So maybe I'm autistic!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My daughter is a marriage and family therapist. She’s the one who suggested this idea. I took some online quizzes … girls tend to present very differently, than the far more often identified boys, and “high-functioning” of course is a lot different than the worst cases. But I check an awful lot of the boxes on those quizzes.

There’s a classic autism behavior called ‘masking’, where the autistic person tries very hard to mechanically duplicate the social moves of the neurotypical, without the innate basis that makes it natural. I have never done this (although in retrospect it perhaps would have helped, dunno). But many of the other childhood behaviors, yep. The fantasy life, imaginative play, soothing myself with sorting, ordering, and story-telling. The helpless meltdowns, the withdrawn attitude that was called ‘shy’ but wasn’t shyness. I don’t have social anxiety, in the conventional sense of the word. I’m good at small talk, I am not even afraid of public speaking. I just find people very tiring is all. They are so noisy; I feel them thinking even when they are silent, they carry this, I don’t know, static, with them at all times. Nothing else does this.

I identified as introverted, and as “Highly Sensitive” (this is a whole movement), but nobody ever thought I was autistic. Neurodivergent girls and women more often than not never get the kind of diagnoses that boys do. Besides the male-centric medical system, girls don’t cause disruptions the way boys do. They figure out how to fade into the background. I was good at fading. A great deal of my childhood focus was on trying to avoid being attacked. By siblings, schoolmates, etc.

Somehow I managed to do fine, once I had escaped my family of origin. I got married and stayed that way, had a child, she turned out well, and so forth. I’m pretty happy, in fact. Nevertheless, I am still something of a freak. This self-diagnosis is a bit eye-opening.

2

This is VERY interesting. I’m glad you’re pretty happy and things have turned out well. And most sympathetic about your escaping your family of origin – a few days back we were chatting about what we would do differently in life if we could start over, and I realized that getting away from my FoO earlier was my first choice.
I hope the “eye-opening” grows to insights you can use to make life even better, and hope you post about it!

3

It sounds to me like you’ve succeeded in life in spite of your inherent difficulties. I think many, if not most of us have at least some of these difficulties and issues, especially as kids, and either learn how to live with them, or learn how to hide them.

As a child I would get physically ill if I had to do any public speaking. In college I struggled, but forced myself to do it, and as an adult I’ve learned how to be comfortable doing it, although I still don’t like it.

Congratulations on getting through all you’ve had to deal with, and yes, people are very noisy, and for that reason I hate any crowds I find myself in.

4

I have my anti-whatever problems. They are uniquely my own. Which can be, probably is similar to a bunch of people. But add me into the mix and I own them.

I had a great family of origin. My mother died early. I’m assuming that had an effect on all of us. Each dealt in different ways. I think my dealing with it led to my speech impediment never getting any better. I deal with it today.

I have fears that will never get better. For reasons.

I’m not introverted because of these things. I have the propensity to be introverted. These things made it easier.
People in open spaces bug me. People in small spaces bug me. I’m much better one on one or two.
I manage. I survive.

I’m not autistic.

5

When my son was diagnosed autistic, obviously the lens then became pointed at Mom and Dad. (I think Dad is subclinical or barely clinical, but he has obvious traits and honestly the way he struggles reminds me more of how women present. His most obvious issues are with me, or other close friends, where he doesn’t understand how he’s coming off in an interaction.)

As for me… well, I’m unquestionably weird. I even had a cousin remark that I’m probably autistic. I don’t think I am, but it’s worth taking a look at. Online quizzes will not get you very far. Unfortunately even some of the instruments that have been empirically validated to detect autism in adult women have a number of false positives for women with social anxiety. I scored “high probability” on one of them, which was a kind of social situations evaluation, but I scored average on the other one, and I give more clinical weight to the latter. I definitely have social anxiety as an adult, but as a kid, I did not care in the slightest what other people thought of me, and I was very weird. So I have looked into this for myself. I have mostly concluded that what could have been mistaken for autism as a child was giftedness. I was highly precocious and creative. I spent most of my time by myself, reading or writing. I wrote fiction, constantly. I had little interest in my peers because I was thinking on a different level at that age. On top of this, my mother encouraged me to mask my intelligence and not stand out. So I was taught to feel awkward about looking too smart. (And is one reason I love this place.)

