Questions

Hi, 

I got diagnosed with autism last year, at the age of 21, due to a joke which then turned quite real. Even though I had a good therapist, I was left with too many questions to answer. 

I tried to find answers in articles online or in books but the situations were all different, they all had family which understood and was supportive. 

I wonder, why autism never gets discussed in my family. The only thing I heard was that I don’t seem like the typical autistic person and that it doesn’t make sense to them that I was diagnosed to begin with and if anyone else has these issues. 

I wonder if anyone else’s problems just get downplayed by other people when they try to open up. Every time I say that I have autism people react with the same sentence “is it diagnosed then?” 
this reaction just blows my mind. 
I wonder why I never seem to fit in anywhere, even if I try so hard. I don’t even feel like I’m a past if my own family anymore. There is nothing that connects me to my parents an when I visit them, there is nothing we talk about.
My masking also doesn’t work very well anymore. Did anyone else experience their masking abilities to just disappear or weaken? 

There are so many more questions I have but I have no one who can help me with that. I’d love to have a few people to talk to (: 

So I don’t really know where I was going with this, maybe just letting off some steam?
If you wanna say something then you are welcome to do so (: 

It’s my first time in a forum so please don’t be too harsch on me! 

  • I used to listen to people’s problems a lot as well because I was so fascinated by their problems and how they’d approach fixing them.  I then told my parents that I wanted to study psychology when I was 10 years old after going to a therapy session of one of my classmates because I asked her to take me, but my parents   reaction was very degrading so I never thought about studying it again. I wasn’t interested in having friends or doing any social activities for the longest time until I kind of made “friends” with a neighbour couple of mine. I later moved away and lost connection because I never really responded to messages or showed any interest in their activities. Actually reading what I just wrote made me realise that I don’t miss them and I don’t know why I caught sudden interest in having friends or if I even really want them or just want to fit in better with society. And I think that’s where the problem lies. Everyone around me has friends and they don’t understand why I am comfortable with having none. They also don’t understand that I don’t feel connected at all to my family anymore and that I couldn’t care less about if they accept me or not because I don’t have to prove anything to anyone. I guess I was trying to fulfill social expectations for so long that I completely lost track of who I am.

    Thank you for suggesting more books! And thank you for making me realise who I actually am and what I like not what others want me to like.


  • thank you for the response and the link. I will definitely give this book a read. For as long as I remember I analysed people and copied their behaviour but I never thought about asking why they do certain things. I guess because where I’m from it’s considered rude or weird. 

    I am one of those people who often found myself listening to other people's personal and social problems regarding the nature of society, and questions from me showed that I was interested and as such elicited more information or clarification when required ~ rather than as such being rude. Although I was particularly good at social calamities conversationally!

    Also as being an Aspergenic weirdo (born with a university level comprehension capacity and into reading massively) I was not particularly interested in having friends and doing the socializing thing ~ just as my peers were not particularly or even at all interested in being friends or doing the philosophical or intellectual thing with me.

    Just as a couple of further suggestions regarding 'how people and society work' ~  I would highly recommend reading Plato's 'The Republic' as the western world uses it as it's societal model to quite a large extent, and for comparative consideration Jean-Jacques Rousseau's 'The Social Contract' ~ which is romantically ideological and more euro-centric.


  • thank you for the response and the link. I will definitely give this book a read. For as long as I remember I analysed people and copied their behaviour but I never thought about asking why they do certain things. I guess because where I’m from it’s considered rude or weird. 

  • I get that (: 

    I feel the same about expectations like that. 

    hope you enjoyed you drink


  • I am wondering where other people with ASD got their knowledge about how people and society work.

    Due to watching the patterns of people's social and professional behaviors as a child, I would ask people why they and others did the things that they did ~ in that they really did not seem to be enjoying themselves whilst pretending otherwise for the most part. Most could not explain why they repeatedly did this, and those that did could only say that the societal pretense was the way it has always been.

