Adult Diagnosis of Aspergers, seeking others' experiences.

Post Reply New Topic

I don't think things would have been any easier for me. In my home town whilst I was growing up and even now, there is scant support and services.

I think I would have definitely benefited personally from realising that I was different and not defective. Maybe then I would have just stopped trying to fit in and knuckled down at school, gone to university and I wouldn't have to do that now at 33. I look at my sister like this; she didn't have a diagnosis, but she never seemed to care or realise what was going on socially around her. She went through university straight from school and even now, she says that it's everyone else who is different.

On the other hand. If I hadn't repeatedly thrown myself into the social milieu, then I wouldn't be the person I am today, I wouldn't have travelled, I wouldn't have experienced the things that I have and I probably wouldn't have got married.

I don't spend to much time thinking about this sort of thing anyway because, for me personally, I find it highly irrational. I can't change the past, so I try not to dwell on it to much.

If I'd known how the odds were stacked as a kid, I might have found a way through the maze that gave me some return.

Instead of being washed up on the shores of retirement without anything.

I think that if I had known I was on the spectrum I would have become even more paralyzed and afraid to try things I found uncomfortable. Knowing that what I say is likely to be taken the wrong way, or that my point of view may not be right all the time, would have made me feel even more self conscious and filled with self doubt.

On the other hand, I might not have made as many mistakes. I would not have left art school thinking I was supposed to try to get a more well rounded and more prestigious education, which was a bad mistake. I might have been more patient with others if I had been more aware that the problems I perceived were my problems and not, as I saw them, something wrong with the other person.

I've been fortunate compared to some of the people who posted here, so I can't complain, but I look regretfully on having lost two long term relationships, having no career or job, and I never having developed my skills and aptitudes. If I had accepted who I was and known what to accept about myself and what to consider outside my skill set, I would have focused on the strengths I had instead of looking for other avenues that I didn't have the skills to pursue.

I have to remind myself that I can still try to do those things now, but given that I have not only AS but also Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, it's still hard for me to ferret out what could be real possibilities for me and what are only pipe dreams.

That's what my diagnosis did to me as an adult. But if I'd been diagnosed as a child, I'd have probably worked through all that by now instead of being smack in the middle of the process, here in middle age.



Then there's the question of how much the CFS was *caused* by the struggles of living all those years undiagnosed, pushing yourself to be what you aren't, floundering to try to understand things without the proper context.

Yes, I feel that way too. Here I am now at 46 trying to figure out where I made mistakes, and feeling like I am just doomed to repeat them. But even when I was a kid, I was anxious about not appearing "defective," or even unhappy, especially to my family, so I don't think I would have asked for help. I would have, and did, stubbornly insist I could do just fine on my own. Having a diagnosis might have felt like a sentence, even if in point of fact it could have helped me gain some perspective about myself. Ultimately though, I think a lot of turmoil could have been avoided if I had known why I was different. (I'm really just thinking out loud, not really coming to any definite conclusion.)


Yes, thank you for saying that. I have wondered as much myself. When I was younger I tried to do a lot of things I thought I was supposed to do and thought I should be able to do, and they were very stressful. But whether I can turn any of that around now, I don't really know.

Thank you for your thoughtful responses.

I think the pipe-retrospective-dream I would have by the consideration of being appropriately identified early on is more in the way the adults around me would have acted. I can recall bullying sessions, in my eyes, where my parents would basically go through the list of things wrong with me and assert that I am to not act as such anymore (which of course never did me a lick of good for understanding). The undying echo, not in overbearance but rather prevalence in memory, is the phrase "You're always too black and white, you do not see the gray"... even more confusing. The so-called middle ground, where intangible impetus overules logical thought. The realm that doesn't exist for me. Had my parents been cognitive of this ~maybe~ things would have been more conducive rather than suppressive, in that I was forced to repress myself, or more specifically my communications with the outside world, in order to 'get by'. ..and perhaps my perception of it being a 'forced' situation is misgiving, it seems more likely an affect of my implicit inability to attune to the transient and lofty mindstate of 'everyone else'.

But, as had been mentioned, the ultimate relavence is the here-and-now, and the near future. While a want or wish to change the past is appealing, it is in ultimate futility. As is expecting much of anyone else to change on account of something they may never take full charge to understand. Ah, If only for an intellectual take-over of the world, not by force, but by the appeal of knowledge... the powers of the media I fear however are too all-encompassing to ever expect a yeild in that area... there's then the powers of religion... there are too many bases for conflict that humans abide by.

