Diagnosed when older? The process of accepting the dx?

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I think I must be in a quasi-denial stage: I've gotten through roughly half my life not knowing. Now I'm wondering what- if any benefits there are in knowing now. I don't identify with most of the participants on this board and I have yet to meet anyone IRL that is on the spectrum- I have no real barometer for my diagnosis.

My apologies, Greentea - I had gotten so wrapped up in reading your story, I had neglected to take note that you had actually filled out the "Location" section (something so many members either neglect, or fill out with something allegedly funny - like me, for instance). The tale had sounded so familiar, I suppose I had simply assumed you must be somewhere in either the US, Canada, or Europe.

Even in the US, it depends on the state. Some states have an "At Will" law, that's exactly like in my country. They can fire you for being an Aspie and it's their right. And certainly in Europe, bar the UK, there are no laws protecting Aspies from being fired for it.

This is very much my experience. i've had a host of misdiagnoses and trying to sort out what the heck was wrong over my lifetime of 46 years. I have depression and anxiety issues and that sensory integration stuff. It is all being realigned and re-examined in terms of finally getting a legitimate and sensible and logical answer to the cluster of traits i exhibit and have always exhibited.

I was a BIG one for self-medicating withe the delightful little illegal drugs. What this meant was that i was steered into a kind of "therapy and rehab" sensibility and approach that more or less espoused that all things were healable and fixable. It has been extremely important for me to reconsider my life from a new analytical standpoint that actually answers and confirms what has been the issue in my life. It is a new paradigm. (I was living in the wrong one before the dx.)

So, in saying that, i have benefited enormously from some of the cognitive therapy i have come across. But on the whole, while other people i was in rehab with have developed a social group and permeated the culture and society they belong to, I struggled along with some improvements but with utter exhaustion from partaking in the simple machinations of people and life. I have exectutive function problems (house was empty of food yesterday because i couldn't get to the shops...not a money issue - just cannot organise myself to drive one minute down road.same with paying bills online even. Procrastination is a problem.) If i go out and see people, i have to sleep the following day(s) and have no-one around. And i will go over the social exchanges for days in an attempt to work out the subtexts and what was actually being communicated. AT times i crave friendship and communication, but during and after the experience it is a complete mystery to me and i tend to cope with it rather than enjoy it. I want to do more with my life and career but feel crippled at times by the limitations of my AS. at other times, i rejoice in it.

Anyway, Vulcan seems to express a parallel experience to my own.....one of re-evaluation and re-interpretation of a life and history. And in saying that, there is indeed relief as well- do not get me wrong. It is just somewhat more complex for me than that, and appears to encompass a great deal more than "millie plus dx = relief and problem solved." (and in saying that i am not implying that is how it is for anyone else.) As i said , i am entering into a new paradigm - the one i needed all along, in order to comprehend my place in the world.

Itnerestingly jsut prior to the whole ASD can of worms opening up in my family, i was at a terribly suicidal point in my life. Utter desolation - just not understanding what was wrong. I actualy had a similar experience to garyww in the woods -- a kind of real me emerging from beneath layers of trying to fit in and false personas. everyone does this - develops personas - but i do feel my attemspt to fit in were a little more skewed and weird. no wonder people kind of looked at me funnily. it was like i was trying too hard and trying to conceal too much while tic-ing and stimming my way around in public!

Wow! This is a fascinating thread. I agree with Neshamaruach, so much happens in a short time, I can´t keep up. But I was thinking about something at work today, and it all started because what Misslottie wrote kind of "came back" to me- (sometimes it takes awhile after I read something, before it really sinks in). But I think the challenges here are not only about the diagnosis- (i.e., the neurological difference and all that that entails)- but the fact that most of us- probably all of us, actually- have had a lot of psychological crap thrown at us through the years, due to the rejections, shunning, people misunderstanding us, or even us judging ourselves because we think we don´t "stack up" in some way. So, not only do we have to accept the AS, but we also have to deal with these psychological issues. (In my case, as I stated, many of the AS problems, or at least my acceptance of them, started getting better with age): what´s been almost more difficult has been processing all the negative experiences of the past, putting them into perspective, etc. When I first read about and discovered AS, I went through a stage where I kind of "went back" to all my past experiences, re-lived them, re-experienced the old negative emotions, tried to put them in the new perspective, etc. This can be very difficult, as well as depressing. I realize, since being on Wrong Planet, that I am one of the incredibly lucky ones. I have had some kind of grace in my life. I was also lucky to have a family who- even though they often had trouble understanding me- were always there for me, and supported me somehow. I especially realize that now. Knowing how difficult my life has been- and considering myself one of the "lucky ones"- I can see how it must be even harder for those who were rejected by family, or had other traumatic experiences to deal with. I believe it is human to feel much of our self worth based on how others treat us, and, to some extent, by what goes on around us. It can be very difficult. That is why I think it is very important for all to have some kind of support; either an AS group, online friends on WP, or therapists who specialize in AS...whatever works for you. I feel very sad when people say their life is hopeless! I think a lot of this is just the identity process....finding a new identity, dealing with unfair stuff that happened in the past, etc. It might be sort of like the spiritual concept of the "dark night of the soul"- sometimes you have to go through something like a miniature death, a looking into the darkness, to emerge as a new being (a new identity).

