Uta Frith, women, autism, and what Dr Stock, Helen Lewis etc think...

Yea, a slip of typing from me, sorry! Highly is much better. I use the term hyper or hypo a lot in terms of sensory processing at work. Am personally hyper mobile but hypo thyroid. Semantics matter, definitely!

Posting on the hop doesn’t help either…

this with bells on

I don't really understand your question. Again I can only answer for myself but an ADHD diagnosis at 62 for me, shining a light a light on my own behaviour and causes and culpability for that behaviour that was like standing in the dark in the middle of a football pitch and somebody turning on the floodlights.

And an understanding of how ASD affects my husband is on many days the only way I can manage to carry on giving him the support he needs for his health rather than walking away or simply checking out because it's all too difficult.

Isnt that generally the human condition though?

I say that as someone who has sought these answers over the years through counselling and will probably need to again.

Do we as a modern species, for all our navel gazing, really understand ourselves that well?

Suspect getting an explanation and gaining an identity are two different things.

One is for yourself, the other is for other people.

This may be pretty close to what the pp meant by gaining an identity. Hence the question of what is the neurotypical baseline.

I would fit the profile for this and I would say its due to trauma and attachment difficulties (insecure and ambivalent)

They are dear friends, but I have found myself wondering if they have become motivated by gaining the identity.

I can only speak for myself and to an extent for my husband, but it's nothing to do with gaining an identity and everything to do with understanding things in our past that we have messed up, giving ourselves forgiveness for those, and about understanding what it is that makes us continue to behave in ways that make our lives and other people's more difficult in the present and why it is so hard to stop doing them.

It seems to me that over the past few years there has been a move away from bullying-prevention campaigns and towards diagnosing those who are bullied with ND.

The ed psych who recommended that DS (6) pursue a diagnosis said to us that it was better to known to be autistic than to be thought a weirdo. I was quite shocked by that I remember. I didn’t want either for him to tell the truth.

@GCburneraccount "They are dear friends, but I have found myself wondering if they have become motivated by gaining the identity."

I don't know if I want the identity to be honest. I got given it without being asked, ever since I was a (weird) child. It's a family joke that I'm the odd kid, and I was well known in my peer group as "the professor" which was by far the kindest nick name I got along the way. I'm curious more than anything else, but not curious enough (it seems) to go through all the kefuffle and possibly expense of going through a process of diagnosis.

I went through a lot of stages with relation to my quite obvious neurodiversity in my life. For the longest time just tried to fit in, with decent success to be fair. Then in my early 30s (20 years ago now, so not a recent thing) I started to put the pieces together and wonder/realise how autistic I am, notwithstanding I can manage quite well in the world and don't have any huge deficits.

So I definitely would be one of those people that (especially people who have known me only in later life) seem completely fine and quite well adjusted. I think it's fair to question why I would be in the same category as someone who needed serious or even reasonable adjustments just to have a job, or who would require supported living for their whole lifetime.

I said recently to a friend who is early 30s and pursuing a diagnosis "I'm probably not really any better at 'it' than you, I've just had more time to practise".

I want to say thanks to the contributors to this thread. I've found this a very interesting and useful discussion.

Its not an area I know about at all but it has increasingly come up with friends, family and colleagues in the last few years. When I've tried to find out more I've found it so hard to find information I trust - I've recognised similar identitarian/authoritarian aspects to the gender stuff which has made me suspicious of the whole area, while also not helping my understanding of it at all.

I made many of my friends doing the sort of hard STEM stuff where autistic traits are common, not that we would have called it that then. A fair few have recently got a diagnosis in their 40/50's, despite not having any obvious problems associated with it. They are dear friends, but I have found myself wondering if they have become motivated by gaining the identity. I have also wondered if there is an impact on other groups which much more obviously need support than my friends.

I image so. I watched TV show few years ago looking at kids with problems and going through diagnostic process one was refused turned out his sleep was being disrupted by family dog and he was very tried. I can't remember what the TV show it was called but it was on ITV.

In real life most people spend years knowing often from young ages there is something different to other kids. Getting near diagonstic pathways takes years and a lot of peristance IME.

In the ASD process turned a lot of what is normal in our family and adapted to isn't normal in the general population apparently. Also people outside family do comment and point out the kids quirks - and raise concerns.

I was disgonsed at 21 with dsylexia and dsypraixia at Uni- I'd spent life being told it was lazyness or stupidity ie my fault. My Mum had raised it to teachers without me there and been laughed at - yet when she saw them later all said it made sense and had wondered at the time - which made her feel awful. I ha dto push and did so as sibling who failed GCSE was having it suggested via a few routes to them.

In RL only people I know who gone private do so becuase they are getting desperate have often jumped many hoops already and spent years waiting and that usually been mental health crisis of some sort.

I can't say there are no clinics that are giving out disagosise for cash - as I haven't audited them all - but IME there are huge barriers and a huge amount of pushback and discouragement to go down diagnostic routes that may be different in higher social economic groups with more resources I wouldn't know.

intense detailed multi-practitioner assessment for ASD - leading to an ADHD diagnosis, but not ASD.

