Was it difficult for you to deal with the diagnosis at first

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I've only just been given the diagnosis of aspergers (I'm 16) this last week, and have been having major trouble dealing with the information. I'm wanting to know if anyone else had trouble, and if you did how you cope with it? tips for how i can deal with this, as it is a rather big thing....

I'm sorry if i've missed some rule or something and am doing something wrong here... It's my first time posting. I read the rules, but i always seem to get something wrong on online fourms and get screamed at... so sorry

thanks for any advice, any advice is helpful.

No. I was diagnosed as a little kid and the phrase "Asperger's Syndrome" just went over my head and I didn't care. I think I remember it being described as a disease but at seven or years old, disease didn't have the same stigma as it does at 24. I was always being told there was something "wrong" with me ever since I could remember and when my parents finnaly got the diagnosis and told me, I was like, "So what's new?"

I'm so sorry that you are having a hard time after receiving your diagnosis. I am not on the spectrum, but my son has AS. He was only 6 when he was diagnosed, and I really had a hard time with it.

What finally settled my nerves is when I realized that nothing had changed. It wasn't as though he was diagnosed with cancer, and bad things were happening in his body. He was still the same wonderful boy he had always been, but now I had some reasons behind some of his behaviors. I began to see that all this diagnosis gave me was access to more information about him.

I hope that you come to a place of acceptance soon and realize that you are still the same, wonderful person you were before the diagnosis.

I didn't becuase I was only in kindergarten.

For me if anything it was a relief I only wish I had been diagnosed sooner. I was not diagnosed till I was 20. It felt like a great sense of "Oh huh, so that is why I am that way. Or hey maybe this is a way to make certain things better for myself and to give me a better understanding of myself." It realy comes down to perspective, you can look at everything more then one way.

Not at all. What I experienced was a sense of relief and a sense of liberation.

I finally knew what was "wrong" with me, and I was finally liberated from the labels that others had tried to place on me.

I was 12 when diagnosed and I had a hard time accepting the fact I was different and the fact I might never be "normal." I had troubles accepting the diagnoses when I got a little older. Then I decided to just forget about it and just be myself and not try and avoid the label. Besides it seemed like everyone showed traits around me so what was the difference?

I was just glad that there were others like me. I thought my problems were all just me. Since then I've learnt so much about myself and have been able to deal with my symptoms better.
I've decided I'm better on my own than with friends, though I have a few. I just focused on my strengths and how to better deal with my symptoms. And I'm a much happier person.
Actually, it made me do a complete revision of history and science and some math. Before I could never understand it but in my room instead of a loud classroom I was able to understand the information better. When I was finally prescribed meds for ADHD learning became something really enjoyable, as did reading and writing and sometimes talking to people.

I was diagnosed at 17 by court psychs who didn't have a good track record with me in the past. It took about 2 years and my own reading on my own diagnosis and other 2 psychologists to confirm to me that I did in fact have NVLD. They said NVLD/borderline Aspergers. During those 2 years, I was like "NVLD, whatever, it's just some dumb made up thing" until I started melting down later. I found out the schizoid personality type diagnosis given me was true, too, for many years, I guess I shielded myself, basically not having real emotions at all. I just couldn't afford to for my circumstances. Then when things got easier, they at the same time got harder, as my emotions decided to come back on again, and then that's when I started looking into the NVLD/Aspergers diagnosis I had, and noticed my meltdowns acted exactly like the Aspie meltdowns I read of, and also people with NVLD talking about their life, it was exactly the same as me. Things like being late tying shoes, etc, fit me dead on. I'm wondering if my "real" self is Aspergers, and I put up a schizoid shell to hide it from people all these years. Seems that way.

So now, I don't know. I found out after you get out of high school, there's not much treatment for Aspergers/NVLD available, I was diagnosed after high school. NVLD has the problem of sort of allowing you to "know" everything. So like, I was in an anger management class, and I arguably knew more than the guy teaching it, but at the same time, I'd get pissed and punch walls in my house a couple times a week. It seems the way conventional treatment works is just by giving more knowledge to people, and to me that doesn't really work for anything. I have what seems like infinite knowledge, but the inability to execute it very well. My friend with NVLD just sort of joked to me when I finally started talking to him about how I was considering the reality of my NVLD, he told me "That just means you're half a genius."

So to put it simply, no, I did not take it well.

I absolutely had a difficult time. I was expecting to feel just relief (like many people here have written) but despite it not being a surprise, I did find it hard to cope with at first. I was diagnosed at the start of the year. It took me about 7 months to feel like my ground restabilized a bit.

