I’m late diagnosed neurodivergent. What now?
As a late diagnosed neurodivergent individual myself, who works with a lot of folks with late diagnoses of ADHD/Autism/AuDHD, here are some tidbits of wisdom I’ve learned from both sides of the chair.
1) It’s okay (and normal) to grieve
I try to warn folks about the grief because it’s something that a lot of people don’t expect, but with being late diagnosed there can be grief of the past and what could have been. Things like:
How could things have been different if I had gotten the support I needed growing up?
Wow, that makes a lot of sense why I did x, y, z thing.
Memories of being reprimanded by teachers, parents, others and realizations that it was due to neurodivergence.
Whatever the type of grief comes up, I welcome you to be gentle with yourself and to allow yourself to move through the grief for as long as you need.
2) You might not get the validation that you deserve
Unfortunately a lot of people do not know how to support people in late diagnoses. Maybe you’ve heard the following:
“Well, aren’t we all a little bit ADHD?”
“You don’t seem autistic.”
“But you seem fine socially.”
“You can hold down a job so it must not be that bad.”
3) Things might get harder before they get better
Especially with autism diagnoses, skill regression is to be expected. What is skill regression? It’s when you cannot seem to engage in the masking that you used to do so seamlessly. Oftentimes it feels terrible for a while, it almost feels like being a teenager again and not knowing who you are and how to interact- but what comes afterwards is figuring out how you can show up in a way that is more sustainable and learning to moderate your energy in a more authentic way.
