> my wife (Dr of special education) finally convinced me to talk to a Dr and get get tested for autism. Turns out I'm ASD 1, would have been Asperger's in the past.
Can I ask candidly, what did you gain from knowing this? Presumably this didn't have much effect on you, since you seem to be fairly successful - finding a partner and getting married and presumably also having a decent job.
Seems kind of like a vanity validation for your wife rather than a benefit to you.
For me it helped change some of the approaches I take with my therapist. I also have sever clinical depression. It's also helped me relate to other people and understand why people have an easier time with seemingly basic things, like speaking to a group of people or just being at a table where multiple people are having conversations and I get overwhelmed and can't follow what's going on.
For instance, I spend a lot of time scripting conversations and I've found if I don't do this it will have a meaningful negative impact on my ability to communicate with people. Almost like if I don't practice setting up the path between a concept and the words, then when I need to talk to other people that connection doesn't exist and I just can't put things to words.
It can help reframe personal experiences and past struggles for one, but it can also help gain access to support that isn't available if you're just a "weird nerd". It can also serve to legitimize your struggles to people who think you just need to "stop being so lazy" at whatever you genuinely struggle with by being able to point at a diagnosis.
Yeah, the benefits are a mixed bag and subjective but that's why we should normalize self-dx rather than insisting people have to get a medical opinion to be "validated".
As of recently[1], in Australia, an ASD diagnosis is a reportable condition that may affect your driving ability and therefore comes with an AU$9000 fine if you don't disclose it to the authorities. Though I suspect I might be ASD 1, there is now no way I would seek a diagnosis.
That is fair and personally I would argue that you should not comply with an unjust law like that (how's that for a "strong sense of justice" in autistic people?) but of course it's safer to avoid the legal risk of non-compliance by simply avoiding the diagnosis if it doesn't benefit you.
Frankly, the law doesn't make sense given that ASD is not a "medical condition" in the sense of being temporary or avoidable and the act of passing driver's ed and attaining a driver's license demonstrates your driving ability. If you were undiagnosed prior to attaining a driver's license, it clearly did not impact your ability. If you were diagnosed and attained a driver's license without disclosing your "condition" it clearly did not impact you either. It feels more like ASD is being used as a proxy for some other condition (learning disability?) that is not usually diagnosed directly.
IMO anyone fined for non-disclosure should try to take the case to whatever the Australian equivalent of the Supreme Court is. Surely some NGO must be willing to foot the bill.
Not quite - as of more than a decade ago in Queensland, but nobody noticed until recently, when it became a reportable condition in some other states with a possible $500 fine.
Can I ask candidly, what did you gain from knowing this? Presumably this didn't have much effect on you, since you seem to be fairly successful - finding a partner and getting married and presumably also having a decent job.
Seems kind of like a vanity validation for your wife rather than a benefit to you.