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Reactions to a potential diagnosis

nukefusion

Member
I was talking to somebody close to me today that said that since going through a pre-assessment and realising that I was probably on the spectrum that I had "become visibly more vunerable". It was a useful conversation because I am pursuing this primarly to try and help mitigate some of the issues that I am facing. But maybe in the short term I have realised that maybe I cannot change some of these aspects in my personality and in turn it has caused me to withdraw a little. I think they were coming from a good place, they don't want me to stop pushing forwards. After all, nothing has really changed. Has anybody else experienced something similar? How did you navigate the realisation that you had significant traits and balance acceptance with perserverance?
 
I was talking to somebody close to me today that said that since going through a pre-assessment and realising that I was probably on the spectrum that I had "become visibly more vunerable". It was a useful conversation because I am pursuing this primarly to try and help mitigate some of the issues that I am facing. But maybe in the short term I have realised that maybe I cannot change some of these aspects in my personality and in turn it has caused me to withdraw a little. I think they were coming from a good place, they don't want me to stop pushing forwards. After all, nothing has really changed. Has anybody else experienced something similar? How did you navigate the realisation that you had significant traits and balance acceptance with perserverance?
Hi @nukefusion, First, I love your post--thank you for posting it. I think it's really good that you have a support system in place and someone who is championing you through it. I'm sure it helps.

You asked, “How did you navigate the realisation that you had significant traits and balance acceptance with perserverance?” What I want to know is, what happens if someone doesn’t want to accept it?
 
How a person incorporates their diagnosis into themselves and whether or not to share the diagnosis with others is highly individualized. For myself, I am an educator, a mentor, a team leader, a big physical person,...so for me to just get out in front of it and just say to a group of people, I am on the autism spectrum is actually quite liberating. I did it yesterday, in fact. After all, NOBODY is going to put me down for it. Someone else who may be at the opposite spectrum in terms of their "pecking order" within the group,...you have to think about things first,...who can I trust,...who really needs to know, etc.
 
How a person incorporates their diagnosis into themselves and whether or not to share the diagnosis with others is highly individualized. For myself, I am an educator, a mentor, a team leader, a big physical person,...so for me to just get out in front of it and just say to a group of people, I am on the autism spectrum is actually quite liberating. I did it yesterday, in fact. After all, NOBODY is going to put me down for it. Someone else who may be at the opposite spectrum in terms of their "pecking order" within the group,...you have to think about things first,...who can I trust,...who really needs to know, etc.
@Neonatal RRT, you know, you always have the best answers. I'm becoming a major groupie over here and that's not really my thing.
 
An accurate diagnosis was a huge relief to both my family and myself. It certainly gave context to a lot of my 'quirks' like my sensory need for motion, need for routine and a tidy environment, my abysmal spacial reasoning, and hypersensitivity to external stimuli (e.g. most family gatherings or certain smells) which would manifest as migraines so painful they would make me hysterical. Only thing that would actually help, total sensory deprivation save having music thundering in my ears. Weird, yes, but it helps to modulate my nervous system.

I wasn't being stubborn or stupid or naughty on purpose. I wasn't avoiding people because of a psychological issue. It was an unconscious defense mechanism to limit the amount of sensory input I subjected my self to. Reading and my dogs were a safe space that didn't trigger the overload. People did.

It explained certain aspects of my personality like my hyperlexic tendencies, selective mutism, and atypical learning processes, dysphonentic reading style, dyscalculia, odd humour, and fixations with certain music and books.

I learned to mask well and early. People who don't know I'm on the spectrum are often surprised by my odd recall abilities pertaining to books or when I decide to actively engage in a conversation and stray from safe scripts. The term savant has been tossed at me on more than one occasion.

Diagnosis can bring relief, context, and a certain level of peace. I know for my mom it was a huge relief knowing she wasn't failing as a parent and her kid wasn't destine for a future of turmoil and grief. It clarified boundaries and triggers. As well as highlighted strengths, weaknesses, and helped me figure out workarounds. Parameters and context are everything for me. The more information I can gain on a subject the better I function. If I don't have context for something, I will point blank tell you, I have no frame of reference for Topic A and then proceed to look it up.

It is a tool. And everyone uses it differently. I don't share my diagnosis with those outside my immediate circle because frankly the interactions are too brief to warrant the conversation required and people being people aren't always the most astute.

Autism isn't a disease that needs curing; it is a different operating system that has always occurred within the human population.
 
