r/AutismTranslated • u/WebRelative8373 • 1d ago
personal story Does this happen to anyone else that happened to me?
I'm on the autism spectrum, according to the psychologists who evaluated me. I have ADHD, and I also have mild cognitive impairment.
I never stood out for having much intellect. In fact, I was a poor student and was never interested in putting in the effort into something as difficult for me as studying. I barely finished high school. I was fortunate to have help, otherwise I wouldn't have made it. It's not easy for me to work well either. There aren't many jobs I can do well. I'm good at moving weights and carrying things, but I'm not good at quick, busy jobs or jobs where a lot of verbal instructions are given. And of course, I'm not good at jobs that require studying or a lot of cognitive ability.
What happened to me when I was a child and teenager is that I seemed to be mentally retarded, what other children could understand I could not understand, I did not understand jokes, I did not understand instructions, I remember that in physical education the teacher explained something with words and visually and I was the only one who did not understand, it took me 3 years to learn to add and subtract, I could never divide by more than one digit, when I watched a movie I did not understand the message nor did I understand what was happening or why the characters did such things, socially I did and said inappropriate things, I was reckless and it seemed that I did not think, when they bothered me by saying things I did not know what to say to defend myself, academically I was one of the worst students and I was rejected for that, all this that I mentioned continued to happen to me in adolescence then it began to slowly improve with age, I am currently 31 years old but there are sequels of all that.
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u/TLJDidNothingWrong 1d ago edited 1d ago
Lots of autistic people have difficulties and symptom overlap with learning disorders like NVLD. Question: are you a master daydreamer? Do you dissociate a lot? Did you ever try to ‘rush’ or skip past early milestones (there’s a theory doing so inappropriately retains physical reflexes usually lost in/after infancy)? If the answer to any of them is yes, might be part of the reason.