I have a question for all you late diagnosed adult.....

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.....

Parents
  • I think quite a few reasons, some that others have already mentioned. 

    I think the long period of masking became harder to manage the older I got. Also though knowing why things were difficult also gave me permission to avoid things I struggled with in the past. I never really liked having people coming to fix things or install things at home, but now it leaves me exhausted, maybe that is due to age and over time having less resources to recover.

    I lost some of my support as people died. Also a lot of changes to manage both in personal and work life. 

    The pace of life has greatly increased and how things are done. I used to keep important details neatly stored so if I needed to contact anyone I could find them. Now most things are done via the internet with passwords and my brain struggles to cope with all this and technology in general. Even getting a new washing machine was challenging, instead of a simple dial and clear instruction booklet you have something with a mini computer that can easily go wrong and is much harder to figure out 

    COVID brought another change, not only wondering if we would survive, fear of having to go to hospital, but also removal of a lot of things we were used to and resulting change. 

Reply
  • I think quite a few reasons, some that others have already mentioned. 

    I think the long period of masking became harder to manage the older I got. Also though knowing why things were difficult also gave me permission to avoid things I struggled with in the past. I never really liked having people coming to fix things or install things at home, but now it leaves me exhausted, maybe that is due to age and over time having less resources to recover.

    I lost some of my support as people died. Also a lot of changes to manage both in personal and work life. 

    The pace of life has greatly increased and how things are done. I used to keep important details neatly stored so if I needed to contact anyone I could find them. Now most things are done via the internet with passwords and my brain struggles to cope with all this and technology in general. Even getting a new washing machine was challenging, instead of a simple dial and clear instruction booklet you have something with a mini computer that can easily go wrong and is much harder to figure out 

    COVID brought another change, not only wondering if we would survive, fear of having to go to hospital, but also removal of a lot of things we were used to and resulting change. 

Children
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