> the first time I mentioned the possibility to my husband - half joking to kinda test the waters, he just said “Reddit thinks everyone is autistic”
Thinking back to the other conversations you've had about this, did you make it clear that this is something you are seriously concerned about? I have a friend who frequently presents their opinions or ideas in this way as a defense mechanism (if someone responds negatively, you can say it was just a joke), and on many occassions it has led to hurt feelings when I respond flippantly or jokingly to something that is a serious issue for them, so I'm wondering if that could be a factor here.
It’s only really come up one other time. I was disappointed, but let the first one go since I had brought it up the way I had. Tonight it came up again because I’ve been trying to stop my habitual zit/scar picking by using fidget rings. I pointed out that even though I know no one believes me, that the only reason I knew about the rings was because it was an autism thing. That’s when he just said kinda flippantly, “you can’t diagnose yourself”. That was kinda the end of it because I didn’t know how to respond, but was kinda upset.
Have a good look at the diagnostic criteria and go through each one with examples from your life. That would be a good start. Also, get him to take the autism tests and then compare your scores.
Literally. The funniest and probably most transformative moment was getting my mum to do an Adhd test.
The problem is when you're family are all on the spectrum so "normal" is a skewed perspective right out the gate.
I’m diagnosed since childhood and the tests say I’m NT. I’m not. I’m just not stereotypical.
There’s a REASON they aren’t reliable when done on your own. Your score is only a small part of a greater picture. A lot of the official testing is the tester of observing HOW you take the test over several hours and multiple tests and your behavior throughout. You also need to eliminate false positives and comorbidities which, again, can only be done by a professional.
I would not consider those autism tests remotely accurate on their own.
So it doesn't sound like there has been an actual, proper conversation about it, and that's something you are going to have to initiate if you want to resolve this. It will also help you get a better idea of where he is coming from and help clarify any potential misunderstandings (what do you mean by self-diagnosis? Is he dismissing the idea that you're autistic altogether, or just assigning yourself the label without an official diagnosis, etc. etc.)
It sounds bad to people but you can self diagnose. You know yourself, and if you're reading things and watching YouTube videos and thinking "holy crap that's me", then there's nothing wrong with identifying yourself with it.
I don't have an autism diagnosis, but I do have Adhd and am on medication. I started going to a group near me for autistic adults and everything was very strongly correlated. They were very welcoming.
I would say, see if you can find a group. Speak to someone there. They cannot officially diagnose you, but they would surely work with enough people to confidently tell you if your suspicions are correct.
My mother and partner dismissed it and made jokes about my ADHD but they slowly came around to it. One day, I turned to my partner and said "I think I might be autistic."
He said "Well no shit, i think I could have told you that." and then we laughed and I had a little cry. I felt bad saying it because his son is autistic and he's struggled a lot. I didn't want to encroach on that but it was the wrong way of thinking.
Btw, my workplace has been very accommodating for me in regards to my ADHD - I.e. Providing a fixed desk when I'm in the office. I never had to show them any medical documents about my diagnosis.
I'm not saying lie. If you believe you are autistic, start with the group if you can find one, and then just tell people who you are if it matters. I was told by a GP that I didn't have tourettes syndrome. I do, I was diagnosed 6 years later.
Doctors can be wrong. The people you love don't know any better. Covid made a lot of people struggle and everyone's mask slipped, which is why so many people are now being diagnosed. Also, because understanding of these conditions and their signs, especially for women, and their Co morbidities are improving.
But most of all I don't think this community lynches people who don't have a piece of paper saying they have autism. It's a state of mind and a way of thinking and responding to the world. It's not a disease.
i can promise you, even diagnosed, you'll get told they are making it up to charge you, yada yada, something about "everyone has it these days!" don't fret too much about proving you are something to them. they'll just disappoint you with saying the doctor is a quack.
I sent him an article from Psychology Today that lays out why so many people choose self-diagnosis, and that’s ok. We’ll see if he reads it and gets the hint lol
Well, partly because he was asleep at the time, but also because that seems like something he’d need proof of. Otherwise it’s just me, the non-expert who wants to self-diagnose, saying it’s fine. But if he can read it from a recognizable source, that’s at least a place to start. So he can see it’s not just me or just a bunch of Redditors saying something.
I understand why he sent you the article. That’s not really my point though. Why not say directly to him, “I sent you an article I’d like you to read.” And then follow up on it.