@Darkkin The sentence "I wasn't being stubborn or stupid or naughty on purpose" really resonates with me, because that was what people thought for my entire childhood, that I was being that way on purpose, and it got me into a lot of trouble and caused a lot of trauma. I was a very good student and I thought I was very well-behaved, but I was ALWAYS in the principal's office or in detention because of a misunderstanding, and I was labeled with "behavioral issues." I never did anything bad intentionally and I always felt so ashamed and guilty about doing things that were "bad."
I wish more professionals/people in positions of power understood that we are not "doing it on purpose."
An example of this would be something like, a teacher told me to draw something other than a dog, and I cried (didn't get violent or throw a fit, just cried, and said that I didn't understand) and I would get sent to the principal's office. Things like this happened regularly.

I think your post in this thread is very valuable and is hopefully as helpful to the OP as it was to me. And you're right, it's not a disease, it is definitely a "different operating system." Curing it would rob some people of their entire personalities and livelihoods. I don't want to sign up for that!

I choose not to disclose my diagnosis to people outside of my immediate circle either. But it's a choice, and anyone can choose differently if they think it would benefit them or make them happy.
 
@Darkkin The sentence "I wasn't being stubborn or stupid or naughty on purpose" really resonates with me, because that was what people thought for my entire childhood, that I was being that way on purpose, and it got me into a lot of trouble and caused a lot of trauma. I was a very good student and I thought I was very well-behaved, but I was ALWAYS in the principal's office or in detention because of a misunderstanding, and I was labeled with "behavioral issues." I never did anything bad intentionally and I always felt so ashamed and guilty about doing things that were "bad."
@Luca, that sounds like that was very difficult to go through. I haven't thought about this in years, but in reading about your experience one teacher came to mind who put my desk up against the wall with one of those, you know, little cardboard forts surrounding me, and had me sit there alone for several weeks. Somehow I ended up upsetting her so much that she placed my little embarrassing desk arrangement in another teacher's classroom.I spent Christmas there, watching the children in that classroom opening up little Why I have no idea. I'm sorry you had to go through those things.
...I think your post in this thread is very valuable and is hopefully as helpful to the OP as it was to me. And you're right, it's not a disease, it is definitely a "different operating system."...
I can really relate to what @Darkkin said, too. I used to complain to my husband that people never understood me. They'd ask me questions and while I was thinking about how to reply they'd assume my 2.3 seconds of silence meant something it did not and they'd be off again, maybe now accusing, or launching themselves in a new direction without really wanting an answer. He'd smooth it over like this. If you put a semi and a motorcycle in a race, which would win? In the short run, the motorcycle could zip circles around the semi for the semi, fully loaded, takes time to get up to speed. Once it does, however, it goes a distance the motorcycle can't and delivers a load having a much greater value than what the motorcycle could ever carry. His point was that some people are motorcycles, and some are semis. I suppose it's rather like the operating system illustration.
 
@Luca, that sounds like that was very difficult to go through. I haven't thought about this in years, but in reading about your experience one teacher came to mind who put my desk up against the wall with one of those, you know, little cardboard forts surrounding me, and had me sit there alone for several weeks. Somehow I ended up upsetting her so much that she placed my little embarrassing desk arrangement in another teacher's classroom.I spent Christmas there, watching the children in that classroom opening up little Why I have no idea. I'm sorry you had to go through those things.

I can really relate to what @Darkkin said, too. I used to complain to my husband that people never understood me. They'd ask me questions and while I was thinking about how to reply they'd assume my 2.3 seconds of silence meant something it did not and they'd be off again, maybe now accusing, or launching themselves in a new direction without really wanting an answer. He'd smooth it over like this. If you put a semi and a motorcycle in a race, which would win? In the short run, the motorcycle could zip circles around the semi for the semi, fully loaded, takes time to get up to speed. Once it does, however, it goes a distance the motorcycle can't and delivers a load having a much greater value than what the motorcycle could ever carry. His point was that some people are motorcycles, and some are semis. I suppose it's rather like the operating system illustration.

Omg, what an awful thing for your teacher to do! I’m sorry :(

I like your analogy about the motorcycle and the semi truck :) That’s a good representation of how I’ve felt about a lot of people.

I hope that you’re recovering from things that happened to you as a child. I am too.
 
Diagnosis has given me the confidence to say: NO, that makes me uncomfortable and no more is said on that subject.

I circulate around those of my faith and for the most part, they are great. They honour my boundries.

