Finding You've Had Asperger's In "Old Age"

I put "old age" in quotes because I'm a relatively healthy 60-year-old in all ways except chronic pain from CRPS. Coping well with that, considering I've been dealing with it for a decade. People tell me I look about 40, so that's always good for the ego. I'm also in wonder about that part, since I feel like I've been rolled over by road graders most of my life. I guess it's God's little blessing to "make up" a bit for the abuse?

I don't even know why I wanted to write here. I was diagnosed with ADHD in my 40's, which explained a lot of childhood problems, as well as throughout adulthood. But I only "discovered" the Asperger's after becoming curious after reading up a bit on it. I finally convinced my T that the symptoms fit too closely (especially with childhood symptoms) not to at least test, & now he agrees.

There's not a lot I expect to do about it now. It just helps explain even more, that's all. And, of course, at this point I have grandchildren to think about. I'm especially concerned about one whom I believe is being scapegoated and who has a difficult time coping at home. His parents would get angry if I ever said anything, but they just might listen to me if I told them about Asperger's and suggested he be tested. At the very least he has mild ADHD, although he's highly functional outside the home. Hmmm... come to think of it, so was I. His father is abusive, his mother is oblivious and I simply feel helpless.

At any rate, I will eventually figure out something to do to help. We don't live close enough to them at the time to be there for this little boy enough, but hopefully will move a lot closer in the near future.

My own FOO was and is a complete mess. Mother a narcissist to the nth degree, and in a kind of turn-about, it was my father who was oblivious. Me, with all that ADHD, Asperger's inability to "get it" and general angry misbehavior exacerbated over the years, became my mother's favorite scapegoat. However or whenever all this happened I'm unsure, but the result was an older brother/family hero who is (without a doubt!) a narcissistic sociopath, one sister I haven't quite figured out, another who is every bit as narcissistic as the mom and a baby brother who's alcoholic, a compulsive liar and chronic thief. (Committed armed robbery at the age of 18.)

Then there was "me". The scorn and shame of the family until I grew up to be the "perfect daughter and mother" for a few decades, always there for my parents when nobody else was, only to discover to my horror that I'd "taught" my 2 children to see me as their kicking post, too. What a mess, huh?

The neat thing right now, (besides my determination to help my little grandson escape some of the scapegoating aimed at him), is that I finally, at this "ripe old age", know what I want to be when I grow up. Over the years I've accumulated college credits here & there, but never with the goal of a degree. Now I am determined to return to school to study psychology. Forgive me if this sounds "out there" ~ I've thought about it a lot, including that it's possible I have my own narcissistic and high-&-mighty ideas about my own abilities ~ but my goal is a PhD before I reach 70.

I have no illusions of this being a big "career" or even of making money this way. My main goal is research. I want to learn, learn, learn all I can, especially about the hurdles I've experienced in life (not making it over much more than half of them.) And since not a single person in my family (all of whom have achieved college degrees of some sort, besides the baby brother and myself) takes me a bit seriously except for my husband, I don't plan on revealing these plans until that degree is within reach. In fact, all my siblings think I'm plain crazy. But I'm not. I only had to find different ways to cope with insane abuses and scapegoating, that's all. Now, I'm sad a lot, I'm often lonely and I hurt much of the time, but I'm not crazy and now realize I never was.

So. That's it. Don't know what possessed me to blab all this out here this morning. I've been reading posts for a while and often want to respond, but somebody else always writes what I would have said, and better, so this is my first post on this forum.

I know none of you. But in reading the posts, I feel closer to you than I do most of my family. I guess we are a family, aren't we?

Welcome to the club - I was diagnosed when I was 49. I found Tony Atwood's book 'The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome' to be very helpful in understanding things from my childhood plus the ways I react to things as an adult.
Good luck with your college plans!

I also do things to satisfy my need to be seen as useful and for people to take me seriously. I admit, I think I have quite a big ego, and some of my ideas are also large and I do things in grand fashion.

It stems from a confusing childhood where one feels useless and not needed 90% of the time.

