Masked, Misread, and Undiagnosed: My Fight for an Autism Diagnosis

I am writing this almost as if I am sitting in the neuropsychologists client chair again and answering back to every sentence in that neuropsych report that felt like it flattened me, misunderstood me, or shoved me into a tidy diagnosis that doesn’t fit.

I want this to be understood that this is me being raw, specific, and relentless …because that’s what this report lacked. Rawness. Specificity. Relentless care.

When I read that the evaluator concluded “ASD is not diagnosed at this time” and emphasized trauma and BPD (which I am currently diagnosed with but never truly felt fit 100% like autism feels) as the explanation for everything I said and did, I felt seen through a single lens… somebody had decided what I was before they really tried to understand me. I’m here to explain, in my own voice, why that conclusion is wrong and why the evidence in my life … not just the clinic snapshot …points strongly toward autism.

First, let me be blunt about how the evaluation felt… hurried, patronizing, and dismissive. I answered questions that felt like they came from an adult who expected a simple story, and the moments I spoke with nuance …the sensory things, the obsessive interests, the long patterns of masking … it honestly felt like they were treated like quirky parts of my girlhood.

The report repeatedly relies on the fact that I “made appropriate eye contact and easily engaged with the examiner” and that my behavior during the session was comparable with a typically developing adult.

That’s precisely the problem.

I learned, years ago, how to make a room think I’m fine for forty minutes if it means the room will leave me alone.

Masking is not pretending to be sociable for fun… it is survival. A single session can’t capture the cost of that performance… the hours of rehearsal, the exhaustion afterward, the ways I narrow my life to make the performance sustainable.

To equate a competent, practiced exterior with “no autism” ignores the whole point of masking.

One major flaw in the report is its heavy reliance on my husband’s questionnaire (SRS-2) as a decisive piece of evidence.

Jason’s perspective IS very valid, but it is incomplete. He is not neutral… he loves me, supports me, and has often framed my struggles in terms of depression, pain, and what looks like relationship instability.

Those themes are loud in our household because of the environment we live in and the ways people react to difference. It’s not just the words people say… it’s the looks, the subtle shifts in tone, the way conversations die in certain moments. It’s the tiny but sharp signals that difference is tolerated only when it’s palatable, when it’s neat and easy to understand, when it doesn’t inconvenience the rhythm of the people around you. In our home, in our community, those undercurrents scream constantly, and it’s painful for em, even when no one’s speaking them aloud.

It’s in the way humor is used like a scalpel, carving certain traits into “quirks” if they’re endearing and cutting them down to “problems” if they’re not. It’s in the unspoken rule that you can have emotions, but not too much of them… you can have needs, but only if they don’t require others to stretch beyond what’s comfortable.

The environment we live in doesn’t encourage curiosity about difference… it encourages suspicion. People here don’t ask, “What’s behind this?” or “How can I understand better?” They ask, “Why can’t you just…?” Why can’t you just try harder? Why can’t you just be more like so-and-so? Why can’t you just stop?

Because of that, the themes of masking, misunderstanding, and quiet endurance are amplified in my life. Every interaction feels like a performance test. Every room I walk into comes with its own invisible script I’m expected to memorize on the spot. And when I ask how someone’s feeling, they get irritated or in some cases stop being my friend because I care about how they’re feeling, “too much” … And when you live in that kind of atmosphere long enough, you start to internalize it… you start bracing yourself for the next moment your difference  is going to be spotlighted, dissected, or dismissed.

It’s not just “difference” they react to… it’s the kind of difference they can’t control, reframe, or absorb into what they already know. And I live in a body, a brain, and a heart that will always contain that kind of difference.

Back to the SRS-2… The scores that placed me in the “mild” range reflect Jason’s view of how I present when we are in survival mode together … and in that context my masking strategies and his protective interpretation can easily under-report features of autism. A dependent informant’s low-to-mild report should never be taken alone as definitive, especially when my own descriptions and my lifelong patterns tell another story. And when that happens, I feel like I am being gaslit into believing that I am just lying or overdramatizing.

