What would life be like if you had early diagnosis?

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Anyone ever wonder that?

I wonder if life would have been easier or harder. What would the parent's reaction be? What would they do if they heard the words..the common words from psychiatrists that "Your child will probably never marry" or the common sterotypes?

Would your parents give into that ruling and just give up on you ever being independant and focus on other siblings instead?

Did your parents already do that without an official diagnosis?

Do you think it would have been better? I think it would have been better because then I could have worked on a few things or at least understood more. I also do not think it would have been better because it may have given more fuel to the fire that I should never be shown how to do certain things because the shrink said I would never be able to.

In fact, I've actually been alone in most of my journey. Alot of times when speaking to siblings, someone will take full credit for my accomplishments and learnings when actually I was left alone in the matter. I don't feel like correcting, I just let them believe that.

If you had not traveled your journey - you would not be you.

I never think back, but I am so great full I have at last found my true self - an aspie

The huge difference would be that I wouldn't have spent all my life's earnings on therapies and all my life's energies on trying to improve my relationships with people. Instead, I would've spent my resources on university studies, which I'm very good at and where I do thrive. I wouldn't be a clerk now, one whose job depends on her social skills, I'd have more money and I'd enjoy the good things that life has to offer unrelated to human interaction. The way things are, at 46 I discover I've been an idiot for 46 years trying and trying to improve what cannot be improved on to start with, because it's just not there. Oh yeah, after decades of investing everything in it, I offend people a tiny bit less. But it makes f**k all difference in my life anyway.

I hope as many aspies read this post and stop "trying" and instead start "living".

Does that come with a manual?

The manual is as I described above, not to invest in what can't be improved but in what you're good at.

MAN can I ever relate!! !! Let me see...

1. I would have treated the first friend I think I knew a bit better, and not been so taken aback by certain things. Maybe she is someone I would have married. If I had, maybe she would be alive today.
2. I wouldn't have changed so much to look so NT.
3. I would have studied more.
4. I wouldn't have even TRIED to take classes on social or selling things.
5. I wouldn't have taken any of the jobs I did(And would probably be a MILLIONARE by now, and would probably have 20/20 vision, and a healthy aorta!)
6. I would have tried to map out how others think, rather than assume it is logical.
7. I would have STAYED in an apartment.
8. I would have been more diligent about some things(of course this is similar to #2).
9. I wouldn't have bothered with religion or social gatherings.

To those detractors that think WELL, he would have been told he couldn't do this/that/etc... My personality would have kept pushing me FURTHER! The GOOD I have today is due to that! Getting rid of #2 would have made that obvious even today.

Greentea,

I have elements I want to change. The minor things that can be changed. I want to do it. It's something I've done before. In the process I learn new skills. I learn more about the human mind. That is just a little part of what I enjoy doing.

It doesn't make me unhappy doing so. It also doesn't mean that I think others should go my way.

That's what I did growing up. While I was pushing further, others around me didn't want it. I still don't know why.

i would agree there
the only thing out of many that i realy regret is losing some one i realy loved. which now i realise was lost caus of my aspy.
never mind.
personaly i think our future is allready told and can not be changed,
you just have to go with the flow,

then agian that could be an excuse for my past failure
and another excuse to not try so hard

I mean I ACTUALLY developed a policy of not using ANYTHING unless I understood it at a rather basic level. Before I was 10(which was before Microsoft or Apple were around, BTW) I understood radios(Right down to the tank circuit), TVs(Right down to how the electron beam is managed to excite the phosphur), Computers(Right down to how basically a capacitor stores the charge in dynamic memory, or how logic circuits handle the data presented by a matrix created with the address and data bus), etc....

I don't think I ever read the directions for electronic gadgets, but I DID read the schematics. I also ALWAYS asked why! I also tried to INSIST on doing things my own way. I HATED imperfection. And YEP, I knew I wasn't perfect, and would have prefered to be a bit different.

Anyway, that meant that if they said I was an idiot that would never amount to anything(Luckily, I was never told anything of the kind), it would have made them look exceedingly dumb, because even a lot of ADULTS didn't know how radios worked, much less a TV or a computer. Most STILL don't.

You may not realize it when you wrote it but you actually helped me understand something about my siblings. You just made something go click!

Thanks.

Do you ever feel damned if you do, damned if you don't?

It depends. It might have been better, it might have been worse.

The bad scenario:

I would have been forced to go to a school for autistics (or even worse: home schooled), without contact with other people, and wouldn't be particularly high-functioning today.

The good scenario:

I would have gotten help with my social skills from the start, and would have gotten help with organising stuff. My grades would have been better, and my years as a teen would have been easier.

"What if?" questions can keep me up all night...

At least I would've known there was something I was bad at, rather than think that all of me was bad or not know what was wrong with me, and doubt everything about me: my tastes, my perceptions, my memory, my imagination, my IQ, my values, my kindness, absolutely everything for 4 decades.

i would have taken most of my bad experiences in stride. i wouldn't have grown up immensely bitter with my parents and relatives. i would have understood that i was somehow different from my classmates and wouldn't have been so angry all the time. i wouldn't have expected so much from people, knowing they wouldn't know how to deal with me. i could have learned skills right ahead instead of psyching myself into thinking that i could be bad because no one wants to be with me.

I wouldn't have wanted to be diagnosed as a kid, even if such a thing had been possible in the 70s. I'm an eccentric, and if I'd been diagnosed, all my eccentricities (all the things that constitute me, in other words) would have been treated like pathological symptoms to be cured or at least modified. By remaining an enigma to others, I've escaped that fate and am still the person I want to be, not somebody whom others would have wanted me to be.