Benefit of a late diagnosis.

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Not knowing has been a roller coaster ride that I both love and hate. I've spent a decade struggling and dealing with some pretty f****d up stuff but I'm very strong because of it. I'm also a bit messed up and can't function anymore so I'm putting all that life stuff on hold and getting a new diagnosis and going on the benefit and getting better. It was a great adventure but I'm tired and want to go on other adventures.

I know what you mean by thinking you can achieve less so you do. It's true.

I wasn't diagnosed until I was 33. I think I would have benefited from a diagnosis when I hit my teenage years... because I had some major problems around that time including a misdiagnosis for something else.

You know what would have been helpful to know while younger?
1. Why I wasn't so obsessed with sex like all my peers were.
2. Why I remembered massive amounts of information that I thought other people were just too lazy to remember. Also, that this is actually an impressive skill and not something I should "dumb down" to try to fit in with other people.
3. That I was so poor at reading social cues in real time. (I naturally ended up reading tons of psychology and self-help books as a way to navigate high school.)
4. Why I'm able to hear and be bothered by noises that other humans couldn't hear or weren't bothered by.
5. That maybe I should have spent more time strengthening my strengths rather than working on every single weakness I had (weaknesses which were mostly social, hence reading all those psychology books).
6. There's more...but I'd be here all day typing them up.

I ended up having a complete mental breakdown in my sophomore year at college.

FWIW, I have a full-time job and live independently and have been for years. The job sucks (though I think most people would say that) and I'm not absolutely sure what my friend statuses are because I don't even know how to define a "friend" these days.

I was diagnosed at 26.
I remember one incident where I stared at a group of guys and then they sexually harrassed me for hours outside of my house. I think knowing about being an aspie would have saved me from a lot of exploitation and abuse.

So if I would have had a diagnosis maybe I would have had more education. I don't really think there is anything"WRONG" with me, but at least now I know sometimes I have to play the social game and it's a lot easier now that I know the rules and the game.

OK, the evidence is clear. Early diagnosis leads to better life outcomes.

For us for whom it is too late, all we can do is embrace diagnosis, celebrate the late in life collapse of illusions and prepare the way for those early diagnosed autistics of the future. If nothing else, our example can make the way smoother for the ones not lucky enough to rate early diagnosis or effective treatment.

On the one hand, the general idea that its a mistake to focus on the negative or be self limiting is true. On the the other hand, those of us who were diagnosed later in life should be aware that this is a spectrum and the fact that we avoided diagnosis or misdiagnosis for so long is probably partly due to not being at the more outwardly obvious end of that spectrum. This makes it a bad idea for us to generalize too broadly from personal experience.

Another thing to avoid is the problem of unintentionally blaming the victim when your intention is to encourage. The problem with the whole power of positive thinking idea is that it carries with it the idea that each persons problems are their own fault because they have not overcome them.

Tell the thalidomide person with no legs that they can run in the Olympics, too--just look at Pistorius! That sort of thing.

If you have the feeling that your diagnosis has resulted in your believing your are less able, you need CBT, or DBT or some other treatment that will correct your dysfunctional thought patterns. But if you really can't get the timing right to drive a car, trying the power of positive thinking is probably not the wisest approach.

i am pretty much decided that I won't get an official diagnosis.

A doctor told me a few months back she believes I have ASD, the AQ and the other test both suggest I do, the things I have read up on suggest I do, ran some suggested traits past my gf without her knowing what I was doing and she agreed I have them. Also had a chat to her and my mum about it all (they are the only 2 people who know, and will ever know) and they both were not hugely surprised. GF explained how hard I am to talk to sometimes which makes sense. Also now fully appreciate noise filtering which has been an embarrassing problem all my life.

Doc has put me in touch with a Neuro Psycologist to get it diagnosed. Just decided against it, can't see what good it will do apart from state on my record that I have a mental health problem which I can only see as a negative for later in life.

Am 33, have been reading up on ASD a lot in the last few months and probably feel better about things now, Always thought I was a bit of a loser, now I still do but just not quite as much!

I tend to agree with you.

I was 20 when I found out about ASD and realized I had it. There was not a lot of information in 1998. I was on my own.

My first impulse was to believe it meant I couldn't. Couldn't hold a job, couldn't find a partner, couldn't start a family, couldn't make friends. Couldn't learn, couldn't change, couldn't be anything but lonely and miserable.

That was depressing, so I started a forced drive to learn to be normal. I tried sorority rush; after two miserable nights spent trying to make small talk with people with whom I shared no common ground, I got summarily rejected.

