Recently diagnosed and overwhelmed

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I was only diagnosed with aspergers last week. At first I felt really relieved about it all, but the more I think about it (and I can’t seem to stop thinking about it) I am feeling really overwhelmed by it all. Suddenly all the things that have always been there (stimming, sensitivity to light, need for routines, etc.) seem so in focus. And there are so many other things that I am realizing that I have lived with my whole life that I had no idea were due to AS.

My psychologist has gone on holidays for a month and I feel so alone with all of this new information. Did anyone else find it overwhelming to suddenly have their whole life explained so clearly? And did you realize even more ways in which you are different from everyone else?

Hi alexi

Yes I found that was the case.
I was only informally diagnosed by a psychologist, who suggested AS to me. I had never heard of AS before then.
She suggested that I looked it up to see if it "fit" me. Of course it did. However, I was then left alone to cope with this discovery.

On one hand I was amazed and relieved to find a description of my experiences that was so accurate.

On the other hand I was pretty uh, sad (?)(not too good with describing feelings) to realise that the AS was a "hard-wired" thing, with me for ever. I also realised, like you have, that I am irreconcilably different from so-called "typical" (ie. the majority) of people.

What I have found the most exhausting aspect of this new information, is that I have re-evaluated my life history with a whole new paradigm. My life does make a lot more sense now, but the process is definitely energy intensive.

Another aspect which I find intense is trying to distinguish which aspects of my persona and behaviour are "caused" by AS, and which are not. This is taking some time to get over, even though I have realised it is not very productive, beyond a certain point.

well, I don't have any other revelations really! Just stick with it, keep reading wrong planet, books, etc.

Yes, I felt terribly shocked by my diagnosis. I had never thought there was anything fundamentally 'wrong' with me, and now I was told I had been born with this 'syndrome'. Every unique thing about me, evething I had chosen in life, every opinion and logical conclusion I had reached about the world, seemed now to have been genetically predetermined.

WrongPlanet.net really helped me a lot. So did a local aspie friendship group (we get together once a month as a group, and I am also friends with individuals in the group now).

Getting to know so many other aspies on the Internet (here, Twitter, and Facebook) and in person feels like I have found my lost tribe.

Two years after I was told I have Asperger's Syndrome, I am now a very happy person. Learning more about how my aspie mind and body works has helped me to optimise it. I revel in the advantages of my special aspie abilities, and I am not discouraged by the deficits which come with it. Many great people (like Albert Einstein) have been aspies.

Welcome. Enjoy who you are.

I was shocked and upset when I first realized that I have Asperger's. Then I chased an official diagnosis for two years and by then I was used to the idea.

Anything new has a sort of yo-yo effect on our emotions, I think. For example, I've been told that hockey players who win the Stanley Cup are all ecstatic but then the next day or week they crash and spend hours staring out the window. Also if you win big in the lottery, they give you a therapist to help you cope.

Life is easier when you're dealing with things that are true. I have a much clearer view of myself now, and I respect myself more.

Remember you're at the beginning of a road - go easy on yourself.

It appears this is quite common. I 'knew' I had AS from about 2007. I was formally diagnosed last August 2010 and this is still something I'm experiencing yes. I have a post diagnosis group session later today, I think there will be 4-6 of us and I'm pretty sure this is going to come up a lot.

when I was diagnosed (at age 23) I commit suicide.
I alway tried so hard to be normal, and then I was told it was never going to happen, doesn't matter how hard I tried.
People began to talk to me like I was Rainman, like I was a small child, but simultaneously said "oh you must be soooo inelligent".

I was diagnosed about 10 weeks ago. Yes, it is a bit overwhelming but it is what it is... I figure we will both settle into this at some point. Hopefully sooner than later. I just keep telling myself that nothing is really changed except my awareness and so far that has been a good thing.

I oscillate between relief and feeling utterly overwhelmed. Every time I think I'm gaining some perspective some new piece of information pops up and the turmoil bubbles up again.

Right now I am having a great deal of difficulty placing myself on the 'functional scale'. I see people here at WP that are clearly in need of more direct assistance than I, but conversely I feel a very thin wall between myself and a complete meltdown. I can't really get a handle on how much this impacts my life, my thinking and my problems versus how much is just me not trying hard enough. I have nearly perfected hiding my true self but at great cost. I am having to carefully and cautiously drop pretense because I am running out of energy to maintain the facade. But if it collapses all at once it would end badly.

