Autism Assessment - Part 2

Knowing who you are plays a massive part in accepting yourself, and ever since I started college, I’ve struggled to know who I am. I feel that not many people really know me, and not many people actually want to make the effort to get to know who I am on the inside, and that hurts me deeply. I may not know how to explain them, but I do have feelings. I do want to have conversations and relationships with some people, but I just don’t know where to start.

For as long as I can remember, I have wondered whether there was something wrong within me because I don’t fit the profile for your average young lady in her 20s. I know that this is partly because of my physical limitations, but it has always felt like more than just physical. I don’t feel like I should feel. I don’t know if any of this will make sense to you, but sometimes I feel like there’s something part of me that isn’t detectable, not even by me. I don’t know how to describe it, I don’t know where it is, and I don’t know how to feel about it being there. I just know it’s there.

I’ve often heard the phrase “disable the label”, but never fully understood why it’s in use. In my view, the word “disabled” literally means to stop something from working or to prevent you from doing something else. Everything has a name - or a label. Contrary to what some people think, “disabled” is not a bad word.

Having the Autistic label gives me peace of mind because, although having the ASD diagnosis hasn’t changed anything, it has provided me with a huge amount of clarity as to why I am the way I am. I have always been told to be myself, but sometimes that doesn’t feel possible because of people’s expectations and society’s ideas of how we “should” act.

It felt like I was on a see-saw, balancing between Autistic and neurotypical. I’m at the Autistic end, but my autistic traits aren’t quite heavy enough to be seen by most people, so my masking balances the autistic traits until I unmask. Before I was diagnosed, I didn’t feel one hundred per cent comfortable telling people that I am actually autistic because I hadn’t been diagnosed yet.

Masking seems necessary to an autistic person for lots of reasons: The main reason that we mask is to fit in with society. Masking looks different for each person. I don’t know much about what I do to mask because most of the time, I’m in my own home and don’t need to, but occasionally I make myself chat to people even though sometimes, I couldn’t care less about talking…

Masking can be extremely tiring because you are putting on a persona to hide your true self. Imagine you work as an actor who plays a character in a show, and that show is on all day, every day, and you don't have any breaks whatsoever, you'll become incredibly tired, wouldn't you? This is the same for Autistic people who don't feel comfortable dropping their masks. Sometimes, this is intensified for me when I have a carer who I don’t feel one hundred per cent comfortable with. It’s sad, but true. It happens more than you think.

Almost everyone who I’ve spoken to and almost every article that I have read has said that it is generally more difficult to assess and diagnose an Autistic female than an Autistic male. I don't know how much of this is true, and of course, it depends on where they are on the spectrum, but it is said that females are better at masking than males, and therefore, more difficult to diagnose.

Come back tomorrow for Part 3.