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I finally looked up the actual number of autistic adults in the US
I was reading a report from the CDC website last night and saw that over 5.4 million adults in the US are on the spectrum. I always thought the numbers were mostly about kids, so that really surprised me. How many of you found out about your autism later in life?
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maxmurphy1mo ago
Right there with you, got diagnosed at 42 after a lifetime of thinking I was just broken. The relief was massive but so was the anger at all those years of being told I was lazy or not trying hard enough. It's wild how many of us flew under the radar for so long, just because we didn't fit the old stereotypes about autism.
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casey9093mo ago
Got my diagnosis at 38. Spent decades just thinking I was bad at being a person, missing social cues everyone else got. Seeing that number makes sense, a lot of us slipped through the cracks. It's a weird mix of relief and grief figuring it out so late.
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the_ruby3mo ago
That relief and grief thing hits hard. Finally having a real reason for all those confusing years is huge. But it also hurts to think about all the time lost, all the needless struggle. Makes you wonder how school or work could have been different with the right help back then. So many of us were just told to try harder when our brains were wired different.
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