Recently a spiritual sister popped in to use the toilet and said that two others were in the car, but they did not want to overwhelm me. I felt so gratified, that I phoned and invited them in for coffee.
 
My diagnosis and subsequent therapy is getting me to closure about the horrible emotions from my past that have haunted me. The diagnosis was anti climactic as my spouse would sometimes refer to me as her aspie guy. The harder part for me has been making sense of the past, and having to remember my actions and emotions and left me feeling worse for a while as I grappled with the ways I injured my psyche.
 
Hi @nukefusion, First, I love your post--thank you for posting it. I think it's really good that you have a support system in place and someone who is championing you through it. I'm sure it helps.

You asked, “How did you navigate the realisation that you had significant traits and balance acceptance with perserverance?” What I want to know is, what happens if someone doesn’t want to accept it?
Thanks for your reply. I think the person seeking acceptance is probably myself. If other's don't want to accept it I guess nothing really changes, there's is not much I can do, but I have a habit of taking things to heart. Perfectionism can be a problem. It's hard to accept that I might not be able to be the way I want to be in certain areas.
 
A teacher put me in a closet once, primary school If I saw her today It would go to the old age home and give her a piece of my mind. it would not be pleasant.
 
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I was talking to somebody close to me today that said that since going through a pre-assessment and realising that I was probably on the spectrum that I had "become visibly more vunerable". It was a useful conversation because I am pursuing this primarly to try and help mitigate some of the issues that I am facing. But maybe in the short term I have realised that maybe I cannot change some of these aspects in my personality and in turn it has caused me to withdraw a little. I think they were coming from a good place, they don't want me to stop pushing forwards. After all, nothing has really changed. Has anybody else experienced something similar? How did you navigate the realisation that you had significant traits and balance acceptance with perserverance?
Im in the uk ,different attitude to diagnosis, if !you get a diagnosis, theres no change in how you were before, its getting a diagnosis, its snobbery, the nhs wants to control what they have, so dont like private healthcare ,unless they say so.

I'm 6 years on from you ,diagnosed at 45 nearly 46 ,which is very! common, if you were born before 1991 .
It is thought lord henry cavendish (english)born 1732 died 1810 ,would be diagnosed with very high functioning autism, like me ,lived in the same city as Lorna Wing(diagnostician) but 200 years before, so no diagnosis for him.

Oldest man actually diagnosed 83.

Daily intense teaching ends at age 25 in the uk, so i was 20 years too old for that!.

Diagnosis was underwhelming ,but i actually think im pdd-nos, now called atypical autism, not very high functioning autism.
 
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Im in the uk ,different attitude to diagnosis, if !you get a diagnosis, theres no change in how you were before, its getting a diagnosis, its snobbery, the nhs wants to control what they have, so dont like private healthcare ,unless they say so.

I'm 6 years on from you ,diagnosed at 45 nearly 46 ,which is very! common, if you were born before 1991 .
It is thought lord henry cavendish (english)born 1732 died 1810 ,would be diagnosed with very high functioning autism, like me ,lived in the same city as Lorna Wing(diagnostician) but 200 years before, so no diagnosis for him.

Oldest man actually diagnosed 83.

Daily intense teaching ends at age 25 in the uk, so i was 20 years too old for that!.

Diagnosis was underwhelming ,but i actually think im pdd-nos, now called atypical autism, not very high functioning autism.
Thank you, I'm from the UK too and born before 1991. I'm not in an hurry to rush anything as in theory nothing really changes, but I guess the realisation has caused a subtle change in my demeanour. Maybe things are just very new and I'm still trying to understand how I feel and what it might mean.
 
Thank you, I'm from the UK too and born before 1991. I'm not in an hurry to rush anything as in theory nothing really changes, but I guess the realisation has caused a subtle change in my demeanour. Maybe things are just very new and I'm still trying to understand how I feel and what it might mean.
youre supposed to be given accomodations by the nhs when you get the diagnosis never got any but i'll never set foot on a nhs property again cant say why in this section
 
youre supposed to be given accomodations by the nhs when you get the diagnosis never got any but i'll never set foot on a nhs property again cant say why in this section
Sorry to hear you've had a difficult time. I know the NHS is under a lot of pressure and I think they try their best but it can be a bit of a lottery.
 
Sorry to hear you've had a difficult time. I know the NHS is under a lot of pressure and I think they try their best but it can be a bit of a lottery.
you cant discuss non autism connected thoughts in this section you go to off topic very strict rules
 

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