Why a Diagnosis Matters

While I would never suggest pressing a diagnosis on someone who isn’t ready for one, I am so glad that I was diagnosed with autism at last. There are many reasons why a diagnosis was helpful. Let me mention a few here.

1. For most of my adult life, I struggled with constant migraines and nausea to the point of blindness. I would go to the doctor and there was never anything wrong that they could fix. Sometimes they suggested vaguely that I might need a mental health diagnosis for “anxiety,” but it was only when I got my diagnosis with autism that I realized what things were causing these difficulties: forcing myself to go into situations that caused sensory overload. By insisting that I was “normal” over and over again, I was making myself ill. Public events where there are hundreds or thousands of people around me, where there is too much light, too much noise, too many smells, too many faces, made me sick. Now that I’m aware of this, I can do the things that matter most to me, and watch my body for signs that it has had enough — usually about an hour in. Then I already have an escape plan.

2. It’s hard to explain how wonderful it is to make sense of yourself, to see all these disparate pieces that you couldn’t fully acknowledge before, and to see that they are part of a pattern. Patterns are something that most autists love, and in this case, the pattern was myself. I love knowing myself…