What does your Autism mean to you?

I watched a documentary in the 70's about autism and my parents laughingly said 'that's you!' But then my .other remarked, why spend so much time on children who are clearly a dead loss, when there are bright working-class kids who really could do with more investment of time and money. 

To be fsir, only the Kanner's type autism was recognised then, not the more high-functioning forms. 

Another family member started to come under scrutiny in the early 90's and I had inadvertently read some of the things that had been written about me in my medical notes: it was seen as mental illness then. But it didn't come as some resounding 'ah-ha' moment of revelation - the literature on Asperger's just reopened a host of old wounds and lead to a massive falling out with my parents, who then seemed to call into question every thing about my lifestyle all over again. But later on, a therapist where I live now told me it would never have hurt so much if there wasn't any truth to it. 

Now it matters a whole lot less. I have been self employed for over 20 years, so all fears about being unemployable are gone, though the day job can seem like a thankless task at times and only takes me away from more creative pursuits. Then again, the world of Art stinks too.

Now it just seems, all manner of well-known individuals are coming out and it seems to be pretty common. 

I am glad for something ultimately that does confer that strength of being able to think outside the box. Maybe too, finding ways to deal with certain stressful situations with less shame. It suppose it helps to recognise that some of the more difficult aspects of life, for example the bullying at school, not feeling accepted socially, make more sense, though this all came a bit late in the day.

I was a child of the 80’s, I don’t remember any hearing anything about autism except that there were a handful of autistic children at my primary school, in my year and the year below. I remember when I was 7, one of them and the brothers of two of the others talking about autism one day. Well the brothers were talking about their sisters being autistic then the boy piped up with “I’m autistic”. It never occurred to me to ask what it was though. I remember that same boy told me years later, when we were 14 that he was autistic. I asked my dad that evening “what is autistic” and he just said something about it meaning difficulties with socialising and emotions. Weirdly, around the same time, that same boy asked me if I had Aspergers. At the time I said no, because I wasn’t diagnosed then and I didn’t have a clue what Aspergers was. Apart from that my mother always referred to me as being a strange child and she often said I was vulnerable but she never offered any further explanation. 
I would love to get hold of my medical records. Especially the old Lloyd George cards. I do remember a lady coming to our house to do some sort of assessment when I was 10 or 11. I remember just talking on and on about my pet gerbils for however long she was there. I would like to see if there is anything Autism related in my notes from when I was a child. 
Everything does make more sense now but I still can’t help wish that I’d been diagnosed when I was a lot younger!

I wish I could see my medical notes properly but I can't as I am not registered with a GP in the UK, haven't been for a long time. I think I mentioned having caught site of them once when a doctor just let them be seen. I was sent to a child psychiatrist at 7-8, continued to see him until 10, when my family moved. I nearly ended up being hospitalised as he used to do art therapy with me. I had a fascination with my grandfather's bath, as he might have mentioned sliders and leaks - but he thought I had been drawing coffins and decided I was depressed. As s teen that was an interesting surprise for my parents. I didn't even know what a coffin was!

It had been decided I got delayed developmentally because I was jealous after my brother was born, which is when I regressed and stopped talking. All those destructive deep and dark emotions. Mother thought I was mentally subnormal, but the first educational psychologist I saw found that wasn't the case at all.

First year at secondary school saw me sent to a new psychologist. I grew to dislike all this attention and scrutiny, but later on, also felt it was all brushed under the carpet and made to feel like an attention seeker for seeing the GP about anything.

I little more honesty and openness about it all would have been a great help!

No worries! Hopefully this link is more useful. I might use the first link to access my own medical records, just out of interest.

I’m aware that way back when medical knowledge wasn’t as advanced as it is now that autism was considered by some professionals as a type of psychosis. Obsessive compulsive disorder has been considered as both a neurosis and a psychosis at different times over the years. Luckily times have changed. 
I imagine that there was a lot more stigma surrounding mental health and related conditions back in the 1980’s. Certain cliques of people at university probably didn’t help either! There’s predatory manipulators in every walk of life, sadly! Our underlying neurology makes us more vulnerable to them!

I understand that is true now but it wasn't in the past

Kitsune - thanks for that! The other links I tried weren't much help!

This was the 60's, as said troubles like these were seen as mental illness, not organic. That 70's documentary I mentioned on this thread earlier referred to full-blown Kanner's autism as a psychosis.

