Did "finding out" mark an epoch in your life?

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Well did it? For me it certainly did.

I cleaned my kitchen tonight with pine cleaner and the smell is taking me back in time to 1983 and daycare. It was there that I first realized at the age of 3 1/2 that I was different from the other kids. Couldn't never really put a finger on why though. Fast forward to the 1st of June 2004 and I'm still pondering that same question, only now my life feels pointless and with out meaning. Try as I might, I have no social life and I always seem to be playing catch up to everyone else. As far as I'm concerned, I'm living life in a vacuum.

The previous month had been the wettest may on record in eastern Wisconsin with nothing but dreariness and rain. But that morning was bright and sunny with not a cloud in the sky. It was that afternoon that I would by chance happen upon aspergers after seeing a quick blurb in the local paper about it. I still can't describe the emotions going through my mind as I read about it on the internet, but they became so strong I had to shut off the computer and lie down in my bed to regain my composure. It suddenly all made sense to me. Six years later that day still stands out in my mind as the point in time where a new me was born.

Well for me its marks the longest period in my life I have been without a job. But if I was not laid off I never would have watched the tv show that discusssed the autism spectrum and also mentioned WrongPlanet. I never would have gotten tested.

I am up for anything right now and have been toying with the idea of doing stopmotion animation which is the only special intrest I have that has some kind of marketable skill. My hope is to get good enough to get into CalArts which has the best experimental animation program in the states. I never would have done this if I had not been laid off then got tested for Aspergers. Having Aspergers and being poor might help me get bigger grants tp pay for school. So being diagnosed with Aspergers might have been the best thing for me.

Yes. It was an inflection point on the graph of my life--the time when things stopped going downwards quite so fast, and eventually turned around and started getting better.

no. from the time i came into my memory i knew i was autistic because i was diagnosed as autistic before i could remember my life before that.

i have been autistic from birth and i knew i was not like other people from the first memory i can recall.

I realized it at the same time as my 4 year old daughter, understanding why things were so hard in my life was eye opening. I felt awful and cried a bit reading some things, understanding that it was never going to get easier, that I wasn't just going to get it some day and now my daughter is going to go through this for the rest of her life. Then I realized I'm still me and that's a good thing, I'll take the side effects that go along with my mind. I also had some guilt for wanting my child to have my special view of things, I felt like I asked for it and got more than I expected.

Yes. Before I was unnoficially diagnosed, I thought my problems would be solved instantly if I had some friends and a girlfriend. Then I managed to befriend a considerable number of coworkers (actually, they befriended me) and nothing changed. That got me really depressed and a little obsessed about getting a girlfriend.

Nowadays, I've learned to accept my problems. I'm taking it easy, trying to learn some social skills and get rid of 19 + years of social anxiety before obsessing about socialization. In other words, I'm learning to accept myself for who I am before I worry about getting accepted by other people.

Did "finding out" mark an epoch in your life? --- Being diagnosed with ADHD Inattentive including central auditory processing disorder was helpful, especially the auditory processing/listening part, however, for me the epoch was finding a FDA approved medicine which actually works a little for me to temporarily reduce distractibility a little and temporarily improve the ability to pay attention (sustain attention, longer digit and letter span, slightly improved comprehension) a little (not a cure).

Maybe. It's too soon to tell. At the very least it is a marker on the road. Is it part of a significant turning point? Ask me again in ten years.

I love myself so much more now. I don't beat myself up anymore when I have awkward social moments. I feel like I understand the whole world better, and I actually think I am somewhat more socially capable now that I understand my own mind and the fact that other peoples' minds are different. I used to think other people were like me on the inside, and they were all just very fake and artificial to each other. I still think a lot of social interaction is artificial, but I understand that there are genuine feelings and needs that NTs are able to meet through all the chit-chat and smiling and eye-looking.

Not really, yet "finding out" did appear in time for me to get some answers before I die.


Other than the part about trying to "catch up" or whatever -- I do not want to go wherever almost everyone else seems to be headed -- I would say about the same: My only "social life" happens once or twice a week for about 15 seconds with one of the mail carriers on my street, and I believe the term "depersonalization" fits my dilemma quite well.


I would say a much better understanding of "me" began coming into view, and for that I am very grateful.

Hi Scoots5012,

This was last week for me, I am a new user on Wrong Planet. Already I look differently on my life and put all the problems down to the autism and not to myself. Of course I still have a trail of carniage behind me of awful memories, and physical and mental illness as I tried to be like everyone else. Knowing about my autism is the best thing which has happened to me except one thing: finding out about EFT. I found about EFT and autism at the same time, what a month! Thinking about it this is probably the most significant month of my life, everything is getting sorted out. Today I went to a terrifying job interview at a top company and only felt maybe 10% of my usual anxiety. Finding out about autism was part of that.

Like you I didn't find out my diagnosis didn't happen until later and I feel a little let down by the system and my parents for not telling me, but at the same time I let it go because there was probably little awareness of this back then.

Well best of luck to you.

Yes, I think so. I'm newly diagnosed, and it really came as a surprise to me. But now that I understand it, everything about me makes sense now. Finding sites like this one where people share their experiences has made me realize after all this time that I really am not the lone freak who lives in a parallel universe to the rest of the world. Even people who I think of as friends could never understand where I was coming from, so I'm elated to have found people who do.

Understanding oneself definitely changes things.

Well, it was something of a renaissance, yes. For a long time I felt concerned by the doubt that has to accompany a diagnosis that's so subjective. I'd been given a whole new way of seeing myself but with the caveat that it might be a load of crap. So at first when I started using the "new eyeglasses," I felt held back by the fear of going down the wrong road. But I noticed that the individual traits are much more objective, and that I could simply compile a list of the ones that cause me problems, and work on those.

In doing that, it's given me a new light on my personality.....I never realised before that hyper-focus was one of my problems, for example, but now I notice every time it trips me up, and I notice how I've unconsciously learned over the long pre-diagnosis era to avoid situations that make my happiness dependent on the ability to rapidly switch from one idea to another on demand. It explained why I show a preference for working alone even though I have the highest regard for co-operative working as such.

It's not so much a question of whether or not I have AS, it's more a question of do I have enough of the symptoms strongly enough to make it worth looking at myself with the Aspie eyeglasses.....and even if I only had a couple of the traits, I think that would be enough to make it worthwhile. Loads of things about me began to make sense in terms of AS theory. At last I had an alternative to the repression theories of orthodox psychiatry......the problem with repression theories is that you can rarely prove anything, and of course if the AS theory is correct, it would be especially hard for an Aspie to dig up feelings, and unawareness of those feelings might well be more to do with that, than any true repression. So I stopped looking for murky Freudian motives. Getting emotions to stand up and be named is still very important, but the emphasis seems better with the AS eyeglasses. Counsellors can no longer tell me that emotional self-discovery depends purely on my willingness to find out.

It's also allowed me to take more of an interest in some of my acquaintances who have some of the traits, because I'm interested in the whole subject of AS.