The evaluator leaned on the absence of a non-abusive childhood informant as evidence against autism.

That is cruel logic. I was raised in a household where caregivers were part of the problem. Expecting a trauma survivor to produce a witness who wasn’t complicit in the abuse or neglect is like asking someone who was burned to produce a neighbor’s testimony about how hot the fire felt. Many autistic adults … especially females… who were overwhelmed, masked, or dismissed… have no guardian who could credibly report the early markers of autism.

Furthermore, trauma and dissociation have a profound effect on how memory is stored, retrieved, and even experienced in the present. When a child grows up in unsafe or unstable conditions, the brain often prioritizes survival over recording detailed, coherent memories. In such cases, memories may be fragmented, missing entirely, or locked away behind dissociation… a coping mechanism that allows the person to function in the moment while cutting off from overwhelming experiences.

In my neuropsychological report, these memory gaps are interpreted as evidence against autism, as if having a patchy recollection of early years disqualifies the possibility. But I see it differently. My inability to recall large portions of childhood is not a reflection of an absence of autistic traits… it’s a reflection of an environment that was unsafe enough to alter the very structure of how I process and store experiences. I lived in a constant state of adaptation, bracing for the next change, the next danger, the next way I might be misunderstood or hurt.

The assumption in the report and my lived reality cannot both be true. One treats memory loss as a sign I wasn’t autistic… the other recognizes that autism and trauma can coexist, with trauma shaping the way autistic traits appear in childhood recollections. My memory gaps don’t erase my autism….. they are simply the marks of a life where survival came first, safety was rare, and the mind learned to protect itself by tucking whole pieces of my early life out of reach.

Throughout the interview I described things that fit classic autism criteria… chronic sensory sensitivities (the chewing sound that makes my skin crawl, the way socks feel like confinement …to be completely honest here, clothing in general, feels like I confinement… the noise/quiet spectrum that cripples me) repetitive and soothing behaviors (hair-pulling (I legit pulled out my  hair, just to eat the roots, in childhood til I was 14), scab-creating, head-banging in childhood), and long-lasting, intense special interests (a couple examples… my years of obsession with Phantom of the Opera and my 15+ years worth of daily absorption in poetry). The report notes these behaviors but then reframes them as coping strategies for trauma or as idiosyncratic attachments.

That reframing ignores the pattern… sensory reactivity + stimming + intense circumscribed interests + social confusion through and across my very development = a neurodevelopmental profile.

Trauma can amplify and complicate these traits, certainly, but it does not create them from scratch in the same organized way autism does.

The clinician repeatedly interpreted my difficulties with relationships as primarily evidence of Borderline Personality Disorder … “frantic efforts to avoid abandonment,” “intense unstable sense of self,” and “alternation between extremes” are phrases that appear in the report. I do experience those things. I also know, intimately, how social misunderstanding, chronic invalidation, and the emotional whiplash of masking produce those exact behaviors.

There certainly IS significant overlap in observable behavior between BPD and autism when you look only at surface-level relationship patterns and affective instability…. But the causal stories are different… in BPD, relational intensity often centers on attachment patterns and fear-based reactivity… in autism, the same behaviors can arise from sensory overload, missed social cues, and catastrophic misreadings of others’ intentions. My history … special education placements for behavior, a twin who was diagnosed autistic, obsessive interests, sensory distortions from childhood … fits an autism-by-development path more cleanly than a purely personality-based explanation.

I want to talk about the CARS2-HF observation and the PAI interpretation because both were used as anchors in the report. The CARS2-HF rating of “minimal-to-no symptoms” was based on a short presentational window and the clinician’s observation of how I comported myself in the office. But many autistic women are able to present “age-appropriate” gestures and facial affect in short, structured encounters. That’s not evidence of typical neurodevelopment … it’s evidence of practiced social camouflage. The PAI was labeled “invalid” because of elevated NIM (negative impression). The report suggests exaggeration or a “cry for help.” Let me be frank… when a person has been chronically dismissed, traumatized, and medically undermined for pain, the inventory items that sound dramatic to a clinician are literal and accurate to the person living it. High NIM scores often reflect real, catastrophic experience, not fabrication. To treat that as a disqualifier for a neurodevelopmental diagnosis is to punish someone for being loud about their suffering.