I was sitting on a park bench fixing to cry when I realized that being sad over being rejected by people who bored me s**tless and spent most of their time doing things I hated to do was just stupid. Very liberating moment.

So I decided that I could do anything I wanted to, if I was willing to work hard enough. If I wasn't willing to work hard enough, then I probably didn't really want to do that thing. It's not so much sour grapes, as it is a cost-benefit analysis. Every thinking person does this every day of their lives.

I found friendships with people who accept me for the way I am. Most (OK, all) of them qualify for diagnoses of their own. My friends are one bipolar depressive, two probable Aspies one with comorbid depression, one schizotypal personality disorder, and one obsessive-compulsive hoarder with ADHD tendencies.

They're all good friends.

I found someone who claimed he could take me as-is and got married. That might have been a mistake; it hasn't been easy on either of us. But there is love. We have had lots of good times.

There are four lovely little ones. They are good kids. When I do not allow (or force) myself to obsess about being normal, making them normal, being good enough, and et cetera, I am a very good mother. Not perfect-- but anyone who thinks parents should be perfect shouldn't be a parent. Nobody gets everything right all the time for 18 years straight. I don't care who you are; that's impossible.

Self-hate from a lot of the literature I have encountered in seeking to improve myself has done a lot more damage than Asperger's itself. That's my opinion; my husband and friends tend to agree.

When I'm feeling down, obsessive about being normal and about the idea that I am not normal and therefore can never be good enough, I look back and wish I had been diagnosed young and taught to be content with that chain. I tend to want to put chains on my kids (my middle two are very probably ADHD; I had hoped that since the diagnosis had been around so long they would not encounter the culture of pathology but boy was I wrong. There is a lot of yelling, a lot of criticism, a lot of punishment, a puritanical attempt to break their will and change their personalities. There aren't a lot of good times, because no one can ever relax.

And none of us are happy.

When I'm feeling OK, accepting the idea that I'm different and that difference may be a challenge but it isn't a deficit, we do all right. Meals get cooked and homework gets done and kids get bathed and bedded and played with and read to. Discipline happens, but there's a lot less punishment. No, we don't have a bustling social calendar full of enriching activities that look great on a college application...

...but they don't want to do that stuff anyway. We read books and do activities and talk about stuff and go places together. We do OK. Just fine.

We've had a two-and-a-half year run of the former. I had good intentions, the best intentions, but it was a stupid thing to do. It was forced and unnatural and I hope it's over now.

Before that it was mostly the latter. We seem to be back to that and I hope that's where we're going to stay.

I was 23 when i got the diagnosis, and in my opinion it felt that it was way too late to get that diagnosis. But now i'm 6 years further, and i can relate to what OP is saying. I know a lot of peers who had the diagnosis when they were very young, and i sure see a different between us. I see that i'm more independent, and have more confident in successes in life. I got the feeling i'm more militant. Because all the disappointments and failures in life (and there are a lot of them!) has made me the way i am. After all, i'm still standing, and i think that if i got the diagnosis when i was young, and get the help that i needed, maybe i became 'lazy' and 'needy'.

But since that never happened, we'll never know i guess. Sometimes it makes me wonder. I think that things could have been easier, and that i didn't have that many stress and burn-outs maybe. That would have been very nice!! So i am going for the 'medium-way' about this. I think that a young diagnosis is good for getting the stresslevels down. Because stress is really really really bad for you. It's good to know that there are things about you that are different. But.... it is also better if the world don't chew everything for you in my opinion. I think it's not bad to going into the deep sometimes, get lost, and figure things out on your own. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? So i think that there's nothing wrong to getting a young diagnosis, it's just important how the environment is getting along and react with that. Does the environment fix everything for you, or does the environment learning you how to fix things on your own? I think that is a big difference. I think it is never good for anyone to get an 'overload' on help. But i don't think that letting people fail over and over again, and not caring about if they are going to make it in life or not is good either.

Sorry but what a nonsense. I have been diagnosed with 32 and the rope you talk of always existed. That rope does not exist because other people tell you to imaginate it, but it exists because of your experiences, your tries and so on. And this nonsense "You just have to try own..." Yeah, you are invited. Try to chop an old oak with your hand and do not forget: If it doesnt work, dont give up. Try again! Its only society telling you, that its dumb, and your dumb experiences, and the fact that you tried it, but if you dont give up ever the imaginary rope, that prevents you from chopping the old oak with your bare hand will magically disappear, sweeties will fall from the sky, Kim Yong Il will decide to gift his atombombs to Kofi Anaan and China will declare Tibet as an independent country. XD And its only that dumb physician telling you, that you cannot jump from earth to the moon with the power of your muscles. You simply must try and not give up! Dont trust your experiences!

