Coming to terms with realising you are probably autistic

My journey of self discovery has been going on since I realised, well, that there was an "I". I have always surrounded my self with people on the spectrum because their serenity and logic matched my own. But I would deny that I was on the spectrum because I thought autism was one thing for everyone (lack of eye contact, not knowing how people feel) and I can SEE that people are feeling things about things, i don't know why they're feeling it but I can see it, therefore I excluded myself from the label.

I'm intelligent and over time I learnt that if I just say "I don't understand that connection you're making there but I can fix this problem you have so you can stop feeling this way" then people would perceive it more as a strength and say that they envied my point of you... that doesn't help with the bonding process though.

It was only yesterday, when the thought of losing someone precious to me, forced me to evaluate myself through others' eye. And it struck me, I am on the spectrum. And i wept... HARD. Things just started making sense. childhood memories locked away entitled "painful and incalculable" come rushing to the surface and began filing into the right places. I feel good now.

So maybe your journey will come to a climax and everything will fit into place, or maybe your journey is different. There is a passage that resonated with my situation "Self diagnosis or self-identification is achieved through the hard work of figuring out who you are. It doesn’t tend to happen in a vacuum but off the back of a traumatic or stressful event that has blown apart your coping mechanisms. So you’re dealing with the fallout of that as well. When you manage to work through it all, that’s when the growth happens. No-one else can do that for you and it’s something to be proud of."

I dont think i can say more than that. hope this helps.

My journey of self discovery has been going on since I realised, well, that there was an "I". I have always surrounded my self with people on the spectrum because their serenity and logic matched my own. But I would deny that I was on the spectrum because I thought autism was one thing for everyone (lack of eye contact, not knowing how people feel) and I can SEE that people are feeling things about things, i don't know why they're feeling it but I can see it, therefore I excluded myself from the label.

I'm intelligent and over time I learnt that if I just say "I don't understand that connection you're making there but I can fix this problem you have so you can stop feeling this way" then people would perceive it more as a strength and say that they envied my point of you... that doesn't help with the bonding process though.

It was only yesterday, when the thought of losing someone precious to me, forced me to evaluate myself through others' eye. And it struck me, I am on the spectrum. And i wept... HARD. Things just started making sense. childhood memories locked away entitled "painful and incalculable" come rushing to the surface and began filing into the right places. I feel good now.

So maybe your journey will come to a climax and everything will fit into place, or maybe your journey is different. There is a passage that resonated with my situation "Self diagnosis or self-identification is achieved through the hard work of figuring out who you are. It doesn’t tend to happen in a vacuum but off the back of a traumatic or stressful event that has blown apart your coping mechanisms. So you’re dealing with the fallout of that as well. When you manage to work through it all, that’s when the growth happens. No-one else can do that for you and it’s something to be proud of."

I dont think i can say more than that. hope this helps.

Hi Stephen, I had a similar thing: I kept losing friends and then one day there was a real disaster where I realised once and for all that I see things in a very different way to most people.  I had been thinking for several years that I might be autistic, but this one event was like the final straw, and I started the process of looking for a diagnosis.  I cried a lot too in the aftermath of that event, because I just knew I was autistic and I didn't know how to deal with it at first.

I see you are self-diagnosed.  I feel I am almost sure that I'm autistic, but I also have many days where I doubt it, so I really feel that I need a professional diagnosis.  

I have been going through a similar process to you, of opening the 'painful and incalculable' memory door and realising the reason I said and did certain things.  In many ways it's a relief, because I can forgive myself more easily.

It sounds like the process of coming to terms with your diagnosis was very quick, and everything slotted into place in one go.  That must have been a day you will remember forever.  I think my journey will be longer, probably because I doubt myself a lot.  Also I need to learn more about autism so that I can understand better what it is and who I am.

Stephen said:

It was only yesterday, when the thought of losing someone precious to me