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Hidden Autism?

find clues here: YOU MIGHT BE AUTISTIC IF :

Interacting with others is usually difficult, uncomfortable, upsetting, or not satisfactory in other ways. ( diagnostic criteria 1 -social struggles)

Signs include being estranged from family, lack of friends, multiple marriages or relationships that end in distress, constant fighting or misunderstandings with others including: trouble with people in school, church, relatives, workplaces, encounters on the street or in public places, difficulty with situations such as doctors offices, emergency treatment/hospital/clinical settings, difficulty in encounters with those who work with the public (police, teachers, store clerks, restaurant servers,or workers who come to your home ( such as plumbers, lawn care, house cleaners, etc etc etc).

You may have been bullied, abused,/ and-or neglected as a child, you may still be bullied or in an abusive relationship.

You may prefer to keep away from others because your “people” experiences have not been so good. Sound familiar? Keep reading.

YOU MIGHT BE AUTISTIC IF: You struggle with communication.( diagnostic criteria 2)
You might find it difficult to express yourself either spoken words or in writing, using ASL, texting, or on the phone.

You might have troubles with speech , including stuttering or stammering, freezing up when you think about speaking or are suddenly called on to speak.

You may not recognize your own emotions until they overwhelm you and you end up “falling apart,”
“blowing up” “freezing up” or “breaking down”, or “having rages” .

You might be dyslexic, hyperlexic, or be unusually talkative or withdrawn. You might prefer to read and write to communicate.

You might have difficulty using your facial features and body language, or others have told you that you have strange body language or gestures and expressions.

You may find it difficult to understand the facial expressions and body language of others.
You might have frequent misunderstandings and have trouble following directions.

You might have been accused of being over friendly or being cold, or of behaving inappropriately.
You may not recognize “personal space” of others.

Social chit chat is frustrating, boring, annoying or causes anxiety.

Having long two- sided conversations with exchange of information or ideas, or sharing of emotions is mostly unknown or you may never have experienced this.

You tend to avoid interacting with others because of these difficulties.

YOU MIGHT BE AUTISTIC IF : you have rigid thinking and or repetitive behaviors ( diagnostic criteria 3)

You might have a regular routine around many parts of your life, and you hate to have those routines disrupted or suddenly change.

You hate surprises (good or bad)

You expect certain behavior from others and are surprised, disappointed, angry, or dismayed if they do not behave the way you expect.

You have strong beliefs about right and wrong, what is good and what is bad, and you rarely change those beliefs.

You may have intense interests in details surrounding a specific subject or subjects. It is not unusual for these interests to change over a period of time, but whatever those interests are, they will be very specific and demanding detail and will be absorbing and of almost driven/ obsessive proportions.

You have certain rituals or processes you must do in order to accomplish certain tasks. Being asked to change these suddenly makes you uncomfortable, upset, angry, or distressed and worried.
As an example, I brush my teeth after I eat anything. since I snack constantly, I brush my teeth a lot when I am home. When we travel, I am often unable to brush after meals or snacks and I find that distressing. Other examples would be the order in which you do any task, the tools you might use or need to work or to perform the task, time of day you must do things, etc. If your rituals or processes are changed or interrupted it is difficult to proceed without upset.

You may tend to isolate yourself or resist other activities or interactions if they interfere with the structure of your rituals and routines, or if you are not given time to prepare for them properly.
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If you relate to these things, and more importantly relate to 2 or more behaviors from any of these 3 sections, you may be autistic.
The sections I just described are sometimes called the diagnostic TRIAD of autism… having behaviors from all 3 sections are points used to diagnose autism.
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I add my own criteria here: ( and many diagnostic persons also take note)
YOU MIGHT BE AUTISTIC IF :
You have sensory struggles. This can include not only trouble with any or all of the “usual” 5 senses but also difficulties in interoception and proprioception. These have to do with regulating your emotions and knowing where your body is in relations to the rest of the world.
You may struggle with perception of light, taste, touch/feel, smells, sounds, knowing and expressing your emotions, and being coordinated/clumsy, having trouble while in motion or watching others in motion, listening and understanding, fears related to going too fast, fear of falling, fear of being touched, sudden noises, being overwhelmed by a smell, hating certain foods due to their taste or texture, trouble wearing clothing because of seams, texture of fabrics, sticky labels, etc. The range of sensory struggles is so big I can not include enough examples. But if you think about how you use your senses and what your most difficult struggles are, you may find that many relate to unusual sensory processing.

You might have a personal history of job loss, unemployment, being bullied, abused, “set up”, scammed, used or victimized. You may have a personal history that includes experience with substance abuse, involvement with law enforcement/ justice system, multiple diagnoses of genetic and or neurological disorders, autoimmune disorders, depression, anxiety, or other mental and/ or physical illness, homelessness, poverty, and may have recieved therapy or treatment which was not successful or resulted in non typical ways of responding to treatments for named diagnoses.
These things are documented to be significantly higher in the autistic population.

