Published on 12, July, 2020
I’m very confused about who I am and want to know if any Autistic people relate to any of my traits/behaviours.
I’m a 35 year old woman, in a happy long term relationship, good job and have a large social circle and enjoy social events. However I’ve always felt like I’m “not being myself” and always obsessed over personality type quizzes to try and find out who I am, always searched for the solution, yet never found it. More recently I’ve thought maybe something bad happened in my past that I don’t know about, and that is why I didn’t feel right and felt different - however nothing proves this point.
I’ve recently become fascinated in researching into late diagnosis of autism in women. I possess many traits of autism and masking, however I don’t (that I know of) have any problems with eye contact or interacting with people - this makes me question whether I am or not. To save going into too much detail I’ve bulleted below some of my current and past traits and behaviours. Some of these I’ve always just thought are weird or was just something I do so I’d love to hear if anybody else has had similar experiences.
The above are just a select through that have a personal impact on me, however there are more traits that are fitting. I’d be grateful to learn of others experiences.
I used to do personality trait quizzes, the good old cosmo quiz was something I did every month. I spent a lot of my 20's and 30's trying to find out who and what I was. I thought it was a post therapy thing, I'd had years of therapy and when it ends it you feel a sort of gap where all the trauma used to be and the negative behaviours and ways of thinking, but I didn't know quite where to go with it. Many of the things that had created the trauma were still there, poor social skills etc didn't quite seem to explain it, it wasn' tuntil I was in my late 40's that I started to learn more about autism and that it could effect women, although at the time it was thought mildly and rarely. I read one article and all of a sudden everything fell into place, all the awkwardness, the intense interests, the problems with friends and socialising, with body contact and sex and allergies. I have loads of allergies, I seem to collect them, suddenly it all made sense, for women theres often a physical side to autism that there dosen't seem to be in men, I wasn't a hypochrondriac, I was autistic! I was diagnosed when I was 50, given no help or anything, just left to get on with it, it was felt that seeing as I'd managed to reach 50 relatively ok I didn't need any further help. I still struggle with some things, a diagnosis dosen't magically make everything better or OK, you can face a different set of prejudices, but some things are much better. I don't think you can have power with something you can't name and for me diagnosis gave me a starting place to research and build on, to empower myself to try and find the right sort of help. Some people find a diagnosis less helpful and seem to see it as a full stop and seem to feel powerless in the face it, only you can decide if you want diagnosis and how you will deal with it, will you be empowered by it or not?
Hi NAS93140
I can relate and don’t think I know myself that much. A life of masking does that. The only advice I could offer really is try to monitor your own behaviour when you’re out and around people. When I say something I often ask myself if that was the way I genuinely wanted to say it. I think I might be getting somewhere now as I watch myself more now if that makes sense?
Catwomen, do you have a link to the personality test at all please?
I looked online and did some but they wanted me to sign up before the results were revealed.