FoxLovinPat
Well-Known Member
Hey there, I'm Pat! I'm 29 years old, and identify as nonbinary, and prefer they/them pronouns. I was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome at a young age but nowadays prefer the more inclusive terminology of "being on the Autism Spectrum" seeing as identifying myself as having Asperger's didn't really do me any favors, that and the history of Asperger's makes me uncomfortable.
Despite knowing that I'm on the spectrum all my life I didn't really know what that actually meant for me until roughly this time last year when I finally started doing research into Asperger's/Autism. This is mostly due to being raised by a father who never properly educated himself on his adopted child's diagnosis and instead went off of outdated concepts of Autism, which didn't do me any favors at all and in fact harmed me. To his credit though he did do things right initially by making sure I had extra help in Elementary School through Special Ed and Speech classes but once Elementary School was over I was pretty much expected to be just like all the other kids in my class who weren't neurodivergent, which wasn't fair and I struggled as a result.
Anyways I decided to join this forum as a way to find and interact with others like me so I find people I can relate to better and maybe further understand myself through listening to the stories of others. Also I don't use social media because I just never understood it, and still don't, but I have used forums before in the past so I felt joining an Autism forum would be more comfortable for me than joining Social Media.
Btw could anyone point me to good sub forums/threads to look into?
Despite knowing that I'm on the spectrum all my life I didn't really know what that actually meant for me until roughly this time last year when I finally started doing research into Asperger's/Autism. This is mostly due to being raised by a father who never properly educated himself on his adopted child's diagnosis and instead went off of outdated concepts of Autism, which didn't do me any favors at all and in fact harmed me. To his credit though he did do things right initially by making sure I had extra help in Elementary School through Special Ed and Speech classes but once Elementary School was over I was pretty much expected to be just like all the other kids in my class who weren't neurodivergent, which wasn't fair and I struggled as a result.
Anyways I decided to join this forum as a way to find and interact with others like me so I find people I can relate to better and maybe further understand myself through listening to the stories of others. Also I don't use social media because I just never understood it, and still don't, but I have used forums before in the past so I felt joining an Autism forum would be more comfortable for me than joining Social Media.
Btw could anyone point me to good sub forums/threads to look into?