Support thread for women with suspected/diagnosed/self-diagnosed ASD or ADHD

[EauRouge]

Previous thread here.

Hello all, I know I'm new but the old thread was full, so here's a shiny new one. This is a thread for adult women who have ASD or ADHD, or suspect they do, to support each other.

Here are some resources that might be useful:

Links

List of female AS traits by Tania Marshall.

Article about women and girls on the spectrum by NAS.

List of female traits by Everyday Aspergers

Musings of an Aspie- Cynthia Kim's blog (one of the few sources I have found about being a parent with Aspergers)

Autistic Women's Collective

Recognising ADHD in women from ADDitude Magazine

Resources for women with ADHD from ADDitude Magazine

Adult ADHD support (coming soon by the looks of things)

Books

Aspergirls by Rudy Simone

The Complete Guide to Aspergers Syndrome by Tony Attwood

You Mean I'm Not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?!: The Classic Self-help Book for Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder by Kate Kelly (I haven't read this one but I have heard it recommended many times- apologies if it's no good!)

Online tests

(Online tests are not 100% certain but can give you a very good idea and a starting point for talking to your GP if you're seeking diagnosis)

RDOS Aspergers quiz (the best one IMO)

AQ test

ADHD test

ADHD questionnaire for women

Info dump complete

Please come and join in!

Hello. I was supposed to be diagnosed via work this week, but the psychologist has broken his hip.

I'm very interested to hear how other MNetters' dx went. As for psychotherapists/CBT etc: it took five sessions for the guy to work out that AS affects pretty much everything.

That FB group 'support for British women with Asperger Syndrome' is a bit lame IMHO.

I haven't been officially diagnosed by a psychiatrist but had an assessment with a charity that specialises in Aspergers. My local NHS is awful at dealing with autism- they believe in all the myths and people that are not qualified to say so have told me that I definitely don't have ASD. Reasons given include that I understand jokes and that my issues haven't improved over time . A friend of mine was told her son doesn't have ASD because he did some role playing. They really are shit here but I've heard some other counties are better.

Buffy, I expect the story telling thing was about imagination. I'm shite at making up stories too but some aspies are really good at it. Social imagination tends to be more of a problem for people with autism, like predicting how people will act in a social situation. The worst thing for me is trying to figure out people's motivation for acting a certain way or saying a certain thing, because people do not always say what they mean.

It's a small but national charity, they are based not far from me. They do diagnose but they have to bring in a psychiatrist so it costs a fair bit for them so they ask for a large donation. I was told that since I'm not working/in education or planning to claim benefits, there is no point in spending the money on a diagnosis yet, but that may change in the future. The woman that runs the charity has an MA in autism and she's the one that assessed me, but she's not a psychiatrist so it doesn't count as a 'proper' diagnosis.

I feel the same way about spending all my energy on my DDs. Before they came along I was 'coping' basically by spending all day on my own while DH was at work. I have had a few jobs since dropping out of uni but apart from one job that I had for nearly 2 years, all the others have been over within a few months (the worst ones I only lasted a few days!).

Even when I do get some time to myself, which isn't often when you have children, I am so wound up from being on the go that I can't relax.

If anyone wants the charity details then I will PM them. I don't want to post it on here because it's quite close to where I live.

So I did the RDOS:

Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 152 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 63 of 200
You are very likely neurodiverse (Aspie)

Which makes me feel more comfortable saying I most likely am. I'm not working, I doubt I ever will now, I hope to make it as a writer though, so I'm thinking there's no point in a diagnosis from that angle. But as time passes I feel like I need something to say this is who I am. Maybe so I can just be myself and stop pretending so hard.

I only realised last year when ds2 was undergoing diagnosis. Those AS traits and Everyday Aspergers are so descriptive of me. I feel like I'm just getting to know myself. I'm rambling. It's been a rough week. Hello everyone.

And as usual for me on mumsnet I'm close to deregistering yet again. I get sucked into commenting, waste hours I actually want to be doing other things with and obsess over whether I have exactly explained exactly what I mean and one never can in the written word in a chat style. The conversation in my head can be taken completely differently when written down. I've previously been down the route of spending an hour composing a paragraph, it's not somewhere I want to be again.

But I need this place for ds2 and probably this thread for me. I don't know how to stay away from the rest though.

Hello all.

I have received paperwork now to fill in to see if I warrant an assessment. Of course I'm now convinced that I'm barking up the wrong tree....

Quite similar!

I've hidden everything from active but SN and bookmarked SN sections. Hopefully that will help. Nice of you to say about sticking around I still have a residual fear that if people get to know me they will dislike me. Out in the offline world I can be superficially socially successful, but i rarely go deeper because I can't sustain "normal" too well in person. Though I currently have friends who understand me. I think. Until they get sick of me!

Oh I need this thread tonight. I'm about to explode so I'm going to watch a bit of TV but can anyone take a look at my thread in Relationships? I don't mind if you add thoughts here or there.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/2319996-I-dont-really-understand-why-we-are-arguing-and-I-dont-know-what-to-do-from-there?msgid=52866503

Oh... duh... I have just realised this is not the thread that I started on the same topic. Sorry for barging in if it's not too cheeky, can my question still stand? And I'll say hello/introduce myself later, I am often doing things backwards so it doesn't make that much of a change.

Bertie Hi. It looks like from your thread the best thing you could do is get your needs diagnosed and see what support is available for you to make sense of everything and give you strategies to cope with your life. I can't really advise on the relationship aspect. Dh and I have both had counselling for our own issues and are better together for it. But it does take two.

Polter Exactly! Both my current friends have been explicit in liking me even though I don't think I do friendship as well as their other friends do.

Buffy Thank you. I could write tons more as I've been reading about feminism since the board opened and on Twitter. But I don't have time to compose things right. Plus words fix you and I'm permanently open to new information.

Hi Buffy :)

I've just realised this is the second thread from the old ASD one, which I was also on. I do identify with a lot of that "Aspiengirl" stuff but reading ADHD stuff, when it's not too male-centric, is usually a spot on description of my life. The things I don't identify with are stuff like walking out of meetings/classrooms, having significant educational problems as a child, and doing really obviously inappropriate things. Which is the usual "image" people have of ADHD (including me in the past) which is the main reason why I'd never really thought about it before. But probably over two years ago now, somebody posted the link to ADHD-PI on a thread about lateness and I followed it out of curiosity and then just sort of sat there going Holy fuck what.

I have just finished "I'm not crazy, stupid or lazy" and found it really helpful. I had a PDF copy with some upside down pages, so I think I will order it in print to re-read and make lots of notes on. I also reached out on a local (non ADHD related) group and found out that a friend has it so we've been meeting up and chatting but there are other things happening and it's all a bit spread out really. She lent me "The ADHD Workbook for Adults" but I have found it very rigid and not that helpful. It's full of "Reward yourself when you've done X" which is a motivation technique which is next to worthless for me. I found it disappointing that the whole book was like that - I had thought it might have a mixture of suggestions or approaches.

I'm pretty sure I have sensory processing disorder as well, the book Too Fast Too Tight Too loud Too Tight was very enlightening for me although I think it's mild to moderate, it certainly doesn't stop me from doing most things.

I really need to get diagnosed but I'm only on emergency health insurance at the moment and I don't think it's covered :( DH says "Just go and I don't care how much it costs", but we are supposed to be saving at the moment and I'm confused by the two contradictory messages there.

Oh I only saw Buffy's comment when I posted, hold on :)