Published on 12, July, 2020
I was diagnosed 2 weeks ago at the age of 31 and I definitely wasn’t expecting this huge sense of imposter syndrome!
What I find confusing is my issues didn’t really start to come to light until I was 17/18 and started having panic attacks (they generally happened in busy environments or around flashing lights). After that it was down hill from there and my ability to function just got worse and worse.
Prior to that though I was so good at hiding the things that made me anxious and I never really shared my emotions. I don’t recall having panic attacks and coped reasonably well with flashing lights etc. While especially in my teen years I always felt different for no particular reason, I still managed to get by with no obvious issues.
I did stim as a child and teen but very subtly (scalp picking, picking the skin around my nails, swinging on chairs, smelling things, rubbing my feet together when in bed, dancing, moving about a lot etc) but as I went into adulthood and I became more educated about stims I definitely started doing more obvious stims (rocking, ticing, singing, swaying from side to side, rolling of the eyes, nose scrunching etc) I sometimes feel I started doing them due to being influenced. Yet I now can’t stop doing them because they make me feel so much happier. This whole thing is confusing to me.
Why do you think a lot of adults who get diagnosed late seem to have got by with no obvious signs until something big happens to them as they get older? Why do you think as we get older we can’t seem to cope as well? I would love to know other people’s thoughts on this because it blows my mind that I had this my whole life yet managed to get by and function.....
Being homeschooled probably had a lot to do with the late diagnosis. There were massive issues every time I was in school up until the point which I went to an adult community college at 15 at which point everything was fine.
put me in school and demand I sit through a dull lesson and deal with children who just won’t connect with and it’s bedlam. I’m bored and bullied. when I’m bullied I bully back, that includes anything I perceive as bullying from the teachers too. That’s why all in all I was only in school for about maybe two or three years throughout my entire childhood. Once around four or five and once around 13.
The first school wanted to refer me to special-needs but it was before special-needs was good. At a time when wad were still a fair amount of stigma associated with it and back when a lot of it was just glorified babysitting and my mum was not at all comfortable with the idea. Second school they insisted that I be tested for special-needs and then as soon as they determined that I had them (dislexia) dropped me.
I probably would’ve been diagnosed much much earlier had I been in school bbut I don’t know if they would’ve caught the autism as well as the dyslexia after all they caught that at 13 anyway.
i’m not sure that would’ve made school any kinder though. back then they still equated autism with a lack of intellectual potential. I’d have been so frustrated in a special school being taught remedial material I’d probably have burnt it down.