TLDR: Got diagnosed autistic recently (I also believe I have ADHD but still undiagnosed), but despite the official diagnosis, I still feel imposter syndrome. (I don’t blame you if you don’t feel like or don’t have time to read this whole thing because it is LONG, but if you do and are able to comment I would really really appreciate it because I feel like I need some support right now)

Basically as the title says. For a little context, I’m 19 and trans (FTM) (seems relevant due to the differing presentation of symptoms in biological men and women). For a while (like 2-3 years now) I’ve suspected I might be either autistic or ADHD, or a combination of both. As a queer person whose algorithm consists of a lot of queer content, I also ended up with a lot of neurodivergent content.

As I slowly grew informed, I started to relate to a lot of things (but not all). It also somehow turned out that most of the people I became friends with I later found out were neurodivergent. I did a lot of research and spent hours reading articles and watching videos on people’s experiences. By the end of it I figured I might be auDHD, and that the reason I didn’t relate to all of the traits of one or the other was that some of then kind of “cancelled each other out”, if you will. But then that made me doubt myself a lot, because what if that was just me trying to find an excuse to be considered neurodivergent and be more “special”? I mean, self-diagnosis can’t actually be trusted right?

All these thoughts kept running through my mind, and it was so frustrating because it felt like I was too neurodivergent to be neurotypical, but still not “different enough” to be neurodivergent (keep in mind, cause this is the connecting theme in this post)

Anyway, fast forward to very recently, I was diagnosed autistic. A little while back I went to talk to my mom about my suspicions she actually backed them up, saying that looking back there were a lot of behaviors of mine she considered autistic but dismissed in her ignorance back then because she still believed autism=nonverbal or like Rain Man. She managed to find a specialist moving to where we live from another country and so basically had not waitlist (I got very lucky in that sense). The diagnosis was focused on autism, so I don’t know if I have ADHD or not but I still suspect I might.

I spent quite a while struggling with a bunch of things in life, mostly school (not academically because I’ve always had good grades but with getting stuff doing, time management and actually attending classes). I now realized that a lot of these struggles can be explained by autism/ADHD. But still, even without knowing that I powered though (barely) and graduated with honors, so clearly my neurodivergence wasn’t that big of an issue right? At least, that what my psychiatrist (not specialized in neurodivergence) made me feel when I last saw her.

She said something along the line of me probably not needing a therapist who specializes in autism because then that’s what they would focus on and me being autistic and it hasn’t been that much of an issue in my life. Now, I don’t blame her fully for this interpretation since she’s known me for a long time and she’s been following me for my depression and anxiety combo, so it makes sense that my issues are more related to that, but I’ve been starting to think that maybe a lot of the things we’ve attributed to those were actually signs of neurodivergence, especially when I think of the number of treatments I’ve tried that I haven’t found particularly effective, and how my depression seemingly can’t be explained (not to say that there’s always a reason or trigger for depression). So again, don’t blame her, but it did feel a bit dismissive.

I also remember this one time I was having a meal with two of my friends, one ADHD and one auDHD, and they were sharing experiences related to their neurodivergence, and I was trying to join in, sharing relatable experiences, but then being told I wouldn’t know what it was like. And that made me feel bad because of how it’s usually said that neurodivergent people can kind of identify each other, so it felt like being told straight up that I was neurotypical, and so again I started telling myself that my self-diagnosis wasn’t valid and I was just trying to fit in, cause otherwise why would that upset me so much? (Granted, much later on when I told that auDHD friend I was gonna get a diagnosis and we started talking, she told me she wouldn’t be surprised if I was also diagnosed auDHD, but in that moment I felt bad)

I was hoping that with an official diagnosis, I could put these doubts to rest, but it’s not been that simple. The doctor who did my assessment was great, super friendly and receptive to what I told him, and listened to me even though he knew I hadn’t been recommended an assessment by my therapist or psychiatrist, and I admitted that my suspicions had essentially arisen from lots of scrolling on social media. Just before the end of our first session, he asked again if I thought I was autistic, to which I replied I wasn’t sure I was autistic necessarily, but probably neurodivergent, and told him what I mentioned earlier in this post about feeling like not belonging to the neutrotypical or neurodivergent communities, and about other situations where I felt “right on the edge” like this. He then told me something like “Well, I haven’t noticed anything about you that’s particularly telling of autism during our conversation but we’ll see” which was half reassuring because he wasn’t dismissing the idea completely and half a cue for my brain to start berating me about faking and making everything up in my head and jumping the gun etc.

By the end of the assessment we had a call and he later forwarded me the report with the results of our discussions and the tests I’d taken. Standard stuff. The conclusion both during the call and in the report is that the tests I did put me for most things in the “(highly) compatible with ASD” but there wasn’t that much that clued him into it when we were having our discussions in person, and so I am a very high masking autistic person thanks to my intelligence. However, the way the written report concluded made me feel that imposter syndrome again: it ended with something along the lines of: “due to there not being any conclusive evidence indicating the contrary, he’s diagnosed with ASD”. I know it’s just factual, but it really hit hard. Not only that but then I started overthinking (again) about things. There were some moments during the assessment where I was clarifying my thought process, was that me trying to come off as “more autistic” to “pass” the test? Only the written test results I handed in really gave him the confirmation of me being on the spectrum, what if I subconsciously exaggerated my answers? I mean, there were definitely some questions where I was hesitating between options, I’m not supposed to overthink it but I did and maybe that messed up the results?? Ad infinitum.

Anyway, all of this to say, I’m not denying the result, and the diagnosis itself didn’t surprise me that much or change how I think of myself particularly since, as I said, I’d already suspected I was neurodivergent in some way, but it’s still been hard for me to rid myself of these thoughts that I’m “faking for attention”.

If you made it to the end, thank you so much for reading all of this, I know I said I’d appreciate comments but I don’t really know if I’d even know where to start if I saw this post, and I also don’t know exactly what I’m looking for in the comments, I guess if someone’s had a similar experience or if you have any advice, knock yourself out. Thanks again

(By the way, I feel the need to clarify since I’ve been accused of this in some past posts (not on this subreddit though), this is not karma farming, I just want to hear other people’s responses to know I’m not screaming into the void😅)