Scared to Self-Diagnose in Anxiety and Coping with Newness

Keeping this one really short, I can talk more about it in comments/future entries as it’s something I’m struggling with. I’ve been researching, for the past few months, all kinds of stuff about autism. I have a lot of symptoms: stimming (I’m still learning what all I’ve always done that’s actually stimming, this so far is wiggling my toes, singing, making different expressions, tensing all my muscles, etc.), noise sensitivity, misophonia, shutdowns, difficulty regulating my emotions, difficulty recognizing/expressing my emotions, some difficulty in social situations (this was really bad when I was a kid, much better now), hyperfixations, and more that I can’t think of off the top of my head. I’m pretty decent in social situations but I definitely screw up sometimes, and other times I just have no clue what’s going on and leave it to other people to lead, before jumping back in.

The difficult part is that I also have anxiety and depressive episodes, as well as c-PTSD from my childhood. I know that a lot of my symptoms could be from those, rather than autism. But, that could also be me just rationalizing them and not seeing them for what they really are. Another added layer is that I’m a young, cis woman of color (1/4 asian, mixed). There is still not a lot of research on autistic women, especially women of color. What we do know is that autistic women are very different socially from autistic men; they tend to mask significantly more and do not always “appear” autistic, compared to men. I don’t know, I want to dive in fully and self-diagnose (getting a diagnose from a doctor would be kind of pointless, I do not feel like my life is impaired in any major way), but I’m also scared that I might be wrong. If I was wrong, I don’t know what that would entail - I would feel awful for being wrong and trying to make myself a part of a community that I might not be a part of.

However, I have taken the RAADS-R test multiple times and score a little higher every time; this is probably because I learned that the way I interpreted one or more questions was wrong, and completely missed the point of the question lol.

I just re-took the RAADS-R while writing this and scored a 154. 130 is “the mean score of autistic people, strong evidence for autism” and 160 is “very strong evidence for autism”. So my current score is pretty well above the average score, but to me I feel like it isn’t high enough. I don’t know why I expect it to be higher? Maybe I want it to be higher, so it’s irrefutable? I don’t know.

I took the Aspie Quiz and attached my results below. Aspie score of 158/200, neurotypical score of 79/200, “very likely on the broader autism cluster (aspie)”. Here’s my chart: http://www.rdos.net/eng/poly10a.php?p1=86&p2=79&p3=93&p4=48&p5=80&p6=76&p7=75&p8=47&p9=68&p10=62

Also took the CAT-Q (since why not, already have spent time taking the other quizzes again), which is a masking test (remember, autistic women mask more). Total score of 127: compensation 43, masking 49, and assimilation 35.

Average CAT-Q scores of autistic females is 124.35: compensation 41.85, masking 37.87, and assimilation 44.63. This says I mask a lot more than average, which would explain why I don’t feel autistic all the time?

I have been trying to stim more in the past week, specifically with more awareness of it, and at times it has almost made me cry with how much relief I’ve felt actually listening to my body. I also just bought Loop earplugs today, waiting excitedly for them to get here so I can try them and see how much, if at all, they help. I have high hopes, but read enough reviews to bring them down and not be super disappointed if they don’t work for me. Try, try again.

I don’t know, maybe the fact that I took the time just to retake the quizzes to give an accurate score on this entry shows autism in and of itself, lmao! I’m just worried to self-diagnose, I guess, but all the evidence is there. I wish I knew why I was so worried to just do it.