well, basically tik tok started recommending me a lot of videos about autism, adhd, audhd, aspergher’s and that kind of thing more specifically. i started watching them and what they describe as ‘symptoms’ or whatever seem to match with a lot of things i tend to do. i then found a screening test which is used to see if a diagnostic is worth it (it’s some kind of psichiatrically approved test) and my score was positive for asperghers. of course it doesn’t mean anything because i need a professional but it got me thinking if maybe it is my own bias or if maybe i should try and seek professional help, a lot of my issues when it comes to my “professional” life i feel have been fucked up because of things that could be related to this, so that’s what kind of bothers me, and also that maybe has impacted in some ways in my social life or social skills. but i dont know if maybe i’m just being dumb or not, so i’d like to know what it was for other comrades.
My mom watched some kinda therapy real-tv show (german show called “zwei bei kalwas” i think) and one episode had a child with autism in it which made her basically obsessed with autism because she saw the child acted like me and i had been a middle school drop out for a couple years already (had been bullied into suicidality and stayed home) with no therapy really helping.
Eventually she got me into an autism specific clinic and i got my diagnosis there and with that also a justification for me to be able to be sent to a school for emotionally and mentally disturbed children.
Fun fact: Abusive children that bully and even threaten others with knives and such in their free time are also considered “emotionally and mentally disturbed” for the school system. The state really wanted me to go to the much closer school, but that one only had the bully kind of kids because i lived in the poor area.
There was a second school for disturbed children way further away (car only basically) and that one had mostly autistics and bullied children. My diagnosis helped me get into that one and cost the state 10s of thousands of € because i had to take a government paid taxi every day lul
After i started studying 6-8 years later i also got my ADHD diagnosis which actually had been much more negatively impactful on my life than my autism… 😬
I don’t think anyone would ever be able to notice that i have autism now and i don’t think i would get diagnosed with it if they never knew how i behaved as a child because the symptoms are either mild or i steeled my mind against them.
My ADHD symptoms are way more pronounced and especially my executive dysfunction is fucking me up.
I also likely have, undiagnosed, anhedonia (autism and ADHD both affect the reward center of the brain as far as i know and ADHD is basically “just” a dopamine sickness anyway) since my brains reward system is, in my perception, almost non-functional.
That’s also why i eventually dropped out of university. It was actually quite easy for me, but as soon as i needed to write project reports and essays my brain completely refused because there was never a reward pay-off for my brain by my brain 🙃🙃
With my autism, ADHD and likely anhedonia as a result of both, the anhedonia is the worst by far.
Edit: holy shit this is so much more text than i thought lmao. Anyway enjoy my barely relevant rant