Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi everyone, I’m completely new to this but was diagnosed with aspergers almost 2 years ago at age 25. I have struggled reaching out for help, autism was always known as a bad thing growing up and I haven’t really wanted the diagnosis to be real, but sometimes I’m not even sure if it is. As a female on the spectrum, I’ve had many difficulties but have always masked my “bad” (autistic) behaviour and hidden the real me so that I can just kinda get by in life, which is why it took so long for me to get a diagnosis. I’m on the high performing end and as such, my parents and peers tell me I’m “not that autistic” which feels really horrible considering how hard I’ve had to try all my life to seem normal. I guess I wanna know if anyone else feels this way, I still don’t really know what it means to be autistic and if I even am autistic or just a bit weird. It’s really depressing me and I can’t keep pretending to be normal for other people’s sake but they don’t believe I’m in need of help.
Same here. I'm newly diagnosed and I've shared with a few friends and a lot of responses haven't been helpful. Lucky some have!
People often aren't good at hearing someone else's reality. And often struggle to hear someone's pain, so often placate and deny the problem. My best friend treated it like a joke. Two close older friends who've been surrogate parents didn't know what to do with it. My sister keeps saying everyone's like that and goes on about the difficulty of modern life as the cause to any problems I might have.
I'm lucky too though that a close friend's son has asperger so he is hearing me; I've another friend who although has virtually no time has taken it on board; and my brother is curious to learn more, although again he's got kids and very rarely has time for chats. My accupuncturist got it, and that was validating. I read the kid's book Inside Asperger's Looking Out with one friend and that was a really useful technique, she took it on board which she hadn't the first time. It's a ten minute read, it's a picture book.
A friend who was late diagnosed has told me similar things and advised me to go slowly on who I tell and to be very careful as she regrets outing herself to many people.
And yeah, I'm still trying to understand what's autistic and what's normal. Like I've assumed my normal was close to normal for everyone else, so if it's not, what is everyone else's normal like. I'm watching them, and I am starting to see, like what I thought was relaxed is actually content, but I'm not relaxed with all that thinking swirling around!
I don't have much money but I'm going to prioritise seeing a private therapist for a few sessions who specialises in aspergers.