#also really gotta get a primary care doctor so i can seek adhd medication

[t4tstarvingdog]

need someone to pet my hair and call me brave and hold me in their arms btw

[caspercryptid]

I just want to add on here because I had an experience with this that, while awful and stressful, ended up applicable to both my mental health journey and my physical health journey, if anyone is seeking formal diagnosis for whatever reason.

I have fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia is what is called a Diagnosis Of Exclusion. That means there is no test for fibro. There is tests for everything but fibro, and you have to go to every fucking doctor imaginable getting every test imaginable until they all come back negative. This is Fucking Expensive, and it sucks. It involves a lot of x-rays and blood tests, which are even more expensive. Allergy tests, also expensive. It was painful and awful and at the end of all of it I ended up at a pain center and they went "we would love to help, genuinely, but we need a fibro diagnosis to start treating you for fibro and we don't do that here" and I looked at the nurse and I just. Broke. I explained everything I'd been through and I ended up saying, fairly explicitly, "can you give me a referral to a doctor that will diagnose me with fibromyalgia"

And they did.

At the end of all of that was me saying the words "I need you to send me to a doctor that will BE WILLING TO GIVE ME THIS DIAGNOSIS" was the fucking miracle worker. So. For everyone dealing with this with psychiatry and psychology. Unfortunately this is a nightmarish awful process, and this advice may not be helpful to people who don't have the money or insurance to switch doctors. But if your doctor gives you this shit, drop them. Sometimes the practice you're going to will have another doctor on staff who does the same thing, call in and ask to see them instead. I have had to do this for migraines and adhd too! Sometimes you have to sit down in front of a doctor and go "I have been experiencing these symptoms and I am seeking this diagnosis so I can pursue treatment" and some doctors will hear you! It can be scary but you gotta say Treatment and not mention medications and usually that stops them from thinking you're drug-seeking.

Something I've also found helpful is to get a doctor on your side that isn't the one that can give you the diagnosis. Your primary care doctor would get bitchy if you tried to self dx with the flu without a test, but they're more likely to nod along if you describe adhd symptoms and say you're seeking an adhd diagnosis, and if you can get them on your side, they can write you a referral that will vouch for you, and then you can go to the psychologist and say "my primary care doctor sent me here for adhd symptoms" and then it's not you saying you have adhd! It's your primary care doctor! And they wouldnt get mad at a primary care doctor, would they???

Self-advocacy is fucking Hard and Awful and the deck is stacked against you but I just wanted to offer my own experience to offer a few tips for people who have the resources and to say that sometimes you do everything right and do everything they tell you to do and they still won't listen to you until you get another doctor on your side. And sometimes doctors outside the field of specialty can be the ones that are the most helpful (my primary care doctor was fantastic, and my physical therapist is actually who first went "Hey your reactions feel like fibro to me")

Good luck everyone, hope this was helpful, sorry OP for the long rambling reply this just really struck a chord with me— I haven't sought a formal diagnosis for autism even though I Know I have it because it wouldn't be helpful to me but i remember going through this with adhd and fibro and I learned a lot.

a while ago i attended this lecture on autism. guy in the audience said he had many of the symptoms that were presented and asked what should he do to get treatment and possibly a diagnosis. instead of answering his question the psychologist went on a tangent about how “the clinic reigns all powerful over guesswork”, and how actually it has become a trend amongst little children on the internet to claim that they are autistic for cool points, and that this hurts real autistic people. no she didn’t tell him how to get his symptoms looked into, she just made it very clear that to her, aknowledging your own symptoms is bad and evil and hurts the poor real mentally ill people.

an ex-friend of mine, then a psychology major and by now probably a full psychologist, once lectured me on how horrible and bad it was that i told her “i probably have some sort of neurodivergency”, and that if i were her patient she would never give me a diagnosis because “you aren’t like this now, but i know that if you get a diagnosis you’ll use it as an excuse to start treating people badly. that’s just how mentally ill people are.”

same ex-friend was extremely disgusted when she found out that fans sometimes make neurodivergency headcanons for characters that have the same symptoms as they do, and that authors sometimes write books with neurodivergent protagonists in stories that don’t focus on that (ex: she seemed horrified that percy jackson has adhd?)

multiple psychologists i’ve seen on facebook agree that they should refuse to treat patients that say “i’m here because i have symptoms of a disorder and wonder if i have it”, and that a patient should arrive to a psychologist as a blank slate.

school psychologist asked me how i was feeling about my trauma situation and i told him i thought my friends would leave me. instead of addressing the issue he said that that no i didn’t, that i was lying, that i had searched “bpd symptoms” online and now i was faking symptoms because i wanted to have bpd, that he shouldn’t have told me he suspected i had a personality disorder because now look what was happening. no, i didn’t search bpd symptoms online. yes, my friends left me, it was a completely founded belief and not a symptom, let alone a faked symptom.

so the next time you hear someone saying they’re “anti self-diagnosis” i want you to understand what they’re saying. what they’re saying is:

- i don’t want people to be aware of their own symptoms

- i don’t think my patients should have access to any information that doesn’t come from me

- i don’t think neurodivergent people should learn how to cope with their symptoms and live “normal” lives

- i think neurodivergent people should be denied a diagnosis because the moment they get one they will become evil and dangerous

- i don’t think people who don’t look like a stereotype could possibly be neurodivergent, even if they have all the symptoms, so i think they are faking it for attention and should be denied treatment