Late diagnosis, nothing prepared me for this

PuddingKenma said:

Hello everyone,

Hello there ~ PuddingKenma.

PuddingKenma said:

Im 25F and was diagnosed this month after a lifetime of struggling and confusion.

My diagnosis has left me feeling mostly happy- someone has had the patience to listen, and recognises my struggles without dismissing me. It gives me more confidence because I spent so long being told "there's nothing wrong with her she's just badly behaved" it just became the default for me to think I just had a really bad attitude, but not being able to help it.

When I got diagnosed back in 2015, it was a lifelong puzzle solver that I very much needed and wanted the answer to in respect of me either having a bad attitude ~ or else as it turned out a specific type of aptitude that had not been appropriately facilitated, identified or affirmed until I was 44.

PuddingKenma said:

What I'm really struggling with is the anger and resentment I feel towards family and the adults I was supposed to be protected by growing up. I feel so angry that nobody cared enough to notice or raise a flag that maybe there was something up with me?

Autism awareness has only recently become generalised to an extent where health professionals and educational care providers know what to look for, and most parents are so sleep deprived and shell shocked by the life-changing effects of having children ~ that recognising neurological divergences can require some quite severe trait symptoms, and the more one is able to socially camouflage and personally mask ~ the later one ends up getting diagnosed.

PuddingKenma said:

I can't stop asking myself things like "Did my parents honestly think this was normal?" or "Weren't my teachers supposed to be trained to pick up on students that seem heavily isolated and have difficulties?"

Not until more recently really, as more people have become aware of what autism involves as a spectrum condition with varying extents and ranges of presentation ~ with even some health professionals still to this day believing that people must be severely impaired communicationally to be autistic.

PuddingKenma said:

Has anyone else had to sit with feelings like this after diagnosis? I hope over time it will subside, but the more things click into place for me and start making sense, the less it makes sense that I went this long without help.

In my case, I used the child development norms associated with children that have Asperger Syndrome to review each stage of my upbringing, using The Complete Guide to Asperger Syndrome book by Tony Attwood, and just imagined myself as being my own time-travelling advocate that explained to my parents, teachers and other authority figures that yelling at me and giving me grief about my attitude was born out of ignorance, and for that I forgave them for they as much as I knew not what actually needed facilitating, identifying and affirming in terms of my aptitude.

Changing one's developmental and life-long narrative to an autistic affirmative one is often recommended, give it a try perhaps.

What do you mean by  changing your narrative.

What do you mean by  changing your narrative.

Weazelbeast said:

What do you mean by  changing your narrative.

Our narrative is how we account for ourselves in terms of our lived experiences, or in other words our life-story ~ so in terms of changing it we regard ourselves more positively as being neurologically divergent; rather than negatively for not being neurotypical.