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One of the hardest things is making that first post when you’ve been reading in the background but kind of want to be a part of it. But you also can’t deal with the pressure of no one replying, or just as equally bad - too many people replying and feeling like you have to reply back to everyone but it’s too overwhelming. And then the pressure of actually knowing what to say in your first post…

Anyway, hello. I’m very nearly 50, although my head doesn’t feel like that. And recently, or very soon to be diagnosed as autistic/asd or whatever the correct terminology now is (seems Asperger’s is no longer). I almost feel like I don’t actually need to be told by a psychiatrist as I know I am (I have had a pre diagnostic assessment where apparently it’s looking likely it’s adhd too). But I’m not going to go over everything as it’s actually starting to wear me out thinking about it constantly. And I have to say I’m not particularly over the moon about it, especially as when it all first came to light I presumed I’d feel enlightened in some way to have it confirmed, which I did for around a day, then after a lot of reading and trying to get my head around everything I’ve realised that there is actually minimal support in the UK for people of my age, and that a lot of people don’t understand, or want to understand, or think you just want a label, and don’t get at all how utterly hard you find every day life because you are so good at pretending there is nothing wrong because they can’t see in your head or realise how utterly lonely you are and have been for years, even though you can’t actually deal with having people around but at the same time kind of want people around. And the crippling anxiety that is with you for every second of the day, or how so very many noises affect your life and concentration and people just think you are a grumpy angry woman (even when you thought you were doing a good job of hiding it but apparently not). Or how you either go completely blank because you are overwhelmed, or talk quite a lot of absolute nonsense and go on and on, and then worry about it obsessively for quite a long time after. I think you probably get the drift if you’ve so much as got this far of ridiculously long sentences and not nearly enough full stops (and probably paragraphs), which is ironic as you yourself find it tremendously hard to read great walls of text but find you in fact do the exact same thing yourself.

I’m not entirely sure where I was going with this, but there, I’ve done my first post.

One question, is this a predominantly US forum?

Welcome Georgiabee, hope you find some forums , threads ….that catch your interest . And enjoy time when you stop by here. Glad to see you .!

Welcome to WP! I hope you find the company pleasant.

And you don't need to give me a personal reply. When you wave to the crowd I'll figure I'm included.

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

Willkommen

Welcome! Glad to have you here.

There probably are more US members here than anything else but I have seen quite a lot from the UK too. I'm in Scotland.

No need to respond me individually either

Welcome! I hope you enjoy WP.

My impression is that there are about equally large numbers of USA and UK members. Then Canada and Australia. Then NZ.

Thanks for the welcome everyone. Reassuring to know there are UKers here too, not sure why, we’re all human. Guess I would have felt like even more if an outsider than I do everywhere anyway!

Yes that was a long paragraph. I almost went insane.

First things first. WELCOME TO WRONG PLANET.

There are many people with Asperger's, so you are not alone in this world. Enjoy communicating with them.

Ha. I do apologise, I think I threw up a little bit of my mind in the original post. I’ve just reread it and nearly joined you on the insane front.

I do feel very alone and have done for a long time. Maybe the diagnosis will mean I can find my tribe, I don’t know. It’s worth a try I guess as it’s not much fun.

Well you are with friends here. So be who you are not what someone wants you to be. Be yourself.

I loved reading your huge paragraph of mind-vomit with the long sentences because it just felt exactly like how my own brain works!

Welcome to WP!

Not just in the UK. Everywhere, as far as I can tell. If anything, it's my impression (from afar) that the autistic community is better-developed (relatively speaking) in the UK than anywhere else in the world.

There is indeed not much in the way of professional support for autistic adults. So we need to create our own autistic-led peer support groups/forums instead. (I also think autistic-led peer support groups/forums would still be valuable even if we also had more professional support.)

Pre-COVID, there were in-person support groups for autistic adults in most major cities. Hopefully such groups will gradually come back to life.

In the meantime, welcome to Wrong Planet.

Welcome!