The WAIS-4 results show average intellectual functioning …  no abnormal or low IQ … and the clinician used that to say I have “no cognitive deficits” and therefore nothing neurodevelopmental… in his view… to account for my struggles.

That is a misunderstanding of how autism presents across intelligence levels. Autism is not defined by low IQ… autistic people live across the full range of cognitive ability. Many autistic women who are verbally fluent and intellectually average to above-average learn to compensate in structured situations, but remain profoundly different in sensory processing, executive functioning (the report noted a Working Memory Index of 89), and social cognition. The WAIS doesn’t capture the slow erosion of capacity that masking, chronic pain, and exhaustion cause. It doesn’t capture how a single grocery store can empty me for days, how a small conversation or sitting still for an hour at church in the extremely uncomfortable pews can trigger catastrophic rumination and a need for certain movement.

I also want to dismantle the report’s statement that my recollection of childhood “is not consistent with a diagnosis of ASD.” I remember long patterns… being told I was “too loud,” being punished for seeking comfort, being shuffled through foster and group homes, being in special education classes not because of intellectual disability necessarily but mainly because of behavior. I remember the sensory reactions so clearly that I wrote them down during the evaluation: how socks felt like confinement, how chewing made my insides spiral, how I would arrange objects so much to the point my special ed teachers had me play with blocks and shape toys because I was happier with that then outside during recess where I would just get bullied… and I’d get fixated on certain movie quotes, books, teacher supplies of different colors and all kinds of songs. Those are not random memories… they are developmental ripples that run from toddlerhood through adolescence. The report’s dismissal of these as inconsistent is itself inconsistent with how autism shows up in girls who are taught …implicitly and explicitly …that their natural responses are “wrong.”

Trauma complicates everything. I am not denying PTSD or the real, measurable harm I’ve experienced. But trauma and autism can coexist and often do. Trauma can intensify autism-related anxiety, create overlapping behaviors (hypervigilance, dissociation), and obscure the developmental pattern. A competent, autism-aware clinician doesn’t force a binary choice …trauma or autism …they evaluate both. The report’s insistence that trauma explains all of my symptoms collapses these three decades of experience into a single cart and says “there, we’re done.” That is exactly the kind of intellectual shortcut that keeps women like me undiagnosed!

The report also leaned on a clinical assumption I want to challenge… that “accurate diagnosis is best undergone during a person’s early developmental period,” and thus my lack of childhood diagnosis weakens an adult diagnosis.

This is backwards. Many autistic girls went undiagnosed because their symptoms were subtle, masked, or misinterpreted as behavior problems. The diagnostic field has only recently acknowledged female presentations. To use childhood under-reporting as proof against autism ignores the medical and social history of under-detection in girls and women. A later diagnosis is not a sign of absence… it’s a sign of the system’s failure to see me when I needed it!

Let me be specific about how my sensory and regulatory systems shape the rest of my life… the chronic pain, which may be related to autoimmune issues, makes me physically less available for work and social expectations… the fear of needles is real and disabling… the constant anxiety around doors and small sounds is not merely “worry” … it’s a sensory alarm that turns mundane moments into trauma triggers. A clinician who flattens those into “mood problems” has not listened to how embodied those experiences are. My social behaviors … pulling away from friendships, oscillating between over-involvement and retreat … are adaptive strategies I developed because the world often feels physically punishing and socially unpredictable.

If (no… WHEN) I go for a second evaluation, here is what I will insist on… a (hopefully female) clinician who uses autism-specific adult measures (ADOS-2 adapted for adults if possible, the RAADS-R or AQ-adult), and who is versed in female presentations and masking (tools like the Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire can be informative). I will ask for a developmental interview that doesn’t require a non-abusive informant but does carefully reconstruct lifetime patterns, sensory profiles, special interests, and stimming.

