Diagnosed at 26, NOW THEY TELL ME!

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In 2006 I was 26 years old when I was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome. Before that my entire life up to that point had been a disaster. As a small child I hardly even made ONE FRIEND. The school system did not help out and my mother who has it as well made my life A LIVING HELL.


Now that I am 32 years old I have to spend the prime of my life rebuilding what I should have completed already!! ! I've been cheated badly, and I feel I deserve some sort of compensation for it. Let me know if you feel this way.

I hope that this is some consolation, but I was diagnosed only a couple of years ago.

I'm 54 years old.

I am 47 and diagnosed last year and feel like time passed me by and I never had what my same age peers had or experiences my same age peers had-I feel hopeless and pathetic.

Self-diagnosed at 52. Yeah, have to wonder what my life could have been with this understanding at 26...

I've just been diagnosed and I'm 54. The way I look at it is that I'm thankful to find out there's a reason why I see the world the way I do, and I'm embracing it.

Sweet Pea hugs

suspected at 44
self diagnosed at 46
now undergoing diagnosis at 48


ktbug wrote

SAME.

I figured I was going to get responses. Now I think that we all deserve some sort of compensation for our troubles.

Not sure what you mean by compensation. I'd settle for acceptance.

There is no compensation for mistakes in the past, just the knowledge not to repeat them. Understanding the reasoning behind said mistakes and how they relate to current and future issues is key.

As logical and analytical as I am, .. I couldn't and didn't figure it out for quite a while.

I'm 47 and dx'd a few years ago. I've made mistakes because I didn't know I had AS or understood how my brain worked or why it worked the way it did. However, those were my own mistakes and I don't deserve compensation for them. I don't deserve compensation because I wasn't dx'd before. There are no roving bands of doctors who are prowling around looking for aspies to dx, and I just happened to be missed If that were the case, I might deserve compensation from them.

I do understand feeling as if you deserve a "do over" now that you know how your brain processes things, but none of us get that no matter what our problems are. I'm sure people who missed early signs of cancer feel that they deserve compensation or a do over because they didn't catch the signs until the cancer had spread and become terminal. But, they don't get one either. The only thing we can do is just go on with our lives, with the understanding that we have now, and try to better deal with the symptoms of our AS.

That's all we can do. I hope you do feel better soon and get some peace with this.

At least you were diagnosed in your 20's, I was diagnosed at around 17 and I'm thankful for my diagnosis because it has allowed me to build a greater understanding. If you ever have children or you talk to other people on the spectrum, you will be able to feel empathy towards them because they will be going through what you had to go through and perhaps from there, you can help them.

And as someone else said, Not sure what compensation would be. No amount of financial support would make me feel any better-- I have food to eat and a place to live, and after that what does it matter??? What would it be??? Vengeance??? Wrath??? Those things are deadly sins-- I'm not religious, mind you-- for a reason. They destroy you.

Maybe a public, personal, live apology from all of the people who told me I deserved to die, or that I could not possibly function as well as I do???? There is a cruel part of me that would really like that. To make them feel about themselves as I have felt about myself, with their encouragement.

Wrath is a deadly sin. Because it destroys you. I know, because it's killing me.

I'd settle for acceptance.

Except getting acceptance isn't settling at all. Acceptance would be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, wouldn't it????

You know what you are all right. There will be no compensation. In order to get compensation, you have to stand up and demand it. I can clearly see that there will never be a united group of people with AS to demand what they rightfully deserve. It has to be an individual's decision to go after what they want provided that he or she does not do anything illegal. I'm glad I made the decision a few years ago to break the rules. I am not going to break the law just break 'the rules' in order to get what I want. For example I have no problem at all dating a girl who is 19 or 20 years old. If anybody esle has a problem with it, they can kiss my ass.

Who would we demand it from, and what would we demand as compensation? Also, are we being compensated for not being diagnosed earlier, or for people giving use grief in school? If I thought that someone owed me something, I'd certainly speak up. I've spoken up to people who I've ran into from school within the past 10 - 15 years. I've actually said "Yeah I remember you, you were a real d**chebag to me and <insert whatever they did> and I wouldn't trouble myself to p*ss on you if you were on fire". I didn't ask them for compensation though, they don't have anything I want. My compensation is the fact that I have the ability to speak up for myself now.

So, who would we demand it from, and what kind of compensation would we demand, and what are we being compensated for exactly? I'm not being argumentative, I'm having trouble figuring out what you are meaning exactly about that.

I feel sorry for you that you met so much misunderstanding when you were younger. It's true that children who are diagnosed nowadays can heve it easier. My daughter goes to a regular school and has managed to make friends. The reason why this was able to happen is because they have a very strong anti-bullying policy backed up with social skills training. Children are taught that you shouldn't make nasty remarks to others, and it's nice to give people compliments and about win-win compromises. At the beginning children found my daughter odd- but she wasn't teased. Later people started to realise that she's actually a nice person. And finally she's reached the stage that she has real friendships with kids. None of them know that she's autistic. (It's not because we're ashamed of it, but it's because we considered that giving a label to her 'otherness' might give people a reason to write her off).
In a couple of years time, she'll need to go to high school and will be leaving the protective environment of her current school. We are going to try to get her into a highschool for autistic children- so that she has the environment that she needs to be able to study.

You can't change the past, but there's nothing wrong in feeling bitter about what happened to you. You deserve to be comforted, and I hope that you find peace of mind.