I particularly like this paragraph from my DX report....

It seems as though that sentence gives you a sense of validation of your experience?

Yes exactly. My burnout experience taught me that not everything I'm good at is good for me, and this aligns with that; I *can* do stuff, but it's exhausting. It backs up the permission I've given myself to stop trying so hard and to allow myself breaks and rest.

It must be nice, to finally have a professional acknowledge how things are for you and show a degree of understanding? It's important that we realise the effect of what we do on ourselves. Maybe we can 'do' things but it takes it out of us much more than for a non-autistic person. It's all about finding a balance.

I’m glad that you were able to understand where I was coming from.

I think it’s natural for any of us, following diagnosis, to want to pick apart all of our past life experiences and suss them out in the context of autism. I have done so and am still doing so BUT I tend to ‘process on the go’, which I think is a healthy approach. What I mean by that is that I’m not solely focused on looking at my past life through the lens of autism but rather it forms part of the constant dialogue that I tend to have going on in my brain as I’m getting on with every day life. Things slot into place as and when, here and there. I was thinking some things through today, while clambering up and down spiral staircases in a castle with my two youngest daughters (2+5) so yes I’m processing everything but I don’t let it become all consuming. 

I don’t know how long the adaptation process will take. I think it takes as long as we need it to and it is important that we do take our time with it and don’t try to rush it. Personally, I’ve found the process so far to be a really positive experience. I’ve learned so much about myself; made sense of so many things; made a lot of friends that I would not otherwise have made and gained wisdom and insights from people that have been kind enough to share them. 

It must be odd after waiting for so long to finally have the assessment and diagnosis over and done with. I was lucky in that sense as I only had a 6 month wait due to also having an ABI so needing to be assessed at a more specialist unit that deals with more  ‘complex’ cases. I was already 99.9% sure that I had Aspergers, before I even asked the GP to refer me for assessment. I’d started to realise it initially way back in the early 2000’s when I was doing my undergraduate degree in psychology. But then I had the ABI in March 2007 and that took over, it had to really! It wasn’t until I passed the 7 years of ‘spontaneous recovery due to neuroplasticity’ that I started questioning this other stuff that had always been there before the brain injury, there had always been something not quite right with me. I started thinking along the lines of Aspergers again in early 2015 and spent from then until my assessment in December 18 completely obsessed with reading absolutely everything that I could find about Autism, especially the female presentation of autism which can differ significantly from the male presentation. Weirdly after I was diagnosed I suddenly no longer felt compelled to read everything possible about Autism, don’t know why!

I think that it’s important to take the time to work our how your autism affects you and what changes you need to make to help yourself. Again, that’s something that can’t be rushed, there’s no time limit on when it has to be achieved by. it’s very much still a work in progress for me, it may always be as different life circumstances or situations may crop up that need me to re-evaluate whether or not my current approach is still helpful or healthy. I guess life is a continuous process of adaptation in some ways.

Sorry, I’ve rambled for far longer than I intended to. I hope you find some of what I’ve written to be vaguely useful!

I can relate to all of that Kitsun! Do please carry on sharing your thoughts here or PM (send me a friend request?).

I wrote a very much longer reply before replacing it with the one above last night, talking about how the DX is just the beginning............and the process of unpicking the past to sort out what is underlying autism, what is the real me, and what are scars from masking for three or more decades.

It's also taking quite some time for me to adjust to the fact that the diagnosis process and the associated waiting is over - I've lived with it for 19 months and now it isn't part of my life anymore, which is clearly a good thing but still a change to adjust to.

I've realised that working towards good mental health with autism may require adaptations to the approaches used in the absence of autism, and for instance I need to work on my "need for correctness" which has helped me in my work life but almost destroyed my ability to simply let life flow by happily and in particular let go of times in the past where I made errors that can no longer be corrected.

It’s an interesting journey and one that triggers a lot of mental processing/adaption/internalising new information and applying it to the self. I could go on as there’s so much more. It’s a process that I’m still very much going through myself as I was only diagnosed last December. Personally I’m finding it to be a really positive process, I’m discovering so much about myself that I didn’t understand before; I’ve found the answer to so many questions; the keys to so many locks! Getting my diagnosis is what’s finally allowed me to blossom as a person. I feel free now, not constrained by other people’s expectations of how I should or shouldn’t behave. I also feel complete, instead of feeling like I’m the compilation of many disjointed facets of personality and life experience, autism has consolidated all the different aspects of me into one whole that now makes sense. Sorry I’m waffling but I know what I mean. If you surround yourself with people that understand and ‘get it’, which I think you do do, certainly on here. Then your journey can also be a positive experience of increasing and developing your self understanding and awareness. 

