For those who were diagnosed late...

Post Reply New Topic

For those of you who were diagnosed at a later age...let's say 21ish or older, what did you think the problem was before then?

I was diagnosed at 23. I did know about social anxiety, but I felt that there was something else going on. I remember thinking for a long time that life was a game that everyone was in on but me...like that movie The Game with Michael Douglas, where life is this big mind-screwing thing and he has no idea what's going on and everyone seems to be aware of it but him. When people looked at me in public (because of the social awkwardness/weird vibe/intense face) I thought that they were all-knowing people who were part of the game.

Then after a while, a few months before the diagnosis, I remember asking to get a brain-scan when I was in a short-term care facility...and they gave me an MRI brain-scan and also made me take a bunch of tests, but nothing turned up. They said I had a high IQ...that I'd been through a lot, but everything was fine. Then I got the diagnosis a few months later following another hospitalization.

It's funny really, because I had identified all the symptoms on my own, but felt that I was the only one in the world with them. I'd heard of autism...but aspergers wasn't really anything I knew about at all. When I thought about autism, I thought of Dustin Hoffman in Rainman.

I was diagnosed at 35. Until then I just thought I was weird, odd, an outcast, etc.

I'm 41, and I was diagnosed last week.

I thought that I wasn't able to cope with things other people found easy. I also thought I had social anxiety. I didn't realize I was particularly different, I just didn't know how to explain why I kept sabotaging my best efforts to get anywhere. As it turns out, I wasn't. I just kept hitting or exceeding my capacity and shutting down.

Last edited by Verdandi on 18 Apr 2011, 1:57 am, edited 2 times in total.

I was diagnosed with NLD when I was 40. Before that I usually thought I was lazy and that everyone else had so much more stamina than me because they were obviously hyper-focusing all of the time to pull it all off. I must've intuited something, though, because I remember in the 80s asking a therapist if it were possoble to be slightly autistic.

I was diagnosed at 35.

Until my early 30s I didn't really think anything was wrong as such, since I did not see other's behaving that differently. I did wonder why people bothered being so social when it is so hard, and where all their energy to do stuff comes from.

In the 5 years leading up to the diagnosis, I started to become aware of the differences. Wondered for a time if I had schizophrenia (that wasn't a nice time, I thought I might have killed someone for a few weeks, it was horrible), then I got diagnosed with social phobia and depression (fair enough, I do have both).

I'm not convinced my AS diagnosis is right, although it is from a specialist clinic. Personally I feel I am just too lazy to get anything done, if I just tried harder, I would be 'normal'. And that has lead to the development of the anxiety and depression, which I feel is my own fault too.

Let me see now, 97 so... I was 34! Before then I went to special schools with other auties so I was aloof distant and indifferent etc but was never diagnosed autistic and that may be correct or incorrect as a diagnosis is rather subjective.

You sound like you're already trying plenty hard. But you know that already. Not meeting criteria developed by and meant for someone with different wiring is NOT your fault, and getting frustrated, anxious and depressed about that isn't your fault, either.

I've been there with the depression/anxiety thing. Luckily for me, my diagnosis was a revelation and it dispersed the depression. Not the anxiety, though.

Maybe if you can start trusting that you are your own unique self with your own unique stregnths and challenges, not someone else's...

I hope you don't mind the unsolicited advice. Too close to home, I guess.

I'm 25 and undiagnosed as of yet, but it's only been a couple months since I found out what Asperger's is. My mother always chalked up my differences to my being "gifted" and thought that solved it. I used to think my problems were, at one time or another, nearly every conceivable disorder. My longest-running "solution" was some form of split personality where one half was extremely extroverted and the other very introverted. In fact, I once took a standard school-issue personality test but did half one day and half the next. The first half of the test scored all one way and the second half completely opposite. It wasn't until I got my current job that the pieces started falling into place and I was led to Asperger's in my research.

