For anything worth having one must pay the price;

and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice. - John Burroughs

When you are diagnosed with autism as an adult, you are practically alone. Autism is still a "children's disease", and the network and care is accordingly, not to mention the perception of the environment. Today I read in a tour operator's brochure that Mesa in Arizona, USA, is an "autism certified" city/region. People who work in public service, such as police officers, nurses, bus drivers, as well as employees in the tourism industry have received training on how to deal with autism (https://www.visitmesa.com/autism-travel/).

On the one hand, I find that a beautiful thing... on the other hand, I also find it exaggerated and, frankly, sad. And also a bit frightening. How many more trainings do we need to be friendly with "non-normed" people? And no human being is standardized, nobody is like a gene-bred cucumber...! And how many more small and smaller and yet smaller subgroups and sub-diagnoses do we need to feel recognized and appreciated and seen? Not infrequently I have the feeling that all this is more simply a trend than a real "opening of society". And a ten-year-old blond not even Jewish boy from a well-off family, who may become an engineer at the age of 25, is defined and put down as "the norm" - but how does he fare when he searches and searches and only ever finds that he is totally normal, but "normal" is now considered boring and unattractive? And not infrequently I have seen such a young man being blatantly laughed at when he talks about problems and perhaps wants to do therapy, or go to a healer. For some years now, the picture has changed a lot, with more and more individual people looking for that one thing that makes them an outsider and explains their suffering, and for which they are allowed to feel "special". Above all, this is a shattering testimony to modern society, which standardizes everything and everyone and immediately pathologizes not only every apple, but also every child who deviates even a little from the norm. But there is a difference between "normal" in the sense of "conforming to the norm", and average, ordinary. My sister once put it very aptly: “Well, I'm married, I have two children and a part-time job... I don't want to say that I'm normal, I'm certainly not, but just average. And that just right.”

Exactly. That just right.

An ordinary life, a boring life is not only perfectly fine, I even find that desirable. And who now thinks, ha, right, Sylvia travels all her life all around the world, that’s not boring!

Mistake! My daily life is extremely boring. Occasionally the one or other problem, sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller... or a nice thing like a weekend visit with friends... but otherwise also a daily monotony. But this offers me the space for inner work, inner development. What is called "spiritual life" requires a certain external boredom. A certain daily routine. Only in this way can we come to rest inwardly, and I can say, based on this personal experience of mine, that this inner rest is the basic prerequisite not only for a happy life, but also for this inner healing work, or a "spiritual path". Both are deeply interconnected!

But we’re living in a hectic world, divided into small pieces, which is all too often a daily struggle even for ordinary people.

And anyone who is diagnosed with autism as an adult after the age of 25 is really on a very lonely footing. Even if there are offers in the environment, they are mostly limited to children, maybe sometimes to teenagers. As an adult, you are (perhaps!) offered "autism therapy" in which you then sit across from someone who ultimately thinks he or she can (and must!) apply the same template he or she applies to children and adolescents to someone who has been living their life all alone for 40 maybe years, however "successful" or "boring" or not. Sure, I had also needed such an autism therapy to understand that my problem is not the autism, but the emotional and psychological trauma that comes from the fact that no one ever understood me, that they always tried to "rebuild" me because I was somehow "wrong", and above all always blamed me.

But I have to say, I am a bit dismayed that none of the "autism experts" have come up with this idea yet? Only recently I had to tell an experienced and also really very good specialist to please stay away from me with the idea of children's books on good social interaction (“social skills”), because I have masked and acted all my life, sometimes quite stunningly successful, sometimes completely failed, and that I firstly simply am no longer able to, and secondly also no longer want to. I'm tired of it - and I'm too old to sit down at a game with ten strangers and remember their names and a hobby at any cost... Ah, no! I'm 55 years old now. I don't have to do that anymore. If it's important to me, I can still get out the actor's mask and wow the unsuspecting audience for a while, but otherwise... it's too much of a waste of my time.

So as an adult, you're very much on your own when you get a diagnosis of autism. Those who are around my age may also find that there is trauma to deal with... or, that it's just nice to have someone to talk things through with, and who understands you and then coaches you. Like for me right now. Therapist and coach in one. That is really a fine thing!

In the long run, however, this tears a not inconsiderable hole in the wallet!... In Germany, therapy is covered by insurance, but all therapists in the country are booked up for years. In Mexico and most other countries in the world you have to pay out of your own pocket.

And at some point, therapy comes to an end. And then?

There is a German group in Facebook for people who have been diagnosed with autism as adults, as well as their relatives and partners. It is one of the most pleasant groups ever in Facebook, and of course also pleasant because "we are among ourselves", so many, when they open a topic, write really long texts... or many can give emotional and other feedback on certain things and experiences... not to mention the intelligent and clear and always direct communication…

But that's pretty much all I found in my search/research. In other languages, the yield is even smaller, especially since the fact that most Facebook groups are simply not a particularly pleasant or even enriching environment.

Resources are lacking. And if we adult autistic people don't put them together ourselves, no one else will do it for us. Above all, I think we need to stop, in an all-encompassing way, putting "being different" as something either great or worthy of rejection. There is something very narcissistic about either putting others on a pedestal and (virtually) worshipping them, or pushing them into the ditch, and our whole society works that way, and not just since the advent of social media, although the same takes it to an extreme.