First post; college faculty informing me I have autism

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So this is my first post here and I don’t know where to even begin. I’m going to try to be on point with this the best I can. The last few months of my life have been incredibly treacherous, though I feel I’m beginning to get better in a sense, and my general functioning has increased. I’ve always used drugs and alcohol since I was about eleven years old. In the last few years I finally managed to get sober through an immense amount of rehabilitative services and therapies. Following sobriety a social worker talked me into going to college. I’m 29 years old and obtained a GED at seventeen. I barely went to junior high and only went to high school part of the freshman year, though academics are my passion. I didn’t talk to anyone at college much when I started with the exception of a few professors with interest and temperaments I was inclined to. I was able to get employed through the school and began working at a tutoring center the school has in the city library. I worked with middle aged women and I felt very out of place and awkward. They were trained to spot out disorders like ASD in clients. I had a really bad morning leaving for work one day (fighting with family etc) and then when I got to work and opened my new pricey laptop the screen was broke. I began to panic because I had enrolled in online courses because employment with the school required 4.0 credit hours at all times. After a little bit more time went by the administrator began criticizing me, but it went on and on for what felt like an eternity. Perhaps it wasn’t but it certainly felt that way. I had a complete meltdown and started yelling and cursing and quit. They called a security guard in and I managed to remain calm while I packed away my desk and left. It was totally out of character for me. I then returned to school the following semester (present day; semester ends this week) and all the faculty was acting extremely peculiar around me and I feared they thought I would blow up again which is out of character for myself. I took a human development course and one day the doctor instructing the course began talking about “someone going through life with undiagnosed autism and no one ever catching it and the troubles they endured”. Later on that day an instructor then pointed someone with autism out to me. I went home and did some research (I’m a psych major and have always tried to figure out why I was different from the general population). I was completely f****** astounded! No words could possibly describe what I felt when I began watching videos and reading journal articles. My family doesn’t understand that I’m disabled in this way and they always put me down and our relationship is quite rocky, though I love them a great deal and we’re very close. They help me financially a great deal. I was living in a group home for addicts (where I reside presently) when I researched information leading me to figure out I likely had some form of ASD. I began noticing all my idiosyncrasies and went very deep into a psychological state of shock while reflecting on my life and that this was the problem all along. I was angry, sad, and relieved all at the same time. Questions like, “Why didn’t my family do something to intervene while I was young?”, and “Why me” were going through my mind. I had a complete breakdown. I was forced to go through this breakdown in public because I couldn’t drop my classes due to the laptop incident over the summer. I just tried to remain as normal and still looking as possible to those around me even though I was a absolutely dying inside!! !! I managed to make it through the semester, though my grades did suffer from all the attention I was getting and from my troubled preoccupied mind. I’m beginning to feel better but I’m going through so much negative things socially. I feel a great deal of empathy though I look the same most of the time. It’s like everything is locked within my mind and I cannot express myself. Others look at my expressionless face and don’t understand. My mood has been getting a lot better and I’m beginning to get happier after going through all this. I was even sleeping in my car off and on through the semester. I’ve lived through some pretty troubling experiences that were probably much worse, but this certainly takes the cake psychologically for sure. I’m high functioning and things could be a lot worse but it’s like it’s just bad enough that it really effects my quality of life and I’m very isolated even though I don’t want to be. I just get so nervous around stimuli that it can make me physically sick. I always thought I had a severe anxiety disorder my whole life. If you’ve actually taken the time to read all this I really appreciate it. I’ve been pushed to the brink of suicide from this throughout my life and in the last six months. I’m trying so hard to be successful and it’s absolutely killing me. I would appreciate your stories, tips and experiences. How do you deal with people troubling you and not understanding your not neurotypypical? After the last exam of the human development class the instructor asked if I was keeping up my new “medical discovery”. I thought this would be a good idea and look forward to reading your insights.

I can relate to going though school without understanding how ASD is affecting us. Sounds like your on the right track now. I think just understanding ASD can help a lot.

First off, Welcome to Wrong Planet!

Aspies experience significantly more stress than the average NT. It should almost be our middle name. Stress unless it is vented can accumulate leading to distress - such as anxiety, panic attacks and suicidal thoughts. So the primary goal is to learn techniques on venting stress.

I will give you a homework assignment. There are two books that I believe will be very valuable for you. These are:
"In an Unspoken Voice" by Peter A. Levine
"The Revolutionary Trauma Release Process" by David Berceli
These books will help you understand stress and how to vent it.

Welcome to Wrong Planet.

This is going to sound strange, but it seems some very auspicious things have come together for you, in that you are finding out that your profile is Autistic and finding put about the occupational hazards.

Anxiety is one of our big hazards. Our brains can be superb patten spotters but not so good estimating likelihood. When my brain spots a pattern with a worst case outcome which could go baldly for me, my instinctive thinking then treats it as a threat and triggers the body responses for the wild - great doses of adrenaline, tightening muscles to prepare for fight or flight, or sometimes a freeze response which is a survival tool to fool predators whose vision responds to movement.

Alcohol and other substances can damp these responses, and can result in heavy use of these substances becoming another occupational hazard of our profile. It csn also make us well placed to help otherd on the spectrum who have become caught up in addictive stuff.

I think you have already discovered our profiles help us collect and fill our minds with information. What you write about your school experience implied you have done quite a loy of teaching yourself.

Welcome. Going through life undiagnosed can be a living nightmare.