This community is for people who have a special neuronal configuration and I’d like to hear how you discovered it. Were you told? By who? How did you take it? How is life today?
Here’s my story:
I was only told by my mother that I’m smart but never anything else. She took me to a school psychologist for evaluation to decide what school form I should go to after elementary.
My teachers in elementary school thought I should go to a more basic school form but my mom was convinced I was too smart for that. So I went to sort of an advanced school. It was no problem intellectually but I became an outcast pretty much immediately. Had to switch schools later because of my social difficulties.
It took another 20 years for me to go out on my own and search for the reason why stuff wasnt working. Neither normal “desk” work nor “supervisor” positions worked really. When I went self employed, I found a spot for the first time.
When covid hit and I had to give up my company, I went digging for answers. “Gifted” was the first thing, but it wasnt the whole picture. When “Autistic” was added it all started making sense. Too much going on in the head to “be normal” but no social talent to actually make something out of myself in the corporate world.
Its an ongoing process of resolving trauma as much as possible and learning to live with what isnt resolvable. Explaining the process and situation to people, sometimes against opposition is not easy but all in all my life has become a lot healthier.
Thanks for reading. Have a good one!
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I was a toddler when a doctor first try to get me on ADHD meds. Never officially been diagnosed with autism, but realized I might be on the spectrum in high school. I’ve known I’m a bit weird since I was a child to some extent, but generally didn’t have labels to put on it and didn’t care much.
Might also be a bit dyslexic or some similar issue? Had a school counselor ask me about that after I managed to mess up my test ID number in multiple different ways one year (but thankfully, she caught before sending the tests out somehow). And I did have relative difficulty with reading and spelling. I still regularly write letters in words out of order, but I just adjust by putting them between the letters I already wrote.
very relatable! Glad you got through it okay. Thanks for sharing.
Diagnosed dyslexic & dyspraxic as a small child, I don’t remember much about why, guess my spelling and handwriting was crap even then.
Diagnosed autistic in my 20s, after several years of treatment by my GP for social anxiety I was referred to a psychiatrist, who referred me to a autism specialist to rule out schizophrenia prodrome.
Diagnosed ADHD-PI in my 30’s after a friend with both suggested getting assessed.
Damn. Thats a rough ride and it shows how young this stuff is from a medical standpoint. Kids nowadays sometimes get diagnosed very early.
Do you have anything to share with people who are thinking about getting assessment? Some dont know if it would help them in any way.
I always knew I was different from everyone else. I called myself “weird” a lot and thought I looked strange on video. I often pointed out how I don’t think like everyone else. I also asked people how they knew things about social situations often, or ran social situations by others to get a better understanding of them. It’s like I knew I didn’t think about social matters like everyone else did. To me people either (a) made wayyy too many assumptions about others and interactions or (b) had a 6th sense for social experiences.
One day, I was at a gathering a a friend’s house. It seems that I said something that was not normal, even though I thought it was completely normal, and a friend said, “Don’t mind him. He’s autistic.” That’s when I realized that maybe my comment didn’t land well. The next day, to get my friend back by making him feel guilty, I looked for online autism tests to send him the results so he would be worried that I was ruminating on it. To my surprise, my results kept coming back that I was likely autistic. Later that day when I saw my friend again, I asked him if he really thought I was autistic, to which he responded a bit confused with, “Well…yeah.” After further discussion, I learned that it is pretty apparent that I’m autistic, so my friend thought that I would have been aware. Nope! I always knew that I like people that were “a bit autistic” and even liked toys for autistic kids, but never really thought tat about myself.
I became obsessed with learning about autism, which further lead me to believe I was autistic. Then, I scheduled an assessment with an autism psychologist for a thorough evaluation. She confirmed it pretty easily, so I was diagnosed not only with autism spectrum disorder, but ADHD also (I knew about me being ADHD my entire life though).
Thanks for sharing! Its equally wholesome and sad imo. Having friends that actually are able to give you a hint that helps you but the fact that we even need it is sad.
Thanks! Having friends that give hints is helpful, but considering what I’ve learned about social interactions since and my history with this particular person, it’s also crappy realizing that he meant it as a passive-aggressive insult. It’s nice to finally clean house of bullies though. Onward and upward!
