Latest / Aspergers & Autism Podcast [The Aspie World] AuDHD / How I Got My Autism Diagnosis

Transcript

How I Got My Autism Diagnosis · Aspergers & Autism Podcast [The Aspie World] AuDHD

• 0:00
  But doesn't matter how I got my autism diagnosis.
• 0:03
  Hey, guys, what's going on? Welcome back to the aspy world.
• 0:05
  My name is Dan, and I have autism and ADHDOCD and dyslexia.
• 0:09
  I'm making weekly videos all about the stuff.
• 0:10
  So if you want to learn more, I'm about to hit the subscribe
• 0:13
  button. What's going on?
• 0:14
  Dates. Welcome back to another video.
• 0:15
  It feels like it's been forever. It's yeah, it's been nice.
• 0:18
  I just launched a new product, which is just absolutely crazy.
• 0:21
  So anyway, I'm so pumped to this video.
• 0:23
  I got a lot of people asking me, Dan, how did you get your autumn
• 0:26
  diagnosis? How does the process work?
• 0:28
  Where did you go? What did you do?
• 0:30
  So that would take some time. Just talk about some of the
• 0:31
  common traits of autism and and kind of like how you can
• 0:34
  characterize it, how people spotted it me and how I see it
• 0:36
  myself and then how I got my autism diagnosis.
• 0:39
  Because I really believe that understanding how you got an
• 0:41
  autism diagnosis can help you achieve your autism diagnosis if
• 0:45
  you're looking for that. So let's let's get right into
• 0:47
  it. So first of all guys, autism
• 0:49
  being a neurological developmental condition means
• 0:52
  that there are characteristics that are neurologically
• 0:54
  ingrained in a person who's only also the spectrum.
• 0:57
  Now if you're interested, I do have a little freebie like Life
• 1:01
  Hacks book for autism and that you can download for free.
• 1:04
  The link is in the description down below where you can just go
• 1:05
  to the link in my bio and where it says free book, just click
• 1:09
  that and you get it for free. Some of the characteristics that
• 1:11
  are completely obvious with the autism, things like, you know,
• 1:15
  obsessive behavior. An autistic person may be really
• 1:17
  obsessed with a specific topic of interest.
• 1:20
  You know, mine is all things kind of chemistry related
• 1:23
  because I did a degree in chemistry marketing, business.
• 1:26
  I love all that kind of stuff. But then you could have somebody
• 1:28
  who's really into photography, that could be excellent
• 1:31
  photography, that they want to spend all the time doing
• 1:32
  photography and that's their thing, right?
• 1:34
  That's where their talent lies. Also, obsession lies that you
• 1:38
  could have another artistic individual who is obsessed with
• 1:41
  Marilyn Monroe, that kind of thing.
• 1:43
  And one of me, by being obsessed is that they constantly spend
• 1:45
  all their time learning about it because they spend all their
• 1:47
  time researching it. They would fly out to kind of
• 1:50
  Marlboro's house where she used to live, like try and stalk her
• 1:54
  friends online or whatever, and then just know everything about
• 1:57
  that subject. And this is another trait,
• 2:00
  wanting to talk consistently obsessively for hours about that
• 2:03
  one thing. You may think autistic
• 2:05
  individuals will have issues with social communication, which
• 2:08
  is correct. This is another trait.
• 2:10
  But also autistic individuals would, if they get going about
• 2:14
  the topic of interest that they're interested in, you know,
• 2:16
  OK, so people who know younger people on the spectrum could be
• 2:18
  Minecraft. And I'll just talk to you for
• 2:19
  hours about Minecraft or Roblox, right.
• 2:21
  That's because they have learned all of those things, and they
• 2:24
  want to dictate that stuff they've learned verbatim.
• 2:27
  And that's a really interesting characteristic where you can
• 2:30
  have a very shy, quiet person who's on the autism spectrum.
• 2:32
  But if you ask them a question about their specific topic of
• 2:35
  interest, they'll be very, very vocal about it.
• 2:38
  And I think that's very fascinating.
