Greetings

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I am new to this forum and am impressed and glad to see a large community of autistic and Asperger people expressing themselves and relating to each other on-line. I am 49 years old. Along with the newness of writing blogs like this I am also new to an Aspergers self-diagnosis and this has come with a tremendous relief. I fully support when I hear people say that AS is not a disorder but a different way of looking at the world. So, when I finally understood that my brain is wired permanently differently it brought rapid psychological healing. In other words there is a wonderful irony that this diagnosis is a healing one because now the world makes more sense. The mis-fitting of decades can be understood which is extremely releasing. I can re-evaluate the traumas, mostly self-induced, of inhabiting a different world in real time. I have gained the self-diagnosis in three steps. Firstly, having the external verification of my daughter's brightness helped me suddenly realise my own. Secondly, getting an ADD diagnosis, got me in touch with the field of neurological wiring and helped me get on Concerta which even in middle-age made a real difference. Those two steps themselves set me off like a rocket and I moved from the quiet margins to a career in international research in health and population issues. Still plagued with work aversions and self-doubt, but with adaptation skills, I kinda survived at a high-functioning level. But, now the key piece of the self-knowledge puzzle has taken me much, much further in terms of understanding how things work and how I fit in. I will write more about AS self-diagnosis another time. For now, I am greeting and expressing gratitude. Alongside the science I have consumed and enjoyed much philosophy over the years. Before I had the ADD diagnosis I became more spiritually inclined, practised and still practise yoga and meditation, slowly adjusted my way out of self-medication. I now know that this relates to trying hard to function without understanding the language and cues that people were using. It's like there was a direct understanding I could reach and with this in place I could go through the motions of more regular communication, but, of course, amazed at the inefficiency and deception that characterise many normal conversations. Now that I know there is AS and that this fits my wiring portfolio with precision, I can function much more easily, particularly balancing the external rewards that I have never understood with internal ones that I value highly. I am also writing a book called Mystic in Science, because mystics need to get real and scientists need opening up - but more of this on another day. Unused as I am to expressed honestly I am completely expecting that you will make me regret it, but perhaps not...