Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi there,
I am 31, I have a demanding job, a 7 y o son, a husband. I am not diagnosed with autism but at this point I feel there is not one person I ever met who understands my struggles. I feel like an alien and I guess need to know are there aliens like me. And if there are, did you figure it out? I don't even know if I am in the right place but can anyone relate to this:
What I am struggling most with:
What others tell how they experience me (these thighs have been said repeatedly by different people) and I do not understand why.
Things I have under control and I learned to do even though I don’t feel like doing them but I know they are important:
I just need to know that it gets better because I am at 100% capacity trying my best and still failing.
Liza
The answer is, if you are autistic you will never become not autistic. However, self-knowledge is empowering. Knowing that you are autistic, even if you are not formally diagnosed, opens up a wealth of advice and fellow-feeling from other autistic people. You are no longer alone, there are many fellow travellers out there, who have had the same or similar experiences and traits as you. Once you can see things from an autistic viewpoint, work arounds for social situations and other problems are available. When you are no longer trying to live up to unrealistic neurotypical standards, life can become somewhat less stressful.
Thank you. Have you heard a phase “aren’t we all a little bit autistic?”. This is something my psychiatrist wrote to me discouraging me getting an assessment done.
I would like to believe that everyone could relate to my experiences but so far I just do not have any evidence of this being true.
Do you see this as a fine line between neurotypical and non-neurotypical or is it a huge gap you cannot fill?
NAS89256 said:I would like to believe that everyone could relate to my experiences but so far I just do not have any evidence of this being true.
I'm a bit puzzled by this. Do you mean everyone in general, or other autistic people? Of the traits you relate in your initial post, I share some, but not all, but they certainly point to you being autistic. Autistic people are all individual, their autistic traits are also individual, though there is usually considerable overlap. I share your dislike of being touched by anyone I do not know well. When I am being light hearted and facetious, people, even my own children, often think I'm being deadly serious. Unlike you, I am fairly good at decision-making and I suspect that you don't have a visceral and debilitating disgust if you touch nylon fabric, like I do. Autistic people, like all people, are individuals with individual abilities and problems. That is why autism is called a spectrum condition.
The best counter to “aren’t we all a little bit autistic?”, is, but only a small minority of people are diagnosable as autistic. That a psychiatrist said the phrase is very shocking.
Because autism is assessed on traits, not physical diagnostic tests (like diabetes etc.), there will be people with many autistic characteristics that do not quite get over the diagnostic threshold. For these people it is a fine line. For the majority of neurotypicals there would be a very substantial gap between them and diagnosable autistics.