Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi everyone, my name is gus and I was recently diagnosed with ASD. Apparently level 1 or high functioning ASD. I’ve been posting and now I feel like it’s time to introduce myself. These posts are just an amazing form to connect with you and see that I’m not alone. By the way I do not live in Britain, I’m sorry if the community is restricted to British residents, but I couldn’t find any community online in Brazil. Maybe facebook or something but I don’t have any social network.
Being diagnosed with ASD at 42, also being married with kids it’s just confusing. I’ve tried to talk to people about it but they all just say that “you don’t look like an autistic person”. Not quite encouraging.
Last year I saw a BBC report on the Autism Awareness Month and for the first time I immediately identified myself. I always thought that I had a serious problem, specially with social relations. As a kid I stopped going to school for a while. Lots of psychologists and nobody found out. But that was the early 80’s and ASD wasn’t very known I guess. My mother died in 1985 and since then they all said that I was “different” because I’ve lost my mother. Now I see that before that I was actually a very different individual. When my older daughter was born I thought I would freak out being forced to talk to different people and especially attending children's parties and parks. on some occasions I had to leave parties and stuff because I could not bear to be there. This happened dozens of times in my life.
Thank you for the opportunity to read the testimonials and share as well.
Hi Gus. I am from the UK but live in Budapest
hello and welcome!
You have a cool name my son is called Gus
Thanks @sunflower, @Trogluddite, @windscale, @Hippy65 and @Fuzzy for your replies. And @Bagpuss7 too!!
Hi Gus,
I’m glad you’ve found the forum here, hopefully you’ll make some friends too. I don’t have social media either.
It’s amazing to read about the different lives others here have, and their hobbies and what they like to do for fun. I love how we can all connect here!
I hope you’ll have a fun time here :)
Hi Gus and welcome
Welcome Gus.
Welcome, Gus.
You'll be more than welcome here; most of us feel rather like "aliens" even when we're in our own culture, and it will be interesting to learn something about yours. Certainly, the psychologists that don't see the autism for decades, and the silly comments about "not looking autistic", are something we have in common no matter how large the distance between us!
Best wishes.
Hi Gus
It is great that you are in Brazil and we are an international community. I haven't got my diagnosis yet - but I think some people may doubt it. I was having problems with lots of change at work so I mentioned to my boss I thought I might be autistic. She said that was impossible as I was articulate. Many people have a limited understanding of ASD.
The stress of losing someone we love can make our autism more obvious. I think that happened to me. It was always there but it came to the surface more. Looking back when I got very upset about things (lots of people in our house, going on holiday, changes at work) I was probably having meltdowns. I also had periods of time after overworking when I may have been in burnout or shutdown.
Being part of this forum is one of the best ways I have found to understand autism. It is helping me to recognise the many strengths of autistic people too, which often get less attention than deficits in the outside world.