Hi
This post might be a little more personal and anecdotal than the others. I write from experience, from things I’ve heard from people around me, and from vague memories of studies I’ve skimmed here and there. I write, as I always do, to get thoughts I have out of my head and into a more solid medium (although I guess both within my head and on my server it’s just some electrical potential. Perhaps I should print these).
This post is about my autism and adhd diagnoses, and how I came to believe I was a trans woman. It’s long and winding and not nearly as good as some of my other ones. To anyone that knows me as an acquaintance or even a friend by reading this you will probably get to know me far more than you ever wanted so, fair warning.
When I was younger
(Content warning: mentions of suicide)
I want to start by just talking chronologically about my life, writing down what I remember. I hope to write a complete story that isn’t constructed to try and justify anything that comes later. That is hard, of course. Perhaps I bring these memories up post-hoc, based on who I think I am now, and simply tell myself they are core to my story. A rationalization, essentially. Still, it’s the best I’ve got. You can skip all of this if you want. Ok, with a few hundred words of caveats out of the way:
I have a few core perceptions of growing up, of how I saw myself:
- I hated how I looked. At a young age, maybe 10 onwards, I overate a lot and became quite chubby. I hated looking in the mirror, having my picture taken, going to the hairdresser, clothes shopping, and undressing for swimming lessons or PE classes. At the time, I felt ugly (nothing more), and that dislike permeated anything that made me think of or could be linked to my appearance. It was bad, I would hide my body behind a towel at the pool, I wouldn’t change around other kids and went home instead, I tore up pictures of myself and almost broke my dads camera pushing it away. My parents had a hard time finding clothes I would be willing to wear, and I could refuse wearing them for the most arbitrary of reasons. At around 16, I lost a bit of weight and looking back, I was kinda cute, but i still very much hated how I looked, with almost all the same behaviors as before. This feeling only really began to subside a few years ago, maybe around the age of 21-22
- I thought I was weird. I was in the smaller groups in school, the nerds as it were. I played a lot of video games, hated sports, didn’t get invited to nor go to parties (except dinner parties my parents brought me to). I thought I was bad at socializing, but mainly I was just quite quiet and didn’t feel like an extrovert. This belief that I was weird thought didn’t trouble me much. I always had at least one close friend, and I could enjoy the things I liked. Sometimes I wondered if it would be fun to be one of the popular kids, or to have a girlfriend, but it wasn’t a huge concern for me on its own.
- I had a lot of social anxiety. Interactions with strangers terrified me. One vivid memory I have is of when i was around 9, my mum took me and my sister to a new horse riding stables. Just before we left I refused to shake the hand of the lady that worked there, and hid behind my mum instead. She shouted at me a lot during the car ride home for that. I think I remember it because it constructed how I dealt with all social interaction thereafter. I would try to do the things that were expected of me, but I knew they would be anxiety inducing. I avoided physical contact, new people, calls, friends except my closest ones. How people perceived me in those situations would consume my mind, even just being noticed was a problem. I dreaded going to the shops, of lingering to long in one place, of having anything out of the ordinary go wrong or anything that might bring attention to me. It extended into all of my life, to times nobody was there, that I was failing at being a human. Moments which should have been good memories where I even may have smiled and had fun I usually don’t remember well. I think that’s because recalling them only generates thoughts as to how people perceived me then, of if I said the right things or came off as interesting, and they would always be negative and anxiety inducing. The sad side effect of this is I don’t remember these events that well, as without regular recall those memories don’t get reinforced over time.
