Did You Discover New Things About Yourself...

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After you discovered you were on the spectrum and diagnosed, did you then begin to realize you were held back or struggled when before you found out about autism, you could not account for it and assumed it was you not trying hard enough?

(School reports showed I was intelligent but a recurring theme was "Must try harder" which at times puzzled me!)

But in other ways I look back on my past actually amazed how I did it, as I couldn't do it now as I am...

But one thing for me came as a shock is the areas I was not aware I was struggling...
What I mean by this is one gets so used to life as it is, that one can't think outside of it? Hope I am making sense?

In a way, due to autism one can say I am disabled in a few areas but not in all areas.

But when filling out forms and my Mum doing the writing and reminding me of things, (I could not face filling them this time. My brain said "No!"...), I was shocked at the things the form asked that I was replying to and I had not considered...

Anyone with similar experiences after assessment and diagnosis? I am told it is common?

Discovered:
- That me being different has a label. A good portion of my autism aligns with what I would do and actually identify with.

Affirmed:
- Everything else pertaining how I'm different from the rest, good and bad. I already knew all of my "symptoms", what I struggle and not struggle with.


It's like knowing I'm different from everyone doesn't blow my mind.
I really never truly had identified myself as this 'normal person', even if I wasn't autistic.

Like... If I were neurotypical, I don't think I'd be a typical allistic person.
There are certain deeper patterns that autistics have that NTs and allistics alike do have that I don't; or that I do that they don't.

Like I'm not a typical human to begin with, even taking account by including and excluding everything under neurodivergence.



Debunked:
- My seemingly unending anger and inclination towards violence that warranted my diagnosis.
It's not the autism, it's really me. If anything, it's the autism that's holding me back from said violence. Violence resonates in me, but it doesn't match with my autism.

- The maladaptive daydreaming.
That's not the autism or even neurodivergence, that's just a stupid brain's reaction to protect itself from common childhood crap. Like, if I were allistic, the reaction would be the same.


I discover less and less about myself; by only kept discovering what I'm not.

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I was watching a youtube video today by Russell Barkley about ADHD young people who self-describe "growing out of" ADHD. He said that in one study, the parents of the same young people were asked about the ADHD symptoms of their young adult children, and they described something like 10 times more symptoms than what the young adults thought they had.

I wonder if it's something similar with autistic young people. Maybe ALL young people in some aspect or another.

I think if you had asked me about myself at 20, I would have said all kinds of things that my older family members would have disagreed with. And that I would also disagree with, now that I am older and looking back.

I don't recall blaming myself much for my troubles, such as they were, before being diagnosed. I was more likely to blame other people and bad luck, particularly capitalism and the alienated nature of city life. Not that I've ever felt particularly unsuccessful in my life endeavours. After the diagnosis I just had a more specific way of describing my bad luck in terms of my having ASD (arguably a misfortune) and in terms of how ignorant most people are about the condition, either because it's too complicated for them to understand or because they'd rather not go to the trouble of making accommodations for people who've got it, or maybe because they just want somebody to feel superior to. Plus of course the lack of support for adults.

The diagnosis offered me a way of explaining some of the problems that had happened as a result of the mismatch between other people and my ASD traits, and it also helped to explain why I was fairly good at my science job and why I was able to solve many problems by applying my logic and systemisation skills to them. But the traits hadn't changed, so it just gave me an umbrella term, which in a way wasn't very availing as an explanation, although it did give me a box of traits I might turn out to have, and I think that investigation taught me a lot about myself.

yes, this! I was regularly told I was lazy and choosing to fail at so many things people expected of me at home, school, church, etc.
I was a bad person, I knew exactly what I was doing, I must shape up and fly right, do better, try harder. I kept crying and saying I didn't know how, and begged for help. Was constantly told I just had to work harder, be a better person, everything was my fault constantly.
I was severely depressed by age 8 and hoped to die each night when I went to bed so I would not have to go through another day. This persisted until a suicide attempt at age 30 and counseling.

It would be another 38 years before I finally found out I am autistic, but counseling gave me insights and new tools for communication, escape from the old unhealthy family patterns I had learned.

Therapy saved my life and my sanity after my young lifetime of being blamed and punished repeatedly for failure to meet expectations.

It was such a relief when I learned at age 68 that I am autistic and so many of the painful whys of the past were finally explained. Autism had its way in the works all those years and nobody knew.