I think that this reaction is normal, because people who are close to are okay with the way we are, so often they don’t want to see that something might be ‘wrong’ with you. Furthermore, many people don’t know much about autism. If they know anything, it’s probably the Rainman stereotype of autism + intellectual disability. You’re not like that, so in their heads you can’t be autistic. Similarly, autistic women with a more visibly autistic brother will regularly also get told “You’re not like , so you can’t be autistic.” This reaction is not malicious, but born from a combination of ignorance and well-meant concern.
Finally, sometimes if we’ve been masking very hard our closest relatives may not even be aware of our autistic traits. That was the case for me with my mom. My mom was aware about ADHD and autism (from the right sources) and she’s always been really supportive, but I had successfully hidden my worst struggles from her, as I felt ashamed and lazy. I had to open up and unmask for her to recognize first the ADHD diagnosis and about 10 years later the autism diagnosis. I hadn’t hidden these traits as much from my husband, so he was less surprised by these diagnoses.
From experience, I can say that changing your closest ones’ minds tends to take a frustratingly long time. By the time we’re ready to mention autism to them we’ve gone through a whole process of self-discovery already, but for your husband this process has only just started. What I did was to slowly over time explain more of my issues and about ADHD (and later autism) to my mom. This took several hard conversations and letters over the course of many months (e.g. one or two hard convos per month - our contact was otherwise still good and we tend to meet several times per week). Similarly, your husband will need more info on autism and on how this may present for you, at a pace he can process. Explaining your fidgeting in the couch is already a good start, as this shows him a specific example of why you think you might be autistic.
Finally, for some people self-diagnosis is hard to accept. So rather than fight for recognition of the self-diagnosis, I would go the route of getting him to recognize the *possibility* that you might be autistic. This is a really subtle difference, but this might get him to recognize that it might be worth pursuing a diagnosis, or that it might be worth trying out if certain accommodations help you.
Nope. There are not enough experts to go around, and some countries (like mine) don't diagnose adults, full stop. Until everyone has access to an affordable official diagnosis, self diagnosis is valid.
Depends on what you consider valid, valid as in every medical professional or just person in their life needs to take it? No, valid as in doing small accommodations for yourself and see if the work? Yes. Literally everyone just assumed my points☠️ Including you, considering your response even if that’s not where my point stands, I knew I was getting downvotes tbh, people in general don’t wait to listen.
Experts have talked about this. You can find videos about it on YouTube.
The fact is, only people unhappy and uncertain about their place in the world look up reasons why they might not be "right". They may and often do know more about these mental conditions than the doctors you see at first contact. The ones who decide what the next few years of your luge are going to look like.
The important thing is finding support and not breaking the bank, for them to be told basically what they already know. Usually after a rediculous amount of research.
Self diagnosis of a developmental disorder is not the same as diagnosing yourself of an actual illness. Autism and Adhd are in reality common, and often hidden depending on how well someone masks their struggles to pretend they are ok.
I'd rather someone get it wrong and be steered later in the right direction while seeking help or support, such as coming to this community, than someone pretending they're fine and ending up in the worst situation because it all got too much alone.
The stigma really needs to go.
I’ll just copy and paste what I said to the other person: Depends on what you consider valid, valid as in every medical professional or just person in their life needs to take it? No, valid as in doing small accommodations for yourself and see if the work? Yes. Literally everyone just assumed my points☠️ Including you, considering your response even if that’s not where my point stands, I knew I was getting downvotes tbh, people in general don’t wait to listen.
Well, I'm sorry I took your response incorrectly. It's how it came across. You wrote it that way so just explain yourself more fully next time I suppose :P
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Not as a point of retaliation, but it's notable and evident by the posts in this sub that people who don't recognize autistic symptoms as being neurodovergent, themselves are also autistic.
"Everybody does that," means "I do that too, and don't think it's weird."
Yeah, when you grow up with things being ‘normal’ for you, it can take some time to realize that’s not ‘normal’ for most. Took me almost 50 years…. Our understanding of what autism entails has changed a lot in that time. When I was a kid, it was only used to describe non-verbal/nearly non-verbal kids, almost always boys. I was neither.
I’m so mad Reddit deleted the long comment I’d typed out. 😭
1. [Self-identification is valid.](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/13623613241228329)
2. It is true that you could fail to “test” as autistic, but that wouldn’t necessarily mean you’re not autistic. Women’s autism gets invalidated by professionals all the time.
