Jsbodhi I am glad you shared your tale here. Let's be... "happy accidents"...? Or something resembling them...
That is awful about the way you were treated. I too was treated badly by adults as a child and I cannot fathom any of it, it seems not petty but downright cruel. I mean come on, the child is an innocent party especially when it comes to the circumstances under which they came to be?
Well that self diagnosis was a long time coming. About 8 years ago, I obtained some tests from when I was a kid- every single year from kindergarten up. But most importantly, an IQ test. two of them actually, taken within about 8 months of each other when I was near old enough to drive. I saw an enormous disparity between my verbal and non verbal score and just started googling it.
I thought I would discover I had ADD as I had suspected it for near 2 decades and anyway have a neurological disorder that it often accompanies. It turns out I probably do have it according to the neuropsychologist I will be testing with. But I digress.
So anyway up pops "non verbal learning disorder" over and over. My heart sank. I immediately went in to denial. But life continued to prove over and again that I could not just forget about it and go ahead and live successfully. So from time to time I'd look into it again not knowing what to do. I'd bring it up to therapists who would only get frustrated and not know what I wanted or demean me like the guy who kept calling me "deficient". After many years I finally figured out I needed a neuropsychologist to talk to and so I did.