Published on 12, July, 2020
I'm in my early 40s and was diagnosed with autism just two months ago, so I'm still getting to grips with how it's impacting me and how best to respond.
Hello
I'm also in my 40s (just about!) and new here too.
thanks. Do you mind if I ask what prompted you to get assessed? Please don't answer if you'd rather not. It was suggested to me by a therapist.
My GP prompted me to in summer 2019. Autism hadn't been on my radar hardly at all until then, I'd been focusing on mental ill health awareness and treatment particularly since around 2007. This year I've started to explore Autism more e.g. joining NAS and this forum community chat.
I was working with a counsellor who kept finding that her strategies for my anxiety weren't working. She suggested I might be autistic and recommended a counsellor who was more experienced with neurodivergence. I think both of those things really helped me- have you found your diagnosis productive for your mental health?
I'm unsure about that so far. Before autism came on my radar in 2019 I was focussed on my long term depth Gestalt psychotherapy.that I'd been in since November 2007. I was viewing it all as I would gradually 'get better' regarding my chronic mental ill health (diagnosis Dysthymia in 2010). Getting the autism diagnosis has altered+affected my view of it all i.e. I always was autistic and always will be. I do remember my Gestalt psychotherapist saying right near the beginning that we were working on me learning to manage what I've got rather than 'be cured' I think but I kind of ignored that and hoped/aimed for more of a 'cured' type outcome (and 'everything' would be going great i.e. a very idealistic type vision fantasy). This has now changed for me, a realization (probably maybe getting closer to reality than being more in fantasy illusion world) I suppose and has threw me (my world view etc) a lot. I decided to stop my psychotherapy in November 2022 for various reasons including that my view of eveything had changed gradually since my autism diagnosis in November 2021 (November keeps cropping up in all this and we're in November 2023 now too!). I'm ttherefore exploring autism slowly now e.g. became a paid up member of NAS this year+joining this forum chat service, trying some local autism groups and so on. I'm extremely unclear where I'm going with it all now (even more than I have been in the past). I might continue psychotherapy in the future in another location i.e. I'd like to 'move on' generally somehow somewhere
That's interesting, sounds like you have a GP who's quite well informed in terms of m/h issues. Do you think you've made progress with your general mental wellbeing as a result of your diagnosis?