Adult Diagnosis of Aspergers, seeking others' experiences.

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Nicely-observed, RomanceAnonimo. I agree we are caught in a classic Catch-22 when at the very heart of Aspy issues is limitations on effective social communication, yet all diagnostic processes are based to some degree on exactly such a process!

I am torn: to haul myself through a formal diagnostic process, fraught with the many issues that entails, but which may enable me to secure some financial assistance for the next time my working life collapses through overload? Or to continue hauling myself through a normal-seeming life wearing an ill-fitting 'personality overcoat' that will shorten my life due to stress and secondary depression generated through constant struggle and self-doubt? I know damn well that my 'high functioning' will go against me, whichever way I choose. People have always expected great things of me, and I have done my best to deliver ... crashed and burned ... picked myself up again ... started afresh somewhere else ... crashed and burned. But I was supposed to be a high achiever, and somehow it has come about that people still expect me to do well - family, friends and strangers alike - EVEN THOUGH I HAVE NOT, DEMONSTRABLY, OVER HALF A LIFETIME, DONE WELL.

Now, suddenly, in what some call 'middle' age, I know why it has blown up in my face all these times. Early this year, I read intensively on female-pattern Asperger's Syndrome and am now certain of two things: (1) I was and continue to be a true-to-template Asperger's baby, toddler, schoolchild, adult, student, worker, parent; (2) the wrongness that was diagnosed - i.e. the 'black dog' of depression that has beset so much of my adult life - was caused by social effects of the first, and intensified by PTSD. To suddenly understand everything - it is astounding just how much has clunked into place now I have the template - has triggered a cascading, blessed release from self-recrimination. This is the first solid step I have ever trodden in my life!!

Where to from here? Who can say? Onward, ever upward, say I - with hope, but not certainty. I hope it is not too late for me to build a meaningful, honest life for myself, because the loneliness has been and continues to be crippling. Nobody can struggle privately for so long, suffer so many rejections, live with self-worth stripped to nothing, without it causing secondary damage. There is no undoing that damage by now; what's done is done. But perhaps it is possible to turn some of it around. How possible it is to backfill an incomplete life, reboot an arrested personality development, recode a misprogrammed brain - above all, expunge debilitating mood disorders that are no less real for being secondary manifestations of the underlying unrecognized social dissonance - I don't yet know; but I will die trying. And I mean that in a GOOD way.

I intuit here I am in the company mostly of twenty-somethings. It is a great gift that you have received your explanation at such a young age. Take what understanding you can from this, rewrite your history in all these essential ways, deal with your anger, but then please move forward: launch into your life, revealed and centred. You have so much time to make up, but YOU HAVE TIME ON YOUR SIDE. Use it, and build a sustainable life!! I wish you all well.

Last edited by HighPlateau on 20 Oct 2011, 10:58 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I don't have as much life experience as the older posters who responded but I recently found out about autistic spectrum disorders and found out that I had many of the symptoms. Now I understand what people (who know me well) mean when they say that I'm not "normal." However, I don't see any reason to get a formal diagnosis. I can't see any tangible benefits in getting a diagnosis as an adult and I would rather not spend a couple thousand dollars on it. I also don't want to use autism as an excuse for not blending in completely. I believe in the "fake it until you make it" approach.

Anyway, to the OP, if you really believe that getting a formal diagnosis will improve your quality of life, then it is worth every second and every penny to get a diagnosis.

Yes, we did learn to survive. Also, we learned that because our brains are differently wired we can't actually change - be cured - and instead have to adapt, act, fake and copy in order to have a life amongst the NTs. At least this has been my experience.

HighPlateau: This was brilliant. I salute you. This is a perfect, succinct way to put it.

When I was in grade school in the early seventies, I was diagnosed as gifted. It was the most painful diagnosis I ever got. Somehow this seemed to mean to all the adults around me (including my parents) that I was too smart to have any problems. Any problems that came up MUST be due to laziness or they were being faked. I learned to loathe the word potential because it was used to beat me down whenever I didn't live up to it. A = acceptable, and B = below acceptable; anything else was failure. The fact that I couldn't hold a fork or a pencil "correctly" was evidence that I was trying to embarrass my parents.

