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Dealing with Autism midlife

Badger81

Hi, I'm new (M44) to the forum. We are waiting on diagnosis for my 12 year old daughter, I have always noticed a few things from a very young age and thought she was on the spectrum. I am 100% sure she is and we will wait and see how we bring this up with her. Only had couple of meetings with psychologist over the laptop. The reason for the post though is a personal one. After doing a lot of research and having a zoom meeting with psychological department regarding my daughter, I started looking in to everything and it dawned on me that I'm autistic, so many things throughout my life make more sense, things I have done and still do that I thought was just what everyone does. Every single thing I googled to investigate (which there were countless) suggested would be traits for autism, this left me feeling very silly for being 44 years old and not knowing this about myself. I had a bit of a mental breakdown, I brought this up with my partner after a few days of trying to process everything, feeling guilt etc. Im not good at showing emotions, even with my partner and stupidly left and went to do my darts league that night right after. I should never have went and really had one of worst nights of my life, which is some going! I managed to confide in a few people and get back to normal fairly quickly after a couple of days, however over last couple of weeks I really am struggling to know how to act now, not all the time which is a good sign. I'm second guessing myself with things to do and say. To be honest if I could just reset to a month ago I probably would, although would have helped me growing up to have a diagnosis, I don't see any need now. Just want to concentrate on my daughter and give her the support when the time comes. I'm just wondering is this coomon for adults that learn they are autistic? Has anyone had similar and still feel this way? It's really affecting things for me, work home life etc, I really just want to be on my own majority of the time. When im second guessing myself, you start to feel like you don't know what's going on in your own mind. Sorry for the long post.

Parents

  • I can see how it would come as a shock being so out of the blue like that? I assume that you had not had any inklings before or felt that there was something hugely different about you? For me it was more of a relief as it just answered so many questions and gave me reasons for how I had always felt. I had also wondered if I was autistic on more than one occasion prior to my realisation but hadn't really followed it through. I would recommend therapy if you can. I had never had any before and didn't really think it was for me but I knew I needed some help to unpick everything that I had experienced in my life and just having someone to talk to about my worries every week is really useful. Good luck with it all. My son is also autistic we believe but we don't feel the need for him to get diagnosed at this stage, although that may well change in the future.

  • in reply to McFrost

    It's a strange one for me. I have felt stuff I do or can't seem to do a lot based around emotions, seemed strange to me, however I never really searched for a reason why. Not even sure I thought if others do similar things or not.

    I think down line will help me and would have been good through my life at some stages. However maybe it's best just for things to play out naturally, good and bad moments through my life that I now know are autistic traits.

    I do think will be good for my daughter to learn more about this though, I think we will leave for time being. Going to take absolutely ages for next step for diagnosis.She is in 1st year next year, so a lot of changes for her coming up 

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  • in reply to McFrost

    It's a strange one for me. I have felt stuff I do or can't seem to do a lot based around emotions, seemed strange to me, however I never really searched for a reason why. Not even sure I thought if others do similar things or not.

    I think down line will help me and would have been good through my life at some stages. However maybe it's best just for things to play out naturally, good and bad moments through my life that I now know are autistic traits.

    I do think will be good for my daughter to learn more about this though, I think we will leave for time being. Going to take absolutely ages for next step for diagnosis.She is in 1st year next year, so a lot of changes for her coming up 

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