Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi all, I hope it's all right to post this, because it probably gets asked a lot.
I'm in my mid-30s now, but for as long as I can remember I've always felt different and I've never been able to pinpoint why. Several times over the years I've tried to "figure myself out" and on more than one occasion I've ended up researching autism but I have never gone any further than reading about it.
Apparently when I was a toddler I was very chatty but at some point I don't remember, probably around the time I started primary school, I became shy and withdrawn. I've had a lot of trouble over the years with people thinking I'm weird, and looking back now I can kind of see why. I self-analyse a lot, and focus too much on regrets that have no relevance today.
I've always liked meeting new people and having lots of friends, but I feel utterly incapable of maintaining friendships or even staying in touch with my own family regularly. I cannot hold a conversation unless the other person is doing most of the heavy lifting, and I've always hated touchy-feely things like hugging.
I have always been terrible at maths, even now I don't know my times tables and I can't do mental arithmetic beyond simple addition, and when I had a retail job I had to be extra careful counting change. Even Carol Vordeman videos and extra maths workbooks couldn't teach me. I'm actually a bit surprised that I never got diagnosed with a learning difficulty just based on that.
On the flip side of the maths issue, I've always been good with words and I apparently knew my alphabet before I started school (thanks to Blockbusters, according to my mum!), and I love games like Scrabble and crosswords, and I'm even writing a novel.
I used to have a lot of anxiety and had a generally negative outlook on life, and in around 2005 I started self-harming and when people started noticing I decided to see my doctor. I was diagnosed with clinical depression and referred to a psychologist. They really helped with some things and I'm much better at copying with stress, but I do wish I had told them everything - I didn't even tell them or my GP about the self-harm. I didn't wait to be discharged from the psychologist - I just stopped going (another regret).
When I'm put on the spot I get flustered immediately - even when I'm asked something I know about it's like every bit of knowledge in my brain suddenly becomes inaccessible to me. This was mainly a problem in school when I would then get accused of not paying attention, but it still happens occasionally in adult life too.
The main problem I have in adult life is that I find it difficult to focus on work and even on things I like doing, or I just have a problem sticking with things I'm working on. I much prefer having a plan in place for what I'm going to do, so with personal projects when I am the one calling the shots, so to speak, I am notorious for starting things and then abruptly dropping them leaving them half-finished. At work when I have set tasks to do, a simple distraction can derail me for the whole day - luckily we are still in a start of the year quiet period, but an inability to focus could be pretty bad when our workload gets larger and we are on tight deadlines.
This has turned into a bit of an essay, and I could probably type for hours with numerous examples, so I'd better stop.
I guess I feel a bit lost, and others have suggested I make an appointment with my GP, but I actually hate going to the doctors because I always feel like I'm not going to be taken seriously (I was actually called a hypochondriac once), and I kind of don't want to tie up valuable NHS resources that could be helping other people.
Thanks for listening (or reading, even)
Welcome, AJ!
Sorry I'm fashionably late for the party - I'm catching up after a bit of a break, and I have a bit of a scattergun way of going through new posts.
Firstly - don't worry about "writing essays" - they've always put up with me around here, and I sometimes couldn't keep a post short if my life depended on it (long ones are quicker to write, as I can't edit down without procrastinating - literally for hours sometimes!) Besides which, autism often affects how we use language, so it's only fair that we're tolerant. In fact, what you say about picking up your alphabet really young can sometimes be an autistic trait (hyperlexia), and I was that way myself - reading and writing came to me easier than spoken communication when I was little, and I can't notice anything with writing on it without feeling compelled to read it. Autism is often like that - at the extremes of things in either direction (for example; dyslexia is more common, just as hyperlexia is; as are the opposite poles of maths ability).
There's a lot else there that I recognise too; a previous history of struggles with mental health that no-one could quite pin an exact cause on seems almost de-riguer for a late-diagnosed autistic person. Unfinished projects and getting derailed easily - oh yes, I sure recognise those; they've been the bane of my (failed attempts at a) career many times. I'm usually either so hyper-focused on this one thing that I really have to do right now that I forget to eat and wouldn't notice the apocalypse happening, or I'm so scatterbrained that making a cup of tea takes a dozen attempts over the course of a couple of hours!
As for tying up NHS resources; the way I see it is this: Autistic people can often be easily overwhelmed by things which don't much bother other people, which leads to what's sometimes called "autistic burn-out"; which is often mistaken for mental health problems, and sometimes really does lead to mental health problems. Understanding ourselves is key to dealing with this better and making burn-outs less likely. So in the long-run, we're just as likely to need help from the NHS if we don't get the explanations that we really need - maybe even more so - and often the kind of intensive "crisis" kind of help that costs the NHS the most. So think of it as "preventive medicine".
Best wishes.
Thanks, you have raised some good points there. :)
It's funny you should mention forgetting to eat because it's reminded me that when I lived alone I very rarely ate breakfast or dinner/tea. It's like I only remember to eat when other people are eating.
It seems to be quite common; like our brains are no good at prioritising the messages from other parts of the body. If I get really engrossed in something, the phrase "coming to your senses" can be very literal - I'll snap out of it and find that I might be starving hungry or thirsty, freezing cold, have a dead leg, or my bladder is about to burst. I don't really feel as if my mind inhabits a lump of flesh and blood at all sometimes.
It's very rare that I eat breakfast (I always feel as if my insides are still asleep). Yet at my last job, I could get so into the rhythms of the machine I was operating that my supervisor would have to remind to go for lunch - I'd just merrily carry on until it was too late to bother having a lunch break at all, otherwise. It doesn't help that I can never decide what I want to eat - quite often exactly the same few things for months on end so that I don't have to decide. Give me a complex programming problem, and I'm fine - but I grind to a halt trying to decide anything that doesn't have a definite answer.
Haha, me too! I tend to wander around the shop a few times looking suspicious before I decide what I'm going to actually buy. :P
I'd choose not to have to choose every time! I'm the same if my usual brand of something is out of stock at the supermarket - I just end up frozen there with an empty head, getting in everone's way (I've been mistaken for a shop-lifter several times).
Oh I'm terrible at deciding what to eat. It's become a running joke that whenever we are out for a family meal everybody is always waiting for me before we order... and even then usually just have the same thing as normal.