The biggest struggle for me has been that I feel I don't know who I am anymore. That feeling has definelty been decreasing over time though. I've started to look more at how I can make my life work better for me and it has been really beneficial and I look forward to the future now more than ever.


When I was feeling overwhelmed I wrote here on Wrong Planet, some people gave helpful insight:
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp3298042 ... t=#3298042

Also, I found this list of the "Seven stages of acceptance of aspergers" which I found somewhat comforting:
http://aspergersexpert.blogspot.com/201 ... erger.html

Hope it helps you. And just know that you are definetely not alone in feeling this way. I've been looking around here all year and the topic comes up quite a lot. It's ok to feel overwhelmed and confused at first... That it is enormous news... Find someone who you can really talk to about it, maybe a counselor who will guide you through. I have a very good one who has helped me so much. Goodluck.

Yes, I had difficulty at first. I was diagnosed when I was 17. Information about the disorder was very limited unlike now. I'd read all the symptoms/stereotypes about AS at the time and thought: this is NOT me. How can the even diagnosis me with this stigma?

-Obsessives over parts of a object. (NO)
-Talks about special interests all the time. (I never shared my interests because I thought people would think my interests were stupid.)
-Talks robotic and monotone. (My speech is very expressive.)
-Loves transportation and math. (I prefer art.)
-Lacks empathy. (More like I have too much.)
-Aggressive meltdowns. (I'm more likely to go into shutdown than attack someone.)
-Engaging in one-sided, long-winded conversations without noticing if the other person is bored. (I rarely talk. So this never happens.)
-Doesn't understand humor or sarcasm. (No, just no.)
-Does not show emotion. (I'm can be very emotional.)

It wasn't until later that I finally came to terms with my diagnosis, and started to understand it better. (By reading blogs, and forum posts of people that had the same disorder. I realized that this was a spectrum disorder and not everyone is the same.)

Easy for me.

Had known/suspected for about 2 years.

Diagnosis was a formality.

Last edited by Blindspot149 on 13 Oct 2011, 2:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

I would sit it out for a few months. I was told at my diagnosis it commonly took about 3 months to come to adjust to it and that's when they had follow up appointments.

I started seeing traits I had in social situations and feeling depressed that I was messing up again because of Aspergers. I am now seeing more that it is enabling me to get help e.g. interview adjustments and specialist counselling. I'm starting to see traits so can work to compensate for them e.g. I know why I feel unable to talk and can feel fractionally less anxious and make an effort to try anyway even if I may do something a bit Aspie-that is me.
I've told one or two people via the Internet and they have been really underwhelmed. It's also not such a bad thing, a lot of people are very proud. I got over feeling disabled and also that I was only "mildly" Aspie-I just have it and everyone is different.
The other point is, it is not your entire personality. You are a person and you also happen to have Aspergers. It does not define everything about you. You will struggle with things that NT people also struggle with.

I was diagnosed at 8, and I didn't like it one bit. I spent the rest of my time at Junior School observing the other children's behaviour, and I copied their behaviour quite well, but each day I found a new type of social body language what they done what I didn't do, so I had to try and do that, and it just went on like that.

I kept on asking my mum questions like, ''am I adopted?'' and ''how come my brother and my cousins aren't born with this AS and I am?'' and ''would you be happier if I didn't have AS?'' and ''am I better off dead?'' and lots of other little questions like that. My mum had to keep on saying, ''but having AS is not a bad thing'', and I always had an answer for everything so I said, ''but it's not exactly a good thing, otherwise I would just be accepted normally like the other children.''

But I felt so miserable with me being The Outcast and nobody else was, that I decided to pretend to be another child. I made up a name, an appearence, a personality, a family, etc, and pretended to be this imaginary child, and I got my brother and my cousins to play along, which they did. Two of my younger cousins decided to copy me by making up imaginary children themselves, after all they were too young to understand that I was doing this to bring out the social part of myself. I still pretended that the real me was with us but never wanted to join in any games, so we used to pretend to go upto ''her'' and encourage her to play games with us. The special needs teacher at school was quite pleased with me for doing this kind of thing to help with my social skills. I found it easy since I had a big imagination, and also it stopped me from feeling so miserable.

Once at the big school I got so fed up with one girl being really popular that one day I yelled to her friends and boyfriend, ''if she had a social disability you wouldn't be crowded around her like that!'' That made them think!

I was just thinking, is there anyone such as your parents that could provide support/talk to you about it, or even someone to provide counselling? A friend, if this is not a silly suggestion to someone with AS? It may help just talking or writing it down.

It is an incredible relief and a devestating reality check all at once.