Well, just look at my signature below:

oh, Greentea: just an added note: I think your boss sounds like a total jerk! I read your story, and I couldn´t see anything wrong in what you did. The way I see it- (and, of course I could be wrong- I´ll be the first to admit that)- is that your boss missed the responsibility of answering the colleague, left it in your hands- with no information, or communication- and- due to guilt, probably- tried to "cover up" this mistake by blaming it on you. One thing that I´ve learned about people through the years...(I learned it the hard way, through much experience); is that the negative things are often not about you, it´s often about THEM. Sometimes, people´s own feelings of insecurity, negligence, jealousy, etc., cause them to react badly to you...and it may not be you at all! But I think we are all vulnerable in this way, we tend to assume that we are the ones at fault.

Greentea: ditto to morgana's above post.

I found this to be what has stopped me from having suicidal thoughts. The actual need for change once in a while.

What you're saying here rings very true for me. The most difficult thing right now is that I am identifying so much with my father, who was an undiagnosed Aspie. I did not see him for many years before he died, and found it difficult to think of him at all because I was so afraid of him. And also I was very ashamed of him--of my whole family.

And now, I almost can't stop thinking about him. I always felt a kind of kinship with him, and I fought it, but now, it's perfectly clear. I've been looking at pictures of him when he was a kid, and the autism is obvious. He can't make eye contact at all. And the pictures of him from my childhood--I look at them and I see a very confused person in a lot of pain trying desperately to be normal and do all the things that everyone expected of him. It's like I'm seeing him for the first time--not as my scary abusive dad but as a stranger I don't know.

What hurts the most is that I wish my father were alive and that I could reach out to him on this, but even if he were alive, he would not accept me or even talk to me or be open to a discussion like that. Sometimes I forget that while I was doing years of work on myself, he was busy living in denial and smoking himself to death.

I really think this would have been easier at 18. At 50, that's a lot of years of misperceptions to correct and a hell of a lot of wasted time.

Sorry to go on so...I'm having a tough night...

ooooh! you read what I wrote long ago and remembered it when you needed it! thank you, ChinaShopBull! I have been reading this whole thread and lurking. It reminds me of three years ago when the Dino-Aspie Cafe (and later Ex-Cafe) started when we were all sharing about how we learned we had been Aspie all our lives! Great thread, folks!

Merle

The same with me. I'm actually very normal with no emotional baggage, and a lot of common sense, yet agree and accept that I have AS. I identify with the research that Hans Asperger did, but some folks that are being diagnosed with AS don't seem to be "little professors" at all. I've always been very academic and moral. My teachers in grade school would let me teach the class and give speeches about the topics that interested me, music and history. I loved that. I always saw the whole picture, not just parts of objects.

Is there some kind of subtext to what you are saying here? i don't quite get it? (i can often miss what someone is saying if it is not direct enough.) are you implying that you personally know how to gauge whether or not people were little professors when they were young, on the basis of short paragraph posts on a forum thread for ASD people?

(if so, seems a little lacking in common sense! Hardly the stuff of good hard processes of examination and deduction....if not....i find your commentary somewhat narrow. )

As for the research Asperger did, there is more to current research than Hans Asperger's stuff. His work was pioneering and wonderful in that it offered a different approach to the prevailing one Bruno Bettelheim put forward in the fifties - whereby kids like us were seen to be purely a product of environment and poor nurturing by bad mothers. (not that Asperger's work was even championed back then anyway. but at least he started the ball rolling.) Aspergers intital research was of course later taken up up by others in recent years. And thankfully, I think there is some understanding that Aspergers Syndrome actually encompasses more than "geek" syndrome, or the view you put forward in your post. - And for the record, i was dux of everything at school - a "picola professoressa" and a stimming oddball...chewing pencils to the lead, chewing pens until i had ink all through my mouth, swinging on my chair and also banging into things all the time...I was the classic little superbrain girl who collected wine labels for a hobby and also kept stamp collections and kept a detailed record in a book of my favourite footy team's scores over a year wtih a graph of top try and goal scorers and a record of matches played when and where. (other girls were playing with Beautiful Chrissy which was a popular doll at the time.) etc etc. However, the expressions and traits in individuals vary considerably. Not everyone is going to present similarly to me, and I have done enough reading to know that no two people with ASD's are alike - which makes it so complex. In addition, the current criteria for what Aspergers actually comprises and IS, is debatable, and differs from country to country. Some adhere to the DSM-IV - as in the U.S, while other psychs or specialists in other countries may not. Some psychologists in my country might follow Baron-Cohen's approach, (which sems to be fairly popular int he U.K as it comes out of Cambridge) whilst others may use a criteria devised by Lorna Wing and Tony Attwood. ) I
Alas. Alas, it is all quite variable.)

Last edited by millie on 17 Dec 2008, 12:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

well said, and i relate so much to both i think it's true what they say, that it gets easier to be yourself as you get older because you just care less as time passes about what other people think, and about measuring yourself by other peoples' standards.

thank you and hello starvingartist. I like your name. i am also an artist!

nice to meet you, millie....thanks about my name it's appropriate for me.....at least it would be if i could just get my not-so-starving-looking-ass to more accurately protray my issues with indigence lol

chuckle chuckle!