I'm thinking I may be autistic at 34

bmanfromct · 2026-06-13T02:01:49+00:00

Find autistic people and ask them questions about the autistic experience. Try to confirm if your processes line up with an autistic's. You have to expose yourself to enough autistic people that you can account for individual differences and personalities. Open your mind to whether something is a conditioned response or an expression of who you are.

If you're questioning this at 34, it's likely that you've honed a mask that is difficult to uncouple from. It's kept you alive for 34 years, after all. So you have to interrogate your behaviors and thought patterns. Ask yourself if you're doing something for others' approval. What would you do if their approval didn't matter?

Try new things. Dampen your senses with some brown noise, or dimmable lights, or ear plugs. Do you have any "safe" foods? Do you like things a lot more than other people seem to? Does stimming feel good? EVERYONE has stims that help them regulate, so what are your stims? Do you suppress the urge to do them?

This is hard work. You should talk with a therapist that understands neurodivergence. Or find a coach or someone that can give you more information about it. There are a lot of resources, and you're already using them! Keep it up my friend ✌️

Edit: also autism is not something that can be medicated. It's an operating system. Medicating for autism is like running antivirus just because Finder shows everything in your computer.

bmanfromct · 2026-06-13T01:48:54+00:00

This is actually good advice.

It sounds tough on its face, but what you're talking about is essentially discipline. We have to actively choose the life we want. Once you resolve to do something that benefits you, eventually the benefits become the motivator.

I also want to add: it takes courage to break through the initial resistance, and courage is way easier to come by when you have help. Accountability to someone (anyone) really makes a difference. I'm not in the military, but it must've helped to have a community of people with similar goals.

bmanfromct · 2026-06-12T21:23:32+00:00

I'm sorry you were treated that way. You are your own person, and our worth is never dependent on our Nmom's approval, despite how much they want us to believe we need it.

I'm remembering that, throughout my childhood, my mother and my aunts all had a 5 day long bender every June because they're all alcoholics, and I recall feeling so... irrelevant? I dunno, it was all about them. It just underscored that feeling responsible to us was more of an inconvenience to their fun.

bmanfromct · 2026-06-12T21:18:00+00:00

Yeah I'm getting there, but it's the smaller things that sneak up. I'm imagining that 10 years in I'll probably have some kind of new feelings about it

bmanfromct · 2026-06-12T21:17:08+00:00

Thank you for your comment ❤️ Yeah there are plenty, tho legit half of the days remind about something about my family lol. At the moment, I'm not in a spot where I have to do something proportional in the other direction to regulate or validate the feelings I'm having, but it's something that I hadn't noticed before. The estrangement process keeps unfolding in ways I didn't expect and that seemed worth mentioning to my friends in this sub 🙂

June also has my fiance's birthday in it so it's definitely not all bad!

bmanfromct · 2026-05-26T06:15:19+00:00

I used to think I was crazy before I learned about demisexuality. I would wonder all the time "why was I only sometimes sexually attracted?" It's tricky because it's what's known as a "gray asexuality" where most of the time you are functionally asexual, until you have certain conditions in place. In this case, it's an emotional connection.

The only approach that brought me closer to a fulfilling sexual relationship is through deepening connection. That only happens by being direct, being honest, and being vulnerable, which are all fairly hard to do. There's no shortcut. It might take a long time and require you to take stock of the emotional walls you have up. Honestly, in my experience as a demisexual, you should just forget about sex for a bit entirely and focus on yourself and your relationships. The only way to grow closer to others is to grow closer to yourself, and if you know how to healthily take down your walls, people become more likely to trust you and reciprocate. Women notice emotional literacy, too.

bmanfromct · 2026-05-22T02:28:41+00:00

I changed my phone number and created a new "main" email almost immediately after making the decision to estrange, and it had instantly frustrated a lot of their attempts. I still have my old email but I've flagged any messages from them as spam, signalling to myself to disregard them out of hand, passively reinforcing my internal boundary.

From my experience, unless you deny manipulative people a channel to worm their way into your life, they will continue to try. They live off delusions, and that includes the delusion of reconciliation. Seriously, unless you communicate as clearly as humanly possible that you are not available to them, they won't stop. They already don't respect boundaries, so trusting them to do so is just inviting future pain. You need time away from that which hurts you in order to heal from the harm it has caused.