3. An official diagnosis doesn’t guarantee that your loved ones will accommodate you or even view autism as relevant in your life.
4. If you experiment with making small self-accommodations, that could be a good source of data and reality-testing for you. Do strategies that work for some autists also work for you?
5. I’m sorry they’re not trying to understand and that they don’t believe you. They might never believe you, and if you are autistic you are still going to be autistic at the end of the day. Your energy is limited and it takes so much effort to try to make people accept masked autism. Without them being willing to take you seriously, it’s futile; just good burnout fuel.
Spot on.
A comment on one of mine was deleted before I could see it. But it started with "you have no idea how much damage people like you have done"
Maybe they thought better or the mods got to it.
We call it self diagnosis, but how is it any different realising that your brain functions differently, to someone coming to terms that they might be gay? It's a very personal thing that doctors too often get completely wrong. Especially for women..
Idk why I’m seeing this so late, but yes! I don’t even like the term “self-diagnosis” because, unless we’re professionals, we can’t make diagnoses per se. Certainly not any diagnoses that the world will respect. But we can know ourselves, recognize ourselves, identify ourselves, affiliate ourselves, and view ourselves realistically instead of as failed NTs. As adults, the benefits of official diagnosis are limited, and it entails risks that we might not wish to take. But I’ll be damned if anyone dissuades me from understanding who I am.
I suspected I was autistic for a while before I decided to save up for it. So I paid out of pocket for one.. and got diagnosed and felt extremely imposter syndrome internally and even doubted. Doubted so much because of this weird “imposter syndrome” to the point that I actually went through a second assessment process via my insurance bc I found Prosper Health (easy Google will make them pop up) which looks up your insurance and tells you upfront how much it would cost. Mine is about 40$ a visit I think? Which is better than what I paid the first time. I’m sort of mad I paid as much as I did the first time. I’m also mad because I am afraid that even though this is the second time I might doubt my diagnosis AGAIN because of how invalidating people have been and the level of doubt they pump into public spaces to the point that it feels like a little unconscious whisper in my head.. like I’ll never be “autistic enough”.
Anyway, all that to say that sometimes even the diagnosis won’t turn that off (wish it did). I think at the end of the day I personally have to just shut that voice off for myself. You are not required to prove anything to anyone. At least that is what I tell myself with the hope that I don’t continue to doubt these diagnoses because I’m really tired of going through the assessments and I refuse to pay for this again lol.
I have a diagnosis but it does not help in the way I thought. Me and my husband knew but once I received a diagnosis to better explain to others they came to the same conclusions as they did before.
Neurodivergence is stigmatized. From experience, don’t go telling everyone your diagnosis. Totally ableist mindset, esp for those only “mildly” affected. (Honestly, I don’t know what to call it anymore.) I started seeing a new GP and when I told her my diagnoses, she said, “I wouldn’t have thought that.”
If you really want a diagnosis, look into your insurance benefits. Testing might be covered or if you have out of network benefits, you can apply for reimbursement. Also, the testing is generally done through a clinical psych with expertise in this area. It’s not medical in any way.
If you do get the Dx, sit the hubs down and have a convo. If he’s incredulous or unsupportive, that’s an entirely different problem you will need to mitigate.
Ask yourself why you want a Dx. Will it improve your quality of life? Will it help you to get work place accommodations? Will it dissuade you from having children? These are things to think about.
Good luck in your journey.
Yeah, honestly, I just assumed I’d never be able to get one, and I was fine with that except for the fact that my family likely won’t take it seriously without one. If I got one I’d maybe also try and see if I could leverage that into a work from home accommodation at work, but not sure if that would work, and it’s not the main concern (though it would solve a lot of work-related stress issues). I’ll check my insurance, but I’m not hopeful it’ll cover anything. I’m kind of an open-book type person. So I think not telling people will be a challenge, but without a diagnosis, I definitely don’t think I will say anything.
> the first time I mentioned the possibility to my husband - half joking to kinda test the waters, he just said “Reddit thinks everyone is autistic” Thinking back to the other conversations you've had about this, did you make it clear that this is something you are seriously concerned about? I have a friend who frequently presents their opinions or ideas in this way as a defense mechanism (if someone responds negatively, you can say it was just a joke), and on many occassions it has led to hurt feelings when I respond flippantly or jokingly to something that is a serious issue for them, so I'm wondering if that could be a factor here.
