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Beginning Adult Diagnosis Odyssey at 44 - interested to hear other's experiences navigating this winding path in middle-life.

Quietdude

Burnout and depression led to therapy, leading to the beginning of a possible adult diagnosis at 44. Profound sense of a weight being lifted, but also anger, doubts, confusion. Interested to hear other people's experiences and words of advice travelling this path in mid-life. 

Parents

  • The good news from personal experience, is that human brains are pretty neuroplastic [Content has been removed or edited by a moderator because it did not follow our community rules.] 

    Also weight lifting, music, philosophy and the pretty women you'll meet post diagnosis and treatment will make all the terrible years of profound isolation seem almost worth it.

    Also good luck. You have nothing to apologize for. 

  • in reply to NAS50677

    Thank you for your detailed response. It's all been quite the whirlwind so far. I was speaking to a therapist for around 5-6 months, during that time the conversation began to focus on the possibility of autism and how difficulties that I had been facing over the past few years were in part a response to "masking", or specifically what happens when a person burns-out after decades of moderately successful "masking". GP appointment is end of this week, but I understand that testing/diagnosis will likely take more than a year.

    In the meantime, it has been liberating to review my life through this new lens, and a lot things suddenly look very different. The word I find myself using, but perhaps not using with the greatest precision, is 'forgiveness' - since a weight has been lifted and I can forgive myself (not that there was anything to forgive) for haivng blamed myself for being "weird" and "diffiuclt" etc when really it wasn't something that was in my gift to control, and certainly not as a child. That revelation has been quite profound, but also maddening, I think for the same reasons that otherscite elsewhere. Plus all the stuff you see in the press about over-diagnosis does nothing for the sense of imposter syndrome.  

    This is why your last sentence - 'you have nothing to apologize for' - really struck me. It's as though I have been apologising, inwardly and outwardly, my entire life, which has been destructive in ways that are perfectly maddening and suddenly so easy to see. I'll check out the references you shared.  

  • in reply to Quietdude

    [this content was against rule 7 and has been edited by a moderator]

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