Wishing You Had Known Earlier

[chincey_james]

Does anyone else ever get lost in wishing you had known about your neurodivergence earlier in life? I hadn't really considered it until I began reading these forums, and it's been on my mind a lot lately. Maybe it's just a rite of passage for those of us who are diagnosed (or self-diagnosed) as adults? I can't stop thinking about how much confusion could have been saved if I had known earlier. If my family had known earlier. Does this feeling reduce or go away with time?

 

[Xinyta]

Honestly. I think about this myself on occasion. How simple it would of been to know how to handle myself, if I were diagnosed.

Though, I then think there maybe only minimal change, if any. Namely because of my parental upbringing being what it was. Though I would have more of a reason to be my best self. Something I lacked because my condition was up in the air and mostly containing haphazard guesses to what my 'disability' is.

But maybe not knowing and going through all the negativity I have been through, has a silver lining in it. It means I have to work for what I didn't get. Which can have value in of itself, because you are making it happen for you.

 

[Judge]

Absolutely. Whether or not it would or could have improved my relationships with NT women is anyone's guess. However I still wish I would have had a chance at foresight rather than hindsight some 30 years or more later in understanding who- and what I am.

 

[Kavigant]

One way in which I am particularly blessed lies in the fact that I spent years and years in therapy making peace with the train wreck that is my past before I was even presented with the possibility that I am autistic.

Of course I now look back and realize how much a diagnosis back around 1973 would have helped me to make wiser choices which would have helped me to avoid a life for which I was supremely unsuited.

I could have avoided so much suffering and avoided unintentionally inflicting suffering on others. But I have managed, with help, to build a good life. I am married to a wonderful, patient woman who saw my good heart and was willing to help me heal despite not having a scientific understanding of WHY I have the challenges I have.

It took a lot of pain for me to reach this point, including a suicide attempt, but my life is now humble but happy. It would be foolish for me to complain too much about the past. But not everyone has had the same luck and I can imagine being very angry and resentful right now

 

[Rodafina]

I don't see much sense in longing for things that didn't happen. Things simply occurred as they did, and you have arrived at the present moment. No sense in putting your wishes on the past.

Wishes for the future, however... those I like very much.

Does this feeling reduce or go away with time?

If you can practice acceptance and keep your focus on the present moment, then yes.

 

[AprilR]

I used to wish that, but knowing there was and still is zero support for people like me where i live, i am not sure now. Maybe i would have hated myself less

 

[Gerontius]

Hello Chincey & welcome to the forum.
I would say that probably I wouldn't want to have known earlier as I might've not seen myself as a person but as a medical condition. What I do wish is that I'd had the tools to know what to do with my diagnosis & that my parents had known what the heck they were getting into--and that way maybe, even informed, I could've been treated like a person instead of a problem.

 

[tazz]

Diagnosed at 50. I generally don't have an instinct to think about "what if..." scenarios. But this is something that has crossed my mind a little.

If I'd known earlier:
Maybe my school years would have been easier.
I think it would have helped with my long term relationships, which did not go very well.

But also, the challenges I faced at school left me with strong self-reliance, a drive to achieve, a desire to help others suffer less and good critical thinking skills. These qualities served me well in later life. I wonder if I might not have developed them so keenly if I'd known about autism and had it a bit easier.

Overall though, if I could, I think I would trade some of my achievements for less distress and heartache.

 

[Misty Avich]

I'm the opposite, I always wish I hadn't known until adulthood. Being diagnosed with an ASD at age 8 makes me feel like I'm severe and low-functioning, when I'm totally the opposite. Most females go through life undiagnosed, so I get frustrated when someone like me with PPD-NOS got diagnosed so early.
Sometimes I just wonder how things would have been if I hadn't of been diagnosed. Ever since the day I was labelled, I was miserable, hated myself, didn't feel normal, and just hated having a label that nobody else in my life had. Attending appointments and assessments was stressful for me because I felt like I was broken and not normal, and I didn't want to be labelled.
I'd feel embarrassed if anyone mentioned the label, but I couldn't escape it because my mum had told everyone they knew, and I mean everyone, thinking it was the right thing to do at the time, and it even got blabbed to all my classmates. I hated it. And I still hate it to this day.

 

[Neonatal RRT]

Does anyone else ever get lost in wishing you had known about your neurodivergence earlier in life? I hadn't really considered it until I began reading these forums, and it's been on my mind a lot lately. Maybe it's just a rite of passage for those of us who are diagnosed (or self-diagnosed) as adults? I can't stop thinking about how much confusion could have been saved if I had known earlier. If my family had known earlier. Does this feeling reduce or go away with time?

Yes, things would have been different. I don't know in what specific ways, but it would have been different. It's sort of like asking "What would your life be like if you didn't have autism?" I don't know, and serves no purpose thinking about it.

I am feeling a bit blunt and course today : Seriously, just a word of advice for many people on the forums. "Get out of your head." We can't change the past. Crap happened to us. We all made mistakes. It all happened. Do remember, never forget. Become better and wiser for it. Use the experience as fuel to do good in this world. Wisdom = knowledge + experience + mistakes.

 

[AO1501]

Being undiagnosed until my mid-50s I spent much of my life battling the oddnesses and differences I knew existed between me and almost everyone else, and being puzzled and confused by them. So my instinctive reaction is to think how much better, or even just easier, life would have been if I had been diagnosed in childhood.

But, in truth, those battles and the struggles I've had are much of what has made me who I am today, and been the foundation of the successes and achievements I can look back on with a certain amount of pride.

Set against many, I have been very fortunate, I think. But some of that is because I didn't know, so didn't accept my weakness as the things that defined me.

What I have found since the diagnosis is that I have tended sometimes to slip into acceptance, which has not been entirely positive since it has made it harder to push back my boundaries as I used to try and do. Which ,means that I can see why many, or even most, might wish to have a diagnosis earlier because it would have made life less difficult, for me, I am just not so sure.

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

Made no real difference for me had career, got married had kids. Just explained stuff. starting to except my
extraverted self, talk more in social situations.

 

[Tom]

Personnally I am glad I didn't know earlier. It would have disqualified me for my chosen career (military). So not knowing I went into the career and did well. It was not struggle free. What is? But the point is labels and diagnosis can be as much a hinderence as a help.

My son didn't know, and I didn't tell him because I knew from an early age he was likely going into the same career. As it was my special interest, it was his. And guess what? He is doing fine. It may have helped that I was in a very technical job and so we steered him in that direction, as my family, particularly an uncle, way back when, steered me.
Now that I am thinking of it, even my Track coach encouraged it and brought a former team member who was in the Air Force and home on leave to run with me one practice.

Now if at any point he started to run into problems, yes we would encourage him to see the right sort of medical professionals. Even in my career I sought help with a physical ailment and eventually got steered into mental health as they thought it might be stress related and I was diagnosed with anxiety and put on maintenence meds to treat it. But that was not a disqualifier (like autism was and is) and I was able to continue my career another 22 years.

 

[Progster]

Yes, I wish I had known. That my parents and siblings had known. But it was the 70s/80s and at that time only more severe cases were picked up on, and often not even then. When I was in middle school and having difficulties at school, my parents got me a remedial teacher who told my parents that she thought I was autistic. I was taken to the GP about it, but since I was talking, making some eye contact and had 1 friend, the idea was dismissed. Then as a young adult at university, again I had difficulties coping and sought therapy, but instead of looking into the possibility that I might have autism, I was diagnosed with social anxiety. I was diagnosed at the age of 41, I'm now 52.

I'm sure that if I were growing up now, I would be diagnosed as a child.

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

If I had known I would have got help, went to university, become a physicist, my loss societies loss who knows.
too hypothetical.

 

[chincey_james]

Has anyone else tried to hunt down clues from their infancy or childhood to see if your parents (or guardians) should have figured it out? It's unfair to the people in the past, but it's something I've spent the afternoon doing. My mom kept a journal of the first four years of my life, and I've been searching it from page to page for any indications. I feel like my head is spinning now. There's been plenty of good advice in this thread about staying in the here and now. I should probably take that advice...

 

[Rodafina]

Has anyone else tried to hunt down clues from their infancy or childhood to see if your parents (or guardians) should have figured it out? It's unfair to the people in the past, but it's something I've spent the afternoon doing. My mom kept a journal of the first four years of my life, and I've been searching it from page to page for any indications. I feel like my head is spinning now. There's been plenty of good advice in this thread about staying in the here and now. I should probably take that advice...

I think it can be very helpful to understand the past. This is how the process of diagnosis works. I’m sorry but I forget if you said you’ve been officially diagnosed or not, but for most people that were diagnosed there was an extensive family history taken from family members.

I think we must be careful not to resent those who did not notice or did not come to the conclusion of autism when we were young. They were working with what limited information they had and because there is such a variety of presentations, autism is not always the clearest answer from the beginning. But for most of us, in retrospect we can see very clear signs of autism all the way along our lives.

I think it’s a precious thing to be able to understand the past if you have data available to you. It’s just not good to get stuck there wishing things were different. Instead, everything can be used to understand your present and figure out your future.

Edit: oh yeah, I double checked. You said you were officially diagnosed. I don’t know if the online diagnosis included this, but if you read about the experiences of many people here, there was extensive paperwork and interviews given to living caregivers. Information from the past is important. Wishing to change the past is an impossible task.

 

[chincey_james]

I think it can be very helpful to understand the past. This is how the process of diagnosis works. I’m sorry but I forget if you said you’ve been officially diagnosed or not, but for most people that were diagnosed there was an extensive family history taken from family members.

I was "officially" diagnosed via an online service. It wasn't cheaper, but one of the primary ways it differed was that it didn't require the family history portion except insofar as I reported it. In some ways I wish it had involved that, and maybe I wouldn't be sitting here with so many doubts, but that's the path I chose. In many ways, I chose the path of least resistance emotionally. I find anything traditionally therapeutic or medical very invasive and uncomfortable.

Edit: I probably should have included my mother in the process. She herself told me she suspected I had Asperger's. It was her suspicion along with my partner's insistence that made me seek diagnosis.

I think we must be careful not to resent those who did not notice or did not come to the conclusion of autism when we were young. They were working with what limited information they had and because there is such a variety of presentations, autism is not always the clearest answer from the beginning. But for most of us, in retrospect we can see very clear signs of autism all the way along our lives.

I think it’s a precious thing to be able to understand the past if you have data available to you. It’s just not good to get stuck there wishing things were different. Instead, everything can be used to understand your present and figure out your future.

You're spot on. For me, it's only a feeling of sadness that my sensitivities were written off as casual anxiety. I would pick my nails until the point of bleeding from a very young age. I even remember my parents having the doctor tell me to stop that. But I do think now that I am processing these feelings, I am willing to let them go at some point (once I've felt them deeply enough).

 

[AutisticMilly]

This is a tricky question. On one hand, I wish that I would’ve known as a child that I wasn’t just weird, and that there was a reason for my behaviors. But, with my parents being so clueless about autism to this day, I probably would’ve been subjected to ABA or some other sort of abusive therapy, as it’s still commonly recommended in medical spaces. If I had more support as a child, I would’ve liked to know.

 

[Outdated]

Does anyone else ever get lost in wishing you had known about your neurodivergence earlier in life?

I do. I think it would have been very helpful earlier in my life if I understood more about burnout, perhaps today I'd still be working if that was the case. I do have some very strong issues and knew from age 5 that I wasn't normal but had no understanding of what it was that made me different.

I have noticed a trend of difference between people that were diagnosed as children and people that were diagnosed later in life. For the most part it seems that people that were diagnosed later in life are in general more successful and have less social problems than those that are diagnosed as children.