I now realise I may be on the spectrum

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I’m 47 now. All my life I have felt “on the outside, looking in”. Failed relationships, my partners eventually falling out of love with me. My traits and personality haven’t helped. Growing up I was a day dreamer, loner, quiet and creative. I still am.

I recently had a breakdown coping with lifes pressures this had led to medication and counselling and a inward reflection. My councillor brought up the notion that I may have traits that put me “on the spectrum”. My instant reaction without much thought was. “It would be a relief” and would explain a lot about me, my life and my quirky ways.

After the session I took it upon myself to research ASD. Word after word, statement after statement, I could see me in there, I was reading my own life back in some stories and posts online, behaviours, communication issues and low empathy that I have felt all my life and quotient tests started to back up what i was reading about how I am as a person. I thought I was just “quiet” and saw the world as a creative playground. I’m a photographer. My parents saw me as “anti-social, selfish and self absorbed”

With doing my research I feel i know myself better and understand i have trouble communicating and expressing my emotions with
other people. I realise my experience of the world IS different to other people who I know. I feel my view of the world isn’t understood by many people I know. Perhaps a few creatives thats it.

To me the world is a very noisy, busy environment wherever I go. I love libraries they are good places, it is quiet there.
I love my own space listening to music in low light. There’s not much noise then.

At school i was a renowned daydreamer. I excelled at history, classical studies, computers and art. I was moderately good at english, technical drawing and science. I was poor at maths and PE. I disliked sport very much. I still do.

I am always told not to bottle things up, talk to close relatives. I feel this is impossible to do most of the time apart from with my current girlfriend who i have opened up to and has backed up my theory that I may be on the spectrum.

I sometimes stutter, fluff my works. I mostly have to rehearse sentences and statements if i need to ask someone for something If i have anxiety, or request help to do something etc. I struggle with expressing myself in a conversation and my answers are always nearly “yes”, “no”, “ok”, “really”. My mind drifts into my own world when in social situation and the voices all become one strange babble as i stare at the wall relaxing in my own head because it is quieter there.

I find it hard to work out the feelings and emotions behind text messages.

I liken my life to this analogy……. I live in my own world and this is largely a massive sensory experience with lots of creativity, thinking and self absorption. I know i have to interact with the normal world so for life on a normal day to day basis i schedule and plan everything to enable me to interact with the people i live, work and socialise with. Doing this creates peace of mind in my own world in my head.

If i am on the spectrum then i am ok with this. it will explain why i do the things i do and how i approach life, human interaction and why i appear unsociable, why i am creative and how i react when stressed and over stimulated by environmental, social and communication pressures. It will explain a lot of the struggles i had growing up at home, interacting with my parents and sister and when helping my dad, appearing “thick, uncooperative and difficult” to work with. It will explain why i spent all of my life as a loner mostly in my own world. I feel “safe” there and comfortable.

I’ve been researching and reflecting two weeks now and already my life makes so much more sense and I feel a strange peace and self acceptance that maybe I am “Different”.

Without going to my GP and asking for a formal diagnosis I will never really know for sure and at 47 I may have a struggle on my hands with that but In my own mind I think I may be borderline/high functioning ASD.

I'm in the same position having just discovered this very real possibility only now when I'm in my mid 40s and reflecting back and having all those inexplicable episodes through my whole life make so much more sense. Your experiences are so similar to mine it's surreal. There's just one thing that doesn't quite jibe for me in my situation: that aspies don't empathize when I've always felt overwhelmed by empathy but at a loss on how to express it. I did read one theory that this is ACTUALLY the case, that we (assuming I'm on the spectrum) actually are bombarded by feelings of empathy and if that's true it leaves no doubt in my mind that I'm Aspie. Welcome!

I've read that theory too about empathy, Serend. It was empathy what really made me think hard about it all. I took the Empathy test numerous times and really digging deep and thinking about it. out of 80 i was getting 17-19 all the time no matter how i looked at it.
I look back on my relationships and i've often felt emotionless not knowing how to respond, confused. When they are crying I could just stand there and watch not really understanding and just feeling numb. It's very weird.

I stim all the time, my eyes are all over the place taking things in, can't concentrate for nothing when in a noisy environment and people are trying to talk. My attention span is that of a goldfish or worse. It goes on and on.

My empathy shows itself at a distance if that makes any sense. If I'm at a funeral or a celebration when I'm on the spot to express certain feelings, I can't do it, yet when I watch a movie alone I'm a total sap. So it's confusing. I can understand how people would see me as cold (one friend called me the most repressed person she's ever known) but internally it's a different story. And yeah I can't follow a group conversation to save my life. One on one is difficult enough. I was convinced I was "simply" ADD before I realized it was comorbid with ASD.

