This is a spillover from the Fuck Today thread, but getting a diagnosis and reading articles about different issues to do with high functioning autism really helped me to build up a coherent picture of who I am and about growing up, which was a confusing experience - why can’t I connect with people? Why am I failing when I try so hard and everyone thinks I should be able to do it? Why do I keep getting in trouble when I mean well? Why don’t my parents seem to understand me or listen to me, even though I know they care about me? Why do they keep hitting me? Or when I got older - why aren’t I growing out of this?
I was able to get a clear picture and explain my whole childhood to my parents from my own perspective for the first time (in a completely non-judgemental way, pointing out the things I did and didn’t understand, along with the many good things I learned from them and am grateful for, then talking them through the reasons I acted in odd ways at different points growing up). They got it. This may not seem like much, but to be told by my parents that I was understood and that my reactions now made sense to them, that they accept my principle of not using physical discipline and that they would have responded very differently to me if they had the chance with the information they now have was huge. I was also able to explain why the dramatic and lasting conversion experience I had (to Evangelical Christianity, at age 4) wasn’t necessarily a miracle, and could be explained from other perspectives. They didn’t quite agree there, but they do think that it makes more sense now!