- I thought I was worthless. My parents, in particular my mother, shouted at me a lot, and as a young kid would spank me as well. I wasn’t a great kid, I didn’t want to do chores or homework or socialise. I wanted to play video games and watch mythbusters, and I got screamed at a lot. I cried often from this, and remembered being told to “stop feeling sorry for yourself”. I knew I wasn’t doing things I should, and although I didn’t like that about me, it never really changed. At some points they stopped asking me to do chores, and I at least went to do sports or swimming or whatever it is my mother wanted. At the same time, there was my sister. (Kristine, if you are reading this, I hold none of this against you today. It’s a part of my story and I want to write it down, I’m not sure how much of it you remember if any, nor how relevant it actually actually is, but it’s in the past now. You are a wonderful sister). From around 8 to 15 I had a very harsh relationship with my sister. It went a bit beyond sibling rivalry, I think. I wasn’t a perfect brother, boystrous and loud and a little disgusting and argumentative too. For this, I could not touch anything of hers, could not be near her, couldn’t lay her plate at the table sometimes. I was regularly reminded of how disgusting I was, of how bad my memory was, of how often I was wrong by her. She began at one point saying how she wished I was dead, which got so bad my parents barred her from saying it. I still felt sometimes though, in some moments, that’s what she wanted to say, even though she didn’t. At 16 she went on an exchange year, and when she came back, it was completely different. No more that feeling of being insufferable. I remember during the year she was away an odd sense of reprieve, and also of complete surprise when she came back. All in all, I’m not sure how much of those years that stuck and influenced my later problems with mental health, which in truth only really began at age 18 (after our relationship began to feel normal again), but I do know that my self confidence was at a point non existent. The dislike of my appearance, doubt about my intelligence, social withdrawal, and feeling of being disgusting all culminated in me hating myself. As I grew older, this went from something I believed but only had anxiety for, to something that made me want to take my life. I almost did that at 19.
- I had an odd relationship with school. I usually did quite well in subjects I enjoyed, I definitely noticed I raised my hand a lot more often than others, even when I was scared people would judge me for either speaking english or broken swedish. I never did any optional homework, and was late or even didn’t hand in many assignments. I heard the words “You would be good at this if you just tried” multiple times. Maths exemplified this well, as I was active in class and usually did well on tests, but was so out of practice that I made a lot of simple mistakes, was slow, and could not have survived without a formula book. My grades were all over the place, but I got into a good highschool and then a good university.
- I hated my birthday. At around 17 I really began to have issues with receiving gifts, especially on my birthday and christmas. My earliest memory of that is crying myself to sleep one night after my parents asked what I wanted for my birthday. I think (though I’m not sure) that around then they (my parents) were arguing a lot about money (and, just in general) so perhaps I just didn’t want to burden them with that, but even then my self worth was a component. This feeling of not deserving anything was combined with the fact that I would never give anyone else presents, and given that these gift giving days are somehow societally expected, it just felt wrong to be accepting things from people on these days. It got worse, to a point where I would shut down entirely if people did anything to acknowledge my birthday. I remember one night, after such a shutdown day, being online with my friends (who i hadn’t told) and playing together as normal. My mum came down, presumably woken by noise I was making, and asked teary eyed “why are you like this”. I didn’t have an answer
That’s essentially my childhood and I would describe it as rocky. Many other things weren’t noteworthy. I liked other classic boy things, even if a bit autism coded, like model railways and lego and guns and programming and science and tech. I grew more mature on the outside as I tore myself apart from the inside. Things did get better though, through time and exposure. At 21 I finished a bachelors degree and started working full time. The fear of never being able to have a job faded. I moved in with my sister and her then boyfriend, and did my own laundry, and that fear faded. I went to the shops a few times, called services I needed to call, did a little cooking, and by 24 or so was at least willing to accept I could exist as a human being, if a bit of a weird and lazy one. I still have a suffocating social anxiety, but lesser than the extreme one I used to have. Avoidance is still my primary method of maintaining my mental health. I willingly went to someones birthday party a few weeks ago, the first time in many many years. Cried a lot during that though.
