newly diagnosed 61 yr old Aspie

Post Reply New Topic

hi people ... I am a 61 yr old guy who received an Asperger's diagnosis about 8 months ago .... I stumbled on to a discussion about Asperger's and had one of those a-ha moments ... I took a variety of tests and pretty much aced them all for being called an Aspie ...

over the past 8 months I have been internalizing, assimilating and accepting this diagnosis ...

honestly, it has been the most exciting news I've received in quite some time ... part of my personal self talk has always included the phrase "what is wrong with me" ... since the diagnosis, I have not heard it in my head even ONCE ....

I now know there is NOTHING WRONG with me .... there is something DIFFERENT with me .... so liberating ... such a huge weight has disappeared ...

anyone else out there in a similar "older adult/newly diagnosed" situation who can relate ???

Mardo3

Welcome to the forum, Mardo.

Yes, I can empathise with that. I was diagnosed just a couple of months ago at 45 y.o. I am beginning to feel comfortable in my own skin for the first time ever, after years of depression due to feeling inadequate and a failure.

very similar to my reaction to getting diagnosed in 2013 at age 55

Yes! I am 61 and was given the official diagnosis over a year ago. There wasn't a diagnosis when we were young, I was just a "bad kid". It is such a relief!

I am dating a therapist...only reason dating is even working. I told him that as difficult as it is to be me, if there was a pill I could take tomorrow to make me like everybody else (NT) I wouldn't even have to think twice about tossing it in the trash. Then I asked if he'd take an Aspie pill - he said only if he could be as smart. I think most people don't realize being really smart can be a blessing AND a curse. Like I'm bored to death talking to most people and never watch TV (except for documentaries on Netflix) or do "normal" things that bore me to death.

I was self diagnosed (finally) a few years ago when I was 69.

I think the word that describes my experience best is: Enlightening.

All those years of petty pain and rejection and questions ILLUMINATED. Shadows chased away, truth revealed.

Finally. Everything drops into place. It feels good to know where you're at.

There can also be a mourning phase in the elation. You realize that nothing was wrong with you, so your reactions and feelings were justified. You didn't deserve some of the things that happened in your life, and some things would have been easier had you known earlier. It can be a roller coaster ride of reflection for a little while.

I am not autistic, but when I found out that I have my neurological disease I had a similar process. It was a few years before I went from relief for there finally being a reason why I can't run and why I fall down alot, to anger and grief about being different, to "eh, no big deal."

I was diagnosed at 60. It hasn't made a big difference, but I can see ways at work I am making smarter choices now I understand what's going on within myself. It would have made a HUGE difference if I could have known all this at 20, or earlier.

I am happy to say imy diagnosis has helped me be more empathetic and helpful with my daughter, who was diagnosed a few years earlier than me.

Well, I'm much younger (less "experienced"-- see who says aspies don't know social etiquette), but I wasn't diagnosed until about 2 or 3 years ago. I'm with Bea, I don't think knowing has made much difference for me. TBH, I don't think it does help, at the end of the day you merely know something about yourself, the world itself doesn't change. You now know why you have sensory issues or eye contact problems, or any other symptom, but people are still going to treat you based on the those symptoms, whether they were diagnosed or not.

The hard part about late diagnosis is that the bag stays.

No one - well, practically no one - knows that autistic adults exist. There's no conversation for including us in anything. The unknowing autistics who are getting by haven't had their self image crushed by diagnosis and they fight to keep it that way.

We can work towards changing that, but it's a thankless task. Worth doing, only because it's that or wait to die.

Not just autistic adults- No one acknowledges Baby Boomer adults, who should be our current Wise Generation; those we look to for advice and guidance. *I* personally, don't know where my research would be if not for your generation. That's in general with sociology and in specific with critical autism studies.

The generation before you, the Veterans, were a little more likely to step in and volunteer information to younger people, even when it wasn't wanted. Boomers don't do that so much. They tend to stand back unless asked, and so some people don't realize when they need help from the older generation.

I didn't get my diagnosis until I was 28, yes I know it is not as old as some folks on this board, but I can totally relate to the bored to death comment! I too don't watch TV unless its documentaries or something that is to my obsession/ interests like animals, crafts etc.
normal things bore me as well so does small talk and the like. I don't understand wasting time with the things the NT world seems to call fun, or the social norms. Some of the stuff baffles me, I still do it though when In public or at work so that it does not cause trouble or attention to me. But yes Boring is a great way to describe what it is like when your brain is working at a different level.

How did you get diagnosed? Are you insured? Was it out of pocket?

Self diagnosed at 69 (finally) after a year or two of digging through Freud, Buddhism (how I wound up here), and other fields.

How it felt to me was:

If you've ever hung a door back on it's hinges you know it's impossible to put in a hinge pin until ALL hinges are aligned.....but then it's like magic and all the pins drop into place without any effort.

That's how I felt. All those niggling incidents and explainable details of my life, my place in my family growing up, and people's strange attitudes, etc., etc. ETC. are all aligned with the answers and EVERYTHING FALLS INTO PLACE, and my life finally made sense to me. Before it happened to me I would have doubted the possibility.

"Why" it happened was I couldn't accept my obviously "introverted" status for all the answers to questions and road blocks I'd faced my entire life, and my thought: "Even strongly introverted people still have 'some' friends, so I must be different than that.", kept leading me forward until, I got here.

Welcome! You are not alone, my discovery came even later. I hope you learn as much here as I have done, and recognise a lot of new insights from what other members share. Before I came here I thought things like my difficulty using the phone was just a personal thing so to learn that issues like these were familiar ones to people on the spectrum was really helpful. When you know better, you do better!

Welcome to our world

I knew I was different from a very early age . Of course It didn't help having a mum called Mary and a dad called Joseph ! !

When I was 3 and and a few friends around in the garden , they all sat down in a circle and had a pretend tea party using plastic cups and saucers . I lasted about 2 minutes and then went inside and got my mum to make ME a jam sandwich and a glass of milk ..... just for me - I wasn't bothered about the rest of them

I went back outside and ate my buttie and drank my milk whilst they all faffed about with pretend cuos and saucers .

Weirdos ! !! !!

Anyways about 25 years ago I went to a lelectue on autism and discovered I was more autistic than most of the teenagers I was about to work with

Oh God yes. My own "aha" moment was when I was sharing a waiting room weekly with a bunch of Asperger kids who were waiting for their "social skills" group to start. I listened to some of the boys talking, and felt like I was listening to a carbon copy of myself, at that age. When I was in their place well before the 1980's, the diagnostic machine had not invented "Asperger Syndrome" yet.

I did feel far less "abnormal" after discovering there was a reason for my social frustrations. Aspergers had very much been like a gift when it came to following a successful career as an engineer and scientist. Unfortunately, the backdrop of that career was a lifetime of social frustration and declining self esteem. Having an explanation for this deficit did feel good, but there remains a disappointment that I will have trouble learning effective social skills, for the rest of my life. For every disappointment, there is some benefit though. As soon as I figured this out, I stopped buying those self help books that I'm sure we all bought to try and "reform" ourselves. One thing I've learned is that most socially-literate individuals who write such books don't know sh*t about Aspergers and those who have to deal with it. I got a lot more out of reading Dr. Temple Grandin's books than I ever did reading the pop psych crap.