Hi and welcome. I self diagnosed after a lot of research plus having experience of working with young people and their parents who were diagnosed with ASD 1/Aspergers. You are an adult, and if on looking into this you find it fits how you are, then you are quite likely correct.
Yes I think getting a diagnosis can be tricky, there are a lot of variations in how that goes, my impression is more for women and girls who may present differently to males, who were assumed to be more likely to be in this category, and the diagnostic criteria somewhat favours males still.
I expect you have taken a look at those as you question if you fit this diagnosis. I see this as a normal neurological variation, which currently is much misunderstood. It is highly inheritable, so that you may have either neurotypical or neurodiverse children if you are in the category.
Central to the experience of ASD1 for many or most, are communication differences and difficulties with unstructured or other social communication. These would be lifelong. One myth I often notice people have sometimes believed is that if we have this different neurology we can't change anything about ourselves; this isn't true at all, there's plenty we can change.
For example, like anyone, we develop attachment styles in childhood, and research shows we are similar to neurotypical development in that area. Depending on varied factors, we may develop more secure or more insecure styles, and these affect relating too.
We can work on moving towards higher security in relating, even whilst we may have some other less changeable components to our experience of relating, for example we may have processing delays, and take time to understand what the other person means, or not know what we feel emotionally sometimes, it may be hard to define.
As adults, we have likely developed strategies for some of all this. We may always have been assumed to be neurotypical, as autism has only more recently started to be better understood, and mostly that's still a hurdle, that people associate the term with Dustin Hoffmans Rainman portrayal. The real person portrayed didn't have autism, as far as I understand it.
People with ASD1 often pass unnoticed at school, just that kid who has trouble making friends, but their schoolwork is ok or even great, if they get around to doing some homework and study.
But as young people or adults we can run out of ability to easily mask our differences or perceived deficits, or we may realise that our experience is consistently different in some areas than our peers, and we may also get feedback about that. Sounds like you have, hopefully from trusted sources?
Hang out here and join in discussions and post some threads, you'll find out more about how this all fits for you.
