AnnadinNoliman
Well-Known Member
Alright I've been reading a lot in these forums for several months now and I'm finally just gonna jump in here. NuqneH!
I'm just gonna explain why I'm here, that's a thing I can do, right? I'm gonna give it ago.
So I remember learning about autism in my fifth grade "gifted and talented" class (a program I really resent which took the kids that were pretty good at math and did nothing but stoke our huge egos) and thinking "that feels familiar".
I'm 21 years old now and it was only a few years ago I started thinking more seriously about autism as it explains a lot of how I've felt and acted for my whole life (can probably guess most of them, social interaction being the most densely complicated maze of nonsense in the universe, a lot of sensory stuff, abnormally intensive hyperfocus on my interests, etc.). And I started seeing a therapist through my university and after interacting with her for about a year (during which I never mentioned autism, just my problems with school and stuff) she told me that almost literally everything I've complained and dealt with sounded like autistic things to complain about and deal with. I took this news to my partner (we pretty recently started dating) who's a psych major with a lot of experience working with autistic children, and she told me that she thought me being autistic was so blindingly obvious she assumed I already knew about it!
Therapist thinks the reason no one felt the need to try and diagnose me with something when I was younger was because I was always proficient at school and I was able to figure out enough of the rules of social interaction to come off as just "weird". But it's really taken a toll on me for my whole life in that all the intensive calculations necessary to just navigate a social situation have always seemed unreasonably difficult and I've always blamed myself for not being able to get the hang of it like everyone else can. But I'm learning to grasp that it's not inadequacy that makes me like that but simply that my brain works differently.
So I'm trying to learn how to be comfortable with myself as I am since I've spent the last decade ceaselessly trying to change myself into what other people want. And that's why I'm here! Hoping to find community and shared experiences. Hope this wasn't too long!
I'm just gonna explain why I'm here, that's a thing I can do, right? I'm gonna give it ago.
So I remember learning about autism in my fifth grade "gifted and talented" class (a program I really resent which took the kids that were pretty good at math and did nothing but stoke our huge egos) and thinking "that feels familiar".
I'm 21 years old now and it was only a few years ago I started thinking more seriously about autism as it explains a lot of how I've felt and acted for my whole life (can probably guess most of them, social interaction being the most densely complicated maze of nonsense in the universe, a lot of sensory stuff, abnormally intensive hyperfocus on my interests, etc.). And I started seeing a therapist through my university and after interacting with her for about a year (during which I never mentioned autism, just my problems with school and stuff) she told me that almost literally everything I've complained and dealt with sounded like autistic things to complain about and deal with. I took this news to my partner (we pretty recently started dating) who's a psych major with a lot of experience working with autistic children, and she told me that she thought me being autistic was so blindingly obvious she assumed I already knew about it!
Therapist thinks the reason no one felt the need to try and diagnose me with something when I was younger was because I was always proficient at school and I was able to figure out enough of the rules of social interaction to come off as just "weird". But it's really taken a toll on me for my whole life in that all the intensive calculations necessary to just navigate a social situation have always seemed unreasonably difficult and I've always blamed myself for not being able to get the hang of it like everyone else can. But I'm learning to grasp that it's not inadequacy that makes me like that but simply that my brain works differently.
So I'm trying to learn how to be comfortable with myself as I am since I've spent the last decade ceaselessly trying to change myself into what other people want. And that's why I'm here! Hoping to find community and shared experiences. Hope this wasn't too long!
