Introspective: how did you accept your Autistic traits/diagnosis?

[breakpoint64]

As i eat my Birthday Cake today, i contemplate how many feel the need for a diagnosis to justify who they are as a person.

Those words from your doctor "you are AUTISTIC " somehow opens the doors to a world of understanding... and yet I can't accept my shortcomings. It's been many years since i realized I was different, but even now 10 years later I still feel like I have not truly accepted myself and that the diagnosis felt like "You are autistic, so what's next?"

So how does everyone else accept themselves, or does it require acceptance over time?

How am i supposed to accept myself when i feel that others cannot accept me?

I can’t relate to that particular experience since I have been only told by an expensive ASD psychologist that I couldn’t be autistic.

It makes it harder to accept being on the spectrum because you can’t accept something you are not. Despite holding a lot of counter evidence in my memory, acceptance is just way more harder for me than someone who actually ended up with a diagnosis.

Because I can not accept myself as someone who I am not, even if I am most likely on the spectrum I just feel like I am not allowed to accept that.

 

[Au Naturel]

The diagnosis is not to justify. What is there to justify? A diagnosis is not a "get out of jail free" card for bad behavior.

If you're feeling pain of any kind, a diagnosis does not justify anything. It provides an explanation for the symptom. If an accurate diagnosis, it offers predictive value and may point the way to therapies and mitigating strategies.

I've always felt knowing the why of something demystifies and makes life easier.

 

[Khendra]

Good question!

I accepted it because the reality is that I struggle a lot with friendships, and many aspects of employment, because I have so much trouble with understanding and processing social cues, and managing my frustration when very unexpected things happen. I seem to struggle with these things well beyond what labels of introversion or Myers-Briggs designations would indicate, and that is what the psychologist I saw thought as well.

What took me longer to accept was the fact that I CAN improve upon my weak areas. And I have. I went through a period for awhile after my diagnosis where I tried to pull the autism card every time a problem came up, like it was an excuse for every problematic social situation. That didn't help, and no one sympathized. Sympathy doesn't solve problems anyway. The only way to solve problems is to make changes. Though I may struggle more socially than others do, I can still get better.

 

[Stella Nordica]

Interesting question raised here, thanks!

As most of you know, I am not (yet) diagnosed. The centres in my home town have a waiting list for three years, and now they stopped new adult applicants. So getting formally diagnosed will happen at one point in the rather far future.

I'm still new to accepting myself as "possibly autistic", and yet it makes so much sense to me. The confidential talk I had with a lady in the know ("I can't diagnose you but I can neither say you're 100 percent not autistic or 100 per cent autistic. But there's a good chance you are." Those were her words and what she worked out with me in that talk finally made me realise that there is a reason why I have always had and still have these limits.

It made me realise that I cannot compare with the NT world around me (especially my highly successful NT best friend - I've always been extremely jealous of her achievements and despiced myself for not having at least a tenth of her energy).

Two weeks ago I had a first confidential talk with her about my problems and apologised for some injustice I had done to her a while ago which truly endangered our friendship for quite some time.

But I digress. What I wanted to say in the first place is that I have found a more lenient way to look at me, I'm learning to accept myself (if ASD is indeed the diagnosis but for the time being I identify this way). And I am extremely proud of myself that I am learning to open up enough to a few people who mean a lot to me and genuinely ask them for help.

I feel a lot more at ease with myself, and I think I might even learn to work on certain weaknesses and get professional assistance in some areas wherever necessary.

To as a conclusion: I feel much better to have a name for my being different, knowing that is true and not just imagined as I was told all my life.

Sorry for that lengthy message. I'm getting off my soap box right now!

 

[Alexej]

Sorry for that lengthy message. I'm getting off my soap box right now!

THat was not a lengthy message IMHO

 

[Stella Nordica]

THat was not a lengthy message IMHO

Thanks, Alexej, it felt lengthy while typing because more and more thoughts were coming up in the process and I was wondering if I was rambling again and not getting to the point(s) I wanted to mention. So I cut myself short at one point. I probably could have gone on forever!