Different girl

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Hi. Nice to meet you all.

I was diagnosed with AS as a child but spent a lot of time denying it. Only now, later on in my life, have I realised that there are ways in which I am significantly different from others. This has brought up questions regarding both the past and present. Was I wrong to deny it all these years? Would my life have been better if I'd chosen to be more open about it, rather than sweeping it under the carpet and acting as though I was normal?

Am here now because I'm struggling with social isolation and lack of self-esteem, and am wondering how much AS is at play. I've always questioned how a 'syndrome' could be diagnosed seemingly from a mere set of personality traits. (seemingly being the operative word - I know it's not quite like that.) Why do my personality traits mean that I'm 'different'? Why is my personality not good enough to be normal?

I hope to find answers/advice here.

Hey Gossip Girl welcome.

Welcome! I think the difference between autism and personality traits is that autism is only diagnosed when the traits cause impairment in everyday life. As for whether your life would have been better if you hadn't denied it, we can never know.

Thank you both.

Recently I started to wonder if there are aspects of my life that were impaired without me realising it. This specifically relates to the last two years where I was in a profession where I became very unhappy and started to feel like a failure no matter how hard I tried. It got to the point where I felt like my personality was the thing that was stopping me, because I couldn't think of any other reason. And that's when I started to wonder if it was because of AS.

Welcome to Wrong Planet!