• Replies 64 replies
  • Subscribers 113 subscribers
  • Views 2436 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Related
Hints and tips
  • To quote someone's message, first select/highlight the relevant text, and then use the Quote button that appears
  • To "mention" someone, type @ followed by the start of the forum name, and choose from the list; that person will get a notification of being mentioned

Did you think you were autistic before someone suggested it?

Stuart333

I'm curious whether you can see it in yourself. I thought I was right and everyone else was wrong.

I suspected I was different, but squashed it, I was just extra normal. I couldn't figure out why I was confused and had bouts of depression,

I just wanted to know what was holding me back, why I had some atypical depression, and whether there was something up with how I communicated.

But there was no need for an autism test. I wasn't autistic surely.

Except the psychologists thought otherwise, 3 of them. I even argued with them, a sign in itself probably.

So did you guess, before someone suggested a screening test? Maybe the internet makes it more likely these days, but you need a reason to go looking.

Parents

  • I first thought it when I wrote a book when I was quite a young child. The thought came and went as I grew up. I was different for sure but didn't quite fit the version of autism that was seen at that time. As an adult the thought increased. I started doing a lot of googling about it. I was in my 20s the first time someone actually mentioned it to me.

  • in reply to Expecto_Patronum

    I did a very technical and precise drawing of the staircase in my house......when I was 8 years old.  At that time, "autism" wasn't even a "thing"......because I'm super frigging old(ish)!  Fast forward 40 years (or so)......and still.....I was behaving in a manner that was (consistently) considered "weird"  to all around me.....and I had come to understand and accept that I DEFO didn't see the world, as others do!  It took me a few DEEPLY upsetting and discombobulating years of "searching" .... .to finally realise (and then accept) who, and what, I am.

    Hey - the journey.....is perhaps.....just as important.....as the destination that we find ourselves at?

Reply
  • in reply to Expecto_Patronum

    I did a very technical and precise drawing of the staircase in my house......when I was 8 years old.  At that time, "autism" wasn't even a "thing"......because I'm super frigging old(ish)!  Fast forward 40 years (or so)......and still.....I was behaving in a manner that was (consistently) considered "weird"  to all around me.....and I had come to understand and accept that I DEFO didn't see the world, as others do!  It took me a few DEEPLY upsetting and discombobulating years of "searching" .... .to finally realise (and then accept) who, and what, I am.

    Hey - the journey.....is perhaps.....just as important.....as the destination that we find ourselves at?

Children