Published on 12, July, 2020
........and probably will hardly manage to again, as I may have forgotten my password ready. After a zillion things going wrong.....including the fact that all my brilliant ideas for a handle were already taken. Great minds.
I have not been diagnosed and won't be, I don't live in the UK and no doubt more ties to my lovely home country will be cut still further in the next year.
It was just seen as craziness when I was a kid, in the 1960's. It could be a spectrum thing but it could be something else. The red flags for the A word for me are that I regressed at 18 months and no longer spoke using grammatically correct sentences. Tantrums and obsessions during childhood, being scapegoated at high school and repeatedly being criticised from student years onwards for not engaging in enough eye contact.
But it is on the other side of the boot too as I teach at a high school for children who wish to specialise in the arts, and many are now getting diagnoses of dyspraxia, dyslexia as well as the odd autism I do feel the need to know how to work with these kids.
I would love to hear from older people who are only now recognising the hidden thing after all these years. Or from other teachers also confronting similar things.
The most important thing is my art incidentally.
I can only second what people are saying here. The day I was diagnosed was a big turning point for me too. It gave me closure on a lot of things and avenues to deal with them. Did you channel your obsessions and compuslsions into art? It helps me immensely.
Art and expression do seem to be a common thing in the ASD community. I have music. I had an ex who had ASD who was an artist and film maker. Funnily enough I didn't get my diagnosis until 15 years after we split up. We shared an eye for detail which made watching film and stage productions a shared interest.
I'd try and get a diagnosis. It might answer a few questions for you.
I do hear what you are saying Cloudy Mountain. Now that there is not the inability to deal with it that came from family, it would be easier to do it for myself and keep the knowledge to myself or not,, delending. It eoukdbe difficult where I am though. And there is a lot more prejudice and stigma against what seems to be anything like mental illness here. I outgrew the most extreme things of my childhood which would have stood out as "not normal.' I was obsessed with letters of the alphabet, numbers, says of the week, there was the speech delay, massive tantrums, oppositional behaviour.
I still get massively stressed in certain situationsa s stated before. Delays where trying to get somewhere, airport, metro being closed, being crowded in. Dealing with bureaucrats who may hold significant power over me such as employment in the past, residency rights can also bring out the worst in me.
But I cannot report the massive sensory issues some do here though. And I have been in work continually since emigrating and am in a long-term relationship.
I know I still occasionally get told I am rather weird and strange and always felt 'different,' etc etc. I
I did get an an formal diagnosis from an old friend who happened to be a consultant psychiatrist. She told me I 'had done very well.'
In painting I can experiment a great deal with pattern, reflective surfaces and I hope, communicate something to others too. I have always had plenty of other special interests too.