Hello everyone - been looking at this site for several years now finaly just managed to post something - 4 years of 'diversionary tactics'. That time back then I read a newspaper article about Aspergers and had a 'lightbulb moment' - this sounds like me!! Didn't have a clue about this at all. I knew there was something wrong since childhood but growing up as a child in the '50's and a teenager in the '60s - 'aspiness' wasn't known about.
during early adulthood I tried various therapies - the types that are usually classified as Humanistic Therapies - encounter groups, bioenergetics, gestalt etc. and these did help to boost my confidence to some extent but they obviously couldn't get to the root of the problem. I was also unable to get to the root of another problem - extreme difficulties in relationships - because I had been abused as a child by - I think - my mother - and I had fully repressed the memory of those incidents.
Once upon a time I did go to a doctor asking for help with depression but the doctor told me to just 'pull myself together and get on with it' so I burst into tears and ran out of the surgery and vowed never to go to a doctor ever again.
I have just got hold of Phillip Wylie's new book 'Very Late Diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome' which is very usefull book,
which I recomend for older people like me to get some guidance on this situation. He does say that the route forward to a
diagnosis is to go to a GP but my previous experience rules that out. Mr Wylie does point out that really the person anyone should go to should be a genuinely empathetic diagnostician.
I have managed to get out several years running now to the 'Autism Show' but that is as much as I can manage.