Just reflecting on my journey to date, the false starts and blind alleys. I've had longstanding issues with anxiety and these have dominated a lot of my reading, and my life actually.
I've kept searching and searching, with absolutely zero awareness that any of this could be related to autism until my son's informal diagnosis a couple of years ago, and have spent much of my life dogged by the constant feeling that I can just learn the answers, maybe not in the book i'm currently holding, but probably in the very next book I read.
It's been perhaps obvious to others that I've spent far too much time on this. I'm 55 now and got my first self help books out from the library whilst my mum observed, Oh, you don't need those, love". Claire Weekes' "Self help for your nerves" & Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people", I think. Recently a former colleague found me in the self help section and, expressing mock surprise said, "Fancy bumping into you here!" as if this was where I lived. And my husband, observing all of my books from the "Overcoming" series on my shelf, quipped, "I know which book is missing! It's called Overcoming the need for Overcoming books!". I think they have a point.
If only the subject of autism had been mentioned sooner. Perhaps i could have bought the right books or enlisted different support. My family is full of individuals like me. It's a large family and yet nobody else has mentioned it. I could simply draw a genogram and join the dots! Can anyone relate?