It’s an interesting journey and one that triggers a lot of mental processing/adaption/internalising new information and applying it to the self. I could go on as there’s so much more. It’s a process that I’m still very much going through myself as I was only diagnosed last December. Personally I’m finding it to be a really positive process, I’m discovering so much about myself that I didn’t understand before; I’ve found the answer to so many questions; the keys to so many locks! Getting my diagnosis is what’s finally allowed me to blossom as a person. I feel free now, not constrained by other people’s expectations of how I should or shouldn’t behave. I also feel complete, instead of feeling like I’m the compilation of many disjointed facets of personality and life experience, autism has consolidated all the different aspects of me into one whole that now makes sense. Sorry I’m waffling but I know what I mean. If you surround yourself with people that understand and ‘get it’, which I think you do do, certainly on here. Then your journey can also be a positive experience of increasing and developing your self understanding and awareness. 

I’m glad that you were able to understand where I was coming from.

I think it’s natural for any of us, following diagnosis, to want to pick apart all of our past life experiences and suss them out in the context of autism. I have done so and am still doing so BUT I tend to ‘process on the go’, which I think is a healthy approach. What I mean by that is that I’m not solely focused on looking at my past life through the lens of autism but rather it forms part of the constant dialogue that I tend to have going on in my brain as I’m getting on with every day life. Things slot into place as and when, here and there. I was thinking some things through today, while clambering up and down spiral staircases in a castle with my two youngest daughters (2+5) so yes I’m processing everything but I don’t let it become all consuming. 

I don’t know how long the adaptation process will take. I think it takes as long as we need it to and it is important that we do take our time with it and don’t try to rush it. Personally, I’ve found the process so far to be a really positive experience. I’ve learned so much about myself; made sense of so many things; made a lot of friends that I would not otherwise have made and gained wisdom and insights from people that have been kind enough to share them. 

It must be odd after waiting for so long to finally have the assessment and diagnosis over and done with. I was lucky in that sense as I only had a 6 month wait due to also having an ABI so needing to be assessed at a more specialist unit that deals with more  ‘complex’ cases. I was already 99.9% sure that I had Aspergers, before I even asked the GP to refer me for assessment. I’d started to realise it initially way back in the early 2000’s when I was doing my undergraduate degree in psychology. But then I had the ABI in March 2007 and that took over, it had to really! It wasn’t until I passed the 7 years of ‘spontaneous recovery due to neuroplasticity’ that I started questioning this other stuff that had always been there before the brain injury, there had always been something not quite right with me. I started thinking along the lines of Aspergers again in early 2015 and spent from then until my assessment in December 18 completely obsessed with reading absolutely everything that I could find about Autism, especially the female presentation of autism which can differ significantly from the male presentation. Weirdly after I was diagnosed I suddenly no longer felt compelled to read everything possible about Autism, don’t know why!

I think that it’s important to take the time to work our how your autism affects you and what changes you need to make to help yourself. Again, that’s something that can’t be rushed, there’s no time limit on when it has to be achieved by. it’s very much still a work in progress for me, it may always be as different life circumstances or situations may crop up that need me to re-evaluate whether or not my current approach is still helpful or healthy. I guess life is a continuous process of adaptation in some ways.

Sorry, I’ve rambled for far longer than I intended to. I hope you find some of what I’ve written to be vaguely useful!

I can relate to all of that Kitsun! Do please carry on sharing your thoughts here or PM (send me a friend request?).

I wrote a very much longer reply before replacing it with the one above last night, talking about how the DX is just the beginning............and the process of unpicking the past to sort out what is underlying autism, what is the real me, and what are scars from masking for three or more decades.

It's also taking quite some time for me to adjust to the fact that the diagnosis process and the associated waiting is over - I've lived with it for 19 months and now it isn't part of my life anymore, which is clearly a good thing but still a change to adjust to.

I've realised that working towards good mental health with autism may require adaptations to the approaches used in the absence of autism, and for instance I need to work on my "need for correctness" which has helped me in my work life but almost destroyed my ability to simply let life flow by happily and in particular let go of times in the past where I made errors that can no longer be corrected.