Hi.. We are indeed a big family, yes, and am glad to meet you and hope we can be friends.
My story is remarkably similar to yours. I am autistic, and this is something, that’s only in recent years, been definitely confirmed. I’m 57 and it has answered many questions I’ve had for so long. I genuinely don’t believe I’m immature, but I’m told both look much younger than I am, and my general manner is younger than I am. (Many think I’m in only my 30s – that certainly is good for your ego!). Whether my manner is due to my autism I don’t know.
I was non-verbal until I was six, and at primary school, I was very introverted.
My mind was once described as like having a tall brick wall in it, and I would hide things behind it, and no-one seemed to be able to penetrate it or break it down . That wall is probably still there to a degree. As I grew older, I remained withdrawn, and at around 11 or 12, was being bullied at school. My mum has said she only found out about this when she discovered massive bruises on my legs. During all this time, the suggestion of autism was never mentioned, however, I went to see a psychologist, and it was felt that I would benefit from attending this boarding school he knew about. It wasn’t a “special school” (a term I absolutely detest), but just a smaller school - intended for the “quieter child”. On its website now, it says it “provides high quality education and pastoral care for boys aged 8-18 who might be bright, but struggle in mainstream schools due to a Specific Learning Difficulty”
As I left school and was growing into adult life, I came out of my shell a bit, but am still socially anxious.
I do have many friends, wonderful friends, and I get very unhappy when I see they’re unhappy. I’ve been told a number of times, I worry about other people, at my own expense. It’s just actually meeting people, I have difficulty.
I don’t consider being autistic an illness or a disability – but I do feel it’s a test. It’s that, that makes me who I am. I can understand my traits and my way of thinking more clearly now. Indeed and it makes me very happy, now that I do understand. Everything I’ve not understood is fitting into place. It annoys me when people talk about a curing autism. If you have autism, it is part of you, and as I say, makes you who you are.
I do have my down-days. Times when I get depressed, and just want to cry. There are odd occasions when I do have a meltdown, it’s unfortunately, just the way I am, but generally, I look on it all positively and consider myself blessed.
You are not crazy, and from reading this, can see you’re an amazing person. I’ve read your post and think it is brilliant. I hope we can be friends, and with this in mind, am sending you a friend request, which I hope is alright.

Hi, Dav, and thank you. I wrote a long private message to you, but can't send it. It says I have to have made at least 3 posts before I can send a private msg. So, guess I'll post a few more & then try. Gotta follow the rules, eh?

I just related to what you wrote, but feel a bit nervous about posting too much personal info publicly's all. TTYS

StbGuy ~ You nailed that one. I'm kinda unsure if I have a big ego or rather wallow more in absurdly low self-esteem. Maybe I tend to swing between the 2 extremes? I guess the fact that I've never done what you say, "things in grand fashion," would show that I've let the bad self image rule more in life, but I have had moments of success. For many years my obsessive focus was raising my children and working to be the best mother possible (opposite of the way I was raised.)

But I really like your last sentence:"It stems from a confusing childhood where one feels useless and not needed 90% of the time." Succinct & to the point. You are so right. I honestly believed I was "dumb" and unable to accomplish much as a kid, and proved it by underachieving. Then, as an adult, while my siblings were dumping their children off with me to watch after so they could pursue their college degrees, I was thinking I could never do that because I just needed to focus all my energy on motherhood. My children (& niece & nephews) were my life. Anyway, I could yada blah yada about that forever, but that's in the past, and now I am free to pursue that degree & why not, ya know? Why shouldn't somebody be able to get their Ph.D. in their 60's? I mean, I think there are many states now that offer free tuition at age 62. (Need to check into that.)

When I was 22 (1977), I went to a psychologist for the 1st time in my life. She was awesome. After a year or so, for some reason she wanted to give me an IQ test. When I returned the next week she sat me down & explained to me that she had given the test to many people, but that I was the 1st & only one who had ever gotten all the answers right. She said she wasn't quite sure how to score it, but was putting it at "165". She didn't tell me that it was especially high or anything, only that she'd never had anybody get all the answers correct before. She was trying to convince me to go to college.

