Adult diagnosis

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It seems like for a lot of people it changes a lot about how they perceive themselves, and they find autism in many different things about them, they discover lots of new information due to the diagnosis. It wasn't like that for me though. For me it's not something fundamental about me, especially the diagnosis, not the traits, it's just another condition. Nor is it something I didn't expect and didn't consider a possibility.

Hi there, same here, I'm still confused about if I am autistic and if yes how to embrace it, but I think I do not owe to anyone to put that label on my forehead before they interact with me. First of all they can use and abuse that kind of honesty, second, it may freak them out instead of just letting them be themselves. Maybe they have some other mental diagnosis, you never know, it may be that not just autistic people do masking thing. And if they are nice, as an probably autistic person I wouldn't have problem with being myself either.

And second, as an, until recently, non-hearing person, maybe you developed some autistic traits because the society isolated you and you became too inward oriented. I don't know it seems that today "autism" is easily sticked as a label, especially to adult people who are for some reasons overly introverted. I still have to dig into my consciousness to find out if there are maybe some traumas that went unconscious. So far I know I suffer from CPTSD and also have Sjogren's syndrome, which I found out is, supposedly, common among autistic people, and Sjogren's as well as other connective tissue disorders attacks both central and perifer nervous system.

So, do your own research and see where you fit and maybe open up to people who proved they can be trusted.

Not always, but yes, I do think that the arc of these things tends towards a formal diagnosis for those that don't have a specific reason to not get one or who are managing as well as they'd like in their lives.

Sadly, the DSM 5 made that harder, especially for those that had pre-existing and conflicting diagnoses to interfere with the process. Hopefully, whatever comes next will have more of a research basis than what a bunch of professionals think based on their biased experiences. Introducing steep cliffs to diagnoses is never a good idea when there isn't a specific set of tests that can be run consistently to address a specific issue.

And what do they do with the diagnosis if they are managing fine?

I mean, someone has posted on this forum, that a lot of autistic people have a need for being 100% sure and having it all documented. I've had more than enough of the "do you have Asperger's?" and "you're weird" talk, personally.

This is only my opinion, but as for Asperger's syndrom or so called "mild" autism cases, honestly I'm not sure if it is real, inborn autism. It's just overlaping too much with Cptsd and I believe that constantly being exposed to a stress overstimulates nervous system and eventually it becomes weak, especially if stress trigered systemic autoimune diseases, those with neurological issues. In that case you can't really figure out why do you have autistic traits, is it because of stress, or autoimune disease or you just were born that way. But if one can learn coping patterns and techniques than it's all about wrong things you learned in past. Probably from your parents or caregivers or people who made some bad impact when you were very young. I also believe that trauma was so big that it went subconcious. And it errupts in a form of autistic traits. If we could only know what it exactly was, it would be easier to process and maybe overcome.