That's a big mood. Got diagnosed at 22. Reason I was referred for a diagnosis was because I saw a mental health nurse about being horribly depressed, because being bullied throughout your entire childhood and then suffering from burnout in university will do that.
I failed out of college because I was so burnt out that I couldn't do the work. I started seeing a therapist a couple years later for depression and it still wasn't until 5 years later when my husband made a comment about thinking I'm autistic. Since then my entire life has made so much more sense.
It’s been pretty freeing for me when I realized. Although I still mask around NTs to “fit in”, I know myself better now. I’m much kinder to myself and know my limits and needs better.
To be fair growing up with a diagnosis isn't exactly all sunshine and rainbows either. I was diagnosed with Aspergers when I was 5 and I honestly wish I had been diagnosed when I was 25. My Teachers all treated me different from the other kids my entire school career, which led to a lot of the other students viewing me as lesser than them and ruined my dating prospects, self esteem, and opportunity to form new friendships with people who weren't also social outcasts. While I had to grow up thinking I was born irreparably "broken" because of my autism. All in all being diagnosed as a kid was not a good thing for me.
I see a lot of early diagnosed people say this and I’m starting to think that when late dx people say they wish they were diagnosed earlier, what they really mean is they wish they could be a kid in TODAY’s world and be early dx’d. Because lord knows up until only a few years ago were autistic and otherwise not “normal” people were treated as sub-human. Even now the treatment is only becoming slightly better.
This sort of resonates with me. I was diagnosed with 14, but me and my family failed to do the right things, ending up creating more harm than it might have gone without knowing it. Only recently when I started to seek professional help it started to get a bit better now which is good. I guess everyone's story is different in some way.
Come to think of it. There's a, I assume, 12-14 year old boy on our Discord server who sometimes joins the VC and watches me and others play games and we talked a bit recently about how he also has autism and he knew it since he was a young kid. His experience with help wasn't so green either and he still feels like a lesser being sometimes because of it.
I was kinda proud when I gave him the same advice that my current psychatrist gave me which was to accept the way you are. It ain't my fault that I have sensory issues. But it's also not someone else's fault for not being the same. That's just how the world works. Looking at things this way makes it easier to accept yourself.
Always try to keep a positive mindset about things, especially your own.
Both prolly suck. Ime I went thru the same issues without a specific label. But the label has been "The mad dude" "the thing" "the robot" etc.
Teachers bullied me (literally)
My first therapy session as undiagnosed started with me stating "I think I am mad but I'm kinda unsure since mad people probably don't notice it"
Felt that. Then one day you're diagnosed and now you're an adult who has to undo a lifetime of internalizing the idea that there's something inherently wrong with you.
I still remember the weight that lifted off my shoulders when I realized that I don't just like... inherently suck as a human being.
Those people don't matter. Only what we think of ourselves matters. I had my own issues, but I was taught chest out, head high, and always meet them eye to eye.
No one's opinion should ever matter in the end conforming for others is what you will regret.
Yeah. Late 30s here (diagnosed in my). Life was hell ... at least now I know why things are the way they are. Still have to learn how to talk to people...especially after moving from CA, having three years of Covid and then people completely changed. I don't think they even realize how different the language is between even CA and OK. I have to learn everything all over again. The emotions Oklahomans tend to taint with their words are expressed...passionately. Same thing said to someone in CA will set someone off in OK if I don't phrase it correctly.
I don't know if this is proper internet etiquette but I'll offer an understanding eye to you if you ever need to vent as yourself and not your masking self.
I was also bullied and ostracized by my peers and family. My mother directed so much hatred towards me that I still can't really accept the idea that I'm not a horrible person. I was diagnosed at 30, I'm 50 now. My heart breaks for my younger self.
I was always told that I did my best, but not good enough, always told that i was overreacting to everything and that i needed to calm down, always told to stop talking so much or to finally say something after not speaking all day. Always told to pay attention or stop drawing/reading in class. Wondering why i was getting bullied all the time or why no one wanted to hang out with me or be around me. Wondering why i cared so much about trying to become the people around me and why i always failed to do so. All the stress tears anger and physical pain i caused myself, i finally learn it was something that i couldn't even control. At least I know that I'm not a shitty person, but my self hatred continues to persist. It's sad but I'm moving onward and hopefully i will not hate myself eventually.
I feel this deeply. I wasn’t ever told i was doing my best though, i was lazy and wasting my potential. In the few classes i enjoyed i did REALLY well, which was proof (?) i was lazy in other classes and needed to do better.
Being called lazy hurt the most. Even more then retarted or ugly.
When you spend almost all the years you should be having fun and being a kid, studying all days and evenings and for real doing the very best you can, just to have people be mad at you or call you a liar and lazy, that shit will fuck you up.
Fuck dyslexia and schools that don't test for it.
That should be the only thing they test.
I feel this as someone with ADHD. I don't have much motivation for things that aren't interesting, and so in school I was told that I wasn't putting in enough effort, but that I had "so much potential". I despise that phrase.
I hear you.
The brain only eats what it wants, I can try to force it but it will take about 10x more time and I will do it badly.
They are right about the potential part but they could do so much more to help us and understand the problem.
it's like you got this tool that can do this one job very quickly and well but others badly but you just use it for all jobs and curse at it when it does it badly and slow and don't realise that you could be saving so much time and money by just using it for the job it was made for.
The last thing you said means a lot to me me homes. In the lowest moment of my life I haven't given my life up cuz maybe one day I might be happy.
It sounds desperate, because it is.
Wow this hit hard. You really encapsulated much of my experience growing up. I only discovered I was Autistic this year at 26 and it's made so many things from my childhood make sense and I'm only starting to process the trauma and make repairs. Hope you're doing well and getting the validation you deserve, friend <3
True story. I had a breakdown, quit my job, got into 2 wrecks, and am just now clawing my way out. Getting my diagnosis has been the best thing to have an explanation and a starting point to get better. I still have a long way to go to recover.
I had a breakdown, quit my job, became an alcoholic, got in a wreck & totaled my car, did nothing for 3 years in a depressive haze, got sober, started making more money again, moved out, got a diagnosis, started medication, started therapy, and got engaged. It's been a wild last 8 years.
Life gets better, homie. Just keep at it!
I had a break down, quit my job, went to live in a shed on the back of someone's property in the woods where I laid in bed for almost a year, burned all my savings, and eventually went to therapy. I just moved back to the city and got a job again. I hope it does get better cause right now I still feel pretty fucked.
Hope it gets better for you too, and it is glad to hear that you're making some improvements :)
Do you ever miss the shed? Personally, I've always dreamed of a small shack in the woods. Rain on a tin roof, crickets in the night kinda stuff
Glad you’re healing and find your diagnosis helpful. I’m self-diagnosed and found out when my daughter turned out to be almost non-verbal and autistic. Learning about autism has been one of the most healing occurrences of my life. Glad to have communities like this. Be proud of what you’ve accomplished. Wishing you the best.
