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How long to adjust to diagnosis?

Surprised autistic
over 2 years ago

After what feels like a lifetime of Ill defined mental health problems and difficulties I’ve finally revived a diagnosis for ASD at the start of December, a few days shy of my 40th birthday. I’m finding the whole thing a little hard to get my head around and I guess it’d be good to know how long other people took to accept and adjust to their diagnosis? I spent the first month kind of ignoring it but have just started really hammering the books to understand what it means so I can maybe start understand who I am. 

it feels like I’ve been completely alone in this for so long that I don’t really know how to accept or understand my thoughts and feelings, my wife is amazing but I can’t really express to her how I feel as I don’t have the language. I’m relieved that I’m not just odd and a failure at life but I also feel this means that things I find difficult are never going to really be surmountable. 

also starting conversations on the internet shakes me almost as much as doing so in real life which doesn’t help, thanks for reading  :) 

Parents
  • over 2 years ago

    I felt the same I’m 22 I got my diagnosis in march last year so almost a year now I’d say for my it took about 8 months for me to understand fully even though I basically already knew before my diagnosis but the confirmation of my suspicions was very jarring and thinking back I definitely didn’t understand it.

    I read over my report looked up certain things I didn’t know, kept doing my own research on the internet reading papers and blogs and so on. Eventually I felt like I knew enough for me, about me and the diagnosis and I just deleted the report off my phone cleared all the search history from I was reading and said to my self. “I know enough now I’ve spent all my life wondering and torturing myself as to why I’m not like everyone else but now I know and I have a valid reason.” I somehow moved on got a job and just started doing things that I wanted to do and stopped doing things I didn’t want to do (unless they were things I HAD to do that’s not the same). I basically listened to my actual self rather than listen to the part of myself who i thought that everyone around me would accept.

    I can go on but I don’t want to make this reply much longer than it already is but I’m happy to talk about it.

Reply
  • over 2 years ago

    I felt the same I’m 22 I got my diagnosis in march last year so almost a year now I’d say for my it took about 8 months for me to understand fully even though I basically already knew before my diagnosis but the confirmation of my suspicions was very jarring and thinking back I definitely didn’t understand it.

    I read over my report looked up certain things I didn’t know, kept doing my own research on the internet reading papers and blogs and so on. Eventually I felt like I knew enough for me, about me and the diagnosis and I just deleted the report off my phone cleared all the search history from I was reading and said to my self. “I know enough now I’ve spent all my life wondering and torturing myself as to why I’m not like everyone else but now I know and I have a valid reason.” I somehow moved on got a job and just started doing things that I wanted to do and stopped doing things I didn’t want to do (unless they were things I HAD to do that’s not the same). I basically listened to my actual self rather than listen to the part of myself who i thought that everyone around me would accept.

    I can go on but I don’t want to make this reply much longer than it already is but I’m happy to talk about it.

Children
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