I will ask the clinician to consider how trauma changes behavior without assuming trauma is the origin of developmental patterns!

I will request that they interpret my PAI and other self-report results through the lens of lived, chronic adversity rather than labeling everything invalid because it sounds extreme.

Finally, I want to claim my truth plainly… I have carried a pattern my whole life that looks a lot like autism. I was placed in special education because of how I acted, but no one asked what my inner world felt like. I was labeled “difficult” and punished for sensory and social needs I could not yet name. I am not an invention of my trauma. I am not a theatrical personality disorder. I am someone who has learned to survive through masking, who has obsessive attachments that soothed me through neglect, and who finds sensory worlds both intoxicating and punishing.

That pattern existed long before any clinician typed “BPD” in a diagnostic box. It will not disappear because someone bags my words into a trauma-only explanation.

This report does not make me wrong. It simply reflects an incomplete, biased, and rushed approach to a complex life. I deserve an evaluator who recognizes that autism in women often looks different … quieter, more camouflaged, and entangled with trauma … and who will sit with those complexities instead of stuffing me into a pre-chosen diagnosis. I will take this report as a stepping stone, not a tombstone, and I will insist on another assessment that listens to the whole arc of my life. I have already crafted a Venn-diagram of the exact (not all) developmental and current examples pointing to the sensory struggles, the stimming behaviors, the childhood obsessions, the special education history, and on top of all that … my twin sibling being diagnosed … it’s all my necessary evidence. I will ask them, above all, to read through all I’ve written and put together as my way of advocating for myself and to also read me, as a whole person, not as the sum of symptoms they can easily file under “trauma” or “personality.”

I am tired of being explained away. I am tired of professionals who have only one theory and apply it to my life like a stencil. I know how I have lived, I know what patterns repeat, and I know what the cost has been. I know that a diagnosis of autism … if it is the right one (which I have strong evidence of)… it will not erase my trauma, and it will not be a label to be frightened of. It will be a framework that helps me get accommodations, safety, and understanding. That matters in hundreds of practical ways… medical advocacy, educational access, workplace adjustments, and the deep relief of seeing my life described accurately. I deserve that work. I deserve clinicians who do the work. And until I get that, I will continue to push back on reports that reduce me to a single, neat explanation when my life has always been anything but neat.

Here’s another essay I worked on before this one. It relates, so I will add them together.

I didn’t grow up with answers… I grew up with accusations. I didn’t grow up with understanding… I grew up with labels. “Defiant.” “Disobedient.” “Disrespectful.” “Too sensitive.” “Too much.” “Sinful.” “Master Manipulator.” “Not enough.” “Hypochondriac.” … I wasn’t told I might be autistic. I was told I was bad. Strange. Angry. Ungrateful. Broken.

And I believed them.

But the truth is, I wasn’t born broken. I was born tender. Sensitive. Curious. Deep-feeling. Intense. Musical. Vivid. And I now believe… autistic. I didn’t know or even think of it then. Neither did anyone else… or if they did, they didn’t care enough to ask… not when I was a girl. Not when I could smile, nod, and mimic just enough to slip by.

Instead, I was placed in special education classes for how I acted, not for how I thought. Not for how I felt. I wasn’t treated like someone with a rich inner world… I was treated like a problem. Because I had meltdowns. Had to be restrained and put in a padded suit to get my bi-yearly blood-draws for a 10 year misdiagnosis of ADHD and the insurance and doctors demanded the blood-work, I was restrained many many times in elementary school, put in seclusion rooms constantly through psych wards, behavioral and mental health facilities, arrested and put in juvenile detention multiple times…..  Because I had meltdowns. I never knew myself enough to know exactly why I had them… why I dissociated. Why I froze when asked questions. Why I wandered inside myself, and why I didn’t know how to make the outside match what I carried within.

But yet, inside me was a whole individual world.

