Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello everyone. I was diagnosed with ASD around a month ago, in my 20s. I'm feeling quite alone and at sea with the new diagnosis, especially since there seems to be no post-diagnostic support or local groups where I live, so thought I'd make an account and say hi. I hope you're all doing okay today.
So what was your first symptom for autism?
Quite a lot of symptoms really. I'm still at the stage where I'm coming to realise that all sorts of things that I just thought were "normal" are actually autism-related eg. insanely good hearing, sense of touch, taste, smell etc. I hadn't realised that other people don't do the amount of thinking and analysing I do in social situations, it just comes intuitively to them, or that other people don't notice the amount of detail I notice in the world around me. The assessment really came up because I was a facing a massive change and I wasn't coping with it well at all, so that's when people started to suspect that maybe my extreme reaction could mean I was autistic and apparently they were right. Still very much trying to get my head around the idea though!