Autism Dating – Front page › Forums › Dating with Asperger’s › Not Diagnosed
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20/02/2017 at 11:13 pm #4038technewsParticipant
Hi all. I am new and I have never been diagnosed. Does anyone have some advice? I’m 44 this year and didn’t think it would do much good to start the diagnostic process now. Anyways, Hi everyone :).
Isaac.
28/02/2017 at 4:48 pm #4138papaBearParticipantHi yourself, I’m new here as well…
I have just recently been diagnosed, I’m 38 turning 39… I don’t cherish the fact that I have a diagnosis, but it have helped me to understand a lot of my previous years… It explains alot.
Having a diagnosis doesn’t solve anything( for me, that is…), but it sure have helped in understanding why I never fit in and why my response to the rest of the world and other people have been difficult.
I was kinda reluctant to get a diagnose, but now (3 weeks later) it’ve started to “sink in”. The diagnosis can be helpful in my everyday life, if just to have some way of explaining to the people around me that they can’t expect “normal” responses from me when I get a “meltdown”. Earlier this have been very hard, and have given me a lot of difficulties. In relationships, with friends and, most important, family.
My personal opinion would be to get diagnosed, but then again it’s your decision. It might have benefits, but also will probably have drawbacks… And as earlier stated, a diagnosis doesn’t solve anything. You have to cope with it all the same.
OBi
14/05/2017 at 5:13 am #5162zepperoniParticipantI find it hard to get a diagnosis. Insurance doesn’t cover it and it’s not recognized in adults. I finally found a Dr who is willing to get me started with it. He needs to solve my thyroid problem first, so he can separate the issues. Even though, all of this has gone on all of my life and we learn to adapt (not usually very well) and never understand why we are adapting, we do it. All stuff you can understand, I’m sure… Anyway, my point was that getting a diagnosis is very important to me for an official explanation for why things are how they are. That I don’t communicate like others and that they don’t need to always be offended. Trust me, if I want to offend them, I can. I don’t think I’m offending them, but I am. I feel so misunderstood and hated, everyday. I haven’t done anything wrong to anyone, I say things the wrong way, I don’t look at them when I speak and I ask questions that seem the same as the last question I asked but really, I changed a couple of words to get a different kind of answer and that drives people nuts. They get frustrated. I work in a very technical field and I need to understand EVERYTHING. I have a crazy passion for my work. Obsessive.
10/11/2018 at 1:53 pm #5732Loves FerrarisParticipantI know that this is an old thread but just wanted to add my thoughts. I got my official diagnosis as an adult – that was about 10 years ago. It didn’t solve any problems for me either, but it did give me a handle on things and helped me understand why I thought the way I did. It helped me understand why my communication/interaction strategies still feel as I have to do them consciously, even though I’ve used them for many years. When communicating/interacting with other people, I have to expend a lot of energy into listening to the other person, watching their facial expression and reading their body language. I have to monitor my own communication style – making sure I have the appropriate facial expressions, appropriate body language, appropriate tone of voice, remembering to make eye contact, remembering to pause, etc. I was taught all of these things as a young person and hoped that they would become second nature to me.
On the other hand, the official diagnosis was confirmation to me that my parents, who had suspected many yeas ago, that I might have had a mild form of autism, were correct in their opinion. This was before the use of the term Asperger’s Syndrome became more common. My parents suspected that I may have had mild autism because I had trouble interacting with other people appropriately. At the time, doctors advised my parents that I didn’t have autism because I could speak. My parents disagreed with that opinion and trained me themselves in the art of communication and interacting with other people.
26/02/2019 at 8:35 am #6404Voice NerdParticipantSo glad to read this, even if some of it is from awhile ago. I have an appointment in two days to get a diagnosis. I’m 58. My dad was 88 when we got his diagnosis. Seems my coping skills have gotten worse as I get older, or perhaps I am just so very tired of having to conform all the time. I just want to stay in my room by myself. I am feeling so very depressed. I can relate to feeling misunderstood and hated every day, and how I am always offending people. I feel like I should have “learned how” by now at age 58. I feel hopeless.
03/04/2019 at 11:34 am #7959cosmogirl80ParticipantThanks for sharing, encouragement for others :)… I only just really realised I wasn’t merely blunt but that girls can have asperger’s recently and I’m 38!! Anyway I watched Tony Attwood speaking on Girls and Aspergers recently and recognised my entire life to a T right there. Was extremely liberating to realise hey I really AM bonafide different…my brain works completely differently to the majority of people! So anyway I don’t really feel a need to a get an official diagnosis – just a few hundred dollars down the drain and I don’t see that it will make any difference this late in the game…My mother also recognised my entire life right there in Tony’s presentation even some of my friends did as there were examples like directly lifted out of my life…besides not collecting potato mashers, lol.
I think the most challenging part of being female aspie is that as women we can come across fairly socially adept/normal even charming compared to the stereotypically known male aspie and people EXPECT all the normal female stereotypes…and don’t deal well when their expectations very quickly come crashing down as they get to know us past the initial meeting. Have to say though at this stage of my life I am pretty comfortable being in my own skin aspieish and all…but I have to make a conscientious effort to reign my natural tendencies in just for the good of others sensitivities as an act of loving consideration…
Occasionally though I will just let the aspie out full force when I get tired of tiptoeing, but only from time to time 😉
I learnt a lot of women only realise they are aspie at my age when suddenly all the close (mostly male) friends got married and settled down and then you realise oh, actually I don’t get along with most women so much because I don’t share many of their interests and not understanding or responding to their emo aspect well always gets me into trouble so it is actually more stressful to be friends with most non aspie females than it to be friends with males.
