Coming to terms with realising you are probably autistic

shouldnt be any difference, i mean you should already have felt discriminated against and out of place and excluded anyway which lead you to the diagnosis lol

Hi I don't no if anyone feels the same but I've just been diagnosed with autism and adhd at 22 and I just can't make sense of it, it explains why I've struggled but now I feel ill be judged or discrimated for who I am

Hello,

I'm really sorry to hear that you've had lots of difficult experiences and that you didn't have the answer you needed until later on.  It sounds like people really misunderstood you and didn't see you for who you really were. Thanks a lot for being open and sharing honestly how you feel about your experience of diagnosis.

Hello Seren,

I'm really glad that you've started posting.  Welcome to this forum.  I hope that you will find it helpful to be part of the community.

Thanks for your reply to my post.  I wonder whether perhaps, since you've become aware that you could be autistic, it's helped you to notice difficulties which you perhaps had before, but maybe learning about autism has just made you more aware of them.

I can relate to what you say, about being reluctant to tell people about it until you are sure that you are autistic.  Are you intending to have an assessment and if so, do you know how long you have to wait?

Thanks for your kind words.  I am finding it difficult at the moment.  I can't focus as easily on work; in fact, the work that I do doesn't seem as important or interesting to me as it once did.  The life that I'd carefully constructed, where I buried myself in work and didn't interact with people much, now seems inadequate to me, and I feel very lonely and long for more companionship and relationships, but I find relationships difficult.  

Hello Sean,

Thanks very much for replying to my post.  It's interesting and helpful for me to read about your experiences.  It sounds as though it was very helpful for you to learn and understand more about how your brain worked, so that you could then figure out ways to adapt your behaviour to that.  It's great to read that you were so accepting and kind towards yourself.  I'm learning a lot from people I meet who are kind to themselves, and I think it's a lovely attitude.

I'm sorry to hear about the Autistic Burnout that you suffered.  I don't fully understand what Autistic Burnout is, but recently one person on this forum directed me to some video resources on the subject.  I had a kind of burnout when I was at school - I had an eating disorder then started missing a lot of school - and I don't know if that's the same thing or not.

Thanks for your thoughts on self discovery and acceptance.  I am finding things quite difficult at the moment.  I hope that it's a temporary phase and I'm sure it will get easier in time, but at the moment it feels that the life I had before doesn't fit any more, which is unsettling.

Its a mixed feeling, on one hand its nice to have a better understanding of why I feel and do the things I do but also one of frustration, thinking back to the way I was perceived by others, being labeled "naughty" as a child, shouted at by various people throughout my life, particually at school. I feel a lot of my mental health issues and trauma could have been avoided with earlier diagnosis which makes me quite sad.

Hi Ultramarine,

I relate to this so much. I feel exactly the same. I'm not sure if my life struggles are down to autism or something else, but since I realised it could be, I haven't been able to settle my brain. I'm obsessed with it. Work is difficult, I find people's instructions or information is too vague and I just don't understand what people are trying to convey. I get extremely stressed out and can't understand why people do or say things as it doesn't align with my own thinking. If that makes sense. I feel like I'm just being a really awkward person all the time. 

I can't bring myself to talk to work about what's going on with me as I feel stupid in case it turns out it's not ASD at all!

Anyway, you are not alone. I definitely think you need to give yourself a break and do what you need to do.

Hope you're ok :) 

Their energy really is infectious in good ways. Where would you pick?

i knew it --- new zealanders are really nice people and like u say have a great attitude  --- the country rubs of on them

Ha ha! Good question..."best" is of course subjective. If I had to pick, based on where I've been, what I've seen, and who I've met along the way...I would pick South Island of New Zealand (North Island is too warm, and Auckland is too expensive/busy) - mixture of beautiful landscapes, scarcely populated, and a great culture that the Kiwis have towards one another and the planet.

u've been about a bit  ---  so out of all the countries which was the best ?

Hi Aidie and others, yes, I am new to this forum. I support I should post an Introduction on that board (will do so later). I currently live in England. Used to live in Republic of Ireland, New Zealand before that, and originally born in Boston, MA (USA).

I believe you are new so welcome to this forum 

do you live in Northern Ireland / republic of Ireland ?

I also believe the source of anxiety (at least for me, who is on the spectrum) stems from not being able to remember/recall "things" (words, feelings, everything). I have always had an excellent memory and am extremely thorough, almost as if my brain constantly is striving to retain every single fact. But, anxiety comes when trying to recall that fact, and struggle to properly put it to words. Go figure?! 

Like several others, there are some great and interesting replies. I felt it might be useful for me to add yet one more, and hopefully it will be of some help.

I'm now in my 40s, married, good job, was diagnosed with learning disabilities as a child but then Asperger's in 2007. At the time of the diagnosis, I didn't really care too much. I was me, I found my place in life, and everyone thought I was generally doing okay. I honestly thought I HAD come to terms with being on the autistic spectrum. I wasn't on any medication or having to see doctors.

Unfortunately, it wasn't until prolonged stress (and family deaths) caught up with me recently and I suffered an Autistic Burnout, and I literally had regressions. That's something that none of us ever thought would happen to me. Since then, I've learned that being on the spectrum just means that parts of our brain are a little slower than the rest of our system (for example, I'm great with maths and logic, but horrible with emotions).

I accept that. And, I then was able to accept the fact that sometimes the "logical" part of my brain can have an idea before my "system" can determine how I "feel" about that idea. Essentially, I was thinking and acting/doing before my brain fully processed all of the data/information about "feelings" that might be attached to those thoughts/actions.

I don't mean to get philosophical, but once I accepted how my brain works, and that I'm just a little slow sometimes, but that's okay, stay calm, relax, and you'll get there...sometimes part of your brain gets to the destination before the rest of you, and you get confused and don't really know why.

I'm know everyone is very different, and no two people are alike (from another perspective, we're all the same). Regardless, once I understood how my brain worked (maybe because I'm a logical thinker in the first place), my world started making sense to me again. I was able to make connections again, and knew how to "sort" my thoughts. So, perhaps, that approach might work in a similar way for you as well?

All the best in your self discovery/understanding/acceptance.

No need to apologise at all. You were right, the lyric didn't make me uncomfortable at all, just puzzled.

Sorry, looks like I was wrong!  Hope I didn't offend anyone.

my manager  sometimes says "Hows tricks"    meaning "how arethings going" it always make me pause and think "What tricks, magic tricks ??????  "

Strangely, as a child I remember being puzzled, though not made uncomfortable, by the song lyrics 'I've got you under my skin'. I'm a big Dylan fan, and as a child the patent inability of a 'Tambourine Man' to 'play a song for me', due to the innate incapacity of a tambourine to produce a melody, did bother me somewhat. 

Even having said this, I still often feel that I am not all that literal minded!

i had a likewise have a long list of unexplained names  :)