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Newly diagnosed and not sure how to feel

Magpie

Hi all. I'm a 24-year-old recently diagnosed with ASD. I’ve had a lot of mixed emotions since my diagnosis – at first, I didn’t really feel anything except maybe justified in having sought a diagnosis in the first place. However, I got a copy of the letter from the assessing psychiatrist to my GP the other day, and when I read it, I immediately burst into tears. It wasn’t like the letter was a personal attack – it was just detailing what the psychiatrist observed when they spoke to me, but I think it stuck in a way that simply knowing didn’t. Like up until that moment, my autism was little more than an abstract concept and a bundle of crippling hypersensitivities. But seeing it all written in plain English – things I hadn’t realised about myself, like my ‘unusual and rehearsed’ speech pattern, missing conversational cues (still questioning what exactly those were), and limited emotional understanding – affected me in a way I really wasn’t expecting. Now, I don’t know what I feel. Has anyone else had a similar experience after their diagnosis?

  • Oh yeah that's very raw, especially this,

    Magpie said:
    missing conversational cues

    I was thrown by this, obviously I missed them as I still don't know what they were! Apparently I also made it 'mildly uncomfortable'; when you hear stuff like that, you wish you could also get some pointers as to what typical people would have done. (I think it would be fascinating to watch a video of a completely typical person doing an assessment, probably would blow my mind!). 

    The report does make you feel a bit incompetent, but the whole language is deficit based, so I suppose they have to. At least it said they thought I was trying my best!

  • Hello. It is hard to see yourself from the outside.

    It is easy to minimise things, to intellectualise and not connect words with actual experiences.

    Seeing things in black and white forces you to see what you are really like. You can't dismiss it, it is there on the page.

    It can seem harsh. All that effort to be normal, you tried your best, and here are all the flaws and problems.

    Except they are not flaws and problems. They are what make you the person you are. They are your story, your journey, your struggles, the things you overcome today people don't see. Someone listened and saw them.

    It sounds hard as well because it is in clinical language. In time it will soften, and it will seem less important as you come to terms with, and accept, yourself.

    But it is the identity shock and the confrontation with reality that us disorientating. 

    Because life is about coping, it is easy to disconnect the knowing and the feeling of things. I know lots of things without really connecting them to how they feel. Sometimes the emotions burst through.

    I would encourage you to pay attention to how you feel. Don't get swallowed by it, but don't deny it either. Allow short periods of feeling. 

    You can also feel grief losing what you thought your past/future was or would be. But this also will pass. It may take months. 

    It is a difficult time. I struggled. You are not alone in finding it hard.