Aspergers finally recognized in middle age

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My son was in his late forties when we realized he had Aspergers. Before that, he was considered brilliant but unbelievably weird. The only times he felt normal was when he was in engineering school or sky diving. In previous generations, he would have run away from home. Maybe gone west or gone to sea--he had forebears who did both. I often wonder if he would be more comfortable in his skin now if he had been diagnosed as a small child.

I feel quite certain that I would have lead a happier and more fulfilled life if the diagnosis were availiable when I was a child AND if anyone cared enough to to test me for it. I would have learned what to expect and not expect in the world. I would have learned to put my abilities to better use and to understand my limitations.

Instread, I lived my life lonely and as a target for abuse., believing only that I was a failure and an incompetent.

(Much happier now though)

Oh how I can relate!! !! And spend alot of time now trying to let
go of the regrets. Sometimes I feel like what's the use, the best
part of my life is over so why even go on when all this pain is
inside...What good does it do to find out now?...But then I take
a breath and look for the faith I've held on to. That there will be
a change for the better and live another day. I look for opportunites
to do good, love and move forward.

Judging from what I see here on WP, I don't think it would have made much difference. Day after day I see posts from teens and 20somethings with AS, wallowing in self-pity because they feel they can't make those romantic connections they think will magically transform their lives into havens of delirious happiness, fumbling awkwardly and self-consciously in social situations, being bullied and targeted for ridicule and contempt by both family, employers and strangers who refuse to believe that their Autism is really a handicap that prevents them from doing things that seem simple to most.

Then I look back down the course of my own life, living with AS until 45 never having heard the term, then until 49 before being formally diagnosed, and what I recall of all those years is that my life then was exactly the same as theirs are now. I was just as miserable as a teen, just as certain true love would fix everything, was just as pressured and bullied - and the bullying continued well into adulthood and still happens today.

What did make a difference for me was my family moving to a small town, where I was forcibly befriended and learned to interact with a peer group some of whom at least, actually included me instead of ignoring me - and one of those friends dragging me into a local radio station and introducing me to the Program Director, which gave me a job that synced perfectly with my own obsession with music and allowed me to develop a career that lasted more than three decades. Between those two occurrences, I was able to develop coping mechanisms that got me through adulthood, learning to work around the areas where my Autism held me back.

So in some ways, I wonder if not knowing was ultimately better for me, because it forced me to deal with life and work around my handicap, where having had an official diagnosis might have made it easier to just roll over and not even try. Yes, I was often unhappy and morbidly depressed by my limitations, but I still have regular struggles with that and I've known what my condition was for several years now.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to know now, its a tremendous relief to know that my lifelong sense of alienation from mainstream society wasn't just a flaw in me as a person, but a physical handicap shared by many others. That has been very cathartic, but it has also by turns, made me extremely self-conscious in ways I never was before. I am now hyper aware of every little Autistic gesture and behavior I have - I can't get through a transaction at a store counter without feeling like an inept boob and I never worried about things like that before.

So its a mixed bag of blessing and curse. I'm glad I know now, the diagnosis literally saved my life - I'd have been SoL if I hadn't been able to qualify for Disability when I did. Its good to know what made me this way, why my life has been noticeably harder than the lives of those around me, but at the same time, it hasn't fixed anything. I'm as Autistic as I ever was, I just have a name for it now, and a lot of people refuse to believe that its even a real disability, that we're all just using AS as an excuse for being lazy and weird. So what else is new?

I agree with Willard. There is a lot there I can identify with.

I also wonder if I wouldn't have worked as hard through life if I had been dx as a child. Conversely I wonder if my mental health outcomes would have been different. I destroyed myself in living a life that was a lie, and yet learnt skills that some neurotypicals would die for I had to work much harder than everyone around me to function on their level. There were times where I was intensely envious without knowing why and spent my life feeling like I was missing my humanity. It just looked so easy for everyone else to be......well......human.

It is a double edged sword. There are both good and bad aspects to being diagnosed later in life.

Mics

It's good, that he finally has a name for his difference, and I hope that it eventually brings the two of you, together.

Thanks for your post Willard...
Makes alot of sense and gives
me a more positive way
of looking at my situation and
the hardships of the past.

Sincerely,
Anjie

I think things would have been much easier had I been diagnosed as a child.At least as far as family expectations go ,not sure school would have been any different

I'm 23 and only recently have found out about being AS, but I actually found it did me some bad initially. School sucks, period. Being stuck in a hyper-social situation with people who I couldn't connect with was torture. But I thought it was a torture everyone sort of endured, I just had to get past my seemingly larger share of it. And I did. I learned to change my expectations. I learned relationships/consumerism/ect don't mean much to me and that I could find lots of happiness elsewhere.

Then I came on here to the depression and self-pity of those who have seen themselves as unable their whole lives and I fell into that it for a second. It's so much easier to blame your problems on AS. But I quickly realized that it wasn't doing me any good, and that I was better off before I fell into that trap of blame.

Life sucks some times and for some people it sucks more. Labels don't help unless they come with proactive strategies and an understood way to live with the label. Blaming anyone for things that can't be changed doesn't usually end up in productive energy being spent. I love who I am, it just took me longer to accept that it's okay to be different, label or not.

Hear hear!

Life is hard for everybody, sometimes. Yes, it doesn't help to be on the spectrum but it's not the end of the world.

I'm 43. If I ever get properly assessed, all that I'll likely care about is that it finally happened. What might've helped me more is if my father had been properly assessed. I think he's mildly autistic, but we'll probably never know. It would've helped us all if we'd had a better explanation for things about him while my sisters and I were growing up, and I think my parents' relationship could've been improved. Even if they had still not lasted as a couple, I think their parting could've been more amicable with better understanding.

It also might've helped if my mother and older sister had been tested for misophonia - or at least known about it. Given the powerful reaction they both had to certain kinds of sounds, maybe there'd have been a lot less distress and rage in the house if they'd known what they were actually dealing with. My mother is now deceased, so this could no longer help her. I've mentioned the idea to my older sister, but I haven't had much time to discuss it with her since. She may never want to get it checked out, but I have hope that just knowing it's a possibility could give her some peace.

I have been diagnosed with aspergers back in July 2011 and I am 40 years of age, but emotionally I feel 17, but I do not let that worry me. The thing is that in those days, our condition was not recognised and everyone thought I was a nutter. I cannot hold down jobs, I cannot manage my finances and keep myself in a tidy order. I am lucky I have a wife who has her own disability and both of us compliment each other.