Hi, I'm a new member. My name is Ettina.
I'm kind of on both sides of the thing. I'm a 3rd year undergraduate psychology student (23 years old), and I've also got a dual diagnosis of PTSD and PDD NOS (atypical autism). So, I'll talk a bit about all three aspects of myself.
PTSD was my first diagnosis. When I was 10 months old, my parents discovered that my two cousins (14 and 11 years old) were being physically and sexually abused by their father, my paternal uncle. My father's family had a rule to protect his brother and keep him out of trouble, but my father bucked that rule and told the police about the abuse. My uncle went to jail, his stepdaughter to her father, his kids with his second wife to my aunt, and his kids with his first wife (the ones who told) stayed with us. Unfortunately, they were extremely emotionally disturbed, and were emotionally and physically abusive towards my parents on a regular basis. I witnessed all this. And unbeknownst to my parents, they both independently decided to sexually abuse me. The older sister ran away permanently when I was 3. The younger brother stayed more two years until he sexually assaulted a classmate, which made my parents realize I wasn't safe around him, so they sent him to a foster home. A year later, when I was 6, he confessed to abusing me, and when I was questioned I reported abuse from both of them. That's when I got my PTSD diagnosis.
I was always autistic, but was undiagnosed. My parents figured I was just a really smart, quirky kid who'd been through a serious trauma. All that is true, of course, but the 'quirky' has another name - autism. I had no language delay (in fact I'm verbally gifted) but I find it hard to understand people's behavior and to make friends. Certain textures, sights and sounds that don't bother others are extremely uncomfortable for me, and conversely I have a very poor sense of balance and can't feel hunger very clearly. I have a bunch of odd gestures and little rituals I like to do. I'm very disorganized, with difficulty shifting attention, no time sense, can't keep my room clean at all (I moved out of my childhood bedroom because there were bugs living in it), I tend to focus on one thing and tune out everything else, generally a lot of frontal lobe type issues. I was finally diagnosed at 15, after two years of obsessively researching autism trying to decide if I had it or not.
One of the most positive features of my autism, in my opinion, is my intense interests. My interests over the years have been rainforests, cats, drug addiction, disabilities, genetic syndromes, and finally psychology. I've been studying psychology since I was 13 or so, and at 20 I finally got to make it official and become a psychology major. My biggest interests in psychology are autism, psychopathy, attachment disorder and PTSD, gifted children, and behavioral phenotypes of genetic syndromes. I have piles of ideas for research studies in these areas. Some of these studies I'm already doing unofficially - I've done several online surveys on these topics, and data mining of online material. (You can find the results from these at my blog, Abnormaldiversity.)
Anyway, that's me. Hello, everyone.
I'm kind of on both sides of the thing. I'm a 3rd year undergraduate psychology student (23 years old), and I've also got a dual diagnosis of PTSD and PDD NOS (atypical autism). So, I'll talk a bit about all three aspects of myself.
PTSD was my first diagnosis. When I was 10 months old, my parents discovered that my two cousins (14 and 11 years old) were being physically and sexually abused by their father, my paternal uncle. My father's family had a rule to protect his brother and keep him out of trouble, but my father bucked that rule and told the police about the abuse. My uncle went to jail, his stepdaughter to her father, his kids with his second wife to my aunt, and his kids with his first wife (the ones who told) stayed with us. Unfortunately, they were extremely emotionally disturbed, and were emotionally and physically abusive towards my parents on a regular basis. I witnessed all this. And unbeknownst to my parents, they both independently decided to sexually abuse me. The older sister ran away permanently when I was 3. The younger brother stayed more two years until he sexually assaulted a classmate, which made my parents realize I wasn't safe around him, so they sent him to a foster home. A year later, when I was 6, he confessed to abusing me, and when I was questioned I reported abuse from both of them. That's when I got my PTSD diagnosis.
I was always autistic, but was undiagnosed. My parents figured I was just a really smart, quirky kid who'd been through a serious trauma. All that is true, of course, but the 'quirky' has another name - autism. I had no language delay (in fact I'm verbally gifted) but I find it hard to understand people's behavior and to make friends. Certain textures, sights and sounds that don't bother others are extremely uncomfortable for me, and conversely I have a very poor sense of balance and can't feel hunger very clearly. I have a bunch of odd gestures and little rituals I like to do. I'm very disorganized, with difficulty shifting attention, no time sense, can't keep my room clean at all (I moved out of my childhood bedroom because there were bugs living in it), I tend to focus on one thing and tune out everything else, generally a lot of frontal lobe type issues. I was finally diagnosed at 15, after two years of obsessively researching autism trying to decide if I had it or not.
One of the most positive features of my autism, in my opinion, is my intense interests. My interests over the years have been rainforests, cats, drug addiction, disabilities, genetic syndromes, and finally psychology. I've been studying psychology since I was 13 or so, and at 20 I finally got to make it official and become a psychology major. My biggest interests in psychology are autism, psychopathy, attachment disorder and PTSD, gifted children, and behavioral phenotypes of genetic syndromes. I have piles of ideas for research studies in these areas. Some of these studies I'm already doing unofficially - I've done several online surveys on these topics, and data mining of online material. (You can find the results from these at my blog, Abnormaldiversity.)
Anyway, that's me. Hello, everyone.
