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In light of my most recent post, I have been prompted to revisit considerations of the specific ways I might be neurodivergent. By and large, I have developed coping skills that allow me to work and generally comply with most baseline societal expectations, so I just kind of deal with my mind and its twists and turns without an official diagnosis of anything.
Being on tumblr for a long time, I have heard the back and forth about self-diagnosis a lot. Some people want to protect the validity of their issues by guarding the door of official entry with professional medical diagnosis for a lot of things. I get it, and I get the arguments for it. On the other hand, and for Americans in particular, sometimes that is a class and economic issue as much as it is a medical one. For years now, I have been without consistent medical coverage, and as a result exploratory treatment or ongoing mental health treatment that doesn't come in a bottle has been out of my reach. My doctor has to make the decision to not refer me to other specialists or spend a lot of time doing anything with me that requires ongoing maintenance and tests because of the financial burden it would place on me. Which is fucked up, but it is what it is.
Ultimately, I don't really think that I need an official diagnosis at this point for anything other than validation, and I can live without that part. However, after my friends read my previous journal entry, one of them mentiond that perhaps it would help me to read about Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. (You can find an unofficial diagnostic quiz here: https://www.additudemag.com/rejection-sensitive-dysphoria-adhd-symptom-test/)
This is a mental health issue that typcially occurs alongside ADHD, but it can also be comorbid with autism. However, I don't know if it can exist on its own. In any case, it led me to read a little bit about the diagnostic criteria for both ADHD and autism spectrum disorders. I definitely don't have ADHD, however I feel like I might meet quite a number of the diagnositc criteria for an autism spectrum disorder. Throughout my life, I have noticed that I have often had an unusually high number of friends who do have autism spectrum disorder diagnoses. However, I have never been diagnosed myself. I suppose the biggest hurdle to me believing that I might be on the autism spectrum is that I have always excelled where it comes to linguisitc communication. However, this MIGHT be as simple to explain as saying that from an early age I had something of a fixation on language and particularly the meaning of any word I came across. I love etymology.
Anyway, a friend reassuringly suggested that with or without a diagnosis that if it helps me to help myself through understanding the symptoms of a thing that maybe it doesn't matter.
In any case, I think that Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria is definitely a thing I suffer, which is one reason I have such a hard time processing failures to find a partner. One thing that I think strikes me as so strange about this most recent experience is that I feel prompted to give up when there was absolutely no clear rejection. In fact, I am fairly certain that it was simply a failure of understanding when I tried to blurt out my suggestion. However, I have processed it like rejection and have begun going through the motions of shoring up my defenses and trying to move on. I don't know if that was a necessary response, and I'm half-convinced that it may have been a very unnecessary one indeed, but it at least helps to know that maybe there is an explanation, even if maybe letting this go is the easiest thing to do...
Being on tumblr for a long time, I have heard the back and forth about self-diagnosis a lot. Some people want to protect the validity of their issues by guarding the door of official entry with professional medical diagnosis for a lot of things. I get it, and I get the arguments for it. On the other hand, and for Americans in particular, sometimes that is a class and economic issue as much as it is a medical one. For years now, I have been without consistent medical coverage, and as a result exploratory treatment or ongoing mental health treatment that doesn't come in a bottle has been out of my reach. My doctor has to make the decision to not refer me to other specialists or spend a lot of time doing anything with me that requires ongoing maintenance and tests because of the financial burden it would place on me. Which is fucked up, but it is what it is.
Ultimately, I don't really think that I need an official diagnosis at this point for anything other than validation, and I can live without that part. However, after my friends read my previous journal entry, one of them mentiond that perhaps it would help me to read about Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. (You can find an unofficial diagnostic quiz here: https://www.additudemag.com/rejection-sensitive-dysphoria-adhd-symptom-test/)
This is a mental health issue that typcially occurs alongside ADHD, but it can also be comorbid with autism. However, I don't know if it can exist on its own. In any case, it led me to read a little bit about the diagnostic criteria for both ADHD and autism spectrum disorders. I definitely don't have ADHD, however I feel like I might meet quite a number of the diagnositc criteria for an autism spectrum disorder. Throughout my life, I have noticed that I have often had an unusually high number of friends who do have autism spectrum disorder diagnoses. However, I have never been diagnosed myself. I suppose the biggest hurdle to me believing that I might be on the autism spectrum is that I have always excelled where it comes to linguisitc communication. However, this MIGHT be as simple to explain as saying that from an early age I had something of a fixation on language and particularly the meaning of any word I came across. I love etymology.
Anyway, a friend reassuringly suggested that with or without a diagnosis that if it helps me to help myself through understanding the symptoms of a thing that maybe it doesn't matter.
In any case, I think that Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria is definitely a thing I suffer, which is one reason I have such a hard time processing failures to find a partner. One thing that I think strikes me as so strange about this most recent experience is that I feel prompted to give up when there was absolutely no clear rejection. In fact, I am fairly certain that it was simply a failure of understanding when I tried to blurt out my suggestion. However, I have processed it like rejection and have begun going through the motions of shoring up my defenses and trying to move on. I don't know if that was a necessary response, and I'm half-convinced that it may have been a very unnecessary one indeed, but it at least helps to know that maybe there is an explanation, even if maybe letting this go is the easiest thing to do...