• 2:39
  So with me, one of my traitors that I talk a lot, I know, I'm
• 2:43
  sorry, but I talk excessively. I talk a lot about a lot of
• 2:45
  things. And I I, I memorize this in
• 2:48
  fact. And I love talking about those
• 2:49
  facts, right. And that's really common within
• 2:51
  autistic individuals. Now, another trait is having
• 2:54
  difficulty with eye contact. A lot of autistic individuals
• 2:56
  won't necessarily be able to make specifically good, long
• 3:00
  sustaining eye contact when they're talking, because when an
• 3:02
  autistic person is is making communication effort to look
• 3:06
  into one's eyes, it's kind of like looking into the soul and
• 3:09
  like grabbing them by the scruff of the neck.
• 3:10
  It's very awkward, very uncomfortable and they can't
• 3:13
  really do it. So this is something that you
• 3:15
  can see quite apparently. Another thing is difficulties
• 3:18
  with a change in the routine or just individuals love routine.
• 3:21
  They love knowing the outcome of a specific set of events.
• 3:24
  Like we're going to go to the zoo today that we have to drive
• 3:26
  for an hour in the car. We've packed sandwiches.
• 3:29
  When we get there, we're going to have our sandwiches and
• 3:31
  everything's going to be cool. But if something happens, like
• 3:33
  you get a flat tire in the car and then you have to eat
• 3:35
  sandwiches in the car and then you delete going to the zoo.
• 3:37
  So you have to get like a hotel next to the zoo and then go to
• 3:39
  the zoo that after a big no, no that the destruction of the
• 3:42
  routine, the the, the, the surprise that just came out of
• 3:46
  nowhere, this like unpredicted event that was completely out of
• 3:51
  out of the plan of action can really throw you.
• 3:54
  So that's another reason why autistic individuals can can
• 3:56
  display this whole, like, issues with routine.
• 3:58
  But on the same line. Autistic videos thrive from
• 4:02
  having a specific routine. So they could get up in the
• 4:04
  morning, you know, wear the same clothes every single day.
• 4:07
  Not the same actual clothes, the same type of clothes.
• 4:09
  Like I wear black clothes all the time, like black T-shirts,
• 4:12
  black blonde sleeve T-shirts, black pants, black socks and
• 4:14
  black underpants. Like, that's that's just me all
• 4:16
  over. But autistic individuals, well,
• 4:19
  let's get dressed the same thing every single day.
• 4:21
  They will get up at the same time every day.
• 4:22
  They will eat the same thing for breakfast every day.
• 4:25
  Then we watch the same shows, might watch something or repeat
• 4:27
  all the time. These things are very
• 4:29
  interesting and they're very characterized in autistic
• 4:32
  individuals. Emotional deregulation is huge,
• 4:35
  not being able to express themselves emotionally,
• 4:37
  especially communicating with other individuals when you're
• 4:39
  talking about emotions. And this is because assisted
• 4:42
  individuals have a disconnect between the understanding in the
• 4:45
  brain of energy that converts into motion, which gives you
• 4:49
  energy, and motion, which is emotion.
• 4:51
  And so this is something that's quite have not had to grasp, but
• 4:55
  half of their brain to kind of like do intimately on that
• 4:58
  level, like, OK, I'm going to do it right now.
• 5:01
  I'm going to see what, you know, I'm going to see my emotions
• 5:02
  right now. And at that moment in time, I
• 5:04
  think that's quite interesting and it's very, very apparent.
• 5:07
  Autistic individuals will typically have issues making
• 5:10
  friends because making friends is something that's quite hard.
• 5:13
  You need to know social conventions.
• 5:15
  You need to know unwritten social cues, which is a big
• 5:17
  issue for people on the autism special.
• 5:18
  You know, how far do I sound to a person or how close to a sound
• 5:22
  to a person? How do I say hello?
• 5:23
  How do I inject myself into a conversation?
• 5:25
  How do I say goodbye and how do I leave a conversation?
• 5:28
  All these things are, they're quite mystical for us sitting
• 5:30
  individuals and they may not fully be able to understand
• 5:33
  that. So that in in a nutshell, the
• 5:36
  last thing I'll say is taking things literally.
• 5:38
  Autistic individuals will take things at face value.
• 5:41
  If you say something is something, don't believe that's
• 5:42
  what it is. This is part of the reason of
• 5:44
  how I got my diagnosis so back in 2013.
• 5:48
  This is just before the DSM changed the nomenclature from
• 5:51
  Asperger syndrome to the Autism spectrum disorder.
• 5:54
  My girlfriend, his mother, was a mental health nurse and my
• 5:57
  girlfriend was actually studying autism in university.
• 6:02
  She was doing a degree in childhood studies.
