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Newly diagnosed Adult

NAS74954

Hi,

I am a 42 year old lady who a few weeks ago was diagnosed with autism. I also have an 18 year old son who is also autistic. 

After years of knowing that I was ‘different’ and also noticing that I see a lot of myself in my son I finally plucked up the courage to approach my GP for an assessment following a discussion with my support worker at uni who also happened to be an autism specialist.

The reason for my post is to ask any newly diagnosed adults how they told their nearest and dearest ? 

Ive always been very good at mirroring appropriate behaviours when in public and to people who know me they would say I’m a confident chatty person which couldn’t be further from the truth.

I’ve found trying to be someone I’m not very exhausting and stressful and this diagnoses has answered so many questions for me in my life especially when growing up.

I look at people with huge friendship groups in ore sometimes wishing that was me when in reality it’s the complete opposite of me and what I want. I don’t have any friends but this suits me perfectly as I prefer my own company more. 

any advice on telling my family would be greatly appreciated 

  • Take your time, there's no rush. Many people on the forum said this to me and i wish i wouldve waited.

    I wanted to tell them because i thought if i need any future help, i can approach them. However, I present similarly to you so it was a big shock to them and they only know the stereotypical presentations. If you are telling you parents, there might be the feeling from them that they have done something wrong in bringing you up. Or that there's something "wrong" with you. I haven't talked to my parents about it since I told them 6 months ago.

    Be clear about what you want from telling people. It's ok telling people but I have found, they don't know what to do with this information. 

  • Hi.

    I arranged a meeting, indicated it was important and asked them to ensure their children were absent (I really struggle with interuptions). I prepared some brief notes on what is autism is (cribbed from this site I believe) and many bullet points on how it affects me personally, with many real examples.

    I recalled some very visible meltdowns they had witnessed, and explained it to them from my newfound autistic viewpoint.

    It was actually quite pleasing that they brought up some other incidents of my past odd behaviour that I hadn't remembered, and we discussed those also.

    I think the most effective part was revealing what goes on in my head behind my very well practised mask... I had prepared a very detailed, blow-by-blow transcript of my internal thoughts & feelings during a relatively recent mini-meltdown they were aware of.

    Finally I gave some concrete examples of what they can do to live in harmony with my flavour of autism.

    Later I realised they were perhaps over-compensating a little, so it might be worth pointing out that if they are unsure how something would affect my autism they should ask (blunt autistic style!).

    A small disclaimer: this meeting was against a backdrop of long-term family crises... so it was always going to be treated seriously - especially as it finally gave some concrete actions we could implement that would improve things a little.