I’m beginning to think that giftedness (which my son also has) is its own kind of neurodiversity and its own kind of special need. It’s been a challenge just figuring out how to support that part of my son’s development on top of all the other interventions needed.

I don’t know if you’re autistic, but I do know what it’s like to have been passed over as a non-troublemaking girl. I was diagnosed at age 34 with ADHD Inattentive Type - after being married to a psychologist for decades, I might add. It flew under his radar too, because of all the other issues I was dealing with. I, along with my therapists, had been under the impression I was having a hard time paying attention because I was anxious, and I was having a hard time getting things done because I was depressed. But when I was no longer depressed and anxious, guess what? Still a complete mess. My default state is just overwhelm.

Husband and I were sitting on the couch one day, and he was telling me non-identifying information about his client intake. Kid says he feels overwhelmed, can’t seem to prioritize or start on tasks, forgetting things, and I laughed and said, “Oh, so he has ADHD” because by then of course I knew all about ADHD (I didn’t.) See, I had recently left a whole case of raw chicken in the foyer overnight. Which is a day in my life. Like $200 worth of chicken, gone. And as I reflected on that, I said, “Haha, your client sounds so much like me!” And my husband laughed and said, “Yeah!” and then we were quiet for a long time.

I said, “But I’m not hyperactive.”
He said, “You don’t have to be. There’s an Inattentive type.”
“Oh.”
“We should get this checked out.”

So we did. I had to get a full differential diagnosis because of comorbid disorders, but lo and behold, I had been living with ADHD my entire life and could never figure out what the hell was “wrong” with me. And it was a real rude awakening when I realized that so much of the combativeness between my mother and I when I was a kid, and quite frankly the abuse I received for being lazy, not paying attention, being irresponsible etc. was all because I had ADHD. And that’s why no matter how hard I tried to get things right at home, I failed - even while killing it at school. I got some meds and I have learned some coping skills, but I occasionally lose entire days to distraction (like this one.)

Yes I’ve had some struggles. But I recognize that a lot of cool things that my brain can do are probably from ADHD. And whatever diagnosis you may receive, if you decide to explore this or not, it sounds like you have a pretty unique brain too!

6

I agree that giftedness is its own neurodiversity. It separates one from one’s peers as surely as any diagnosis. True of me. And then, there is that opposite-from-Dunning-Kruger-effect where you just can’t quite grasp how incurious and dull almost everyone is – that in itself is a social awkwardness even if you have no autistic qualities.

I also think that everyone, perhaps particularly the gifted, is a medley of qualities that are not the norm. I know that I am always at the far end of any bell curve you can name. One end or another. But autism rings true for me in some respects, respects I never thought of before. I love things I’ve never thought of before.

My daughter was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult; she had the whole workup. She is smarter than either of us and a gifted artist as well. My husband is very like her in those ADHD ways, but is so capable and brilliant that no one ever thought of ADHD for him either.

I’m sure that there’s been speculation that these neurodivergences are or can be particular gifts, which come at a cost (like all gifts). Our society only finds a certain type of person acceptable, and only actually rewards a subset of that: he bright extrovert with a goodly helping of narcissism. In a different kind of society, there might be more recognition of subtler talents.

7

Just to clarify, because this quote makes it sound like we married at age 14 - we hooked up at 19. We had been a couple for 15 years before I was diagnosed. I was confusing the past with the present, as I have presently been in some kind of partnership with my husband for 22 years. Point is, we lived together for a looooong time before we figured this out.

8

I mean no disrespect, but everyone tests positive on those interwebs are you autistic tests. And the autism spectrum has widened so far that at least a quarter of the planet can now qualify if they want to. And there are whole levels of neurodiversity.

I would ask a few questions like:

  1. did you have normal language acquistion as a toddler?
  2. do you have friends?
  3. did a noise like the microwave trigger screaming and a full on meltdown until the sound was off?

