When did you realize you had adult AS/how did you handle it?

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Had to think about this one.

For me, it was a VERY positive experience.

Put simply, it explained every damn thing about my entire life that I'd never quite understood. Suddenly, there was an explanation for all the things that had eluded me, right back into early childhood. The final upshot, and it is still in process, is that a lifelong depressive mood, always held at arm's length by iron self-discipline, seems to have vanished overnight. Like an immense weight of guilt, dissatisfaction with friends, failed "jobs," failed romances, all now had an explanation. It was quite a relief to discover that I had been right all along. That I DID, in fact, have a pathological sense of honesty/integrity that got me into trouble on numerous occasions. That I DID, in fact, have real difficulty deciphering the motives and intentions of others. That I DID, in fact, have reasons for being so . . . unusual.

Discovering this stuff at age 50 . . . wow.

Better late than never.

BangingHeadOnWall: Do our responses help? Or make it worse....sigh. Auties/Aspies in action!

I recommend reading Dr. Temple Grandin's book, Thinking in Pictures. Temple, like me, is a HFA (Dx'd when she was little). She's amazing, and tremendousyinsightful. Reading this book would really be an investment for you - you'll like.

One thing I fairly recently heard/watched that was meaningful to me: Temple's mother (NT) had to be one of the mothers, ever! Temple always thanks her mother, in every book she's ever written. Temple's mother has the gift of being able to communicate and appreciate Autists. Anyway, (please listen, BangingHeadOnWall), the interviewer asked Temple's mother a question, "Are you surprised your daughter is an acclaimed scientist and autism researcher....her resounding success?"

Temple's mother (she's really old) said, "No. I always knew Temple had it in her."

Hi BHOW,

Everyone else on this thread has given you such great advice and suggestions. I'll just add my own 2 cents (okay, more like 10 cents, I'm an Aspie, after all ).

I was just Dxed with Asperger's at the beginning of November. I had known about AS for years, and had researched it on and off when trying to make sense out of my father's behavior. Something about the information I was finding kept calling to me, but I wasn't ready to make the connection to myself until very recently. It helped that I have a very patient NT husband, who doesn't push me, but will answer very honestly when I ask him a direct question like "Does this aspie quiz sound anything like me?"Since I started asking, his answers have consistently been a profound "Yes."

The diagnosis has helped our relationship in many ways, mainly because I'm getting more comfortable in my own skin. I'm not living in a constant round of dealing with my problems by choosing to believe that either a) I am a failure and everything that has ever gone wrong in the known universe is entirely my fault or b) I am fine and everything is always someone else's fault. Ironically, it's made me feel more human to recognize that for all my intelligence and drive, I have my limitations, even though there is a sadness there that I am not like most human beings. The difficult thing for my husband and me has been the realization that there are some things we can't do together, like pretty much anything that involves lots of people. It is very sad for me, and for him, but also an incredible relief that I can name what is going on and what I need to do, rather than trying to fit into other people's expectations of me. It certainly helps my husband to know that he is not at fault for my predicament, and that he doesn't have to worry about taking care of me, because I am now taking care of myself.

My guess is that if your husband is in so much denial, he already knows the truth. But please understand that many of us in the 35+ age range have invested so many years and so much energy trying to be "normal" that it is difficult to let go. The thing that pushed me past my resistance was essentially watching everything in my life fall apart (except for my marriage and family, thank G-d). I had no friends, no community, no work. I still cannot imagine working again at a steady job, and this is after 25 years of being very high-achieving and successful in school and work, raising a family, and putting in more hours than now seems humanly possible. Sometimes, it takes the unthinkable; for your husband, the unthinkable is that your son is on the spectrum. Once your son is diagnosed and your husband sees that the sun keeps coming up day after day no matter what, it may start to break down his wall of denial. I hope so.

But don't push. As someone here once said to me, our Aspie brains take the "scenic route" when processing any kind of feeling, information, or experience.

