autism disovered in old age

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Me too! Bloody therapists, so caught up in how right their 'system' is...I spent four whole sessions educating the last one about ASD. I didn't turn up for the fifth session....Complete waste of time for me, great learning experience for him. Grrr.



Christmas is a financial and sensory nightmare.....yuck!
>>>ain't that the truth!

well, for me, even discovering i had AS at the age of 24 was a heavy weight. i don't know if i would say dramatic problems arose..in many ways it is a relief to know why i am the way i am, why i often feel so frustrated trying to talk to people or understand them.

I'm not sure at the moment whether I still think it fits. I'm having to think about it long and hard! I think I do want to get a diagnosis of AS, whether that's seen as co-morbid or as cancelling out the BPD diagnosis.

If you write very good books you are rarely satisfied with the world you live in. I dont know about Camus. Kafka was certainly an Aspie. While he attributed all his unhappiness to his father' continual humiliations, I am convinced that human resilience is extraordinary and that he might have revolted, fled, abandoned his family (even if for jews this is more difficult), had he the capacity to build on alternative relationhips. Kafka did'nt have this capacity. His friends were people with whom to talk about literature. No depth in his frienships. His "best" friend was Max Brod who in his biography of K. showed an abysmal misurderstanding of K.
Beckett's "Malone dies" is one step further in the description of an old loner's end. It is a masterpiece, and even full of aggressive humour, galgen-humor of course, but a great manifestation of vitality none the less. Then of course there is Kleist and Robert Walser. Among the living or recently died: Salinger (although I am not sure he is a great writer), Richard Yates, Carver and many others.

What are the chances of an old person getting diagnosed with it if their parents are dead they are an only child and no childhood records?

I dont think you have to look for medical records. Rather letters (but letters ar conventional and full of lies), school records, diaries, number of friends e the general history of the subject.
As for me it took a whole life to interpret who my parents have been, how they saw me. Many happenings were hidden to me. And I became aware of facts only after their death. Many fcts I will never know. My father anyway was nerly certainly an Asperger. Although he was a very well known and successful in a way, he had no friends and was unhappy. Disastrous relationship with my mother, from which he never separated. My mother was stronger but frigid, selfish and never had friends also. When I think of my family I think of a lager or a gulag. That's why I thought for a long time that my "ratage" was due to my family history. Now I changed my mind.
I want to add here, even if this has nothing to do with AS or not AS, but with the general problem of the unequal distribution of happiness, that there hundreds of thousand of children being sold to brothels by their families who will die of aids after havig benn exploited, and so many similar situations. This is to give a sense of proportion in our lamentations.

Thank you Paolo, for reminding me to have a sense of proportion. You're right, there are far worse things that can happen to a child and far worse challenges as an adult.

My sister and I would absolutely identify with your description of your family life as a child as a 'gulag' - it was the same for us: it's a spectrum, and I am now certain that our parents were somewhere on that spectrum. The good thing about my own knowledge about my status, however late in life, is that I can live accordingly and take my neurological differences into account in all my dealings with others. My parents did not have this knowledge about themselves - they lived lives of great difficulty due to ignorance and, I'm sure, profound guilt because of all the things they kept getting wrong in their closer relationships.


@paulsinnerchild - my dx as an older person was helped by the childhood memoire that I put together: I spent a week or so remembering EVERY tiny scrap I could about my childhood and writing it down quite systematically.

Then I checked details with my mother, only to find that she'd beaten a path to the GP's door (with pleas for help with me and my weird behaviour/'little professorism' etc). She'd not told me anything of this before.

It was also a cathartic thing to do and seeing my past through the lens of ASD for the first time was amazingly liberating - everything fell into place/made sense for the first time ever and I could at last ditch the psychological claptrap and struggle to 'change my thinking'.


@scrulie - hmm - I hadn't thought about BPD as a co-morbid to ASD, though it must be possible. I'd be interested to know what your psychs think. Let us know how you get on, and good luck!

When we learnt about Aspergers just before last Christmas I to thought "Aha that explains a lot especially my husband." He would be talking with friends and the amount of times I would have to go and rescue them because H didn't realize that they wanted to go, or they were lost in his talk, because he didn't pick up on body language. Now I have told several of his closest friends with his permission and they have said "So that explains it." They knew that H wasn't the same as there other friends but the majority have stilled stayed friends with him. My own parents are relieved to find out because now he makes more sense as in they know why he is the way he is. My dad doesn't get as annoyed with him as he used to and my mum bites her tongue instead of being sarcastic, and I can be more relaxed and let him be himself knowing the other person knows.
But as has been said true friends will still stick by you and you get to know who your true friends are once they are told or you begin to be the real you. Or both.

