When did you find out? How long have you known?

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Hello everyone.
I usually do not participate in these forums (although I read them from now and then) but I have two questions that I would like all to answer, if you wish.
I've been feeling like crap lately. I have a pretty meaning job, the most important relationship in my life is coming to pieces and my short term-life changing plans too.
I'm 30 and I've been diagnosed 2 years ago. I always think that my life would be WAY more different if I had found out sooner.
When did you find out? How long have you known?
Please respond!
Thanks!

I've found out later in life - at 33 - and for the time being I'd rather avoid a diagnosis. But I was "informally" diagnosed by a professional and coming to terms with it was a long and painful process for me. I used to think my life would have been much easier if I've known about it earlier, but I'm not so sure any more. Reading this forum I've found many people suffered from being labelled in childhood and experienced a whole different set of problems because of it.

I'm sorry you're having such a hard time - it's terrible to have to re-evaluate your life from a completely new point of view - there are just so many misunderstandings, lost opportunities and wasted efforts... You're not alone in this, most folks diagnosed later in life seem to go through it. I hope you'll feel better soon.

Thanks for the response!
It's a very interesting point regarding the labels. Only 2 people close to me know I have and one of them is my "most important relationship". I have always avoided telling even my closest friends (the few of them) fearing they won't be able to understand. Not even my family knows.

I found out when I was 12. I was pretty lucky to be diagnosed young. I used to wish it be sooner but I think 12 is young enough. I didn't start reading about it till I was almost 15. I don't no what I be like today if I were never diagnosed.

I have mulled and debated this question in my own mind for a couple years now and I simply cannot pin it down to one answer or the other. I just don't know if I'd have been any better off knowing before age 49. I mean, I always knew who I was, so all the AS diagnosis did was give me an explanation for how I came to be that way. If I'd known sooner, I don't believe it would have given me any genuinely valuable tools for making my life any better (other than perhaps access to a math tutor). Even the notion that being classified as disabled would have protected me from unfair dismissal from a job has turned out to be a friggin' joke.

I actually wonder if knowing would have just caused me to give up on a great many things in life and never have tried to accomplish anything at all. As it was, I was painfully aware that I had limitations others did not, but I found ways to work around that and function as best I could. That's pretty much all 'Behavior Therapy' could do for you, isn't it? Teach you coping mechanisms.

You can't use AS as a way to explain your limitations to others, because if you don't have a physical deformity or get about in a wheelchair, their answer is always going to be "Oh, come on, you can't blame every problem you have on Asperger Syndrome" Well, actually you can. If a neurological dysfunction affects the way you perceive reality and react to the world around you, that pretty much colors EVERYTHING that ever happens to you and everything you do in response.

But does knowing at 6 make things better than learning about it at 36? I'm not sure. If you don't know you have a withered muscle, it doesn't make the weakness go away - but it can force you to make that weak muscle as strong as it is capable of becoming. Otherwise, you might just sit around and say "No thanks, I can't - I have a bad muscle."

On the other hand, forcing a withered muscle to do work it isn't capable of performing might just make it snap and leave you permanently unable to stand at all, so perhaps the analogy is flawed.

Like I said, I don't have a black-or-white answer to this one.

Ive always known I wasnt ;ike the others around me, It wasnt till My first videogame did I learn I was an uber d0od,

I've found out, the summer that I was 14, when I was going through some papers, that my mum had in a steel green box. My mum told me, 4 months later, when I was 15. I think that my life would have been better, if I knew, sooner.

Which level of "found out"?

The first time I came to WP, I realized I must have AS.

It took me a couple of years to get a formal diagnosis on paper.

I'm 59 and still trying to find a therapist with experience re AS in adults.

No, it wouldn't have helped to know sooner, but that's entirely because of the Real World, which didn't catch up till 1994 re diagnosis. Not much is on offer for adults. I've made the most headway with sensory issues (weighted blanket, tinted glasses, earplugs etc.)

There should be a third option "No, there's no way knowing how it would've affected my life" or something along those lines.

I can't say if it would've been better over all, perhaps some parts would be easier and others harder. As with most hypotheticals concerning the past, determining the course of events is virtually impossible, at least without sufficient data to make educated guesses.

What's more, I wouldn't be who I am today if I had known earlier. Similar, perhaps, but a different person nonetheless.

If I had known sooner, my life wouldn't have been any better. Finding out just last year at the age of 28 was lucky, because it's taken me that long to reach the level of maturity it takes to think things out and deal with it as well as I have.

if i had known a few decades earlier, i would not have been so confused about so many things, and i would not have wasted time beating myself about the head and shoulders for always being a terminal screw-up, and furthermore would not have wasted any more time trying to pass for normal. other than that, it would not have rescued me from my suboptimal life.

I think knowing...made me crazier than I already was. I mean, it made me regret everything and it made me want to scream because of all those horrible, horrible memories that wouldn't have happened had I not been this way. And I was just fourteen at that time. A year later and I feel like I've aged a great deal. I think I might have preferred the ignorance, at least for a while longer, or else my confidence might not have shattered the way it did. The knowledge is a heavy burden to bear for me.