Autism diagnosis anniversary

Coming up soon

For me, diagnosis changed my life enough that I remember the date and circumstances around my diagnosis clearly and I celebrate it each year. At the end of this month ( September 2025) I will celebrate my 6th autistic anniversary.

Knowing about my autism has changed my life for the better. Self understanding was something I had missed completely all those years before and it has taken emotional homework to sort and understand so many things from the past.

I am still learning about my own neurology and still trying to find ways to adjust my life to make struggles easier.
It has been hard to accept that I really am impaired in “normal” every day activities by my neurology. I find myself facing grief off and on when I struggle with some aspect of daily living where autism causes misunderstanding or makes it difficult to do something others do with ease. Todays news and strife adds to the emotional pain and like everybody else I feel particularly helpless, vulnerable, afraid of what lies in the future.

I try to remember to do my best self care, not to feed myself on social media’s shock and fright tactics (such things raise viewership and media does not hesitate to feast on horror, fear, distress, etc all over the world to gain customers).

I am trying to keep my life balanced and put myself on a diet of doing things that I can control, things I can do in my own little sphere to make my world better. In order to do this I must accept that I can’t control much, that I am not helping anybody by becoming dysfunctional through distress and anxiety induced by the feeding of my fears through social media/the news/ etc.

I can keep informed with just a few minutes of reading daily, I will no doubt be informed if the world is ending and somebody will tell me what to do (as if we could do much in that scenario).

I have been reading a lot of history over this past summer and have come to recognize that this sort of thing goes on in every generation. There is always a battle of “sides” of understanding… it seems to be human nature. There is always violence, mayhem, killings, sick behavior by individuals, just as there are always others who struggle to do good.
That all seems to be part of human nature.

I can look back in my own life, and I can look into the stars in the night sky and see how insignificant my own personal struggles are in the scheme of the world.

Very few humans are recognized beyond their own lifetimes, the rest of us experience life and all our struggles in different ways and pass on without fanfare in the world scope of things.

Do what matters most to your own life, your own loved ones, your own little place in your group, your community, your personal sphere…. you can safely leave the rest of it to history and world processes that will go on forever.

Thoughts on my own progress/process. It has been almost 10 years since I first began to suspect I might be autistic. It has been since 2017 that I began to try to learn more. I got diagnosis almost 6 years ago and began this blog in 2019. I find I am in a different position now and I have less information to share. Today’s science has uncovered many things and has clues to so much more but it is very slow going. Current trends in politics are very concerning and I am watching with strong interest. People who believe in science and finding and documenting facts are working continually for better understanding and I think funding will continue to be available from those who are financially able and who are concerned. Beyond that it is not within my sphere of control and I must rely on others who have the powers I don’t.

“accept the things you can’t change, change the things you can, and find the wisdom to know the difference” is something I am trying to live by. Learning what we can control and what we can not seems to be a key to mental health as we all struggle with conditions in the world today.
Find ways to give yourself what you need, what your loved ones need, what is good and right for you and yours. The rest is just details.

Autism anniversary

happy autistic anniversary to me

Five years ago, on Sept 30, 2019 I got my autism diagnosis, just 3 days short of my 68th birthday.
What a whirlwind of emotions!

Relief, validation, shock when I began to realize and recognize how impaired my day to day functioning actually was. I re-lived so many instances of painful struggles and saw with a fresh perspective how hard I had tried and how much anger, hurt, punishment, constant criticism and focus on my repeated failures over the years had deformed my life and my self image. I am a true survivor!

It was good to know that all those years of shame and blame for failing to live up to other’s expectations were not actually “all my fault” but autism had been working behind the scenes without anybody knowing. My different neurology made life much more difficult without my understanding how or why.

I have spent the last 5 years (and several years before that) trying to learn as much about autism as I can and sharing it here and on my Facebook information page (Autism for Older Adults)

Today I have mostly worked through issues of the past and found self-forgiveness, forgiveness of others, and a lot of peace and healing.

I have been able to make many adjustments to the way I do things in daily living and set limits on things I do that cause me struggles. I still do things to please others but I choose how and when and who I try to please and appease. (see fight, flight, freeze and fawn (appeasement) as responses to trauma)

Formal neuro psych assessment and subsequent diagnosis summary reports have helped me see my worst weaknesses and my best strengths and I have been able to use those insights to adjust daily life (self accommodations) for ease and comfort without needless struggles.

