Magnolia Connection

"I was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder by a doctor in 9th grade, but it never felt quite accurate. After years of my brother calling me autistic, telling my parents that I was more than just shy, that I was instead different, having high-functioning depression for seven years, and meeting a boy with high-functioning autism who got diagnosed at 14 because of learning problems, I started looking more and more into the high-functioning aspect of autism and it clicked. I originally didn’t go to Magnolia Connection to try to get a diagnosis because I would have to wait months to get tested and at 20 years old, I couldn’t wait any longer once I had realized what I’m pretty sure I had. I saw a guy psychologist who didn’t specialize in girls with high-functioning autism and wasn’t able to do advanced testing. Upon one interview, he thought that I had high-functioning autism, but after a questionnaire, he questioned whether I had autism because the questionnaire came back normal and I was crying. Apparently, autistic individuals are just emotionless dolls, which is so not true. Anyways, he thought that I deserved a provisional high-functioning autism diagnosis. That meant that he wasn’t 100% sure that I had it. I felt very frustrated and I knew that I needed to see a professional who could do advanced testing, which was Dr. Soyer at Magnolia Connection. I’ll admit that I was afraid that I would once again get turned down with no autism diagnosis and have to give up, but she didn’t let me down when it came to her knowledge towards high-functioning autism in girls and I will forever be grateful. If you come here, you will definitely be treated with kindness and the right amount of psychological education. I just hope that high-functioning individuals can keep being diagnosed at younger and younger ages in the future with places like this around and spreading a wider awareness about different levels of autism, ADHD, depression, etc. For those who don’t know much about autism in general, just like social anxiety disorder, it can be associated with social difficulties, but not always. However, what significantly differentiates the two disorders is learning problems in some individuals, heightened senses, obsessive interests, repetitive behaviors, and disliking change. Also, I recently learned that by being a neurological disorder, autism is even often linked to hyper mobile joints, polycystic ovarian syndrome (a hormonal disorder that causes polycystic ovaries, irregular and absent periods, an increase in body hair, weight gain, acne, and fertility problems), and scoliosis (improper posture caused by a curved spine)."