High Functioning?

@peter , @plastic , @nas69312

Hi all,

I relate to a lot of what's been written here. I had to skim a lot of it first time because it was just to painful a mirror onto my own inner world. I'm recently self diagnosed at fifty, but then quickly discovered I was given a clinical diagnosis of autism as a child.

Yes, i could really do with hand holding, but i'm struggling to get any one i know to relate to this. I'm discovering the world isn't the way I thought it was, nor are people, nor me, nor my role. It feels my pillars of making sense of everything are gone. I'm regularly feeling really vulnerable, which is a new thing for me (so good), but not knowing where to turn. I'm single, nearly always been single, and I could so do with a cuddle right now!

I struggle to reach out well. I tell people, but I don't seem to be able to garner emotional support. As my accupuncturist said I approach it in problem solving mode, appear competent, and merely get people to witness my analysis of the situation, but not my upset. I think I find it hard to access my upset even alone. Sometimes I can curl up in bed alone for 5 minutes or several hours upset, but normally I just shut down, and then later dwell on analysing and problem fixing.

Shutdowns are the biggest impact on me I think. I can never defend myself, I'm left bewildered at what i guess is NT politics, power and status games. I can see how innocent I've been. Mostly it's just been my diligence that has been taken advantage of. Sometimes someone's done a dirty on me and I've just watched it in innocence. I've mostly been able to move on, professionally I've always been in high demand, but it's often taken me ages. The worst was I got bullied for years in a company I'd founded myself by some NT after power and status, perhaps from envy. After four years or so of not knowing how to counter it I left. It was a huge huge loss. It has fortunately led me on to greater things and now founding another organisation that I feel prouder of and is much more robust in our governance and I survived a similar attack intact and they left instead. I'm learning, there's hope!

Coming to terms with all this is hard. I'm realising how profoundly lonely I've been so much of my life. I've had people around me, but something's never connected. I've kept myself busy with big special interest projects and now I wonder why. I'm trying to discern what I do cos it's genuinely good for me, and what I do because I thought that would make me happy but now I realise I've been drawing on the NT recipe book.

It's a painful learning curve, but I know life will be better the otherside.

@peter , @plastic , @nas69312

Hi all,

I relate to a lot of what's been written here. I had to skim a lot of it first time because it was just to painful a mirror onto my own inner world. I'm recently self diagnosed at fifty, but then quickly discovered I was given a clinical diagnosis of autism as a child.

Yes, i could really do with hand holding, but i'm struggling to get any one i know to relate to this. I'm discovering the world isn't the way I thought it was, nor are people, nor me, nor my role. It feels my pillars of making sense of everything are gone. I'm regularly feeling really vulnerable, which is a new thing for me (so good), but not knowing where to turn. I'm single, nearly always been single, and I could so do with a cuddle right now!

I struggle to reach out well. I tell people, but I don't seem to be able to garner emotional support. As my accupuncturist said I approach it in problem solving mode, appear competent, and merely get people to witness my analysis of the situation, but not my upset. I think I find it hard to access my upset even alone. Sometimes I can curl up in bed alone for 5 minutes or several hours upset, but normally I just shut down, and then later dwell on analysing and problem fixing.

Shutdowns are the biggest impact on me I think. I can never defend myself, I'm left bewildered at what i guess is NT politics, power and status games. I can see how innocent I've been. Mostly it's just been my diligence that has been taken advantage of. Sometimes someone's done a dirty on me and I've just watched it in innocence. I've mostly been able to move on, professionally I've always been in high demand, but it's often taken me ages. The worst was I got bullied for years in a company I'd founded myself by some NT after power and status, perhaps from envy. After four years or so of not knowing how to counter it I left. It was a huge huge loss. It has fortunately led me on to greater things and now founding another organisation that I feel prouder of and is much more robust in our governance and I survived a similar attack intact and they left instead. I'm learning, there's hope!

Coming to terms with all this is hard. I'm realising how profoundly lonely I've been so much of my life. I've had people around me, but something's never connected. I've kept myself busy with big special interest projects and now I wonder why. I'm trying to discern what I do cos it's genuinely good for me, and what I do because I thought that would make me happy but now I realise I've been drawing on the NT recipe book.

It's a painful learning curve, but I know life will be better the otherside.