Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi. I am waiting to be assessed for high functioning autism after being told by my GP and 2 mental health professionals that I likely have it. I am in my late 30s and am not I guess your “typical” possible autistic.. I have been in my job 20 years and married for almost 20 years.. without going into it all, I do identify with a lot of the traits that have been presented to me but I am struggling to accept this possible diagnosis because I don’t want to get mis-diagnosed and I don’t want to be a fraud or like seem to minimise diagnosed autistic people’s struggles.. does that make sense?
I’ve had severe mental health issues since my early teens and so much of this is making sense and making me feel like maybe I’m not crazy or some alien or something.. but then like I say there are other parts which are a definite “no, that’s not me at all”. I know there’s a huge spectrum so it’s likely that I’ll identify with some parts and not others, I guess I’m just struggling to come to terms with it all.
Has anyone else had a diagnosis /possible diagnosis later in life and struggled with it? How did you get past the worries and just focus on yourself and figuring things out?
Hello and welcome. As my handle suggests, I am late diagnosed also, I'm mid-50s and have been married 20 years, and only sought diagnosis when our son started to have difficulties a few years ago, aged 15. After he was diagnosed I realised I might be autistic too. I have done the screening tests and been referred for a full diagnosis, but I am almost certainly moderately autistic. Finding out late in life is a blessing and a curse. I understand a lot more about myself, and a bit more every day. Things that happened to me make more sense now: struggling to make friends, feeling "different", and developing anxiety in my 40s are all explained now, and I am re-appraising how I feel about myself and "forgiving" myself for stuff that it turns out I couldn't help: like not making friends, being called "weird" and not "fitting in" at work. Like you, I don't recognise every autism trait in myself, for example I don't have a great deal of sensory issues, but I do struggle with hearing voices in loud rooms because I cannot filter out background noise. I can be witty and conversational, even with new people, but I crash quickly and want to leave social events about 9pm at the latest!I gave up drinking alcohol five years ago, because it was making my anxiety worse: hangovers were not headaches but a long, insufferable day of feeling impending doom and terror, so being drunk wasn't worth the cost. I was diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) about 7 years ago, several years before considering I might be autistic. Now I believe that my undiagnosed autism caused me great difficulties in relationships, especially with my wife.
Finding out how my autism affects me and discussing it candidly with my wife is helping us greatly. We are understanding our differences better, and making adjustments. For example I struggle with lots of questions: I get overwhelmed quickly. I also "go into my own head" or "drift off" and don't listen until someone gets my attention. My wife would get frustrated with me "drifting off" until we started to understand it's part of my mental makeup. She would bombard me with questions, e.g. when shopping, when really she didn't need answers but was using me as a "sounding board". Now she knows not to do this quite so much as it causes me anxiety.
So yes, diagnosis has helped, maybe even saved my marriage. We know what to work on, we know which difficulties are contributed to by my autism, and how to work on them. I also learned I need to work on friendships and nurture them, while NTs seem to just manage this "accidentally". It's been very useful.
Hope that helps, happy to connect on here for DMs if you want.