DD1 had same.

DD1 went through Uni and NHS system and didn't come out with out an ASD disagonsis though they said there was something and said to look at other disagostic routes . She then had to go through seperate ADHD process with NHS with a different team and then via univeristy disablity team the dyslexia and dyspraxia testing with education psychologists completely seperate process.

We'd know there was something since she was a velcro baby and raised concerns and had concerns raised with us her entire schooling. We been on lists promised we'd get on others and nothing. Then it's our fault for putting in support that masks the problems or not paying for private disgosiss when it was beyond our means.

A freind of DD1 family paid 6 K for diagosis after friend hit mental health crisis - a friend of DD2 also had mental health criss think parents are still scared by and also went private - no-one was surprised by outcomes yet there a narrative all private disagonsis are just paid for and not worth getting.

I'm intertesed by the sleep issue. I know my problems cause by dyspraxia and dsyleixa are worse with lack of sleep. As soon as DD1 and Ds sleep issue were aired in ASD meetings that pointed to ADHD - yet I've done everything over their entrie lives to improve their sleep. I still get blamed as velcro babaies so co-slept - sleep problems in exists previous genertaion when being left to cry it out as was parenting norm then.

My son joined an activity where all the kids (teens) were just lovely. Having got used to having to work out whether someone from his peer group was being sarcastic or not, he then had to relearn to take these kids absolutely at face value. Eg. If they paid him a compliment it was always a genuine complement, he didn't have to think about whether they meant the opposite or not. In turn, he probably came across to them as bit guarded initially.

Sorry, I could have been clearer. Does anybody looking for a diagnosis ever come away without one? Your child being given an ADHD diagnosis instead doesn't dispel my more general concerns - not a criticism aimed at you but I do wonder if we are (generally) parhologising what might be personality differences too readily. Particularly as there is no neurotypical baseline to compare.

This has been a really interesting read.
Someone touched on this earlier; i have been pondering whether research into the culture of the country of diagnosis should be carried out.
For example; in Ireland people come at you sideways a lot of the time, unlike say Sweden where they are more blunt.
Does this make autistic Irish people stand out more or are Sweden's social clues really really subtle and what seems like total frankness in all situations is in fact not the case and it is equally easy to diagnose?

One of my DD's had a similar experience at the Michael Rutter but they missed her ADHD and only diagnosed dyspraxia and binge eating disorder at that time. ADHD came later. So properly set up clinical units do indeed refuse ASD diagnoses.

I agree, and I have copied them to keep as they are so informative. They could help anyone enormously. Thank you both @WarriorN and @noblegiraffe .

An interesting thread. I will come back to read it properly but bookmarking for later.

I do see rigidly-held identitarian overlaps between autism and the gender communities. And the overlap between trauma/attachment disorders and what is perceived as autism spectrum.

Autism has been diagnosed several times within my family over the last 10 years. Next gen seems more overtly autistic than mine but then my generation experienced a lot of trauma and the overlap between the two (thanks to a wide spectrum) are significant. I'm pretty certain I'd get a formal ASD diagnosis if I went down that oversubscribed route as I recognise all of the traits OP mentions. However, I do wonder what neurodiversity can possibly be if we haven't got clear parameters for neurotypical. What is 'normal' and what isn't?

I remain wary. I do not think people who can hold down jobs, raise families, run a business etc have any business sharing the same label as my friend's son who is non verbal and unable to live independently. Resources should remain with those who need them the most. And I guess that's where the rubber hits the road for me.

Genuinely not meant to be goady but has anyone ever come away from the diagnostic route without getting an ASD diagnosis at the end of it? I seem to know a lot of people, mainly women, who have sought a diagnosis later in life, On the one hand, people are recognising the struggles they experience and wanting to understand themselves better (But I'm recognising these struggles as reported and assuming they are common?) Then there's the ever moving goalposts of the DSM, written and funded by Big Pharma. Unless I'm mistaken, there is no biological test one can take to rule in or out ASD or any MH diagnosis? So the diagnosis is dependent on subjective interpretation from a broad symptom pool. I have similar concerns about all MH diagnosis BTW, not picking on ASD particularly. I think we live in a time when people tend to look for validation outwards, are genuinely overwhelmed with stress and information overload and struggle with any and all forms of discomfort.

When I read about it (while DS was waiting for diagnosis) I usually saw it described as in the piece above, ie as highly sensitive rather than hypersensitive. It’s a better term really because hyper can mean extremely but it can also mean overly, so the term is ripe for confusion. (Especially if you want to be angry about this I would say.)

I think there is a big element of identity and sense of 'tribe' especially in self diagnosed group, and questioning the diagnostic criteria makes people feel their identity - and struggles they have - are invalidated. ND reframes struggles in a more positive manner than 'depression', or 'personality disorder' or even 'trauma'.

Well well. DD often says she has no memory of some things and some periods of time. Yet she has perfect recollection of others.

I thought it was because she repressed the memories. But perhaps she never formed them.