I have numerous tics that never made any sense until now. I pace around a lot and I'm sure I have several other stims, but they've become so unconscious that I hardly pay them notice at all or thought they were odd until now.

I can relate to that too. I can well up with both music and film. I have been able to since i was a kid. But like you I can't do on the spot empathy. On the flip side of the coin I can watch holocaust documentaries and not feel anything. With my work as a photographer I can get really emotional about that too. But with others I can't. It seems to me I can only be emtional from my point of view I can't relate to others experiences in the real world unless I've experienced it myself first hand.

so much makes sense to me now. The black and white thinking. Literal responses to people at work. (They think I'm messing about) but i do them naturally without thinking. Sat like a dummy in my own world in a pub while listening to a load of garbage of babble and watching peoples mouths move not really taking any of it in at all really. My short term memory is really bad if i'm given instruction. I tend to repeat what the other person has just said quite a lot.

Sometimes I am so self absorbed in my world that I don't hear people trying to get my attention. It's like I'm in a trance.

Yes to all of the above. You might as well be talking about me. One pet theory that may not have any validity but its worth thinking about: maybe the apparent lack of empathy towards other's plights relates to the fact that we ARE so different and DO relate to the world in such a different way than most people that it's difficult to empathize. If true, that would be completely understandable.

The one thing that's taken me the longest after joining this site is understanding stims. People were talking about it a lot, and I had no idea what they were talking about. For me it is completely unconscious. For example, a couple of days ago I had to attend a function. The longer it went on, the more I freaked out. At one point, I came to my senses, and realized I was jiggling my keys in my pocket. The only times I notice any stims is when I suddenly become self aware.

@underwater I have stimmed for as long as I can remember. Anything from rocking, jiggling keys, ripping beer mats, feeling clothes, standing with my hands in hot water and drifting off into own world, shaking my legs(s) grinding teeth, waggling tongue in my mouth standing on my toes in a que, feeling my eyebrows, on and on and on lol

That's the whole thing. I also grind my teeth, move my tongue around a lot, do restless things with my hands...I remember the only time that I got in trouble in primary school is when I mindlessly started tearing adhesive paper off the desk during class. My teacher was livid, but looking back this was probably stimming. I've always done it, just not in a stereotypically autistic way that would raise red flags for someone not intimately familiar with the condition.

Yep, stims confused me as well.

I spent a long time thinking that I didn't stim. I even worked out what common stims were, including hand movements, and still determined that I didn't. I spoke about it with my husband. We both agreed that I didn't exhibit that trait. When I was diagnosed, I specifically said that I didn't.

Weeks later I was struggling with something and my husband said "You're getting stressed". I asked him how he knew, and he said "You're doing that flappy hand thing you do when you're stressed". I have no idea how I'd not noticed when I'd been looking specifically for that. I now notice when I do it.

Hey britaxeman welcome.

Stimming seems to help me concentrate and help block distraction out. I know I do it when watching Tv .... and I'm engrossed in what i'm watching. When i'm hyperactive and happy I'll stim a lot too. When self-absorbed thinking, I'll rock gently. When agitated I'll rock and shake my legs, waiting in queues I'll Bounce on my toes. I'll also stim to everyday rhythmic sounds i hear too, sometimes counting in my head. Not sure How i've made it through all my adult life without it being picked up as I don't always stim alone. MY family always called me a fidget when i was growing up. and constantly told to stop it. Sometime's saying, "I think you've got Saint Vitus Dance".

Yes, exactly. Although I did read somewhere that autistic girls are less stimmy than boys, which perhaps explains the real or perceived lack of stims.

Over time, I've come to realize that I had a lot of visual stims as a child. All the kids chewed their pencils, but I chewed mine to bits. I used to wave a pencil in front of my face so it looked like it was bending. Again, all the kids did this, but I thought it was fun a lot longer......story of my life. Had a really bad nail-biting habit. I grab and hold limbs, grab my neck, pace, do a funny thing with my jaw. I stretch and clench my muscles, shake my foot, rub my hands - my great-grandmother used to do that too - scratch my head, rub my eyes, play with tags and strings and zippers, sing. None of this is very striking, and I don't think people really pick up on it in a conscious way - but unconsciously they probably do.

Here's my favorite one that I've done practically all my life up to the present day--counting, everything, for no good reason at all. Or sometimes I don't even count anything specific. I just count and I never thought anything of it. It was just something I did. A quirk.

I've counted all my life too. anything and everything, anytime anyplace, it doesn't matter where i am or who i'm with. i could walk down the street and count leaves in the gutter, then switch to the traffic lights counting the cars waiting, look at a sign, say the words, sometimes to a rhythm, sometimes spelling and counting the words. Again i thought it was a quirk with. just something I did.

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