Development of an Autistic Personality 'The advantages and disadvantages of diagnosis and misdiagnosis and treatment in the development of my autistic personality' I’ll start with one of my mottos: Change is good! Now that that’s set the cat amongst the pigeons as far as what is expected of someone with autism, I hope I have your attention. It has been just over 2 years since I heard the wonderful words, ‘you have autism’. During that time, many things have changed for me. I have grown in many ways and shrunk in many others. I knew life would never be the same for me after those simple words, but I was ready. I am not and will never be a patient. In order to reach that goal, and become master of both sides of my personality, I need to embrace the things that I find especially challenging. This should enable me to learn about myself and my view on life. ‘I believe wholeheartedly in the idea of openess; about my place in the world and how I can make a difference.’ As viewers, you are essentially witnessing the first wobbly steps of an emerging person. This presentation gives me the chance to show you how subtle autism can be and how difficult that can make the process of diagnosis as well as understanding for the rest of the world. I will be covering the time prior to diagnosis where I underwent 2 years of psychotherapy including RET and EMDR sessions. After this, I will explain the diagnosis process, what I subsequently am doing to help myself and the manner in which I made use of the network around me. I will end the presentation with a series of conclusions about the positives and negatives regarding a late diagnosis and the treatment I received pre-diagnosis and the treatment post-diagnosis. Length:40 minutes (time for questions can be added on) The presentation can be given in English or Dutch. Accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation.