Adult Asperger’s Video 4. Living in a Bubble – Advice on Dealing With Diagnosis (Part 1)Adult Asperger’s
My name’s Anthony King and welcome back to my video series about mild autism spectrum disorder in adults based on my book “Living in a Bubble”. Let’s continue from where we left off in our last video together…
Advice on Dealing With Diagnosis
The time between discovering that I might have ASD and realising that I did have ASD was exactly four days. Those four days were probably some of the most confusing roller coaster days of my life. I also felt complete loneliness and if I’m honest, a little bit of fear and sadness. My feelings and perspective changed over those four days. At first I dealt with it with humour. When I sat some people down who were close to me, they didn’t seem to understand nor did they seem to care. So, what do you next? You have ASD. Congratulations because this alone is an amazing step forward. You now know that you have the strength inside you to see reality and to see the truth about yourself. Many people do not have the reflective qualities and integrity to look within. There is a real fear with being potentially labelled as “autistic” – I get that, but if you battle on this can change your life for the better – bringing confidence, awareness and strength as well as some much needed solutions.
There is hope beyond the fear
Fear is natural and you can eventually overcome it. It’s natural that you will fear people’s reactions. You might even fear that your family and friends won’t believe you because you yourself don’t quite belief it yet! You might think that your own mind is playing tricks on you and seeing things that aren’t there. This is all completely normal.
Prepare
I wrote a list (based on my research) ten to twenty pages long of bullet points and emailed them to the expert before I saw him. I printed out copies to take with me. However, the most important part of compiling this document was the mental journey it took me on. I was looking back at my life with different eyes and writing down the results objectively. I felt sadness, despair, shock, surprise, regret and a wide range of emotions we have to go through. This package was essentially my life in written form and, with every bullet point being related to ASD, this contributed to resolving each one and my own personal self-development.
Grieve
You will probably be very emotional and upset. Embrace this! Cry and get it out! You are allowed and it’s a really important thing to do. You must allow yourself time to grieve and to process your experiences in a new light. It’s so shocking to realise that you saw the world and all your life experiences in a totally different way. That in itself is discombobulating and will take an emotional and physical toll on you. Allow yourself time to process and mourn the life you thought was real but are now discovering was slightly different to how you perceived it. You will feel a range of emotions after diagnosis until you finally reach acceptance… and you will reach acceptance, I assure you. There will be a brighter day and the sun will rise in your life and it will rise higher and brighter than before because now you have clarity and an honest perspective of the world and your own limitations and you can work on those limitations and expand and improve. In fact, I believe strongly that “normal” people often do not ever take the opportunity to look within and change like we do, because we are FORCED to self reflect, grow and change. Most people are too lazy to do this. There is no time limit to this. It might take a few days, it might take a few months or it might even take a few years. I was determined to deal with this full force so it took me a couple of months to work this out within myself but I firmly believe that it is a process, a never ending process of expansion, education and personal development. It can be exciting to improve every day, so it’s a journey with no time limit that you can pick up at any time.
Thank you for joining me today. We’ll continue with more in our next video. See you then.