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! 

Parents
  • Hi Lisa welcome to the forum. I'm sorry you are going through this.  Hugging

    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. 

    Can I just ask, here you say that people (your family?) say that you aren't typical; does that mean that you are not like other people they know who have also been diagnosed Autistic or that you are not typical to what they believe an Autistic person 'should' be?

    I ask because you are you and there is no typical or not typical but how you deal with that will depend on why people believe you're not typical. 

  • Hi Leaf, thanks for the kind words (: 

    I think that they just have a certain image of how autistic people behave but they never met anyone who was diagnosed. The only cOn my way! thing 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.”  When I explained that Aspergers is different, it was just disregarded and never spoken of again. 

  • That is so frustrating for you.  

    How open do you think your family would be to learning about autism, perhaps if you found some people on YouTube that you felt you could relate to, would your family be prepared watch and then discuss with you? There are quite a few Aspies with YouTube channels and your family could see other people with Autism who don't fit the stereotype that they imagine; I'm just suggesting YouTube because seeing someone "in person" so to speak wouldn't let their imagination take over and create a bias. Does that make sense? It's just a though, possibly not a very good one, though. 

  • 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 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.


  • 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 
Reply Children
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