There is nothing bad about trying something, you never tried. There is also nothing wrong about trying a few times to have a statistic reference. But when you have tried a 100 times to chew granite, and think that it will work only because of you not giving up, you are simply dumb.

If you want to stay with your rope example: The diagnose has helped me. Because the rope was invisible for me until now. Sometimes the rope pulled me back, without me being able to prepare myself, but I couldnt tell myself why, because I didnt see that damn rope. I only knew that whyever, I was forced to stop, where others could go on, or could go when it was impossible for others to walk. And the nice thing is: Now I see the rope. And seeing the rope allows me to handle it. Its not anymore dangling from my neck and because of me not seeing it, I step on it by accident making me stumble, or get stuck with the rope somewhere and dont know how to pull it free, because of me not seeing it. Becaue of me now knowing that I have that rope, and that there are others that have experiences with that rope, I now can learn tricks from others and relie on their expierences of the rope.

It doesnt matter if a rope is invisible or not. If its 10 meter long, then its 10 meter long, anyway if invisible or not. But visible ropes allow you far more tricks and far more handling then some mysterious unknown stuff, that keeps you stumbling about it, because of you not being able to see it.

Sure, the rope can be used by your parents to fix you and slow your movement down, enabling you further then the rope would anyway. As it can be used to show you, how you can use it to climb on a mountain. Weird parents are not the ropes fault.

It flows both ways.

I feel late diagnosis is bad because you fail repeatedly at stuff normal people can do but never understand WHY or HOW to overcome it. As life is very much a race against a clock, wasting time making mistakes is not in your best interest.

I think autistic people should know early on who and what they are, but they should not be encouraged to let their condition be an excuse for not trying things or working to overcome their difficulties. By 18, an autistic kid could have a realistic grasp of what they can and cannot do from having tried many techniques to discover their limits. They can go into adult life better prepared to pick and chose their path in a way that favors their strengths and not their weaknesses.

Without this, you just set people up to fail again and again until they see no point but to give up.

I met a PHD Psychologist who specializes is AS a couple of years ago. I ended up spending a lot of time with her and her husband over the week of our vacation overlap and she eventually asked me if I had ever been diagnosed. I had no clue what she was talking about. I found the idea fascinating from a remove but felt uncomfortable labeling myself. The idea just percolated in the back of my head for 2 years.

I recently had a horrific experience with a relationship attempt that seems to be this recurring theme throughout my life. I could not figure out why I was so broken, why I couldn't understand what everyone else did, why NO ONE understood me. I happened on a letter on the Internet by a guy named Richard Rowe and it was like he could read my MIND! Long story short I found my way here as I did research, took different tests, blah blah blah.

So this is all new to me. I see both sides. I think there are a lot of positives for early DX, but the label brings negatives perceived and real. I think that from an emotional perspective, understanding why I so badly wanted even a friendship it was so damn hard. I don't even know if I want to tell my family... I'm not sure what difference, for me, a diagnosis makes other than now I may know why.

Since the topic is "Benefit of a late diagnosis"...

I've had half a day to think about this. I'm not sure if there is any benifit as such.

I was diagnosed at 46. Before that I didn't have the slightest hint of a clue that something was amiss. I'm high functioning, and as someone pointed out, the fact that I was high functioning meant that I wasn't going to get diagnosed. I thought, and everybody in my family thought, I was normal (relatively speaking).

My working career has been no problem. I've excelled at work, hobies and everything I put my hand to.
My personel relationships have been zero. I've never understood that, and my family has never understood that.

Untill recently since I've been putting in a real effort to find a relationship (seeing a social worker, buying books on relationships ect). I've started having friendships and dates with girls. I'm only just beginning to understand what it is to NT, and how I am not. For me, it's at the intimate stage where I fail spectacularly. I just can't do the emotional transfer during intimacy which the girls require, the whole thing fail quickly and spectacularly.

I do believe I could have been saved a heck of a lot of pain and torture by knowing earlier.
An due to my personaly, I probably wouldn't have turned out any softer than I am (I am a battle hardened and world weary).

So for me, I'm not convinced there is any benifit to a late diagnosis.
Though I'm sure different personality traits would have different cost/binifit ratios.