The Stillness After Diagnosis: Learning to Understand Myself

As a child, I was always the weird one. In and out of different friendship groups and never really found a way to fit in. I had friends, but I didn't truly understand what that meant. Heading into adulthood, I was somewhat uncontrollable. But this was never the intention—I didn't really understand what I needed to do, or how to do it.

​Fast forward all the way to becoming a mother, two horrid relationships, another child, plus several years

in a tricky workplace, I decided that perhaps I needed to re-evaluate life. Something clearly wasn't right. My emotions increased tenfold; I was so dysregulated and I just felt lost. I didn't know who I was, why I had missed so many red flags, and noticed that I genuinely could not see people's intentions no matter how much they were waved in my face.

​I realized that this all was actually ADHD. I sorted the referrals, waited what felt like forever, and got my diagnosis. This was expected and kind of felt like a relief. I could forgive myself for lots of my life's choices.

​But following this, something didn't sit right.

I spoke with my brother who told me that his Counsellor said she suspected he was Autistic and had ADHD (he wasn't pursuing diagnosis due to his own personal choice). But this got me thinking. Now there's one issue that I can only now reflect on: autistic people often think literally. When I read the symptoms and presentation, this is exactly what I did. After a LOT of research, I was now considering that potentially, this was me.

​At the time, while caring for my youngest, I was having a lot of concerns with her own behaviours, and recognised that these mirrored mine as a child. After some consideration, I felt I needed to get assessed for Autism—not only for my own reflections, but also to support my daughter in the future just in case she was Autistic too. Going into the appointments, I was so concerned that maybe I had got it wrong.  I couldn’t be could I?  But when I got the phone call confirming my Autism diagnosis, and realised that this was actually a disability, it made me cry my eyes out.

​It felt affirming—that I wasn't just overthinking something. That actually there is a reason every step so far felt so hard, why I've always been on the outside, and that I've never fitted into the box. Finally, I could reflect. There was clearly a lot of "what ifs" and guilt around what could have been. But also, there was the most gentle stillness. A stillness to acknowledge that actually, this is okay. This is something to learn.

​And learn I did. I did a deep dive to explore strategies, to first put my needs into actual words, to find what these actually mean for me, and what my future may look like.

​It's a work in progress, a journey, and there are new hurdles every day. But I am going to keep pushing, because change is needed to restore what should have been and to increase potential in what can be.