Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello everyone.
Recently joined this community through the advice of a support worker and I received my diagnosis of HF Autism earlier this year.
I have found the whole process a bit of a roller-coaster in that it has been isolating at times, emotional, reassuring and overwhelming at various stages - not to mention exhausting. I'd reached a point where I was struggling to accept certain aspects of who I am and felt I couldn't explain what I was going through or relate to anyone around me. My support worker recommended I turn to this community to see that I was not alone and that other people were experiencing and learning to cope with the challenges I was facing, as well as overcoming them or at least managing them better.
I am happy to say that you all seem a lovely lot who I can relate to well, so for that I say thank you for making me feel less like an alien in a human world!
Hello Starbuck, I'm on the 'self diagnosed' waiting for assessment pile too and can definitely relate to the rollercoaster ride of exhaustion and it's only been a couple of months!
I'm finding it kind of shocking how many are here and appearing who've managed to get (a long way for some of us) into adulthood with no proper understanding of ourselves, just a huge awareness that something doesn't make sense and the descriptions that we've been given of ourselves don't fit. It is empowering to find each other and feel less isolated as we inch our way forward.
Do you think you're husband will come around to at least being curious . ? My partner has read Nerdy, Shy and Socially Inappropriate and while he was reading it (painfully slowly) he kept saying that he didn't like her which isn't a great omen! I'd wanted him to read just one post from the Musings of an Aspie blog and all the comments because I think you get a much clearer less subjective sense of what we are talking about from the multiple voices, but he didn't. He can spend all day looking at bloody car forums, but no, not that. Harrumph.
The other night we were dancing around the issue and he said "But this can't mean that EVERYTHING has to be on your terms". Cue lots of tears at the chasm in our understanding, all I managed was "Are you not seeing that I've spent the last twenty years doing EVERYTHING on your and everybody else's terms and can we please not talk about it anymore." Don't think that qualifies as progress...
How about you Starbuck, do you think you have people who might meet you half way, now you know what you are dealing with? sorry I went off piste!
Spotty...you're apologising again........
Sorry.
Grrrrrr....lol