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One of the difficult things about diagnosis of autism is that it does not have just one way of showing itself, because it is due to differences in neurology, each person will be different, and each of us will have different life experiences, all of which help to hide our struggles and make them difficult to define. The things listed here are necessarily general descriptions and it is up to us to sort out which details of our own lives apply to the descriptions of the way we struggle. Although autism is physically uneven development of our neurology, diagnosis depends on general behavioral guidelines and autism’s effects on our lives are mostly behavioral.

I continue to address older adults who think they may be autistic and to encourage them to consider diagnosis, search out information, to ask for help.
You are not alone.
Knowing my diagnosis has made all the difference to me even at the end stages of my long and struggling life. Finally I can make sense of it all. What a relief!

Grief and Autism

Defining grief and discussing feelings of loss and sadness surrounding Autism

This is dangerous ground. Issues surrounding Autism are sometimes very political and raise great emotional reactions. Ideas about grief are among the most controversial, discussed, ranted over, rage-raising and distressing issues on many autistic forums and blogs today. I am about to try to sort some of the controversy, anger, shaming, blaming, and distress. Instead I might inadvertently add to it, who knows?

I spent hours reading definitions of grief preparatory to writing this.
Grief can be explained as a normal or natural reaction to loss, deep sorrow in reaction to change of any sort, the usual being over loss of a relationship due to death. There are also aspects of grief in loss of expected outcomes or change of expectations or plans .

Grief is not simply feelings of loss, but also a ground for conflicting feelings of guilt, anger,sadness, relief, or release. We can feel sorrow over the loss of a parent and still feel relief over their release from suffering, from the difficult behavior or painful relationship, and feel guilt for feeling the accompanying sense of freedom. All of that is part of grief, and there is often much more.

In natural cycles of grief there can be stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and sadness, and acceptance. These can happen in stages, and can be repeated over and over in any order, sometimes simultaneously, other times remaining in one stage for long periods of time.

Many people may need support and counseling or therapy to help with grief. It is not uncommon for adaptation to be incomplete or adjustments to be unhealthy in our search for consolation , solace, and peace over our place in the midst of our losses.

The thing that brought grief to my attention was the third reading of Tony Attwood’s excellent book on autism. “The Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome.”

I read it through the first time when I suspected my autism but was not sure. I thought much of it was written only about children and did not see how much of it applied to me. Then I read it again and recognized so many traits and experiences of my own from my childhood (looking at it and comparing it to my younger self). The entire book read from the aspects of my own childhood was filled with “aha” moments.
I was amazed and so interested… it explained almost everything about my early life. This was it!

The third time I read the book, something very strange happened. As I read those descriptions of childhood struggles I had the urge to cry uncontrollably. I felt sadness and loss and immeasurable helplessness and confusion. I was re-living my childhood emotions. I felt the feelings I had felt in all of those impossible situations from my childhood, the guilt, the anger, the sorrow, overwhelming sorrow and sadness all wrapped together in one experience, each situation the author described bringing forth a flow of memories of similar situations from my childhood, adolescence, and teen years.
The most predominant of these was the deep sorrow I had for myself and my struggles.
I experienced this feeling for most of my life. Feeling nobody understood, nobody cared, I was lost and helpless, feeling I was the cause of everybody else’s troubles. I remember being told over and over to stop feeling sorry for myself. I remember wailing ” I don’t know how” .

I can remember so many tears and so much distress. I remember begging for therapy, a counselor, for somebody to help, and being told repeatedly that “there is nothing wrong with you”.
I just needed to shape up, to get with the program, to shake it off, pull myself together and TRY..to do right, to be good, and to stop being selfish and bad. I never understood how I was supposed to do these things, but I was to do them by myself by willpower and strength of character. The feeling of futility was immense.

OK, back to grief. I believe I was trapped in grief and despair. I knew I needed help and comfort and that I was not ever ever going to get. I had a need for understanding and compassion for the struggles nobody seemed to understand, and took for deliberate willfulness and acts of evil. I needed explanations, insights, support and directions, I needed details of almost everything explained in depth . I knew I was not going to get them in my home situation.
I came to the stage of acceptance eventually, but the underlying sadness was there throughout most of my childhood and young adulthood. I spent my early day to day life not only in fear and dread of any interaction or mistake I might make, but also in grieving for the things I was pretty sure others had somehow obtained but that were forever out of reach for me.

Grief for loss of loved ones is called bereavement. It is a reaction to losing through death, divorce, separation, life changing disability or other circumstances. I have always processed this sort of grief more easily because the “why” factor is usually evident. The loved one died, had health changes, was no longer in love , moved far away, all concrete facts that don’t have that “why” factor.

