What made you realise you have/might have autism?

Hey all, hope this is okay to post.

I’ve recently started to realise I may have autism - I originally thought it was ADHD but when I started looking at the crossover I realise that autism might be playing a role too!

I was just wondering what were the signs that originally made you realise you have/might have autism? Especially if you were diagnosed as an adult rather than as a child.

And a follow on question - looking back what did you do as a child that was likely due to autism? I want to get tested but seeing other peoples experiences I’m worried about the process - my memory is so rubbish I’m worried they’ll think I’m just wasting their time.

Thanks in advance! Yum

  • As a teen a documentary came up about autism, and then my parents turned to me and said, 'hey, that's a lot like you! '

    .At least insofar that I spoke grammatical sentences at the age of 1 but by 18 months regressed, and stopped speaking. As they recounted it. I did catch up verbally, but then there were no lack of other troubles. The bullying, the social exclusion, etc. 

    As for things I did as a child these included obsessions with certain letters of the alphabets and numbers. 

    The comments my parents made at that point were hard to take it seriously, because the documentary only showed up Kanner cases of severe autism, and I certainly wasn't that. Anyway it was come Ted that spending money in these children was a waste when there were so many bright but deprived children who were not eligible for any help.

    All would have been forgotten except that after getti g away from my horrible school I was told by fellow undergraduates some were saying 'I was the strangest girl they had ever met.' Then after graduating when there was no work, all the doubts my parents had abkut me came flooding back, which only makes me more rebellious.

    It is not a massive issue now, though one of my niece's children got a diagnosis.

  • Beaches, other than the possibility of making sand-sculptures, are hell. We once stayed in a hotel on a rocky headland in Italy and it had a set of pool-type ladders directly off a rock-ledge into the sea - heaven!

  • I'm currently watching a TV show with Chris Packham on...how he interacts with people and talks is so similar to me in so many ways. His comments on disliking beaches are word for word what I have said on numerous occasions.

  • Would you mind if I asked how you decided where to go privately for an assessment and where it was you went? Thanks 

  • I saw a video about this on Reddit. I then downloaded the video for research purposes using Reddit to MP4.

  • Hiya all,I'm Jorgie-aged 50,I realized I was definatly an Aspi about 5 or 6 years ago,mainly from reading a library book and I also found a DVD there too,bthe DVD was quite interesting,but it was the book was the thing that rasounded with me the most,as it was written by an adult female and she was talking about her personality traits and her struggles in life.

  • I was curious and watched a video about the symptoms of autism/aspergers. Everything they said in the video sounded so normal to me, and I thought - doesn't everyone do these things? This video is ridiculous. It's normal to do all these things - and I was so angry that the video was stating such normal things and making it seem like it was a disorder of some kind, that I almost dismissed the video entirely as being some kind of sham.

    But then I paused for a moment, and thought a little deeper - if all these things seem normal to me, could it be that I might have it? - And I just watched more videos about the topic, and I looked into my past, and it just fit me and made sense, and then at some point I joined this forum to chat with other people on the spectrum, and I feel at home here. 

  • I went private for an assessment in the end, my area doesn't do them on NHS. Once the idea had been planted then I had to know either way. Don't deal very well with maybe, always need a yes or no. 

  • I have recently been engaged in a FB alumni group. There are certainly people on that site with whom I have quite a few things in common. I can now look back quite easily and realise that I was almost certainly not the only one in that group on the so-called spectrum. But of course, most of the people who could perhaps be classified thus dropped out of the system before graduation, never to be seen again. What a waste! There was some genuine talent there. I stuck the course, but in some ways wish I hadn't; Dropping out earlier would have allowed me to create a few more alternative alliances a bit earlier on. I think I might be gracefully dropping out of the alumni group before long. It's beginning to turn me into too much of the reflective practitioner.

    The thing I keep noticing is this: without a keen interest in playing sport you are nearly always going to be peripheral. Well there are also some other hobbies that allow one to be the centre of at least some attention, but I also blew those by taking my work too seriously. I actually have multiple (and frequently changing) interests, but that doesn't help much either.

    To be labelled strange, one really doesn't have to do much beyond avoiding sports and other very social pastimes. There is obviously a very wide perception that such avoidance automatically renders you lacking in the essential team spirit to be a social and occupational success.

    There are seemingly quite a few people out there who are probably a great deal more weird and dangerous than myself; but they play the system just well enough to be socially acceptable and even popular; totally regardless of their actual performing ability. But I have also seen quite a lot of these eventually crash & burn in the most dramatic of finales.

  • Well, I always struggled at school with most non academic activities and with socialising in the playground, then later with relating to the other adolescents and the assumption that we'd be into various boy bands or magazines.  Then later still I struggled with the social aspects of work and the assumptions made that certain things were just known or even obvious, because they needed spelling out to me (in spite of all my qualifications).  I also had major issues with fear and anxiety, which often prevented me from functioning in the workplace as well as socially.  

