Hi everyone,
I'm a 39 year old male who is currently going through some private therapy and counselling. For a long time I felt that I may be on the spectrum in some way, and had privately shared this with my partner - but for many different reasons I never looked into this further.
My therapist actually has Asperger's and after a few sessions I decided to bring up some of my concerns and fears. When I mentioned it, he immediately said to me that he had started to question the possibility with me because of our communications. He has encouraged me to begin the process of looking at getting a formal assessment, and potential diagnosis.
I should clarify, my therapist has emphasized he is not able to provide formal diagnosis or conclusions. However I asked him to share with me some of his personal experiences and our similarities are uncanny.i didn't know at the beginning, but he also has a lot of experience helping an autism charity - so while not binding, I sense his advice and suggestions are valid, probably needed and in many ways could be a God send.
I have struggled with a lot of things since I was in primary school, and never really fitted in nor fully been able to make sense of the world.
Over the last few weeks I have been reading a lot about autism, autistic traits (and I seem to tick a lot of boxes - which I think I have known for a long time but never done anything about it) and watched numerous documentaries. It has been very helpful and insightful, but I also feel quite frustrated that I have lived in silence for so long and a bit scared about potentially being diagnosed. I have in many ways always kept a front up around people and never really let people see the real me.
To the point over the last few weeks I have even questioned what really is the real me?
In many ways in private I feel my life has always been a bit of a mess, and I have both anxiety and depression. However I have worked for myself for a number of years (small scale, nothing major) and I am starting to sense that this has allowed me to mask / hide a lot of my internal characteristics from people. Whenever I had regular jobs in the past I always struggled when working with people, always feeling misunderstood, disconnected and things have never been easy - especially when I feel I am not in control of situations...
Initially, when I first (seriously) considered this a few weeks ago I felt a sense of liberation, but when I realised the state of the NHS and how long things could take with that route I have resigned myself to trying to find a private (assessment) solution. But financially it is a bit stressful! I also feel quite frustrated with the world (or my world anyway...).
I think more than anything I am simply looking for a sense of validation about my life experiences to date and hopefully a better understanding of myself and (hopefully) some better coping mechanisms and strategies to improve and simplify my life a bit...
I appreciate I have not been formally diagnosed at this stage, so I hope it's OK to post and share here - if anyone has any thoughts or suggestions I would be grateful to hear from you.
Thanks!
