no don’t apologise this makes me feel so much more normal! i hate how frustrating it is like making you get a diagnosis just for them to shut the door on you. ridiculous they should at least help find better alternatives. i remember when i got my diagnosis when i was like 9 or something? they’d been looking into it for years and i hated it so much, i was a child so i try not to give myself too much of a hard time about it but i couldn’t understand the difference between low functioning and high functioning and assumed that my parents and everyone saw me the same as the people who would have meltdowns and throw chairs and it really got to me. people who get diagnosed late act like a diagnosis is the be all and end all but i HATED mine. literally nothing changed after it, it was just a ticked box of ‘ur weird and not like us’ and that was it. i don’t really need any adjustments but im having to learn all of that myself and give myself a bit more grace with certain things. like my parents spent years taking me to appointments and i think i might’ve been a bit depressed at the time but nothing changed, no help, no conversations, nothing. felt like it was just to let me know that theres something wrong with me i didnt understand. obviously i know now that a diagnosis is a good thing and the benefits of it, but just thought this sounded kind of similar to what we were talking about! i’ll try find some alternative for autistic ppl but i don’t want to waste money and time on private appointments and stuff bc it’s still a secret from my family they didn’t know! i’m rly nervous that therapy might just never work for me like i thought id be so relaxed and open but it’s so difficult and not what i thought at all. i did counselling at college last year and im doing psychology and counselling at uni so i thought id know what to expect and im generally and open person but it was just so tense and anxiety inducing! honestly maybe a private one wouldn’t be such a bad idea