    I didn't actually realise until much later in life though, following my son's severe breakdown and several years spent with mental health teams, at the end of which they simply discharged him as having "Asperger's" rather than a MH issue.  I then started wondering about this "Asperger's", linked it in with a major breakdown experienced by my dad in the 70s, joined the dots and decided to get assessed myself.  Finally diagnosed age 55. 

  • The same as moon, watching Chris Packham’s “My Aspergers and Me” was a lightbulb moment. I sat and cried at the end because it was like discovering myself.

  • Well, it has been apparent that something was amiss for over 50 years. But as no one else ever took any real interest, there didn't seem much point in bothering myself. I just got on with life and making a mess of things.

    In the new millennium, I started noticing this term Asperger's in the media; nearly always it was mentioned in an almost derogatory sense. so I gradually started researching it; mainly because I was intrigued as to why quite a few folk found any mention of it so offensive. I began to notice that the BBC site was a bit more inclined than most to give the subject some credence. After a few years of reading its links to NAS info on Autism Awareness events, I suddenly had an almost satori moment - reading just one article - in which I realised that it was basically talking about people like myself.

    Self-identification followed on quite quickly from that at age 59, after I'd also gone looking elsewhere for info. There was absolutely no one interested in the country in which I had lived as an expat for about 25 years already, so I eventually took myself off to my native UK for a positive assessment of Asperger's/ASD at age 61; having spent months before hand compiling a very long history of my lifelong issues.

    But that wasn't really the end of it. I suppose that the problem with self-identification is that even when you are diagnosed, you often still keep going through an almost  daily cycle of both rejection and eventual re-acceptance. That went on for about 3 years, and then died down for a bit; before restarting during the COVID era. However, I cannot really emphasise too much that my identification with ASD/ASC has actually got even stronger as a result of Covid lockdown. That's because I've had plenty of solitary time to reflect on my issues, and even realise further behaviours that I hadn't given too much thought to previously.

    I obviously realised quite early on in life that i was struggling with things that others found quite simple; so I quite early on adopted a non risk-taking approach to life, in order to cope. That approach to life is apparently unacceptable to the majority of people caught up in the modern-day Punch & Judy show we all now live in. It is now very obvious to me that I thus annoy almost everyone, eventually. However, in my own inimitable way, I reckon I am actually rather thick-skinned. Sure, that attitude probably continues to make my alienation even worse; but it also seems to strengthen my personal resolve to carry on, regardless!

  • I was in class and we were told to make posters about what makes us unique, and another student (now one of my closest friends) wrote that they’re autistic and they out some of the symptoms, and I went home and researched it 

  • My daughter was having CBT for anxiety and her therapist raised the possibility that she might be autistic, and, from what my daughter had said about me, that I might be as well. I then researched adult autistic traits like I was on speed and took every online test, and concluded that I was. I then got an assessment and was clinically diagnosed.

  • Always having felt out of step without realising it fully or why. Started reading about AS in females. Annecdotal quote on Tanya Marshall website of "feel like I'm missing a conversation gene". That was a total A-HA moment. 

  • I always felt so different from everyone else and I have always struggled with communication, friendships, relationships etc etc just generally understanding people and I had a break down the beginning of the year and that's when I had to find out what was "wrong" with me

  • We had homework when I was 13/14 to research facts about autism (it related to a film we were analysing) and I sort of related to it but thought I was too 'normal'. Then when I was 16 someone asked me if I was diagnosed, because I was so nervous to meet them that I was acting very awkward and weird.

    One of the most aspie things I did as a 5 year old kid was to tip all of the chinese fortune telling sticks onto the floor, use them to work out what the chinese numbers were, write a number table in my notebook, and not tell anyone until I had memorised it.

  • That's similar to me, felt different but didn't suspect. I was diagnosed in 2017 after an EIT Psychiatrist asked if I would like to be assessed. I said ok and they told me I had aspergers after the assessment. I'm only now on the path to recieving support. It's strange how I was diagnosed without much effort whereas others really struggle to get it.

  • I saw that. He's an amazing guy. The fact that I knew what he meant and where he was coming from on so many things probably should have made my potential autism more obvious to me.

  • I've always felt at odds with the world, but due to the way autism was portrayed in the media thought it could not be something I had.

    Fast forward 30+ years of struggling to make sense of the world, social anxiety, being bullied, workplace meltdowns etc and I started to follow the Twitter account of someone who was a teacher.

    He and I had identical jobs, and we'd had many similar experiences. During the past few years he'd been diagnosed as autistic as an adult, and started writing in detail about his autistic life experiences and diagnosis.

    It was often like he was describing my life.

    We chatted via DM and he encouraged me to do some online assessments. I did so and every single one showed I was likely to be autistic, in the 'severe' category.

    After a recent MH crisis which caused me to resign from my job (I've had anxiety / depression diagnosis since age 19) I mentioned autism and what I had discovered to the MH nurse. He got the surgery to send me the AQ10 NHS questionnaire. I got 7/10 which triggered the referral.

     It may or may not help me to discover why I have struggled with my mental health for as long as I can remember.

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