Post Diagnoses - What now?

PAX said:

I was diagnosed in August and did the late diagnosis course in the winter. But, now I am wondering what no that is over?

Hello PAX, welcome to the club.

The next steps are to realise that there is no real support for the vast majority of us so you need to learn how to do it yourself. Scotland seems particularly bad from what I have read so I would not expect anything from the state in terms of support for you as an adult.

My advice would be to learn loads more about autism, especially the autistic traits that cause you most trouble and read what the specialists have to say.

This will teach you the vocabulary and principles surrounding your situation and give you a solid understanding of what is related to autism and what isn't.

Once you have a solid basis of clinical understanding of your situation then this site is probably the single best resource worldwide for community responses to questions - you will probably get a lot more response to specific questions (eg "I can't speak on the phone because of anxiety so how do I make a doctors appointment?" ) than to broad ones like "what next".

Chances are the questions have been asked / answered  before so use the search icon (the magnifying glass in the top right of the screen beside the pink Donate button) and use keywords to find related conversations.

A good starting point for reading would be:

Understanding Autism For Dummies - Stephen Shore, Linda G. Rastelli, Temple Grandin (2006)
ISBN 0764525476

This may be relevant to your situaton:

Very Late Diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome - Wylie, Philip_ Beardon, Luke_ Heath, Sara  (2014)
ISBN 9781849054331

If your wife is a reader then this may help her too:

Loving someone with Asperger's syndrome_ understanding & connecting with your partner - Ariel, Cindy N (2012)
ISBN 9781608820771

Something to consider is that autism is normally genetic, so it the children are biologically yours it will help to look for traits that they exhibit too so you can help them cope better and possibly access help if needed.

There will inevitably be lots of questions to follow from you so please fire away - ideally using a new thread for each category to help get focussed results.

Most of the help is aimed at children and not at adults, I did find a group locally that supports adults, but it was pretty useless, mostly aimed at making sure you had the benefits you're entitled too. Most of the help on offer seems assume that everyone is very badly affected and can't do normal life stuff or speak for themselves and so cater for the lowest common denominator. In many areas people are setting up their own groups, they can be hard to find, I found one near me yesterday, I saw it on Weather Man Walking, which a BBC Wales program with our local weather forecaster walking around the country, it's an art project not far from me at all, I don't how or why I never knew about it. Don't give up hope of finding help and support, but be aware that you might find it in unlikely places

     Yes I have begun to see this. Help either is for children, those still in education or cases considered severe. Of course happy these groups get something. Like you say maybe have to look harder in unconventional places or start something. :)    

     Yes I have begun to see this. Help either is for children, those still in education or cases considered severe. Of course happy these groups get something. Like you say maybe have to look harder in unconventional places or start something. :)