I’m not exactly sure how to word or describe this feeling, and I’m feeling extremely alone on it but, ever since I got diagnosed earlier this year everything has been feeling harder. I can’t control my anxiety that well, It’s harder to talk to strangers, It’s harder to think properly and manage my emotions. It’s like when I get diagnosed, my whole life restarted and I’m learning everything all over again. And it’s like my brain is still in denial about it because I keep pushing past my limits (wether its something small like over trying to figure out solutions) and wonder why I’m so depressed, anxious and tense.
Up until my mid-30’s, I generally knew myself pretty well. My father had bi-polar which led to my parents getting divorced when I was young, and that led to me spending a lot of time on my own just thinking about thinking.
I could see the systems and operate within them. High school and college were easy. Working in food service and retail and eventually an office were all easy. Being with my wife was easy.
Then we formed a polycule with another couple, with severe ADHD. Everything got harder. Work, marriage, running a household. My memory tanked, my mind slowed to a crawl. I stopped smoking weed but it didn’t help. My new GF, in pursuing ADHD medication, got diagnosed as AuDHD and the 3 of them encouraged me to get diagnosed too.
I finally did and I was disappointed how little it did for me. A lot of it really was as simple as “do you like going out and partying or staying home and chilling?”, and I would answer “chilling”, and that… Means I’m autistic.
So what did I really get out of it? Well for one I’m more comfortable using the word. The biggest upshot of which is that I feel more comfortable interacting with the Lemmy autism communities.
The cognitive assessment was nice. I scored the highest percentiles in Verbal Comprehension and Working Memory, with terribke processing speed. After nearly a year of feeling like my brain was melting and I waa getting terrible at everything, it was nice to have some pretty solid evidence I still have my mind. I scored very low for Processing Speed, and I think trying to keep up with two hyperactive partners may be the source of my issues.
I started reading some books recommended by the psychologist, and so far they have not really resonated with me. Autism is so broad that I think it needs to, and will be, further broken down into subcategories over time. Reading about the experiences of others always has a mix of “woe that’s just like me” and “wow that’s nothing like me”.
The diagnosis drove me to talk to my older sister, who was hospitalized several times before eventually getting diagnosed a few years ago. Talking to her reminded me of how my brain is supposed to work and helped me a lot. I should talk to her more often. She gave me a lot of good advice, but the most profound thing she said was that going out and socializing is something that was actively bad for her mental health, and that she stopped doing it. I had been treating it as a matter of taste. I had been going out tk bars and restaurants and festivals and bowling alleys and all sorts of other places with the polycule. The ADHD seeks novelty and stimulation, so I thought I was giving reasonable compromise to do things I don’t like in order to spend time with them. I thought I could just try to deal with it and focus on the positives, but it was actually harmful to my mind and functioning.
There have been negatives too. My wife has said this diagnosis has been a huge revelation for her, but… We just celebrated our 15 year anniversary. We had excellent communication for 13 years before we entered a polycule (that was why were confident doing it in the first place). I kind of feel like she got lost in the sauce of the shiny me relationships and forgot about our marriage, and is blaming it on me being autistic. We astarted couple’s therapy to work on things and its going well.
Another negative is… My boyfriend sent me a link to a BS article about a medicine to “reverse autistic symptoms” in mice. And like… I understand he means well. He’s seen his wife start Ritalin and has gotten a tremendous increase in functionality from it. But… I like who I am, and I’m incredibly functional whenever I’m not trying to deal with a bunch of frivolous and shallow distractions.
Thank you for this post! I came from Reddit just today and in those forums they forbade every comment I made which resembled yours. I wholheartedly agree with you, especially your last sentence. I think there is a wisdom in recognizing when to stop wasting time amd energy with BS. I like myself too and now that I am older, I find myself defiantly and strongly being myself. I socialize very little, engage in the activities which I enjoy by myself quite contentedly. I think, if being honest, most folks are even a bit envious and resentful that I have the courage and ability to do this. BTW, I was diagnosed as a child but my parents wisely chose to send me through gifted classes and not focus on the autism. Only when I got worse in my teens did that label play any role, mostly negative. I acquired learned helplessness and began to doubt my abilities. I got extremely anxious and depressed. I was on various pharmaceuticals for many years which thankfully seem to not have cause irreversible harm. It has taken many years to pull out of that and now I take no pharmaceuticals and have completely rejected Western medicine and their labelling and drugs. I am the most free and happy I have ever been. The key was getting out of the medicalization apparatus altogether. I do not play in their field, I do not acknowledge their system at all. I act autonomously outside of it. Now I am a successful artist, fulltime student living alone in a nice place with a few quality friends and my Buddhist sangha and groups like this are my support network. I do not lead with or even mention the autism unless I have known the person for awhile and even then I am trying to not have it be definitive of me at all. I do this partly because I found I was using the autism as a kind of crutch and excuse to not live to my potential. This is the most difficult thing for me at this point-seeing if I will be accepted or rejected as just me without the autism label. Like I just entered an art call for people with disabilities that also accepts people without. I entered as without by not mentioning the autism. That means they will judge the artwork more stringently than if they knew about the autism. But it is tricky because if I mention it I could be an advocate for others with that issue. Still, I no longer want to believe in the labels, period so I am taking more chances now just being me, no definition. Works for me.