Did you receive a very late autism diagnosis/realisation?

Just to say you are NOT inferior to others just different 

thanks , i will look to see if there is a local group.  Im intereted to know is your name Spikey Mark from something someone has called you, as my dad used to say my personality was spiky lol

Thank  you everyone for your kind words regarding my eye treatment and also for your replies, which I am reading.

I am in probably the oldest generation to be diagnosed/realised but we as a group have a very different life experience of autism from those diagnosed early.

We are troupers really, having spent decades experiencing the 'battle of life' without armour or sword.

Yes, at aged 59. I am so glad i know now. It helps me to accept my challenges and differences. It avoids countkess visits to see the GP. I am proud of what i have achieved but i wouldnt want to do it again. 

This is a wonderful thread and really great to hear about people’s experiences. I was diagnosed very recently in my early 40s. I’ve experienced many of the challenges others here face and come up on the threads throughout my life, but just thought I was weird and my family just thought I was ‘special’ (not always in a good way). Like many NTs my lack of awareness about the realities of autism and how it is experienced by people meant that I had a stereotypical view of it myself until I went on a work course a year or so ago that explained that (as we know) autistic people do have empathy (which some of us describe as too much sometimes) and other myth-busting things that made me think ‘hang on a minute, I know what’s going on now’. Diagnosis for people that seemed to ‘cope’ was out of the question in my area in the 80s and 90s, so I don’t wish I could go back, but I do wish I’d known and could then have avoided trying to be someone I wasn’t in my youth. Very happy to know now though and to have found this community.

Hi Debbie

Diagnosed at 53 earlier this year. I got a private diagnosis. It wasn't until i heard about masking that i realised i might be Autistic. I just assumed everyone masked. I very much identify with everything in the article to be honest. I've become a bit obsessed with finding out about autism which my wife says has made me a bit self obsessed but i'm trying to come out of that now. It's been pros & cons much like everyone else on the thread.  I am hopeful that in the long term it will be a positive thing.

I thought I was late diagnosed at 37 but perhaps not as late as others!

For me it helped me with accepting myself. I spent my whole life depressed and hating myself (severe hatred and self-loathing). When I look back now I realise that there wasn't anything "wrong" with me, I was doing the best I could and actually doing a pretty good job within my limitations. Over the last few months I have been learning to be less hard on myself.

Seconded

In my case it’s not very late as I’m 36, but the realisation helped me generally. Helped me to know myself better, helped me find job that suits me better and understand why I’m inferior to others. But it’s not helpful in terms of having contact with people, I can’t join local support group without dx and I just accepted the fact that I will always be this alienated human. Because during the years I mastered my own coping strategies so for many professionals I’m doing too good and I’m too normal to be autistic, but unfortunately for neurotypical  people I’m too weird to be included. 

I hope all goes well.

Eye send you my best wishes.

Good luck mate.

Oh no! I'm sorry to hear this! Good luck 

Ooh, that doesn't sound nice! Hope all goes well.

Thank you all for your replies.

As I am about to have an unexpected eye injection - "unexpected eye injection in the bagging area" - I shall be out of touch a while.

The chance of being diagnosed as autistic in the 1960s and 1970s, if you did not have intellectual or learning disabilities, was essentially zero. So for me bemoaning the lack of an early diagnosis is somewhat futile. However, I think that if attitudes to autism had been more advanced back then I would have had a rather easier life and I could have avoided some of the long process of developing work-arounds in order to cope with life. For example, I could not work out why I had zero ability to create romantic or sexual relationships. I knew I was basically kind and considerate, could flash out the occasional witty or funny remark and that I was physically on the attractive side of average. However, I had no success. It eventually struck me that I could not reliably sense if someone of the opposite sex found me attractive or not. I just did not have that ability, without that instinctive knowledge, making any sort of advance is just extremely risky. I did some research on non-verbal communication, facial expression and body language, which helped. In the end I decided that I just needed to be extremely courageous and risk rejection. Eventually, courage and persistence paid off and I have been married for 28 years. Had I known that I was autistic at an earlier age, I suspect that I would have not had such a long and difficult time figuring out what was going wrong.

Hello and welcome, Pipe!

I joined Autism Hertfordshire and am really pleased that I did. I was very reticent at first.

Thank you Debbie. I am glad that this stuff makes the mainstream news, but I also am worried that NTs will get sick of reading about it. I hope that there is a good balance of this drip-feeding into mainstream sites. A friend here this morning pointed out to me that there is a bit of a backlash at the moment with people thinking getting diagnosed is just trendy***

Anyway, I was diagnosed earlier in the year aged 54. Despite being diagnosed, I FULLY support self-diagnosed people - which was a route that I could have also taken. (In a way, I was self-diagnosed from my 40s, but never read anything about it apart from online tests and from the point of view of being able to 'cure' it.)

Pros

• I now have a small amount of autistic friends, both online and offline.
• I no longer feel truly alone and a bit of a weirdo
• I have a few meaningful concessions from my wife
• My wife's family, at least, are very supporting (My own family are more about never mentioning it)

Cons

• I got all optimistically fired up and then disappointed with my expectations of how people would react (particularly my own family - see above)
• I still don't think I would share it with the medical profession and in work situations
• I'm not sure I will ever know where my mask begins and ends - I think that I even mask alone. Though I am looking my wife in the eyes less (A tragedy of mine is that I love eyes and hers particularly, but I can't look into them comfortably when talking.)
• I am really worried that the ability to cope gets worse with age, not better.

*** Jon Ronson happened to say this in a much longer article yesterday that had nothing to do with Autism, otherwise.

"I’ve noticed that people on the right have tried to make autism a culture war – they’re comparing people who call themselves neurodiverse and autistic to trans people, saying stuff like, “They think they’re autistic, but they’re not really autistic.” And then “high-functioning” autistic people are pointing out that there’s actually surprising little difference between them and more “severely” autistic people. The outward manifestation is different, but the underlying condition is the same. I think that’s all fascinating.

I think the people on the right are wrong about this. It’s like they just find autistic people annoying and think they just want to be special."

Full article:

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2024/nov/10/jon-ronson-what-will-be-the-next-culture-war-autism-and-climate-migration

It's like pushing bubbles down on wallpaper. I've downvoted - just to reset the balance of the universe...

I notice that I can't report as spam - only abusive. Which means I can't report, because I am uncomfortable with my report being inaccurate out of the starting gate.

that is so sad but thats why i diddnt come out during my working life, i just didnt trust people to be able to look past that label.  You hear that society is more aware and nondiscriminatory these days but  its not. People fear what is different

Mr T said:

I fear that my diagnosis has ended my career due to bias and discrimination at work.

I think that, for many working-age folk, this is a massive (and very real/potent) concern.