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Coping with a new diagnosis

Peachi

Hi all,

(I'm totally new to this community so please bear with me!)

I am a thirty-one year old female and I have just received a very new diagnosis of having High Functioning Autism, with the added super ability to mask my problem and present myself to others as being completely un-autistic. I have always suspected that there was something 'a bit odd' about me, and my parents suspected I was on the spectrum when I was a child (they didn't have me formally diagnosed when I was younger as they didn't want me to grow up with a label and act up against it.) I have paid to be assessed privately as things were starting to build up in my life to a point where I really couldn’t live with things as they were and I needed to try get some answers. So...here I am with my brand new diagnosis and although in many respects I am finding it a huge relief, in other respects I feel like I am really struggling to cope with it.

It seems that I can't make sense of anything at the moment, the whole world is confusing me and that things I once understood are baffling me. My life that previously made sense and which had an order I was happy with now seems alien to me and like I am learning it all over again. My usual coping mechanisms (activities such as running, walking, reading, writing etc) are just about holding me together but even these things are not fully doing for me what the once did. Since my diagnosis I feel like I am fighting that much harder to understand things, situations, people and life…my brain is stuck on a spin cycle and I can’t get it to stop! I have always felt like I am living my life 'behind a piece of glass' not able to interact with the world and others; now I feel that even more keenly. I feel isolated, lonely and just generally adrift, like a ghost in a crowd. It's impacting how I feel about my work (I have a successful & high pressured job with a very large organisation), my home life (I am very happily married with a comfortable home) and life in general (I am physically fit, healthy and usually pretty happy). I have a fantastic support network around me in terms of my husband, family and understanding friends, however I still feel like I am struggling to get back to being me and how I used to be.

I really don't expect anyone to give me the answer to all my woes, but I wonder is there anyone out there that has gone through/is going through a similar thing to me? Are you feeling the same as I do? Have you had a recent similar diagnosis? How do you get by/cope? Do things get a bit easier? How have things changed for you? Any help, advice would be welcome....or just to know that I am not alone in this would be equally as nice.

Thanks guys x

Parents

  • Hi Peachi 

    You say you sought a diagnosis because things were starting to build up and you couldn't live with things as they were. So I wonder if it's the diagnosis you're struggling with, or a continuation of the difficulty in coping with life which it seems had begun before your diagnosis? 

    I'm a 55 year old female and I've recently found that I'm an "aspie" after a period of high anxiety and depression. Reading about the Autistic spectrum and joining this community has helped me start to understand myself and why I feel and sometimes behave the way I do. I am now feeling a lot happier, but I believe that's down to me taking the following actions:

    1. Talking to my husband, a GP and a few trusted friends about how I've been feeling and what made me anxious and depressed. Others have opened up about how they get anxious in certain situations, making me feel like I'm not alone. A colleague has also told me that her sister has just been diagnosed with aspergers. 

    2. Joining this community and voicing a worry that I had - of being told by the doctor that I don't have aspergers and therefore not having any explanation for why I was feeling like I did, and getting responses which calmed my fears. I realised it doesn't matter - whatever happens, I'm the same person I've always been and I know that I experience life in a similar way to other people in this community. 

    3. Noticing when I'm starting to get anxious, upset or obsessed and taking a few moments to reflect why and calm myself down. For example, today a colleague came to ask me about a work matter when I was just about to leave to go home, which held me up and made me miss my bus. I started to get stressed, but when no other buses from the bus company I had bought a return ticket from this morning had arrived after 10 minutes and a bus from another travel company arrived I said to myself "Don't hang around waiting any longer and getting more stressed - pay another £2 for a ticket to get home on this bus!". So I jumped on the bus and continued talking to myself in my head, reasoning how it didn't matter if I was a few minutes late home and thinking about how nice it would be to relax with my husband when I got there. I wouldn't have told other people about getting stressed about missing a bus before, but I'm mentioning it now because I think that it happens because I hate my schedule being changed, or things not happening when I expect them to, and being on the spectrum explains this, so I can tell myself why I'm stressed and attempt to calm myself - a sort of self counselling. 

    I hope things get better for you soon and that you find better ways of coping. 

Reply

  • Hi Peachi 

    You say you sought a diagnosis because things were starting to build up and you couldn't live with things as they were. So I wonder if it's the diagnosis you're struggling with, or a continuation of the difficulty in coping with life which it seems had begun before your diagnosis? 

    I'm a 55 year old female and I've recently found that I'm an "aspie" after a period of high anxiety and depression. Reading about the Autistic spectrum and joining this community has helped me start to understand myself and why I feel and sometimes behave the way I do. I am now feeling a lot happier, but I believe that's down to me taking the following actions:

    1. Talking to my husband, a GP and a few trusted friends about how I've been feeling and what made me anxious and depressed. Others have opened up about how they get anxious in certain situations, making me feel like I'm not alone. A colleague has also told me that her sister has just been diagnosed with aspergers. 

    2. Joining this community and voicing a worry that I had - of being told by the doctor that I don't have aspergers and therefore not having any explanation for why I was feeling like I did, and getting responses which calmed my fears. I realised it doesn't matter - whatever happens, I'm the same person I've always been and I know that I experience life in a similar way to other people in this community. 

    3. Noticing when I'm starting to get anxious, upset or obsessed and taking a few moments to reflect why and calm myself down. For example, today a colleague came to ask me about a work matter when I was just about to leave to go home, which held me up and made me miss my bus. I started to get stressed, but when no other buses from the bus company I had bought a return ticket from this morning had arrived after 10 minutes and a bus from another travel company arrived I said to myself "Don't hang around waiting any longer and getting more stressed - pay another £2 for a ticket to get home on this bus!". So I jumped on the bus and continued talking to myself in my head, reasoning how it didn't matter if I was a few minutes late home and thinking about how nice it would be to relax with my husband when I got there. I wouldn't have told other people about getting stressed about missing a bus before, but I'm mentioning it now because I think that it happens because I hate my schedule being changed, or things not happening when I expect them to, and being on the spectrum explains this, so I can tell myself why I'm stressed and attempt to calm myself - a sort of self counselling. 

    I hope things get better for you soon and that you find better ways of coping. 

Children
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