Late diagnosis blues

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Hiya all neurodiverse people. I was self diagnosed about a year ago after doing research online. I started tearing up as I was reading about the social difficulties of Aspergers people and I had the thought that wow this was me.
When I was maybe 8 or 9 my mother said that I was more like her than I knew. I know now what she meant.
It's been a tough time sifting through my life and seeing the things that Aspergers has affected me such as: my social isolation as a child, difficulties with new people, trust issues, and more subtleties. I felt as if my whole life has been a half truth and I have missed out on the great connections neurotypical people take for granted everyday.

I have a therapist that has helped me through this internal transition and I can say my future is filled with more confidence after the help I have received. However, my social "game" is really lacking. I have 1 friend that I can say is a permanent one but even then I usually say no to hanging out. I have developed extreme isolation tendencies and I am happy not to talk to people for days.

I want to hear about your experience if you have a later in life diagnosis and how it affected you.

First post btw, thank you for any comments<3

Mine has been similar to yours in the sense of sifting through my past. When my son was dx'ed I had no clue was AS was, so I started reading Tony Attwood's "The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome". I remember breaking down and crying because I had finally found what explained ALL the troubles in my life not just parts like depression, anxiety, ADD, and sensory. I sought a formal dx after that.

I have also found therapy to be helpful. I understand things better like the "whys" but the methods of limiting their impact are still being put into place.

Better late than never.... I say. Some days are better than others and I suppose that is to be expected. Shark

When I was diagnosed at age 55 I came to realize that every key decision and turning point in my life was partially to totally influenced by my autism and were not solely the result of flawed personality.

I have a bit of a dissociative view of the true workings of the world; In my mind I see this world and its complications as too heavy or not worth it. (for me I think, why bother with this complicated social dance that I will never fully understand) Of course I know why you and others like you with a family are learning how to improve the missing skills.

I live in the country away from folks and I just have my dog as a friend. I have few fears about life and one is that I will regret not exerting myself to become a better functioning socializing person.

That hits the nail in the head. How did you feel about this knowledge?

Relief and greatly improved self-esteem

In (I believe) 1981, I was watching an ABC 20/20 news report about clinicians doing work with severely autistic children - in those days, the whole phenomenon of autism was fairly new to the American public - and I remember watching the video of these kids head-banging, rocking, swaying, spinning and hand-flapping and feeling as though I had discovered long lost siblings, because I had been doing most of those exact motions more or less uncontrollably my entire life (I grew up in the 60s, when you were either Downs Syndrome "ret*d" or you were considered "normal," and expected to behave like all the "normal" kids. There simply was no other category). I knew whatever was affecting those kids, I had some form of it, but never during this program was the term "High Functioning" mentioned, so I didn't know what the connection between me and those kids was, just that there was one.

So more years went by, occasionally someone I worked with would complain that my constant rocking and swaying was making them dizzy and ask me flat out if I was autistic. I could only jokingly answer in my best Robert DeNiro voice: "yeah, I think so...lil' bit..."

Finally, at the age of 45, at home, during one of my many bouts of unemployment, my wife sent me an email from work, a link to a web article, with the header: "Read This, It sounds Like You." At first, I thought it was going to be some snarky insult, so I almost deleted it unread, but I decided to open it, just to see what she thought "sounded like me." It was an article on Asperger Syndrome, a name I'd heard once on a sitcom, being ridiculed as a joke, but I had no idea what it was.

As I read the article, I actually felt chills running up the back of my neck. It didn't just sound like me, it was me. It was so much me, that I had the disorienting sensation that someone had been following me around with a video cam for years, writing up a psychological profile on me, personally. It was creepy. Then it was exhilarating. Because it was me, it was every bit me, me all over, and it explained so much. Suddenly all the bullies who ever backed me into a corner and humiliated me, every boss who ever yelled at me and fired me, every teacher who told me I was very smart but not living up to my potential, every relationship that crashed and burned while someone I thought loved me read me a list of all my innumerable faults - all made perfect sense.

I was 45 then, and it wasn't until another divorce, and another round of unemployment blues drove me (once again) to the edge of suicide, that I finally found myself for the first time in my life, talking to a mental health counselor and asking her if she thought I might have this disorder I'd heard about. After a few months of observation, she concurred and sent me to a psychologist for evaluation. At the ripe old age of 49, I finally got my official Aspie DX Diploma. And it was only then that I began to do serious research into exactly what this strange malady was, and how and why it affected me in the ways that it did. I was by turns giddy with excitement, to realize that what others had always treated as defects in my personality were actually not my fault, but the result of a neurological dysfunction - and then melancholy and depressed to realize what I really already knew - there is no cure - I am what I am, and I will always be this way. In fact, in terms of developing coping mechanisms and learning to fake "normalcy," I was already past my prime. This was as good as it was ever going to get.

So I went through a strange period of intense self-awareness. Every time I had to go out into the real world, I felt everybody was looking at me and thinking "That guy's autistic as hell." I couldn't help wondering: Did everyone else in the world know this all along and simply roll their eyes behind my back? I believe the answer is yes, they did. Because all those years I went undiagnosed, the NTs around me referred to my condition repeatedly and loudly as "WHAT THE F**K IS WRONG WITH YOU!?"

I've also discovered since my career dried up and I've been on disability, that it's not only possible to develop coping mechanisms and fairly functional social skills over time and with repeated exposure to the real world, it's also possible to lose them, if one remains too isolated for too long. Or at least, to lose confidence in the abilities one has, and to revert back to a nearly nonverbal state, in which speaking to other humans becomes an exercise in selective mutism. Though we autistics may be much better suited to solitude and survival for long periods in isolation, eventually our human DNA betrays us - we need human contact, just like all humans do, even if we're very awkward at it.