Don't Feel Autistic Enough

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Hi All,

I must be really high functioning. In most online spaces I just don't feel autistic enough. I feel some shame about this. I can understand most common expression/metaphors. It's more subtle (to me) social rules that trip me up. As a teen, I was diagnosed with PDD-NOS so I know I'm on the spectrum. I have a neighbor who's also autistic, he reached out to me on a walk home. I can't remember the details of the conversation but he made a comment about me that through me. I remember thinking to myself, I'd never say anything like that. But then I'm super high functioning. Can other really high functioning folks relate? Also are there other folks were here who were diagnosed PDD-NOS?

I can relate to this. I was just diagnosed about a year ago at 44 y/o and while I knew that I had definite autistic traits I kept thinking that the psychologist would see right through me and somehow know that I was too "normal" to have autism. Turns out that I have ASD level 1 and this was confirmed by many hours of testing so I guess that helps me to feel autistic enough. For what it's worth, the diagnosis has been massively helpful to my personal well being and being able to accept my deficits.

Also, I don't feel shame about it. My having autism doesn't take anything away from others that may have it worse. Instead, I use my intellect to challenge peoples misconceptions about autism and help them to understand what it mean to be autistic. While I can mostly look normal, I sometimes fail completely at understanding social rules and I really appreciate when the people I surround myself with understand this and can help to nudge me in the right direction.

I still battle doubts over my middle age diagnosis because every time I ask an Autistic if they have meltdowns, they say "Yes," even ones who absolutely do NOT seem capable of having meltdowns such as an attorney, a psychology student who works out hard at a gym, and other "high level" autistics. I'm always asking people (in person and online) if they have meltdowns because I'm always hoping I'll meet an autistic "just like me" who's like a Vulcan: no meltdowns. I also don't have shutdowns. Yet sometimes the things that go on inside my head make me think, "I'm autistic as F#ck."

Next, I can give/hold eye contact without the experiences that so many here name. I DO over-think it, though, and when I have to prolong it, it begins feeling unnatural, but it's not like I feel invaded, stripped naked or creeped out by it. However, I've come upon other autistics who say eye contact was never an issue, nor is it an issue in their autistic children and toddlers.

Never had autistic burnout, but then again, never masked heavily.

Good executive function. But I also don't have ADHD.

I'm a "little professor" type, an Aspie, if "Asperger's" was still the name of a diagnosis.

Fully independent, never needed help doing things that so many autistics need help with.

However, when I got the diagnosis, family members weren't the least bit surprised and claim to have known it all along. Always felt different. Could never "get" people. Have weird sensory issues. Can't go five minutes without stimming. Tend to think in black-and-white. Lots of other checked boxes.

Honestly, things aren't always as they seem. I was able to do all those things until I couldn't. Now I'm hyper aware of just how much I wasn't getting without a ton of effort. At this point, I'm not even sure if I could go back of I wanted to.

I related more early on with my diagnosis but as I have progressed in self understanding, I am learning that I am far more impaired than I believed at first.

I am sure enough autistic all right! I AM autistic "enough". I just never looked closely at myself and how I interacted with others, etc. Now that I understand how my autism interfered with almost everything in my life (and still does) I don't have such a high opinion of my functioning or my intelligence as I used to. Diagnosis changed my perspective completely. The more I learn, the more my opinions change.

Take your time and sort the things that are most difficult for you. As your self understanding grows, perhaps things will look a little different. (then again, maybe not! )

"So-called mild Autism doesn't mean that the Autistic person experiences autism mildly. It means you experience their Autism mildly."

There are no autism Olympics. You feel what you feel, you cope with what you can cope with, you fail miserably at other things.

I don't know what feel 'autistic enough' means , enough for what? I know there are lots of members on this forum who suffer more than I do due to their autism but it doesn't affect how I feel about my autism as we are all individuals.

I get that. I'm definitely high functioning.

'Feel'?

I feel way more autistic than I appear or act, more than what the paper said about me so far, and whatever people thought they perceived me to be.

Not because everything is harder or easier.

But more like I cannot get answers from anyone, rarely (maybe never) ever resonated with anyone, and basically on my own in this.

Everything feels like an experiment without any exact sample size, without ever having the same conditions.

I have so many questions that I cannot articulate, concepts I can grasp yet cannot express.

That I do live in a different world, speak in a different language -- despite being in the same dimension of time and space, despite talking in the same language with same vocabularies, grammar, etc.

It's as if I do live in a different continuum, yet of the occupying the same spaces.

Doesn't matter how close the relationship I have with others, doesn't matter how emotionally it does, how inclusive or accepting -- there's always this gap that everyone around me lives in a different world, speaking in a different language; I'm familiar at, habitually engaged my whole life, but never natural and never will master.


Basically, I feel more autistic because I may have some sort of severe reverse social dysphoria, than something about comparing what I can and cannot, did and didn't do, or whatever it is from anyone.

I don't mind different, I don't mind 'being left out'.
"Severity levels" and "support needs" are irrelevant in my case.
What made me feel more autistic is outside those dimensions -- and that may be the point, that I am so autistic that those two common themes of comparison is irrelevant.

It's just that this feeling that I shouldn't be here for too long, but I cannot and unable leave.
People don't want me to; I don't think or feel like they don't want me -- they cling even.

Not out of fear or feeling that I inserted myself -- it's way opposite of that, more like I should be elsewhere but people expects and wants me where they see me.

That to a point that I'm seeking a form of rejection so I have an excuse to go to a direction that I want -- stories always depict and assume the other way around.
It's almost never about people not wanting me, more like me 'not wanting' them.

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I'm not Autistic at all when I am relaxed or doing my own thing . But throw in my kids, a pushy crowd, cut-throat workplace politics or a complicated mundane task with competing demands and then there it is: Autistic, when I can't compensate for my overreactive nervous system. This morning I was with an Autistic volunteer at work and he's the stereotype - talks about his special interest non-stop, lack of eye contact, other "inappropriate" social interactions. So I am less Autistic than him that way, but I still have significant issues living a "normal" life. He's also 30 years my junior and I wonder if were more like him at that age.

I didn't even suspect I had ASD till I was in my 50s, so for most of my life it would have been difficult to ""feel autistic."

When I couldn't keep up at school I felt that I might have some kind of brain damage. But mainstream educational pressures eventually ended, and I got a science job in which I demonstrated that my brain was pretty able, and I was achieving impressive results with my technical hobbies, all of which suggested it must have been the educational system that had been the problem. And there was some good evidence that the system was rather flawed.

I also noticed that my social life often seemed in danger of collapsing, but then I moved into a very friendly part of town and for some time I had more friends than I knew what to do with. So it was easy to put my previous social problems down to having been among too many jerks.

When I retired and got a lot more control over my environment, I noticed that I was still getting some executive function problems that I could only blame my own brain for.

I don't know how severe my ASD is. My diagnostic scores were about halfway between normal and as Aspie as it gets, but I've often suspected the severity was over-rated.

I thought I was doing "normal" until I realized what people really thought (and think) about me, then I understand why. I was doing well on technical terms like school, work etc but others wonder why I can't convert that ability into an awesome job or mcDuck fortune.

Because it's uninteresting to me.