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Not being allowed to be diffrent

NAS65321

Hi I am 52 and only found out about ASD two years ago. I always knew I was diffrent and as a kid unless you were disruptive at school nobody ever really looked hard. I was a sickly child and at one point there was talk of sending me to the 'special' school which I fought against. Looking back they may have found my ASD there? Anyway I was never allowed to be anything less than 'normal' as a child. I was a very average child and was never disruptive or in trouble.

I just wonder how things could have been diffrent? Outwardly I am married, have a mortgage, always had a job, and have no kids by choice (probably down to ASD). But have always spent a life masking and trying to fit in, which is exhausting. I guess I am not alone in being like this at this age? I am wondering how would have my life had been diffrent with an early diagnosis? Alternativley how would things be diffrent now if there was no such thing as a ASD diagnosis now and everybody was just left to get on with it?

Rob

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  • I was diagnosed last year at 56. When I showed my mum my diagnosis, she cried. "But you could have had help", she said.

    Hmmm...I get where you are coming from and I have asked myself that question too. But in the end, I think this is more of an upset for my mum than me

    In the first place, however, awful my school days, I'm kind of glad no one could have known. Dr Wing didn't make the connection between Kanner's and Asperger's Autism until 1981, when I'd have been 16. The only help then would have been those hideous ABA therapies; forcing hugs and eye contact and stopping stims. No thanks. Or locking me up in an institution. No thanks. And I kind of get that no one got over- protective of me either. So having battled through my dyslexia and autism sensory issues and school bullies, it also meant that come the moment I trotted off to Europe alone, no one thought to tell me:'No'.

    That said, given my lifetime of issues with the medical profession and medical phobias, do I wish someone could have said: " You're not mad. And no your personality is not disordered, you just have a whopping big sensory processing problem"?, - of course I do. They could have saved me a whole lot of pain and spared me a dangerous misdiagnosis.

    I have mixed feelings on that one. But, we are where we are. What counts now is how I move forward for me now and the noise I can make so others are recognised and spared some pain.

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  • I was diagnosed last year at 56. When I showed my mum my diagnosis, she cried. "But you could have had help", she said.

    Hmmm...I get where you are coming from and I have asked myself that question too. But in the end, I think this is more of an upset for my mum than me

    In the first place, however, awful my school days, I'm kind of glad no one could have known. Dr Wing didn't make the connection between Kanner's and Asperger's Autism until 1981, when I'd have been 16. The only help then would have been those hideous ABA therapies; forcing hugs and eye contact and stopping stims. No thanks. Or locking me up in an institution. No thanks. And I kind of get that no one got over- protective of me either. So having battled through my dyslexia and autism sensory issues and school bullies, it also meant that come the moment I trotted off to Europe alone, no one thought to tell me:'No'.

    That said, given my lifetime of issues with the medical profession and medical phobias, do I wish someone could have said: " You're not mad. And no your personality is not disordered, you just have a whopping big sensory processing problem"?, - of course I do. They could have saved me a whole lot of pain and spared me a dangerous misdiagnosis.

    I have mixed feelings on that one. But, we are where we are. What counts now is how I move forward for me now and the noise I can make so others are recognised and spared some pain.

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