29/06/2019 at 6:14 pm #8356Ellie MaeParticipantI am self-diagnosed, and like most women my age it came as a relieving ah-ha moment. I.e., so that’s why . . . ad infinitum. You see, when I was young autism was a boy’s disease, only boys. I was just a very odd girl.
When I was a really little kid, of course I thought I was normal and just like everyone else. Mom, on the other hand, who had raised two children before me, knew that I was “different” from day one of my life. But I saw so much of myself reflected in my Dad that it didn’t seem odd to me. In fact, I was online researching the traits my Dad had when I realized that he was on the spectrum, and I was, too.
I started 1st grade when I was 5. As soon as I was with the other kids I knew right away that we were NOT alike. I tried to fit in through school, but I tended to make friends with boys instead of girls because we had similar interests — snakes, lizards, spiders and the like. I loved to wander through the desert alone, playing by myself for hours and catching the creatures there. I still enjoy my own company, and don’t need someone to entertain me.
I have never been a girly-girl, and most of my good friends in my life have been guys. I am a reliable friend to a man because I have no hidden motives or future aspirations beyond friends, and I’m not physical with my friends. Most have said at one time or another that I was the best of both worlds, like having a guy friend but still a woman.
On the other hand, it also means that I have spent a lot of my life alone. The NT guys I have tried to have relationships with aren’t happy with me because I’m not just like all the other women they’ve known. I’m more logical and less emotional, more predictable but in a different way as compared to “normal” women.
Bottom line – I think if a dictionary had pictures mine would appear along side the entry “Aspie Female.”
23/02/2020 at 10:37 pm #9352WendinParticipantI am a misfit all my life. I haven’t got a diagnosis yet. Because my health insurance plan can only cover a small fraction of the diagnosis expense. It is not a must for sure. If you can afford it, why not?
02/03/2020 at 7:29 pm #9364kevlar22ParticipantAll I know was that my mother tried to enroll me in a mainstream school in India, but was unable to do so because according to her they wanted to put me in a “mental asylum.” Luckily I was able to enroll in a mainstream school in the U.S. but here people described me as a “psycho” and as a “sociopath” since they found my silence and appearance to be unnerving. It took twelve years of being called “retard” by my own stepfather and peers till I met people in college who were educated about Aspergers Syndrome and helped me understand how I am exhibiting the traits of an Aspie.
I learned that my childhood obsessions of whales, Scooby-Doo, Lilo and Stitch, Indiana Jones, and Pokemon weren’t abnormal addictions, but normal traits of an Aspie. I never saw my experiences with Aspergers as a disorder/disadvantage; rather I see it more as a unique vantage point that I happen to have. I believe that awareness groups should not only have the goal to spread awareness of disabilities/disorders but to also enable people who have disabilities/disorders to decide their own limits rather than by the people around them who don’t share their experiences.30/05/2020 at 8:49 pm #10164AnonymousInactiveI have not been formally diagnosed. I was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of four, however. One of my teachers when I was in school recognized I had a form of what is now known as high functioning autism, and my psychiatrist agreed. I have not been getting treatment for what used to be known as Asperger’s, I have been getting treatment for ADHD, of which has been a major issue in my life.
31/05/2020 at 7:57 pm #10193AnonymousInactiveI just found out on Friday that my psychiatrist told my mom when I was 10 or 11 that I had Asperger’s. I didn’t know that. I’ve been treated more for my ADHD, which has, at times, caused me significant issues in terms of my relationships.
30/10/2020 at 3:35 pm #10783AnonymousInactiveHello,
It’s interesting we seem to have a lot of females on this thread talking about being missed, I’ve come across this a lot in my reading. I was 33 when diagnosed with ADHD but struggled with the meds, which brought out ‘weird’ traits from childhood and adolescence I’d since learned to suppress (I think I was simply too tired to mask them)… cue some research and the realisation that Asperger’s explained my life like nothing else had.
However, even when the psychiatrist who diagnosed the ADHD initially told me my childhood traits (which I’d collated for him in nice long list, ha!) were ‘probably Asperger’s’ I didn’t take that seriously as, unfortunately, I only knew about typical Asperger’s and didn’t think I could have it. I’m 34 now and awaiting an assessment for autism spectrum disorder, so will see if my suspicions are correct.
For me the point of a diagnosis is mainly to understand myself better. It can be very confusing – and lonely – being ‘odd’ or ‘different’ your entire life, even though I generally accept it and don’t even mind it as I can see it’s true. A diagnosis to me would mean being able to ‘categorise’ certain traits or quirks, and I know I don’t need it but I feel it’s also permission to decline social invitations or other difficult environments without feeling guilty or like a let down to others.
I’m so glad to see some wise ladies (& gentlemen) on here.
All the best to you all, whatever you decide to do.
30/10/2020 at 3:42 pm #10784AnonymousInactiveHi Voice Nerd,
I hope you are feeling better about things now. Please don’t be harsh on yourself about ‘offending’ people. I find I do it all the time, even with the best of intentions. Most of the offence others take seems to come from my honesty, or from missing signals from them, etc, but I think it’s important to remember that intent matters. If you don’t set out to hurt anyone and they still get hurt, the most you can do, and should be expected to do, is to apologise sincerely, learn if possible, then close the matter. It’s easy to ruminate and feel hopeless but nothing has given me more hope than realising there are others like me out there, that there’s a reason for my mishaps. I hope the fact that you share experiences with many others who understand goes some way to helping you feel more hopeful that social difficulties don’t have to mean isolation. Now, I’ll need to go try and take my own advice 🙂
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