Now we come to an opinion that is not popular with many autism groups. There is a huge backlash against parents of autistic offspring who lament online that their children are suffering and wish that they were not autistic.
I find the anger of some autistic people may be misplaced because the distress the parents are showing is at their own helplessness to help their struggling children, some of whom are very heavily afflicted with many of the worst features of autism.
I think it is natural grief that is showing, however poorly worded in forums or blogs. The parents are truly grieving because they see all sorts of things that they have been helpless to prevent and to aid.
There is a loss of expectations for a normal childhood and adulthood, a loss of dreams for a bright future, a loss of the idea of “what it was supposed to be”.
I understand the angry autistics’ reaction to the spoken wishes of so many parents saying they wish the child had not been born, that they wish the child was not autistic, etc.
In many cases such children are killed by their parents. In many cases children are abused by their parents.
In times of the past and today, many wish for elimination of pregnancy of a potentially
” damaged ” child , society of today deeming it is OK to select which pregnancy can be terminated , the demand is there for tests for autism as there is for down’s syndrome and other genetic conditions. To be an autistic child and hear that you are unwanted is probably a very common state. I heard it too. I understand the reaction against such statements. I understand the reaction against being told we are unwanted.
I understand the pain it causes in our own autistic hearts and I suggest that the anger we feel is grieving of our own over things that we have missed, have lost, have never known. I have no answers. Grief is part of the human condition and will be experienced by the vast majority of humans today. Grief has been the hardest to sort and understand of all the almost constant emotions of my life. Now with my new understanding of my own autism I am making progress toward sorting it out.
I have no answers but find it difficult to focus all of my rage on the parents in these support groups who are feeling loss of ability to help their children, who feel grief at the things they want their children to be able to experience or goals they will perhaps never attain. I don’t think it is realistic to blame the behavior of a few parents on all parents of autistic children, any more than we all recognize how unfair it is to blame ourselves for our autistic struggles, or the behavior of a few autistic people .
I may write more about grief and autism as I continue to sort and to understand. Mean time, I want to make a call for unity. Autism needs different perspectives of diverse people to continue to help us all understand the many ways we are affected, our needs, our self understanding, our struggles and our triumphs. I hope we can refrain from tearing other grieving people apart in our quest for “justice”, “fairness”, etc.
As human beings we are all in this together. Let kindness and not anger and retribution win this one.

Who am I ???

Finding your authentic self after diagnosis

There has been much discussion lately, in the online forums I attend , about masking and finding one’s own identity.
How to drop the mask and be more authentic? How to know who I really am beneath all the adaptive and self protective behaviors I have learned over my lifetime? How do I know which parts are “real” and which parts are camouflage for self protection or ease of coping?

I was at a loss for a long time about these questions. For me a lot of these questions did not apply because as I had aged, I had adjusted my style of dress, my social behavior, my willingness to put up with discomfort, etc.
I had become more authentic to myself for the most part before I learned of my autism.

It might be a process of ageing that we become less willing to put up with social and physical discomfort or meaningless rituals or distressing social situations, or I might have been lucky to have sorted out sources of discomfort and to have allowed myself to discard those things that were most difficult and distressing to me.

I understand the need to sort it all out, and to self accommodate in order to have the best experiences that life has to offer and to eliminate pain and discomfort where we can.

May I suggest we start with the things that we find most difficult and distressing? By figuring out different ways to do things, we can eliminate at least some of the things that are hardest for us to tolerate.

I learned to avoid physical discomfort first. Stopped spending hours on clothing, hair, makeup, and worrying about being “in style” or if I looked right. Flat shoes, loose fitting clothing, easy hair cut, minimal makeup applied only for very special times. Works for me! Even within dress codes, unless a certain specific uniform is required, there is usually some leeway.

I got rid of the scratchy couch that I could not bear to sit on, the bright flickering fluorescent lights. When I lived alone I did not use TV or Radio. I now remove myself to my quiet zone if my husband wants to participate in things that drive me wild (TV and Radio for example).
I have bright clear lighting that doesn’t flicker in places where I need it for reading and close work.
I stopped forcing myself to go to concerts, listening to podcasts or videos, trying to interact in large groups (4 or more is a large group to me), stopped going to restaurants, shopping malls, and other places that caused my sensory struggles to make me anxious and put me in ‘stampede mode”. What was the point?
If things like wedding receptions, anniversary parties, retirement parties, etc send you into panic or meltdown, consider a congratulatory card, note, email, or phone call along with polite regrets.
( you don’t have to explain, just say you are sorry you missed their big day but wanted to send congratulations or whatever message you’d like to give).

I found new ways to get a lot of things done, adapting them to my sensory struggles so that I no longer suffered loud noises, chaotic surroundings, etc.

In replacing those old painful experiences I found joy in solitary walks in nature, taking photographs, doing crafts, listening to my choice of music (peaceful or upbeat and not dissonant, no lyrics since I can’t readily process spoken or sung words), I found the ‘real’ me.

I lost a lot of anxiety and anguish by simply declining invitations to loud parties, noisy social gatherings such as dinners in restaurants, classrooms, malls, etc and substituting meeting with one or 2 people for quiet shared activities.

It may require others in your life to make adjustments too, or you might need to compromise to keep peace, but I urge you to find your most distressing activities and find ways to eliminate them or change them to things that provide pleasure or at least reduce discomfort.

