Diagnosed with ASD, but afraid people don't believe me

absolutely. i'm transmasculine, so growing up with an afab brain my behaviors were shrugged off because i did well enough in school and made friends. i don't have an official diagnosis since getting one as an adult & a trans person is very difficult (as i can imagine it was for you as an adult woman), but other autistics believe me & support my experiences. the autistic online communities out there are super awesome, and being an autistic woman comes with unique challenges in a male-dominated diagnosis, so it's a great place to talk to other people about your experience! you are just as autistic as anyone else, and i'm glad you were able to get a diagnosis!

This is very relatable! My first time trying to get diagnosed the team I went to was extremely dismissive of all of my apparent symptoms and discarded my test results because they believed I was lying. This was all because my mom never saw any developmental delays. They misdiagnosed me with Schizoid Personality Disorder and said “You basically have the adult version of asperger’s”. (Like wtffff😭)

I’m 18, and even my own mother didn’t believe my diagnosis because I was never developmentally delayed.