How Did You React To Being Diagnosed?

[Geordie]

As my friends with AS and myfolks pointed out, It's indeed sad to be diagnosed, but the understanding of the diagnosis takes time --- and to help ourselves, we need some time and solutions to really get through the rocky part of diagnosis.

 

[Kempy]

I got my diagnosis about 7 years ago but I never even Googled aspergers until last December.

 

[Geordie]

Perhaps it's because when we reach a certain stage of maturity, we know our problems and we will be curious to try to solve them.

 

[hjasshj]

I didn't react too well at first, I remember crying because I didn't want to be labelled with it, but I got over it eventually.

 

[superboyian]

Even though I've been diagnosed, there are times where I would feel something has been missed out in my life, I've missed out alot of things that alot of teens would do now-a-days...

In a way its a good thing and at the same time its not, but as Calvert said, there are pros and cons in this.

 

[KinksFan]

I was diagnosed, when I was 5 and a half, so I didn't really have a reaction, back than. When I found out that I was on the spectrum, I was a little ticked off, that my dad told my sister, before my mum told me. I was also a little scared about it, because I was 15, at the time, and that was just a year after the movie, Rain Man made its debut, on the silver screen. I was afraid, that I was going to be seen as a freak by my family, because of my "unhealthy" Beatles obsession.

 

[142857]

Superboyian and Calvert, maybe I can give some insight into what it was like not being diagnosed.

You feel like your failings socially and in other ways are due to your own weakness. You get told all your life in one way or another that you have failed to live up to your potential - people look at your IQ and wonder why you are not a PHD or a high earning professional. Other guys make sneering remarks about your lack of girlfriends. At work people are happy to take advantage of your special skills, but not so keen to make allowances for the areas that you struggle in.

I am sure that it must vary for everyone. All things considered, in some ways I was better off not being diagnosed because I had to go through life without people making allowances for me and without making allowances for myself.

Then again, if I had been diagnosed then perhaps I would have learned coping strategies and found a path in life that was less painful but which suited my talents better.

 

[CJinherPJs]

I don't remember my actual diagnosis, funnily enough I don't really remember much about the whole process. I do remember being told about it though, and I recall asking if I was going to die because at the time I thought it was a disease. I didn't think much of it at first, but as time passed it began to get me down and I thought I'd ruined my parents' lives because they didn't want a defective child like me. Reading up about Asperger's was one of the best things I did because it helped me see how I could build on my weaknesses and made me realise that I'm not defective. My brain just has a few wiring differences.

 

[Pinky]

id never heard of aspergers till i got told i had it (at age 9, my parents knew from age 4) so i didnt think much of it.

 

[Droopy]

Then again, if I had been diagnosed then perhaps I would have learned coping strategies and found a path in life that was less painful but which suited my talents better.

This is one of the reasons that I'm glad I was diagnosed early. If it had of been even a few years earlier then I would have developed coping strategies much sooner and possibly had a better social life. All hope isn't lost though, my social life is improving and hopefully will last right through my twenties and into the thirties.

 

[klaatu]

tears. just glad to know. my life was already over so nothing physical was going to change. nothing wrong with knowledge.

 

[Droopy]

my life was already over so nothing physical was going to change.

What do you mean by that?

 

[klaatu]

my childhood was pretty severe, hated by my father, mentally ill mother, sometimes stayed with grandmother who had schizophrenia and did all sorts of things to me. escaped it all after high school at 17 by joining the military. 4 years of that was enough and at 21 was in a huge world completely on my own. as lost as i was emotionally, i was fortunate to find a job that suited me and soon discovered i was the smartest one in our business. helped a lot to win quick promotions. could not escape the depression and speech problems caused, i believe by childhood abuse and trauma.

time passes and i am at a crossroads. give up or do something about hating myself. started running. short distances and slowly at first but that changed rapidly as i worked very hard at getting 'better'. after a year i was ready to try a marathon. i had lost about 50 lbs and best of all, my depression was almost conquered. who says you can't run away from your problems. also took up bicycle racing. great fun. i was fearless. after a couple more years my depression was gone. my body was like a machine. i started traveling and ended up running marathons and doing century bike rides on six continents. i was happy for the first time...ever. i was training for a crazy trip to antarctica when in a brief instant it all ended.