Change clothing, change shopping habits, change the way you socialize or interact with others, change decor or arrangements within your home to accommodate your worst struggles. Many of us have it in our power to make adjustments that can make life so much better. You do not have to do anything one certain way, or in many cases you might not have to do it at all.

Sometimes we need to just stop and consider alternatives. Change can be scary, but taken in little bites, and not all at once, sometimes changes can bring about a lot of relief and comfort in exchange for the pain, anxiety and frustration.

What can you do, one step at a time to remove painful experiences from your life and to substitute or build new and pleasant experiences for yourself?

Adult Autistic reaching out

Self Advocacy, Ageing on the Spectrum

Advocate as noun: Person who publicly supports or recommends, or stands up for ( an idea, a person, group of people, certain ideas or beliefs)

Advocate as a verb: To publicly recommend, or support, promote, advise in favor of, stand up for or endorse ( an idea, a person, a group of people, certain ideas or beliefs)

Standing up for oneself , actively representing one’s own interests, welfare, health, well being,

Speaking for oneself of one’s needs, one’s beliefs, one’s best interests is Self Advocacy.

At my age, 6 months away from age 69 years old, I have finally become a self advocate.
Self advocacy has been one of my hardest struggles in life.
I had nobody to recognize my autistic struggles, nobody interested in helping me through my struggles as a child, nobody to speak for me in any situations I found overwhelming, frightening, distressing, or difficult in any of the very many ways I struggled.
I had been trained to be compliant in everything. Wait for directions, wait for permission, wait for somebody to notice my needs or wants.
Don’t bother people, don’t ask for things, don’t be a pain! Don’t talk to me, don’t tell me, don’t say that, I don’t want to hear that from you.

So many of us who grew up this way are simply not prepared to stand up for ourselves and ask for help with our problems.

One of the issues that comes up repeatedly on the adult autism online forums I participate in is how to overcome obstacles in our lives, from speaking out about being abused and asking for help to get safely to a new situation, about stopping bullying, about being blamed, shamed, or victimized in various interactions, including medical situations and needing adjustments or explanations made in health care situations.

One of the many problems repeated over and over are problems with misdiagnosis when people turn to professionals for help in understanding their struggles.
So many of us who seek diagnosis are handed misdiagnosis and scoffed at by those in power for thinking we might be autistic, usually then being told that we don’t fit diagnostic criteria from ages ago, with no current understanding of autism facts that have been learned in the intervening years since the days of the Doctor’s/ professional’s medical training.
One of the struggles we have in obtaining diagnosis is the sheer lack of numbers of autistic people applying for diagnosis.
If a doctor has 2 percent or less of his practice involved in the population they(he/she) sees, how much time will be spent trying to stay abreast of the most recent research and information for those issues? I base the 2 percent of population quote on the current basis of understanding of the frequency of autism in the overall population. Most of the people seeking diagnosis will be better informed than their consulting specialists unless the person we are seeing is an autism specialist.

In so many of our struggles, we know what is best for us, what works for us, what is wrong for us, yet we are somehow afraid to speak up and speak out.
I was afraid of aggression and anger from others, afraid to draw attention to myself, afraid to speak up about things that were wrong or distressing to me. I was convinced nobody cared. I was right.

Nobody does care about you like you do! Unless you speak out on your own behalf, nobody is likely to understand what it is that is troubling you, whether domestic abuse, workplace bullying, medical issues regarding your care, medications, treatment, clarifying instructions you get or attempting to get professional diagnosis.

I have several things that do not work in my favor. I have no social status, I am elderly, I am not physically appealing/attractive, I am a woman, and I am not wealthy.
I do have the advantage of previous training for diagnostic battles. Our now adult daughter struggled from an early age with many things that made life painful and dangerous for her. I got my experience on the medical battlefield when she was young, as an advocate for her diagnosis and treatment, being forced to learn all the ins and outs of insurance, government requirements and definitions of disability, researching diagnoses, finding the right treatments, understanding therapies and medications, etc etc etc.
Mother love was a great force in helping me overcome my own struggles and in learning to speak out for things that were not right for her.

Have you given thought to self love?
Our daughter was worth of fighting for, of seeking treatment for, of my learning about her struggles, learning the required rules and regulations from the government at state and national levels and diagnoses involved, how to apply for help, where to go, who to see, and my learning about medications and help that might be available. I was highly motivated.
Our daughter was/is worthy of continuing to fight for when she had given up. When she was discouraged, when she was overwhelmed, when she was in her darkest times. There has been no question of that!
Would you fight for somebody you cared about?
I think almost all of us would.
Then consider being a self advocate and standing up for yourself when you need to.
I did not think I was worthy. I still don’t want a fuss.

I still am afraid to bother anybody, still am worried about what others will say or do if I speak up. I am timid, I don’t want to annoy or anger or be the focus of negative attention that one draws if one opposes authority in the form of the doctor, the teacher, the boss, the spouse, the family… there is a huge list of people it feels unsafe to speak up to about any subject. My social conditioning is that deep it is a struggle every day to remember it is OK to ask for support, for help, for explanations, for adjustments, for changes, for things I need.

