Finally realised I was HF Aspergers

[2/3RDS]

Hello there... I am a person who is trying to get a late diagnosis in my mid 50's of Aspergers and finding resources are amazingly scant here in the UK in my neck of the country.

Despite working in education for many years, never realised I could be Aspergic but now it fits like an old glove. I have given myself the username 2/3RDS because when I try to explain to people what A is, I use the analogy of its like being brilliant at 2/3rds of life, and not having a clue as to the last third... I now get asked if I am a computer programmer which im not, and cant seem to get the hang of, even though I have phenomenal ICT skills in most other areas.

i am hoping to be part of discussion and feel less like staring at the wall and swearing loudly when another job application, phone call or general contact goes wrong....

 

[Judge]

Welcome to AC. Oh yeah, how well can I relate to wanting to go back in time and doing it all with self-awareness of my autism that I never had until my mid-fifties!

I'll never know if it would have made a difference, but in hindsight I would have certainly liked to try.

 

[Katherine Rawstron]

I'm in my 50's and can't get a diagnosis either as I don't fit the stereotype. As I've taken early retirement following redundancy, it doesn't matter too much. I don't know how you've managed to teach all this time without a nervous breakdown, especially since Ofsted came into being! So many teachers have gone under, and the ones I know about are not autistic as far as I know.
I wish I'd known about my condition when it came to career choices, with counselling and support, both for me and for my parents (they expected a lot of me), although I'm not sure which path I would've gone down, as the things I was most suited for didn't appeal at the time. As it is, I made mistakes, but have lived more of a life that way as I fought the urge to turn in on myself and become a recluse.
I'm glad nobody knew before that, i.e. when I was pre-teen, as I was constantly in trouble at home (rarely at school) and that way, I couldn't be tempted to or, worse, be accused of faking it to get out of trouble or cut an interminable lecture short.

 

[Elemental]

Hi 2/3RDS A big, warm welcome to our community.

Like others posting above, I am 50+ & got diagnosed with high function ASD at 'Uni as a mature student in my 30's...I went for re-testing several months ago & because the protocols had changed in the ensuing 18 years & because some information was withheld from my new diagnostic report like: being one of four in my family diagnosed with spectrum stuff & much other relevant info too, I was re-diagnosed with a non-specified personality disorder. As I'd only relatively recently accepted & accommodated my original diagnosis - since which, my life changed hugely for the better - I was left in total limbo-land regarding my identity, it felt like at the time. I have submitted a formal complaint about my treatment because when I asked the locum psychiatrist how about my original diagnosis & how that could differ so, he literally just shrugged at me.

^^^ Just to illustrate that we all have had different experiences of diagnosis & outcomes & I'm over that upset now too

 

[2/3RDS]

So here's what happened to me....
Because I was good at communicating things by computer, but getting crap from my Head of Faculty when I was a Teacher, who believed my resources and talent could not be communicated to others so was brilliant (His words) but useless, I set up a website with my own teaching resources around 2003.

Within 2 years it was getting over 1 million hits a year and I had the very funny (To me) experience of going to an official exam board training day in London with a colleague who was VERY NT, and was clearly the example my exasperated (and not very insightful) boss wished I would follow in my teaching style.

She was highly annoyed when the examboard used MY online guide for the days training and told us that we should all be following it because it was brilliant. Of course the exam board didn't contact me and ask permission or pay me despite their excitement of meeting me in the flesh unexpectedly.

Then a few months later I was working as a teacher for half a week and a consultant in education (because others HAD realised my value) for the rest of the week, and Wednesday was my changeover day. At the end of my morning teaching session I was criticised in public by my Boss in a corridor, in front of the students, angrily telling me "why can't I just do things normally and that nobody would be interested or able to learn from my resources" (The headteacher did an identical rant in front of my stunned class a few weeks later). I then got in my car to be a consultant for the afternoon and spent three hours delivering strategies and developing projects with a group of 12 headteachers for my client.

Though at the time I didnt 'know' I Had HFA, I did decide that as there were things I was clearly good at but others which baffled me, maybe I could make this work to my advantage. I went to the headteacher and offered to give up enough of my salary to pay for a part time PA to handle the timelines and deadlines and minutiae that often passed me by... he told me "If your a teacher, you do all of it, not just the bits you want". By the start of the next year I had left and haven't been a teacher for 12 years, but I educate every day!

I'm now trying to get funding for a series of Practical problem solving communication training sessions for people with HFA, where attendees spend the day building and improving something funky such as clockwork monsters or a car built from scratch, powered by the weight of a bottle of water falling, but they are actually communication stealth exercises. The fun and exploratory problem solving and creativity based practical segments are interspersed with little group and individual communication tasks which are intended to help the attenders recognise and develop strategies for communicating with NT people. It culminates with an evaluation where they write some of the questions themselves.

I've uploaded a picture of the gravity powered car, my design and graphics..