Are autistic people consistently as confident about their abilities as non autistic people?
firemonkey
Citizen
in General ASD
My default mode is to think I'm useless and worthless. That's punctuated by brief periods of fear driven hubris. Doing well at anything is far more often than not reduced to 'I only did well because it was easy'. The belief being that tons of people could do equally well, or better.
Comments
How does being a late diagnosed person with ASD effect your sense of self?
You would have had different responses than NT's all your childhood, sensory issues, perhaps communication difficulties that are connected to ASD. It had to be frustrating, and bewildering, confusing. Misunderstood.This must have a profound effect on a person's sense of self, everything seems different to what those around you are experiencing and you have no idea why. How could someone undiagnosed ever feel that they fit in without guidance and support?
I asked my aspie friend how his parents never had him diagnosed as a child, he struggles so much to communicate and understand emotions, cannot cope with stress, had meltdowns, how could his parents miss that? My own son has severe ADHD and was diagnosed and given close guidance and assistance from age 5 onwards.
A child who has been diagnosed with ASD is given tools and the necessary ongoing support and hopefully is more equipped to deal with life and ASD. Perhaps even sustain a positive self image despite having to cope with autism and co- morbidities.
My autistic grandson is in a Rudolf Steiner school and is fine with not yet reading and writing at 8 yrs because he is in a loving non- competitive environment.
I believe the early undiagnosed formative years for autistics may seriously contribute to a sense of failure and lack of confidence when trying to fit in to an NT scale of measure.
In terms of being independent I was (very) young for my age. That became a major issue on starting A levels, and the realisation that the aim of doing them was to get a university place. Not wanting to disappoint my parents vs knowing I'd not be able to cope with the non-academic side of university life lead to me being in a constant state of 'high anxiety'.
Even accounting for the fact I was quite asocial I had little to no idea how to act with other children etc.
From what I've seen, left on their own, parents either used denial as a coping mechanism, resorted to force and punishment to make the kids "normal", and a select few actually tried to find out of the box solutions for helping their children learn and integrate better. You can mostly tell with ease which method has been used by the specific struggles autistic adults have.
It's slowly getting better, I had so much more resources and information with my kids.
back in the eighties the consensus was that gifted children (he is gifted intellectually) are slower to develop emotionally and at 18 he joined the IDF and went to war and I suppose under such circumstances he was unable to mask any more.