Research

Research in the context of the diagnostic journey is the process one may launch into to find out as much information as possible to try and deal with the self-questioning.

Examples may include:

• Looking up clinical definitions of autism
• Searching for and studying the content of autistic YouTube and Twitter accounts
• Searching for online tests that you can do on yourself at home

The strict clinical definitions may be of limited usefulness as they tend to be framed in terms of fairly specific deficits that may be difficult to identify as a match with your personal experience. Autistic social media accounts may prove a lot more useful as they describe a broader range of more true-to-life experience that may resonate with you more readily. Looking at the content from several different accounts also helps, as each autistic person's own experience is unique to them.