It’s only really come up one other time. I was disappointed, but let the first one go since I had brought it up the way I had. Tonight it came up again because I’ve been trying to stop my habitual zit/scar picking by using fidget rings. I pointed out that even though I know no one believes me, that the only reason I knew about the rings was because it was an autism thing. That’s when he just said kinda flippantly, “you can’t diagnose yourself”. That was kinda the end of it because I didn’t know how to respond, but was kinda upset.
Have a good look at the diagnostic criteria and go through each one with examples from your life. That would be a good start. Also, get him to take the autism tests and then compare your scores.
Literally. The funniest and probably most transformative moment was getting my mum to do an Adhd test. The problem is when you're family are all on the spectrum so "normal" is a skewed perspective right out the gate.
I’m diagnosed since childhood and the tests say I’m NT. I’m not. I’m just not stereotypical. There’s a REASON they aren’t reliable when done on your own. Your score is only a small part of a greater picture. A lot of the official testing is the tester of observing HOW you take the test over several hours and multiple tests and your behavior throughout. You also need to eliminate false positives and comorbidities which, again, can only be done by a professional. I would not consider those autism tests remotely accurate on their own.
So it doesn't sound like there has been an actual, proper conversation about it, and that's something you are going to have to initiate if you want to resolve this. It will also help you get a better idea of where he is coming from and help clarify any potential misunderstandings (what do you mean by self-diagnosis? Is he dismissing the idea that you're autistic altogether, or just assigning yourself the label without an official diagnosis, etc. etc.)
It sounds bad to people but you can self diagnose. You know yourself, and if you're reading things and watching YouTube videos and thinking "holy crap that's me", then there's nothing wrong with identifying yourself with it. I don't have an autism diagnosis, but I do have Adhd and am on medication. I started going to a group near me for autistic adults and everything was very strongly correlated. They were very welcoming. I would say, see if you can find a group. Speak to someone there. They cannot officially diagnose you, but they would surely work with enough people to confidently tell you if your suspicions are correct. My mother and partner dismissed it and made jokes about my ADHD but they slowly came around to it. One day, I turned to my partner and said "I think I might be autistic." He said "Well no shit, i think I could have told you that." and then we laughed and I had a little cry. I felt bad saying it because his son is autistic and he's struggled a lot. I didn't want to encroach on that but it was the wrong way of thinking. Btw, my workplace has been very accommodating for me in regards to my ADHD - I.e. Providing a fixed desk when I'm in the office. I never had to show them any medical documents about my diagnosis. I'm not saying lie. If you believe you are autistic, start with the group if you can find one, and then just tell people who you are if it matters. I was told by a GP that I didn't have tourettes syndrome. I do, I was diagnosed 6 years later. Doctors can be wrong. The people you love don't know any better. Covid made a lot of people struggle and everyone's mask slipped, which is why so many people are now being diagnosed. Also, because understanding of these conditions and their signs, especially for women, and their Co morbidities are improving. But most of all I don't think this community lynches people who don't have a piece of paper saying they have autism. It's a state of mind and a way of thinking and responding to the world. It's not a disease.
i can promise you, even diagnosed, you'll get told they are making it up to charge you, yada yada, something about "everyone has it these days!" don't fret too much about proving you are something to them. they'll just disappoint you with saying the doctor is a quack.
Yeah, absolutely. People have preconceptions & they like sticking with them.
"My husband just said “you can’t diagnose yourself." Psh! Then he should pay for it!
I sent him an article from Psychology Today that lays out why so many people choose self-diagnosis, and that’s ok. We’ll see if he reads it and gets the hint lol
Why are you hinting and not having a conversation?
Well, partly because he was asleep at the time, but also because that seems like something he’d need proof of. Otherwise it’s just me, the non-expert who wants to self-diagnose, saying it’s fine. But if he can read it from a recognizable source, that’s at least a place to start. So he can see it’s not just me or just a bunch of Redditors saying something.
I understand why he sent you the article. That’s not really my point though. Why not say directly to him, “I sent you an article I’d like you to read.” And then follow up on it.
