50 years old - is Aspergers diagnosis worth it?

The "difficulties at work in negotiating and persuading people" that Richard mentions are a big telltale hallmark of the issue in his case. This suggests difficulties with communicating with others and difficulty with imagining other people's points of view. This is a clear manifestation of two of the three issues in the diagnostic "triad of impairments". People's apparent, or superficial, eccentricities are often a result of our failure to recognise feedback in social situations. We learn bad habits (and have consequential issues like mental health issues) and do not get the social training that other people instinctively soak up in social situations. The actual social communication blindness is actually invisible particularly if one is markedly eccentric or 'odd' in some way. People with autism often have other things, like sensory issues, that seem to come along for the ride. but the central diagnositc criteria are detectable by experts.

My understanding of the spectrum term is that some people are completely blind to all nonverbal communications and are completely clueless about what other people are thinking or feeling. Other people may have some sense and can pick up some of the signals some of the time.

@LMY, I hope this helps?

The "difficulties at work in negotiating and persuading people" that Richard mentions are a big telltale hallmark of the issue in his case. This suggests difficulties with communicating with others and difficulty with imagining other people's points of view. This is a clear manifestation of two of the three issues in the diagnostic "triad of impairments". People's apparent, or superficial, eccentricities are often a result of our failure to recognise feedback in social situations. We learn bad habits (and have consequential issues like mental health issues) and do not get the social training that other people instinctively soak up in social situations. The actual social communication blindness is actually invisible particularly if one is markedly eccentric or 'odd' in some way. People with autism often have other things, like sensory issues, that seem to come along for the ride. but the central diagnositc criteria are detectable by experts.

My understanding of the spectrum term is that some people are completely blind to all nonverbal communications and are completely clueless about what other people are thinking or feeling. Other people may have some sense and can pick up some of the signals some of the time.

@LMY, I hope this helps?