How Did You React To Your Diagnosis?

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How did you react to your diagnosis? I got my diagnosis a week and a half ago. Someone here asked me how I felt about it and I said that I felt a bit numb and it didn't seem like a big deal, after all they were only confirming what I already knew anyway.

Today I've been filling out some forms for the uni course I start in Feb. I've had to explain what extra help and support I may need. I've been crying the whole time. I realise that the diagnosis is sinking in. I'm struggling with the feelings that this is as good as it gets. Up until 2 weeks ago I was being told that I had depression or PTSD or an eating disorder blah blah blah. All things that could, in theory, be fixed. I've spent nearly 40 years trying to fix these non existent problems so that I could be happy.

Where do I go now? (Rhetorical question)

Am I going through the stages of grief?

Sorry to hear that getting your diagnosis has been challenging I hope you'll find some much-needed support on this forum

It may be stages of grief, which are messy and don't happen in a particular order. You will probably know if your mood is bad enough to suggest it might be something else (you mention PTSD and depression also).

For me, getting the diagnosis was a relief. It happened several months after I finished grad school. In retrospect, it would have been great if I had been dx'd when I was younger and could have accessed special supports in school. I might have been better prepared for life after graduation in that case. Take advantage of all special supports available to you in uni

I was dx 3.5 years ago and have gone in and out of the 5 stages of greif over this time.

I have found this link
www.aspergeradults.ca/asgriefstorm.html
a great comfort in understanding the enormity of loss associated with my Dx.

I have been in post dx counselling for 2 years now and it has been invaluable as a means of support with re intigrating the understanding of myself.

I wish you well.

I found out at the age of 15. I tried to act as normal as I could for a year, and than I've accepted the fact that I'm HFA.

I was self diagnosed so it was no suprise when the doctor told me my results were Aspergers. I have only known about Asperges for about a year before getting diagnosed.

I had nearly identical reactions as you (just dx a few weeks ago and was complete surprise as I went in for grief counseling NOT Aspergers). At first I was numb then I was depressed beause there is no cure. Now I am seeking local resources that can possibly help me get better in some of the areas I am bad (like literal meanings of words). I cannot believe that this cannot be at least made better through exercises and concious awareness of the issue. We'll see...

I was simply "BINGO!! !!"

about time

No reaction. I didn't even know what it was. I just think I was lucky my parents got me diagnosed and they did all the work and the talking about my history and my problems and all. Now I don't have to worry about going through all that testing crap and wondering if I do this or that and having to answer pages of questions and then getting my thoughts together when I am asked hours of questions. I didn't like being at the hospital anyway.

But I hated having it, hated it hated it. It meant I wasn't normal and I had something wrong with me and it just took me awhile to accept the label. When mom would try and explain it to me, I felt like a freak. All she did was tell me my brain works different and I have a different learning style and I see things different. I still tried to be normal but by then I was a total outcast and no friends. And the truth was I didn't even know what things were abnormal about me so I didn't know certain things exist like social cues and the rules about social skills so how was I to know what I struggled with and what I didn't pick up on, I didn't use internet a lot then nor even read about AS to even learn. I didn't even use forums so therefore I didn't learn any social skills and how people are and how they think and act. I didn't even know my obsessions were abnormal and I always assumed they were normal, same as me being stuck on things and I thought things were the same for everyone. How they thought and what they felt. I didn't even know I had sensory issues and coordination problems. I just thought I needed more practice and it was that way for everyone. I never had much self awareness and still don't. I even thought I had to try harder to be normal but the truth is you can't learn to be more normal if you aren't aware what exists like social rules or social cues and body language, non verbal cues. So reading about AS helped.

I have never been formally diagnosed with Asperger's, but based on what I have learned about the condition, I know with absolute certainty that I have it. When I take the various AS tests available today, I am just short of a positive diagnosis. That is, I test much higher in the spectrum than a NT, but not high enough to reach the positive AS range. If I take the tests as I was at eight years old, however, I am well into the spectrum, and a positive diagnosis is all but guaranteed.

From a very early age, I knew that something was wrong with me. It frustrated me to no end that I wasn't like "normal" people, and no one could tell me what was wrong. I grew up before Hans Asperger's notes had been translated to English and Asperger's Syndrome was widely accepted here in the USA. One school psychologist suggested I might have Kanner's Syndrome (classic autism), but I didn't exhibit several key symptoms, so this was discounted. Some people, including my father, decided my aberrant behavior was due to either "an unknown chemical imbalance" or my upbringing, and left it at that. (My parents divorced at about the same time I began to show the more serious classic symptoms of Asperger's, hence my father's "diagnosis" of my upbringing.) Most admitted not knowing.

Now that I know of my condition, and there is ample documentation on the symptoms and treatments available, I feel a lot better knowing what is wrong with me, that I am not alone, and it is possible that something can be done about it. I have already either outgrown or unlearned many of the more serious behaviors associated with my condition, and I have carefully learned certain behaviors over the years to cover up what I haven't been able to outgrow or unlearn. (I learned these new behaviors without the aid of a psychologist or psychiatrist, thank you very much.) I have to consciously exercise these new behaviors (looking people in the eye when I'm speaking to them, for example, and pretending to be interested in what they say even when I'm not), because I know they will never come naturally to me. Today, most people would never guess I have autism unless they knew exactly what to look for. Only one person I know of has correctly diagnosed me, but she works with ASD children all day, every day, on a volunteer basis, and is exposed to the symptoms of Kanner's and Asperger's all the time, so she would be able to pick it up easily. - LJS

I haven't been diagnosed either, but I am going to begin the process tomorrow. The biggest difficulty I have right now is accepting the fact the all the unique quirks I believed made me are just a predictable disorder, I feel like it has taken a chunk of humanity out of me. Numbness, as the op refereed to it, seems like the right word. Right now I'm just trying to abuse my aspergers to help me learn to make music. I put like almost 100 hours into it in the week after I started. Before I would stop myself to seem normal.

My reaction was totally opposite.

I suspected for a long, then less then a month ago, I finnished the test and I got the official dx.

Felt bad that I wasnt dx decades ago when i was young and it wouldve done me some good.

My reaction was pretty similar to yours, actually, OP. I went into the testing expecting to feel relieved afterwards, but I ended up just feeling depressed upon realizing that it just confirmed many of the doubts I'd had about myself.

I sought out a formal diagnosis during a period when I was under a great deal of stress and very isolated, though, so it's hard to say if the diagnosis itself made me feel down or if it was just the proverbial 'straw that broke the camel's back.'

I'm not sure I have any advice to give, but I can relate to what you said, so if you need someone to talk with, feel free to PM me.

Although I was diagnosed when I was six, my condition was kept secret from me until I accidentally discovered it for myself at the age of ten.
Like a few others who've posted previously, I was initially disgusted by the prospect of being 'freakish', and remained very much in denial for the next year or so.
There had always been a sense of alienation and not belonging, however, and I had reached a point of acceptance of the AS diagnosis by the time I was twelve, feeling that it was, on balance, a somewhat more reassuring explanation for my difficulties than my earlier theory of me being a robot.

I didn't really react at all, I just said I had suspected I was weird for ages and got on with my life.