    So I kept on watching and trying to get along with people, and it was only when I studied psychology and sociology at college that everything came together for me ~ by way of reading a book on the first week called GAMES PEOPLE PLAY ~ The Psychology of Human Relationships, by Erich Berne, MD, with a shortened free pdf version of the book available by this link

    This book was a major revelation for me in terms of answering all my childhood's unanswered questions about the step by step and stage by stage methodologies of social interactions, or more generally transactions.


  • Thanks :-). It will seem stupendously trivial to some I'm sure, but "giving in" to familial pressure to send Christmas cards for decades has not only been an aspect of masking for me but also a source of significant stress. A lot of my masking has been similar, i.e. saying yes to stuff I'd really rather not do and get quite stressed if I do. That and pretending not to care about things I actually care about, and pretending to care about things that I'm not really fussed about. I'm rambling, there is whisky left over from the weekend that won't drink itself :-)

  • Yes I am male. We mask, I understand that masking is different for females but why and how I'm not sure. 


  • Hi, 

    Hello ~ and welcome to this here forum.


    I got diagnosed with autism last year, at the age of 21, due to a joke which then turned quite real. Even though I had a good therapist, I was left with too many questions to answer. 

    I got diagnosed with ASD in 2015 aged 44, after being referred to be assessed for Asperger's Syndrome in 2013. In terms of you having too many questions to be answered ~ you may well have to prepare yourself for having to cope with more answers than you are used too!


    I tried to find answers in articles online or in books but the situations were all different, they all had family which understood and was supportive. 

    I think the most viable option for satisfying your curiosity is not to let it run riot and treat the information gathering process as an ongoing state of affairs involving multiple sources, and although some families are all big and supportive of their autistic members, it certainly does not mean that all families are celebrating it either. Some families take ages to adjust, and some will not adjust as the familial hierarchy became long ago fixed and set with the behavioral roles of the family changing only in relation to when marriages, births and deaths occur.


    I wonder, why autism never gets discussed in my family.

    One consideration might well involve what is called the parental league tables in terms of children's abilities at particular ages, involving which parents have produced the most viable or appealing offspring, and the familial hierarchy where family members are treated in accordance with their ability to support the family and society to whatever degree involving employment and being helpful and such like. Obviously as time goes on each member of the family gets used to each others differences, and the balance of neutral, positive and negative attributions get somewhat challenged when they turn out to be neurological differences rather than willful acts of rebellion or failure to apply oneself and all that sort of thing.

    The only thing I heard was that I don’t seem like the typical autistic person and that it doesn’t make sense to them that I was diagnosed to begin with and if anyone else has these issues. 

    It is most likely that as the expression goes ~ "Once you have met one person with autism; you have met one person with autism!" ~ and obviously as an expression that is often quoted; many people on the autistic diagnostic spectrum get typecast with one size fits all generalizations about what autism involves as being a behavioral condition.
    .
    Obviously the most visible varieties of autism are going to be the most recognized and agreed with, whereas the most invisible behavioral traits are going to be least recognized and most disagreed with ~ by the least informed.    

    I wonder if anyone else’s problems just get downplayed by other people when they try to open up. Every time I say that I have autism people react with the same sentence “is it diagnosed then?” 
    this reaction just blows my mind. 

    Being that as Neurologically Diverse people (NDs) our minds function differently to those who are Neurologically Typical, and NTs tend to normalize any neurological or physiological divergence to help or to 'make' individuals fit into the collective of society with them.
    .
    When people do the "Have you been diagnosed then?" thing ~ I normally say, "Yes ~ at a neurological center by an autistic specialist!" When people refute or dismiss my diagnosis I have so far only smiled at their response in order to hold back my laughter, and I have also so far resisted the temptation to ask them rhetorically where they studied neurology at ~ and when did they pass their psychology degree specializing in autism then! 

    I wonder why I never seem to fit in anywhere, even if I try so hard.

    That will in part be due to the autism regarding problems with social interaction, communication and imagination difficulties ~ when it comes to socializing with people who are not autistic, but once you get the hang of socializing with autistic people you will get a better at socializing with people who are not autistic due to shared experiences, pointers and work arounds etcetera.