I am also learning that my life can be so much better if I ask for accommodations, if I ask questions about directions, diagnoses, treatments recommended, or even protest or contest certain proposed actions supposedly to be done on my behalf.
I am worthy of self care, I am worthy of respect, I am worthy of being heard, I am worthy of making decisions of what is right for me and speaking up on my own behalf. I had to learn this and fight to overcome my deepest beliefs about myself and my own value.

If the “professionals” you are interacting with dismiss your fears, pooh-pooh your questions, patronize you, demean you, treat you with contempt, or ignore your concerns, please report their attitudes and actions to their superiors and try to find others who will respect you and make you a partner in your own care and other interests.
You are worthy.

I am learning how to be an advocate for older adult autistic people and to educate and to encourage and to speak up whenever I have the opportunity.

First I had to learn how to love myself enough to feel worthy to speak up for myself.

More on self love soon.

Adult children of Autistic Parents

Did you know ?

When I discovered my own autism, I discovered my mother, too, was autistic.

My mother passed away without knowing of her autism. But when I learned of my own,
I quickly recognized autistic traits in my mother’s inexplicable and incomprehensible view of the world.

I recognized her struggles, her personality quirks, her odd behaviors, her anxiety to please others and to impress them. I began to understand a lot of the “why” questions from my youth.

Diagnosis of my autism, for me was the key to living a healthy and fulfilled life. Lack of information about my autism and my mother’s kept me in a world of “should” and “ought”, a world where my failure to function as expected was the main feature and always behind it my self questioning doubts and self punishment, self hate, why could I not succeed where others had? Why was I such a miserable failure at life where most other people seem to do so much better?

Our mother had very rigid ideas of the rules of life. Everything in her life centered around becoming a socialite. Her home, her family, her clothing, the things she did all were directed toward her idea of what “upper class” people should be. She wanted desperately to be rich and famous, glamorous, idolized and admired. She lived a life of frustration and no doubt also saw herself as a failure if she ever gave herself over to introspection, but she never once admitted to having a personal flaw, that I can recall. ( and remember my perception was definitely skewed by my own fears anxieties and autistic lack of insights) Why couldn’t she achieve a social life? She never knew.

Everything in our mother’s life was moderated by “what will the neighbors think?”
You must understand, my perceptions are autistic perceptions and I had very little understanding of any of the others of my family, their motivations, their feelings, their struggles. I was busy being overwhelmed with my own, attempting to avoid physical and emotional punishments and constant criticism and scoldings, I was overwhelmed with every day survival, trying to please and most of all appease others in our family (as well as anybody I had contact outside the family) and had only my autistic mother’s perceptions to guide me and explain my world to to me. I stopped asking for her help and insights around 3rd grade (8 years old?) when I realized the futility of that, and recognized the fact that she was not interested in hearing about any of my problems or struggles. ( She had plenty of her own and her autism kept her from seeing mine) I understand that now.
I displeased my mother so often because she saw her own autism in me and wanted to correct it, punish it, wipe it out. My autistic failures reminded her too much of her own weaknesses, flaws and struggles and infuriated her because I seemingly willfully continued to annoy her by my struggles, with her seeing these as deliberate disobedience and lack of compliance through resistance of will rather than lack of understanding what she wanted of me at any time.
Her hidden and not really understood message to me was “don’t be autistic”… yeah, that was it.

No wonder I had a miserable childhood! At least I can make sense of it now.

I got my ideas of life’s ” should’s” and almost everything else in life really wrong! Nobody’s fault!!! Nobody knew about autism, either mine or my mother’s, nor that of anybody else in or out of the family in those days.

I was told by my mother’s sister and their own mother (my grandmother) that my mom was “simple”.

In truth, she was extremely dyslexic and probably had other struggles with sensory processing. She could barely read and write, had echolalia, used music she learned as a child to express her feelings ( singing some songs over and over and over for all of her life in certain situations).

I think of my own inability to visualize (aphantasia) and my fascination for taking photographs of things I see, and want to remember. I have thousands of images stored in my computer so that I can go back and look at the images which I can’t visualize or remember in a visual way by picturing it in my mind’s eye.

I was shocked ( oh no, I have become my mother!!), when I realized in remembering that our mother was obsessed with taking photographs and that she had amassed a huge collection of printed images, almost all of her family, taken over the course of the years.
Our mother’s photo obsession drove all of her kids and her spouse crazy. Every activity should have a photo, every event needed to stop while she posed us and took repeated photos. She was always excited to look at the photos when they returned from being developed.
I suspect her obsession with photo taking was because she could not visualize in her mind, either. In those days photo taking was very expensive, both to purchase the films and to have the photos developed. I remember my father complaining about the expense!
On top of our mother’s likely aphantasia, add that she was not able to read much at all because of her dyslexia. She struggled to write due to the dyslexia as well.
Her struggles were far worse than mine… I could read and write and had a gift for words, and I am amazed that she accomplished all that she did without these things.
Mother’s hearing processing and her visual processing may have been struggles for her as well, but I will never know. I know she loved movies and television, loved listening to soap operas on the radio, and enjoyed popular music from her childhood onward.

