Hi all,
I’m a 21 year old female. My traits include:
Stimming:
Leg-bouncing, nail-biting, and when I was little, lip-picking and fiddling.
Fixating: on people, and other subjects of interest, e.g. recently it’s been spectrum-related stuff. I don’t remember doing this quite as much when I was little, at least not before I was about 9, but I did collect things, (small bags, stones, and a bit later, coins.)
Sleep: I’ve never been very good at sleeping, my my mind is too busy and reluctant to ‘switch off.’ Sensory experience: I’m blind, but I remember one evening sitting near a fire with a group of people and finding the light excruciatingly painful, making my eyes water all evening, while everyone else I asked said they were fine. Light rain can be painful, heavy rain can cause me to get lost. I was really sensitive to labels in clothes when I was little, and sometimes still am. I hate the texture of bananas. The sound of crockery being stacked can be really painful. I have (probably relatively mild) misaphonia, and I struggle to cope with the sound of hair/handdryers, hoovers, traffic, lawnmowers, drills, chainsaws, and wine being pored. Being in control of the sensory stimulus prevents it from becoming overwhelming, but otherwise I can go into a meltdown.
Social experience: I really have always struggled to form and maintain friendships. I crave close connections but don’t know how to make them. I overshare: this used to happen all the time; now it’s rarer, and I usually do it as a way of expressing trust, or because I can’t seem to stop myself. I struggle to detect sarcasm, irony, and jokes. I’m naive to a point that’s got me into some quite vulnerable situations in the past. I hate crowds and prefer to socialise in very small groups. I occasionally experience elective mutism.
Deadlines: I frequently experience months of inertia followed by intense productivity shortly before a deadline.
My family are supportive in lots of ways, but they seem to doubt my recent diagnosis, which is making it hard to process it myself. They recognise many of my traits now, but say that most of them were not present until I was 12. I was always creative, an abstract thinker, and academically able. I spent most of my time alone and was basically happy with this. I have sometimes quite intense empathy. So whilst I basically identified as being on the spectrum for years before this was formally recognised, the possibility always seemed dismissed by my family and professionals I was involved with.
sorry for the length of this post, but I wanted to give you as much detail as possible. I’m wondering how much of this sounds Familia, and if anyone can offer some guidance on how to navigate family uncertainty in relation to an ASD diagnosis, and how to move towards integrating autism into one’s sense of self, which I would love to do. Many thanks in advance.
