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!
Hi Floss, I’m getting this too. Despite waiting 19 months to get diagnosed and really hoping for a positive diagnosis because it explains so much, I’m now finding that I’m more different than I thought I was. The way I process sound is captured really well in many sensory sensitivity videos that you can find on YouTube, and I’m becoming more aware of my rigid thinking though I can’t quite see this objectively because it’s just me (there are no videos for this that help provide that outside perspective). Also I’m coming to start to see that I fail to imagine other ways of thinking that others might have.
i have a strong drive to understand everything that I need to balance with just getting on and enjoying life I guess.
I really relate to this a lot. With so many things, I've just never even realised that other people don't experience them the way I do and knowing that they don't is almost making it harder to deal with in a way. So for example I discovered the other day that other people don't actually experience "pain" when they drink a fizzy drink or when they're cold and their hair stands on end. But for me both those experiences are genuinely painful and I never even knew that wasn't normal. Loud noises also feel painful, like I'm physically being bashed over the head, and make me feel sick if they don't stop too. Now I know that other people don't have these issues, I'm finding myself asking "Why me?" quite a lot. I guess it has its advantages too, but the sensory side is particularly hard I think and others aren't always very understanding of it and just think you're making a fuss.