My youngest was very much on the autism spectrum. Didn’t speak until about 5, and only had about a 20 word vocabulary. She would learn a new word, and lose a word and the net total was around 20 words. She never had a real friend (thankfully she had a twin and another great sibling; and she had some neurotypical classmates for the last 7 years that loved her and were somewhat akin to “friends”). At 18, I couldn’t trust her to cross the street by herself, didn’t understand the concept of money, and had at best a elementary school level reading writing and arithmetic level.

IMHO, that’s autism.

I miss her so much every day. :crying_cat_face:

9

I am sorry about your daughter.

I did, as a child, usually have one or two friends at a time. Not more. I was not particularly sensitive to noises (the world was also much less noisy). Melt downs are caused by emotional/sensory overloads and everyone has different stressors.

It’s fairly well established that there are levels of autism, and that some autistic people are gifted. I had an eighth grade vocabulary when I was in first grade. I taught myself to read when I was three.

I would not in reality trust an online test, but I do trust my daughter’s instincts and professional training. She did not make a diagnosis of course, a specialist would do that, an expensive proposition I do not see a need for. I’m fine.

10

I emphasize with this self-discovery at an older age.

My parents are both dead, so I’m never going to get a more satisfactory answer than the very vague one I got at the time, but my parents hid my ADHD diagnosis from everyone, very deliberately, and didn’t even admit to me that I had been diagnosed at age 5 until I was in my early 20s.

Why did they decide it was better that no one know? I don’t know. They didn’t tell me, they declined testing when it was brought up by multiple teachers, and just said they thought I was doing “well enough” when I asked why.

So many things made more sense when they finally told me. Throughout my childhood I was a disappointment to all the adults in my life. I heard endless criticism that all began with the words “you are so smart, but-”

You don’t listen
You don’t pay attention
You are so easily distracted
You’re so disorganized
You lose everything!
You’re so forgetful, why don’t you try harder to remember?
You don’t sit still
You don’t follow through
You have to make more of an effort to concentrate instead of jumping to a new task whe you get bored

And it turns out most of the things I did to annoy adults weren’t character flaws like everyone insinuated. They’re what you’d expect from someone with ADHD who was neither medicated nor formally taught any coping skills to manage symptoms.

11

What he said; if you haven’t already, you should get the opinion of a professional.

I was placed on the spectrum by a school psychologist; I don’t remember exactly when but it would have been before sixth grade. My parents seemed to be more interested in how I would handle an impending ~900 mile move rather than find out exactly goes on in my head so I was never submitted for a proper differential diagnosis but I suspect the psychologists – there was another after the move – were aiming for Asperger’s.

12

One of the best things about retiring from teaching is getting to let go of the responsibility for treating each and every student according to the specific (and divergent) recommendations from their psychologists. Another relief is not having to experience the distress of students who really needed interventions but whose parents couldn’t be bothered to seek (or actively rejected) evaluation.

Are we striving for a world in which everyone is recognized for who they are? I hope so, but it’s difficult.

My partner (an MD) and I both come from families that we call “spectrum-y.” As a model railroader, I fondly experience the conferences as “festivals of Autism.” It cracked me up to find one of the questions on the instrument used to evaluate kids was “Do you like trains?”

I’d really prefer a world in which we understood that everyone has every “disorder,” it’s just a matter of degrees.

13

Or a world in which there wasn’t an order to be dissed from. How much diagnosing is a result of forcing all children to sit at desks for most of their waking hours?

14

As others have pointed out, there are different degrees and types of neurodiversity. My son was diagnosed (by a professional) around age 5. And it was actually pretty hard to tell, even by our nanny who was studying to be a child psychiatrist.

  1. Language acquistion was more or less normal
  2. I see other children respond positively towards him, but making friends is a challenge for him. But he has no trouble playing with his younger sister and her friends or his cousins.
  3. He’s a bit sensitive to noise, but mostly what would trigger a meltdown is if he didn’t want to go somewhere new or if we changed something in the house (like installed new lighting or purchased a new TV). They were relatively infrequent and have been less frequent over time.

