Late diagnosis and noticing traits

I was diagnosed in 2022. I’m approaching 50. Since my diagnosis I’ve realised dance is a stim of mine. That sort of shocked me. I’ve noticed I do it very rarely, but it’s usually after a particularly stressful point in my life, and when I start I really can’t stop! Always feel better afterwards though.

The other ones I knew, like picking and biting my fingers to shreds, or doing things with my hands. Sometimes I find myself rocking when deep in thought, or very relaxed, or even brushing my teeth. That always makes me laugh, and it cements the fact I really am autistic lol, because sometimes I still don’t feel it.

It does help to know that other people feel this too, thank you. I'm already very familiar with imposter syndrome, I work in cyber security and it's a field in which there is always something new to learn, so it's really easy to feel imposter syndrome there. I've managed to adapt to that for work, so I'm sure I'll eventually be able to shake the feeling with my autism as well.

Yes, I can relate to this- I found out I might be autistic when 25 and I have been diagnosed a few months ago but I really struggled with impostor syndrome initially. It actually made me more aware of some of my differences as I learnt more about autism- I became much more aware of just how bad I am at reading people and their intentions- it's not that anything had changed but I felt like I had just found out that I had been speaking a different language for years without even knowing it. I can also relate to starting to notice all these stims- when I initially read about autism, I could only think of the very obvious stim that I did as a child and teen but rarely as an adult and I thought I didn't really stim anymore...but then I started remembering and noticing all these stims - I like to twirl and rip apart tissues or bits of paper or doodle spirals while doing other things, I used to stim with sounds too - again, I was doing all this before I just didn't notice it. I then also started trying out what would happen if I stimmed more in a concious way- would it really help relieve stress? How would it feel? And then I would worry, am I suffering from confirmation bias and just hyperfocused on trying to find autistic traits- what if I am not autistic and I got it wrong? etc. etc. I'm now much more accepting of my autistic identity - it takes time. Not sure if this helps, but you are definitely not alone in feeling this way. 

I worked with a nephew of the actor who played their father. He emigrated to the US from Manchester when he was 19.

I've found myself rocking whilst waiting to pick the kids up from school recently. I just let myself do it now, I had given a little bit of consideration for what other people might think, but then I decided that I don't care.

I always struggle with this. Or a conversation will turn to a topic like football (which I hate) and I turn off entirely. 

I’ve been finding that I’ve been “allowing” myself to do what I might consider stimming when I’m getting overwhelmed. This has included things like individually tapping my palm with individual fingers on one hand, thumb to little finger and back again. Did it whilst walking to the shop earlier and was amazed how much it calmed me down!

I still get massive imposter syndrome but I am starting to wonder how much of this stuff I might have been doing for a while without taking notice of it. 

Yes, I experience this a lot. I've decided now though that it's not my job to do that any more, nor even to do small talk, so I have conversations with people for a purpose and once that's done that's it.

You'd think that such snobs would be very 'unsympathetic' for viewers but great writing ensured that wasn't often the case. 

Heard a writer recently make a great point about Niles. How the obvious thing when setting up that show would be to have his brother be a total opposite, for comedic contrast. But the clever thing was to make him just like Frasier, but turned up to 11. It's a counter-intuitive choice in some ways (telly convention wise anyway), but it was clearly the right one. 

Yes! I've been pondering this a lot. I'll say more at some point, but for now I have theory that I was repressing stims all through my formative years and even into early middle age. Variety of reasons. But over the last 18 months of living alone again (I was in my parental home for a bit) the stims have crept in, or found gradual release in an environment of not feeling one 'should' be fidget-free. 

What I belatedly noticed was my difficulty in furthering conversations once the usual small talk clichés ran out.