I'm having a very frustrating time in my life right now. Part of this is caused by great underachievement and having a hard time dealing with my sensory issues and anger management. Throughout my life I've been having psychiatric evaluation (since I was 13) and visited psychologist. I always been treated for anxiety, depression, ocd and told I'm just like everyone else (mostly because, even when I was 13, I was very verbally mature and intelligent, I was leading the doctor the way I considered right, therefore no one suspected I could have some delayments and learning problems), but no, I'm not. The ways that work for "normal" people don't usually work for me. I always felt like there's something else. The drugs didn't work for me, SSRIs and Xanax got me just more aggressive and made my impulses even more uncontrollable. The side effects were terrible, I am very sensitive to meds. I quit them few years ago. Some long time ago I started to read about Asperger's, the effects of right brain hemisphere damage, NLD, ADHD etc and found many of the listed issues coherent with the ways "I work". For many years I considered myself defective, permanently broken, crazy even. Still living in fear of psychosis. People who knew I was undergoing psychiatric treatments in the past just were adding to that with their opinions. When I was having a meltdown in high school because I couldn't cope with one subject my "friend" started to make fun of me and then said "What? I didn't said anything wrong, you are mad, mentally ill, aren't you?" and even his abusive father added to that.
These problems started to overwhelm me when I became an adult. I'm 21 now. Despite being gifted in languages and writing (my native lang. is Polish), I kept failing at Maths and still didn't pass my obligatory algrebra final, which is to go to uni. I should go to university three years ago. working with people is a dread. I cannot drive well due to some issues which pains me. I've spent so much time and money and effort on getting my licence. I won't list all of my traits bc I already did that somewhere. People were always considering me rude even when I wasn't intending to. I was told things like "She's so rude" "That's her character" "I cannot imagine you driving" "You're moving in such a funny way" "You're so stiff". I was even physically attacked. I have an excellent long term memory so I can recall many things.
The problem is that I have nowhere to turn at the moment. Many Autism related helping centers are not interested in adults and they're very far away (I live in Poland and things work bit different here than in US). For now, I only have an access to a local psychiatrist and a local therapeutist (not specialised in these things and not much effective I guess, few of my friends were seeing her in the past).
But I have this private neurologist appointment in July. She diagnosed my grandmother with ataxia. One reason I go there is because I had some head injuries in the past and experience terrible headaches since then, yet I never had a scan or anything and I want at least to have a CT to begin with. Also gonna ask about EEG. I cannot afford MRi at the moment and to be honest, I'm bit scared of how much time you have to spend inside it. I also want to ask her about possible dyspraxia and my prosody.
The other thing is that I'm not sure if I can tell a neurologist about my issues that I think are related to possible AS or NLD (okay, NLD is not even a diagnosis, I doubt if she ever heard of it, but still). I'm afraid I'm gonna sound weird talking about my issues with school achievmenents and social interactions and driving. I don't exactly know how much a neurologist is specialized in such things and I'm also afraid she's just gonna send me off to psychiatrist or think I'm schizophrenic.
Can she test such things as visual spatial awareness and bad cognitive tempo?
Should I tell her that she diagnosed my grandmother with cerebellar hypoplasia (I'm not sure but this can be genetic I think)
I always have struggles with how much to say so it's not too much and to get to my point.