DEar Bang Head on Wall,

for me, the knowledge and dx at 46 has been a relief and also very upsetting. i can only speak from personal experience and i am in the first year of a process of acceptance regarding my DX.
I waver. there are moemnts of crystalline and exacting releif, and tehn there are moments of great darkness concerning what i am and how it has been for me. BUt in saying this, I would not swap who i am for anything.

Some days, the process of acceptance of my AS renders me incapable of doing much. Other days I am on fire with the excitement and relief of the missing piece of my puzzling life.

I do feel however, that I wish i had been able to go through this process of acceptance far earlier in my life.

As for parnters and family members struggling with their process of acceptance or acknowledgment of AS.....I have a similar situation in our family - where a family member has no wish to even acknowledge that AS is a possibility when clearly it is. I have learned one cannot force or make someone approach their ASD as I would like them to! Each to their own,a nd this is a great lesson in aceptance in and of itself.

As others have said, read and read and read. educate yourself. don;t look for "cures" and enjoy the process of discoery.

If you are interested, Tony Attwood has written an interesting article about "Diagnosis or Discovery" and how one can reframe the process of ASD awareness in one's life by focusing on the strengths and not the negativity that is so often bandied about and perpetuated at times by a well-meaning NT community. If you go to www.tonyattwood.com.au and do a search on his site for the article you can find it and lots of other goodies to read.

ps. temple grandin is also fantastic as someone else has said.

I wish you and your family well - very sincerely.

adult as is as...there is no point in adding an age based nmodifier

It seems more like being diagnosticated early, or late which idoesnt make it dofferent

To be honest, it was a breath of fresh air to what/how I thought of myself. Very "Oh." It was justifying. I also had the luxury of easing into the idea as I read more and more that correlated to me.

At 59 I discovered there was a reason, they were not just weird, they were NT's!
I never had a term for it, but thought they talked about nothing, had no interest in study, self improvment, and the high point of their week was sitting on a sofa watching football on TV.
Now I understand they are socializing!
I thought they were just losers.
I still think so, but now know it is a medical problem.
Living my life, I would say I put in three times the living they did.
Yes I missed out on a lot of mutual grooming and flea picking, so to them I missed life.
They missed the art and science of the universe.
They missed all the books.
My age group is generally depressed, old, and have no friends.
They look forward to Social Security and death.
Having lost my computer business in the New Orleans flood, I started a publishing company.
Everyday is constant learning in a new field, building a whole new network of suppliers, playing the game. I see the economy as oppertunity.
I see life as oppertunity.
We the, just did it, do vary from the latest batch.
They had trained NTs tell them they were different.
Our view was, you are all the same, and not at a very high standard.
I am considered a total radical, I do what works for me.
A narrow focus is needed, I am logical, mechanical, I do not have a soul, I am one.
The NT world is sure I would be better off, for them, if I was a broken machine who lost their soul.
That would make me like them.
Attwood is an NT who makes money being social with other NTs and telling them that the Gods have given unto them the gift of prophecy, but other gods cursed them to never be belived.
Dr. Temple Grandin you can learn from, good enough to cross the NT membrane.
You are different, but NT can be honest, ethical, plain speaking, and broadminded enough to accept that there are other types of people, always have been, who invented the things that keep you from wandering, hunting and gathering, every day.
I second LabPet about Semelena, NT, with a husband and three sons who are lots of fun, she has joined the party. For an outsider point of view, she is a very gifted observer, and speaks NT.
After our world domination, we are going to make her Mum of the World.
Now what do we do with the things we cannot change?

I learned about myself while I was researching autism in regards to my 5 year old daughter. I knew that something was different about her, and things just didn't click when you talked with her. It was like the connectors were not coming together. She spoke randomly because she had no circle of conversation. I read about autism and found myself. Eventually I decided that I needed a proper diagnosis.

I was diagnosed a few weeks ago at 30 years old.

