I have a new job. After getting to know my coworkers better for the last couple weeks, I was deep in conversation with one about tabletop game mechanics which then devolved into talking about creating currency systems for fantasy novels.
Out of left field they sort of add in that they knew I was autistic. I… had never been recently tested, tbh. I was completely nonplussed, not sure what to say. They asked if I had been tested as a child. I said yes. They guessed correctly that the doctors told me I had ADHD. I nodded… that’s exactly what happened. They then tell me that many tests from back in the day were badly done, and many people with autism got misdiagnosed with ADHD.
This blew me away. This coworker was certain. They said they found it extremely uncanny and that they were very unsettled by me, because they also have autism and they could tell I was on the exact same spectrum as them. They said they had never in their life met someone with the same autism type until now. At that moment I realized I understood, too. Like someone was on my plane of existence and that was very unsettling.
So I took the 50 question test and scored 28. I’m on Abilify for bipolar, which I’m not sure I have. The funny thing is… I get all the side effects from the Abilify (Apiprozole) that one with autism would get. Sever drooling, insomnia, etc. Every side effect that the drug would have on autistic people has presented itself. However, the Abilify works good at stopping my horrible thoughts and worries.
So my question is… has anyone ever been in a similar boat? Where you were diagnosed with ADHD but it wound up being autism? These are new waters for me. I always thought when they tested me for autism that they were certain I didn’t have it, but the more I interact with my coworker the more I can tell they’re probably right.
My next step is to talk with my doctor and get officially re-tested. We may be looking down the wrong medication path (though, because the Abilify works pretty well, I’m not opposed to saying I probably have bi-polar, too).
Its fascinating that you didnt know this, despite being old enough to have a job too.
When it comes to my own life and personality, I have developed certain goggles that prevent me from looking at myself, as I don’t necessarily want to see what’s there…
You are probably fine, dont worry about it. We are all like rocks on a beach, getting hit by wave after wave through life and it shapes us.
There is no rush to see whats there, specially if you are young. It comes later in life, a bit retrospecting and healing.
I personally think you have autism. Autistic people are somehow on the same wavelength and most of the people I know that are autistic I find conversation flows a lot better.
The tricky part of diagnosing autism is that it’s an rich internal experience that only you can properly assess. An expert would always be at a disadvantage this way compared to self diagnosis.
Problem with self diagnosis is that neurotypicals tend to answer questionnaires as if each question is a loose criteria but autistic people will consider each question as a strict criteria.
Example: “I have trouble maintaining eye contact”.
NT: I look away sometimes when I get distracted. 2/5
ASD: Not really, it’s just easier to not look at people. 2/5?
I personally don’t have trouble maintaining eye contact but I pretty much can’t process what the person is saying then. If they look away I get 80-90% and if I look away it’s 100%. A better answer to that question in my case is 3-4/5 since I have trouble with eye contact.
Here are the tests on a website made by autists for autists. After these you can look at some result distributions to see where you land. For example, if you score >95% of NTs on the AQ it’s almost guaranteed that you’re autistic.
The 50 question test was the exact one I took before, but I had another go. This time 29, instead of 28. I mean, it would be perfectly logical that I am just antisocial, introverted, ADHD, and bi-polar (a new addition).
I guess it really does get difficult to tell later on in life, when you’ve developed and refined your social mask. Mine is all cracked and rusty because I went recluse for nearly 5 years (never left the apartment but maybe once every few months).
The nurse today told me that “everyone has an excuse for something” and that she had depression but she didn’t label it bi-polar. I was a little shocked, because I’ve gotten along with this nurse very well. I didn’t mention it to the doctor, because he wasn’t my normal doctor. My normal doctor was on vacation.
I need someone who’ll take me seriously and not give me a “buck up, champ” and a pat on the back…
Yeah, it’s pretty weird still. Some people think you can’t be autistic unless you are incapable of living in society or act like Rain Man. As the diagnosis numbers go up and people become more aware of autism this will hopefully stop.
Grounded take: You weren’t necessarily misdiagnosed. Prior to DSM-5 (the psychiatric diagnostic manual) which was published in 2013 you couldn’t be diagnosed with both autism and ADHD. Given that there’s no treatment for autism it didn’t make sense to even consider diagnosing people with autism when they were presenting with ADHD. BPD is somewhat common comorbidity of autism too (this one seems more often misdiagnosed but if meds work then not much reason to doubt it).
My real take: it’s all the same thing presenting in different ways, because we’re all different people, but it’s also uncanny how similar people with autism are in some respects.
This is a good take to have, and thank you for the practical response. I show all the signs of BPD as well, as my girlfriend pointed out to me. I go tomorrow to reassess the Abilify with my doctor, as it’s unsustainable. I only sleep 2-4 hours a day on it.
It makes sense. I have all the classic signs of ADHD, particularly loving to start projects and hating to finish them. I enjoy the peaceful worlds of beginnings, but get fairly impatient with the middles and ends of things.
BPD I’m looking into soon. I have had a constant of every sign of it. I think that’s why the Abilify helps so much. I don’t think I’m an idiot for talking and no longer cringe at the me from yesterday. I’m also not terrified of being left alone in the world. It’s a wonderful feeling.
I think it’s definitely worth talking to your doctor about, although testing adults for autism is usually harder, both because adults have usually learned to mask symptoms and there are fewer specialists trained/available to diagnose adults. So if you have to rely on a ‘peer review diagnosis’ (your autistic coworker telling you they strongly believe you’re autistic), then I wouldn’t sweat it.
Do you feel like you have problems with sensory input overwhelming you? I would have said ‘no’ for myself as a teen, but that’s because I didn’t realize the sheer exhaustion I felt after dealing with noises and lights every day was abnormal. Noise canceling headphones/earbuds, earplugs, and weighted blankets might be worth exploring to you, if you’ve never tried them.
I stared at the ground as a kid and teen. As an adult I learned to look people directly in the eye when talking to them. However… as a kid… too much emotion. I couldn’t stand to see faces because one look into the crowd and I could tell the dynamic and the feelings of others. At least as an adult everyone has a mask. Though I tend to unsettled people. I don’t look at them when talking to them. I look at them.
Actually, my cousin’s son has autism. We had a couple drinks around the fire and she started talking to me about it. She had no idea how to approach it. He’s like 17 and she still didn’t really know him.
I spent all most of the night explaining why he did certain things, or at least why I thought he did from personal experience. His big thing was faces. He didn’t like them. However, he came up to me and started going down a rabbit hole of trains. I like old trains, too, so we spent the rest of the night deep in that conversation.
He never had trouble looking me in the face. The reason I think? I have spent my whole life trying to find a way to make my face kind. I have an angry face. It goes beyond just displeased, I look outright mutinous when I relax my face, lol. But I try to be kind, quiet, and courteous and have spent years trying to translate that to my face.
Definitely matches my experience, to show how long I’ve been traveling this path I was originally diagnosed as ADD before my autism diagnosis, so that ADHD -> autism pipeline is real
Also the fact that it was an autistic individual that brought it up checks out, there’s gotta be some mechanism where autistic people can identify other individuals because the accuracy is scary.
Yeah, they said it unnerved them at how uncanny it was. That I was the exact same spectrum placement as her and that meeting someone of the exact same type of autism almost never happens.
I’m glad I met them. I might have gone my whole life not knowing or even thinking to look. I can notice the same thing, as well. We just talk and talk and we naturally understand our conversation queues, which is crazy rare for me. I agree with them, it’s pretty unsettling. Like looking in a mirror and seeing a different face staring back.
