Well, This Escalated Strangely...

[Pats]

Hello and welcome. Lots of us are late finding why we never were like others . I hope you like it here as much as I do.

 

[Streetwise]

Thanks for the reply, Free Diver! I have wondered about confounding data for my self-diagnosis - age, gender, depression, trauma. Maybe what I see in myself is the extreme consequence of male socialization, rather than ASD? Maybe I am enduring some midlife ennui, rather than ASD? My trauma has been this: my wife was diagnosed with a traumatizing, life-threatening illness that while survivable, will forever define our lives. It has been the trauma that seemingly has exposed me: in trying to understand and meet her needs, in trying to understand and meet my needs, I have left a destructive trail in my wake that has resulted in ruined relationships, and the consensus (amongst stakeholders, therapists, friends, and my wife) is that I “don’t get it” and I seem to have little social/emotional understanding. I have tried my best, but everything social/emotional that I have touched has resulted in ruin. It’s like I am living a separate reality from the people I care about, and we have no means of understanding each other or agreeing on a common reality. I feel terribly misunderstood without the vocabulary to make myself known, and pretty much everyone has given up on the idea that I am a reliable, trustworthy, empathetic person.

I’m in the uncomfortable stage I never knew what uncomfortable meant until I was like this I always remember a bit from the Bible where becoming a Christian is likened to childbirth ,Apart from wanting to destroy my iPad and I’ve never given birth to a child ,from what I’ve seen of childbirth I fully agree ,some women say it’s like sitting on a keg of lit dynamite I think I finally got past the dynamite has blown stage ,i’m still in the sticking the pieces together that have been blown apart bit, I don’t like feeling the emotions that I feel,I’m a stuffer! but I never get away from the horrible feeling when they were stuffed down.

 

[Aspychata]

Welcome to the site!

When we come through something that rattles us to our very core, in my case it was a long-term relationship that was crashing and burning then the divorce was like a mjor explosion, l think we step back and evaluate our core beliefs. Not sure if this applies to you, but l really have put myself under the microscope.

Somebody else said the same thing, they said you take a chance when you get married because the person can get sick and your lovely thoughts about time together is just that sadly.

So it must have created some serious turmoil and you are re-evaluating did l sign up for this? It's a hard truth, no matter how much you love someone, you also think about you and people blindly see you as the bad partner if you are not fully onboard 100% in compassion.
Hope you find answers here.

 

[Shenandoah]

Thanks for sharing, Shenandoah. Different good? Or just different? There have been signs all my life (I experience a number of the symptoms, relational feedback reinforces a diagnosis, I ACE the questionnaires lol), but I have chosen to ignore/devalue them because I have been “comfortable?” Now that I am extremely uncomfortable, it no longer seems that I can avoid looking at myself in this way.

Up until 42 I was doing pretty ok. Worked in an office with people I knew well and liked. Family, house, kids, the whole 9. At 42 due to some events at the company I decided to change jobs. After a surprisingly difficult job search given my qualifications (I guess I understand why better now) I secured a job in another software company. It was a small place with maybe 10-15 staff working in a semi-open office. I just could not take it....lasted a couple of weeks, took a week off, then another week and that was it, I couldn't take it anymore. Anxiety through the roof. Tried to negotiate a partial work-from-home arrangement, but they did not budge at all. Would not have been an issue as I live 30 min away and could have easily made all the meetings and such. So I packed up and left. Have been working from home ever since.
Anyways, it looks clear now is that it was the env. sensitivity that was gradually growing at the old job as well. Open spaces with noises and activity all around. But the escalation at that new job was avalanche-like sudden.
Long story short the following 4-5 years were on and off hell. Nothing destructive happened thankfully at home or career-wise and I learned to manage the anxiety (to a point of course), but it never quite went back to the almost normal levels I had before.
5 straight years of therapy barely made a dent so I stopped. Somehow I managed to pull out of the recurring crisis state and feel pretty ok now. Of course, the problems are there, but I understand and manage them better now. So overall it's ok. I am probably not quite a happy camper, but it's not too bad. Now I seem to have my asperger traits more pronounced, which somehow was not the case in my 30s.
Yes, like you I have never felt quite "there" socially, but I did have a friend or two and never exhibited my spectrum behaviours significantly (I actually considered myself completely typical). Now, at 49 it seems I do. Environment sensitivities, being prone to melt-downs, low stress tolerance and dependency on routine, significant alexythemia, anxieties. Whatever was a small speck of spectrum in my 30s is now well presented.

 

[Raphael Outcast]

I am now pursuing an A.S.D. diagnosis. What I hope this might help me with is finding the right support so that I better understand myself and others, and to finally have an explanatory narrative for my life experience and challenges. I hope it may lead me to form healthier relationships. I really hope it allows me to tell myself “this is who you are and this is the work to do,” which would be an improvement on how I feel now: hopeless, defeated, selfish, hurtful, lost. So, I am cautiously approaching this diagnosis with optimism.

Your decision to pursue a diagnosis seems rational & valid, but be warned psychiatrists can be averse to diagnosing conditions they can't throw pills at, and then again the diagnostic process can be a bit of a farce (depends on the service you're relying upon to diagnose you, perhaps); the so-called specialist team who diagnosed me managed to miss more A.S.D. indications than they spotted, and it was a miracle they succeeded in diagnosing me at all—which my Community Psychiatric Nurse assured me was pretty typical...

However, I can personally vouch for the fact that getting a diagnosis can achieve all the things you're hoping it may. So, good luck in your quest!

 

[Strong Sad]

Thanks, everyone! I appreciate the warm welcome and the kind thoughts.