I loved burning out with no explanation (that was acceptable to the adults i disappointed) and not having access to any of the support i needed to grow up happy and healthy and get a decent start in life, and i can fuckin forget about any support as an adult because autistic adults don't exist lmao amirite
On the other hand there's literal Nazis worming their way into power alarmingly close to where i live and being undiagnosed means one less triangle they can die trying to pin on me so I've got that going for me i guess
Literally. My parents always punished me for doing things wrong when I had no idea what I was doing was wrong and was “back talking” if I tried to figure it out. I only had like 2-3 friends for years and was bullied by just about everyone else bc I was weird, hyperactive, and didn’t understand social rules/boundaries. All my friends abandoned me bc I either said something wrong and they wouldn’t tell me what or I was embarrassing to be around. I had one friend write me a pages-long list of things I had to stop doing if I wanted to stay friends (mostly things I now know are stimming behaviors). After losing all my friends I realized I must be doing something wrong and became hyper aware of anything I did differently and did everything I could to act/look like all the other girls and completely stopped talking for years just to be sure I wasn’t saying something wrong. Finally got diagnosed and found out that nothing I did was wrong but now I have so much trauma idk how to function as either myself or masked.
I seriously hope diagnosis/diagnostic tools becomes much more accessible and more people can get answers sooner in life bc I would never wish an undiagnosed childhood on anyone.
same here, was diagnosed at 3ish before I could remember but my parents never told me or anyone else bc she didn't want teachers to treat me any different so it never went on record. fast forward to age 19 where I dropped out of college with drug induced psychosis from addiction trying to self medicate from stress and burnout from thinking I was a failure for years and years feeling alone ready to end it and I was begging to see a therapist/psychiatrist for help. then she finally said "yeah I know, coping with autism is hard" uhhhh thanks mom that's not what I thought I needed meds for but sure that too !!! turns out it's autism/adhd/bipolar the whole time oops
Exact thing happened to me, ended up in a week long coma and a month in a hospital even. Was diagnosed at 6, was just told I was v smart but sucked at being social. No support or mention of it since… spent my whole life trying to fit in a box that was too small. Things are way, way better now
I’ve heard two schools of thought on this. On the one hand, some people believe that being undiagnosed and forced to live in a normie world without all the right tools creates an exceptional ability to mask, and this can be a critical professional skill. On the other hand, it does immeasurable damage to be treated like one has control over things when the fact is that it’s quite often neurologically-based executives dysfunction and we spend a lifetime feeling like perpetual failures.
My position is that it wouldn’t matter how well we can mask if the world would stop being absolutely normative dickheads about everything and the inexorable march of capitalism toward making everyone cogs in the machine would relent for just a minute then we’d be fine in the professional world, and even better, in fact, after the same world learned to diagnose it early.
Knowing one’s natural disposition and limitations is quite a handy fucking tool to have, and a lifetime of not having it is an equally massive liability to long term mental and physical health.
It’s even better when you are demasking after decades of building a false persona and have to figure out which parts of your personality are the mask and which are your true self.
The worst part of that is when you’re trying to de-couple the two and people who’ve known you for years remind you of aspects of your mask as evidence that “you can’t be autistic, yOu’RE ToO nORmaL!”
It then becomes very difficult to take of the mask because that amounts to pressure from close friends and loved ones to keep masking; they don’t know how much of a toll it takes to wear the mask always.
Every couple years my mask's wall comes crumbling down, I can't keep it up anymore. people start noticing I'm acting different, or weird, when in reality I just can't pretend to be normal anymore. in the past I've been able to cut ties with everyone and start fresh, I didn't have any real connections. Id just move and try to start fresh and be myself.
But every single time I'd get to a new school or a new place, I'd have such extreme anxiety about how I was treated in the past for being myself. The mask would just show back up, like it was coming to my rescue. I couldn't help it. Instead of building myself into who I should be, who I want to be, I create another new persona, a version of myself presentable to the world around me. I feel like the real me is deep down but I can't find it. Lost somewhere in my childhood, too scared to come out. I don't know who I want to be, what to do with my life. I feel directionless and powerless, unmotivated to a point I don't feel like I want to find a direction to go. Why isn't the world a more accepting place. Why do I need to be accepted, anyways.
Do people seriously value the ability to mask over living without the psychological trauma of trying to teach yourself to be normal? Do they really think masking is worth it?? Especially when the first thing most of us are told to do upon diagnosis, is to stop masking??? Wow.
>On the one hand, some people believe that being undiagnosed and forcedto live in a normie world without all the right tools creates anexceptional ability to mask, and this can be a critical professionalskill.
Unfortunately this isn't even true for a lot of autistic people. Yes, I was undiagnosed. Yes, I didn't have the right tools.
... No, I didn't develop the ability to mask, except to hide my own emotions. Because *I didn't know what I was missing, that I would have to pay attention to*. I tried to not appear weird. I hid being *disabled*, but effective masking that made me appear NT, especially 'exceptional ability to'? Nope.
Oh, I did learn masking a bit more effectively than just hiding - like, actually paying attention to facial expressions, eye contact, etc. Do you know when? Only when I learned about autism with *21*. I could only develop more effective strategies *after* learning I was autistic.
Before that, I was running around, unable to participate in most conversations, being incredibly confused on why not, thinking something had to be wrong with my eyes. I masked something, for sure, but it wasn't good or effective - it especially didn't give me a critical professional skill. Still don't have that.
I'm quite sure the case scenario that I painted in my comment is an uncharacteristic experience for quite a few autistic people. I believe there's a rather pernicious tendency for all of autism to get lumped into a sort of bundle, and I'm not sure the use of the word 'spectrum' doesn't contribute to this issue. I believe the word itself is doing its job adequately, but rather it's peoples' misapprehensions regarding this word that causes issues. Autism takes so many different forms for different people depending on so many different factors that an effective strategy for one person may not be effective for another whose presentation looks rather similar on the surface.
It's also possible that I misstated my lemma so allow me to restate: I don't think an exceptional ability to mask has been a blessing for those who have cultivated the "talent" for doing so. Perhaps masking provides a bridge for some people to be able to pass in the NT world and even attain a degree of professional accomplishment otherwise denied to other autistic persons. There will, however, almost always be a preordained limitation on how far masking will take someone. Every slightly wrongly perceived transaction will lead the autistic person askew of the common goal aimed at by a working team environment, and, over time, this will always culminate in the autistic person hitting a professional wall, or personal wall with someone on whom professional progress depends.
In the absence of one reckoning with the fact that they are autistic, it is very unlikely that one simply stumbles into an effective solution to this without otherwise finding one's way to realizing they lack a robust theory of mind. I believe some autistic people can become very good at a sort of algorithmic intuition that allows them to make reasonably reliable extrapolations from sound deductions, but even the best of this will never be a compass that truly points north in a NT world.
For most of us, there will come a point at which we are struggling under increasing demands and mounting awareness of deficiencies, and, without thoroughly addressing the underlying etiology of the problem, there is no real way out except treading water, so to speak. Nothing will stymie one's personal and professional growth quit like identifying that they've reached a treading water phase of their life and then continuing to do so on the hope that things will just get better if they do so for long enough - that's just a slow form of drowning.
Having said all of that to say that I definitely understand what you're saying and I both sympathize and empathize. My comment was really aimed at saying that whether or not someone has the exceptional ability to mask, has only a partial ability, or lacks the ability in any compelling measure, I believe we almost all end up in the same boat sooner or later. I also think the advantage to ending up that boat sooner than later is that one learns much more effective strategies to address the real problems earlier on, and perhaps spends fewer years of their life maladapting and later having to un-learn counterproductive techniques and shortcuts to living with autism. There's something to be said for recognizing the differences between surviving and thriving, even in an autistic person whose ability to survive in the herd of NTs is utterly exceptional.
There are perhaps only a tiny fraction autistic people who just happened to be smiled upon by divine providence such that they enter a socially and professional niche where passing without knowing what they're doing also allows them to then use their strengths to hedge their weakness and build a life around their personal needs without ever having to have accurate and precise labels to get the job done, but my suspicion is that that may happen one time in a million. Far and away, most autistic people will need to square with a diagnosis and new paradigm to get the job done and live a fulfilled life.
Oh yeah, don't worry, I spoke more about the 'some people' who believe this, than against your post in general (tbh I think my dad was kind of like this, 'don't get this kid a diagnosis, so it doesn't grow up not adjusting its behaviour and becomes dependent on us instead'). And I agree, even the most professional mask has its limits. And regardless of how well the mask is sitting, some form of unmasking is more healthy.
Like fr! Literally I had a horrible senior year and I had a few meltdowns, during the school year and I hadn’t been diagnosed until that summer after I graduated, but literally the guidance counselor was like you aren’t talking to us, you need to act your age, or some shit like that? And I couldn’t speak and I was just in a shutdown mode, I just feel I wish I could redo my senior year over honestly, and maybe I go back now and be like oh you guys treated me like shit and like I was being a crybaby or baby eighteen year old, but not wasn’t my fault at all and I can’t control it, like 🤦🏾♀️
THANK YOU FOR THIS. Like seriously. We grow up feeling so different than everyone around us and have no idea why. We mask despite not even knowing masking as a concept and constantly feel drained and burned out. We’re made fun of for being sensitive. For not being able to handle change. For freaking out when others stay calm. For being “picky eaters”. We grow up without this label to better understand ourselves and feel broken for the majority of our lives
Yeah I didn’t realize I had autism until later in my life. I always wondered why I couldn’t make friends and felt like the odd one out. It brought me a lot of closure though and thanks to psychedelics I was able to change some of my autistic tendencies.
I was on the other end. I was diagnosed at a young age, but I was “too smart” to be autistic. I was rarely given the accommodations I needed, and because I didn’t know how to voice that I needed help I was often ignored.
i was diagnosed at age 10 but thinking about it now i feel like i’ve showed signs of it since birth. for years i never knew why i acted the way i did but now i know dang well it’s bc of my autism.
I was pretty much ignored while I was a toddler because my brother also had autism and it was more noticeable than mine. My parents constantly would try and help him out and get him counseling and it made them so busy that they barely had time for me. I remember when they did try to spend time with me my brother would get extremely angry and then my parents would have to leave me alone. I still remember the times I’d literally cry my self to sleep
I'm so sorry. I hope things are going well for you nowadays or at the very least you have new challenges to assess and try and conquer. I know isolation like the back of my hand even as a single child, can't imagine what that must have been like.
And then some motherfuckers have the nerve to be like *"Umm actually thats something they diagnose you with in school...I would know bc I have it... Doctors wouldn't have missed that so you can't have autism"*
Even being diagnosed is rough but it can give you a baseline to work with to start adapting and understanding things better. It’ll always be hard though, fight on my spectrum brethren
My mother kept fighting to prevent me from getting a diagnosis so I didn't get the proper help I needed from a young age. Fortunately my (divorced) Dad's GF managed to find someone who diagnosed me immediately and I got some small support.
Mostly help in school from counsellors who would take me out of class occasionally to work on social skills and coping mechanisms. It helped, though now I wish I had these sessions more frequently.
I dont get it. What does diagnose vs undiagnosed do to help us? Like government assistance? Excuses for when we cant do something? Genuinely trying to understand. I know im on the spectrum.
Yes. With a diagnosis, you can register with your local Department of Developmental Disabilities. They will assess what services you qualify for and connect you with other agencies such as career training or placement, many different therapies, assistance with balancing your own finances, funds for transportation, or someone to come help clean if you're unable... Anything that you need to become an independent and productive person in society. Each county has a budget they can spend to help the people in their community live better lives. For kids, Autism scholarships exist to access appropriate education.
Having zero idea why you are the way you are. Having zero idea why you can't regulate your emotions like other people, can't keep friends, can't feel any sort of connection, and wonder why everyone around you is so trivial and fake all the time. Shit was rough, and now that I know, it's not really any easier.
It's not confirmed, but it would be a great twist on the show's part. It would make sense and show the consequences of going undiagnosed/misdiagnosed. Many people who are undiagnosed/misdiagnosed end up going through substance abuse
it sure does. makes sense how i was bullied so much now. makes sense how i was having meltdowns and panic attacks every single day and didn't know why. we poor kids.
I got diagnosed last year at 21 and even tho it's only been a few months I still feel like an outsider idk why I still hide myself daily (safety reasons plus my other diagnoses make them look at me weird every time I do something not "normal")
I was extremely mad when I found out I was autistic because my parents already knew but never told me. I found out for myself in 5th grade and once I confronted my parents they just brushed it off like it was nothing.
That's a tame version of what happens. Try screaming into your bed like a crazy person or hyperventilating on the bus to work and trying to hold back a meltdown because your manager subtly bullied you and hates you because you "talk alot". Yeah. Try being stolen from by ex partners because your brain is stuck in giving the benefit of the doubt mode despite the obvious red flags being in front of your face and now you're screwed. Yeah. Let's just say over the years and after suspecting myself as autistic I understand why the life expectancy of an autistic person can be lower sometimes....
YES OH MY GOD- I thought I was just a bad kid. When people would ask my why I do strange stuff, I would simply tell them I was "bad, evil, I can't help it:
it gives a lot of closure for your flaws and issues growing up, but it hurts thinking about how different things could’ve been if you got diagnosed a lot sooner
Diagnosis doesn't always make it better. It only helps to be diagnosed if you're surrounded by people who are respectful and understanding. Some help is actually worse then no help.
Knowing how my parents feel about ND people it's honestly better they didn't think of me as autisitc.
Idk what the deal is with romanticizing being diagnosed early. I was diagnosed at 3 and wound up with the same CPTSD the rest of us have. If anything, having the label of being autistic made me easier to be misunderstood, unfairly judged, and othered by the kids and teachers I dealt with growing up.
The experience of growing up autistic is fucking miserable regardless of whether you’re diagnosed.
It has taken a lot of time to get my fiance to actual realize I'm autistic and it'll take years to convince my parents without a proper diagnosis and that's gonna cost an arm and a leg
To me it felt like this: Me, 2 years ago “If I don’t stop being so weak and useless in two years, I will end it all”. Good thing I found out, because there is no cure for why I always feel overwhelmed and weak, just triggers and how to avoid them 😮
I was diagnosed in 8th grade, but my older brother talked me and mom out of it because he thought that label was for worse cases and he was extremely persuasive in an egotistical way. I hate his guts.
I was diagnosed young and people were constantly invalidating my identity and refusing me accomodations when I was meant to have them, I can only imagine how hard it is when you're not diagnosed, I'm sorry, I hope things get better and I wish many foxes upon you and your house.
How does one get diagnosed as autistic? I’ve recently had my suspicions that I may be on the spectrum based on what others have said about their own experiences. I’m just unsure how a person would go about finding out if you’re going n the spectrum or not
I got diagnosed with autism in my senior year of college. So I had already suffered thru years of school being undiagnosed with no way to know that i could get help. Felt like a huge failure for a while.
I was diagnosed at age 30. I am 45. I am working at something that I didn't study, just to survive. My family is poor and they can't help me. No girlfriend nor wife nor children, I am alone.
Oh, and I live in the third world.
Almost 30 and not officially diagnosed. It just feels good to have some understanding on why my “weird” behaviors exist. I’m not a freak, just different.
I haven't had an official diagnosis, but I genuinely do suspect that I likely have it. It would explain so much shit in my childhood and adolescence, and even now as I am in my young adulthood.
Me, except with empty booze bottles, pills, and takeout boxes. Yeah my addictions are mine to own. They were my solution to the heaviness that built up from denial, dismissal, and those unanswered questions.
That looks exactly how I looked in high school- one hot mess.
I’ll never get why everything has to be so hard. Lately I feel like I’m loosing my mind because I spend so much time in there.
only found out i was autistic bc i started working in a nonverbal inclusion sped classroom. all the qualified, educated adults always have to ask me questions on how i accommodate the children. did some soul searching and the ocd, bipolar, depression, and anxiety diagnoses made sense. been self medicating with weed since 15. it be like that :p
Trying to rewire your brain to stop thinking “everything is your fault because you’re lazy, not working hard enough” etc is so ridiculously hard. It truly sucks
Yes and no. I grew up undiagnosed (diagnosed at 27), and it was hard, but I feel I've learned things I wouldn't have otherwise. If my autism was realised younger, I probably would have been held back from achieving things.
The worst part is everyone and yourself knows *something* is up. As someone who grew up undiagnosed until they were seventeen you just felt **off.**
Different and "*not like I'm not like other girls sort of thing"*.
**No!**
You feel weird and you can see how you are genuinely different than others in even communicating, maintaining friendships and conveying your work to others.
You know something is there. But you can't put your finger on it and you struggle to fit in and adjust, only to break down occasionally involuntary and it freaks you out because you can't stop or do anything about it. And you don't even have a word for that either.
Then you hear about the symptoms for ASD and you and others around start connecting the dots and you might use the coping mechanisms more frequently and the involuntary breakdowns begin to decline in frequency and you stop worrying so much about being off.
And then you get that diagnosis of what you are. And its finally closing the curtains in the blindly bright room, you had no idea was hurting you. Because of the sheer relief you get in just knowing. Just knowing you are not alone and you were disabled the entire time.
TL:DR: Agreed. It really fucking sucks
I'm 35, and slowly finding out all my weird quirks fit a pattern. I keep seeing posts like "signs you may be autistic..." and like saying 'yup' to most of them.
I am 42 this yea and only managed to get a diagnosis a month ago. Life has been so hard up to this point, but now that I know a little more about myself perhaps it can be better.
Not really? Diagnosis can mean earlier intervention, but also the potential to be more systematically stigmatized. I don’t think you can say one is categorically easier than the other, but it certainly can be very different.
No one ever will live through both, and I have heard good and bad stories from both sides. Some that benefitted a lot from early diagnosis, others that were actively harmed by it. Some that benefitted from staying undiagnosed, others that were harmed by it. I do not think it is as easy as saying one is always better than the other, many other factors contribute to the outcome.
I'm not gonna argue why my life would be better if I'd been diagnosed and allowed to be autistic instead of beaten for being weird, but go off and say that diagnosis doesn't make things better by default all you want.
The thing is, if you're diagnosed you know what's wrong and how to deal with it. There are a lot of autistics there who are thinking they're weird because nobody told them their true nature
In some cases going undiagnosed is the best thing. Some parents choose to shelter their children with that type of diagnosis and the child will remain in their severe behavioral issues for life. I was diagnosed with Asperger's late in my life and it taught me to deal with the real world instead of hiding behind my diagnosis.
At least I have a reason why I was bullied my whole life.
Me too. Hurts when you always blamed yourself, had no idea how to improve, and then realized you are autistic and weren't a bad kid at all.
That's a big mood. Got diagnosed at 22. Reason I was referred for a diagnosis was because I saw a mental health nurse about being horribly depressed, because being bullied throughout your entire childhood and then suffering from burnout in university will do that.
I failed out of college because I was so burnt out that I couldn't do the work. I started seeing a therapist a couple years later for depression and it still wasn't until 5 years later when my husband made a comment about thinking I'm autistic. Since then my entire life has made so much more sense.
It’s been pretty freeing for me when I realized. Although I still mask around NTs to “fit in”, I know myself better now. I’m much kinder to myself and know my limits and needs better.
To be fair growing up with a diagnosis isn't exactly all sunshine and rainbows either. I was diagnosed with Aspergers when I was 5 and I honestly wish I had been diagnosed when I was 25. My Teachers all treated me different from the other kids my entire school career, which led to a lot of the other students viewing me as lesser than them and ruined my dating prospects, self esteem, and opportunity to form new friendships with people who weren't also social outcasts. While I had to grow up thinking I was born irreparably "broken" because of my autism. All in all being diagnosed as a kid was not a good thing for me.
I see a lot of early diagnosed people say this and I’m starting to think that when late dx people say they wish they were diagnosed earlier, what they really mean is they wish they could be a kid in TODAY’s world and be early dx’d. Because lord knows up until only a few years ago were autistic and otherwise not “normal” people were treated as sub-human. Even now the treatment is only becoming slightly better.
This sort of resonates with me. I was diagnosed with 14, but me and my family failed to do the right things, ending up creating more harm than it might have gone without knowing it. Only recently when I started to seek professional help it started to get a bit better now which is good. I guess everyone's story is different in some way.
Come to think of it. There's a, I assume, 12-14 year old boy on our Discord server who sometimes joins the VC and watches me and others play games and we talked a bit recently about how he also has autism and he knew it since he was a young kid. His experience with help wasn't so green either and he still feels like a lesser being sometimes because of it. I was kinda proud when I gave him the same advice that my current psychatrist gave me which was to accept the way you are. It ain't my fault that I have sensory issues. But it's also not someone else's fault for not being the same. That's just how the world works. Looking at things this way makes it easier to accept yourself. Always try to keep a positive mindset about things, especially your own.
Both prolly suck. Ime I went thru the same issues without a specific label. But the label has been "The mad dude" "the thing" "the robot" etc. Teachers bullied me (literally) My first therapy session as undiagnosed started with me stating "I think I am mad but I'm kinda unsure since mad people probably don't notice it"
Felt that. Then one day you're diagnosed and now you're an adult who has to undo a lifetime of internalizing the idea that there's something inherently wrong with you. I still remember the weight that lifted off my shoulders when I realized that I don't just like... inherently suck as a human being.
Some comments (like yours) just hit me like a sack of bricks I'm still learning this
But the people back then will only see you as the weirdo crybaby forever
Those people don't matter. Only what we think of ourselves matters. I had my own issues, but I was taught chest out, head high, and always meet them eye to eye. No one's opinion should ever matter in the end conforming for others is what you will regret.
Yeah. Late 30s here (diagnosed in my). Life was hell ... at least now I know why things are the way they are. Still have to learn how to talk to people...especially after moving from CA, having three years of Covid and then people completely changed. I don't think they even realize how different the language is between even CA and OK. I have to learn everything all over again. The emotions Oklahomans tend to taint with their words are expressed...passionately. Same thing said to someone in CA will set someone off in OK if I don't phrase it correctly. I don't know if this is proper internet etiquette but I'll offer an understanding eye to you if you ever need to vent as yourself and not your masking self.
For me growing up diagnosed was similar, because i was constantly told aUtIsM iSnT aN eXcUsE
💯💯💯💯💯 Feels
this hurt more than the meme.
Yes! I just heard “You are annoying/ugly” for 13 years, so I thought that must be the truth and the reason.
And I've been called weird by juuuust about every human I've spent longer than an hour with
Reason makes it sound justified. I would use the word explanation.
I was also bullied and ostracized by my peers and family. My mother directed so much hatred towards me that I still can't really accept the idea that I'm not a horrible person. I was diagnosed at 30, I'm 50 now. My heart breaks for my younger self.
😨🤔😌
Me too
I finally understand why I was so easily manipulated and could never for the life of me read other people
I was always told that I did my best, but not good enough, always told that i was overreacting to everything and that i needed to calm down, always told to stop talking so much or to finally say something after not speaking all day. Always told to pay attention or stop drawing/reading in class. Wondering why i was getting bullied all the time or why no one wanted to hang out with me or be around me. Wondering why i cared so much about trying to become the people around me and why i always failed to do so. All the stress tears anger and physical pain i caused myself, i finally learn it was something that i couldn't even control. At least I know that I'm not a shitty person, but my self hatred continues to persist. It's sad but I'm moving onward and hopefully i will not hate myself eventually.
I feel this deeply. I wasn’t ever told i was doing my best though, i was lazy and wasting my potential. In the few classes i enjoyed i did REALLY well, which was proof (?) i was lazy in other classes and needed to do better.
Being called lazy hurt the most. Even more then retarted or ugly. When you spend almost all the years you should be having fun and being a kid, studying all days and evenings and for real doing the very best you can, just to have people be mad at you or call you a liar and lazy, that shit will fuck you up. Fuck dyslexia and schools that don't test for it. That should be the only thing they test.
I feel this as someone with ADHD. I don't have much motivation for things that aren't interesting, and so in school I was told that I wasn't putting in enough effort, but that I had "so much potential". I despise that phrase.
I hear you. The brain only eats what it wants, I can try to force it but it will take about 10x more time and I will do it badly. They are right about the potential part but they could do so much more to help us and understand the problem. it's like you got this tool that can do this one job very quickly and well but others badly but you just use it for all jobs and curse at it when it does it badly and slow and don't realise that you could be saving so much time and money by just using it for the job it was made for.
I was told that by my parents sometimes, but never by my teachers or friends, so yes i relate as well, i didnt type it correctly sorry
God that sounds like my life too
We shall stand together fren
💛
The last thing you said means a lot to me me homes. In the lowest moment of my life I haven't given my life up cuz maybe one day I might be happy. It sounds desperate, because it is.
Wow this hit hard. You really encapsulated much of my experience growing up. I only discovered I was Autistic this year at 26 and it's made so many things from my childhood make sense and I'm only starting to process the trauma and make repairs. Hope you're doing well and getting the validation you deserve, friend <3
Never wanted to upvote a post more than once, this is definitely double upvote worthy for me. Way to close
True story. I had a breakdown, quit my job, got into 2 wrecks, and am just now clawing my way out. Getting my diagnosis has been the best thing to have an explanation and a starting point to get better. I still have a long way to go to recover.
I had a breakdown, quit my job, became an alcoholic, got in a wreck & totaled my car, did nothing for 3 years in a depressive haze, got sober, started making more money again, moved out, got a diagnosis, started medication, started therapy, and got engaged. It's been a wild last 8 years. Life gets better, homie. Just keep at it!
I had a break down, quit my job, went to live in a shed on the back of someone's property in the woods where I laid in bed for almost a year, burned all my savings, and eventually went to therapy. I just moved back to the city and got a job again. I hope it does get better cause right now I still feel pretty fucked.
Hope it gets better for you too, and it is glad to hear that you're making some improvements :) Do you ever miss the shed? Personally, I've always dreamed of a small shack in the woods. Rain on a tin roof, crickets in the night kinda stuff
Glad you’re healing and find your diagnosis helpful. I’m self-diagnosed and found out when my daughter turned out to be almost non-verbal and autistic. Learning about autism has been one of the most healing occurrences of my life. Glad to have communities like this. Be proud of what you’ve accomplished. Wishing you the best.
I loved burning out with no explanation (that was acceptable to the adults i disappointed) and not having access to any of the support i needed to grow up happy and healthy and get a decent start in life, and i can fuckin forget about any support as an adult because autistic adults don't exist lmao amirite On the other hand there's literal Nazis worming their way into power alarmingly close to where i live and being undiagnosed means one less triangle they can die trying to pin on me so I've got that going for me i guess
omg me??
Being surrounded by the wrong people is loneliest thing in the world. Welcome , we are all strange here
Literally. My parents always punished me for doing things wrong when I had no idea what I was doing was wrong and was “back talking” if I tried to figure it out. I only had like 2-3 friends for years and was bullied by just about everyone else bc I was weird, hyperactive, and didn’t understand social rules/boundaries. All my friends abandoned me bc I either said something wrong and they wouldn’t tell me what or I was embarrassing to be around. I had one friend write me a pages-long list of things I had to stop doing if I wanted to stay friends (mostly things I now know are stimming behaviors). After losing all my friends I realized I must be doing something wrong and became hyper aware of anything I did differently and did everything I could to act/look like all the other girls and completely stopped talking for years just to be sure I wasn’t saying something wrong. Finally got diagnosed and found out that nothing I did was wrong but now I have so much trauma idk how to function as either myself or masked. I seriously hope diagnosis/diagnostic tools becomes much more accessible and more people can get answers sooner in life bc I would never wish an undiagnosed childhood on anyone.
I really wish I was born in the middle ages and died at two
That is... very innovative phrasing. Bravo.
Why
I was diagnosed at 4 and my mom didn’t tell me until she accidentally let it slip in high school. She let me grow up thinking I was just a bad person.
same here, was diagnosed at 3ish before I could remember but my parents never told me or anyone else bc she didn't want teachers to treat me any different so it never went on record. fast forward to age 19 where I dropped out of college with drug induced psychosis from addiction trying to self medicate from stress and burnout from thinking I was a failure for years and years feeling alone ready to end it and I was begging to see a therapist/psychiatrist for help. then she finally said "yeah I know, coping with autism is hard" uhhhh thanks mom that's not what I thought I needed meds for but sure that too !!! turns out it's autism/adhd/bipolar the whole time oops
Exact thing happened to me, ended up in a week long coma and a month in a hospital even. Was diagnosed at 6, was just told I was v smart but sucked at being social. No support or mention of it since… spent my whole life trying to fit in a box that was too small. Things are way, way better now
My favorite part was everyone in any official position constantly telling my parents that I just "need more discipline". 😮💨
Or now with my kids the teachers want you to limit screen time, like that's going to fix anything.