A few big ones you missed:
4) Narrow, highly focussed interests. His in particular are Lego, Lego-based or Lego-like videogames and computers. To the extent that he is a bit of an encyclopedia of the history and minutiae. When he was younger, he was also fascinated watching the NYWaterway ferry land (every 20 minutes) and with road markings.

But for the most part, he just comes across as a bright, but slightly quirky and shy nine year old whose really into Lego and videogames.

Interestingly, I see a lot of my behaviors in his when I was his age (and even as an adult). I was identified as “gifted” at a young age and have been tested as an adult a few times for ADHD (results inconclusive). I like “world building” style videogames and am more than happy to indulge his Lego-related activities (to the extent that our apartment now looks like Will Farrell’s basement in The Lego Movie.

I thought his obsession with street signage was odd, but then spent hours with a Cities Skylines mod fine tuning dozens of intersections.

15

I was definitely narrow-focused: animals, fantasy play with porcelain animals, reading about animals … I trained my dog to do tricks and then trained other people’s dogs, and kept fish, lizards, snakes, rats, bugs, turtles, mice … when I was 11 my parents relented and bought me a decrepit old horse (who died two years later) which led to other horses.

Even though I was a gifted artist and was sort off the charts in anything to do with English, writing, etc, it was animals I loved. And still do.

I get the feeling that a lot of animal trainers might be ‘on the spectrum’. At least, the comment that “she’s much better with animals than people” is a common one.

16

Wow. Everything on your list was what I heard as a child. I still have my elementary school report cards from the 1960s. They say exactly those things in the teacher comments (except for sitting still) and I heard them endlessly from my mother. It was so demoralizing, and only got worse in my teenage years. Of course, back then, there was no such thing as AD(H)D. You were lazy and didn’t pay attention. It was all your fault. I’m glad kids today can benefit from a more enlightened society.

17

Hey, at least they knew what was wrong with you! You were just lazy and needed to focus! I was just a mysterious brainy freak no one knew what to do with. Including of course my family. But no one could explain what was so wrong about me, just that I was.

Despite the sloppiness of pop diagnoses, I still think its an improvement on what I grew up with. Or even what my ADHD daughter grew up with (no diagnoses for girls then, particularly gifted girls).

18

I think I’ve told this story before on the Dope: when my older child was diagnosed at age 5, the psychologist said that the biggest red flag (he phrased it another way, but I’ve forgotten exactly what terminology he used) was my kid’s rigidity. In her case she didn’t tend to melt down about new places or new things, but when she did something it had to be Exactly So, and if it did not come out the way she expected it to be in her head, it was meltdown city. (These meltdowns – and occasional meltdowns of course are usual for typical kids, but she would have one at least once a day at school, which is not so typical – were also what led to us going in for the diagnosis.) At age 14 she still has a fairly significant problem with this, though she’s progressed a lot. (At age 14, it’s really clear that she’s ASD; she presents like a typical ASD boy in a lot of ways.)

19

It’s cool to read about this. I have a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder and I’m wondering whether masking is more common in men or women diagnosed as high functioning. If my diagnosis is right, and it would make sense, I think I’ve done all kinds of masking. I think I’ve broken out of it at this point but at low points it can be hard not to slip into it. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with it. However it can be something you grow out of, or as in your case something that never happens at all

20

I’m sorry about your daughter; that sounds really hard.

You probably know that one of the things that has happened relatively recently is that they smushed Asperger’s and what-used-to-be-called-autism together, so now they both fall under the umbrella of “autism spectrum disorder.” (My daughter is classic what would have been diagnosed as Asperger’s back in the day.) I don’t like this, because it seems like it makes “autism” too wide a diagnosis – I consider my daughter’s neurodiversity to be different from your daughter’s neurodiversity in a host of ways, and it confuses people who expect one and are confronted with the other, or vice versa. (On the other hand, no, my daughter doesn’t have friends. She does fortunately have a loving sibling as well as classmates and church kids who have been very kind to her.)