There was no need to call me out like that

Steroids? I’ve never heard of those being a treatment for ADHD

Blood tests help to exclude other reasons for symptoms so they absolutely have bearing.

Well, I had to go through excessive tests, including blood work and EEG.

Well, last time I checked they said it would take 3-5 years waiting time to get an appointment, recently I learned they don’t even have an open waiting list right now.

For ADHD it means you can try medication to help you. For ASD it wouldn’t change anything for me personally so I’m not going to bother.

Personal experience from Germany but also heard from others in the UK: it’s easier to get an ADHD diagnosis as an adult than an ASD diagnosis as an adult.

Well, for a lot of neurodivergent people it’s actually a part of who we are, not a condition we have, so even though you might not like it doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Personally I hate people telling me that I have autism and ADHD. I am both those things.

This article explains it quite well and even though it’s about autistic people it goes for ADHD people as well.

Hormones do have an effect as well.

It does present differently, partly because of societal pressure but also partly because of hormonal setup. That’s the reason why it was thought for a long time that ADHD and Autism was less prevalent in girls. Luckily, this perspective has changed which led to a lot of late diagnoses for women.

And everyone has to pee but if you have to do it 40 times a day you should have that looked at 🙄

So much this!

In the shower and at night when I should be sleeping

And don’t you dare tell a vegan you can’t drink anything with plant milk!

Let me put it this way. I’ve been with my husband for 20 years now and back then we both thought we were NT. By now we both know we’re not 😂

And part of my comment explained why this is not always an option.

You keep assuming that people don’t use their self diagnosis as a springboard to work on themselves and finally having the right tools to do so. A lot of people don’t use their self diagnosis to feel special, it’s an explanation to them for why they are the way they are and how to help themselves.

A lot of us self diagnosed people are part of the lost generation mentioned in one of the papers above. When I was a child, autism without a learning disability wasn’t even recognized. It just didn’t exist and I had to cope until I went into burnout several times. It took until I found a young therapist to even learn that my problems might be caused by autism. My GP still is of the opinion I couldn’t be autistic because I can look into his eyes.

(And for what it’s worth, I’m not officially diagnosed because in my city of close to 2mil people there are exactly two places that diagnose adults and only one of them has experience diagnosing women.)

Yeah, it is. Reading it helped me a lot on my journey.

You mean people like Dr Devon Price?

“I want autistic people to experience less shame of who they are and to learn how to take off the masks that have trapped us for decades. The first step towards that includes accepting who you are. You don’t need a piece of paper from an assessor to do that.”

(Unmasking autism)

The pink ones are kinda translucent and barely visible for me. I don’t mind people seeing them so I might have a few different colors to match my outfit but in professional settings I usually wear the pink ones.