“Different?” That’s just always been true.
I’ve been going to a psychologist on and off for “social dysfunction” since I was like 3. My family wasn’t well off, so it was more my mom trying to do what she could with evaluations or whatever every few years.
I was diagnosed with ADD back when everyone was diagnosed with it, despite not meeting pretty much any of the criteria. My mom tried to argue about it, but random not-quite-poor person vs psychologist, she was blown off.
I used to fantasize that there was an alien civilisation that was trying to understand earth and so created a human-alien mental hybrid to try to make sense of humanity. It’d mean there was nowhere I truly belonged, of course, but it’d also mean there was a reason, a purpose, to me being surrounded by confusing aliens.
Mom ended up going to medical school and learned about autism (and Asperger’s, at the time) while there. She was furious. I was a textbook case of a woman with Asperger’s syndrome, but in my youth, psychologists frequently didn’t consider it possible for female patients to have Asperger’s.
She wasn’t sure if she should mention it, since by that time I was an adult and on my own. I discovered it through a video game, actually - To The Moon, an amazing story in which one of the main characters has Asperger’s.
I mentioned it to her as a “holy crap, I looked into this and I feel like I’ve been seen!” And she mentioned what she’d learned in school. It kinda annoyed me that she hadn’t passed that along, but between her support and what I’d seen, I pursued options and got diagnosed.
Now it’s just autism and not Asperger’s, but whatever. Still, it was blatantly obvious my entire life. I had a rough childhood. I didn’t manage to actually make a friend of my own till I was 17. I had a few friends before then, sort of, but they were a thing where I was kinda adopted because I was easy to manipulate, and not any real connection.
I could be defiant as hell, but I was so lonely, I’d do anything for those who called me friend, so… yeah, not the best friendships, in hindsight.
Really wish those psychologists would have identified my issues back when. My life would have been vastly different.
Oof! I‘m sorry you had to go through that. I‘m somewhat sure it would have been different for me as well.
Do you have someone to talk to about this? It helped me a lot to have someone who helps me make sense of my situation.
Also, I recently joined a computer club. They‘re basically doing parallel play every day. I love it. Just in case this is something that interests you.
Otherwise, feel free to join !autism@lemmy.workd if you havent yet. The people are nice. You can also send me a message on matrix if you want to connect. My wife and I are advocates for autistic adults. Just an option.
Have a good day. All the best to you.
Thank you! That’s really sweet, I appreciate it.
It’s been a number of years, and I’ve found my way. Found someone truly amazing to get married to and she’s done a lot to help me out. I still suck at making friends, but my wife helps bridge that gap.
Interestingly enough, tabletop roleplaying games, like dungeons and dragons, helped me more than anything else. I could practice different ways of interacting with people and get actual feedback on how I came across - people will criticize characters I’m pretending to be in a way that they won’t for my real self. And it has lower stakes - if I screw up in that context, it doesn’t matter. If I freeze and don’t know what to do, I can just roll a die and make the problem go away.
I appreciate what you and your wife are doing. If it weren’t for my wife, I’d probably really be in need of that sort of support. Thank you.
That sounds very nice! I‘m happy that you have support. Funnily enough, my wife and I play d&d as well and make new friends there.
You’re still invited to connect with the community or us if you want to share experiences.
Have a good one! :)
I’ve pretty much always known I process information and social interactions differently. As for figuring out what exactly was going on: it was after I finally managed to find a social group I really vibed with in my late 20s early 30s. Every one of them is autistic, all of them. They were all very surprised when they learned it never occurred to me I might be autistic too they all already knew what was going on. Suddenly a lot of things started to make more sense for me
It hasn’t really changed much in my life to be honest. I had already built up a lot of ways to get through everything reasonably well. I think the main thing is it is a bit easier to talk to understanding people now because I can just be like “hey I’ve got autism bear with me while I butcher this conversation, I mean well” instead of putting in the effort to mask. Also people are more understanding at group things if I just stand up and fuck off for an hour now that I have words to express to them it isn’t because I don’t like them