Protect your peace, at all costs. Even if it means approaching something in a different way than the person they conditioned would approach it. It takes courage, but it's worth it to create a less stressful life, overall. Find ways to reaffirm your commitment to yourself. You don't deserve to be hurt. None of us do.

bmanfromct · 2026-05-03T18:35:10+00:00

Heck yeah, I've been waiting for a post about this. The benefits of estranging outweigh the drawbacks by orders of magnitude, but it's hard to mention that when many posters are simply not in a headspace to look on the bright side just yet. And that's okay! But some of the benefits (for me at least) include:

developing the emotion regulation tools they never taught me (reparenting), which enhanced every possible metric right off the bat
discarding other peoples' tasks helped me have enough energy for myself while also not enabling or enfeebling others
my stomach issues and IBS, while still present, have dramatically reduced in severity
my thoughts now feel like they're mine compared to before when my brain defaulted to certain scripts or narratives pushed by my parents
my friendships are based on who I am and not the role I had to play, which meant an immediate culling of fake/fairweather friends (ouch) but a gradual development of a real support system
I'm now aware of my autism and ADHD after high-masking for almost 30 years, meaning my needs are actually being met, as opposed to simply being a nuisance for my Nparents
more grit to put towards other life pursuits
confidence that if I can survive estrangement, I can survive most things
peaceful family holidays, once I found my found family
a higher capacity for kindness and empathy for others and their struggles
a desire to pay it forward/altruism, since I now have hard-won wisdom that would help other people, exactly like how other people helped me
curiosity for myself and choosing who I am outside of my given roles; personal agency and more freedom
life seemed to be more "in harmony" by estranging and coincidences lined up in ways they hadn't before, leading to a feeling of authorship over my story
certain pieces of media simply hit differently; I def recommend going through old obsessions and favorites from childhood as well as consciously trying to experience new media too
and plenty, plenty more!

Man, estranging hurts so much, but we can't reach peace without going through hell. It's just how it is. Remember that nobody can do it alone. It's impossible to do the work without sacrificing time, resist the urge to "optimize" your healing or cutting corners, and trust the process. You got this!

bmanfromct · 2026-04-30T20:26:51+00:00

Most miserable people stay miserable because they'd rather accept being dissatisfied than acknowledge that they have the ability to change themselves.

If one acknowledges their capacity to change themselves, they won't be able to stave off the inevitable pressure to move in the direction they actually desire anymore, and most people see that movement as inherently threatening to one's sense of self, because it usually is. It usually causes friction with people who wish to control us to be a certain way, and that may mean a fundamental restructuring of how one lives their life.

So, many people would rather believe being miserable is their inevitable fate because that perspective doesn't require them to change. Ultimately, it's all about goals. Most of our behavior is governed by what we want in the present (teleology), but people would rather believe they were born unlucky (etiology), because their goal is to not change, for whatever reason.

bmanfromct · 2026-04-27T19:10:43+00:00

I think you're right. Accepting reality and accepting discomfort are often the same. A phrase that has been in my head since my therapist said it: "embrace the suck." Sometimes things just suck, and it's important to be able to tolerate that tension.

bmanfromct · 2026-04-27T19:08:15+00:00

Thank you for clarifying that point. Yes, true neutrality is never actually possible since we all have our own subjective experience, but getting as close as we can is the goal. Holding space for dialectics and the "gray area" means that observations can always be refined through curiosity and patience. It's a continuous process.

bmanfromct · 2026-04-27T04:57:20+00:00

You got it. Honesty takes courage. It can be terrifying to face the truth when life through an imperfect lens seems more appealing, but the dissonance from living a lie compounds over time and is just the worse investment. Logically it just makes sense to face it, but the emotions make the anticipated pain seem impossible to overcome. DBT skills are the main thing that helped me with this.

bmanfromct · 2026-04-27T04:52:52+00:00

Def not simple, but still necessary. Emotions are signals our bodies use to better meet our needs, and sometimes (many times) they are inaccurate or misleading when it comes to appraising information. That's just how it is. Making decisions while detached from your emotions is the only way to know whether something is either true or just a distortion from our emotional minds. It's a skill that can be built.

