Hello from NYC

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...Hi!! !! !! !! !! ! Coming from the NYC metroplex (Westchester) and being older, too...I feel connected .

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Renal kidney failure, congestive heart failure, COPD. Can't really get up from a floor position unhelped anymore:-(.
One of the walking wounded ~ SMASHED DOWN by life and age, now prevented from even expressing myself! SOB.
" Oh, no! First you have to PROVE you deserve to go away to college! " ~ My mother, 1978 (the heyday of Andy Gibb and Player). I would still like to go.
My life destroyed by Thorazine and Mellaril - and rape - and the Psychiatric/Industrial Complex. SOB:-(! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !!

I finally had the feedback appointment yesterday.

I was told that I definitely qualify for a diagnosis of ASD. In general there were no big surprises in what I was finally told.

But throughout the whole long testing/evaluation process, because I have not had psychotherapy in the past, I experienced a lot of what I think of as psychotherapy-world culture shock. Throughout the whole long testing/evaluation process, I encountered a lot of things that seemed utterly weird to me, but then my boyfriend, who has had a lot of past experience as a psychotherapy client, assured me that those things are perfectly normal in the psychotherapy world.

For example, my most recent experience of psychotherapy-world culture shock was how, at the feedback appointment, the therapist refused to tell me the diagnosis at the beginning of the appointment, but instead insisted on diving into the details of various tests before telling me her final conclusions. When I got home, my boyfriend told me that that's normal.

Anyhow, it's a huge relief to have the final confirmation of something that I've suspected for about ten years and that I've been almost certain of for nearly a year after reading a lot of websites and blogs about autism.

Congratulations on getting the ASD diagnosis after all these years!

as is often the case, i am late to the party if even i know it exists at any time at all. welcome to our club, Mona wish i was fast enough mentally and physically to live in an exciting place like NYC also.

Given my experiences in the LGBT community and various other subcultures, I have a lot of ideas on how to build the autistic community and make it much more useful, in many more ways, than it is now. See the separate thread Building the autistic community?, especially page 2 of that thread. (See also the threads Autistic-friendly workplaces and Autistic-friendly social skills vs. blending in with NT's.)

Next year I hope to create a website which will make it easier for people in the autistic community to organize local peer support groups, e.g. the website will provide chatrooms and announcement email lists.

I'm not ready to do this yet, but, in the meantime, I've decided to create a simple Wordpress.com blog, starting with a post about My life as one of the many belatedly-diagnosed autistic older people. Soon I'll be adding pages with lists of already-existing NYC-area resources, and then I'll add pages about my hopes for what the autistic community can eventually become.

I've decided to change my signature. I've also decided to preserve my old signature here:

A belated Welcome! And here you came across to me as a long-time member (relative to myself, yes).

I relate to you preserving your signature. A rite of passage if you will.

I look forward to reading more of your posts.

Changing my signature again (in just a few minutes from now), and preserving the old one here: