Identity Crisis

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Hi,

Great community you seem to have here!

I am 39 years old living in the UK and I am a few weeks away from being assessed for Autism. Life has been quite challenging for me but I always just assumed that I am just miserable and not very good at being a 'proper' person. A couple of years ago my son was diagnosed with autism (level 1) and whilst we went through that process with him I foud myself relating to many things I found out. I considered going for assessment at the time but wrote it off as I wasn't sure what the benefit would be for me as an adult guy that has a full time job, has married, had a kid, divorced and remarried!

Fast forward to about 6 weeks ago and I went off sick from work after what I thought was another bout of depression (this is the 3rd time in about 6 years) did the usual things, went to bed for a couple of weeks, restarted antidepressants (again) and waited until I was feeling recahrged before gradually coming out of the hole. The difference this time around is that I started counselling, something I have never done before. Within about 40 mins of our first session, she asked me if I had ever considered that I may have some neurodiversity (i have!) she then explained that she believes that my 'depression' is more likely to be autistic burnout. I'm aware that depression is also very common in autistic people but the information I have found about burnout really resonates with me. We went through an AQ50 together and I scored 41.

I have spent the last couple of weeks finding out as much as I can and also having a bit of an identity crisis - I am very good at masking and so I no feel unsure about who the 'real me' is.. I guess this might be pretty common for adults who are now making this discovery.

My wife and my dad have both asked me what I hope to acheive by having an assessment, the answer to this is that I can'l deal with this grey zone of not knowing for sure, I need a concrete answer either way - this being despite the fact that I am pretty convinced I am autistic.

A small sample of my special interests over the years have been:

Warhammer models
Fishing
Classic Minis
Volvo 480
Car detailing
Cycling, especially time trialling and all the geeking out that can be done with that!
Music - collecting CDs/Vinyls, especially releases from the SST label (Black Flag, Minutemen and so on)

At the moment I am pretty fixated on trying to make sense of all this so here I am.. Hi!

Welcome aboard IC.

Welcome to Wrong Planet

You mentioned AQ50. I am not familiar with this test so I looked it up.
If you achieve a score of 32 or higher on the AQ or below 30 on the EQ test, you should probably go hang out with some aspies and see whether you feel affinity with them or not.

You scored a 41 so indeed you might be an Aspie. Congratulations.

The secret in life for Aspies is to learn about yourself, your hidden talents. What, you did not know that you had hidden talents? In reality, you do have talents that other people do not possess. They are your "+s". Most people have things that they excel in (+s) and things that they perform poorly at (-s). But for Aspies, some have ++s and --s. And some of us are off the chart with +++++s and -----s. One example is Elon Musk. He is off the chart. So your first step is to figure out your (+s) and use them to overcome your problems with (-s).

At the moment you are experiencing problems with burn out. And they are getting worse. There are many Aspies that experience burn out. But in my humble opinion there is a solution to burn out. It lies in two areas: sleep and exercise.

Sleep. Your body needs at least a total of 2 hours each night of very deep sleep. This is known as REM sleep and deep NREM sleep. As you sleep your brain passes through many sleep states. The deepest part of this is REM and deep NREM sleep. This will restore your brain for the next day. You need this type of sleep.

Exercise. Your body needs around 1 hour of strenuous exercise each day in order to repair your physical body and make you normal. I am 76 years old. Generally I walk up and down a steep hill each day for an hour. Sometimes I go to the YMCA and swim a mile.

You wrote about some of your hidden talents. You have quite a few. You wrote, "Warhammer models, Fishing, Classic Minis, Volvo 480, Car detailing, Cycling, Music, and Minutemen". These are areas that caught your interest. These are some of your hidden talents. One of your interest is cycling. That is a good talent and it can help remove the stress you feel that produces your depression.

Welcome to WP! And, no matter how your formal assessment goes, remember that you are welcome here.

Though it sounds like your assessment will likely declare you are Autistic.

I thought the assessment was kind of fun! It was clearly designed for kids (usually they'd be assessing someone fifty or more years younger than I was) but I saw no reason to think it might get a wrong answer because of my age.

And I was delighted by the diagnosis: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Level 1 (Mild).

It was wonderful to finally get an explanation for so much of my life experience.

P.S. When things seem bad, remember life is a journey and the bad spot you are going through is just a bad spot you are going through. I was often unhappy with my job...but I persevered and now I think retirement is WONDERFUL. I am very, very glad I persevered.

Thanks for the welcome.

It's been interesting for me to reframe things in a new way and I feel that once I have worked things out a bit more then I might see some positive changes in life.

My trouble really started about 6 years ago which coincided with starting a new job, my previous job was stressful but had a very structured progression of responsibilities and the job itself was quite task orientated or utilising 'flow charts' for different scenarios. When I was in my previous role I was not getting too frazzled and could then dedicate plenty of time to my special interests which meant things were pretty well balanced for me. My current job is a completely different beast with multiple tasks incoming and often no real framework to follow, on reflection I can see that this unstructured type of work has played havoc with my wellbeing and has led to me feeling unable to enjoy my interests (too mentally drained) and led to excessive alcohol use as a way to disconnect, of course this only exacerbated all the issues which led to me becoming suicidal and almost non verbal at times.

Whether I receive a diagnosis or not I have now been able to see that I need to change into another role with clear boundaries and rules to follow, something more task orientated.

At the moment I'm just trying to do whatever I can and just resting whenever I feel the need. I will need to meet with my manager soon and discuss things, I can't see myself going back to my current job so I have started to look for something new. The thought of having an interview is terrifying me though.

I absolutely hated my job sometimes. (And there were quite a few managers I wasn't too crazy about, either.)

If possible, see if you can "adjust" your job. Or, transfer (not having to reset your score for earning retirement).

Might not be possible, I know. And, yes, a job can make you absolutely miserable.

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

Welcome! I hope you stay around and get to know the community and that you find it helpful to be here.