So, I just embraced the idea that I was weird. I took pride in my weirdness and built up armor to the point that I also took great pride in the fact that I could handle any verbal insult. I was also very short, hyper-moral, and the smartest kid in my grade. Needless to say, I was not particularly popular with my peers.

All this changed when I entered high school. Two of my friends (who were also smart geeky kids) decided that the route to social acceptance was in humiliating me publicly for the entertainment of all the other kids. I took them three years to break me while all the adults around me told me that it was all my fault for reacting to them. At this time I completely shattered.

My family moved 1200 miles from anyone I knew, and I tried to get on with my life. I had effectively given up on humanity. I took my first psychology course my senior year of high school. I had always known I was different, but I knew on a deep level that there was more wrong with me than my weirdness.

I went 1500 miles away to university for a year and decided that they were the nicest bunch of idiots I had ever met. I started working and had major personality clashes with my bosses which ended with me needing a new job. (Note: I worked commissioned sales for Radio Shack and was their top salesman for most of my tenure there. Something Auspies are not supposed to be able to do.) I started going to community college and taking lots of Psychology courses. I enjoyed the knowledge, but I still couldn't figure out what my problems were. I returned to university and started going through counseling and psychological testing. They finally settled on Bi-Polar with schizophrenic features.
I started on medication, but this did little to solve my problems. I had started my first romantic relationship in my mid twenties with a girl who was a self declared pathological liar. Through this relationship I developed enough trust to come to a great realization: I had Multiple Personality Disorder! (Don't worry, I'm not on the wrong forum, the ASD is still coming)
Back in high school, my personalities had fractured from the constant bullying. Part of me had retreated into a world of paranoid delusions where I was from another world and the whole purpose of everything around me was an attempt to destroy me.

About this time, I first ran into the descriptions of Asperger's Syndrome. I got my psych degree in '94, so it was only an obscure condition that only a few experts on childhood development had even herd of. I knew I fit the description perfectly, but there was no helpful information for an adult with the condition, so I just noted it and went on with my life.

I managed to finish my degree, get into graduate school and get my paranoia under control, but things were still not going well. My social phobias were getting worse. I would often leave classes, assemblies and church in the middle because I couldn't be around that many people anymore. I completed my coursework for my MS in family studies, but could not finish my last two term papers, so I did not get my degree. I was burned out, feeling like an utter failure.
My loneliness and depression were getting bad and I was not having much luck with finding work. The bright spot in my life was that I found a woman to love. Our relationship was rocky from the start. Our families disapproved, but we decided to marry anyway. She had two daughters from previous marriages, which I adored. I went from job to job and then we had our son. His development was not typical. He went from average length and weight at birth to the 90 percentile in both at his two month check up. His abnormal development continued and at the age of two, he was diagnosed with autism as well as an unclassified genetic disorder which caused him to be both heavier and taller than normal. My in laws had never really gotten along with me and had poisoned my relationship with my step daughters. Now all of his problems were blamed squarely on me. About this time, our third daughter and final child was born.

My latest job had imploded and I was in a depressive slump. My wife suggested instead of looking for another job, I apply for disability and stay home full time with the kids. With two teenagers, a special needs child and a baby at home, this seemed like a workable plan. We went to the doctor and I was diagnosed with Bi-Polar disorder. I knew about Asperger's, but it was not considered disabling enough to qualify for disability. My wife and I secretly divorced (her idea, ostensibly for financial reasons,) but did not tell our family or friends and our family stayed together. When our youngest daughter entered first grade, she developed severe social phobia and was placed in special education classes. I can tell she's another Auspie, but she hasn't been officially diagnosed.

My ex-wife has decided to move across the country, and I have been informed that I am not invited. I have been looking in to getting back into the work force, but my prospects are not good.

I have gotten all of my other conditions under control, but my Asperger's is here to stay (and my Bi-Polar makes occasional visits.) Asperger's shaped my life through all of it's phases but was not my most pervasive problem for a good chunk of it. If they had known about Asperger's back in the seventies, and I had gotten help for my social deficits, I might have been able to avoid or stop the constant bullying that led to my breakdown in high school. Whether I would have been able to make a better life from there? Who knows?

Scincerely,

Scintor