Am I autsitic, or just a result of abuse?

Post Reply New Topic

TRIGGER WARNING. THIS POST IS ABOUT CHILD ABUSE.

TRIGGER WARNING. THIS POST IS ABOUT CHILD ABUSE.


This is going to be extremely personal, but I want to get it out.
I was born to a very young impoverished family. My parents were extremely neglectful, and I was regularly forced to stay in my room, alone, for most of my childhood. It was not uncommon growing up for my parents to forget feeding me, and I was denied medical care with the exceptions of severe cases.

To make a point, there was a time when I caught pneumonia, and nearly died because I woke up and had little more than a panting breath, and my parents wanted me to stay with my grandmother who was a heavy smoker, and accused me of faking my illness. I now have permanent lung damage, as I caught pneumonia every winter for all of winter every year.

I did not have any regular contact with other children until I went to school. I went to a public school where I was beaten daily by other students. Even though I was covered in bruises neither my parents nor teachers attempted to intervene. Eventually, I developed a fear, that anything else would just be worse. I wanted to stay at that school, regardless of my lack of friends and constant beatings.

Summer vacations were months of isolation, as my family lived in the country and the closest people were about a mile away. My parents would both work, and be away in town all day, and I was alone for months, as a sanctuary from the violence of school.

In 3rd grade I was taken advantage of sexually by an older boy while his friend watched. I never told anyone because of fear that I would be blamed, and further abused for this.

I contemplated suicide from the age of 9 years to 16, when I finally attempted suicide. I had rampant thoughts of running, escaping my situation, but was always held back by the idea that It would just make things worse. I went to a high school where I was no longer being beaten, but continued to be socially isolated, but slowly managed to make a few friends. In all this time I never realized my parents were abusive, in fact when a teacher suggested that they were, I protected them, claiming that everything was fine.

I had the fortune of staying with a friends family recently, although they didn't like me much because of my oddities, I saw for the first time how completely different their family was from my own. And have since realized that I have no basis of understanding "normal" family dynamics.

Now, looking at myself, I wonder. Am I actually autistic, or am I just the result of chronic abuse? Do I have more in common with Genie, the feral child, than I do you all? Perhaps it's a combination.

How can I tease out the difference between what is neurological, and what is environmental?

The only way you can reliably "tease out" the truth is to obtain an official diagnosis from an appropriately-trained mental-health professional. This is because many conditions that are not on the Autistic Spectrum can either mask or mimic the symptoms of an ASD. Conditions like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (common in abused people), bipolar or clinical depression, and even schizophrenia may cloud one's subjective judgment and make self-diagnosis difficult, if not impossible. Further, self-medication based on a wrong diagnosis could further damage your psyche, and make it difficult, if not impossible, for even the aforementioned professional to diagnose and treat.

Don't let the poseurs convince you otherwise. Seek help from an appropriately-trained mental-health professional, and don't try to self-medicate.

I've been abused to much growing up it was the norm. The sexual abuse was minor but the physical abuse was constant. Sometimes I wonder if my extreme shyness is because of AS or abuse. Hard to say when you have both. Sigh. I dream of what it must be like being normal and living in a normal family. Too late for me now. All I can do is dream.

I disagree to a very small extent. I mean, it helps to talk to somebody who is experienced in mental health (which, in our society, would be a mental health professional ), but there's a certain point when you know yourself best, you know?

But yeah. In your circumstance, you need to have a mental health professional help you sort out what's autism, what isn't, or even whether or not you have autism.

I'd agree with this, certainly in terms of taking medication of any sort, or even OTC or illicit substances. (Actually - although this is a personal decision, and I'm not trying to suggest it ought to apply to anyone else - I have no interest in using any sort of drug or medication stronger than caffeine. That, I do use strategically to help me accomplish what I want to. And if I ever did consider it, I'd want to be very, very sure I was getting it right. Then, I'm a writer, and the last thing I want to do is disrupt my mind in any way.)

But, I do think there is one thing you can do without much - if any - risk, while waiting for a more accurate answer. Simply try to understand how you work. Don't worry about the labels, but if knowing about the autism spectrum helps you understand something about yourself, that can be useful, even if it turns out the label doesn't fit. Understanding is always good, no matter how you arrive there. And apply that understanding in whatever practical, non-risky ways that you can. For example, now that I understand I don't work like everyone else, and seem to have executive function related issues with motivation, I've figured out more effective ways - at least for me - to motivate myself to do the things I want to do. In effect, I create little "games" with myself, to push myself onward. There's no reason to delay anything like that which can help you improve your life.

