This community is for people who have a special neuronal configuration and I’d like to hear how you discovered it. Were you told? By who? How did you take it? How is life today?
Here’s my story:
I was only told by my mother that I’m smart but never anything else. She took me to a school psychologist for evaluation to decide what school form I should go to after elementary.
My teachers in elementary school thought I should go to a more basic school form but my mom was convinced I was too smart for that. So I went to sort of an advanced school. It was no problem intellectually but I became an outcast pretty much immediately. Had to switch schools later because of my social difficulties.
It took another 20 years for me to go out on my own and search for the reason why stuff wasnt working. Neither normal “desk” work nor “supervisor” positions worked really. When I went self employed, I found a spot for the first time.
When covid hit and I had to give up my company, I went digging for answers. “Gifted” was the first thing, but it wasnt the whole picture. When “Autistic” was added it all started making sense. Too much going on in the head to “be normal” but no social talent to actually make something out of myself in the corporate world.
Its an ongoing process of resolving trauma as much as possible and learning to live with what isnt resolvable. Explaining the process and situation to people, sometimes against opposition is not easy but all in all my life has become a lot healthier.
Thanks for reading. Have a good one!
I always knew I was different from everyone else. I called myself “weird” a lot and thought I looked strange on video. I often pointed out how I don’t think like everyone else. I also asked people how they knew things about social situations often, or ran social situations by others to get a better understanding of them. It’s like I knew I didn’t think about social matters like everyone else did. To me people either (a) made wayyy too many assumptions about others and interactions or (b) had a 6th sense for social experiences.
One day, I was at a gathering a a friend’s house. It seems that I said something that was not normal, even though I thought it was completely normal, and a friend said, “Don’t mind him. He’s autistic.” That’s when I realized that maybe my comment didn’t land well. The next day, to get my friend back by making him feel guilty, I looked for online autism tests to send him the results so he would be worried that I was ruminating on it. To my surprise, my results kept coming back that I was likely autistic. Later that day when I saw my friend again, I asked him if he really thought I was autistic, to which he responded a bit confused with, “Well…yeah.” After further discussion, I learned that it is pretty apparent that I’m autistic, so my friend thought that I would have been aware. Nope! I always knew that I like people that were “a bit autistic” and even liked toys for autistic kids, but never really thought tat about myself.
I became obsessed with learning about autism, which further lead me to believe I was autistic. Then, I scheduled an assessment with an autism psychologist for a thorough evaluation. She confirmed it pretty easily, so I was diagnosed not only with autism spectrum disorder, but ADHD also (I knew about me being ADHD my entire life though).
Thanks for sharing! Its equally wholesome and sad imo. Having friends that actually are able to give you a hint that helps you but the fact that we even need it is sad.