Tag: elderly autism diagnosis

autism in elders

raising awareness

This is the first edition of my one page autism in elders awareness flyer. Everybody is welcome to reprint and distribute it if you see fit to do so.

AUTISM in older adults???

Autisticelders@gmail.com
Autistic Elders on Facebook. ​https://facebook.com/groups/543548473159235/
Blog ​https://oldladywithautism.blog/author/debrabrisch3436/


LOSER! Thoughtless, rude, cold, uncaring, inept, inappropriate, failure, outsider, weirdo, clumsy, out-of-it, gullible, stupid. Have others given you these labels? Has it seemed impossible to do anything right? Have you been told it is all your fault? Do you think your life has been much harder than other people’s but not sure why?

Do you have trouble understanding what other people expect of you? Are people often angry with you and it is not clear how it happened or why?

Are you too open and trusting? Is it difficult to stop others from using or abusing you?

Are you bullied, and do you understand why?

Are you estranged from family members or do you have few or no close friends?

Have you had “people problems” at home, work, school, and other places?

Are you often frustrated, hurt, angry, sad, depressed, or anxious? Do you feel misunderstood and socially isolated? Do you have a sense of “otherness”?

Do you wonder why it is so hard for you to do so many things that seem to come easily to others?

Do you self medicate using cigarettes, booze, street drugs or other things to help you deal with life?

Do you have a very narrow range of interests, but the interests you have are intense and all consuming?

Do you have a lot of self blame, do you believe the negative labels you have been given?

What if You found out that it was not all your fault after all?

What if I told you that you might have an in-born neurological difference and that you have struggles that other people simply do not have because of your unusual neurology?

HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT ADULT AUTISM ?

Today most scientists believe that autism is probably genetic, although causes have not been completely identified, there are several genes that have been identified as associated with autism. Autism is present at birth, it is not caught, does not develop, can not be cured.

Autism causes uneven neurological development and is present at birth.
All autistic struggles are based on neurological functioning and have to do with sensory processing. Our understanding of our whole world is based on information gathered and processed by our senses. Every person with autism has sensory processing struggles, but in every autistic person the struggles are different.

What happened to all of the people with autism before 1980? We are the Lost Generations. We grew up struggling and being blamed for our lack of success. Nobody knew! Autism affects approximately 2 percent of the population according to conservative estimates. Some studies suggest autism may affect up to 7 percent of the general population. There are millions of undiscovered and undiagnosed adults ( over 21) who are unknowingly autistic in the general population. Autistic struggles can be recognized and helped with diagnosis. Diagnosis can be life changing.

Diagnosis even at a very late age can bring healing of hurts, self understanding, and provide new ways to live a better life through accommodations once it is known that one is autistic.

Are you somebody who is struggling in life? Do you know somebody who might find the descriptions here familiar? Undiagnosed autistic people have gone through life not understanding that so many of their struggles are not their fault, that life really is more difficult for them, and that there are many ways to make life easier once we know about our autism.
Contact Autistic Elders at ​Autisticelders@gmail.com​ or check out the links at the beginning of these pages for more information.

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.