Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi everyone,
This is my very first post here on the forum!
I was officially diagnosed with autism last Monday, I knew I was, but there was something around to official diagnosis that changed me.
I have been consciously trying to continue to mask at work, people would normally see me as a bubbly, outgoing, confident individual and I didn't intend to let my work "mask" slip any time soon. However, I find myself being more blunt when answering things, and being more reserved when I would normally be super involved in group meetings. To the point where my colleagues joke about me being quiet "for once" and wondering if something is up.
I actually didn't even know I was doing anything different, I thought I just had nothing to say on the topics being discussed, but I don't really feel ready at all to discuss this with my peers or boss (even if I ever do!)
Just wondering what everyone else's experience is like with this? I have heard a lot about learning to unmask but I just haven't gotten that far yet given it is really new for me.
Thank you
I was actually diagnosed decades ago but because I was abused as a kid I thought it was just misdiagnosed CPTSD, and I only accepted my diagnosis after I started to get better from the CPTSD stuff, but other things remained, so I reliased it was both, and actually more than that was also going on too. So only after I had the epiphany moment (decades after the diagnosis) my mask started to slip off.I guess it depends on when it hits you.
I am so sorry. No two journeys with diagnosis are the same and you are right about when it hits you, I think this is a big part of it. For me, I kinda already knew but something about the diagnosis made me grieve for my childhood and adult self up until my age which is what hit me like a ton of bricks. It was actually quite freeing in a way too.
It absolutely does, and by grief I mean for the years of not knowing who I truly was/how much I was fronting for other people. I am not afraid/sad about being autistic, it is just the way my brain works, but I just wish I had known sooner.I completely understand what you are saying, I hope you are doing well now. :)
Honestly tho abuse aside when I accepted the diagnosis and the mask began to slip I never grieved for a life I "could have had" if I weren't autistic, or had known the full extent of what was going on. Because by that point I'd already started addressing the CPTSD, which increased cope-ability, so I'd come to terms with it that time of my life had come and gone and I couldn't go back and change it. My view of it is:When Tonkin explained grief in her 1996 model as"People think that grief slowly gets smaller over time.In reality grief stays the same size but slowly life begins to grow bigger around it."It's not that the second line isn't true, it's just that it's irrelevant because proportionally it has the same practical effect as the first.But I never grieved for an imagined life I could have had if had I not been autistic, what I grieved was a life I wasn't allowed to just get on with as myself sooner. But I done that mostly already, like I said when healing from the CPTSD, before the autism diagnosis was able to stand on it's own unhidden by the other stuff. Does that make sense?