Would your life have been different if you’d been diagnosed earlier?

Like the others in their 50's I think diagnosis in my childhood, even if possible would just have left me stigmatised as 'special', going to the special school etc and bullied even more. I had other medical issues when I was around 8-10 and then 'special ' school was mentioned and I fought massivley against it. I think it would have helped me in my teens and 20's on the relationship side. I have been waiting 2 years fo the NHS and now I just want to know what my enemy is .

I was diagnosed when I was at secondary school, which I guess is early compared to some. Either way it didn't make a big difference for me. It didn't help my problems and my troubles with learning and fitting in. There was no help or support from anybody.

I sometimes wonder if being diagnosed when I was a young child would have been better, more time to grasp it and understand it. Went through so many changes like puberty new and new school when I was diagnosed whereas I wouldn't have had that if I was a child so it might have been different. Guess I'll never know.

‘If’…

infinite options 

born of the real issue= My negativity 

the question is ‘how do I let go of negativity’?

how do I feed my sense of well-being through healthy questions?

what are the healthiest questions? 

if I had been diagnosed and the attitude of negativity lived within me then my negativity would have attacked another of my realities.

what I don’t have as reality is a figment of my imagination 

Hi, if you are smart enough, it does not take amazing social abilities to work out how to incentivise - or manipulate - people to look out for you. "He might be a savage, but he's my savage!"

When I was young we heard very little about autism so I am not sure what help would have had. Much more is known now and support given.

It would have been good to explain to friends why I didn't make eye contact and my parents why I did particular things, as it felt like I was doing things wrong but couldn't change them. 

However as others have said overall now is probably right as there is more understanding and I am glad I know now why some things are hard and I do different things 

Like a lot of others here, I'm torn.  I would have liked to have had more support at school and university.  But I'm not sure what help would have been available at the time at the time or even now.  If I hadn't had to mask so much, I might not have had burnout and mental health crises through my twenties and early thirties and have a proper career now.  Then again, if I hadn't burnt out and decided to write a mental health blog, which became an 'getting an autism diagnosis' blog, I wouldn't have met my fiancee.  So perhaps on balance everything was for the best.  I just wish I could have learnt to accept myself, my flaws and my idiosyncrasies years ago.

I think an earlier diagnosis could have helped me in some ways. Maybe not materially, but certainly in terms of my mental health. Although I did well academically, the coping methods I needed to survive school were based around teachers assuming that others had given me permission, and not being able to argue while may grades remained very high. However, this basis meant I was left feeling incredibly unsure of them, like they could be taken away at any moment. Which led to an obsession with getting top grades and a massive fear of failure or of appearing even faintly not completely on top of everything. This meant that my mental health plummeted and the mental health interventions I did get were school based so I was reluctant to engage with as I thought it could get back to my school and they'd take away my coping mechanisms (earphones, hiding away at breaks, getting copies of the PowerPoints rather than following the teachers as much, avoiding group work) which was irrational but very very powerful and prevented me from getting good help until after I left schools. A diagnosis would add weight to these necessities and could have left me feeling less panicked every time something went slightly wrong, which would have been nice. On the other hand, maybe I wouldn't have gotten the grades I did, so something good came out of it. 

I'm very similar. I've worked so hard and am happy with who I've become. If I'd been diagnosed earlier I might not be the same person and my diagnosis might have held me back in that I would have felt that I was limited in my abilities and options. 

And it makes my head hurt to think about it!

Yes.  And I think that my life would have been much improved by understanding that I'm autistic much earlier on.  All of that desperate and often futile "self help" as I struggled to socialise and fit in.  And the constant mismatch between myself and what seemed to be expected, with me doing well at many of the things others found difficult, but then failing miserably at things they told me were "common sense".  And the almost constant masking and anxiety.

My only reservation about knowing earlier would be that there'd probably have been no understanding, support or acceptance from others.  So the whole culture of the 60s and 70s would have had to have changed, not just my knowledge of my own identity.  But even that would pale into insignificance when I consider the implications for my family.

For me the most important aspect of this hasn't been my own identity, it's been the wider effects within my family over generations.  If just one of us (and we're a large family) had been diagnosed, this might have alerted the rest.   This might have opened up the way for greater self understanding, appropriate help and support and the gradual healing of loads of intergenerational trauma. 

As it was, we were left in the dark, often running into unnecessary crises and disasters and developing some quite serious mental health issues along the way.  Make no mistake, unidentified autism, which in itself shouldn't have been a problem if the world were full of understanding and acceptance of difference, has led to some life-threatening scenarios.  And we're still trying to recover and undo some of the damage.  I don't even know whether it's possible, given the extent of the damage in our household.  But yes, knowing all of this earlier in life would have made a huge difference.        

Hi, I could have just written your reply. I leant to cultivate the hardest thug in the school. It isn’t hard it just takes time. I was no threat as I was just the wimp. He always had his position to keep in the ecosystem. There is often a power behind the throne. One thing I did learn is that there is no substitute for brains. I think a diagnosis I’m my late teens would have given me a lot more tools to use throughout life. To have been outed in a single sex school in the early 80’s wouldn’t have helped!

