Anyone else feel angry for not getting an early diagnosis?
At the same time, would my life have been better if there was active awareness of my autism, or would have it been worse?
That’s a hard one to answer . Depends at what age you became aware of it .?
Apologizes for the late response. Things have been hectic and I am not great at catching notifications on this website.
I became aware that something wasn't quite right with me when I was around 3/4. Granted I was going through a lot of life-changing events, such as my parents' divorce, and moving states. That is going to have an impact on a child. But I had a feeling when I tried to play with the other kids at daycare/Preschool. Something didn't feel quite right. I felt alienated.
There's also a little more meaning to the last part of the sentence in my first post. I was in an abusive situation with a parent that became worse over the years. If I was diagnosed with autism at 3, I wonder if it would have been used against me. I also wonder how my other parental figures would have treated me. The signs were obvious, but I possibly couldn't be autistic - I was just a little weird! Or just an attitude problem! Girls can't get autism!!
Either way, I am somewhat pleased with being diagnosed now in my twenties than much later. I can salvage myself.
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dear god, dear god, tinkle tinkle hoy.
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believe in the broken clock and who's side will time be on?
The anger I had about the origional topic was that on the whole, no one noticed from schoolteachers to others who saw me as extremely shy and the traum I was feeling on the inside through going through schooland at other times in my life where I have worked and I have been forced into situations that were unhealthy for me (Forced to use phones. Forced to deal wirh customers... Fair enough when I was ready and up for it, but when I wanted to just be on my own working out the back because I could ot face dealing with customers due to stress etc...).
But on the other side of things, had I been diagnosed early in life during school age, I would be put in a special school and not taught as I have heard how those special schools do not bring children on but teach all children as if they are mentally backwards, and the autistic mind is not like that in most cases and the special schools back in those days were not accomedating to accept this.
I hope things have changed but from what an ex. girlfriend said of her sons experience was that he was hardly taught the whole time he was there despite him being intelligent in certain areas of his life. In his special interests, he is quite advanced, and this should have been encouraged. I last heard that his work had been accepted in a cartoon magazine, but it was his self taught tallent and not really the special school that put him in that position as they assumed that because he was in their school that he was mentally thick and needed to be treated as if he was thick, and all he was was autistic.
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It's probably for the best that I wasn't diagnosed as a child. It's complicated, but I'll leave it at saying I doubt my family situation would have supported it well. Part of that is connected with the general attitudes of that time (1970s - 1980s). Having a diagnosis during that time could have left me with more issues. I say that with a certain amount of caution, though, because I can't say for sure how my family would have developed in the face of a diagnosis. It might have actually improved my relationship with my father.
After he died, I inherited the infamous belt. I burned it on a bonfire in his backyard before we sold the property.
Yeah... I'm not going to talk about my childhood experience though.
When I started living independently I have somewhat reconciled with my parents. My mom is very dependent on me, I built and maintain her business, she's helpless otherwise. I can't say there's ever a time without tension between me and dad, but I've got no time for that nonsense anymore.
I was very angry about not being diagnosed and getting help when I was younger, but now I'm tired of being angry. I just want to live my life now. I've got a job that pays well, a house, and a car that gets me to places. I've got no time to be sad or angry anymore. Moments of life are slipping away.
I was recently trying to build a relationship with a lady I knew from way back when we were kids. All she seemed to want to do lately is pick fights an drag me through awful conversations, and I would just brush it off and try to keep going, and she would just get more agitated because I wasn't engaging in her fights. I just felt there were better ways to spend our time, and I've got plenty of fun things to do all the time.
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Enjoy the silence.
I always wished I was the one to have got myself a diagnosis as an adult, rather than being forced to have a diagnosis when I was only 8 years old. It kind of robbed me of my childhood in a way. All the other kids knew very little about Asperger's and autism, and none of them had to deal with it. I was getting support at school before I got the diagnosis and I was doing fine. It wasn't until after I received a diagnosis I started to get depressed because it made me feel more different than what I really was. OK it made teachers give me a little bit of leeway but I still wish I had lived a childhood without being labelled with something that none of the other kids had.
