I have been diagnosed at 23 years old, july last year.

When I first started college I went to a university psych centre for a few years where they tried to diagnose me with dissociative disorder nos, identity issues, alexithymia, but they were very confused about my case and so was I.

About 5 years ago I saw this documentary about a man with autism and somehow something seemed very familiar to me. Didn't give it too much thought, untill I saw another documentary and felt like I might have ASD, but I did not dare to bring it up. The problem was I also suffered from a lot of physical issues and besides not daring to bring up the ASD, I also wanted to find out what was going on physically, constantly had to eat, never felt clarity in my head, saw blurry and had double vision, could barely walk, thoughts seemed to be gone, while I remembered from my early teens my thoughts never ended. It took me years to find out those symptoms were not caused by a mental disorder, but a metabolic disease instead. Due to a diet and medications I became able to think again, but being tired can take me back to that zombified state again.

After I had clarity about the physical problems I managed to tell my psychologist about the ASD I suspected, but she did not really felt like it needed to be investigated, her words: "You have empathy, so you cannot have ASD." Eventually she did ask my mom some things about my past, but my mom has this tendency to only mention the 'normal' and leave out everything else. After that I still kept on thinking about ASD, it became an obsession really. About a year after this I had to leave the psych centre, but still had a lot of questions.

Some 3 months later I decided to ask for a referral at my GP for a centre specialized in women with ASD to see if I had ASD or not. I had to do some tests, fill in questionaries, so did my parents and we had a conversation about how I developed, both my story and my parent's story. This time my dad went there as well, and he mentioned things my mom would not have,
hard things to hear, but helpful in finding out I do have ASD, despite being a woman and having empathy.