To be honest, I think a childhood diagnosis would have been counterproductive for me. I think that 'being thrown in at the deep end' in schools with a broad range of children - including thugs (although I cultivated some, so I had thugs on my side as well) - made me more resilient than I would have been otherwise. Ideally, a diagnosis at 17-ish might have been good, so that I had support doing A-levels and my degree, which I found stressful in some ways.

I think an earlier diagnosis might have been better for me as I would have known why I was different and why everyone treated me and called me a retard at school. I might have even received support and help at school. Because of the bullying and the not knowing I started cutting myself, maybe with an earlier diagnosis that might not have happened either. I wish I could have just had some understanding, it would have made a huge difference for me. Sadly I don't get understanding from anybody else but at least now I understand myself a little better than I did. But I do wish I'd been diagnosed earlier rather than later.

Oh Lord, hun. Do you have support now?

You've had a double burden. Autism without guidance is one thing, but not insurmountable. Autism in the midst of that kind of abuse ...it hurts me to think what you've been through. ND or NT you needed protection and got none.

I wish I had words...

If i was diagnosed as a child i would of become an evil genius and dominated the world by now. With my stuffed animal companion being my silent accomplice. but unfortunately i wasn't. i was segregated by my siblings both blood related and step. not become that problematic child who was prevented from having friends because my parents valued other parent opinions over the wellbeing of their son.

my mum and stepdad started to resent me and did anything to force me into work so i could support myself and leave. unfortunately they soon realized i couldn't integrate into their expected workplace and trapped me on benefits and took my entire income to pay for their bills. until i was diagnosed at 22 and given support because my situation became a safeguarding issue.

i would of probably gotten my GCSE when i was in secondary school, i would of gotten some direction and support into getting into something related to a special interest and not forced into doing animal care at college and pulled out of college because my parents wanted me to work and leave the family home at age 17. to being physically and mentally traumatised by co worker poisoning, drugging and hurting me. 

i would of probably got removed from my mother and stepdads care and protected from the abuse of my older siblings. probably wouldn't of been sexually assaulted by my step sisters. May be if i was diagnosed my parent would paid more attention to the psychopath of my older brother and alot of animals could of been spared. if i was diagnosed as a child maybe my parents would of got advice that didn't result in my step dad and my brothers putting abattoir grade cleaning products in my food and i wouldn't have bile acid malabsorption and crohn's disease.

maybe if i was diagnosed earlier i would of been protected better in high school and not escaped goated and found a friends and not taken advantage off. 

I've had a lot of problems of concentration and motivation for a while. I was enrolled in university to do a ph.d in computer science, which I spent like 11 years doing (or more like claiming to do) before the department kicked me out for unsatisfactory progress. And I wasn't really doing anything else of great value career wise while doing that.

So I guess the question is how much they can help me with this if and when I get my diagnosis. If it's something that can be resolved with the right counselling then I could easily be 10-15 years more advanced in my career right now had I got such treatment earlier in my life, and probably could have completed the phd in that case. 

I am also obese, and suspect this is largely to do with a lack of sensitivity to hunger and satiety triggers, as well as an extremely habit-driven food regime. 

It sucks to think about this, a viable treatment 20 years ago could have changed my life beyond any recognition, but perhaps that's over-estimating what knowing about the diagnosis would achieve.

I don't think it would have made a huge difference for me. I would still have been different and awkward, sucked at making friends, been anxious, not made eye contact ect... I don't think an earlier diagnosis would have changed that. I would have understood it a bit better but knowing hasn't made a lot of difference since.

Oh boy! The 50 thousand dollar question. I have considered it and decided that things just unfold at the right time.

I've just turned 57 and was diagnosed in November. When I showed my mother the diagnosis, she cried. 'But I kept telling the school something was wrong. You could have had the help'. I had to reassure her Dr Wing didn't even make the connection between Asperger's and Kanner's autism until 1981 and there was nothing she could have done.

For me had it not been for my chronic medical phobias resulting in melt downs, I'd have gone my whole life bumbling along with some things harder and some easier than for the average bod and NEVER have known why I was different.

Looking back, sure! Had I come out of the womb with 'autistic synesthete with significant SPD; medics handle with extreme care', stamped on my backside, maybe I would have been saved some life threatening anguish.

But then again, would I have liked what 'help' looked like in the 1970s? All that ABA; forced not to stim, make eye contact and hug my parents? Errr no thanks. Would I have wanted to be super protected and cossetted as my younger autistic cousins were in the 90s, such that they and their parents were terrified the first time they did everything alone..Err no!  Nobody told me I couldn't do stuff, so harder as it was for me, I b***dy well did it all anyway; got a degree, lived abroad, got a job, raised a kid alone. The last thing I'd have wanted was anybody advising me not to pursue my dreams. And hey! So much I did, I did not inspite of my autism, but BECAUSE of my autism. My autism is my friend.

The only thing I regret is the pain I've been through to get anyone to understand the MH fallout vis a vis the medical phobia. But, things unfold when they do for a reason. If something I've lived through helps someone else now...I'm still working out how I can use that...then it was right that I worked it out WHEN I worked it out.

No regrets.