Now that I understand my mother’s autism and have a much better idea of how it must have affected her, I can only admire that she managed to raise 4 children, kept us clothed, washed and fed, kept the house clean and that we all survived and became independent citizens functioning in society.

I grew up in the 50’s and the 60’s and in those days, all failings of children were blamed on poor parenting.

I blamed my mother too, and for some things like her deliberate cruelty, I still do blame and resent her treatment of me. Deliberately causing pain is never appropriate, physically or emotionally.

I can not excuse that part of her behavior. But I can better comprehend it. She had so very few tools available for overcoming her own struggles. She had no insights, as I have been blessed to obtain through today’s knowledge of autism and of my own diagnosis. She had to struggle all her life and never knew about her own autism. She never had the opportunity to gain insights and self understanding, to see her world differently, to make adaptations that might have allowed her to grow and thrive. She never knew.
Today, knowing my own autism and knowing that she died never having the blessing of self understanding needed to adjust her life and her struggles, I am better able to forgive so many of the struggles of my own life which I had been taught to blame squarely on the parenting I had been given. And I can finally forgive her as well.
We survived, how we did it, I am not sure.

Knowing about the autism in our family has been a key to my understanding of my childhood, my youth, my struggles all my life.
Knowing about autism in my mother and possibly in other family members has allowed me to understand all those painful “why’ questions and helped in the healing.

Did you know????

Now I know of my own autism, I wonder how I did as a parent?
Nobody knew about my own autism all the time my kids were growing up.
I did not learn about my own autism until my offspring were born, and grew up to have homes of their own.
Nobody knew back then.
Diagnosis is life changing.

Autism Awareness April

April has been designated Autism awareness month once again.

The word is getting out. Autism awareness and acceptance news is spreading.
This is a challenge to all of us to go one step more, some of us will make posts, give talks, write our blogs, participate in other awareness and acceptance activities.
I hope we can add awareness of autism in adults to the things we discuss this year. (2020)

Extrapolated from the most recently completed USA Census, There are 1.6 million children in the USA (2 percent of the total population of those under age 18) who likely are autistic.
Awareness is rising and help is becoming available for children. Never quickly enough but we are definitely making progress.

Children do grow up. Here is a statistic that might surprise you.
Did you know there are likely 4.2 million autistic adults over age 18???
(2 percent of the adult USA population age 18 and older). Did you know the majority of them will be completely unaware of their own autism?
Please share these statistics. Those of us who are affected by autism know the difference a diagnosis makes in our lives.
Thanks for sharing, and for promoting understanding of autism in all ages.
Learn more here:

https:// oldladywithautism.blog/author/debrabrisch3436/

feel free to copy and paste! Share Share Share thank you.

Newly diagnosed Autistic Adults

Comments on forum are a strong argument for adult diagnosis of autism.

I was so deeply moved just moments ago.
I have a routine of checking in with each of the four on line autism forums I attend every morning.
One person had written that she was newly diagnosed and that she wondered what other people’s reactions to diagnosis had been.

People began to check in and tell their stories.
Some said they were initially shocked because they had no idea.
Others said they felt deep loss for things that might have been.
Some said they felt angry that they had spent their whole lives not knowing why they were different.
Some said they refused to accept diagnosis and fought it to begin with, but eventually became convinced the diagnosis was correct, and accepted it.

Every person (and more checking in as the morning unfolds – it is 5:30 AM as I type this) said that they felt relief because they finally understood they were not bad, wrong, morally inferior, weak willed, crazy, broken, hateful, spiteful, mean, cold, or any of the other labels they were given all the years they did not know and understand about their autism. Diagnosis explained so much!

Each person said it was a relief to have the answers to why life had seemed so difficult for them in so many ways.

Each person said it made so much difference in how they felt about themselves, how they saw their past struggles, and how diagnosis helped them make a new life with fewer struggles since knowing about their autism.

That parallels my own experience and speaks volumes about the tremendous need for finding lost autistic adults and giving them the tools they need to live better lives through gaining and understanding their own diagnosis.

I learned something from an article on autism and ageing the other day.
I had not thought of it before in this way.
This requires the assumption that autism has always been with us, rather than thinking it is an epidemic or sudden plague that appeared out of the blue in the middle of last century when it was first suspected and began to be explored.
Stick with me here.
If there are approximately 2 percent of every generation who are autistic, and autism has been missed as a diagnosis in adults ( childhood being measured from birth to the age limit of 20 years old), and there are currently ( as stated in the statistics I read) 5,500 autistic (diagnosed) people turning 20 years old every year here in the USA:
think about the 5,500 autistic adults in every generation each year who missed diagnosis simply because it was not done before 1980, and until very recently diagnosis was very rare.
People of the baby boom generation will have had more autistic people because there were more people born in that generation…
Half the baby boom population has retired, the other half is in progress of ‘coming of retirement age’. Using those same statistics, can we generalize that there are approximately 5,500 undiagnosed adults with autism reaching retirement age each year? How many are in the ‘over 65’ age category?

