Accepting the undiagnosed Truth

Post Reply New Topic

I am a 48 y/o female...who has spent the better part of my life trying to figure out what is wrong with me. I'm a mental health therapist and yet, despite my vast array of working knowledge...I never really realized that I myself, have many of the traits of High Functioing Autism and AS. I have known my whole life that I am different but it would be years before I was able to articulate my challenges and come to see myself, as I am.
I know I struggled with making friends, social skills, sensory issues as a child, am visual and highly intelligent. Later in life, I realized how my mind is so annoyingly literal. I don't get a lot of humor and and God forbid if someone ever likes me, as I can't tell unless they hold up a sign that says "Hey there, I would like to get to know you because I like you".
This past year, I went through some trauma integration which brought back some of the sensory issues I had as a child along with increasing some of my other challenges. I started noticing that AS information was coming at me from all directions in my life. I read an article written by an AS and I broke down and cried cause I felt like I was reading about myself.
I came to a point where, despite not being evaluated by anyone, knowing from inside myself, I fall on the Autism Spectrum. I feel so lost and so found...both at the same time. Please tell me there is hope for me.

You've read about it, I'm sure you read that it isn't horrible. At least, not all the time.. You'll be fine.

Welcome to the club!! Nothing has changed, you have just become more aware of what you are.
This should give you a chance to re-evaluate your past life in a new perspective, this can be quite liberating. It was for me.

Remember this is not a disease, just a different way of thinking. You are not alone, as you can see by the people here.

A mirror can show you what you want to see, rather than what is. Congratulations on seeing past the illusion.

Where there is life, there is hope. You are progressing well.
Cheers

JustMe4U, you have some training in psychology, so just for the sake of consideration:

At this time no such conventionally practiced intervention method yet exists, but if there were a taining intervention that would allow you to recognize, and in real-time decipher and respond to all of the non-verbal kind of language that just seems to pass you by, just as most people are able to do - would you make the effort to master the techniques/training-exercises of such an intervention?

In other words, would you think it worth the effort of study and practice if it were apparent that you would be able to mitigate the issues you feel you now face and be able to function smoothly and effectively in the various situations that life typically presents to most people?

@ RickAlan, me being me, I love learning so yes. I also have an uncanny ability to visualize emotional cause/effect or the truth in a particular given situation with little, if any, external input (as long as I am not directly involved in it). So, the model would have to pass the efficacy of my mental astuteness, if that makes sense.
I have, worked very hard through out my life to mitigate, without direct knowledge of what I was trying to mitigate, the intensity of some of the issues/reactions I have had and/or continue to contend with.

Does that answer your question?

Your story is mine,, only i was 54 and it took losing a career i spent 12 years training for,, for me to realised who I am,,

I think once the shock wears off ull find a sense of relief, now u can start making accomodations to make life easier,, understand why you do things the way you do.. at least it was for me,, I do find as far as relationships go, im starting over,, in a new ball park with a new game of new rules I have to learn... but over all it is a relief NOT to have to struggle to be NT any more but to be who I am,,

Thats interesting, because I too have always had the ability to visualise the cause and effect of other peoples problems, yet am unable to work out my own problems, or even recognise them. And I also have difficulty with CBT and other therapies because I see them too logically for them to work on me (I think you need an element of emotional involvement in therapy for it to work, and I just don't have that ability).

I've only just recently been diagnosed with AS myself by the way, and like people on here keep saying, it really is a relief and a liberation to finally understand myself.

Hi there

To be honest reading your post brought me both great happiness and deep sadness. But let me explain more, I came to have suspicions about myself a few years ago. To be honest this was while my then wife and I were going through having my 12 year old daughter evaluated (she has since had a diagnosis confirmed of AS). One of the things that as we learnt as parents more and more about the syndrome while dealing with the new found knowledge of my Daughter was that I ticked pretty much every box. I did Dr Baron-Cohen's online evaluation and bingo.. there you go.

To be honest my first reaction was to burst into tears and believe me there have been many tears since then while i've picked apart my entire life and found both great sadness but also deep understanding of who and what I am and why I have done some bad things but also some wonderful things.

Sadly eventually my marriage collapsed in on itself and for a while it was obvious that my wife could deal with a child with AS, but having a partner that also is AS was much more of a challenge. For a while I just blamed myself and also found myself dealing with much self regret. It took a good friend of mine to point out that I had AS when Nathalie fell in love with me and also when she fell out of love with me.

After much time, I've come to see my AS as a gift, I'm an engineer (self taught) big surprise huh.. I also posses this ability you talk of, I've always described it as naturally understanding where in any process the fault lays. I've learnt to delay and allow co-workers to have input, to discuss a problem and sit through endless meetings waiting to point out the obvious regarding the issue at hand. In my personal life it also has draw back, I don't always need to let people finish there sentences as my mind has already seen where there going and my answer is already formulated.. Imagine how annoying that is. But strangly I still describe this as a gift. It has made me professionally at least successful.

My point is by our age we have found ways to cope, to get on and make a good life for ourselves. We must never forget to re-evaluate our chosen way of coping, for I realise now what works professionally can be a disaster in a relationship.

The bottom line is there is hope for all of us. In some ways the way our mind works is a massive advantage, I read a fascinating article about how some drugs companies may be looking for a cure for AS in children which argued that we shouldn't do this, without us the world would be missing some pretty incredible people who have achieved much in every part of society and business.

Look at this as the gift it is, look at what it has brought you, then strive to manage and cope with the harder side. People fall in love with people with AS all the time, they give them jobs because they recognise abilites that we posses. We develop friendships that once forged will last the whole of our lives.

We are different and so is everyone else. Please don't ever doubt there is hope

I am not certain how easy it is to mitigate the cognitive weaknesses we have including (Source):
• Complex Sensory
• Complex Motor
• Complex Memory
• Complex Language
• Concept-formation
• Face Recognition

I was just recently diagnosed. And, each and every day, I am reminded how debilitating these cognitive weaknesses can be.

With that being said, something tells me that our difference is also gift. Our individual challenge is to turn this gift into our advantage.

And I felt like I had totally missed the boat when I realized at 34 I was aspie. I thought how could I go through so many years of school, study psychology with a passion, and work around mental health professionals? And nobody, including me, realized the bigger picture until I finally read the right information at the right time in my life. I was saddened by the news because I spent my whole life trying to fix myself and deny there was anything wrong with me at the same time. I have a constant objective viewpoint that I'm trying to relearn who I am, and I analyze and blame myself. Its adding stress, but I think things will be better once I adjust and accept. Right now, it is extra hard going through this while I'm single and the few friendships I have are suffering. I can't hold them up when I'm trying to keep myself together.

The bright side is that it's so nice to hear similar experiences. At least I'm not the only one.