1. We don't like snakes. That's instinctual, a legacy of our life in the savanna. But snakes, like lyzards, turtles and many other animals are perfect creatures. They lay eggs and don't have to take care of their offsprings. They live solitary all of their life. Wolfs, ducks, apes, men live socially, they need companionship: that's instinctual too. Alone they die or live desperate lives.
2. J.D. Salinger on bananafishes "they live a very tragic life" "they swim into a hole where their is a lot of bananas." they eat so many that they are no more able to get out of the hole, and they die. "For Esme with love and squalor".
Companionship is such a rich nutriment when we are young that we can't live anymore without it.
The experience of a toddler is a promise frequently betrayed.
|i would like to elaborate|

You can adapt yourself to solitude but at a very high price. Your life becomes cauterized, has no more the quality of reality, it becomes dreamlike. The environment become stranger. Sometimes nightmarish. You go on on your business, petrified in habit, having sometimes flashes of time lost, when you ate bananas and you think that in the folds of the things you meet there must still be some trace of bananas (or joy, or extasy - of that quality of emotions that you experienced when you rowed on a flat sea in the sun, or when, as a child you found new flowers and butterflies in the fields). No, no life has not been this drudgery all the time! Things may not be lost but only hidden somewhere.

My mother too tried everything too, eventually she told me she did get a diagnosis of autism in 1961
Even second opinions third opininions led to the same conclusion. I was not the little professor but I was extremely aloof and had poor social skills with obsessions and bahaving as if I was deaf, but I was just living in my own little world (a very very big world from my point of view, and people were not a part of it)

Paul

It seems to me like it would put your life into perspective.

Example: *you thinking* you:Oh that's why that happened in 9th grade....it all makes since now

Being also bipolar it's likely that my messages change in tone according to the moment i write. This as a general caveat.
I don't consider myself old, because i have never reached maturity, self assurance, the tranquillity of a well deserved position in life. I not sure if this aggravates or eases my situation.
In a sense i have a furious desire to "catch up". I know that this is possible in a very particular way. Certainly not in the "normal" things of this world. And, after all, how many, AS or not, are cut off from an accomplished life in this society. But perhaps a last ditch desperate fight for understanding, intellectual revolt and witness might have meaning. I hope so. Maybe this is the positive side of a persistent immaturity. |to follow|

Oh God, oh God, YES. You said it so well. When am I going to grow up?

I don't mean in a responsibility sort of way - I am very responsible - but when shall I ever feel that I am as accomplished and know how to be and move through the world with ease and facility like all the grown ups I see around me? I no longer have the excuse of being chronologically young enough to be 'still learning'....

This really is a great thread. Thanx for starting it. Paolo, you write so eloquently, which is an aspie trait, I understand.

I'm 38 and only today did I discover this disorder. I read up on it and it's hitting me like floodgates opening. Tomorrow, when it's not so late on the East coast, I'm going to call my mom and ask her some things about my childhood. I'm also going to try to schedule an appt with a professional. I don't know what good it will do me in a practical sense to know if I'm an aspie, but I want to know. It would make sense of a lot of things and help me to cope with feelings of inadequacy that I have and feelings of paranoia I have about what others think of me.

My social development was definately very late in life and took a great deal of effort, but I made progress which makes me wonder if I even could be an aspie, and yet I still feel so isolated. It's like I've taught myself the social tricks for getting by at a party or even how to speak in front of large numbers of people. The deeper relationships I crave seem to taunt me. I felt like I was forming a really good friendship recently and now he hardly returns my calls. I remember telling him at one point "I don't like people". He laughed. It's ok. I meant it to be funny but it was kind of true. I was paying him a compliment. It was obvious that I like him and want to hang out with him so he had a special exemption.

What I want is deep meaningful relationships with just a few people and all I can get are shallow ones. It's like something happens to ruin it if we get too close. Either they push me away or I push them away.

Can aspies have that or is that a pipe dream? Are we (if indeed I am one) destined to live lonely lives? I crave a healthy social life but wonder if it's even possible.

I have a theory that if an Aspie/autie has not been diagnosed with the condition before they turn 40 IMHO chances are they will never be diagnosed it because is it only natural for people to work on the weaknesses through behavioural conditioning such as eye contact, poor moral judgment, obsessive thoughts and poor social skills etc and it is no longer anywhere near as evident as it was when they were younger. Not realizing that those symptoms are some of the classic symptoms of aspergers or autism. I still am rather uncomfortable with eye contact but it is not as bad as when I was a teenager.

If I was not diagnosed with autism when I was 8 there would have been a fair chance I would never be. But I was diagnosed with social anxiety for many years since my mid 20s so I would of stood a better chance than most even if I had never been diagnosed at childhood with the condition.

Paul