Finally Understanding Myself: My ASD Assessment and Diagnosis

Anyone who has followed my mental health posts will know the journey hasn’t been simple. I’ve shared my breakdown in 2012, the years of rebuilding, the Dependent Personality Disorder diagnosis, the slow climb back to stability, and the long process of understanding who I am. I’ve also written about communication differences, sensory needs, routines, overwhelm, and the traits I recognised in Will and James long before I recognised them in myself. It all led to this moment.

On Friday I had my two‑hour ASD assessment. Hannah and I sat online while the assessor discussed my childhood, adulthood, school life, friendships, communication, sensory needs, routines, and emotional responses, capturing everything I’ve written about for years.

We started with communication, because it’s always been the hardest part of being me. I either say too little and confuse people or say too much and overwhelm them. I accidentally interrupt because the thought arrives fully formed and I misjudge the gap, I spend hours editing and shortening text, and my friends either carry on regardless or wait for me to reach my point. Hannah even stopped me in the assessment. The irony was strangely reassuring.

We talked about childhood. How I struggled following the adults and child hierarchy. I was raised that if I didn’t know something I stayed quiet. If I did know, I spoke with confidence. Mum created guides and systems to help me function, cut clothing labels out, bought soft jumpers instead of blazers, washed my pound puppy and favourite bedding while I was at school so I wouldn’t notice, and bought a book called But Martin! about an alien trying to fit into a human school but doing everything differently. It wasn’t just a story. It was a mirror. Looking back, she did so much that I now recognise as her way of supporting my unknown, undiagnosed, and unmanaged ASD as I navigated the world.

[Image 2. The image shows the cover of But Martin!, a children’s story about a little green alien who tries to fit into a human school but experiences everything differently from the other children. The book was written to help children understand and accept difference. For me, it became a mirror—my mum used it to quietly teach me how to recognise and navigate my own differences long before I understood my autism]

We talked about sensory needs. Shoes. Textures. The way I chewed my sleeves as a child and still chew items now. How hair washing felt like needles on my scalp and how showers still overwhelm me. We talked about food too. I eat everything but I’m fussy, separating foods on my plate, avoiding ketchup touching vegetables, and refusing crisp sandwiches because the textures don’t mix.

We talked about emotions. I can recognise crying, smiling, anger, and boredom, but not always the cause, which Hannah often explains. I described emotions physically, like how anxiety, overwhelm, and sadness sit in my chest and happiness sits on my face. Hannah said afterwards that this was a common autistic trait. I never knew that.

We talked about routines. Order. Predictability. The items I still have from childhood, like my pound puppy that still sleeps with me. The writing rules the school created. The extra time given for exams. The stimming I do with my hands that Hannah notices and I don’t.

By the end of the assessment I received the diagnosis, surprising no one except the version of me that believed a misdiagnosis for over a decade.

The biggest shift is not the label. It’s the clarity. I no longer have a diagnosis of Dependent Personality Disorder with emotionally unstable traits. It makes sense looking back, as 2010–2012 were some of my worst years. I was grieving, drinking, overwhelmed, struggling, and burnt out. The traits they saw were crisis responses, not personality. The years before and after tell the real story. My childhood screamed autism. My life after thirty stabilised. I rebuilt. Masked. The personality disorder signs didn’t reappear. It was always autism.

I’ve carried the weight of being “difficult” through childhood, school, friendships, work, and even into the ordination process. People often misread me seeking clarity for attitude, overwhelm, argument, or manipulation, like the incident with the bishop. I raised discrimination concerns and the risks created by pausing the process because of my degenerative condition. I was explaining a structural problem, evidenced by the Fearfully and Wonderfully Made report, to avoid institutional harm. It was taken as confrontation. She focused on the personality disorder diagnosis and saw instability instead of a potential misdiagnosis, unlike my DDO and ADDO. I was framed as difficult when I was trying to protect myself from a historically ableist system. She even said that all she heard was “ordain me now because I am disabled.” I was communicating for clarity. I appreciate she doesn’t have the mental health training to approach this well, but it should have been handled differently. Instead she embodied the examples raised in the report and mischaracterised me because the wrong story dominating my life.

I learned to recognise the facial expressions that means “here we go again,” to shrink myself to avoid being misunderstood, or to apologise for things I didn’t do or couldn’t help. It’s something I still do. I need to do it with the bishop to move on and reconcile the situation.

This diagnosis names me, explains my life, connects to my children, and gives me the language for the things I’ve written about for over a decade. The misdiagnosis shaped how people responded to me and how I saw myself. I spent years fixing something that wasn’t broken. I wasn’t unstable. I was autistic. I finally have the language to explain it and see myself clearly.