Just got out of my diagnostic interview about 15 minutes ago. I am officially autistic.

Still processing everything and what that actually means for me, but it’s official.

  • asterisk@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    How did you find the process? I’m just kicking off the same. The waiting lists are LOOOONG, and I’m still in the am-i/aren’t-i phase…

    • warpslide@lemmy.caOP
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      1 year ago

      I went though embrace-autism.com. From start to finish the whole process was 9 months and 19 days and cost $1700.

      I submitted the screening late August 2022, got a reply October 2022 that I can proceed to the diagnostic assessment if I wish. I proceeded to the next step that day and received a response January 2023 that my diagnostic interview was June 2023.

      The hardest part was the waiting in between steps. Doing the screening tests I was surprised how high my scores were, so I did them a couple of times just to make sure I was doing them “right”.

      Getting the response that I can proceed to the diagnostic assessment was a bit a validation that perhaps I really am autistic but I still had a lot of imposter syndrome, so I went ahead.

      One of the biggest fears I had is that this might have been a really expensive “No”, there was a lot of mixed emotions on the call with Dr. Engelbrecht when she told me I am autistic. It was the validation I was looking for and the imposter syndrome is gone.

      I’m now deciding if I want to go on to the next step to work with a medical doctor and perhaps explore whether I qualify for some tax benefits with my new diagnosis to help pay for some coaching/counseling. There really needs to be a course one can sign up called “how to be autistic” or something.