I was diagnosed as an adult. My mum saw my struggles and basically kept telling me I was fine, that I had to try harder, pull myself up by the bootstraps etc. I think she did this for good reason - she didn’t want me not to be able to cope with life. I love her dearly and understand her intentions.
However I suffered badly with depression and anxiety. I remember doing group therapy and thinking that none of these people seemed like me either. I felt fundamentally broken and hated myself even though on the outside I was very good at appearing happy, normal and even sort of confident. Things like standard CBT didn’t work at all and made me worse. Secondary school was genuinely traumatic for me.
As an adult I was (mis)diagnosed with borderline personality which is very common for autistic women.
It may be taking every ounce of your daughter’s energy for her to appear okay at school but she might not actually be. If you are going to make her aware of autism, let her know that people have mentioned she might have it, look at strategies to support her assuming she might at least have traits and make sure not to shame her then you are not necessarily BU. You can discuss it as she gets older and she can decide if a diagnosis would help her (most people I know have felt it was helpful so I think it’s a shame not to do it now when she’s younger but that’s just my opinion).
If you plan on dismissing her struggles because she’s able to function fine in certain situations, keep pushing her to “get better” etc even if it comes from a nice place (because we all want our children to function independently outside of us) then you are BU.
I can’t understand why you don’t want to though if it’s possible: If there were infinite resources I’d say why not just assess literally every child? If she’s not autistic then that’s the end of that. If she is, you might be saving her from a lot of self-esteem issues and a situation where she masks so much that by the time she is an adult she has no idea who she is or how to unmask.
I think you should explore your assumptions here - do you think that a diagnosis will give her “permission” to be less high functioning? Is it that you think it’ll hurt her to find out she is? That it will limit her?
Another thing worth mentioning is friendships. As an adult I’m in a lot of groups for autistic women and I’d say almost all of them find it very difficult to be friends with neurotypical people and only found real friends once they were in neurodiverse spaces.
One of the things you find with high functioning girls is they struggle with a lack of close friendships or they’ll move between friendship groups and are always on the periphery. They may manage romantic relationships better but may be taken advantage of a lot. (Some stats say 90% of autistic girls/women experience sexual assault or rape).
The friendship issue has persisted for me into adulthood and I’ve struggled with having friends even though I make the effort. I think that I’m being nice, making small talk, asking questions, not being too pushy etc but people do not like me or at least don’t like me enough to become close with.
I feel more accepted by autistic women but I don’t feel I fit in there either. I feel extremely uncomfortable when they’re unmasked and not following the social “rules” I so painstakingly tried to force myself to understand. I have very judgemental and even angry thoughts in a group where someone is talking too much about their special interest for example.
Not because I personally am bothered by it but because I’ve internalised the shame that it’s wrong. I’ve met others who have verbalised this same sentiment especially after experiencing a lot to shame growing up.
I end up feeling in the middle to two worlds. Not normal enough to be neurotypical but very uncomfortable around other autistic people. Like I know I’d be safe to be the real me but I almost physically cannot because I don’t know how.
I often wonder if I lived in the world as it is nowadays and had more access to being diagnosed as a high functioning girl, whether I’d have ended up a lot mentally healthier and I think I would have.