But back to point, I have come to a resolution that there is only the hope of being able to moderate one's own inward philosophy in expectation of altering the concept of the world, as it goes looking out by two eyes from one mind. I think the answer lies in context, as in whether one ultimately sees themselves against the backdrop of society, or against the backdrop of their self. I think the latter would allow for a greater capacity to cherry pick the interactions that would yeild an ultimate net benefit, rather than going at it uncalculated and trying to compensate for the stressors internally. While certainly the backdrop of society can never fully go away, it can be effectively minimized.

A lot of people talk about taking in their special interest(s) and making them a basis for societal interaction, professional sustenance, etc. While this may not be comprehensive, or 'normal', in the context of trying to be more neuro-typical, as it were, it seems to beat the alternative of missing the mark completely, as I feel I really have. I have always wanted to change things rather than adapt. I have learned the hard way that it is very hard to make meaninful change to things external to oneself, namely in the way that others behave. I cannot change human behavior, only my own, and at most, hope that influence alone may catalyze change. At present I have a tendency of explaining to people how and why they should change. Not that these assertions are not ultimately correct, but they just simply do not work in the context of actual reality. People are ignorant and stubborn.

I guess the ting that really stinks, in the end, is that somehow it becomes a deficit to rely solely on mental 'data' as many Asperger's do. It is really a benefit to have such a large capacity of brain power. If more neuro-typical people spent more time thinking, and less time impulsing, the world would truly be a better place, particularly in my thoughts for those with Asperger's. If the power of the Asperger's mind was allowed to be appropriately used rather than be blurred by the 'system', a lot of good could come from it. Not all are captured by such a low existence, but many of us are late starters on getting things straight.

Soooo true. It continually amazes me how much of the activity in this culture is based on impulse satisfaction. Commercials, political ads, business decisions ... it seems that the vast majority of activity is BY DESIGN intent on making people NOT think but instead just react. It makes me crazy.

I have a strong hypothesis for why this is so prevalent. I will not go into exhaustive detail as to save the eyes of any readers, but the gist is:

1) Archaelogical evidence shows the beginnings of 'advanced modern civilization' starting around 18,000 years ago. Of course this is not universally applicable, as civilization takes time to spread (even today there are still uncivilized humans on the earth, just very few any more). There are always geographic disparity in the 'rate of civilization', but alas, the beginnings are best understood to be around 18,000 years ago.

2) Prior to this, the human civil structure was very primitive. There were 'herds' of humans, or family groups, or what have you, but prior to 18,000 years ago, humans were required to more or less fully use their genetic survival skills in order to not die out. Evolution is not selective, but rather is based purely on 'what happens to work better for survival'. What happens to work gets passed down, what doesn't work for survival dies out. The skills of survival humans possess, like any species, took a long time to come to be what they were, tens if not hundreds of thousands of years, through the process of evolution. These skills are called instinct.. "fight or flight", "offspring nurture", "migration for food" etc.

3) Within the last 18,000 years, and more specifically within the last 1000 or so years, man has been dramatically changing the environments in which we survive. What came as a natural process of evolution, based strictly on environmental variables, are now changed. The skills to survive in the old natural environment are no longer needed by the general population, but those skills or instincts are still active. We haven't un-evolved them.

4) Now that we have developed a complex world, with complex ideas that should really require a lot of knowledge and thought, somehow it has become acceptable to not have a level of knowledge appropriate to the complexity of our surroundings. It is chaotic to have people living in an environment they do not fully understand. As a result of the lack of knowledge, the impluse behavior kicks in, or misguided instinct. Instincts are strong, so that even when they are misappropriated the effect is very strong. If someone gets satisfaction out of something, they will continue to do those things. What humans do today has nothing to do with species survival, and has completely removed natural selection and approrpriate evolution. We have replaced the circumstance of our skills for survival with trivial behaviors that play into our instincts. People don't think, they impulse.

