Yesterday, I put up a post on my Finally Knowing Me page on Facebook (feel free to like/share – it’s all public) about my levels of confidence of receiving a formal autism diagnosis. Before the first assessment I was 80% confident of getting a diagnosis, but 20% doubtful, but, since the first assessment, my confidence has plummeted and now the percentages are reversed and I’d say it was more like 20% confident and 80% doubtful.
Then there was some stuff about expectations and evidence, and how CBT taught me to use the evidence available to disprove my negative thoughts, but actually that’s a really bad idea because the evidence doesn’t disprove them, it reinforces them (there’s a whole blog post to be written about all that stuff at some point).
Something in the post triggered one of my friends to make a comment to the effect that I should remember that I wasn’t broken, but had a different way of seeing the world.
And that comment then triggered my head into realising what it is that’s so frightening about the prospect of not getting a formal autism diagnosis and being officially classed as autistic.
And it runs thus:
If I DO receive an autism diagnosis, and I do fulfil the criteria for being classed as autistic, then that diagnosis will effectively tell me that I have a different way of seeing the world. It will say to me, and to anyone else who cares to take any notice of it, that my neurology is different, that I have a different way of understanding people and communicating with them, a different way of organizing my body, a different way of perceiving light and sound and feeling and so on, and also that this difference has been there all my life (so it explains why my life has gone wrong in so many ways in the past) and that it impairs my ability to function within the bounds of “normal” society. It will also mean that certain things that have been interpreted for years as me being naughty, or picky, or a bit forthright, or disorganised, or lazy, will all now be explained by me just having a different sort of brain.
Conclusion: I am autistic.
However, if I DON’T receive an autism diagnosis, and I don’t fulfil the criteria, the reverse is true. I will not have that protective label. I will not be classed as having a different way of seeing the world. I will be considered, as I have been all my life, as a bit quirky and eccentric. Maybe I’ll manage to get a diagnosis of Sensory Processing Disorder or similar so that my sensory issues are recognised, but that will not help me when I lose my words and am unable to use the telephone. Maybe they’ll say I’m traumatised now, but not recognise my struggles as a child and I will know that I was simply really really bad while trying not to be. Maybe it’ll be back to just bipolar disorder and “ordinary” mental illness, but that won’t explain why my inertia is so high and my executive functioning is so poor. And, when I compare myself to those people who do have an autism diagnosis yet are able to hold down jobs or run homes or whatever, I will know that I can’t do those things not because my brain is different, but because I really am just a mess.
Conclusion: I am broken.
OK, it’s not quite as simple as that, because you have to factor in the fact that I am, evidently, very broken even if I am autistic, partly because I also have bipolar disorder and severe anxiety and so on, and partly because going undiagnosed and unsupported and trying to live a “normal” life for 45 years and suppressing my autistic traits has led to two major burnouts and been very damaging, especially to my mental health, which is shot to pieces. Being autistic doesn’t preclude brokenness any more than being non-autistic protects from it. And equally, there is justification for my difficulties in life as far as having mental health issues alone – my bipolar disorder is sufficiently impairing that it would probably have impacted upon my ability to work and care for myself even if autism had never entered the picture. Furthermore, it might well be that I have enough autistic traits to impact on my life significantly, even if I don’t fit the clinical definition or cannot provide enough evidence.
Add to that the imperfections of the diagnostic system, the fact that in my case it is relying on memories from many decades ago to fill in gaps about my childhood, the 40+ years I’ve been learning and masking and covering up all my difficulties and giving an Oscar-winning performance on the outside while falling apart on the inside, and it really isn’t an exact science.
But, even so, this is at the nub of the situation: if they say I am autistic then I’m not broken, but if they say I’m not autistic then I am broken.
And if I judge myself by non-autistic standards then I’m a terrible failure and my life has been a pointless disaster (but with caveats about mental illness) and I see very little hope for the future because I simply can’t work any harder or be any better than this – I am basically a broken, failed, weak human being and I always will be.
But if I judge myself by autistic standards then I’ve achieved an amazing amount and been incredibly strong throughout my life (even at great cost to my health) and I see that there really might be hope that I could live a gentler, happier life and achieve goals that are more suitable for me – in a few years’ time I could possibly be a mended, successful and strong autistic person.
And all this is swirling round my head at the moment, like some sort of primordial “soup”, out of which sentient life (or in my case, a moderately functional mind) might or might not eventually emerge. It’s almost exactly 6 months now since I had my first meltdown while away on a camping trip – 6 months ago I didn’t have even the vaguest notion that I would ever be thinking of myself as autistic, or that I’d even know a fraction of what I now know about autism, about myself, about my childhood, or about many people around me. At that point I just believed I was a bit tired and that life would carry on as normal once I got home.
So my head is trying to make sense of it all. I’m trying to work out the extent to which I’m autistic, broken, mentally ill, traumatised, and so on. I’m trying to find a health professional who will actually help me with all of these things. I’m trying to come to terms with the fact that I now identify as a non-binary autistic person. I’m trying to live through ordinary day to day life and remember to eat and so on. I’m trying not to let other aspects of my life (music, study, running and so on) fall completely by the wayside. And I’m still in the process of recovery from burnout and waiting to see exactly what level of functionality I will have once I’ve stabilised.
No wonder I get a bit wobbly from time to time.
Finally Knowing Me: An Autistic Life 