For those with adult Aspergers diagnoses- whats your story?

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Hey guys,
For those of you were diagnosed with Apsergers as adults, whats yours story? How did the diagnosis come about? Were you referred by a friend or a loved one? How did you feel after receiving your diagnosis? Were you hesitant to seek out professional help? How did having the diagnosis make you feel after? Did it make things easier or make sense?

Wanna hear your stories!

caught a bit of a radio show late one night where they were describing aspergers and it sounded exactly like me. My perception of aspergers prior to that was the stereotyped autistic character. researched it, took online tests which had me over the threshhold.

One day I mailed my gf a list of smpytoms without explaining and asked her to tick which were me. She came back ticking almost all.

went to docs explaining, they agreed to refer me to be assessed but I never went along, felt a bit silly about it all. spent 3 years researching, reading, and being obsessed with the idea of aspergers. Went back to the docs, asked for another referral, got it, went, was diagnosed with aspergers in 2016 at the age of 37

I had known for a long time that my brother has got Asperger's when I came across a video of a little girl playing with her chickens, and I was like "oh, this is totally my sister, just she has got cats, not chickens" then the subtitle said this is how the girl "copes with her autism". It struck me as very odd, as the she wasn't at all like my brother, yet the video says she's got autism... so I started researching female Asperger's and very quickly came to the conclusion that both me and my sister have it, probably my mother as well.

I remember how everything just suddenly clicked: our family, my relationship with my family, why we lived the way we did... almost all the things that happened to me after moving away from home... it was/is an uncanny feeling. I contacted the counselling service at my uni and they did the screening, where I scored above the cutoff for Aspergers. (Based on the life events and family history I told them about previously they seemed pretty convinced already anyway.) Now I am being referred to see a clinical psychologist and get the official diagnosis.

It has been/still is a difficult time for me, I have to come to terms with many things I did wrong and relationships that went wrong and why that happened. Also, things that others did.

I am positive though, I think knowedge is power. And it's not like I had an inner experience of "everything is okay, but now I am beingg diagnosed and I don't understand why." I always knew that something was different, kind of "off" or at least not how it is for most people, but i couldn't figure out what and why. For a while I settled for being a HSP (highly sensitive person), but that left too many things unexplained. Now I finally feel I have found my answers and maybe I can have peace with myself.

Probably if we didn't have this stereotype of a "genius male with Aspergers" in popular culture, I would have figured it out sooner. However, since I am nothing like Sheldon Cooper or Sherlock, I didn't even look at that direction. And it never really occured to me that my brother as well is different from these characters in many ways, as I could still see a degree of similarity between them, probably just coming from all of them being male.

But once I realised what the female phenotype looks like and I read different life stories, it was glaringly obvious.

Sometimes it makes me angry that I went through a lot of sadness and trauma because I didn't understand myself and no one else did either. However, it gives me motivation, as a psychology student, to never stop looking for answers until I am certain I have found the right one, and also to always look beyond the surface.

I’m gonna apologize ahead of time for the novel LOL...
For me, my parents noticed something was different when I was a child as I had some tics that concerned my mother. She had some neurological testing done to see what was going on and I was diagnosed with Tourette’s, OCD, and Anxiety. I was young, maybe 6 or 7 at the time and, with the information I was able to verbalize, the diagnosis made sense. As I got older however I noticed it didn’t always fit why I did some things the way I did, but I didn’t have a better explanation.
Fast forward to 2010... I still had no idea at this point despite noticing my differences and lack of social skills through high school, and ended up enlisting in the Army as an Infantryman since I had always wanted to do so. During Airborne school I had a really hard time actually jumping out of planes with my anxiety and I still have no idea how I got myself to do it all the times I did, but that was a huge personal victory... anyhow, once I finished RASP and got to my unit I noticed very quickly I wasn’t like everyone else how loud they were and how easy they were able to talk amongst themselves. I was a loner, I didn’t leave my barracks much, and everyone noticed. They don’t like liners in the military since they want good unit cohesion at all times. Makes sense. When we were on a training deployment to the DMZ in South Korea I started doing research into what could explain the differences I noticed my previous diagnosis didn’t explain. I came across an article about Aspergers and instantly knew it fit, but for a while I did my best not to think about it so I didn’t self-diagnose. Being an Aspie, however, that is MUCH easier said than done LOL. Now I’m out of the Army, some 4 years after the SK trip, and I’m seeing a therapist at the VA for depression and ended up getting diagnosed three weeks ago at age 27. I’ll be honest, when I received my diagnosis I was very relieved in a sense. I had the explanation I wanted all those years, but another part of me is/was angry. Part of my feels I drew the short straw because now I know not everyone will treat me different if they know, but some will. And that’s rather irritating and not fair. Also I’d love a break from my thoughts every now and again.. I guess that’s life, though, so I’m working with my therapist to learn how to socialize better with NT’s and how to control my anger and anxiety.

I grew up long before Asperger's appeared in the diagnostic literature. When I first came across it some years later I thought it all sounded a bit familiar, but I believed many of the negative stereotypes and wanted nothing to do with it.

To cut a long story short, my life was rapidly falling apart, and having researched and dismissed just about every other possible thing that might be "wrong" with me, I finally decided to take a proper look at AS. Adult autism services have only recently been set up in the UK National Health Service and it took some time and a lot of headbanging before I was able to access them.

Eight months later and at the age of fifty four I think I am finally starting to come to terms with things. When I was diagnosed last year, my initial reaction was the one I always have to important events: I felt nothing at all. Then I got really angry but I have mellowed somewhat since. It wasn't a diagnosis I wanted but I think in the long term it will help me to understand why I seem to have been wading through treacle for so much of my life.

Back in 2002 I saw a film called Adam. I thought wow this guy is cool.
2015, finally decided to try and be more social. Total failier, did some research on social interractions, what I could be doing wrong, somehow came upon Aspergers. Figured I could have it, seemed similar.
Also looked into Introverted ADHD.
Late 2016 decided to do indepth research, I took the online test, only 'just' scoring on the spectrum, or just off it.
Didn't really care to have it. Then I found these forums and researched all the little minor traits, and they really began to hit home with things that had happened in my life.

Never felt too lonely, never felt a deperate need to socialise (the way others do).
Normies (NT's) never give clear social feedback if you do something wrong. Which makes it difficult to know their is a problem. To me on occasion others were acting strangely.

So after decades had to self diagnose.
Very happy now, glad to have it. (I don't have the four main traits: meltdowns, social anxiety, stimming, unco.)