5) The ramification of it all, in the end, is that our instincts are not to dissimilar from where they were a few-tens of thousands of years ago, but we have dramatically changed our environment, in a period so fast that we haven't appropriately adapted (by replacing impulse with intellect). We are animals that do not know how to appropriately behave in such a strange environment. Take a species and move it to somewhere drastically different, even though still natural, and it may go effectively crazy, or at least, just die because it doesn't have the skill to survive in the new environment. We just so happen to have a system that artificially keeps survival intact without bona fide survival skills, on the individual level, in order to thrive. It is the neuro-typical people and neuro-typical traits, that even exist in most Asperger's, that make existence so difficult. Its just that most NT's act on instinctual, impulsive behavior, and many Asperger's types use only logic. The logic has a dramatic potential to be mis-informed however, since it originates from within our culture and society in the first place. Too many Asperger's that I see think the NT way of thinking, acting, etc. is the right way and Asperger's is a deficit. NT behavior is what is killing this species, by not understanding the powers we have harnessed in our zeal for 'more'.

Very interesting ideas.




Aspies saving the world. If they would just let us

I too am late diagnosed. From my point of view, I don't find it so bad. If I had found out younger, It just would not have really changed anything, anyways. It is just a relief and comfort to know whats wrong, after decades of problems.

I'm waiting to see someone for an official diagnosis, but the tests so far seem to strongly indicate AS (Your Aspie score: 154 of 200, Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 70 of 200, You are very likely an Aspie). My GP has been great, it helped that she had been to a conference on aspergers the week before!

My life so far has been an absolute mess, there have been plenty of highs but things always turned bad at some point and I've been living with guilt for so long I don't know if I'll ever get rid of it. I'm hopeful though, even though it's only been a few days since the (unofficial) diagnosis I'm already seeing that so many things that happened were not my fault for being a "bad" person.

I do wonder how my life would have been different had I knew, but I'm far from dead yet and I'm looking forward to the future, I'm scared too but just maybe knowing the problems now I can do what's needed to work around them.

I've wondered about that too - whether I would like to have known as a kid but, on balance, I'm pleased I didn't. As you say, we learned to survive amongst the NTs and entirely by our own efforts and at our own pace.

Like many others I was diagnosed only two years ago. I was called an alien when I was a child because I was so different. I never felt like I fitted in on this planet in some ways I still feel this way. At least I know now I have AS. Sorry about my spelling I have had my own language since I was ten..

I have been thinking this, too, since my diagnosis two weeks ago. I am in my late fifties, however, I think I am more like 30-something. The guilt gets less each day - so far. I go looking for it because it was with me for so long. Perhaps, I think, I will elude it and finally be able to put me together ... so I can make a positive contribution ... of some sort. Is the diagnosis a new lease on life? I see it that way now, after the initial shock ...

4) Now that we have developed a complex world, with complex ideas that should really require a lot of knowledge and thought, somehow it has become acceptable to not have a level of knowledge appropriate to the complexity of our surroundings. It is chaotic to have people living in an environment they do not fully understand. As a result of the lack of knowledge, the impluse behavior kicks in, or misguided instinct. <end quote> (dang, sometimes I get a separate field, sometimes not ??)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I realized early that I could do better at logic than most people, but it took until last month to realize that most people don't even try to be logical, just to look that way. They only rationalize, but change the subject if challenged.

Ants have a very complex society, but individually, they are barely smart enough to find their way home. If you see six ants working to move something, only a bare majority are pulling in the right direction. Still, that is enough. Similarly, human society evolves to be as complex as it possibly can be, given the unsuitable instincts we still run on. Our short-sighted reliance on oil has been wonderful for many individuals, but is now becoming catastrophic for the whole web of life. Life the first settlers on Iceland and Easter Island, we found a rich resource, but didn't study how to sustain it, so we are having a boom and crash pattern.

I heard about peak oil in 1957, and planned my life around it, but so few others did that I wasted my life on the fringes. I specialized in a field that is still so small that it can only employ generalists.

because i had always done well in math, i took it as a given that the sciences were where i was headed, until my first year of college or so. but that was the late 70s & when i started reading about the nascent No Nukes movement i realized that the only jobs for me as a physics major would be in the nuclear industry, or the military; so i decided to drop that, & follow my artistic interests instead (i had always been good at painting & drawing, too).

if i had known that my difficulties were not just the perplexities of youth, i would not have tried such a thing, because success in the arts depends almost entirely on making connections & convincing other people.

i would have done better financially as a whitecoat, perhaps not more fulfillingly though.