Receiving a diagnosis in later life

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I wanted to share this very well put together article on receiving a diagnosis in later life.

I feel it will be of particular interest to those on the more high functioning end of the spectrum and especially for those who have faced an existential abyss immediately following diagnosis.

My experience was that after a lifetime of unconsciously overcompensating for such an integral part of my being the diagnosis took some time to integrate.

Here's the article:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8114403/

Thank you for posting this quaker. It voiced issues that have been ignored for decades.

It was very meaningful to me. The impact of mistreatment from others on me was to reshape me into a perfectionist. While that had some advantages, it was (and still is to some extent) an exhausting way to live, in consistent survival mode.

It surprises and saddens me that it has taken so many decades for the older cohort to be even minimally recognised and validated, and how rarely we see studies like the one you have posted. I hope it will inspire further more complex studies as a topic for a Master's degree.

The chronic bullying of AS people both diagnosed or not, needs some high grade studies too, including perspectives from bullies as well as the bullied - which would probably be difficult, but not impossible.

The healing impact of validation by insights such as this study demonstrates applies to AS people of all ages.

its from 2019, the year I got my diagnosis as a 68 year old here in the USA. I can relate to so much of this. thanks for the link.

I’m 69, and haven’t been formally diagnosed, but I just realized it recently (like, a few weeks ago). I was given a link to a site called Embrace Autism, which has a number of screening questionnaires. I took 6 of them, and every one scored well into the autistic range. I consider that pretty definitive. So many things make more sense now. My ex-wife told me that she and the kids have been “pretty sure” about it for years. I’m also transgender, and I think I probably also have ADHD. Everything seems to line up.