Cbreadd
New Member
Hi! I'm still very new to this site, but I've been needing some way to find help and to try and talk with other people who may understand.
I'm 17, and I'm going to be starting college soon, which I'm both incredibly excited about and extremely anxious about. I was diagnosed with ADD when I was 15, after being hospitalized and baker acted for depression and anxiety related events. At the time I had a lot of mixed feelings over my diagnosis, as a few years prior I had actually gone to my mom and tried to bring up that I thought I may have had adhd/add, but she kinda shut me down really quick. After my actual diagnosis my parents didn't quite accept it or acknowledge it, which to be fair they were more distracted with my other mental health concerning my anxiety and depression. Over the past 8 months or so I have actually been acknowledging my ADD and learning more about how it's affected me and a lot of things have been clicking into place, I've even been trying different medications for it because I'm afraid if I can't find some way to function better college and being independent will be far more challenging.
But recently an online friend of mine has been reblogging different posts related to autism, aspergers, and adhd/add, and I realized I could relate to a lot of the things that people posted about autism/aspergers. Different habits and quirks, difficulties with social life, education, or just every day functioning, a lot of small things they talked about I could see in myself.
Now I'm considering talking to my therapist about it, but I have no idea how I would even go about an actual diagnosis or talking to professionals trained in that area. My therapist doesn't really have much experience with that stuff, and I'm worried as soon as I try to bring it up to my parents I'll be shut down (Ironically it turns out that my dad has ADD, and my brother might too-he found out while researching about it)
I don't want to fall back into a funk where I dismiss my symptoms again until it all bubbles over, but there's that voice in the back of my head that keeps telling me I'm just making it all up, and that I'm overthinking things.
So does anyone have any advice/info for how a diagnosis process works? Who to go to, what happens during it, what I should expect from a good/bad doctor (My biggest fear is of a doctor dismissing what I feel if I don't meet the same standards as what's "typical") And if anyone wants to share what symptoms/habits/quirks/etc that are related to their autism or aspergers would be helpful too! I don't really know how to bring what I feel all forward without someone else mentioning it because I've lived for so long seeing what I've always been like as normal/that everyone had similar problems, so it's hard to really know if there's something "wrong" until I see something I can relate to.
Ok whoops this was super long, but any advice or sharing if you relate to something similar would be appreciated! I'm still not 100% sure on how posts on here work but I'll learn.
I'm 17, and I'm going to be starting college soon, which I'm both incredibly excited about and extremely anxious about. I was diagnosed with ADD when I was 15, after being hospitalized and baker acted for depression and anxiety related events. At the time I had a lot of mixed feelings over my diagnosis, as a few years prior I had actually gone to my mom and tried to bring up that I thought I may have had adhd/add, but she kinda shut me down really quick. After my actual diagnosis my parents didn't quite accept it or acknowledge it, which to be fair they were more distracted with my other mental health concerning my anxiety and depression. Over the past 8 months or so I have actually been acknowledging my ADD and learning more about how it's affected me and a lot of things have been clicking into place, I've even been trying different medications for it because I'm afraid if I can't find some way to function better college and being independent will be far more challenging.
But recently an online friend of mine has been reblogging different posts related to autism, aspergers, and adhd/add, and I realized I could relate to a lot of the things that people posted about autism/aspergers. Different habits and quirks, difficulties with social life, education, or just every day functioning, a lot of small things they talked about I could see in myself.
Now I'm considering talking to my therapist about it, but I have no idea how I would even go about an actual diagnosis or talking to professionals trained in that area. My therapist doesn't really have much experience with that stuff, and I'm worried as soon as I try to bring it up to my parents I'll be shut down (Ironically it turns out that my dad has ADD, and my brother might too-he found out while researching about it)
I don't want to fall back into a funk where I dismiss my symptoms again until it all bubbles over, but there's that voice in the back of my head that keeps telling me I'm just making it all up, and that I'm overthinking things.
So does anyone have any advice/info for how a diagnosis process works? Who to go to, what happens during it, what I should expect from a good/bad doctor (My biggest fear is of a doctor dismissing what I feel if I don't meet the same standards as what's "typical") And if anyone wants to share what symptoms/habits/quirks/etc that are related to their autism or aspergers would be helpful too! I don't really know how to bring what I feel all forward without someone else mentioning it because I've lived for so long seeing what I've always been like as normal/that everyone had similar problems, so it's hard to really know if there's something "wrong" until I see something I can relate to.
Ok whoops this was super long, but any advice or sharing if you relate to something similar would be appreciated! I'm still not 100% sure on how posts on here work but I'll learn.