“Help yourself sis” 

-me

After three years of going back and forth, I finally started my therapy journey last month. Like most, I was apprehensive to begin this process. The thought of looking inward and examining the deepest memories I had shoved into the abyss of my brain was dreadful to say the least. 

When I clicked the link to join our first session, I sat there alone for about five minutes. Contemplating if I wanted to ghost the conversation all together. In this moment, I was grateful for the cancelation fee, or I absolutely would’ve skipped out. Curious as to what we could possibly be talking about for a whole hour?! Turns out, we would get into a lot.

For privacy reasons, we will refer to my therapist as TB (that bitch.) Because she is absolutely that bitch, and she read my ass within the first 15 minutes, so honest but so kind. She is incredible. There are lots of revelations I experienced in our first 60 minutes together, most of which I will not be getting into here. Use your own traumas and imagination.

The one revelation I will dive deeper into throughout my blurb posts is the misdiagnosis I received at 13. When I was 13, I was diagnosed with ADD. My pediatrician put my teenage ass on 75 milligrams of adderall and sent me on my merry way. Fast-Forward to June 2022, I am now 26 years old and about 3 years into my adderall/adderral-adjacent-medication sobriety. I feel great! My body has finally regulated back to its equilibrium, I actually don’t really have focus issues anymore, besides maybe self-sabotaging procrastination. But something is still off, mentally. After explaining this to TB, she suggested that maybe it wasn’t ever ADD. Apparently, ADD, anxiety, and autism show themselves very similarly in females, which often leads to a misdiagnosis. As it turns out, having an extreme hate for certain textures, tastes, or smells, to the point that you can not function normally. Or having a difficult time understanding social queues and following conversations is actually a major sign of autism. Who knew? Not the pediatrician who diagnosed me with ADD, that’s for sure. So here I am, at 26 years old, finding out I actually have autism…

While my therapist, who specializes in autism, has concluded after are first few sessions together, that I actually do, in fact have autism. I have decided that I will be getting a psych test done as well, for extra backup. Because I know my family, and they will not believe it until I have medical papers to back me up. Even though, if you sit and really think about me as a human, it all checks out.

So, here I am. Sharing this wild ass revelation on a blog that probably no one will read besides my grandmothers, my parents, and a handful of friends. (Hi y’all.) Hoping that maybe, just maybe, some lost, confused person will read this and it will resonate. Hopefully, I inspire you to seek the answers to questions you have always internally asked yourself. Who knows, even you could be the newest recipient of an adult autism diagnosis.

-Tor