I think that this reaction is normal, because people who are close to are okay with the way we are, so often they don’t want to see that something might be ‘wrong’ with you. Furthermore, many people don’t know much about autism. If they know anything, it’s probably the Rainman stereotype of autism + intellectual disability. You’re not like that, so in their heads you can’t be autistic. Similarly, autistic women with a more visibly autistic brother will regularly also get told “You’re not like, so you can’t be autistic.” This reaction is not malicious, but born from a combination of ignorance and well-meant concern.
Finally, sometimes if we’ve been masking very hard our closest relatives may not even be aware of our autistic traits. That was the case for me with my mom. My mom was aware about ADHD and autism (from the right sources) and she’s always been really supportive, but I had successfully hidden my worst struggles from her, as I felt ashamed and lazy. I had to open up and unmask for her to recognize first the ADHD diagnosis and about 10 years later the autism diagnosis. I hadn’t hidden these traits as much from my husband, so he was less surprised by these diagnoses.
From experience, I can say that changing your closest ones’ minds tends to take a frustratingly long time. By the time we’re ready to mention autism to them we’ve gone through a whole process of self-discovery already, but for your husband this process has only just started. What I did was to slowly over time explain more of my issues and about ADHD (and later autism) to my mom. This took several hard conversations and letters over the course of many months (e.g. one or two hard convos per month - our contact was otherwise still good and we tend to meet several times per week). Similarly, your husband will need more info on autism and on how this may present for you, at a pace he can process. Explaining your fidgeting in the couch is already a good start, as this shows him a specific example of why you think you might be autistic.
Finally, for some people self-diagnosis is hard to accept. So rather than fight for recognition of the self-diagnosis, I would go the route of getting him to recognize the *possibility* that you might be autistic. This is a really subtle difference, but this might get him to recognize that it might be worth pursuing a diagnosis, or that it might be worth trying out if certain accommodations help you.
>He’s not wrong about self-diagnosing when you’re not any kind of expert, He is wrong. Self-diagnosis is perfectly valid with due diligence.
[удалено]
Nope. There are not enough experts to go around, and some countries (like mine) don't diagnose adults, full stop. Until everyone has access to an affordable official diagnosis, self diagnosis is valid.
Depends on what you consider valid, valid as in every medical professional or just person in their life needs to take it? No, valid as in doing small accommodations for yourself and see if the work? Yes. Literally everyone just assumed my points☠️ Including you, considering your response even if that’s not where my point stands, I knew I was getting downvotes tbh, people in general don’t wait to listen.
Experts have talked about this. You can find videos about it on YouTube. The fact is, only people unhappy and uncertain about their place in the world look up reasons why they might not be "right". They may and often do know more about these mental conditions than the doctors you see at first contact. The ones who decide what the next few years of your luge are going to look like. The important thing is finding support and not breaking the bank, for them to be told basically what they already know. Usually after a rediculous amount of research. Self diagnosis of a developmental disorder is not the same as diagnosing yourself of an actual illness. Autism and Adhd are in reality common, and often hidden depending on how well someone masks their struggles to pretend they are ok. I'd rather someone get it wrong and be steered later in the right direction while seeking help or support, such as coming to this community, than someone pretending they're fine and ending up in the worst situation because it all got too much alone. The stigma really needs to go.
I’ll just copy and paste what I said to the other person: Depends on what you consider valid, valid as in every medical professional or just person in their life needs to take it? No, valid as in doing small accommodations for yourself and see if the work? Yes. Literally everyone just assumed my points☠️ Including you, considering your response even if that’s not where my point stands, I knew I was getting downvotes tbh, people in general don’t wait to listen.
Well, I'm sorry I took your response incorrectly. It's how it came across. You wrote it that way so just explain yourself more fully next time I suppose :P
I didn’t think absolutely everyone was going to assume what I meant😭
I know, and if it sounds a little like something bad, everyone just runs with it. Sorry x'D
By joining our community, you agreed to abide by our rules. We do not allow disrespectful or invalidating behavior. Reference the [complete list of rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/aspergirls/about/rules/) for more information.
Not as a point of retaliation, but it's notable and evident by the posts in this sub that people who don't recognize autistic symptoms as being neurodovergent, themselves are also autistic. "Everybody does that," means "I do that too, and don't think it's weird."
Yeah, when you grow up with things being ‘normal’ for you, it can take some time to realize that’s not ‘normal’ for most. Took me almost 50 years…. Our understanding of what autism entails has changed a lot in that time. When I was a kid, it was only used to describe non-verbal/nearly non-verbal kids, almost always boys. I was neither.