There are approximately 275,000 (between the age of 20 and 70) undiagnosed autistic adults in the USA alone. Of course this is only an estimate. Nobody knows, because that population is currently hidden. Actual statistics( I have looked at so many studies) estimate autism in all populations occurs at a rate of between 1 and 5 percent. I have assumed a conservative 2 percent for this discussion.

The relief of suffering in knowing yourself to be diagnosed with autism could reach and help so many people. We need professionals to diagnose, study, treat, provide therapies, care for, and otherwise support this group.

I hope that together we can raise awareness of this need and that we will soon see services provided for these truly lost and struggling generations.

OK, this is corny, but you will understand.

“I once was lost but now I am found”.
It has made all the difference to me. I hope others can be ‘found’ too.

Reaction to Diagnosis

I don’t know if it is the same at any age

I have not looked at any studies, but I participate in several autism based groups online. Ideas stated here have for the most part been formed on my own experience with encountering autism, and reported experiences from adults in online groups I belong to.
Each person’s experiences and perceptions will of course be different.

I think it might be a bit more difficult to shift gears as we age. Autism is known to cause rigid thinking. We older autistic folk have had plenty of practice at forming rigid ideas by the time we reach our 60’s.
Is late diagnosis of autism more shocking to those of us who are elderly? I suspect that it is.

As older adults, we have overcome or adapted to many struggles alone.
We have spent a lifetime believing we are “normal” but also believing we are somehow different, incompetent, selfish, bad, wrong, stupid, useless, thoughtless, inept, uncaring, rude, intrusive, hateful, and on and on… a litany of fixed ideas in our older and less flexible brains, learned in our earlier life and more or less accepted as inner truths because we did not know about autism. We have set ideas about ourselves and others and how the world as we see it works.

We may have wondered why we struggled, but learning at last,( although it is sometimes a relief), that autism is the answer, we may suddenly find ourselves scrambling to find a new platform to view our innermost selves.

It is as if the ground we have stood upon for so many years is crumbling.

The foundations of the house we built our ideas on is being torn down.

We will need time to replace these with ideas about our selves and how our diagnosis of autism makes everything different.

Many older people report feeling shocked at first, even though they knew, deep inside that somehow they were ‘different’.
Knowing about autism changes all of the concepts and precepts we may have held about ourselves and our world.
Knowing that we have been wrong in the way we understood almost everything in our worlds, well, that is a lot to digest!

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Let me insert a warning here. Your autism is hugely important to you, but it will be of little consequence to most all of the people around you. They will be likely to react by passing off the information of your self discovery lightly, and assuring you that they still love you etc. .
They will be likely to make ignorant statements about “everybody being a bit autistic” or they will deny it… never mind, don’t argue. Don’t take these things personally. Your diagnosis will mean the world to you, but as in all things, most people will not be able to understand and since it doesn’t affect them personally, most will simply not be very interested. That’s OK. It does not mean they do not care about you, they simply don’t see the significance of your discovery. But they will see the results as you work though your new understanding of your self!

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Learning about our autism is a shock in the way that a sudden loss is… but this is loss of self identity.

Most people newly diagnosed with autism report going through the stages of grief. Shock, denial, bargaining,sadness, anger, acceptance. All appear and disappear, in any order, in rapid transition or slowly over days and sometimes years.
Do not be surprised at your emotional responses to finally learning you are “on the spectrum”.

My major reaction on figuring out I have autism/am autistic was relief. I knew there was something different about me, but had not a clue as to the nature of my struggles or why I seemed to have so many difficulties with things that others seemed to find easy.
I have been grieving in an ongoing way for years, but now I have an answer for that too. I have been sad for the loss of opportunities and things that ‘might have been’. I have regretted so many incidents of the past where I made bad decisions, misunderstood motives, misjudged so many people or situations. I have been angry over many of those things too. Nobody knew!
Feeling cheated of an ordinary life (whatever that is!) and wishing I had known or simply not been given autism as my share in life, feeling extraordinary relief and curiosity on learning how I was different and why… all going round and round inside me.
I bet you will feel similar things and a whole range of emotional turmoil. It is like being engulfed and having to learn to swim. Not a piddly little word, but one with great meaning and consequences “autism”.

Newly diagnosed with autism means loads of emotional homework, lots of looking for new ways to interact with one’s world, and new understanding of so many painful things from the past.
Please give yourself time to process all the new information, the new ways of looking at life and others, the new things you learn about yourself.
It took a lifetime to learn all the ideas that now are being shaken and tested from new perspectives.