a drunk in an old pickup truck ran right over top of me. i ended up in the wheel well. dead two times. docs said it was hard to believe i could survive. said it was my superb physical conditioning. after a year or so i could walk again. kept trying very hard to recover. gradually i could ride again but not for very far and not so fast.this went on for a few years. gave up on paid work and became a volunteer trying to help non-human animals.

then ,14 years after being murdered, i was driving from a long day working at an animal shelter. rounded a curve and running up the middle of the road was a large dog. reacted to harshly and dropped a wheel off the road and crashed into a stone wall, flipped 2 or 3 times, and came to a stop in the middle of the road. dead again, this time i remember(?) all that occurred while gone, and had some severe injuries, including 3 broken vertebra in my neck....c5,c6, and c7.

did survive and returned to volunteering. mental state shot along with the body. was living for my work and taking care of my companion animals. never had a human to love. what's that song........ 'cry me a river'. have to laugh or i would cry. then i hear about a.s.

that's what i meant.

 

[evilpinkdinosaur]

My mother and I both knew I had asperger's before I was ever diagnosed. I show most of the symptoms, so I wasn't surprised when I got diagnosed. My mother and I researched about it months before my diagnose.

 

[oskarandri]

I Was at first a little surprised to know that i'm different, and i thought was kinda cool and i started putting in much study in that topic and now i know much about autism, all it's ASD's and everything, and i don't think it's a disorder, i think it's a difference and i know it has something to do with the grey matter and white matter in the brain, if i was offered an antidote to eliminate the white matter in my brain i wouldn't take it because it's awesome being very intelligent and a one of a kind person! instead of a regular where you don't do as interesting things as an aspie would do!

 

[oskarandri]

some people have been known to get head traumas and get autism like temple grandin, a doctor of animal sciences. And many people have got it because of premature birth and i think car crash links to it.

 

[WildCat]

The initial diagnosis at 3 was kept as a secret for about 14 years - methinks my mother's reasoning behind this was that she feared it would wreck my self-esteem and gather mixed reactions. Not that it would have mattered, everyone mistook it as "giftedness" (early-reader, go freaking figure) and as a kid I didn't understand much to boot.

Only when I was 16 or 17 did I finally find out about it and yeah, I hated it with all due vengeance. Amongst many issues - social phobia, depression, bizarre personality, academic problems, executive dysfunction, aggression, a few others - now I had "autistic" applied to my forehead. Didn't think I would survive the rest of high school before losing my sanity, but I pulled through.

7 years of time passed before I finally began to dig deeper into myself to figure out who I am and where I need to go next. It's only now that I'm slowly but surely beginning to accept my diagnosis, if it even was a diagnosis to begin with because before I felt fairly normal and never saw what the problem was. I mean, why blame someone based on a set of character traits they never were aware of in the first place? There still a bit of depression lingering around and there's still a bit of me that wants to bond with his fellow earthlings in some meaningful way, but I can only imagine how those 7 years would have taken its course had I never gotten the diagnosis.

 

[robertwnielsen]

I was diagnosed with PDD-NOS about two years ago, and had "self-diagnosed" myself with Asperger's Syndrome (later refined) not long before that -- I have to say, a lot of the characteristics and idiosyncracies that I have developed suddenly made sense, both to me, and to others. In fact, a friend of mine told me that when *her* son was diagnosed (also with PDD-NOS), she thought of me. She said, "I didn't get it (my struggles in high school) then, but I get it now."

 

[Saur]

Actually, I took it rather well. My parents grew suspicious that my problem was Sociophobia, so they took me to a psychology university to have me be analyzed by one of the seniors. When the results came back, they came to the conclusion that, even though I had some sociophobic tendencies, my real problem was Asperger's Syndrome. After that, my parents pretty much apologized me for all the years of arguing and insisting, and felt sorry for me since I learned my way through society all on my own... This was a year ago, and it took a college student to diagnose what three other psychiatrists failed to identify... awkward...

 

[usa1981]

I was diagnosed with AS in May/June 2010 at 28 years young I also have ADHD (really ADD) and Dyslexia).