I had been oblivious about "IQ" tests/scores/whatever before that time, and certainly never expected to do well on one & didn't know if "165" was all that high, but you can't blame me for perking up and getting interested at that point. I went to the library to read up on it, but we lived in a small town & there wasn't much on it in that library. Then I also remembered that at the end of high school, all the girls I ran with had gone to take SAT tests. So, OK, this is how small our town was: there were 50 kids in the graduating class, ha ha. After the scores came back, my high school counselor had called me in to his office and chided me for barely maintaining a C average for the past 4 years. The reason? He told me I had the highest score on the SAT's of anybody in the history of the high school, so was obviously capable of getting better grades than what I had. So, even though I guess I must've been "bright", I kind of glazed over when he said that (in typical fashion for me), & mostly remember thinking, "yeah, right, & so what, big deal. After all, this is the tiniest & dumbest high school in the west." In other words, I wasn't too impressed with myself, & that one SAT test score was certainly not enough to overcome a lifetime of being told I was stupid.

However, I remembered about that then, after that IQ test. In the library I found a thing about a "club" for people with high IQ's called "Mensa", and they had an address to write to find out about testing. I had that address floating around the house for a number of years, forgetting all about it while busy trying to be a "perfect Mama", but came across it at some point before I turned 30. I eventually did write to ask about their testing, and even ended up taking it. Got a letter back saying "you qualify. To join our awesome, better-than-everybody-else-in-the-world club, send in thus-&-thus amount of dues and you will then be One Of Us." When that thing came I remember feeling so ashamed that I had ever taken their obscene test in the 1st place. It was like that letter, along with a pamphlet they sent with photos of their eggheads noshing at their Mensa meetings, brought it home to me how much I would never fit in with people like that. Not only that, I thought, "I'm much too smart to send those morons my good money for the 'privilege' of being a Mensa egghead! As if."

However... there was one person I just had to show it to before I threw it away ~ my beloved Daddy. Most of all, I wanted him to know, to see, that I wasn't all that stupid after all. He could be proud of me, too, even if I hadn't gotten my college degree. So, I pulled out the test score one day (I realized how high it was by that time) to show him, and told him about Mensa, etc. He looked at it, then kind of gazed up at the ceiling for a few moments. Then, looking back at the paper, he said, "I'd love to see what kind of score your sister would get on that. I can only imagine!" That's all. No big deal or anything. But it said a lot to me. I knew it would never matter, even if I scored 250.

Not much later I found out about another club called Densa. After reading up about it, I came very close to joining that one! There I knew I'd fit in. Because I also knew that no matter how well I might do on some "IQ" test, I was incurably idiotic when it came to fitting into the human race. I simply did not get it. I didn't get the subtleties, I didn't get the jokes, I didn't get it period.

What I did get (I thought) were children. I adored them, I loved being with them, I loved teaching them & having them teach me. And that's what I focused on. Now I think I do "get it" in ways I never did before and in ways I never imagined I could/would be able to do in my life. It's required a lot of pain to get to this point of understanding. I don't want it to be for nothing. That is why I want to study now. That is why I have the grandiose idea of attaining a Ph.D. before I reach the age of 70. I believe (since I'm quite healthy now) that I have a good chance of living several more decades in good health, and that there is still plenty of time to aim for the stars.

That's all. I didn't mean to write this much, & didn't write this to try to get my friends here to think I'm some kind of "genius" or something. I'm not. If anything, maybe I'm an idiot savant in some kind of weird way. For instance, I never could understand algebra, yet I love logic problem books. Things like that make me believe that my brain is somehow mis-wired. Go figure. But still... if I work at it, if I study really hard, if I simply care enough... I could do it, right?

Thanks for your amazing post daynrand! Wow, those Mensa people are...just so totally wrong in attitude. I always thought they were something to be proud of joining, wow, I'd just pass on an invitation too with an intro like that.

