Published on 12, July, 2020
I have recently been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
I'm 25, so it was a bit of a shock to find this out so late, it's something that i have considered now for a few years, but as I have my friends and interests and was getting by I didn't feel it was important.
Until things seemed to get harder and harder, and I just felt more and more alienated and lonely and mainly a lack of understanding/misunderstanding, towards the way people behave. I'm quite a sensitive person and this is something that has got in the way of loads of things
I hate being so negative but I feel ashamed of it, ' autism ' and I am worried that my friends and family and the world, in general, will view me differently ( although I've chosen to keep it to myself mainly, I don't know if this is the best approach feeling the level of shame and anxiety I do.
At the moment I'm in denial and I just wish I could wish it away, but in the same breath I don't because I feel it makes me who I am too, I love art and music and poetry and view the world in a very artistic and abstract way due to these wonderful interests that im fortunate to have.
I want to feel like I can talk to people without panicking ( because I LOVE people ) and I have always accepted them for their differences and loved them for it, so it's hard with having a past of being called 'weird ' and ' a bit odd ' to have faith in humanity currently!
Can anybody offer me any advice?
You are still the you you were before getting the diagnosis. You are lots of things, over and above what the A word may have to say about you. It doesn't have to the the ultimate thing that defines you. They might be calling it something totally different in another thirty years!
All that is easily said than done though, when the thing came up for me in the 90's it really did reopen a lot of old wounds. Then later on, a therapist I saw told me that it would never have hurt me so much if there wasn't any truth to it. I think understanding of autism has evolved a lot since the 90's. At that time the literature keot banging on about empathy.
I think you should just use the diagnosis as s tool to undetstand yourself where it is needed.