    I don’t even feel like I’m a past if my own family anymore. There is nothing that connects me to my parents an when I visit them, there is nothing we talk about.

    Assuming that you mean you do not feel like you are part of your own family anymore ~ well that is not so surprising as most people tend to have a bit of an identity crisis on being diagnosed with autism, and most people with autism often relate with feeling like outsiders in their family and or in society at large anyway.
    .
    Their is an American autistic Website forum called Wrong Planet for instance.
    .
    And with having nothing to talk about with your parents that can be just a matter of time thing as you get through your mid to late twenties, and possibly the fact you mainly want to address one topic in particular that they are not sure how to deal with in terms of being authority figures ~ given that on the subject of autism they will be novices rather than the authority figure on the matter. So a bit challenging for them perhaps?

    My masking also doesn’t work very well anymore. Did anyone else experience their masking abilities to just disappear or weaken? 

    Regarding what I stated above about having an identity crisis ~ most people only have their mask to identify with in terms of being a neurologically typical identity, whereas you will be at a bit of a loss about masking your identity because you are not all that sure yet of what that involves ~ given the previous lack of answers to your questions about being autistic. Some for instance choose to give up masking or reduce it and some choose to continue on with it. 

    There are so many more questions I have but I have no one who can help me with that. I’d love to have a few people to talk to (: 

    Somehow I think that your problems with a lack of people to communicate with and get answers from are pretty much over with in the written sense now. 

    So I don’t really know where I was going with this, maybe just letting off some steam?
    If you wanna say something then you are welcome to do so (: 

    Well one of my favorite expressions I really like telling is, "For the love of God or all that you may hold dear ~ remember always that the map is not the territory!" And I very nearly almost managed not to ask you how long you have been running off of steam and how did you come to be driven by steam if you have not always been so? Grinning
    .
    Excuse perhaps my silliness as I read and hear everything people communicate literally.

    It’s my first time in a forum so please don’t be too harsch on me!

    Well hopefully you will have a really good and thoroughly enjoyable time here, but if anyone is harsh with you or you witness it going on with anyone else on the forum ~ under each post is the Cancel, Like and More options with the More option giving you the opportunity to report an abusive post if required. Also do not hesitate to e-mail the Community Manger in the first instance regarding people being suicidal or particularly abusive or harsh on threads, and just to make sure you know what is acceptable and what is not, here are the simple version Community Rules from the Community homepage.

    .

    It is generally considered best not to respond to abusive or harsh posts but just to report them by the More option or also the Community Manager, and let the Moderators deal with them, and keep in mind that the moderators only work from Monday to Friday, and do not usually work on evenings, nights, weekends and holidays. So if need be, be patient.

    .

    [This bit of the post was just a health and safety demonstration for this forum a little bit like a steward or stewardess would give on a airplane.]


  • Masking or camouflaging is artificially 'perform' social behavior that is deemed to be more 'neurotypical' or hiding behavior that might be viewed as socially unacceptable. The motivations for masking symptoms of autism includes fitting in and increasing connections with others. That’s Google’s definition of masking and that’s exactly what it is for me (: 

    i guess it can be different for everyone (:

  • Over many years I created several personas in my head and I used to switch each persona on when required depnding on the situation. Since my diagnosis I have pushed these personas into the background as I no longer am afraid of who I am.   Is that masking ? I dont know :)

    I now accept  who I am. I no longer hide my stimming either. Turns out this appears to be helping me as well :)

  • that what happened to me i was bored and did a test  online  got a postive ASC result ! so I did a different one again Positive for ASC....   9 months later i have been diagnosed as on the spectrum !  and still find it hard to believe. I thought they where going to say go away u're normal stop wasting our time !   But it has explained so much about me !  I feel so much more at ease with myself now Grinning aint life funny Grinning

  • dont worry,, I'm just having fun,, 

  • When I got diagnosed at first nothing really happened. I wasn’t surprised. But then all of a sudden I thought about my life an it all made so much sense. All this time I didn’t feel like I fit in anywhere. I only had issues and I wouldn’t understand the people around me and certain situations.  