I'm so sorry about how your dad reacted to what was clearly a life-defining or life-changing moment for you. That's just terrible, and I know how crushing that must have felt.

I truly believe you should go for your goals! I also don't really get life either. I don't like the way people "measure" successes nowadays. Society is misleading itself by tricking itself into believing in what seems "concrete" and "perfect", and most of all, a "standard" to measure with. Life is too fluid and grey for that.

Thank you, StbGuy! For all you wrote. Short, but you got it. Ya know, the thing is about my littlest sister, I was always really proud of her myself. I loved to tell my Daddy about the latest, greatest thing she'd done/said that day when he got home from work, because I knew he adored her and loved to hear about it.

I was almost 4 when she was born, and can still remember, even before her birth, anticipating her arrival. I had a 2-year-old sister already and could barely stand to touch her, but woo-hoo, did I ever look forward to that new baby! I even threw a tantrum when my parents told me the name they'd picked if it was a girl & they ended up changing it because of my sheer grief over the 1st choice. Then, would you believe this, the baby was born on my older brother's birthday! He was 4 years older than I, was the family hero then (& ever after) & was promised the right to be the 1st to hold the new baby when she came home, since she'd been his birthday present after all. I, for the 1st time in my life, actually began a devious plot to overcome this obviously ill-conceived plan of theirs. It was simply wrong, as this brother had no love for others, especially for a new baby, and I knew this better than anybody (as his personal punching bag and as the family scapegoat.) So, as soon as the parents came home & set the baby down to prepare for the big photo-op, I ran in & scooped her up, forever ruining big bro's chances of being "the first" to hold her. I've never forgotten the look of hatred in his eyes at that moment, and indeed, he wreaked his vengeance plentifully afterward, but in my little mind it was worth it. Besides, all the grown-ups thought it was hysterical.

I just loved the stuffing out of that little girl, then and ever after. I never felt jealous of her. Weird, because she was clearly my parents' favorite and was the only one of 5 kids who never got beaten on. Even when that IQ test thing happened many years later with my Dad, I didn't feel anything like jealousy or anger or anything. Maybe a little bit sad? I don't know. It probably sounds weird and dysfunctional, & I 'spose it is really. I mean, now that I think about it, he didn't need to compare. He could have just seen it as his eldest daughter's thing without bringing the youngest into the conversation, but that's the way he thought & I guess I saw it as normal. Now I don't, but then I did.

Anyway, I sure do run on, don't I? Thanks again. I am going for that degree. I don't know what the outcome will be, but who does? I'm at an age where I can simply enjoy going to school for the sake of learning. I've experienced so many things, including the pain of AS, that I think I have more to offer to others.

BTW: other areas of study that interest me are due to the very siblings mentioned above. That eldest child, the big brother, is a narcissistic sociopath. I don't know when it happened, but the signs were there very early on. It was about 20 years ago that it began to dawn on me. The next-youngest sister I haven't figured out. The youngest one, whom I so adored, is simply a full-blown narcissist. And then there's a baby brother I also haven't figured out fully. He is one of the most devastated alcoholics I've ever known, but aside from that I'm not sure. Me? I'm not sure about that either. Mainly because until recent years I've been mostly oblivious. I've got the AS thing going on, & that explains plenty throughout life, but I honestly think our entire family had/has plenty of narcissism going on, myself included. I'll have to study up on it some more. And letcha know.

Wow daynrand, you guys have quite a complex family! It's strange how with time we begin to discover and redefine things for ourselves, even things we've observed for a very long time and that have been part of our lives for a very long time.

It links well to the thread I think. For 20+ years I knew I was different, but couldn't explain it. I think the best way a person could describe an Asperger's diagnosis is a "slice of comprehension" which brings relief to the "hunger of not understanding".

