Lost generation woman

Hi! I’m over 60 and recently diagnosed ASD. I’ve spent an awful life of being misdiagnosed and even incarcerated, due to the psychiatric services in the second half of the 20th Century having rigid ideas about what mental illness is. Or what it isn’t. Now they can’t get their heads around ASD, and PTSD caused largely by their mistreatment, actually causes depression. They don’t even understand ‘are you hearing voices?’ leads the the logical conclusion ‘Yes. Yours!’ I see the funny side now. Over 45 years too late. I am a whole person, with positive as well as negative attributes. Psychiatrists really do seem incapable of seeing anything other than negatives in patients, in my experience. I think things are improving for the young generation. How many other lost people like me were there? How many are still out there? How do we learn at such a late stage to help ourselves be the best version of ourselves we can be? I am a successful, musical, empathetic person. I am at last finding my wings, like a teenager in a body falling apart!!!! I would love to support other people. And I think it’s so important to each be ourselves. The kids at school these days think they are being so individual ..... yet they all want the same phone/trainers etc. I do believe people should learn to be more tolerant of differences. But what do I know? I’m a 17 year old trapped in a sixty plus year body.

Parents
  • Hi and welcome to.the forum. I know others will say the same.

    I am 59 and not been diagnosed as an adult. I got diagnoses as a child though. They saw it as craziness then. Prepsychotic it was called then. I lost my speech after being able to put together gramnatical sentences at 18 months, later on so it was obsessions with letters and numbers and massive tantrums. Being bullied and scapegoated at secondary school. Being blasted at uni for lack of eye contact. So there is a lot of it about. 

  • Thanks for replying, nexus9.  I’m glad to have a believable diagnosis at last. I hope that like me you’ve found ways to cope and space to not cope in when you can’t! Life can be good fun now, I have discovered. I find reading posts really helpful, but don’t want to just lurk! I feel at home here. 

Reply
  • Thanks for replying, nexus9.  I’m glad to have a believable diagnosis at last. I hope that like me you’ve found ways to cope and space to not cope in when you can’t! Life can be good fun now, I have discovered. I find reading posts really helpful, but don’t want to just lurk! I feel at home here. 

Children
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