    in the beginning I tried so hard to explain to my family what autism is and how it works and I really tried to have a good relationship with them but at one point I just gave up. I realised that I don’t owe my family anything. Now I’m living my own life far away from them and I can’t say I miss them in any way. I just find it very hard to understand that I lived with people for 20 years of my life and they don’t even try to understand.

    the last time I went to see my family my mum arranged a meet-up with my aunt I haven’t seen in 13 years. 30 mins before she’d came over I found out that it wasn’t just her coming but also her son so I got really really nervous. Then my mum quickly went to the store to get something but she called me to tell me that my aunt and her son are on the way and almost there. I started panicking and crying because I don’t want them to arrive when I was home alone. Luckily she came back before they arrived and she told me that if it gets too much for me I can just say that I want to walk the dog so I don’t have to mention my autism but she’d tell my aunt about my breakdown later. To this day I don’t understand why she told her. What did she gain from that? 

    I’m sorry if I’m wrong but I’m assuming that you are male. 
    i actually didn’t know that males do masking as well. 
    it is so fascinating how every single person with autism is just completely different! 

  • Hi there, I really like your name by the way! 

    It does not make sense to me why people feel the need to ask if I am diagnosed. It’s not like I diagnosed myself. I don’t know if people realise that it hurts and that it’s such a dumb and unnecessary question.

    i really like your analogy because it perfectly describes society.  

  • Hi, thanks for the responses (: 

    my family used to bully me as well especially my brother 

    he’d do everything to get me to have a meltdown and when it happened I got yelled at by my parents an told that I should just ignore him. 

    people are awful and I know that they do awful things to others especially people who are different so I’d actually believe you I think 

    I live in the Netherlands and Dutch profanity is literally filled with diseases like cancer among others. Here, everyone who places their things neat and tidy on the desk etc is told that they have autism (that’s Dutch people joking) I never understood that. So one evening  my boyfriend and I for “fun“ did these online tests. First really dumb ones and eventually ones that would determine if you have autism or not. I scored 89% on the first test. My first thought was “this must be wrong, it’s just a stupid test” but I ended up doing all of them and with every test I scored around 90%. We went to bed and I couldn’t sleep because if this  so I took multiple paid tests which also turned out to be around 90%. So that’s when I decided to actually get myself testet and it turned out that I indeed have ASD

  •  I ever got from my family was “well if you have autism.. then it’s more like Aspergers because you don’t have typical autism.”

    Also seen in the hit musical "You can't be autistic because *you're not like my child* ". I had this from my family too (before I knew enough to defend against it - what if that had knocked me back hard enough to not seek a diagnosis?). I can't be autistic because I don't have the same co-morbid conditions that they do :rolleyes

  • Thanks for the kind words (: 

    i realised that I misspelled quite a lot of things Sweat smile

    must’ve been the nervousness

  • I'm loving this thread :-)

    sometimes it feels like we are the ones making all the compromises. It is exhausting
    Overanalysing is what we do 
  • Don’t worry lots of us have same issues. We can talk about it and support eachother

  • I wonder why I never seem to fit in anywhere, even if I try so hard

    Me too. Looking back at my life, I can see now that I was always different and expended lots of energy to try to fit in, but the reality is that I don't - not in "that" world. But the blessing is that I do fit in in my world, and that's what matters. I also think that I fit in here, and you will too.

    I don’t even feel like I’m a past if my own family anymore.

    Me too, if I'm talking about my parents, aunts and uncles, cousins etc. I have nothing in common with them that I would choose to celebrate. One of my own children has disowned me. Thank god I have a loving wife and step-children.

    There is nothing that connects me to my parents an when I visit them, there is nothing we talk about.

    Me too. Obviously we have parts of our pasts in common, and I feel a sense of debt to them for bringing me up & I'm genuinely grateful for that, but there isn't much more positive to say.

    My masking also doesn’t work very well anymore. Did anyone else experience their masking abilities to just disappear or weaken?

    Yes, me too.

    I hope that helps you feel less alone - it does me!