Hi, I'm Casey. For most of my life I've been under the impression that I'm different. Recently, I have been learning to stop brushing away all my idiosyncrasies as just being different, and instead understanding that I'm autistic.
It has been so revealing as I reflect on my past, and the way my mind works, when most other people seem to be of a different mind. Also, tendencies towards stimming, speech issues, the occasional mental struggle, especially as a child, really become clear in context.
I'm on this forum because I don't have any other autistic people in my life to reflect on my experiences with. I'm happily married to an incredibly caring wife, but she agrees that it would be good to have someone to talk with about the way my mind gets to certain pathways when she can not see how I got there.
Hi Casey,
Your post here hit home with me, so I thought I'd share my experience. I'm 56, diagnosed when I was 52. I had a good 40+ years to dwell on my differences, albeit mostly with quiet contemplation, before a combination of external factors in my life pushed me "over the edge" and I sought out a professional diagnosis. I was married at 19, and still happily married. I have a professional medical degree. I have been with the same health care organization since I was 19. I am a part-time university instructor. So, I fit into that category of so-called "high-functioning" autistics.
Yet, I wouldn't characterize folks like myself as having "less" autism, per se, but rather a different genetic variant. I know I am under a significant amount of neurological stress just trying to maintain my self-control. The level of self-discipline I force myself into just to create a professional persona is quite high, and I can be quite mentally and physically exhausted. My brain, as I am sitting here right now, feels swollen, warm, tingling, ears ringing with tinnitus, visual field full of "static" and flashes of light from Visual Snow Syndrome, and this is my baseline.
My wife had a difficult time with the diagnosis, but she was willing to sit through a private, 1 hour interview with the psychologist during the initial appointment. I am not sure what she was expecting, perhaps she was hoping for something different than autism, but was still willing to pay the money and go through the process. Once all the testing and diagnosis was completed, the 12-page written report, etc., she then went through this phase of subtle denial for about a year, and it wasn't until probably 2 years later that she resigned herself to accept it. She's an RN and does her research, but I think it took her a while to do her own research in order to gain her knowledge and acceptance. In other words, nothing
I was going to say was going to change her mind, but rather, she had to take the time, learn on her own, and change her own mind.
So, now, she has a better sense of why her husband thinks the way he thinks. She, now, has a better sense of why I am not a "conversationalist" and why we have a lot of long, quiet moments. We both have a better sense of why the two of us, together, complement each other, and together, we "make one good person". We two, as a team, whether it be word games or just making our way through life, function at a high level. To quote a line from the movie Oblivion,
"We are an effective team."
I am not sure it is important to understand HOW autistics come up with the thoughts they do. It is often differently than our neurotypical peers, for certain, this has been scientifically examined. What is important, in my view, is the simple fact of having that different perspective. Surely, it can create some mental conflicts with the consensus of thought, for better or worse, but having said that, historically, I am rarely wrong in my assessment. So, once I make a decision, I am pretty firm on it. I spend a LOT of thought analyzing topics and can make relevant connections and can have a significant amount of predictive value for myself. For example, I haven't found that I need to understand the complex mathematics to understand what will happen in a physics experiment, I just have a sense based upon my mental analytics, what will happen. (Of course, that wasn't good enough for my professors). I'm doing pretty well with my financial investments, as well, over the years.
At any rate, welcome Casey!