I think your idea of doing a degree at your age is actually a very good one. I think when you're young, you don't question things enough, and you don't believe in the simple things in life enough. You see them, you note them, but you don't get them. As a young person, I think you waste a lot of brain power and time (and effort) in trying to "learn" when all you actually need is to "understand". I think that's the key difference between "knowledge" and "wisdom". I think many young people can have knowledge, even skills, but not a lot of wisdom. Wisdom teaches you how to throw away unnecessary knowledge, which is a scary thought when you're young, as you are conditioned to believe more is more, or better. It is something I am trying to purge from my system for the last few years. Maybe that's why I butt heads with most people my age?

I love your definition, a "slice of comprehension". No, of course, how can we explain such a thing??? I didn't even know such a thing as AS existed until a few years ago. Of course I'd heard of autism, but never considered there was a type that might relate to me.

Now I'm a bit astonished that some psychologist along the way never made the connection. After all, I would end up breaking down & going to one every 4 or 5 years when the pain of depression & panic became unbearable & I'd forget the failures of the past times & think "maybe there is someone out there who can help me?" And how many times did I tell them that I just couldn't seem to understand, just didn't get it, sometimes felt like I didn't even speak the same language as all "those normal people out there"? I think I described the AS symptoms fairly well & repeatedly over the years, now that I understand it better. But not one professional ever put the dots together.

In fact, you said in another post something about not being so sure about an
ADHD diagnosis for yourself. I've had that dx for a number of years, & I do think I must've had it going on as a child, or some aspect of it. But like you, I sometimes wonder how valid that is. When I was absorbed in something as a child I could concentrate for quite a long while & still can, actually. I do get very hyper and antsy & all that ADD stuff, but can't that also be attributed to sheer anxiety over the problems brought on by the AS?

Maybe I've accepted the ADHD dx too easily & need to rethink it. I've tried to explain it to my children a few times. Especially my daughter, who has a 6-yr-old son whom I am very concerned about right now, as he reminds me so much of myself as a child. His parents get so frustrated with him & he reacts negatively, which brings on more frustration, & frankly, I fear for him. He has developed a pattern of yelling everything out of frustration, & his parents' way of looking at it is that he is simply being inappropriate and needs to learn to "use his words" correctly, etc. I don't know, I guess I could go on & on venting about that situation, but mostly I know I need to study, learn, go for that degree & be there for him.

How I tried to explain it to my daughter is that in my head there is something like a big hurricane. Within that hurricane are hundreds of tornados. Within all of those tornados are dozens of smaller whirling dervishes. And amongst ALL of that swirling madness are things like pieces of paper spinning out of control, with words on them. My daily job is snagging those words out of the wind, & it's beyond my control to always get the right ones. Sometimes when people talk to me, their words come out of their mouths and spin right up into one of the whirlwinds in my head, & I can't make heads or tails of them. I have so many ideas going on at once that it takes all my effort to nail anything down to accomplish something. I mean, that's the only way I can explain it to her. She was complaining about how my grandson had been doing well reading for a while, but now can't seem to concentrate on anything & is always spinning off in different directions, so I tried telling her that maybe his head is doing that, too, & he just needs time or a different way of doing things to get those words to settle down & make sense.

StbGuy, thank you so much for your validation, too, about going after a degree. You are so right about knowledge vs wisdom. I honestly don't think I was capable of doing school when I was younger. For one thing, I was in too much pain and too fearful... too afraid of people. Now, I don't feel a need to "prove" anything to anybody. I simply want to accomplish whatever God has put me on this earth to do at this place in life, & know now that almost anything's possible. I simply did not have that when I was young. Sad, but nothing to grieve about. It's just the way it was/is. I only need to be grateful for what it is now.
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Thanks! Yes, indeed! I didn't think of autism applying to me either. I had an image in my mind of classic autism, like you see portrayed on TV basically. Part of the learning curve for me was to realize that what I see on TV is far from the truth. You hear people saying that, but you don't believe it as such. I guess that's knowledge vs. wisdom right there.