A world made of repetition and rhythm and ritual. A world where I repeated the same songs over and over, not to be annoying, but to self-soothe. A world where I memorized the colorful beauty of poetry before I could really spell much. A world where I sang to myself in secret or when I knew nobody was really listening. I rhymed up to 4 syllable words from A to Z while in time out, nose against the wall for hours, just to pass the time, just to keep hold of the whimsy and wonder in my own mind…. Where I rocked back and forth in rhythm with my breathing. Where I begged my dad… begged…. to tickle my back every night from toddlerhood until I was ten. Because it was the only touch that didn’t hurt. The only comfort I had in a home that gave me none.

Until my grandmother shamed me for it.

She sexualized it.

She looked at the child I was… a child whose nervous system was frayed and unraveling… and turned my one source of calm into something filthy. She told me it was disgusting. Inappropriate. That I was acting like a seductress. I was ten. That was my father. A man who despite his occasional violently angry outbursts and constant emotional avoidance and neglect, would NEVER touch me in that way.

It was the first time I felt dirty for needing comfort. And it would not be the last.

The abuse I went through in childhood was not subtle. It was loud. Violent. Repetitive. It left scars that still throb under certain lights.

My grandmother, the one who raised me, quoted scripture while she beat us. “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” She called it love. She dragged my sister and I down hallways and stairs by our hair. She screamed in our faces that we were possessed. Once she tied me up with bungee cords on her bedroom floor “to cast out demons.” … I was left there for hours. I heard her snore while she slept through my pain and her feelings of self-righteousness.

She let my uncle (who wasn’t even related by blood) live in the basement, even though he treated us like toys he could break. He beat us with boards… sometimes with nails embedded in them. He threw glass bottles at me while I sat in time-out. He once made me and my siblings fight each other as punishment. I got in trouble for pulling my cousins-  his daughters- earring out. It wasn’t even on purpose. Not fully, I prefer to think of it as an “under duress” type of situation. I wanted some freedom and praise where I could get it, by being clever enough to figure out how to win fast enough if not strong enough. Yet- to this day I don’t remember the true outcome of that incident other than years later being reminded constantly by my sister of my decision to rip our cousins earring off… what she doesn’t understand is, I was doing my best in a situation I was forced into.

My grandmother would tell me that God forgave her. But she never taught me what grace felt like. She never once said sorry. Not once.

She nearly drowned my sister and me more than once because we didn’t bathe fast enough. I don’t think she saw us as children. I don’t think she saw us as human.

I personally believed she treated us girls with far more hate, violence and self-justification than she ever did with my twin brother and older brother.

And through it all, I was autistic. (I mean we shall truly see once I receive an official diagnosis) Just like my twin brother.

I didn’t know the word. I just knew I felt like I came from another planet. I didn’t know why the sounds in the house made my skin crawl. I didn’t know why certain fabrics made me feel like I was going to cry. I didn’t know why I talked to myself in whispers. Or why I sat alone at recess, looking for bugs, mechanical pencil pieces to hide in my hair so I’d be seen picking those out instead of just scratching my head, I had hoped I’d avoid being rumored to have lice by pretending I had mechanical pencil peices in my hair instead of just scratching my scalp which was soothing for me. I was rumored not only to have lice but I actually got it, I  was even rumored to have crabs… lice in my lower parts…. I was 10… bullied over lice and fake pubic lice…. All I wanted was to have a friend.  I couldn’t understand sarcasm, or teasing, or subtle shifts in tone until the slap or insult landed. I didn’t know why I froze when someone asked me a question too quickly. I just thought I was weird. Broken. Unloveable.

And the adults around me didn’t help. They cared for me, but never deeply enough to wonder if maybe… just maybe… I was like my twin brother.

Because he got a diagnosis. He got support. He got understanding.

And I got silence.

I got labeled with borderline personality disorder which at first felt like it fit but only some parts, it never fully felt like something that I related to. And I assumed it was due to my own issues with identity and awareness, but after really putting energy and effort into learning about autism. In women. Late diagnosed women specifically… my mind has been blown ever since.

