Neurodiversity support thread for women with diagnosed, self diagnosed or suspected ADHD and ASC

[BertieBotts]

Continuing the good work of the lovely EauRouge :) Our first thread in the shiny new section. Seems like they created it just in time for us to fill up the old one

Link to the previous thread

This is a support thread for any posters who feel that they might be (or know that they are) on the Autistic spectrum or have ADHD. Feel free to jump in! Some of us are diagnosed, some not, some trying to work out what it's all about. Women with these kinds of issues often present differently to men and as such, can go undiagnosed for a long time. Hopefully, we can help each other understand ourselves and be there for support along the way too.

Links

List of female AS traits by Tania Marshall

AS traits in women and girls by Everyday Aspergers

Musings of an Aspie - Cynthia Kim's blog (Noted as being one of the only sources of information about being a parent with Aspergers)

Autistic Women's Collective

Women with ADHD by ADDitude magazine - this is a really good website in general (though it really needs a redesign). Lots of good, well researched info on ADHD and especially ADHD in women and girls. Do follow the links to other articles. They also have a closed facebook group which is good for info (FB is down so can't put the link up.)

Books
Aspergirls by Rudy Simone

You Mean I'm Not Lazy, Stupid Or Crazy?!: A Self-help Book for Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder by Kate Kelly. (This is available as a PDF somewhere online but I can't find it now - sorry!)

Speakers

This is a new one but it's something I've found really helpful so I hope nobody minds me adding it. I won't link directly to videos because they show up in the thread, but worth searching youtube/Ted/google:

Russell Barkley: Clinical Psychologist who specialises in the subject area of ADHD. He explains it better than anybody else I have come across and has practical solutions to support life with it. He is VERY long-winded, but his talks are packed with info. Highly recommend.

Ned Hallowell: Another psychologist who actually lives with ADHD himself and has interesting insights. Author of the book "The ADHD effect on marriage". He is a little bit cheesy but worth a watch.

Sorry I only have ADHD links to put here but if anybody knows a good ASC speaker, feel free to add!

Online quizzes

Of course no online quiz is sufficient for diagnosis, but can be a useful signposting tool and a starting point for discussion with your GP.

RDOS Aspergers test

AQ test

Adult ADHD screening test

Symptom checklist of ADHD in women

Hello all! Marking my place too - cannot sleep tonight.

Regarding the conversation about the short and long versions of the final ASC diagnosis, well, I was thinking about mine the other day. My NHS one was pretty strightforward as you'd expect - note to self, must dig it out and re-read at some point, but my private one - eek! The psychologist asked me to write my life story, which I duly did in two chunks. Me, being me, tried to make light of some of it in addition to being brutally frank, but I thought that he'd use it as the basis of my background material. Apparently not - he cut and pasted the lot wholesale into my final full report. Hmm.

I need to have a look at the shorter private report too which turned up in my inbox when I was holidaying in late July/early August. This is indeed the one geared towards the employer. I am having a NAS Workplace Assessment in the next fortnight and will let you all know how that goes.

Sorry - rambling.

Hi Queen

My first assessment via Skype with Tania Marshall was so obviously a standard letter with my name inserted. I had to download and print it out. It also omitted my score on RAADS just saying I had scored significantly high.

The second with Judith Gould was very professional (as you would expect) and was highly detailed and personal to me.

In fact there was masses we could have talked about but there just was not time.

She told me at the end she had absolutely no doubt whatsoever.

I still have days where I doubt it all and think I am just plain defective though. I have to remind myself that is the AS manifesting.

I know exactly what you mean about worrying about not understanding exactly what is expected of you rivier ! I wonder if you wrote the request here, we might be able to pick it apart as a team?
For me, I have been given the first task of my third year of my degree - its re practicing research skills but the brief looks too vague to me. And i'm paranoid about asking for any sort of clarification and looking stupid for the first task of the year :(

Hi all. I have had suspicions for a while that I could potentially have aspergers. I have a thread in chat and was kindly linked to here so hope you don't mind. I've never mentioned it to any medical professional other than my counsellor and she did say she would be suprised if I had it. I've done 3 online tests so far and whilst I know they are not diagnostic tools, I have scored quite highly in all of them, well over the 32 anyway.

How did you go about getting diagnosed or even mentioning it to a doctor and what was their reaction?

Just spotted todays blog of the day...

expatlog.com/2015/09/30/how-people-with-autism-fake-it

So can I, it seemed really familiar though, I'm sure I read something very like it before!

I'm going to be taking part in a study on camouflaging/masking in ASD women that's on this page - I'm pretty sure it's legit They're going to do it by video chat with me. I'm sure they'd like it if more of you got in touch

I am just diving back in for some sympathy - blatant request please. At a meeting today we had an ice breaker and it was to write some compliments on 3 post it notes and stick them to other people (all strangers) and then we had to share the compliments we'd received (if we wanted to). I got none. Out of a handful of people, everyone else had at least one and it was pretty hideous. I was quite thrown by it tbh.

God, that's AWFUL! The leader should have been monitoring and making sure that everybody got at least one. Or they should have made people compliment the person to their left, or whatever.

Thank you. Apologies for the shameless begging but it was one of those 'Argh this is my life' moments and then I realised that I must be really ugly with bad clothes - quite distracting!

Ok. I've just gone back to be polite and read everybody's posts. I'm interested in the hermit thing - running is currently working for me.

That's awful Noeuf, really badly managed by the facilitator.

I really doubt you're ugly with bad clothes. More likely that others just happened to have features which stood out as being particularly noticeable, whereas you blended in more. There is nothing wrong with that at all. It's not a great ice breaker because when you're all strangers, people are going to latch onto something which is obvious and visual, but the truth is we are all worthy of compliments. (Your MN name, for one, keeps making me smile/inwardly chuckle!)

Bertie has put what I was going to say!

Gumblebee I might print that out and stick it on my desk! Thank you

Aspie , Bertie you're right I'm sure - it's just a bit black and white at the time. And embarrassing as I knew someone else in the room.

Thank you everyone, balance redressed now.

Back to the thread - never worried about services and garages etx because I'm such a control freak DH never ever tries to tell me what to get! I always know best (even when I don't).

Polter I do try but the moment I am interested in something that's it, I'm in charge. I re wall papered on Saturday while dh was out just in case he decided to have an opinion on what I'd chosen.
I would massively react badly if he did that. I can't even cope with chairs being moved round.

Ugh I do that too. (With less wallpapering.) What is PDA?

I have some downstairs for ds - he used it once and then we all (me and him) freaked out about the loss of control