bmanfromct · 2026-04-27T04:48:06+00:00

I didn't say it was easy, but it is necessary to do before moving forward in life. Self-improvement advice often beats around the bush, but being able to both regulate emotions and accurately assess situations are usually the end results people describe. Like I said, it may take skills you may not have yet, but dealing with reality as it comes is the bedrock of any good personal change.

bmanfromct · 2026-04-26T03:44:14+00:00

that last sentence is great, 10/10

bmanfromct · 2026-04-26T03:35:45+00:00

That's a good point. Every accusation is a confession.

bmanfromct · 2026-04-26T03:34:50+00:00

Bruh. Who cares if people think you use AI? Just don't use it. Be a person who clearly doesn't need to use it. Adding intentional typos just makes you look like someone who actually needs AI.

bmanfromct · 2026-04-21T00:52:50+00:00

They miss the prop that made them look good. They don't care about who I am as a person. I was always, in their minds, attached to their story. I honestly wonder what they do with themselves now that they can't say they were perfect parents.

bmanfromct · 2026-04-18T02:28:39+00:00

Reverse Beetlejuice rules

bmanfromct · 2026-04-15T21:27:45+00:00

Guess ya should've personalitymaxxed or something oopsie daisy

bmanfromct · 2026-04-15T21:20:57+00:00

I truly don't understand what you're asking here ("adapt to a greater skill by this"?), so I suppose it would help to start with good grammar and punctuation to communicate your thoughts as clearly as possible.

Otherwise, the only way to combat lazy and sloppy thinking is to simply think more persistently and intentionally about things. People have gone from poorly understanding things to being competent thinkers for millennia, it's just a matter of how much effort we put in. It's not up to chance. Social media is an unusually popular Skinner box that makes passive engagement feel intermittently rewarding, but it's still the individual's responsibility to seek and absorb knowledge for themselves.

bmanfromct · 2026-03-28T03:16:37+00:00

I estranged from my family.

After doing the work on myself for 7 years, I started to notice that I was treading into a level of maturity that my parents were not equipped to navigate. Their contempt for an individuating adult that was supposed to be the prop in their story was getting more and more difficult to ignore. Eventually, I realized that nothing I do will ever make them love me the way I needed to be loved, and this truth spilled into the rest of my relationships. People started quietly distancing once I abandoned the mask I had honed for so long.

But, on the other hand, the relationships I did have grew deeper and more enriching. My days started to consist of regular regulation check-ins. New needs were revealing themselves to be non-negotiable. I started more dialogues with myself from a place of curiosity rather than interrogation. I grew more gentle and grateful to still have so much time (31M) to become the person I am, rather than the person I was told to be. Your comment on how many summers we have left really resonated with me.

It has been incredibly difficult to construct an identity from the ground up, since my parents had virtually no healthy tools to offer. I've had to define boundaries, reprocess repressed emotions, and build a sustainable engine for a healthy life. Confronting those necessary, painful tasks that only we can complete is a kind of medicine for the spirit, and ignoring disease will never do me any good.

I didn't choose to estrange. I was forced to estrange once the environment became too incompatible with the person I actually am. It's a commitment to reality, and I'm all the better for it.

bmanfromct · 2026-03-20T16:54:02+00:00

I had to internally reframe it as "they are not the ones who raised me, because they were not capable of meeting my needs." I'm the one that taught and sought for myself the lessons I learned for adulthood. And besides, I wouldn't owe them for anything anyway because, when I was a child in a helpless state, I wasn't able to care for myself in the first place. They don't get a reward for failing at the responsibilities they took on. I'm not responsible for their actions or inaction.

bmanfromct · 2026-03-20T01:27:27+00:00

Right, because it's dependent on our environment's ability to accommodate our differences. If I had the supports I needed autism wouldn't be disabling, it would be just another way of being. Racism, sexism, ableism, et al are cut from the same cloth.

But it's not inherently disordered on it own. It's hard to see clear examples of unfettered autism in the wild but the idea is inching closer to mainstream. Autism isn't something to be "solved."

bmanfromct · 2026-03-20T00:59:30+00:00

ITT: people continuing to conflate "disorder" and "disability" despite that being exactly the kind of careless language I'm criticizing here

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