I’ve always been drawn to language. It’s how I make sense of the world. It’s how I survived. I turned pain into poetry. I turned confusion into song. I sang to myself to drown out the chaos. I repeated lines (mainly in my head) from books, songs and movies to learn how to speak… I listened to the same songs a hundred times just to feel like something in my life made sense.

But no one saw that as regulation. They saw it as obsession. Or annoyance. And some just saw it as“normal”.

They didn’t see the meaning beneath the pattern.

They didn’t see me.

I was placed in special ed classes because I acted out. Because I daydreamed. Because I zoned out. Because I talked too fast. Because I cried for “no reason.” Because I stared at my hands. Because I couldn’t hold eye contact. Because I was disruptive (labeled ADHD for 10 years of my childhood) But never once did anyone ask me why. (Not that I could tell them, I wasn’t given the space to figure it out)

Never once did they wonder if maybe I wasn’t just emotionally unstable, or mentally ill, or dramatic. Maybe I was autistic. Just like my brother.

But they didn’t give me the grace to even ask specific and clarifying questions. Get to know my inner world.

I’ve been trying to put the pieces together for years. Why I feel like a ghost in crowded rooms. Why I script conversations before they happen. Why I obsess over moral consistency. Why I panic when plans change. Why I hate bright regular room lights, specific sounds, certain smells. Why I hate any temperature above 70 degrees or below 45 degrees and it stresses me out in ways I can’t fully explain, Why I burn out so easily from what others view as simple things. Why I feel completely alien, even around people I love.

And finally, finally, I’m beginning to see the shape of it… Autism.

It fits. It explains everything. My sensory overwhelm. My desire and deep need for structure. My hyper-empathy. My social confusion. My constant avoidance and need for alone time. My intense interests. My meltdowns. My shutdowns. My craving for certain types of pressure, quiet, and rhythm. My delayed processing. My inability to make sense of social games. My tendency to fall apart in private. It explains why my body remembers pain before my mind can catch up. It explains why I always felt different… because I was. And I’m not ashamed of it.

I’m angry that it took so long. But I’m not ashamed.

The world didn’t see me because I didn’t fit the mold. I was “too verbal.” “Too emotional.” “Too polite.” I made eye contact sometimes. I could smile. I could socialize… briefly. I could pass. I could mask. I was always masking. Without knowing it. Without meaning to.

It was survival.

But masking isn’t understanding. And being “high-functioning” doesn’t mean being okay. I wasn’t okay. I’m still not... and I’m still unlearning the belief that my pain had to be earned to be valid.

That I had to have a diagnosis to justify the way I broke down. That I had to be male or silent or visibly “severe” to be believed.

No more.

I will fight for this diagnosis… not to manipulate, not to label myself for attention, but to finally have the truth written into the record. To finally be seen through the right lens. To finally be given the dignity I’ve always deserved.

To show the world that autistic girls exist… even if in public they mask instead stim. Even if they write poems instead of math equations. Even if they look “normal.” Even if they’ve survived hell. We still deserve to be known. So here I am, gathering every scrap of my inner world to prove it.

Not because I need permission to exist as I am, but because I want language to shield me. To ground me. To protect the girl who was never protected.

I’m compiling every detail I can. Every trait. Every tendency. Every story I’ve carried in silence. Every reason that points to the truth: that I am autistic. And I always was.

Just like my twin brother… but I had to fight to be seen. I still do. And I will.

Because I am not a lost cause. I am not a diagnosis missed by chance. I am the proof that autistic women are out here. We have always been here. Masked. Misdiagnosed. Overlooked. And now… we’re rising.

I don’t need to prove it to myself anymore. I know who I am. But I will fight to be recognized.

Not for clout.

Not for sympathy.

But for the girl I was.

The one who begged for back tickles.

The one who rocked herself to sleep after every meltdown.

The one who was shamed for softness.

The one who was placed in classrooms she didn’t belong in.

The one who survived abuse she couldn’t make sense of.

The one who was told she was too much.

The one who was never asked if maybe… just maybe… she was autistic, too.

