Hello!

I've only discovered the term SPD a couple of days ago and I had to join the forum. While I do not know if I have SPD, the symptoms fit something I've been going through my entire life.

I was diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder and Panic Disorder at a young age but never a reason of where it stemmed from. People have thought PTSD all the way through a suspicion of RAD which neither fit. I kept googling what I felt until something popped up and matched it. After finding SPD, I popped the term into youtube and showed family members the way children with pretty bad SPD acted and they said that's exactly how I acted for all the same reasons when I was little. (Previously people had thought I had some repressed trauma)

The thing is, I'm looking for an official diagnosis but I don't know where to go. Every time I've tried to get help they just fell back on my General Anxiety Disorder (which I do have) as an explanation of what I felt or how I acted. Is there any way an adult can be tested and diagnosed for this?

Typically SPD is diagnosed by an Occupational Therapist or a Neuropsychologist after several hours of testing. There is an adult section to this forum where, perhaps, someone could share how they were diagnosed as an adult.

I was diagnosed by an occupational therapist twice. This included me filling out forms of what my answers to different sensory questions were, talking to an occupational therapist, and there was a physically looking at me part scheduled; but we'd ran over and I was such an obvious case that we didn't bother scheduling another one to do that. The only looking at time they got was while discussing my symptoms with me, and both of them noted symptoms in that period of time. (So, they are watching then too)

For example; one of the OTs went and tried turning off the florescent lights while we were talking and I immediately became more verbal.

One of the OTs also in that also categorizes people into hyper/hypo/seeking. You can be in multiple categories. She didn't go into the movement disorders as part of SPD or senosory discrimination disorders though.