Shame at not realizing my diagnosis sooner

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Hey there. I’m depressed at the moment.

It’s been a couple weeks since the diagnosis. I took it pretty badly the first week with all the crying. I’ve managed to calm down to be content with much of my daily life but I still have times where I get stuck in self blame and anxiety.

It’s not that I’m depressed about being autistic. I think I’d figure out how adapt to its weaknesses well and I do like many of its strengths - especially the intense focus with my special interests and any problem I have in life. Damn, that comes in handy.

I’m more depressed about the idea that I may not be as self aware as I thought. I have a regular routine of reflecting upon my life you see. I’d look for possible problems, opportunities, question assumptions on beliefs, changes in me and around me, measure progress in projects and so on. I do it partly because it’s advantageous to me so I can live well and partly because I’m pretty scared of the unknown. I deal with that fear by making things known and having a hyperawareness of every required detail about my life especially when things are changing internally or externally.

Holy s**t. How could I have been not aware of something this big? I mean, I’ve actually researched on Autism before out of curiosity yet I missed it. I missed it! I thought my social skills were fine yet it was worse than I thought according to the therapist. No wonder I got confused about social questions no one else seems to ask and had to reflect for hours on end on my confusions. It seems so obvious now. How reliable is my awareness then really? What else do I not know?

Not that I’m entirely unfamiliar with this. I notice I tend to have times where I just want to lie down depressed whenever things start changing too much. I don’t accept the situation but I do accept my emotions. A large part of me is oddly used to this process but it still helps ease the pain by venting like this.

Long story - but I’ve gotten some prodigy level skills in meditation since it was a special interest since I was a kid and managed to reach some incredibly deep level stages of it at a young age. I can only comment that I can do this due to how motivated I get when I’m scared s**tless and my life is full of that. Though, even that’s not enough to stop how depressed I get. I’ve read about people who’ve meditated for decades yet still experience negative emotions. Meditation does not entirely remove negative emotions especially when something big happens in one’s life. It just weakens, shortens and lessens them. Not that that doesn’t help me most of the time but sometimes I just . . . drown myself in depression.


Sigh. I guess I’ll just lie down and do nothing then. I’m too unmotivated to do much.

Tony Attwood, Ph.D., is a world-recognized autism clinician and researcher living in Australia. His sister-in-law has Asperger syndrome and he has devoted is professional life to the condition. But, he didn't notice the autism in his own son until years later ( http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-2 ... is/8960460 ).

A year before I was diagnosed, I couldn't have told someone the difference between Asperger syndrome and autism.

So, don't worry about failing to see things in your own life that you wish you had noticed. Everybody does that sometimes.

I didnt get diagnosed until I was 32. It would have helped alot with the problems I had if I would have been diagnosed earlier in life. When I was in the mental hospital someone screamed at me on the phone and told me to f**k off. People have always gotten frustrated in me and I didnt know why until I got cussed out and hung up on. It took me 32 years to realize I had been thinking wrong, seeing things in my own distorted perspective instead of veiwing everyone elses perspective. It took me that long to see life the right way. I spent all that time doing things wrong. I often look back on life cringing at all the times I just didnt get it, but could have gotten it right with the right advice.