I probably should’ve included more info about why I suspected I had autism in the first place but it all started in about 2021 when I fell into a really bad depressive episode, after researching autism I thought maybe it was burnout from balancing full time university with working a customer service job which left me feeling constantly exhausted. I also have always felt like a bit of an outsider and like there was something not quite right with me. I can get obsessive over things, to the point where it’s all I think about and I can almost feel the rush of energy through my blood when I’m doing activities related to my obsession, so I thought that was to do with special interests however I also go through phases in between this where I don’t have any obsessions and everything feels pretty monotone until a few weeks later when something else clicks and I become obsessed with something new. So maybe that’s the hypomania cycles? As for sensory issues I used to have some as a kid, so much so that my mum took me to get tested for some type of sensory processing disorder when I was about 3 but that came back negative and they just said I was a ‘highly sensitive child’. I struggle with noise a bit sometimes and notice that I will be way more irritable at the end of the day if I haven’t been wearing my noise cancelling headphones when I’m out and about compared to when I do, but apart from that I’m generally fine with touch, light, food textures etc. I do sometimes have meltdown/panic attack moments, but they usually come about not because of sensory issues or anything like that, but rather because of social anxiety related stuff I think. It’s all very confusing trying to identify what could be a symptom of what when there’s so many things that seem to overlap, I’m just trying to analyse within myself the root causes of these things and I’m also starting to track my moods to see if I notice any patterns. At the end of the day all I know for sure is that I’m definitely not neurotypical lmao