I've never self-medicated and have no plan to.

Hi. Have you ever thought about speaking with a therapist? I have heard that both standard talk therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy can be very helpful for people who have PTSD. As for autism spectrum, I think diagnosis yes or no on that would be a secondary concern. Right now it's very important that you seek out help for PTSD and depression. Learn to compartmentalize the past, separate it from the now, prevent it from ruling your life going forward.

Good luck in your search for help and answers. You deserve good things in life.

edit--- just took a look at your blog. I see you already have a therapist. That is excellent. Best place to start learning about autism spectrum and how it may or may not apply to you is right there. Bring it up with your therapist, see what they have to say.

I know I was abused because I was different, and not the other way round, from analysing the situations from my childhood and drawing conclusions.

A Psychotherapist with little or no specialization in AS will likely try to convince you that the abuse is the root cause of all your problems. They need you to put their kids through university afterall.

There is a danger in having an outcome and trying to figure out the cause from the inputs that you know. I always blamed my problems on my father because he was always an idiot in some way saying something negative about me or doing something odd or undermining me. Never had a single sensible conversation with him. Then I learnt about my AS. I guess he might be AS too. Now some of my problems are due to my own AS but it didnt help to have an idiot father whos actions were entirely consistent with him being AS and having "being negative to me" as an autistic special interest.

Enough about me, the point of the story is, maybe "its complicated". Your AQ score suggests you are AS. But your story sounds like you have other negative influences. So try to learn about AS to be comfortable with that diagnosis and to avoid making the usual errors. The other negatives you need to find some way to stop them harming you more.

From my subjective experience abused NT kids don't generally behave in that many more autistic ways than non-abused ones, they're clearly traumatised and generally either hungry for affection or angry at everyone. Abused autistic kids generally seem more autistic, at least in my experience. Although that is by no means a hard and fast rule.

I was also quite severely neglected, and barely attended school, and now I'm old enough to meet people by myself a large percentage of them ask me if I'm autistic/aspergic. Conversely my partner who was also neglected and socially isolated, although to a slightly lesser degree, now appears for the most part normal in social situations, has no real restrictive behaviour (apart from the limits my restricted behaviour place on him). His speech is not at all stilted or difficult, although he has some odd pronunciations of words.

In short it seems likely that if you display autistic behaviours that are noticeable to other people, and impartial outsiders to your situation agree, or recognise autistic behaviours and characteristics in you, then probably you are. Although your negative autistic behaviours were probably made worse by your difficult childhood.

Personally, I have learnt a lot from books about socialising, and I think if I spent more time around people as a child I would have improved somewhat. But then, you can never know really.

Although it may be helpful for you to look up complex post-traumatic-stress-disorder, and then compare it with the symptoms of autism, maybe you have symptoms of both. I hope it works out, and you feel better about yourself.

When PTSD(post-traumatic stress disorder) affects a child it initiates BPD(borderline personality disorder). It burns trauma into your memory and essentially equips the mind for a life of dealing with trauma. You could also be autistic spectrum as well. I had a bad upbringing in institutions and I turned out to have Asperger's at 35. It made sense to me.

The problem is that it is impossible for us to say with a great degree of accuracy what it is. It may well be that you have some form of autistic spectrum disorder that is made far worse by the terrible abuse and neglect you received as a child. The neglect could have been due to autistic traits that your parents could not deal with, or it could be due to them being on the spectrum and unable to deal with a child or it could be that they were just terrible parents for other reasons. Considering the degree to which this nightmare has affected your life, you need to get professional help. It's the only way you can get this properly sorted and hopefully learn to move on successfully.

Same here

While I can't say for certain what it is, chances are that there's at least something wrong here.

And that's putting it mildly o_o

As Moondust mentioned, in many situations autistic children or those who are vulnerable or different attract abuse..but I agree with others that the only way you can work this out is to work through all your current issues and your past with a therapist or similar and try to find out together.

Thank you, everyone that posted.
I'm trying to figure out the best way to tell my therapist about this.
I'm not really good at talking about it, I'm considering printing or writing it out before my next appointment.