Life improves after diagnosis

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I woke up this morning remembering how awful my life was before i got a diagnosis. Before a psychiatrist told me i had AS. This was in 2008 on the feast day of Australia's first Catholic saint Mary Mackillop. Allelulia! What a blessing that was for me. All those years i spent in the wilderness trying to find out what was 'wrong' with me. Now i am so grateful i have autism. In my older years i see NT couples clinging desperately to each other and am thankful i have had to stand on my own and become emotionally independent. We have our own special gifts.

I just noticed my name on the post came up as Tufted Titmouse. That is not me but it is very cute and i like it.

You get a rise in rank for the number of posts you make. And the ranks are named after flying creatures, until you reach 500. Then you stay a "veteran" from then on.

Thank you for telling me that. I noticed i was a butterfly at first and then a hummingbird but i thought i must have done that. But it was the administrator. I like having these names so i had better keep under 500 posts.

On a cat site I was on, after a certain number of posts (I forget now if it was 1,500 or higher), you could get a customized title based on something meaningful to you. Mine was "Lynx," referring to my Lynx (tabby) point Siamese cats, Samantha and Prince.

outerspacenik,

I am happy for you that your life has improved. As for me, at my age, I don't think my life could improve with a formal diagnosis. I don't see it as something positive. It would be just a confirmation of something I have known all along: I am different. Others would see it, too. I couldn't imagine ever getting a date, unless it was a pity date, at my age and with a formal diagnosis.

I am happy for you, though, that it impacted you positively.

I think it depends on when the diagnosis occurs in your life and the specific ways it causes your relationship to the world around you to change.

That being said, I'm glad it has improved your life.

I am awaiting assessment. If I am found to be on the spectrum, it will be a tremendous relief. Why? Because it will expain so much. There is nothing worse then not being able to explain things... I actually fear being diagnosed with something which does not make sense or having no diagnoses where I am back to square one.
It is not that I want to have something classed as an issue. It is more that I really aant to make sense of why I keep getting what I believe to be shut downs though they could be something else. Over the years I have been tested for everything physical relating to the symptoms which I find hard to describe...

Even if I just have traits, having those traits confirmed means that I am not imagining things! As an expert assessor, even if he or she misses things will at least pick up on something which will give me a clue about why I feel like I do... Why I feel so much like I have to force myself to do things, and then if I force myself too much my body objects (Or my mind objects?) and I end up in difficulties.

Being assessed will confirm or deny for me that the issues I am dealing with are something physical, or something mental that effects the physical, which is an aspect that in the past had never occurred to me. The possibility that the mind can effect the body.

I am in a way impatient as I want to know... But I need to be patient.

If I am found to be on the spectrum or have some other issue that is found, then will it mean my life will get better from there? The short answer is I do not know, but I certainly know that to have a etter understanding of what is happening certainly will help me.

For a long time now I have really thouhht "If only I can see some sort of doctor and am able to see them every day so I can fully open up as I feel I can ever open up as appointments are short... I mean... The doctors have so many patients to deal with and it may even take me days to open up... But doctors don't have days to spare! It is how I feel inside. I want to open up fully and so far I have never been able to do this. I would not even know where to start if I had the chance... And I can't open up to anyone who may not understand me. And to understand me also means they may need to also understand spiritual concepts as well as physical.... Umm. Not easy!

Maybe I was a bit down on myself the day I made that post. I still hold out hope of falling in love and dating someday. At my age, though, I can't afford to fail in that area too many times. In your 20s, you can afford a few false starts. In your 50s, not so much.

Have patience.

I got diagnosed with autism and SPD very recently. I think it will take a little more time for the puzzles to fit together. I also have OCD and my doctor thinks it is so extreme that it turns into a bit of psychosis.

But I am coming to see that all of my perceived failures were probably due to autism. Not being able to connect with my parents really hurts me and makes me ashamed.

Well, logically, finding out I had ASD had to be helpful, because it's always good to know your strengths and weaknesses, isn't it?

I'm sure it's helped me to work out what went wrong with a lot of things in my life, and it's relieved me from a lot of suspicions about myself now I know that so many of my mistakes weren't so much down to personality but brain wiring. But there's another side to the coin. Very few other people are interested in my diagnosis. I don't feel people in general are likely to make any allowances for it. To most of them, it's either too complicated or they just don't believe it. So now every time I mix with people I'm starting out with the knowledge that I've got social impairments that they don't have, that I'll likely do something "wrong" and if I try to excuse it as ASD they'll at best ignore that and at worst think I'm making lame excuses.

It's not all bad. I seem to get by socially. I've been able to use music and some strangely perceptive grasp of human nature I've acquired to stay afloat. But the days are gone when in blissful ignorance I could, say, duck out of a social event and imagine that most people were probably smart enough not to put me down as antisocial. These days, knowing the neurotypical mindset better, I feel much more at risk of being "outvoted." I was probably more arrogant before my diagnosis, and although that arrogance was unrealistic, it was a source of a certain confidence I can't ever go back to. I always knew I had social problems, but I used to be able to blame the other people for a lot of it, and as I didn't feel there was anything socially "wrong" with me, I could see no reason to fear jumping into any social situation that came up, if I wanted to. But now I can see a reason. If you tell an athlete just before a race that their tendons are in bad condition and threatening to snap under strain, and they believes you, don't be surprised if their performance takes a turn for the worse.

Probably the worst of it is knowing how schmoozy most people are. Most of them will say anything rather than how they really feel about you if it's negative. How can I improve my behaviour towards a person if they won't tell me what they don't like? How can I even know when I've annoyed them?

There are other things I've had to accept about most of the human race and about how I compare with them. They'll endure a tiring drive to some ritual tourist spot and pay good money to see the ritual sights with friends, get home exhausted and think they've had a social experience. To me, that's just a mechanical process. There was no deep conversation, nobody found out much of any importance about each other, they didn't do anything creative together or share anything except the interior of a car and the viewing of a statue. Most of the time they were just waiting around in a noisy crowd waiting for something to happen. They're not geared to the profound.

Like I say, it's not as bad as it might look from the picture I paint here. I used exaggeration for emphasis.

A jaded ToughDiamond? I tend to agree with your analysis and I may even be more cynical.

I am not diagnosed and probably would not meet the DSM criteria. That said, the knowledge I gained about my social limitations has given me an opportunity improve that way I behave in public. Learning how to speak face has been very useful. Working on small talk and reading body language has helped.

Does any of this change me or the world? No!

Less friction means less trouble.

I think that one of the biggest positives of getting a formal diagnosis is that you can tell general practitioners the reason why you are a little different.

This is important, as from the extensive reading on the subject, expert authors such as psychology specialist Doc Tony Atwood explains that it is extremely common for incompetent general medical doctors to misdiagnose people with ASD including Asperger Syndrome as having schizophrenia due to the tangential manner in which people with ASD often communicate.

In short general doctors misunderstand the nature of ASD styled tangential verbal communication which is caused by dysfunctional neurological networks, for the dysfunctional and random verbal communication of delusional schitzophrenics which is caused primarily by chemical imbalance in the neurological networks.

The main danger of being misdiagnosed, is not only having the label, but also for the some to be filled with high doses of anti-psychotics and even be put in full time adult psychiatry unit.

The history of ASD is plagued with such abuses, i believe that quiet a few people ended up being put in such institutions and ended up having their lives ruined due to incompetent doctors.