It's very strange. I seem to be able to so clearly verbalize all of this - this is the high functioning part. But then the real world intervenes and I am lost again - playing at "real life", never really feeling like I know what is coming next, what is really wanted of me and how to just make it all work. In the real world I am barely holding it together.

Outwardly, I am high functioning, with a job, a family, a home, intelligence, talent - the whole package. But scratch the surface and what is beneath is an extraordinarily fragile thing, held together with bubble gum and duct tape. I am always one crisis away from everything falling apart.

My hope is that learning of this fundamental aspect of my neurology will give me new tools to genuinely be high functioning across multiple facets of my life. I am tired of pretending. I am existentially exhausted, I need stability and simplicity, not this life continually balanced on the edge of collapse. I suppose even if it means withdrawing somewhat from the rest of the world. This world is quite indifferent to me. My sanity is at stake and if it means living an "unproductive life" or a life on the margins, so be it.

I had mixed feelings about my DX as soon as it was made. I was relieved to finally have the "proof" of my condition I needed to get my employer to make adjustments in a job that was getting more Aspie-unfriendly and scary every year. But I didn't like the prospect of disclosing the DX to the employer.....I've never been good at confrontations, and I wasn't expecting them to like the news....I feared that they'd see it as an attack (the local management has a history of vindictive behaviour towards anybody they don't see as "enthusiastic").

Happily it turned out to be a bloodless coup, and the job no longer stresses me out like it was doing. The downside is that they don't seem very autism-aware and have largely limited their concessions to cutting me a bit of nonspecific slack here and there, so although I don't feel terrorised any more, there's little to exercise my intellect and I feel kind of useless here.

Mostly I think it's been the huge change in the way I see myself that has made me feel insecure.....after about 18 months of knowing, it's got a lot better, but I still get the feeling that I used to think I knew myself but was wrong. I wasn't diagnosed till quite late in life, so I guess there was a lot more self-knowledge to unpick. It's been pretty daunting to find that the things I used to feel sure of can collapse under my feet. I started wondering how many people I'd upset over the years with Aspie social ineptitude, and it kind of affected my self-confidence. It feels like a loss of status, as if they're now basing my job on my weaknesses instead of focussing on my strengths. So instead of giving me a quiet room of my own where I could focus and work intellectual wonders, they just leave me in more or less the usual environment and lower their expectations of me.

There's been no support for me except for these nonspecific job adjustments, WP, and an hour's post-diagnostic session with the psychologist who diagnosed me. And sadly my wife moved out on me a few days after the DX....her expressed reasons were external matters that were outside my control, which never really made sense, so it's been hard for me to shake off the idea that it may really have been more to do with my condition, and I guess it must have been a blow to my self-confidence as a reasonably good spouse, which always was brittle, after several failed relationships.

I still believe I'm better off knowing though. AS-awareness has made sense of loads of seemingly inexplicable things I've felt and done over the years.......it's a very hard thing to take on board because it's a spectrum disorder in which nothing is clear-cut - the very thing Aspies have difficulty with - but there's lots of time. Logically it's got to be good to get my hands on the truth and to see things in a new and very real light, but emotionally it can be quite overwhelming, especially in the early stages.

So I agree it sucks in many respects. If you can trust them enough, reach out to friends for emotional and practical support. I didn't, because I have trouble with reaching out and burdening folks, with trusting them to care for long enough to do any good. But life isn't so bad these days for all that.

Yes. I now know *why* my ship has been sinking, yet is still continues to sink.


I like to say I had set a pace I had thought might work ... but weariness now overwhelms me.


No major complaints here, yet that does seem to be where I have ended up.

Thankyou so much everyone for your thoughtful responses. I honestly had no idea that I was going to feel like this after the diagnosis.

Wavefreak, everything that you said is exactly how I am feeling. I feel this enormous need to strip off the heavy masks that I've been wearing around to please everyone else, that have left me so exhausted and really unsure of who I really am.

I was not overwhelmed as I had always perceived myself as different from society. My AS is mild, so I am able to be very knowledgable on certain subjects, but I am also able to commune with people in a sub-normal manner.