Then again, the sense of self or ego idoes seem to be impacted, from what I gathered later on, reading autobiographies from the likes of Donna Williams. I read a book on so-called childhood schizophrenia in the early 90's that appeared to fit me to a tee. But it never said what these children were liked as adults and whether or not they actually did become mad. Wiki now assures me that by the end of the 80's this definition was changed, it was recognised many of these children were simply on the spectrum, excluding those who did hear voices or actively hallucinated other things (despite the taunts of my lovely school mates I never, ever saw things that weren't there).

So then in the early 90's it was quite a jolt I saw an excerpt from my medical notes saying 'I may be prepsychotic!'

That was quite a jolt. My mother once said that I had been diagnosed with an obsessive disorder, not meaning to let that come out, but a counsellor I once visited as an adult told me know that couldn't have been the case as in children was classed as a psychosis!

Either way, the fear, the guilt, was very much in the air and when there were no jobs in the 80's all these doubts came out again on the part of my parents. But in any case at uni, there had been far too many opportunities for some thoroughly unhelpful navel gazing into the dodgy esoterica that had then been circulating around at the time, all going on about getting rid of the ego and false persona to tap into this marvellous great Self and individuality on high. I wish so much now I had never got into all that hooey and wasted so much time, energy and angst over it, not least because there were plenty of predatory manipulators within that circuit who couldn't resist having their moment of power through playing on these stupid post adolescent fears. 

I’ve put a link below in a separate answer that might be useful regarding accessing your UK medical records. How odd that the child psychiatrist thought that your drawings of baths were drawings of coffins and that your speech regression got blamed on jealousy! Seems like too much of a tendency towards the psychoanalytical interpretation of everything rather than any recognition of underlying neurological difference! 
I also feel like the GP thinks I’m an attention seeker when I go there about anything, so I rarely ever go!

I’ve put a link below in a separate answer that might be useful regarding accessing your UK medical records. How odd that the child psychiatrist thought that your drawings of baths were drawings of coffins and that your speech regression got blamed on jealousy! Seems like too much of a tendency towards the psychoanalytical interpretation of everything rather than any recognition of underlying neurological difference! 
I also feel like the GP thinks I’m an attention seeker when I go there about anything, so I rarely ever go!

No worries! Hopefully this link is more useful. I might use the first link to access my own medical records, just out of interest.

I’m aware that way back when medical knowledge wasn’t as advanced as it is now that autism was considered by some professionals as a type of psychosis. Obsessive compulsive disorder has been considered as both a neurosis and a psychosis at different times over the years. Luckily times have changed. 
I imagine that there was a lot more stigma surrounding mental health and related conditions back in the 1980’s. Certain cliques of people at university probably didn’t help either! There’s predatory manipulators in every walk of life, sadly! Our underlying neurology makes us more vulnerable to them!

Kitsune - thanks for that! The other links I tried weren't much help!

This was the 60's, as said troubles like these were seen as mental illness, not organic. That 70's documentary I mentioned on this thread earlier referred to full-blown Kanner's autism as a psychosis.

Then again, the sense of self or ego idoes seem to be impacted, from what I gathered later on, reading autobiographies from the likes of Donna Williams. I read a book on so-called childhood schizophrenia in the early 90's that appeared to fit me to a tee. But it never said what these children were liked as adults and whether or not they actually did become mad. Wiki now assures me that by the end of the 80's this definition was changed, it was recognised many of these children were simply on the spectrum, excluding those who did hear voices or actively hallucinated other things (despite the taunts of my lovely school mates I never, ever saw things that weren't there).

So then in the early 90's it was quite a jolt I saw an excerpt from my medical notes saying 'I may be prepsychotic!'

That was quite a jolt. My mother once said that I had been diagnosed with an obsessive disorder, not meaning to let that come out, but a counsellor I once visited as an adult told me know that couldn't have been the case as in children was classed as a psychosis!

Either way, the fear, the guilt, was very much in the air and when there were no jobs in the 80's all these doubts came out again on the part of my parents. But in any case at uni, there had been far too many opportunities for some thoroughly unhelpful navel gazing into the dodgy esoterica that had then been circulating around at the time, all going on about getting rid of the ego and false persona to tap into this marvellous great Self and individuality on high. I wish so much now I had never got into all that hooey and wasted so much time, energy and angst over it, not least because there were plenty of predatory manipulators within that circuit who couldn't resist having their moment of power through playing on these stupid post adolescent fears.