CNN article on adult autism diagnosis

Post Reply New Topic

About a woman who was diagnosed at age 46.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/02/healt ... index.html

Interesting. It is sad that females get dismissed or overlooked because of assumptions and stereotypes.
Is a parallel thing to how males get dismissed and overlooked with fibromyalgia and CFS/ME.
Yes, male and female are different, but more important is that we're both human; and human and human are the same.

I can relate; it sure would have helped for me to have been diagnosed around 1968 or so.

I graduated from High School in '68, and I doubt a diagnosis at that time would have helped very much unless my parents and society overall (teachers, friends, employers. etc.) had been much better at understanding and knowing what to do than many parents and society even today. However, maybe all of that would have been very different for you.

Yes, that is a thing we can only wonder about. I'm of the mind that knowing a thing exists and what it is makes it a whole lot easier to cope with. As it turned out I and others often did exactly the wrong thing for a given issue because we did not know what it actually was. That incorrect knowledge made certain bits of life a hell I'd like to have not had to live. Oh well, such is life.

I can agree at least partly, and my hesitation has only to do with wondering how easily I actually could have accepted being told I was different and nothing could be done to make me like other people. My logical adult mind can handle that quite well today while saying exactly as has been shared following a later diagnosis:


I just suspect the emotional response and the resulting actions might not have been similar at the time.

We're just the same age and seem to have had much the same experience.

For me, even in the grade school years I consciously wondered that. Still remember sitting on curb in front of house in South Carolina in my 5th grade year and poking at the grass and dirt while trying to figure out why I was so different from everyone else and especially my own family.
Best thing I could do at the time was put it in Star Trek terms, Spock is real and I am related to him or maybe I really am some kind of creature from another planet.
So, yeah, I totally got the name of this place when I discovered it a few years back; this is my second membership here.

Also remember sometime around 8th grade while having some kind of interpersonal relationship difficulty with Dad I pretty much yelled at him, "Don't you get it? I don't think like you do! I can't! It's not "I won't". It's I can't think like you do! It's not going to happen! No matter who wants what! And no, I don't know why! But you know you can see it!"

@kitesandtrainsandcats: I believe I have spoken too broadly or assumingly, so please forgive me there. It had seemed to me that I must have been adopted or something since I never seemed to "fit" anywhere, but the idea that I might actually be different than other people had never crossed my mind. Where it looks to me like you might have been more intuitive, I could only do things by rote. If you might have seen the "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" movie, that scene where the enforcer part of Master Blaster loses his helmet perfectly depicts the witless-baby-boy-in-a-man's-body I used to be...and that all makes complete sense now that I know about my AS/HFA.

I have interpersonal relationship issues with my dad too but then dad's not really the relatable type anyway. Luckly now everyone is able to get diagnosed because people know much more about autism and the like. It sucks that many people will get diagnosed late though. I myself was also diagnosed late and by 19 years old nothing could be done about it and there were no services for me. At that point I was pretty much a shut in on anime and video games and the doctor who diagnosed me even told me I'd never be able to function in real life or something like that.