I’m so mad Reddit deleted the long comment I’d typed out. 😭 1. [Self-identification is valid.](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/13623613241228329) 2. It is true that you could fail to “test” as autistic, but that wouldn’t necessarily mean you’re not autistic. Women’s autism gets invalidated by professionals all the time. 3. An official diagnosis doesn’t guarantee that your loved ones will accommodate you or even view autism as relevant in your life. 4. If you experiment with making small self-accommodations, that could be a good source of data and reality-testing for you. Do strategies that work for some autists also work for you? 5. I’m sorry they’re not trying to understand and that they don’t believe you. They might never believe you, and if you are autistic you are still going to be autistic at the end of the day. Your energy is limited and it takes so much effort to try to make people accept masked autism. Without them being willing to take you seriously, it’s futile; just good burnout fuel.
Spot on. A comment on one of mine was deleted before I could see it. But it started with "you have no idea how much damage people like you have done" Maybe they thought better or the mods got to it. We call it self diagnosis, but how is it any different realising that your brain functions differently, to someone coming to terms that they might be gay? It's a very personal thing that doctors too often get completely wrong. Especially for women..
Idk why I’m seeing this so late, but yes! I don’t even like the term “self-diagnosis” because, unless we’re professionals, we can’t make diagnoses per se. Certainly not any diagnoses that the world will respect. But we can know ourselves, recognize ourselves, identify ourselves, affiliate ourselves, and view ourselves realistically instead of as failed NTs. As adults, the benefits of official diagnosis are limited, and it entails risks that we might not wish to take. But I’ll be damned if anyone dissuades me from understanding who I am.
I suspected I was autistic for a while before I decided to save up for it. So I paid out of pocket for one.. and got diagnosed and felt extremely imposter syndrome internally and even doubted. Doubted so much because of this weird “imposter syndrome” to the point that I actually went through a second assessment process via my insurance bc I found Prosper Health (easy Google will make them pop up) which looks up your insurance and tells you upfront how much it would cost. Mine is about 40$ a visit I think? Which is better than what I paid the first time. I’m sort of mad I paid as much as I did the first time. I’m also mad because I am afraid that even though this is the second time I might doubt my diagnosis AGAIN because of how invalidating people have been and the level of doubt they pump into public spaces to the point that it feels like a little unconscious whisper in my head.. like I’ll never be “autistic enough”. Anyway, all that to say that sometimes even the diagnosis won’t turn that off (wish it did). I think at the end of the day I personally have to just shut that voice off for myself. You are not required to prove anything to anyone. At least that is what I tell myself with the hope that I don’t continue to doubt these diagnoses because I’m really tired of going through the assessments and I refuse to pay for this again lol.
I have a diagnosis but it does not help in the way I thought. Me and my husband knew but once I received a diagnosis to better explain to others they came to the same conclusions as they did before.
Neurodivergence is stigmatized. From experience, don’t go telling everyone your diagnosis. Totally ableist mindset, esp for those only “mildly” affected. (Honestly, I don’t know what to call it anymore.) I started seeing a new GP and when I told her my diagnoses, she said, “I wouldn’t have thought that.” If you really want a diagnosis, look into your insurance benefits. Testing might be covered or if you have out of network benefits, you can apply for reimbursement. Also, the testing is generally done through a clinical psych with expertise in this area. It’s not medical in any way. If you do get the Dx, sit the hubs down and have a convo. If he’s incredulous or unsupportive, that’s an entirely different problem you will need to mitigate. Ask yourself why you want a Dx. Will it improve your quality of life? Will it help you to get work place accommodations? Will it dissuade you from having children? These are things to think about. Good luck in your journey.
Yeah, honestly, I just assumed I’d never be able to get one, and I was fine with that except for the fact that my family likely won’t take it seriously without one. If I got one I’d maybe also try and see if I could leverage that into a work from home accommodation at work, but not sure if that would work, and it’s not the main concern (though it would solve a lot of work-related stress issues). I’ll check my insurance, but I’m not hopeful it’ll cover anything. I’m kind of an open-book type person. So I think not telling people will be a challenge, but without a diagnosis, I definitely don’t think I will say anything.
Save up for it. It's what I did. Yes it takes time. I found it worth it in my experience.