I am almost 70. I have meowed, mooed and other sounds all my life. Recently I have found out that I have ADHD and some Autism as well. I am getting assessed.
It’s kind of a running joke in my family that I’m on the spectrum.
I mentioned getting an assessment to my wife, and she made what I felt was a pretty strong argument against it. Essentially that at 56 years old it wouldn’t change anything, and it would be time, effort, and money spent with no gain.
I’m wondering what you are expecting to achieve with your assessment.
Also, meow.
Self assessed autism is a thing and just as welcome in any neurodivergent community.
The main reason where medical assessment is important is if there are genuine challenges related to it that you do need help with.
Many disabilities only exist in context of the society one lives. In many aspects neurodivergent is just a flavor of brain and not a disability in any sense of the world.
But when the whole word demands you to be capable of A while all you cal do is X, its still considered a disability in medical context and to get expert help you will need the medical assessment.
I applaud your partner for accepting you as you are and saying the label doesn’t matter. But it might still be an idea to see if you could get it checked upon, you don’t know how your neurology might change with age.
Or you may have underlying challenges that you normalized as “everyone has this problem, right?”
I had a bad habit of making “boredom noises” for years until someone pointed it out and I had to start working on it. Turns out the technical term is “verbal stimming” and it’s definitely tied to either of those.
It wasn’t a bad habit dude, it was just your natural way of regulating your nervous system
We all have to wear masks, my guy. It takes a lot of effort to not be “the weird guy” at work.
But does it, in the end, take less effort than constantly fighting yourself?
Life isn’t a choice between easy and hard, it’s mostly a choice between hard now or way harder later.
It becomes less problematic over time. Without learning how to mask or developing coping skills, life will just be harder in the long run. My career would certainly be less successful if I did not develop coping skills. Burnout can be avoided by finding healthy outlets and enforcing personal time to relax and recover.
For me it’s been the opposite, the less I mask the more I actually end up with people and in environments where I am accepted and cherished for the person I am, not who I force myself to be to fit in. Trying to do that nearly killed me.
