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Working out my place on the spectrum

NAS76914

I’ve spent quite a bit of time talking about my son and how the world is going to be for him. I suppose it’s time I talked about myself.

I’m not diagnosed, but believe I am on the spectrum. My son has a severe diagnosis.

Looking back there’s a lot that happened that didn’t make sense at the time. When I was younger I was terrified of Drs and needles to the point where I would lash out as a child. I had be restrained at times to be knocked out for ops etc. This caused me shame looking back. To this day any form of Invasion worries me. I get claustrophobic with scans and unless I know exactly what’s going on I do get worried.

I realise that is the same in my personal life. I struggle massively if I don’t know something inside and out. I always try to be the best I can be at work. Maybe I have to be the best as If I don’t have that knowledge I’m not comfortable. Anything I don’t understand causes confusion or distress.

I can get very overwhelmed at times and get told off for being too stressed by family and my ex wife.

I have a new place now where I live with my son (I look after him full time as a single parent). I know where everything is or roughly where it should be and I’m happy with that. If I’m someplace new it’s hard as if I don’t know where things are it just makes things a bit tougher.

Looking back I’ve realised I’ve coped or masked most of my life.

Have some of you got adult diagnosis and are you parents? How did it make you feel and what were your worries before?

My worry is the world hasn’t moved on enough for my ability to parent not being questioned if I am diagnosed

  • in reply to Martin

    "Poor at being a human human being" is the exact phrase (well, possibly with slightly more colourful language) that I have used when describing the relief I feel about possibly having some answers. I'm Mid 30s and currently seeking a diagnosis (though I am fairly convinced). I have a 7 year old who was diagnosed a couple of years ago and I see so much of me in the behaviors he exibits that others attribute to autism. He's one of the only humans that I've ever really connected with.

  • Merry Christmas to you and your son.

    It's comforting to hear I'm not alone in my fear of Drs. I used to 'shut down' so completely as a child that they couldn't get me to respond to doctors at all. It was abject terror yet no one realised I was afraid. As an adult this flipped into melt down after melt down compounding my poor relationship with the medical profession. Mental Health abandoned me as unco-operative when none of their CBT therapies for NTs worked.

    Then, at 57, I worked out what these episodes and origins of my fears were. I was recently diagnosed ASD.

    As for your parenting, I certainly hope no one does question it. I raised a lad alone. He's NT; thrives on social interaction and super high EQ, but I see some of his logical thought processes and a few sensory glitches like mine. Those genes are kicking about there, I'm sure :-)

    But my son is hale and hearty and a lovely human being, so I guess I did just fine as an unwittingly autistic mum. I'm sure you do a great job too and being on the Spectrum yourself probably makes you a better dad to him, because you can 'get it' in a way an NT parent perhaps couldn't.

    All I can tell you is being autistic is no barrier to being a good parent. Whether you choose to go through an assessment yourself or not is a personal choice. You can always wait until your lad is older. 

  • in reply to NAS76914

     I think the diagnosis was just a clinical validation of a realisation that I was autistic, that happened in the months before I took the assessment. The revelation that there were many other people like me, was a great comfort after a lifetime of thinking that I was strange and awkward on an individual level.

  • in reply to Martin

    Thank you so much for your response. I Agree I think I’m starting to look at life as how well I’ve coped, rather than how I haven’t.

    was the result just the diagnosis you had or was there anything else?

  • I was diagnosed as autistic at 59, and am the father of a diagnosed autistic daughter, and a daughter with probable ADHD (both adults now). All of us are capable of at least appearing to function in the NT world. Luckily, I am still married, my wife is NT, though there are some noticeable autistic tendencies in other members of her family. Like you, I have masked, or camouflaged, all my life, and coped. As the psychiatrist who diagnosed me said, "The only alternative to coping is not coping", and I have come close to not coping a good few times. I was entirely relieved at getting a diagnosis, as it explained so much about my difficulties and limitations, and I could forgive myself for past failings. I always thought that other people had similar difficulties to me, but were just very much better at overcoming them. It was a revelation to me, that so many of the things that I found difficult in life were absolutely no problem to most people, they just didn't exist for them. I went from thinking that I was rather poor at being a human being, to knowing that I was a remarkably successful autistic person, having to cope with a society that was in many ways inimical to me.

    As I was diagnosed when my children were both adult, I had no thoughts about the effect of a diagnosis on any external assessment on my parenting skills. However, being neurodivergent seems to me to be an advantage when parenting neurodivergent offspring.

  • If anyone has any experiences they could share that would be appreciated.