Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi,
I was diagnosed as autistic 2 days ago at the grand old age of 49. I live alone in London, I have a fairly decent job in the NHS which i have managed to keep despite having a lot of time off in the past with mental health related issues and i used to do a fair amount of drinking and drugs to alter my mood and make me more sociable. It didnt really work but I thought it did. i gave it all up entirely a few years ago.
I only have one friend nowadays in London that i see every couple of weeks for a couple of hours as I dont really like socialising even with people i love.
I have only really done the minimal research on autism and despite suspecting for a while that my problems may have a neurological component, my diagnosis was still a shock. I still dont really know what it means for me and how to move forward with my life. I expect ill start with being a little easier on myself when i dont act as I think i should.
Im excited to get to know myself a bit better to be honest and I know that I am lucky to have a job and live an independent albeit solitary life.
I am wondering how to tell my boss at work or even if I should, the NHS has lots of support which i feel would be silly of me to ignore.
Does anyone else have experience of telling their boss or colleagues they are autistic? I am worried they arent going to believe me to be honest and I dont really know how they will react.
I dont know any other autistic people at all so I thought I would drop in and say hi and hover about the forums.
Hope you are all well
J
Hi That is very good advice and you are right, I have a tendency to be quite honest about my personal life so a bit of patience with regards to disclosing might be a good thing. Though i feel a strong urge to tell everybody.
I did not really believe i would be given a positive diagnosis, I knew it was a possibility but I have come to realise that because I only have my own perspective I didnt really realise how different my experience is from a neurotypical base reality if you will. Couldnt see the wood for the trees. I have spent the last few days since diagnosis having a lot of "oh my god! Thats why I did that!!" moments when thinking back at past interactions and experiences and some of those revelations have been quite heartbreaking. I do feel a quite overwhelming amount of sadness for the younger version of me who clearly spent many years in the dark feeling confused and not good enough. It is good that times have changed with societys acceptance (scientifically speaking) and a growing autistic led community. I hope I can somehow be part of that.
I was very very very fortunate to have an adult autism dedicated team close to where i live in london and the whole process took about 10 months. Resources are growing in availability so I hope if you decided to go for assessment it is easy for you.
Thanks again,