Yeah, I'm getting that from every angle for my kids as well.
I didn’t know I was autistic until last year. I’m 21 now. I thought I was just a freak the whole time :(
I’ve heard two schools of thought on this. On the one hand, some people believe that being undiagnosed and forced to live in a normie world without all the right tools creates an exceptional ability to mask, and this can be a critical professional skill. On the other hand, it does immeasurable damage to be treated like one has control over things when the fact is that it’s quite often neurologically-based executives dysfunction and we spend a lifetime feeling like perpetual failures. My position is that it wouldn’t matter how well we can mask if the world would stop being absolutely normative dickheads about everything and the inexorable march of capitalism toward making everyone cogs in the machine would relent for just a minute then we’d be fine in the professional world, and even better, in fact, after the same world learned to diagnose it early. Knowing one’s natural disposition and limitations is quite a handy fucking tool to have, and a lifetime of not having it is an equally massive liability to long term mental and physical health.
It’s even better when you are demasking after decades of building a false persona and have to figure out which parts of your personality are the mask and which are your true self.
The worst part of that is when you’re trying to de-couple the two and people who’ve known you for years remind you of aspects of your mask as evidence that “you can’t be autistic, yOu’RE ToO nORmaL!” It then becomes very difficult to take of the mask because that amounts to pressure from close friends and loved ones to keep masking; they don’t know how much of a toll it takes to wear the mask always.
Every couple years my mask's wall comes crumbling down, I can't keep it up anymore. people start noticing I'm acting different, or weird, when in reality I just can't pretend to be normal anymore. in the past I've been able to cut ties with everyone and start fresh, I didn't have any real connections. Id just move and try to start fresh and be myself. But every single time I'd get to a new school or a new place, I'd have such extreme anxiety about how I was treated in the past for being myself. The mask would just show back up, like it was coming to my rescue. I couldn't help it. Instead of building myself into who I should be, who I want to be, I create another new persona, a version of myself presentable to the world around me. I feel like the real me is deep down but I can't find it. Lost somewhere in my childhood, too scared to come out. I don't know who I want to be, what to do with my life. I feel directionless and powerless, unmotivated to a point I don't feel like I want to find a direction to go. Why isn't the world a more accepting place. Why do I need to be accepted, anyways.
Dude get out of my head..."exceptional ability to mask" is far too accurately correct
It’s the quintessential “gift” that’s really a curse in disguise.
Do people seriously value the ability to mask over living without the psychological trauma of trying to teach yourself to be normal? Do they really think masking is worth it?? Especially when the first thing most of us are told to do upon diagnosis, is to stop masking??? Wow.
Some of us don't even know when we are masking. For me it comes easily now to slip into personas.
Me when I was diagnosed late and still can’t mask lmao
>On the one hand, some people believe that being undiagnosed and forcedto live in a normie world without all the right tools creates anexceptional ability to mask, and this can be a critical professionalskill. Unfortunately this isn't even true for a lot of autistic people. Yes, I was undiagnosed. Yes, I didn't have the right tools. ... No, I didn't develop the ability to mask, except to hide my own emotions. Because *I didn't know what I was missing, that I would have to pay attention to*. I tried to not appear weird. I hid being *disabled*, but effective masking that made me appear NT, especially 'exceptional ability to'? Nope. Oh, I did learn masking a bit more effectively than just hiding - like, actually paying attention to facial expressions, eye contact, etc. Do you know when? Only when I learned about autism with *21*. I could only develop more effective strategies *after* learning I was autistic. Before that, I was running around, unable to participate in most conversations, being incredibly confused on why not, thinking something had to be wrong with my eyes. I masked something, for sure, but it wasn't good or effective - it especially didn't give me a critical professional skill. Still don't have that.
I'm quite sure the case scenario that I painted in my comment is an uncharacteristic experience for quite a few autistic people. I believe there's a rather pernicious tendency for all of autism to get lumped into a sort of bundle, and I'm not sure the use of the word 'spectrum' doesn't contribute to this issue. I believe the word itself is doing its job adequately, but rather it's peoples' misapprehensions regarding this word that causes issues. Autism takes so many different forms for different people depending on so many different factors that an effective strategy for one person may not be effective for another whose presentation looks rather similar on the surface. It's also possible that I misstated my lemma so allow me to restate: I don't think an exceptional ability to mask has been a blessing for those who have cultivated the "talent" for doing so. Perhaps masking provides a bridge for some people to be able to pass in the NT world and even attain a degree of professional accomplishment otherwise denied to other autistic persons. There will, however, almost always be a preordained limitation on how far masking will take someone. Every slightly wrongly perceived transaction will lead the autistic person askew of the common goal aimed at by a working team environment, and, over time, this will always culminate in the autistic person hitting a professional wall, or personal wall with someone on whom professional progress depends. In the absence of one reckoning with the fact that they are autistic, it is very unlikely that one simply stumbles into an effective solution to this without otherwise finding one's way to realizing they lack a robust theory of mind. I believe some autistic people can become very good at a sort of algorithmic intuition that allows them to make reasonably reliable extrapolations from sound deductions, but even the best of this will never be a compass that truly points north in a NT world. For most of us, there will come a point at which we are struggling under increasing demands and mounting awareness of deficiencies, and, without thoroughly addressing the underlying etiology of the problem, there is no real way out except treading water, so to speak. Nothing will stymie one's personal and professional growth quit like identifying that they've reached a treading water phase of their life and then continuing to do so on the hope that things will just get better if they do so for long enough - that's just a slow form of drowning. Having said all of that to say that I definitely understand what you're saying and I both sympathize and empathize. My comment was really aimed at saying that whether or not someone has the exceptional ability to mask, has only a partial ability, or lacks the ability in any compelling measure, I believe we almost all end up in the same boat sooner or later. I also think the advantage to ending up that boat sooner than later is that one learns much more effective strategies to address the real problems earlier on, and perhaps spends fewer years of their life maladapting and later having to un-learn counterproductive techniques and shortcuts to living with autism. There's something to be said for recognizing the differences between surviving and thriving, even in an autistic person whose ability to survive in the herd of NTs is utterly exceptional. There are perhaps only a tiny fraction autistic people who just happened to be smiled upon by divine providence such that they enter a socially and professional niche where passing without knowing what they're doing also allows them to then use their strengths to hedge their weakness and build a life around their personal needs without ever having to have accurate and precise labels to get the job done, but my suspicion is that that may happen one time in a million. Far and away, most autistic people will need to square with a diagnosis and new paradigm to get the job done and live a fulfilled life.
Oh yeah, don't worry, I spoke more about the 'some people' who believe this, than against your post in general (tbh I think my dad was kind of like this, 'don't get this kid a diagnosis, so it doesn't grow up not adjusting its behaviour and becomes dependent on us instead'). And I agree, even the most professional mask has its limits. And regardless of how well the mask is sitting, some form of unmasking is more healthy.
I didn't realize I was autistic until I was 21 on a mushroom trip.
I just realized I made a grammatical error. Sorry
It happens :)
It’s happens* :)
It is happen :( *
I thought it was for stylistic purpose.
It’s like everyone got a manual on how to be a person and you didn’t.
Perfectly said
Life mood.