• 6:03
  So she'd seen kind of characteristics in me that was
• 6:06
  very common in the studies of these children that she was kind
• 6:09
  of studying. And it was like, oh, my
• 6:11
  goodness. And I remember she tweeted out
• 6:13
  something once saying, like, why is it that the people on The Big
• 6:15
  Bang Theory remind me of my boyfriend?
• 6:17
  Because Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory displays
• 6:20
  typically autistic traits, right?
• 6:21
  Or what you would have called Asperger syndrome, which is now
• 6:24
  like low support needs autism. Because there's a big whole
• 6:28
  thing with normal picture. A lot of people don't like to
• 6:29
  use function labels other people don't like to use.
• 6:32
  You know, I don't know, there's a bunch of things.
• 6:34
  We're not going to get to that in this video.
• 6:36
  But if you are interested, I did a whole video talking about why
• 6:38
  Asperger isn't used and why some people still use it.
• 6:41
  I'll link it down below. So that being said, her mother
• 6:43
  did question and asked if I was on the autism spectrum.
• 6:46
  Now at this time, I knew nothing about autism.
• 6:49
  And I met a friend who found that some things that I did was
• 6:52
  really interesting. Like she said to me, she was
• 6:55
  eating a banana out of coffee and she put the banana peel
• 6:58
  inside the coffee pot. She said, can you go to the
• 7:00
  kitchen, put this in the bin? So I just threw the cup and the
• 7:04
  banana in the bin. But she was like, dude, don't
• 7:06
  throw the cup away, only the banana peel.
• 7:08
  But I taken what she'd said very literal.
• 7:10
  And so that kind of started getting conversation going like,
• 7:13
  hey, do you always do things literally?
• 7:14
  Yes. Do you, how do you think with
• 7:15
  this, blah, blah, blah. So it all came to a grinding
• 7:19
  halt when I was in my place of work, which was I was working
• 7:23
  for a company, a multimedia company, and I was sitting
• 7:25
  behind the desk, right. And my desk was the same for
• 7:30
  like 3 years. Like I've been on that desk
• 7:32
  three years. It was very small company, maybe
• 7:33
  like 20 of us in one room, very small.
• 7:36
  And I was there for the whole time, right.
• 7:38
  So yeah, we were very small company.
• 7:39
  I had the same desk like had for years.
• 7:42
  And then the other thing that happened then was I went on
• 7:45
  vacation with my my partner for like a week.
• 7:49
  And I came back to the office and they'd moved not only the
• 7:52
  office, they'd moved my desk and everything was complete chaos.
• 7:55
  And I just had this like huge like meltdown in in the office
• 7:59
  and I'd never had anything this big before.
• 8:01
  And it was just like, you know, in in work.
• 8:03
  And I was like, oh, you know, they took me out and like, holy
• 8:04
  smokes, dude, like you. OK Then they took me to, you
• 8:06
  know, see I worked from home for a little bit and they said we'd
• 8:09
  see a counselor. I'm not going to the counselor.
• 8:10
  The council was also like, yeah, you know, maybe we should get
• 8:12
  tested for autism spectrum. Sort of.
• 8:14
  So I did that. I went through those processes.
• 8:16
  I got referred from my doctor to a autism specialist, went see an
• 8:19
  autism specialist twice, did two types of like interview based,
• 8:22
  kind of some a little bit of practical stuff.
• 8:25
  And then they kind of assessed that and said, you know, you're
• 8:27
  on the autism spectrum, holy smokes.
• 8:29
  And at the time, I knew nothing about autism, which is really
• 8:32
  interesting. And I went online then to find
• 8:33
  some information. And because I'm bad at, like,
• 8:36
  reading, I wanted to kind of learn through like video.
• 8:38
  I went to YouTube, typed in autism or Asperger's syndrome,
• 8:41
  which is what I was diagnosed with, and there was just nothing
• 8:44
  there. So I started this channel
• 8:45
  because I was like, well I can add those things to this, You
• 8:48
  know, I can add this to to the to the mix and and maybe I can
• 8:51
  help some people. So that was my story.
• 8:53
  What's your story? I'm on the road down below.
• 8:55
  If you're not already diagnosed then let me know if you're
• 8:57
  looking to get diagnosis. But if you are, let me know your
• 8:59
  story down below. Speak to you next time guys.
• 9:01
  Peace.