Because we knew I had Aspergers the moment we learned about it, it helped our marraige a lot. I'm lucky that my husband has his own little issues (ADD and social anxieties, and who knows.. perhaps spectrum himself.) and we really compliment each other. I can ask him for help with anything and he'll do his best to help me and not judge me. I can also jump up and down, and cry and scream, and he knows that its a meltdown and not just his wife "being a b***h" like I hear so many other husbands say when their wives get upset. He really does help me navigate life. Without him, I would be much lower functioning than I am. Having someone help you with a lot of things, sorta hides a lot of my disability. (for instance, I don't do the shopping, or drive much, or make phone calls, or cook often. Those things are high stress things for me and if I can avoid them... I will. And my husband chooses to do those things. In turn I do all the cleaning around here. LOL)

Anyway, YES. Knowing did help our relationship. We always had a good relationship anyway, but knowing there is a reason why I'm "weird" sometimes was helpful.

yes, unfortunately there is a difference if one is dxed later in life. I have said it before in other threads.....in my childhood there wasn't even adequate awareness of AS. it wasn't even on the agenda of teachers and health professionals. you were just "odd." and because you were bright and intelligent, it was accepted and the diffuclties were ignored.

my nephew who has just been dxed (at 3 and a half) is bound to have a very different road to mine - thank goodness.

And that is because his ASD has been identified early, and not discovered halfway through his life. leaving him to battle without answers and wtih the ensuant self-deprecation and struggle that has been an issue for quite a number who are dx'ed later in life.

have a good day - whatever your views.

BHOW,

I realized that Autism Spectrum Difference runs in my family when I was 40. A colleague was telling me about her son-in-law who was so controlling (among other things) with his wife that the wife was having suicidal thoughts. A psychotherapist thought that the son-in-law might have Asperger's Syndrome. I was stunned to think that the daily uncertainties I experience might have a name. I was also excited to imagine that there was an explanation for the disjointed relationships and recurring tragedies in my family.

So what I did was research Asperger's Syndrome nonstop for three days, and after I had looked at dozens of websites and hundreds of pages I made an appointment with that same psychotherapist. I wrote down how I saw myself fitting into an Autism Spectrum profile and sent it to the psychotherapist before our first meeting. The first time we met she said to me, "If you were in a room full of people, you would be the last person I'd pick as writing writing what you wrote." I believe that I'm Aspie (as does my therapist), but I've also learned to appear to be comfortable communicating. A partial explanation is that my musician parents had me perform publicly from a young age. The discipline and practice of music as well as music being a catalyst for emotions seemed to help me develop communication skills.

I have continued to see my psychotherapist for four years - and in the process have learned a great deal about myself. I always knew that I was unique, and years ago felt that having a family of my own might not be a good thing. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to hold it together for a wife and children - like the majority of men in my family couldn't do. Finding out about the Autism Spectrum has let me be more comfortable with my decisions, but has also offered me the insight that I don't have to make the mistakes of my grandfathers, father, uncles, and cousins, because I now have a better idea of what is going on. And that is a hopeful thing.

Z

I was diagnosed in high school, bout 10 years ago. But I just ignored it and pretended it was nothing. Just went on being anti-social and being myself.

It was actually a relatively non-related book that changed things for me. I was reading the book 'Running with Scissors', i'll skip the details of the book (they made a movie out of it if you're interested) and generalize it as a coming of age tale of a boy who lives a very strange life. Anyways, there is one page of the book where he describes his older brother and how wierd he was and just one line to the effect of "we later found out he had something called Asperger's Syndrome, a mild form of autism." Nothing more than that, and I realized that the mear 2 or 3 paragraphs of a ~200 some odd page book was about me and that there are people who know me and things could be different and make sense for them if they knew.

I'm still the kind of person who doesnt tell anyone, but I guess it changed things. It was not a "OMG there are people like me?" kind of a moment but a "OMG, there are other people who have to deal with people like me and dont understand why things are the way they are?" kind of a moment. Hard to understand. Maybe just seeing in writing that other people have found confusion in me had helped make me want to acknowledge it more to myself to try and make things better for those around me.

Watching a TV program there was a short piece about someone who was realy intelligent but had AS. It was the first time I'd heard anyone with views that were identical to mine so I pointed out to the wife that that must make me realy intelligent. She pointed out that no, this must mean I have AS.
She was right.

Self (wife) diagnosed at 49.