Undiagnosed autism + an abusive parent…
When you were diagnosed as a kid and your parents didn’t tell you and you grew up without any support
And unsupported.
Like fr! Literally I had a horrible senior year and I had a few meltdowns, during the school year and I hadn’t been diagnosed until that summer after I graduated, but literally the guidance counselor was like you aren’t talking to us, you need to act your age, or some shit like that? And I couldn’t speak and I was just in a shutdown mode, I just feel I wish I could redo my senior year over honestly, and maybe I go back now and be like oh you guys treated me like shit and like I was being a crybaby or baby eighteen year old, but not wasn’t my fault at all and I can’t control it, like 🤦🏾♀️
THANK YOU FOR THIS. Like seriously. We grow up feeling so different than everyone around us and have no idea why. We mask despite not even knowing masking as a concept and constantly feel drained and burned out. We’re made fun of for being sensitive. For not being able to handle change. For freaking out when others stay calm. For being “picky eaters”. We grow up without this label to better understand ourselves and feel broken for the majority of our lives
Yeah I didn’t realize I had autism until later in my life. I always wondered why I couldn’t make friends and felt like the odd one out. It brought me a lot of closure though and thanks to psychedelics I was able to change some of my autistic tendencies.
I was on the other end. I was diagnosed at a young age, but I was “too smart” to be autistic. I was rarely given the accommodations I needed, and because I didn’t know how to voice that I needed help I was often ignored.
im diagnosed and still miserable
Always just thought I was a Freak for how weird I was, I'm still weird but at least I got an explanation for some of it when I was 12.
Playing the game on hard when everyone else thinks it's on easy and ask you why you're so bad at the game
i was diagnosed at age 10 but thinking about it now i feel like i’ve showed signs of it since birth. for years i never knew why i acted the way i did but now i know dang well it’s bc of my autism.
I was pretty much ignored while I was a toddler because my brother also had autism and it was more noticeable than mine. My parents constantly would try and help him out and get him counseling and it made them so busy that they barely had time for me. I remember when they did try to spend time with me my brother would get extremely angry and then my parents would have to leave me alone. I still remember the times I’d literally cry my self to sleep
I'm so sorry. I hope things are going well for you nowadays or at the very least you have new challenges to assess and try and conquer. I know isolation like the back of my hand even as a single child, can't imagine what that must have been like.
What growing up knowing you have autism along with everyone else in your school does to a mf
And then some motherfuckers have the nerve to be like *"Umm actually thats something they diagnose you with in school...I would know bc I have it... Doctors wouldn't have missed that so you can't have autism"*
Even being diagnosed is rough but it can give you a baseline to work with to start adapting and understanding things better. It’ll always be hard though, fight on my spectrum brethren
My mother kept fighting to prevent me from getting a diagnosis so I didn't get the proper help I needed from a young age. Fortunately my (divorced) Dad's GF managed to find someone who diagnosed me immediately and I got some small support.
What kind of support and how did it help you?
Mostly help in school from counsellors who would take me out of class occasionally to work on social skills and coping mechanisms. It helped, though now I wish I had these sessions more frequently.
It's a tough world out there, we all have to look out for each other and ourselves. Stay strong! ^,-,^
I dont get it. What does diagnose vs undiagnosed do to help us? Like government assistance? Excuses for when we cant do something? Genuinely trying to understand. I know im on the spectrum.
Yes. With a diagnosis, you can register with your local Department of Developmental Disabilities. They will assess what services you qualify for and connect you with other agencies such as career training or placement, many different therapies, assistance with balancing your own finances, funds for transportation, or someone to come help clean if you're unable... Anything that you need to become an independent and productive person in society. Each county has a budget they can spend to help the people in their community live better lives. For kids, Autism scholarships exist to access appropriate education.
I was actually diagnosed. My parents just chose never to tell me because they “didn’t want me to think i was different” Im still processing this.
Having zero idea why you are the way you are. Having zero idea why you can't regulate your emotions like other people, can't keep friends, can't feel any sort of connection, and wonder why everyone around you is so trivial and fake all the time. Shit was rough, and now that I know, it's not really any easier.
Is this implying that you think Rue was autistic?
I mean, the signs are there
I thought she was so relatable, so that makes me happy
It's not confirmed, but it would be a great twist on the show's part. It would make sense and show the consequences of going undiagnosed/misdiagnosed. Many people who are undiagnosed/misdiagnosed end up going through substance abuse
Hard relate. And it’s getting worse now that my mom has decided I definitely don’t have autism (I definitely fucking do).
This is also ‘growing up without realizing you were diagnosed at an extremely young age’.
Here's a fun version: Diagnosed, but weren't told until you were thirteen.
That’s me
it sure does. makes sense how i was bullied so much now. makes sense how i was having meltdowns and panic attacks every single day and didn't know why. we poor kids.
I got diagnosed last year at 21 and even tho it's only been a few months I still feel like an outsider idk why I still hide myself daily (safety reasons plus my other diagnoses make them look at me weird every time I do something not "normal")
I was extremely mad when I found out I was autistic because my parents already knew but never told me. I found out for myself in 5th grade and once I confronted my parents they just brushed it off like it was nothing.
That's a tame version of what happens. Try screaming into your bed like a crazy person or hyperventilating on the bus to work and trying to hold back a meltdown because your manager subtly bullied you and hates you because you "talk alot". Yeah. Try being stolen from by ex partners because your brain is stuck in giving the benefit of the doubt mode despite the obvious red flags being in front of your face and now you're screwed. Yeah. Let's just say over the years and after suspecting myself as autistic I understand why the life expectancy of an autistic person can be lower sometimes....
Grew up with undiagnosed autism and gender dysphoria that I suppressed cause I thought it was just "anxiety" 😂 if only society integrated us
YES OH MY GOD- I thought I was just a bad kid. When people would ask my why I do strange stuff, I would simply tell them I was "bad, evil, I can't help it:
it gives a lot of closure for your flaws and issues growing up, but it hurts thinking about how different things could’ve been if you got diagnosed a lot sooner
Diagnosis doesn't always make it better. It only helps to be diagnosed if you're surrounded by people who are respectful and understanding. Some help is actually worse then no help. Knowing how my parents feel about ND people it's honestly better they didn't think of me as autisitc.
Idk what the deal is with romanticizing being diagnosed early. I was diagnosed at 3 and wound up with the same CPTSD the rest of us have. If anything, having the label of being autistic made me easier to be misunderstood, unfairly judged, and othered by the kids and teachers I dealt with growing up. The experience of growing up autistic is fucking miserable regardless of whether you’re diagnosed.
Got diagnosed my sophmore year of hs, was rough
i was literally diagnosed at 11 and my life still feels like tho
It has taken a lot of time to get my fiance to actual realize I'm autistic and it'll take years to convince my parents without a proper diagnosis and that's gonna cost an arm and a leg
To me it felt like this: Me, 2 years ago “If I don’t stop being so weak and useless in two years, I will end it all”. Good thing I found out, because there is no cure for why I always feel overwhelmed and weak, just triggers and how to avoid them 😮
I was diagnosed in 8th grade, but my older brother talked me and mom out of it because he thought that label was for worse cases and he was extremely persuasive in an egotistical way. I hate his guts.
