never realized such a thing existed and will be following it more.
Basically, one day just wondered "an I autistic", googled the symptoms, got nervous reading them, so worked up the courage to ask my close friend who is a clinical psychologist.
She said "don't get upset" and then listed about 50 reasons why she thought I was on the spectrum. It was a total punch to the gut, but feels so obvious now in retrospect.
What I'm wondering now is, is it worth seeing a doctor, therapist, or any other professional to get it confirmed and then learn how to deal with this? Or just accept it and be who I am?
Thank you all.
A good idea to think about is, what would be the aim of seeing a professional?
For example, depending on the diagnosis, maybe some jurisdictions have social programs or protections that you would legally qualify for. You know your situation better than us ('autistic spectrum' can mean anything from major social struggles to a few useful quirks! There are neurologically atypical people I've met with proper diagnoses that neither they nor I suspected).
If there are some things your friend listed which you believe would be useful to change, maybe therapy could be effective for that, or even to help you to foresee some solutions to difficulties before they unfold through day-to-day experience. I don't have experience with therapy so I can't really advise on that. The unfortunate thing about (at least, my) society is that people often consider it rude or offensive to tell a person with social difficulties that they're doing something strange, or they will use subtle social hints to try and be more polite, which means a lot of people with ASD's are never told and don't notice the hints, and find out at age 30 that 'oh, we all just assumed you already knew'. I don't know whether that's more 'frustrating' or 'ironic'.
Yes, this last part I find frustrating. If it was so obvious why did know one tell me!