I am 35 and undiagnosed but I suspect it. I have long thought I had Social Anxiety and in fact it was myself who started describing it as social anxiety to drs because when I simply said "I cannot mix with people" it was ignored. Yes, I can be nervous around people I like and whom I want to like me back (ie men i fancy lol) but I don't think that is that abdnormal lol. I am due to fill out a form for my therapist on anxiety and depression but the reasons it lists for avoiding socialising with social anxiety are not the right ones! So have had to cross them out and write 'other reasons' next to it.

Socialising to me is a lot of hard work and takes a lot of energy. It is exhausting and can wipe me out for days if I socialise too frequently (more than a few hours a week lol). I tend to make a lot of mistakes and annoy people. I have not been able to make and keep a friend in 18 years now! I am told I misinterpret people a lot. I think whatever my problem is it's a bit more complex than just feeling a bit anxious. If it was just feeling a bit anxious it would not bother me. Anxiety symptoms are more of a pain in the ass rather than something that will stop me from doing something I want to do lol. I still cannot mix with people whether I am anxious or not.

I also just tended to think that I was a somewhat quirky person prone to various oddities. One of my support workers asked me if anyone had spoken to me about Asperger's so I looked it up.

Last edited by bumble on 18 Apr 2011, 3:44 am, edited 2 times in total.

I was diagnosed at age 43. Throughout my life I had been given diagnoses of 'giftedness', OCD, anorexia nervosa, depression, social anxiety... As a young child I had OCD-like symptoms, many phobias and fear of change. When I was 12 I became depressed and started to control my food intake in a very obsessive manner. I lost a lot of weight and was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. My teenage years were 'hell' - because I didn't know how to socialise with other girls of my age .

So, in summary, I had a series of other diagnoses before I was finally diagnosed with Asperger's.

I was 22. An IEP was attached to me throughout school. I don't have a list of previous diagnoses because I didn't talk to professionals. I was a real "gotta take care of it myself and don't talk to the Man" type, I guess. Then I read the symptoms, self DXed pretty hard then I went and got an opinion that counts.

hi i found out with 27, i always thought that i am much more sensitive, intelligent and moral thinking than others.
now that i know of it, i understand many connections much better, but still wonder if autism is mainly just what i originally that that my main difference is: a much more sensitive nervous system compared to others.

thanks,
anton

I'm still undiagnosed.

I used to think the following from time to time and in varying amounts:

1. I was just generally supremely defective
2. I was just very lazy
3. I was much much smarter than everyone else, and that was my problem
4. I was an alien
5. My parents screwed me up real bad
6. Life for everyone is really really horrible and difficult, but for some reason, everyone else is in denial and I wouldn't go along with it
7. It was just socialphobia
8. I had Schizoid Personality Disorder
9. I had Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Diagnosed at age 53.

I never knew what the issue was, only that every other attempt at "fixing" my problems fell woefully short. No other diagnosis felt accurate. I never agreed with any assessment until this one.

Two months ago I got my diagnosis (aged 30) which to me was a god given medical explanation for numerous deviations in which my life differed from all those around me. before that? I thought I was screwed up, weird, though hiding in my own inner worlds was always cosy. Breaking up the husk was the difficult and painful part.

I am still undiagnosed, but I've always wondered if I had it. Then I met and fell in love with someone who is autistic and he almost immediately said I think your autistic. I just brought it up with my psychologist and my psychiatrist and they both agreed i have autistic tendancies. They seem to be stuck on not wanting to put a label on me, though, I want the label. It would comfort me to know i fit in a group. I hate how everyone wants to label me with depression and truama and ptsd, sure those things are real, but they wouldn't be so bad if i wasn't the way that I am. Wich I believe to be autistic or aspie. I always felt like I lived in a different world then the rest. I felt my parents screwed me up pretty good, and that life screwed me up pretty good. If i could just figure out what the it factor is that everyone else seems to have then Id be ok. There was a time that I thought I needed to be more social, talkative, have more to say and express, and be more humorous and entertaining. I've explained myself as being shy and having social phobias, hating people and not wanting to be around them but that stems from the painful contact and the difficulties that i have so the base problem to me was still unidentified until now.

Last edited by mybigmouth on 18 Apr 2011, 9:12 am, edited 1 time in total.