POST-AUTISM+ADHD DIAGNOSIS LOG - Sept. 2024

Sarah Grabman — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 20:25:07 GMT

FROM SEPTEMBER 21, 2024:

Okay. This is insane.
I'm freaking out.
Oh. My God.

Okay, here are the basic facts.

I was diagnosed with autism and ADHD officially yesterday.

I'm processing this massive confirmation of what I've been suspecting about myself for over a year now.

I am researching more and more. I'm trying to fill my brain with more information to help validate my suspicions.

Even though my suspicions have now been confirmed by a professional who considers himself an autism expert
(and I consider that as well).
Someone who is experienced in high masking autistic people, which is also what I consider myself to be
(and what he considers me to be).

To have the validation and the recognition that somebody actually saw me behind the mask of what I thought I needed to be to fit into society.

Somebody saw beneath it.

That he was able to validate my struggles and not just dismiss them or label them as something else has been huge.

I am facing a lot of feelings in this.

It's very fresh.

I spent the whole day yesterday just dealing with the pain in my body, the processing of all of this information, feeling of relief, of validation, and giving that gift to myself, like I deserve to be validated in my experience.

I deserve to be seen in what I deal with, and gratitude for being able to find somebody who could give that to me.

Being able to have that in my life now is huge.

Feels like a massive shift in my life where I feel like I can really settle into who I actually am.

And feel like there's space in the world for me. And I'm not just an alien.

I've spent so much of all of my life feeling just like other people know something that I don't -- that there's something that everybody has had access to, some big secret that people are carrying around, and somehow I just don't know what it is.

To be able to place autism, ADHD to that feeling helps reframe my life in a way that's really nice.

The doctor who evaluated me said that he really wants to see me being my own boss, setting my own schedule, being able to make a living off of my creativity and my gifts (my ability to communicate through art and through writing).

And it's like, doctor's orders.

I can do that.

I mean, it's a struggle because of executive functioning problems, socializing issues --

It's just it's so funny to me, I just, I really thought that I was capable of being a front-facing public person.

You know, I thought that I was able to be in movies.

My dream for a long time has been to make movies, and I have made movies, but it costs so much of me to make movies.

And I don't know if it's what's best for me.

I've been having to let go of the life that I thought I was going to have. And the person that I thought I was, and the person I thought I was going to be.

I'm grieving that dream, that potential, realizing that I need to prioritize my needs, give myself accommodations -- make my own job because I have failed.

I have really failed in every job. Not in the way that I've done a bad job. I think that I'm a very good worker.

But I can't sustainably, healthily exist in a traditional workspace. I've known this for a while. For quite a few years. And I've been trying to figure out how to make a sustainable living for myself with my strengths and my skills.

Knowing now that I'm autistic, that I have ADHD, and now I have a professional expert's advice to go ahead with what's best suited for me and my life, which is to be my own boss.

What's best suited for me is to sell my own things, and I guess I'm just scared. I'm scared. I'm scared. I'm scared because it feels like my only option.

I've worked in many different fields, many different industries, and I end up running into the same problems of burnout, boredom, insecurity, inability to perform at the same level every day.

Exhaustion, feeling of being a fraud.

I feel like I need to fit a mold of a person who I set out to be in that job, and that I can't fully exist as myself without disrupting the work environment, because fully existing as myself would mean not going to work.

And it's hard when there's bills to pay and there's mouths to feed.

So, it's only my own mouth to feed, but I do want to figure out how to build a world where I can sustain myself and those that I love.

The whole point of this is that I was looking up the unemployment rate for autistic people because I was watching a YouTube video by an autistic creator who was also late diagnosed and used to be a lawyer, and she is unemployed currently and said that 78.3% of autistic adults are unemployed.

I was like, no way, that's too many people. That's like most of them.

And not that I don't trust her, but I just had to look it up more for myself. And yeah, it's insane.

Autism unemployment was approximately 85% in 2021. Research shows that autistic individuals face higher unemployment rates and social isolation than other disabilities. According to Colombo, in 2021, discrimination can largely be found unconsciously, which makes it more difficult to identify and prove its existence. However, there are several barriers that autistic people face when interviewing for a job. It affects both the interviewer and the interviewee."

Okay. So this is from an article called Autistic Unemployment Paradox.

I feel like autism is just a paradox, dealing with paradox. Autism/ADHD is paradox.

Oh my God, Unemployment among those with autism is approximately 85%. Autistic people still face the highest rates of unemployment of all disabled groups.

This is wild. In the United States, the unemployment rate for adults with autism is estimated to be between 80 and 90%. This is a problem. This is a problem.

This is an absolute problem.

And I think I just want to put a light on it.

This is not fair. The feeling coming out is that this is not fair.

Autistic people are people who need to pay for life. And who do live in this society. And there needs to be more spaces that can employ autistic people, because autistic people have so many strengths.

So many strengths. But those strengths are not valued currently.

I think a huge part of the work that I need to do in the world is valuing the strength of neurodivergence.

Showing that difference is not a weakness and that there can be money, abundance, wealth within that difference.

I don't know exactly what that looks like.

I have a lot of ideas, but I just feel a fire under my belly because I now know that this is not an isolated problem.

I've been struggling with jobs. Not because it's a personal downfall -- I'm capable and I'm smart (and I didn't know that for a long time).

And I have a lot of gifts to share. I have a lot that I can contribute to the world, but there's not a lot of spaces that value that monetarily.

That's a problem. And it's not just for me, it's for many other people.

Let's look up how many people live with autism.

Okay. It says Information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates over 5.4 million adults in the United States have autism spectrum disorder. More than 2% of the population.

Okay. As the current stat, 2.2% of American adults have autism and live in the United States.

So let's see about the world and how many adults live with autism in the world.

Around 75 million people have autism spectrum disorder.

That's 1% of the world's population.

The 1%, baby. That's the 1%, but not in the 1%.

The 1% without employment opportunities. Just fascinating.

And this doesn't include all the autistic people who don't even know if they're autistic, who are just struggling incredibly hard and not having words or support, language, environments for that struggle.

Okay. I feel like that's enough for this video. And I'm making YouTube videos now. I think I might be.

I think I might be making movies this way. This could be a movie. I don't need anybody else to make it with me.

I think it's incredible that people can live in this world, and that we can have societies and that we can materialize ideas that come from where we don't know. The thoughts come in and it's amazing that people make stuff. I think it's incredible that people exist.

I also really, incredibly struggle with making things with people. And it comes at an extreme cost to my mental well-being, and it's just a whole added layer of confusion that maybe I don't need. And I'm learning how to connect with people in a way that feels not so costly to my well-being and my soul.

I mean, this is one of the ways.

I'm in a state.

I'm in a state of -- this is okay.

Sarah Grabman blog

POST-AUTISM+ADHD DIAGNOSIS LOG - Sept. 2024