Hi, Off Topic!
You're in good company here. Lots of late diagnosees on this site -- some well into their senior years. I was diagnosed 9 months ago when I was pushing 48 and it's been the sleigh ride from hell since then. Like you, I was intellectually advanced over my peers all my life, but my social relations have always been a disaster. It was all there throughout my life, but being a female, the professionals didn't pick up on it, until I started belatedly putting the puzzle together myself. Until relatively recently, I shared the general perception of autism as a condition of boys who rock back and forth and act out or of genius computer geeks on the Asperger side of the spectrum, rather than that of a verbally astute professional woman with a graduate education who's great at what she does but can't seem to get through a day without offending someone unintentionally. I had to be honest with myself that the reason I always had the feeling I was on the outside looking in was because I really was on the outside looking in neurologically-speaking. Sitting down with the DSM-IV and flipping away from the misdiagnoses that had been misapplied to me and staring at the Asperger's list of criteria, everything I had experienced from childhood on started to make terrifying sense. Dozens of people on here would tell it you that way almost verbatim, so you are not alone. Welcome. You'll have lots of questions about coming to terms with the diagnosis and the repercussions. We're here to help.
05 May 2014, 4:32 pm