I will speak for her now. I will believe her. I will fight for her. Because I am her. And she is me. And now, finally, we are becoming whole.

Why do I NEED an autism diagnosis and why does the “Label” matter more than some people realize?

People often think of a “label” as a box …something limiting. But for me, an accurate label would be the opposite… a map. Without a diagnosis, I’ve spent decades wandering without street signs, misreading my own behaviors, and being misread by everyone else.

Without a formal diagnosis, every meltdown, sensory reaction, and social difficulty is framed through the wrong lens. I’m called “too sensitive,” “antisocial,” or “dramatic.” My struggles get mistaken for moral failings or personality defects. A diagnosis wouldn’t give me permission to be who I am …it would give me precision about who I am.

For me it’s about accuracy, not excuses… In the past, I’ve been given labels that only partly fit …Borderline Personality Disorder, “shy,” “overthinking.” These shape how I’m treated by doctors, therapists, and even friends. They also influence the tools I’m given to cope …often tools that don’t work because they aren’t designed for autistic neurology.

With a correct diagnosis, professionals can offer strategies that fit: sensory regulation, accommodations for burnout, and communication supports. Without it, I’m left trying to fix problems I don’t actually have while ignoring the ones I do.

For me, self-understanding is one of the greatest forms of survival in life…

For years I’ve been told to “just try harder” in situations that overwhelm me. Without the right framework, I internalize every overload and shutdown as failure. A diagnosis would give me language…. This is autistic burnout, not laziness. This is a sensory mismatch, not weakness.

That clarity isn’t self-indulgent… it’s survival. Without it, I will keep pushing myself past my limits until I break.

With a diagnosis I would have access to resources and legal rights…

Many accommodations …at work, in school, or in public services … require official documentation. Without a diagnosis, my needs for a quieter workspace, flexible deadlines, or reduced sensory load can be dismissed as “special treatment.” With one, they’re recognized under disability rights law!

The label gives legitimacy in systems that otherwise ignore lived experience.

And if on my resume I’d be understood better (in certain fields of course)

I’d have protection from many other misdiagnosis’ and harmful treatment…

Autistic traits can be mistaken for depression, OCD, or defiance. Each misinterpretation can lead to treatments that are useless or even damaging. For example, “flooding” someone with sensory triggers to build tolerance can traumatize an autistic person.

A diagnosis helps protect me from being forced into the wrong interventions.

I’d have better and easier access to community and connection with those who behave, feel and/or think similarly to me.

Without the correct label, finding people like me is guesswork. Autism is not just a medical term … it’s a shared culture and way of experiencing life. A diagnosis is like a passport into that world, giving me access to people who speak my unspoken language, who understand without explanation.

Belonging to that community isn’t just emotional comfort …it offers practical coping strategies, validation, and collective advocacy.

With a diagnosis of ASD it’ll help me in reframing my past, and redesigning my future, especially within autism specific individual therapy, group and family therapy.

A diagnosis would reframe my childhood:

• Why I was in special education for my behavior instead of my inner experience.

• Why I felt alien in my own family and life in general .

• Why masking became my main survival tool.

This reframing isn’t just about closure… it changes how I plan my future. I could intentionally design my life to match my sensory and social needs instead of repeating cycles that harm me. (Chronic pain, fatigue, gastrointestinal issues due to stress, sensory overload, hyper-mobility that causes joint pain… etc)

An ASD “label” is my key… not my cage!

I already live with the traits of autism… the only question is whether that reality will be recognized. Without a diagnosis, I’m stuck with other people’s labels … lazy, moody, uncooperative, crazy, manipulative, argumentative, irritable... The autism label replaces those with the correct one, which opens doors, invites understanding, and connects me to my people. And helps me connect better with those I love.

It doesn’t confine me … it frees me.

A diagnosis won’t change who I am, but it will explain who I am. That explanation is the foundation for protecting my mental health, shaping my relationships, advocating for my rights, and designing a life where I can thrive.

Without it, I’m walking blind. With it, I could finally see. And I deeply want that.