I can tell you from this side of diagnosis that things do eventually settle down and that we can find new ways to live life that bring less distress and a better feeling of safety and competence, a new self confidence. I have found peace and a sense of safety I had never experienced before.

Of all the remarks about my autism diagnosis from friends, etc., I have mostly got comments about my new self confidence. I am not as afraid, I am not as confused, I am not as distressed and emotionally exhausted.

For those who are seeking diagnosis or recently diagnosed, please do your best self care as you begin to sort the past and present from this new perspective. It is like culture shock, and everything we thought we knew, understood, believed about our world, ourselves, our past and our experiences is thrown into new understanding. The older we are at diagnosis, the more we have to sort!
I believe that today I have the best life, the best self understanding, the best perspective, the best tools to use to go forward to my (limited by my age) future. What a wonderful thing it has been to get diagnosis and finally find out what most individuals understand between the ages of 10 and 19. I had no idea!

The past 5 years has been filled with healing and improvements to everyday life. There have been so many “aha” moments as a new insight suddenly clicked and I was once again able to see how autism had been working in my life all these years.

I hope you find what you need to obtain diagnosis or confirm self identity as autistic.
I hope you will do the difficult emotional homework and look for new ways to adjust your new-to-you life as an autistic individual.
For me, diagnosis has been life changing and all for the better.

You are not alone. So many of us have struggled for years before we learned of our autism. There are others “out there” who understand. What a relief!

Five years ago

happy birthday to this blog

I started writing here almost 5 years ago January 2019, in order to share details about the struggles an older adult goes through to obtain diagnosis of autism here in the USA, and to explain the need for such diagnosis even in those of us who are elderly. I hoped to attempt to share all the things I was learning about the nature of autism for those who had gone through their lives into old age without ever knowing they were autistic.

The story begins on the last pages of this blog with my first entries, so to find things that happened in my adventure, you must scroll to the bottom of the page and read backwards. Had I been more tech savvy, the blog may have been easier to use

. Old dogs may be able to learn tricks but sometimes we are slower at it, especially if we have sensory processing disorder and are autistic (this dog, me).

What a huge difference knowing about my autism and how it has worked in me all my life has made! I have such better self understanding, and am learning that it is OK to be me, OK to feel emotions, OK to be different and even to enjoy that aspect of myself.

I have learned I do not have to “fit in” or force myself to live up to other people’s expectations, to say NO to their demands, and It is not my job to “make other people happy”.

At 4 full years and a few weeks now, from official diagnosis, my life has changed almost completely.

My self understanding has changed, my ability to recognize and deal with my emotions is growing, my understanding of my very long history of misunderstandings and pain in growing up, going to school, leaving home and living an adult life, working, parenting, being in a healthy relationship all have changed! It has been a huge relief to learn about my autism and how it worked hidden all those years in so many harmful and hurtful ways. My past finally makes sense!

I have the answer to so many “whys” of my life history.
I can make a better life for myself now, with better self understanding and this new perspective.

Today autism is understood to be not behavioral, but neurological. Behaviors of autistic individuals are due to struggles with sensory processing.

Autism itself presents as uneven development of an individuals’ neurology.
We are born with autism, we die with it. There is no diet, no pill, no treatment, no supplements or special therapies that can cure it . Autism is “for life”

Knowing we are autistic helps us make sense of “what happened”, helps us know our personal strengths and weaknesses and especially important, how best to self accommodate for our own unique “brand” of autism.

When we understand our past and know our own selves well enough to understand how our autism works in us, then we have the opportunity to change our lives in our surroundings, our activities, our schedules, our health care and diet, our own struggles and how to support ourselves through the worst of them.

Diagnosis, whether self discovered or diagnosed professionally, can help in so many ways.
Diagnosis gives us a new and completely different perspective on absolutely everything we thought we knew or believed in our long and painful lives. Self understanding is so important!

There are well over 225 blog entries here, all about discovering autism, the nature of autism itself, and adjusting to diagnosis late in life.

If there are questions about those topics that you’d like to see discussed, please drop me a line.

I hope you find what you need, right here, to explain some of the painful “whys” of past life, to suggest some adjustments you can make to make life better, and to help understand your own kind of autism.

Have a happy and healthy new year, may all your dreams come true.