Neurodiversity support thread: Women with suspected/self-diagnosed/diagnosed ASC & ADHD

[EauRouge]

No sign of our own forum yet, so for now here's a new support thread for women on the autistic spectrum and/or with ADHD. Newbies more than welcome!

The old thread is here.

Here are some helpful links for newbies:

List of female AS traits by Tania Marshall.

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

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!)

I took off Tony Attwood because it was about people with autism rather than for people with autism. Anyone else got any book recommendations?

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

If any of those don't work, it's because I'm cooking the DDs' dinner and I'm shit at multitasking. What's that burning smell?

Hi Marvellous. I will pm you tomorrow evening from my laptop. The phone is too much of a FAFF.

Polter I know it is expensive but would you consider the Lorna Wing centre and refer yourself?

Marvellous- you sound very like me. I've very recently been to my gp with a description like your list. I'm now awaiting the referral.

Well done Polter. Every journey starts with a single step.

Well done polter

marvellous you sound very much like me also. I ended up asking for the referral because a lot of stressful events happened at the same time and I basically fell apart- I was crying every night and self injuring on occasion even though I was already on ADs.

The diagnosis has meant

• changing my meds to an AD that works better with autistic people
• understanding from family and friends (I am lucky that many of the people around me are clued up about ASD, but I have had to educate my DH and in laws)
• I'm more willing to do the things I need to do to cope (eg stimming in public) and I'm learning new strategies from reading books/blogs by autistic women
• I'm on the road to self acceptance, when I react in an unusual way, I'm not being difficult or selfish, I'm autistic!

Gosh - thank you everyone. It's good to heat from you. As a person who mostly copes at the moment, I need to think about what to do. It would have been very helpful to have this understanding about myself about 20 years ago...

Did anyone else watch the 'girls with autism' programme last night?

I was pretty annoyed at some of it. They didn't appear to have any staff who are on the spectrum themselves and I felt overall the staff lacked empathy. I don't see how it particularly catered for the needs of girls with autism. You can't just bunch a group of girls together with a diagnosis and put them in a building and say it's a special school. It seemed to me to vary little from a mainstream school, apart from the smaller class sizes.

Eg the desks were laid out all facing the front. I couldn't cope with this at school/Uni as I got distracted by noise behind me. Why didn't they have the tables in a horseshoe shape? Then the teacher was giving a very long list of verbal instructions. With an autistic person they should know to give instructions in writing to avoid ambiguity and so by the end the person hasn't forgot the start.

Then they made a girl with a dog phobia sit in a class with a dog and then made her seem unreasonable for crying!!

They even used idioms like 'there's plenty more fish in the sea'. Is it really so f hard for NTs to adapt their behaviour to make life easier for the neurdiverse??

I'm very much a proponent of the social model of disability ie seeing society as disabling by being designed for the most able rather than always labelling the 'difference' as a 'problem'.

I thought the same Athe , some of it came over "Just pull your socks up and stop attention seeking". The anxiety exuding from the girl Beth's face was so painful to see.

I started to watch it, but turned it off as I was so irritated with some of the teachers. I'll watch it when I'm feeling more on top of things and not as pissed off with everything!

Polter that's brilliant! hope you get an appointment soon . Is it with the lady I saw? (And Eau I think?) She's lovely.

I told the headteacher at school. I come across really badly when I try to get my point across, so hopefully she'll understand that I'm not deliberately being an annoying pain in the arse!

Maybe she travels to a village hall ridiculously near you too :o That would make it easy.

I've just been reading the first few pages of this thread. And that thing where you can't deal with paperwork, and you sort of keep remembering but never actually do it. And get stressed. And then leave it some more....

That's something I do ALL the time. What the hell is that all about? I just assumed I was rubbish. If it wasn't for DH pestering me, I'm sure I'd never get anything like that done at home.

Two recent examples:
(1) I had an item of mail to forward to someone. I saw it in my bag almost every day for about 2 weeks. I don't have to go out of my way to find a post box, and there was no cost involved in posting the damn thing. It wasn't until the recipient emailed me concerned that it had gone missing in the post that I finally put it on the door mat and mailed it when I left the house that day.

(2) I booked a B&B for August several months ago. They asked me to mail them a small deposit and booking form. I carried that form round and had it on my desk for MONTHS. I KNEW I had to do it! I didn't ever manage to complete it! Finally with one month to go before the holiday (panic that I'd ruined everything) I decided I better email them and (ahem) express concern that my booking might have got lost. Luckily they had held my booking and everything was OK. BUT that was a close one...

Of course I do it all the time with forms from school etc too.

At work, I can manage it.... most of the time. Maybe I'm more focused on the task at hand?

Hello all. Chronically - can I ask which ADs are thought to work best for people with ASD please?

Laetitia it's SSRIs, I'm on sertraline but there's also fluoxetine and citalopram. They don't help with the underlying ASD but they've reduced my anxiety symptoms immensely and I think they can be used to treat OCD too.

Hey everyone,
Thanks to those who responded when i asked several pages back about how having a diagnosis has impacted them, sorry for not getting back sooner.

I too now have a diagnosis of Aspergers, I ended up biting the bullet and paying to go private as i walked out of work after having a massive meltdown and am still off sick.

For those who are strugggling to find somewhere to diagnose, I went with Tania Marshall who is based in Australia and did it with a combination of skype sessions, tests and fact finding emails.

It cost $500 (approx £240) for two 2 hour skype sessions (special deal at the moment) and I also had to forward her an "autobiography" of my life , do several online tests in my own time between sessions, ask close friends to write a bit about me and my character.

I only had to wait a couple of weeks for my appointment. The only slight downside is that because her working hours are in Australia time, you have to stay up late or get up really early for the Skype sessions.

I guess although i am not surprised by my diagnosis I am still i guess a bit bewildered in the sense that i am now looking back over my life and wishing I knew then what i know now and deciding how and if to tell people.

Does anyone know if there is an information leaflet or similar you can download to give to friends/family members with brief easy information to explain the diagnosis to back up when and if i tell them as I know i will probably struggle to say the right thing.

Congratulations on your diagnosis! I hope it helps you and you get to return to work soon.

www.autismeastmidlands.org.uk/common-traits-person-asperger-syndrome
This has a really brief summary of the main difficulties associated with AS.

www.autism.org.uk/about-autism/autism-an-introduction/what-is-asperger-syndrome.aspx
From the NAS, this is in a lot more detail, if you look at 'gender and autism' on the left they also have some info specifically about women on the spectrum.

I found Cynthia Kim's blog (musingsofanaspie) to be really helpful, particularly with regards to being a female aspie and being diagnosed as an adult, but there is loads on there!

Thank you CronicallyAspie,

Those links are helpful and I will print them off.

I am currently reading Nerdy, Shy and Socially Innapropriate by Cynthia Kim which is very good.

I am now reading Nerdy Shy and Socially Inappropriate too, Straycat. I think I have a milder form than she does, but last night I realised I actually do have meltdowns. I can't think of another way to describe how I felt last night so I wanted to ask what do you do when you feel you are going to or how do you prevent it from happening or is that impossible?