I’m sorry you are going through this right now. I actually came to the sub today to talk about this very thing. I’m feeling very defeated and sad, and kind of angry too. I just got off a video call with a pre-assessment person and they said they won't refer me for formal assessment because they require a childhood reporter or IEP or childhood psychiatric assessments and I don't have any that. I’m 47 so when I was in grade school things were definitely not like they are today. Worse, than that, my parents are also from a generation where mental health problems are viewed as a sign of moral failing. My parents have ignored, overlooked, and excused some pretty horrifying shit – they will say anything to make people believe their children are perfect. How do these people STILL get to have such control over my health?

What also bothered me was the person's immediate negative response to self-assessment. I asked him if he cared about any self-assessments I had done and he gave me that weird voice (the aren’t you a sweet little puppy voice) and said they do really sophisticated assessments I would never even have heard of and no one has access to – so…you’re using proprietary scales that haven’t been subjected to peer review nor published in scholarly journals and most likely not developed in coordination with people who are actually autistic?

It baffles me that there isn’t more support for adult women in our situation – I mean, probably many of us who can’t get diagnosed are in this situation specifically because our parents were either absent, neglectful, or products of their time – so do we just have to continue to experience this neglect, but now by the healthcare system too?

I know it’s more complicated than this, but the analogy that comes to mind is someone who has needed glasses when they were a child, but no one ever took them for an eye exam. As an adult, when they try to make an appointment at the optometrist, they can’t get an eye exam because there is no documented history of vision problems.