- Okay, so welcome to Part
2 of my diagnosis story. Part one, I looked at
how I went for 30 years without realizing that
I was on the spectrum, and so in this part, I'll be looking at what was the trigger and how I suddenly over a relatively short amount of time came to be very sure that
I was on the spectrum and started identifying
as having Asperger's. So, I guess the biggest
trigger at the start was I ready a book called Look Me in the Eye: My
Life With Asperger's, which is an autobiography of a man with Asperger's in the U.S. Called John Elder Robison, and he was describing all of these things in this book that I just
seemed to understand at a really, really deep level, and he was explaining them to the reader as if the reader wasn't
supposed to understand. So, I'll give you an example, something like his
psychologist would write down in his notes, oh, Johnny
doesn't like to play with the other children,
and he would explain in his own language,
Johnny would love to play with the other children. The other children are
really mean to Johnny. Johnny would prefer to sit by himself than to put up with the
meanness of the other children, so you can see how there's
the outside perspective that the rest of the world sees, and then his inside perspective, whereas I found that I
could really easily relate to his inside perspective,
and I didn't need him to explain it to me
before I understood it. So, there were a lot of
things that were a bit of triggers for me and thinking oh, wow, I do that, too. So, I got about halfway through this book. I didn't even finish it, put it down, started researching Asperger's online. I did an online test, I found
the autism quotient test and the official diagnosis was probably, so that wasn't very helpful, but then I found, I was
still quite motivated, so I found a group
called Aspergers Victoria and they had a support
group meeting the next day or something like that,
so I sent them an email and I said hey, I'm
thinking, I'm not sure, I might be on the spectrum. Can I come along to your meeting? And I got back a very, very welcoming yes, of course you can. Just turn up. You'll be fine, no issues there at all. I had massive reservations
thinking can I really just tag along to a support group meeting about this condition that I
know virtually nothing about and the Internet diagnosis said probably, but I went and I was really
worried about being an imposter basically so I overcompensated
by introducing myself hi, my name's Paul, I
diagnosed myself yesterday, and that was supposed to be a joke, but no one took it like a joke. They basically said welcome,
you're one of us now! And that really, really threw me. I was expecting some resistance. I was expecting people
to say hang on, hang on, you need to prove that you're one of us. You can't just come in here
with no knowledge of anything and expect us to be welcoming of you, but I found the exact opposite, and I was quite frankly shocked. There was just no judgment there. It was all 100% welcoming. Anyway, so, the next question for me, in my state of shock, thrown off guard by this reaction I didn't expect, the next question was so, do I? Maybe I do belong here. How do I know if I belong
with this group or not? And I was looking around
the room and everyone was so different to each
other, and I was thinking to myself how on earth
am I going to figure out if I belong with these people when they're all so
different to each other? And then something quite magical happened. We were having a discussion,
and the discussion topic was what to do when you
go to the supermarket and the thing that you were
asked to buy isn't there? And we probably talked
about this for a good 20 or 30 minutes, and in that discussion, I found that all of these other people had been asking themselves
similar questions that I've been asking themselves that had similar issues
that I had been having, and most importantly, they really loved all of my strategies because obviously I
had spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I had a strategy for ever situation. All right, if this, then give 'em a call, if you're not sure about
this, then do this, so yeah, so that was really good. Okay, okay, okay, what else, what else? So, that really was quite a magical moment when I realized that I had found my tribe. I have been looking for a place to belong for a very, very long time, always feeling like I'm on the outside and I don't quite fit in anywhere, and all the sudden with this group, I feel like I'm supposed to be there, and I guess from that moment on, I was just sure that
I was on the spectrum, and it wasn't because of any
kind of intellectual reasoning, it was just from an
overwhelming feeling of wow, I've never been in a place with people that I've felt so similar
to in my entire life. There must be something to this. I must be one of them that are
in Asperger's support group. I must have Asperger's,
so that was the kind of emotional logic that was going on, and it was only afterwards
that I started obsessing about actually reading up
about Asperger's and okay, what is it? Does this apply to me? How is this working? And what I found was I was
so sure from that experience that I was on the spectrum that I started reading this books and
telling off the books and going no, that's not what's happening. That's what it looks like on the outside, but that's not what's
happening on the inside, a little bit like this
autobiography that I was reading, and that's partly why I was inspired to start this blog,
Asperger's from the Inside because I felt so strongly
that from the outside, we get misjudged all the
time, and I'd finally found people that validated my
perception of the world and said you're not crazy,
this is actually a thing. I'm rambling a little
bit, but that's okay. So, what I learned at that
support group meeting, and what I've continued to learn for the three years ever
since is that if you want to understand Asperger's, autism, you need to meet people on
the spectrum in real life because if you just
read about it in a book, it's not gonna tell you
what it actually looks like in real life, and that was my experience, and that was the biggest
thing that showed me that I was on the spectrum, was reading about this guy's autobiography and then meeting other people on the spectrum in real life. So, the next question I had to ask myself is okay, so I know I'm on the spectrum. Are other people gonna be as accepting because what I found was that
the Asperger's community, no one wanted an official diagnosis. That was the last question on their mind, whereas when I spoke to
others who didn't really know anything about Asperger's or autism, they were pretty skeptical. They were like, what do you mean you're on the spectrum? You can't just diagnose yourself. You need to go see a
psychologist and stuff for that. So, I was reading up a lot,
and a big, big question is the pros and cons
of getting a diagnosis, and there are plenty of them, and the one that really,
really stood out to me is that it's a common experience, and it was definitely my experience to feel as though I've spent my whole life not being believed when I
say I don't work that way, when I say this particular thing that you've asked me to do, I can't do it for these
reasons or I need to do it this way because your mainstream way doesn't work for me for
all of these reasons are not really believed,
and I felt like the label of Asperger's gave me something
to point to and say see, I told you I wasn't crazy. Not crazy, I'm not insane. My mother had me tested, which is quote I like from
the Sheldon Cooper character. "I'm not insane, my mother had me tested." So, I really appreciated that validation that I felt from the community of other aspies that I've met, but what was I gonna do
in the rest of the world if I didn't have a piece of
paper to back me up like that, and what I realized is there's
always going to be people who don't believe you, even if you've got a piece of paper and you
say look, this is a document that's recognized by the government. Don't tell me that I'm
not on the spectrum. That's still not enough
for people sometimes, so I was umming and ahing
about it for a long time, and I decided that because the diagnosis meant so much to me in
terms of that validation, it was really important for myself to be sure to get a
professional opinion to be sure that I wasn't crazy essentially because I had decided that I belong and that I have Asperger's, but I can very easily doubt myself. So, I decided to seek a diagnosis and that will be the topic of part three of this series of my diagnosis journey, so stay tuned for that. Okay, bye. If you liked this video,
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