Autism
At 25, in 2025, I decided to get a private autism assessment. After a few bad episodes and a therapist who said he couldn’t remember how to do a referral to the public psychiatrist clinic, I went to a private one. I hard heard of autism at least a few years earlier, mostly via memes on reddit. My earliest interaction was with a kid on my rugby team who had an aspergers diagnosis (the name at the time, roughly equivalent to level 1 autism), one of the few people there I got along with. Growing up, in our family, mental health was never discussed (not even after I turned over my suicide kit to my parents). Hospital was somewhere you went if your arm had fallen off and essentially nothing else. Everyone was a little bit weird, and mental illness was something that meant you should be institutionalized. If I did have autism I knew I didn’t have it severely, but I had a lot of signs, and most of all I thought it would counteract some of the insecurity I felt around social situations. Because of how I was raised regarding self and society, I was never going to use any of the help an autism diagnosis entitled me to. I didn’t want to be a burden, and knew that many people had it worse than I. I still think that. It also felt like the diagnosis that my family would be most likely to “buy”, and so when they asked if I wanted to also asses ADHD I said no.
Now, it seems both obvious and mundane. I stim, I avoid eye contact, I infodump and I’m still bad at most social queues. I always did these things but I didn’t know why. Now, I worry less about it though, fight it less, and most of all, I don’t worry about not being able to be friends with everyone. I know people like me and they are great, I relate to them and we get along. In a way, life just makes more sense than it used to.
The label “autism” like quite a few others does many things depending on who you ask. It holds people back from improving themselves. It allows healthcare systems to provide standardized support for those that need it. It steals societal resources from people who actually need it. It creates communities where people can give each other support. It creates echo chambers that feed into delusions. It’s something everyone has a little of. It’s something only people with high support needs should have. It’s a disease to be cured. It’s a natural variation of the human brain.
The list is endless. I have my own thoughts on it, but they hardly matter. All I know is this: This label, autism, is important to some people. It helps them understand themselves and find support, societal or social. It’s understood and managed differently in different countries, with better or worse outcomes. The best thing we can do, as is so often the case, is to understand the stories of those for whom “autism” means something personal, whether they chose to associate with it, or were given this label. Above all else, it’s most important to be kind and understanding, to others, and to yourself.
ADHD
And yet, I still thought I might have ADHD. I’ve never been hyperactive, at least not more than usual kids. However I was bad with executive function, the part where in life you do the things your brain thinks you should do. Believing I was lazy and just couldn’t fix it for some reason fed deeply into my insecurities. There’s something horrifying about wanting to grow up, “I’m not a kid anymore, I need to take my life seriously” and still somehow not being able to do that. I couldn’t rationalize it away, it was too obvious. I would rather sit and stare into a wall than focus on something I needed to do. I couldn’t even procrastinate, because well, I had work to do and I shouldn’t be procrastinating. So, a year after getting and autism diagnosis, I sought an ADHD assessment too.
OK time for meta commentary. You’ll notice I use assessment vs diagnosis carefully, by which I mean when I went for these assessments I didn’t want to “skew” the process by “wanting” a certain outcome. I had a theory, but the medical professional would do an objective review and I would give them objective information (in many ways the same approach I had for the first section of this post). Thing is, this mindset is draining. After getting a diagnosis, every time I speak with them about medication, effects, side effects, I still don’t trust that I have ADHD. I feel like an impostor, and then I worry that they can see that. I don’t really know if this feeling will go away, but I hope so.
Being Trans
Speaking of impostor syndrome, none sometimes gets to me worse than that surrounding whether I’m trans. Don’t get me wrong, I know that I am. It’s just so obvious, how I feel and react when I notice my boobs or wear feminine clothes or someone uses female pronouns or my new name. I’ve been taking estrogen for 5 months now and it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I kind of, almost, just barely, don’t hate the way I look in a mirror sometimes. Still, I don’t introduce myself with my new name, If people ask for my pronouns I say any, and I’ve never girlmoded in public. The fear of not being able to pass in future is one that I hope will, well, pass. Either because I actually convince myself I pass, but better yet, that I just stop worrying about it.
What still gets to me though is why did it take so long for me to realize? Was my dislike of my appearance actually dysphoria that I just never connected to possibly being trans? Did my autism, by making societal concepts of gender always feel “weird” slow me down in realizing that I nonetheless identified as female? I don’t think I’m non binary, even if I behave a bit that way right now, because I think that behavior is just a defensive response to my fears of not passing well. It would have been nice to have realized earlier, but regardless, I’m incredibly glad I finally did.