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Am I autistic

SJG

I am a 54 year old man and recently my step grandson began going through an assessment for Autism. I read the initial report and it mentioned cutting labels out of clothing, not wearing itchy clothes, eating issues only liking certain things, obsessively playing alone etc. I then posted on our family Whatsapp that this was basically my childhood. I remember my mother cutting labels out, unpicking logos from the front of shirts, contemplating wearing tights under itchy trousers (luckily I didn't do this), giving up school dinners and taking in baps with sprinkles on, puking at any food textures I didn't like, spending hours setting up soldiers or playing myself at subbuteo. My stepdaughter then sent me a link to the AQ test, the result was 34 so substantial autistic traits. This is when I started seriously thinking there may be something in this.

A lot of what I have investigated seems to fit but I have some doubts and think I may be grasping at this as an excuse for other issues. I am suffering from severe depression at the moment for a number of good reasons and have been getting counselling on and off for 5 years. Autism was never considered within this until recently and my counsellor doesn't feel she has the expertise to diagnose. This is all happened in the last 2 weeks and I am still unsure if I want/need an official diagnosis. So what else makes me think I'm autistic?

I have always found social situations difficult. I literally have to drink to be able to cope, or maybe this is just an excuse. Social events go pretty much the same way, I feel awkward and hardly talk to start with but then open up as I drink more. I can hear myself getting more dominant in conversations but have luckily learnt to reign myself in. Isn't this the same for everyone or is it my autism? I find myself analysing everything in my life to see if it fits autism and a lot does. Even walking the dog, everyone seems to know my dog and his name but I don't know anyone else's. I am polite and say hello but don't ask many questions, I then berate myself for not asking and only talking about my dog. I can literally hear my brain saying remember to ask them something but I invariably forget. I do however have a fair number of friends and really enjoy socialising with them which is not particularly autistic.

I am good at sports, played a lot of football when younger and the more sedate sport of darts now. I have captained some of these teams as well. I have had good jobs. How can I be autistic?

I have had quite a few career breaks. When I look back these appear to be after something has changed at work so maybe a build up of stress or the autistic burnout I have been reading about. A relationship failed after one career change and I can now look back and see I started isolating myself and not going out. I am really worried my current relationship is going the same way.

I am having real problems with my decision making at the moment. It is easy if I research stuff and there is a clear winner. If not I find myself analysing what others may do or how it affects others and never just deciding on what might be good for me. It is almost like I have to please everyone else before I can even consider my own needs.

I also seem to get on very well with kids which I believe is another autistic trait. I am very close to my grandson and believe this may be because of our similarities. My step nephew (now in mid 20s)  is autistic and we get on great as well. I guess I understand his need to talk in film quotes as this is something I do occasionally but not as much as he does. My thing is more wordplay and connecting film quotes or lyrics to conversations. I think this may even be a way to keep me listening and seeming interested in what people are saying. I know it annoys people at times but can also be very funny. I just can't stop myself, I think it makes me feel a bit clever or something.

On the flip side a lot of my childhood issues have gone. I now have a very varied diet and love multiple cuisines. Clothes are not much of a problem now although I do tend to avoid wearing jumpers. I have read autism doesn't go away so how come I can cope with these now?

Anyway I doubt anyone has got this far. What do you think, am I autistic or a complete fraud?

  • in reply to SJG

    The clinical diagnosis confirmed what I had already worked out myself. However, it was very good to have it formally validated. I was a little euphoric after the diagnosis, because being autistic explained so much about me. Rather than being somewhat weird on a purely personal level I was part of a group and community of similarly weird people. It always puzzled me that I was, in my younger days, so ineffective in gaining any sort of romantic partner. Dispassionately, I could see that I was physically on the attractive side of average, I was intelligent, honest and kind, and always treated other people in the way I would like to be treated myself. Still I had no luck. Getting the diagnosis gave me a reason for this, I was just not equipped to flirt, I could not read the signals that women were attracted to me, or reliably signal back that I was interested. It also explained why I had odd sensory issues, why I become agitated in crowds and why socialising exhausts me and I need a lot of time alone. It also allowed me to forgive myself for many past failings, which is a big advantage of getting a diagnosis. To sum up, it allowed me to realise that I was not rather poor at being human, I was daily overcoming problems that don't exist for the majority of people, and that I was an autistic person doing remarkably well in a society that was in many ways hostile to me.

    I would add that the diagnosis has not led to any particular support being made available, I guess that being relatively successful means that I do not need it, but it would have been good to have had access to meeting other autistic people. So far the practical benefits have been limited. I no longer feel guilty about using disabled toilets and getting an 'invisible disability lanyard' allowed me to be fast-tracked through airport security checks a few weeks ago. Given the chaos at airports recently, it was a useful bonus.

  • in reply to Martin

    Hi Martin. One more question and probably the most important. How has the diagnosis helped? Even contemplating being autistic is making my mind spin. Thanks again for everything you have written so far.

  • in reply to SJG

    I was diagnosed at 59 years in February '21. The only information I had about autism before that time were: 'the silent child rocking in a corner of a room', the film 'Rain Man', and the autistic savants who can draw accurate cityscapes from memory. As I was nothing like any of these, it never occurred to me that I might be autistic. My daughter has problems with anxiety, so do I, but not to the same extent. On and off, since she was about 15, my daughter has had CBT therapy to help with her anxiety. Her latest therapist suggested that she might be autistic, and from what my daughter had said about me, that I might be also. Having had this pointer, I researched adult autism traits like a man possessed and took all the online autism tests available. I came to the conclusion that I was almost certainly autistic. I paid for both myself and my daughter to have private autism assessments and we were both clinically diagnosed a day apart.

  • in reply to Martin

    Thanks again for the reply and some insight into what autism is like for you. I don't tend to have anything that really freaks me out now but have had in the past. My reaction is to run away and hide for a while, shutdown rather than meltdown. Well done with the degrees. I started one but only lasted one term before coming home. I don't want to pry but if you can say, what prompted you to get a diagnosis and/or how has it helped. I am still debating whether to get an official diagnosis and even if I am autistic.

  • in reply to SJG

    I had little interest in food up to about eight years old, I was very picky about what I would eat. By ten or eleven my diet had expanded enormously and I was actively interested in food and ate much more.

    All autistics are individuals and their autism is expressed individually. I have a sensory problem with nylon textiles, if I touch them I curl up into a ball and want to die, the texture is so horrible to me. I am socially quite able, but being sociable drains and exhausts me, I need alone time to recover. I am married and have two children, worked in scientific research for 34 years and did 3 university degrees, but only 20 minutes into my autism assessment the psychiatrist said he would be diagnosing me with ASC (autism spectrum condition). Being able to function in society is not any sort of bar to being autistic, it is the exhaustion and other difficulties we have in society, that non-autistic people do not experience, that reflects our autism.

  • 133 on the RAADS-R so still strong evidence of autism. On the diet how were you in childhood? My diet was very bland and weird up until my mid twenties but then changed, is this normal within autism? Thanks for your reply, still looking like there might be something to this.

  • You can have a varied diet and be autistic, I have and am. Try the RAADS-R test online, it claims to have a much more definite cut off between autistic and allistic scores than the AQ tests - picking up 100% of diagnosed autistics and giving only 4% of allistics an autistic score.