The knowledge of being autistic

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Despite being diagnosed over 6 months ago, I am still having some trouble accepting my diagnosis. I don't understand why though because I know it makes complete sense, and in fact, actually being aware I am autistic has helped me in more ways than it hasn't. For example, my anxiety is not as severe and I am finding aspects of school easier. However, I am still struggling to accept that I'm autistic, I think in some ways I am ashamed. My main issue is that it's all I think about a lot of the time, whether if I come across autistic or if my diagnosis is wrong (when it really obviously isn't). Could someone offer some kind of explanation to perhaps why I keep obsessing so much over this and maybe some advice. Does or has anyone had the same problem?

It's called perseverating and it's a common characteristic of people with ASDs. It's related to special interests, an inability to let past events go, and related to the ability to hyperfocus and difficulty in changing task or refocusing attention.

I think you have answered your own question: you have attached the powerful emotional experience of shame to your diagnosis and they are currently intertwined. I think very many people on WP can relate to your experience, because to be in a minority as we are is to be "othered" and the fact is that we are regarded as "lesser" by members of the normocentric community who define themselves as what a human being should be like. And there is plenty of active shaming that goes on, the name-calling that ASD children experience, the being left out, the bullying. Shaming is a form of oppression, and if you internalise the shame, it becomes "internalised oppression" - when you react to the external shaming by shaming yourself. You internalise the external prejudice. Learn about internalised oppression (google it), as part of your acclimitisation process.

However, there is no shame in being neuro-atypical. We are born with the set of genes that nature gave us - autism was in the mix just like eye colour and everything else; we have a set of potentials and some vulnerabilities - just like EVERY human on the planet - the normocentric majority as well. There are no perfect people (only some who are labouring under the delusion that they are).

If everyone was the same, from an evolutionary perspective, the human race would have died out. This is why hybrid plants, for example, are much stronger than true bred plants that only reproduce the same characteristics as the parent plants! You have a set of characteristics which are uniquely yours, just identify them and play to your strengths. Know your strengths and value them and yourself as potentially wonderful.

I understand what you're saying, and in many ways I agree but I can't help but still feel quite confused by my thoughts. It seems more unconscious than anything, the embarrassment that is, because sometimes I am happy being the way I am as I know there isn't anything actually wrong with me. Though lots of the time I carry on with the obsessive thoughts, despite knowing I shouldn't be ashamed and persist to tell myself I'm not and others around me. Hopefully I just need time to accept my diagnosis properly. After all, 6 months isn't exactly long, right? Thank you for your response nonetheless, I think it has helped in some way.

I don't know if this will help you or not.

When my daughter was diagnosed, I already knew she was autistic. The minute the word came out of her pediatrician's mouth as a suggestion, I just...knew...it. And I felt completely OK with it, because it explained a lot of things that were confusing before. However, when she actually got her diagnosis awhile later, although I still knew it was true and was still largely "ok" with it, suddenly I felt...ambivalent. Suddenly it seemed way to permanent. And I started wondering if maybe I had somehow unintentionally mislead the team who diagnosed her. I started feeling more stressed about it. I thought about it a lot more. I felt overwhelmed at times. I felt confused because I knew that knowing was a good thing. And I knew that she was the same girl she was before it was "official." But part of me felt guilty, and part of me felt like maybe it was all wrong, even though logically it was all right. Sometimes I felt confident and secure. Sometimes I felt like I was in a fog.

There are very few parents I have come across who haven't experienced these feelings to some extent.

My point is, I think how you are feeling is normal. I think it is normal for your age and normal for being recently diagnosed. You are at a point in your life where you are trying to define who you are. And you have just gotten information that may feel like it is defining you for you. But it really doesn't define you. I think a lot of people your age probably spend a lot of time ruminating about things about themselves and they probably spend time feeling embarrassed about things they can't change. I think you just have a "name" for what you ruminate about, whereas other people your age have vague feelings. Or relatively meaningless things like the size of their nose.

Be gentle with yourself. You will get there.

I will try to remember this when I am in doubt, thank you.

As you say, six months is not a long time to assimilate such a large piece of information. It took me longer - just over a year, and I had a lot more life experience, being so much older than you. So it's early days.

Often, behind feelings of shame there is a "should belief" lurking in the background - "I should be.. this or that or whatever". If you think this applies to your case, then do your best to rethink the shoulds into coulds - you could do this or that, if you decide to.. (called "reframing" in psychology, taking a thought belief and seeing it from a different perspective).

However you sound very mature for your age, and I think you are going to do really well.

Yes, shame and worrying how it looks, that's been a big problem for me too. No matter how proud I psyche myself up to be, deepdown I've still not overcome my embarrassment, and I'm acutely aware of how hated we ASDers can be, and I go around half expecting people to write me off the moment I make an Aspie mistake. Before my diagnosis I could at least pretend to myself that I was "normal."

All I can advise is to do what I do - I try to avoid mainstream people (I never really liked them anyway). If I associate only with outliers and eccentrics, and live in a multicultural environment, I don't feel I stand out as weird or inferior so much. Easier said than done if you need to work for a living or you're stuck with family members who don't want to understand. In my case, I chose a nerdy science job, and I pretty much deserted most of my family a long time ago. Drastic but effective. It wasn't a conscious thing. I think it happens by itself eventually, judgemental people and I usually give up on each other pretty quickly.

I also try to fight those feelings of inferiority by recognising them and trying to see them for what they are.

I'm 45 years old and was just diagnosed 3 months ago, at first I was crushed by it because I knew there was no "cure", it was never going to change or get "better". Now I feel more like I was fumbling around in the dark for forty some odd years and suddenly I finally found the light switch, everything over course of my whole life all of a sudden made sense.

Nothing has really changed for me other than being spied on by the government medical industry. Thus, I have to be careful on what i say or else they will throw me into the loony bin.