So probably about six months ago I got an autism diagnosis from my psychologist (basically I said "I think I might have autism" and she replied "yeah probably" and gave me a questionnaire). I had been suspecting it for a few months, after relating way to much with autism posts on tumblr. But when I got my diagnosis, even though I was kind of ready to get affirmation, it still hit me like a train and basically took me out.
For probably three or four months I honestly was going through all the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. With my ADHD diagnosis last year, it made perfect sense and I went about my days afterwards like normal, but with a better understanding of myself. With the autism diagnosis, it almost felt like a death sentence. Like it was official, I could never be normal or even reasonably fake being normal. My preconcieved notions of what autism was led me to think negatively of myself, even if they weren't true to begin with. I felt lesser-than.
It took a lot of effort to get over my negative feelings. My therapist suggested that I should do some research to help put my mind at ease, and see how other adults were handling it. And honestly, those blog posts that pop up as the first few results on Google just made me feel worse, at least at first. Going through the autism tag on tumblr helped some, as people there talked about some of the lesser known quirks and parts of being autistic. It felt more human than reading a post online from a freelance writer (no offence to them but it just didn't help me that much).
I still feel a little weird about my diagnosis. Many of the negative thoughts have gone, but I still can't shake the "steoreotypical autistic" form my head, and boy oh boy do I feel guilty about that. Every day I learn more about how autism is represented in me; like my little wiggle-dance I do when I eat something really good, my intense adversion to eye-contact (to the point where I haven't looked at the face of some of my roommates' friends), my special interests, my over-the-top facial expressions when I feel that someone is looking at me, and more. There's a fairly new book called So, I'm Autistic that I want to get that's about being diagnosed with autism as a young adult/teen, and navigating the world with that diagnosis. I think that would help some, But for now, #autism does just fine.
The real question that I have now is when/if I tell my bosses so that during busy times I can get accomodations. I've worked at my job for four and a half years now, so its basically expected that I can handle busy/intense times (which are few and far between). But the last two holidays that were busy absolutely destroyed me. I know that it's because my anxiety masked my autism, and that has only recently gotten much better, and has let both the autism and the ADHD shine through.