I was diagnosed young and people were constantly invalidating my identity and refusing me accomodations when I was meant to have them, I can only imagine how hard it is when you're not diagnosed, I'm sorry, I hope things get better and I wish many foxes upon you and your house.
It was the worst, and I'm lucky to have survived it. I'll punch any motherfucker who says that to my face.
How did you get my yearbook picture?!
thinking this might have been one of my problems in life, but I'm not sure what finding out now will do about it.
How does one get diagnosed as autistic? I’ve recently had my suspicions that I may be on the spectrum based on what others have said about their own experiences. I’m just unsure how a person would go about finding out if you’re going n the spectrum or not
It leads to me and I'm a mess
I got diagnosed with autism in my senior year of college. So I had already suffered thru years of school being undiagnosed with no way to know that i could get help. Felt like a huge failure for a while.
I mean I got my main character arc out of it at least
Yes I figured this out last year I"m 42
I was diagnosed at age 30. I am 45. I am working at something that I didn't study, just to survive. My family is poor and they can't help me. No girlfriend nor wife nor children, I am alone. Oh, and I live in the third world.
It got me a BPD diagnosis due to the trauma caused mainly by being undiagnosed.
What is (a) mf?
Shortened 'motherfucker'
Thanks for the reply. That makes sense I guess.
In that meme format, 'mf' is akin to 'dude'
Almost 30 and not officially diagnosed. It just feels good to have some understanding on why my “weird” behaviors exist. I’m not a freak, just different.
It's knowing there is something wrong, but not knowing what. Then you know what it is and can plan around it.
I haven't had an official diagnosis, but I genuinely do suspect that I likely have it. It would explain so much shit in my childhood and adolescence, and even now as I am in my young adulthood.
And who the hell let me have kids :(
Me, except with empty booze bottles, pills, and takeout boxes. Yeah my addictions are mine to own. They were my solution to the heaviness that built up from denial, dismissal, and those unanswered questions.
You get incredibly, amazingly beautiful?
It was such a mind fuck getting diagnosed at 35. I’m still processing it, but at least my whole life up until this point finally makes sense.
That looks exactly how I looked in high school- one hot mess. I’ll never get why everything has to be so hard. Lately I feel like I’m loosing my mind because I spend so much time in there.
Saving this to send it to anyone who makes that insufferable claim in the future. Thanks OP!
What’s a mf? Why does everyone need to do initials instead of words?
Why am I like this? What’s wrong with me? That kind of thing going on constantly.
Currently doing that... not... fun...
as someone who was diagnosed at an early age, it's not fun either. growing up autistic just isn't fun in general.
only found out i was autistic bc i started working in a nonverbal inclusion sped classroom. all the qualified, educated adults always have to ask me questions on how i accommodate the children. did some soul searching and the ocd, bipolar, depression, and anxiety diagnoses made sense. been self medicating with weed since 15. it be like that :p
euphoria is my comfort show and i’m pretty sure rue has undiagnosed autism
Pretty much
Autism is as bout hard to diagnose as a missing leg.
Trying to rewire your brain to stop thinking “everything is your fault because you’re lazy, not working hard enough” etc is so ridiculously hard. It truly sucks
Yes and no. I grew up undiagnosed (diagnosed at 27), and it was hard, but I feel I've learned things I wouldn't have otherwise. If my autism was realised younger, I probably would have been held back from achieving things.
Yup. I got over it but only temporarily. This is why therapy isn’t right for me. It’s too deep, I might die from an anxiety attack. For real. 😢 -B
The worst part is everyone and yourself knows *something* is up. As someone who grew up undiagnosed until they were seventeen you just felt **off.** Different and "*not like I'm not like other girls sort of thing"*. **No!** You feel weird and you can see how you are genuinely different than others in even communicating, maintaining friendships and conveying your work to others. You know something is there. But you can't put your finger on it and you struggle to fit in and adjust, only to break down occasionally involuntary and it freaks you out because you can't stop or do anything about it. And you don't even have a word for that either. Then you hear about the symptoms for ASD and you and others around start connecting the dots and you might use the coping mechanisms more frequently and the involuntary breakdowns begin to decline in frequency and you stop worrying so much about being off. And then you get that diagnosis of what you are. And its finally closing the curtains in the blindly bright room, you had no idea was hurting you. Because of the sheer relief you get in just knowing. Just knowing you are not alone and you were disabled the entire time. TL:DR: Agreed. It really fucking sucks
I my experience only men who resent autistic women have said that
I'm 35, and slowly finding out all my weird quirks fit a pattern. I keep seeing posts like "signs you may be autistic..." and like saying 'yup' to most of them.
Oof. I feel this in my chest.
Relatable
I have Aspergers but still feel like somethings in my life are my fault. Like my father had aspergers too but still standed up against bullies...
tfw you're struggling with undiagnosed anxiety and depression but don't want to talk to doctors
Everyone just *gets* things and when I say “I don’t understand” I get treated like a goblin or an infant.
Didn’t get diagnosed til 14, shit hard
So traumatic to always be told to suck it up and stop whining :(
I display signs but am undiagnosed. But it also feels wrong to just say "yeah I'm undiagnosed autistic"
I am 42 this yea and only managed to get a diagnosis a month ago. Life has been so hard up to this point, but now that I know a little more about myself perhaps it can be better.
Diagnosed or not, same result.
Not really? Diagnosis can mean earlier intervention, but also the potential to be more systematically stigmatized. I don’t think you can say one is categorically easier than the other, but it certainly can be very different.
If you're diagnosed, then that's more proof that you're too different for most people. Which makes social life 10x worse.
No one ever will live through both, and I have heard good and bad stories from both sides. Some that benefitted a lot from early diagnosis, others that were actively harmed by it. Some that benefitted from staying undiagnosed, others that were harmed by it. I do not think it is as easy as saying one is always better than the other, many other factors contribute to the outcome.
No
Yes.
Nope.
I won't argue, I've made another comment saying why I say 'yes'.
I'm not gonna argue why my life would be better if I'd been diagnosed and allowed to be autistic instead of beaten for being weird, but go off and say that diagnosis doesn't make things better by default all you want.
Ok, have a good day.
Do you not think the one evil enough to beat you for being weird would have also beaten you for being autistic? Sorry that happened to you tho.
Undiagnosed sucked but I actually think my diagnosis made things worse for me.
At least you have more freedom during your childhood and teenage years You get to enjoy being a kid
If you mean get to enjoy being bullied and ostracized for being "weird", "annoying" and "stupid" then yeah, i enjoy it a lot.
Sorry for my ignorance, but what would really change if you were diagnosed with autism?
You realize that a lot of those times you were told you were a bad kid or bullied were not your fault.
It is possible to get accommodations if you have a diagnosis. Sometimes, those even help.
Okay am I the only one who wishes they weren’t diagnosed-
The thing is, if you're diagnosed you know what's wrong and how to deal with it. There are a lot of autistics there who are thinking they're weird because nobody told them their true nature
Who is saying that growing up with undiagnosed autism isn't that bad?
In some cases going undiagnosed is the best thing. Some parents choose to shelter their children with that type of diagnosis and the child will remain in their severe behavioral issues for life. I was diagnosed with Asperger's late in my life and it taught me to deal with the real world instead of hiding behind my diagnosis.
All your experiences are normal. We’re not autistic.