Being diagnosed so early in life makes me feel like I went through the standard procedures of diagnosing a low-functioning autistic child, even though I was a high-functioning, articulate, sociable, non-stereotypical Aspie with no speech delays.
It turned me into an aggressive child too. When I was 9 I used to swear at or even hit adult family members if they said the a-word in front of me. I just hated it. I wished people wouldn't bring it up. I didn't want to be defined by it. And unfortunately that hate still stays with me now - except I don't swear or hit people if they mention it of course. I just act natural like I don't have it.
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Female
Sadly I'm now discovering that getting an adult ASD diagnosis doesn't really seem to help with anything. I had hoped it might encourage the NHS to be more helpful and the DWP to be less draconian, but actually it makes no difference to either.
If I've missed out through not being diagnosed sooner, there doesn't seem to be any mechanism for correcting that imbalance. No way of catching up on all the things that ASD patients diagnosed in childhood were taught. Let alone working on the 40+ years of bad habits and negative reinforcement.
So I'm disappointed and angry, yes. Not necessarily about not being diagnosed in childhood, but about the lack of support in adulthood when, if anything, there's a pressing need to catch up.
Jo, thanks for the insight. In my ASD women's support group there is a 40-some-year-old who had a similar experience.
Public awareness and support has improved since her time for sure, but has it improved enough? Probably not given two years ago I didn't know ASD meant "intense world" rather than lack of empathy (not) and lack of sociability (not), plus I don't see good techniques at the local school relative to some special needs students.
I am very conflicted that recently my ASD-like daughter (age 9) was not diagnosed with ASD (she was given six other diagnoses, including SPDs and Expressive Language Disorder), but I as you imagined that could be ok if I can find support in any case. It won't be readily available (US insurance won't cover the non-physical diagnoses) and it's more work on my part (perhaps I can get help in the US public school), but it's a possibility. Maybe we can manage it by ourselves (my anxiety jumps sky high thinking about it - down, down, we're ok right now) for a while more, but it's getting rough.
I got a VERY early diagnosis---a few of them, in fact.
I benefited from not being treated like a "disabled person," but like a "normal" kid.
I was never quoted statistics about anything....that taught me that statistics are irrelevant to my particular situation. Had I read the statistics and believed them, I'd still be a virgin at age 60.
Was it your parents, schools, community and/or outside support that treated you "normal" (as in growing and learning in your own way)? I take it you received specialized support that wasn't "disabling". If so, kudos to your parents and community.
The studies are better now. Just as a study indicated AS folks may have bimodal IQ distributions, there is also an indication of bimodal sexual activity distributions. The two studies were not related to each other and by mentioning this I am of course amusing myself by implying their would be a correlation between the two, not by individual so much as over time relative to Focus. Studies are so myopic.
Interestingly, I didn't receive too much "support" at all after the age of 5---except for a few sporadic sessions with a psychologist and speech therapist. I was pretty much "left to my own devices." This was the 1960s----a very primitive time as far as autism was concerned.
When I was 5, I actually went to a summer camp, and was the subject of research (along with a group of autistic kids and "normal" kids).
I was thrown out of class when I misbehaved-----or was spanked/hit with a belt by my mother/father. It was a "be seen and not heard" situation at both home and school.
I didn't really have an "impression" of school. I just knew I had to go. I enjoyed showing off my knowledge in front of the class. This bought me the only joy within a school setting. This caused me to be bullied even in my "special school." I believe I started liking some teachers around the time I went to Junior High. Before then, I cared too much about myself to really "like" anybody (except for my best friend Craig).
Some days; I had so many aspie behaviors as a child, even for a female, I had some typical "male" presentations and still wasn't diagnosed. My therapist says pretty much no females were diagnosed before the early 2000s because it was still seen as a male condition. I wish I had been so that I could have felt less alone and gotten some better coping mechanisms.
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Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. - Aristotle
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