I think that ties in brilliantly with what I was discussing earlier about hearing something but not getting it, and I think it is something that affects professionals the most, simply because of the comfort experience can bring. I think many older professionals trained in the eras where we still thought of autism as classic autism, like I even did. Then they came out with Asperger's syndrome and then autism as a spectrum with obvious implications for the vastness of symptoms of course. I think that demonstrates my point perfectly - yes, they do know that autism is now a spectrum and includes Asperger's, but they still don't believe that it does. When they think of autism they are still looking for those classic symptoms, because knowing something in theory is not the same as seeing it in practice. That's the human condition basically. It takes 30 years to train a good psychiatrist with lots of experience and then 30 years to "untrain" him of all his long-held notions he uses to identify conditions. This happens because the standard (e.g. DSM-IV) has been reconfigured (DSM-V). It actually all just illustrates how little we, as humans, truly do understand about life.

But, rest assured, I had the same question. Just directed to my school teachers. I asked myself, 12 years I spent in school, my childhood, my adolescence, the most transitional phases of my life, and not one noticed I was different enough to investigate further?

That might very well be. Things like sensory processing disorder, over-stimulation and the like seem to follow AS naturally. This might very well manifest with the symptoms of ADHD, yet might not even be ADHD. It might be some kind of "autistic ADHD" which might not even be ADHD after all. Also, since we cannot enter one another's consciousnesses, we will probably never be able to observe and compare in order to truly find out. I will never know what neurotypical is like and they will never know what AS is like. The day we can swap modes so to speak, we will have the hard "data" to know truly. The observer can "visit" and "take notes/sample", then "leave" again. As we are all stuck in our own brains, we have no frame of reference.

That hurricane analogy is a great way of illustrating it! If anything can describe the mental chaos, that is it definitely. And, what many do not understand is why it is so tiring, why sufferers can only focus for a short while and on one thing only. It's because it's hard work, and that truly illustrates why.

Me too. I have realigned focus in order to streamline my life. I've also stopped chasing after "normal" goals if I can put it that way. I am not normal, so normal probably won't make me happy anyway. It's a tough decision to make when you are young because of the pressure to fit in and the ever-present worry of youth "slipping away" like it's some kind of commodity. But, when I look at it, I didn't have a youth anyway, not a normal one at least, lost it when I was about 5 already, so I just need to define life the way it works for me, because that's all that'll work in the end for me anyway.

Thanks once again for your inspiring and kind words, I really enjoy reading your posts!

You're right on there, StbGuy. I used to fret about time & youth "slipping away", too, like "oh, dear, oh dear, so much to do & I'm still spinning my wheels & pretty soon I'll be 30 & it'll be almost too late," or some-such nonsense & so it went on through life. I feel like in the past decade, after a series of absurd & catastrophic events took place to steal time away, I'm now sort of free from that. I don't think about it so much any longer. I know that you can plan all you want, but you never know what might happen to blow those plans apart, or you can plan and who knows? Your plans might end up coming together or even being far better than you'd expected. I'm not "optimistic" so much as "realistic". The plans for school (with even a Ph.D. at the end in mind) can be made, but I won't be utterly devastated if something else ends up happening, either. It's the old "go with the flow" theory, I reckon. It took until age 60 for the whirlwinds in my mind to settle down enough to make some sense of, and so be it. Maybe that's just the amount of time that was needed in my case? I'm grateful for lots of things. I'm strong & healthy. I really do feel about as well as I did in my 30's. I don't look 60, for whatever that's worth. (Maybe I won't stick out so terribly in classes with teens & 20-somethings?) (But, come to think of it, I do not care if I do!)

OT: Guess what I did yesterday? Tried to bleach my hair white. I want it to look like my dear grandmother's hair, which was beautifully, snowy white. My natural color is a golden, light brown, but of course has a good deal of gray in it now. I decided I wanted white hair like my Nana's. Sigh. It turned very light blonde instead. I think I can put the bleach on again in a week to see if it'll take more color out. But I'll probably have to settle for platinum blonde. That's OK for now, I reckon. I think I do look a lot younger with light hair, for what that's worth, ha ha. (who am I kidding? It's worth a lot.)