Many new ideas will take the place of some old “stinkin’ thinkin’ “. , Many old ideas will be discarded, pains will be dug up and revisited from new perspectives.
I like to say I am a work in progress. My growth in understanding of my world, my self, and everything that applies to these things has been phenomenal. It has been the most exciting thing, freeing, uplifting, a sort of fresh start in a new and better world, to learn of my autism and to learn how to live better through my better understanding of how autism has touched every part of my world for the previous 65 years before I knew, before I began to understand so many answers I found when I found out about autism.

It is my deep hope that the medical community and those learning about autism to apply to professional practices today will be able to help not only children and families dealing with autism, but will be able to diagnose and explain their autism to old people just like me, but who remain still undiscovered and struggling with their Autism without knowing.

Autism diagnosis for an Old Lady

My next attempt at getting a professional diagnosis is less than a week away.

I find myself very nervous, on edge, near tears sometime.

Summer is always busy and I have a lot to do. Maybe being busy is good because it keeps me from fretting, something I am very (very) good at!

I trust this doctor, and he has many years experience with autistic people. My husband will come with this time. We have been given a “homework” sheet to fill out and have been cautioned not to discuss it with each other. I think the Dr wants to compare our observations. Dr will also spend time interviewing my spouse. This was something that I was told would take place during my first “assessement” but which never happened… anxious about that too.

Almost everything I want to do from here onward depends on a positive diagnosis, and I have no idea what will happen if he gives me another diagnosis (schizoid has been suggested, but I disbelieve that).

Everything I have read about autism seems to fit my childhood experiences, my personal life experiences, and my work experiences.

I am no stranger to other diagnoses as there are others with those in our family… and our daughter experienced multiple diagnoses over the years until they ‘got it right’.

I do intensive research on any subject which interests me, and neurological brain disorders (mental illness and other associated conditions) has been one of my areas of study.

If this Dr says I am not autistic I will be devastated emotionally because I already identify as autistic and I know it will upset my self image… which already happened with the first “assessment”.

I am so concerned that many older adults are being missed, and misdiagnosed as having other mental/neurological conditions. Particularly women, who are likely to be diagnosed as one in 143 cases, as opposed to one in about 50 in males.

Women simply show our autism differently, or are more adept at hiding our struggles.

So many doctors here in the USA have no understanding of autism, even neurologists and psychologists . I hope by gaining credibility with a professional diagnosis that I can further interest in late diagnosis of adults.

The ironic thing to me is that so many of the professionals we are depending on for diagnosis and self understanding are mostly not trained to understand us and give those very diagnoses.

Finding direction

When I began learning about autism, I simply felt a huge relief to finally understand so much of my past, how it happened and why. In looking at events from the past, mostly unsuccessful interactions with other people, which caused emotional and sometimes physical pain, fear, and frustration, I was able to see how autism prevented me from understanding them, and them from understanding me. That was incredibly overwhelming, changing my understanding of everything in my world, and shifting it to a new perspective. I am still taking “baby steps” in my understanding and am continually amazed at how deeply entwined autism features are in all of my life, every part!

I have decided that for those of us who are older,( lets just draw an arbitrary line at chronological age 60), it is much more difficult. Many, if not most of us, have had no idea about our autism and have lived our lives as social outcasts, believing that what was happening to us was somehow our fault. We were faulty because we didn’t ‘get it’ and couldn’t do things that seemed to come so easily to others. We have been the nerds, the weirdos, the socially unacceptable geeks, the “odd ducks” and often also the brilliant and quirky genius sitting at the back of the room and coming up with solutions to problems that escape others. We have often been mocked, bullied, ostracized, belittled, and we carry the pain of not knowing why with us. Depression is frequently experienced by autistic folk, is it any wonder why? Anxiety seems almost universal among autistic people. If I kept doing things wrong, and being punished or criticized, but never knowing how to fix what I am told is wrong, is it any wonder I am ( we are) anxious? I am going to record my thoughts, feelings, and struggles as I go forward from self discovery of my autism, to trying to find somebody who will recognize the true diagnosis of the old lady with autism.

It would not matter to me if I stayed with self diagnosis, because I am quite satisfied with understanding within myself, and finally knowing the answer to almost every one of those “why” questions I had for most of my life. Here is the thing, though. I wish with all my heart that others who are still struggling and hurting deeply because they do not have the secret word: autism…. could be helped. In society today, one’s credibility depends on documentation… you must be certified by others… to drive a car, to act in many professions ( physician, lawyer, weather forecaster, engineer, ok- you get it) . If I want to be my best as an advocate for autistic people who are undiscovered and hurting needlessly, I can’t go out in the public sphere and say “Listen to me, I think I might have autism, and I want to tell you about it.” can I? You can imagine the response, can’t you? But if I say, ” I am autistic, I have been diagnosed as autistic, and I might be able to tell you a few things about it” I have that credibility… the socially acknowledged experts have pronounced me autistic. I have a certificate! No rolled eyes, no sighs, snickers, and shaking heads, it is there, proven; I have that paper that gives me credibility. My search for credibility has begun. This is an ongoing story.