Diagnosed with autism in my forties

[Silmar]

I’ve been diagnosed with autism aged 43 and I don’t know how I feel. I’m just numb, no emotional reaction whatsoever, I feel absolutely flat. It explains all of the lifelong bullying and exclusion, why nobody will be friends with me, why nobody wants to hire me.

Now I feel hopeless. This is not something I can ever change. There’s no point continuing to try to make friends because I will never be able to. There’s no point continuing to apply for jobs because nobody will ever hire me. I’ve tried and tried for years but now I know I can never succeed. I might as well just give up. It’s not just bad luck or not trying hard enough, I don’t need to rewrite my cv or do another qualification. I’m autistic, that’s the problem. Game over.

I was diagnosed at 42.

I had a long time trying to come to terms with a lot of "what if's" .

And came to the conclusion, you cannot come to terms with them, because you can never know what could have been different.

I started at the point that when we were children, nobody would ever have noticed a girl with social difficulties and diagnosed Autism. The only people given that back then, where pretty much non-verbal boys, or savant boys.
None of the people with lower needs autism would have been noticed at all.
I wasn't noticed because nobody like me was. I cannot be bitter at that because nothing will come of it.

Bigger what it's come later in schooling, when I didn't speak in school time for a year, and still nobody cared. Meant I ended up not pursuing the education I should of, nor accepting the opportunities literally offered up to me by the Military.

I am grateful my husband (also a late diagnosed Autistic) is understanding that my grief, because that is what it is, my grief over "what could have been" doesn't mean I am unhappy with him, or what we have now. But that I wish there could have been less pain, less bullying, and more education and a better life purpose than the job role I ended up in.

And now onto what DOES change for the better with that bit of paper.

Noise cancelling earphones, gamechanger! I don't feel stupid wearing them, I have a disability, they are an accommodation.
Sunflower lanyard! Suddenly people at checkouts have patience when I am flustered, when I broke down at the hospital, I was given grace not looked at weirdly or as if I was a disruption.

@Silmar sorry to hear you are feeling hopeless, I was diagnosed late too, at 48 and like you felt flat. It takes a long time to move through the stages of self acceptance I think, I threw myself into autism research to be able to understand more about what had held me back all my life and now work as SEN support in a school as I can relate to the neurodiverse kids and really enjoy working with them. If you can tap into your interest then I think that may be a good place to start.

The issue is that I always thought “How do I fix myself to stop people being so mean?” I thought if I could just figure out what was wrong with me and fix it, then I could be like everyone else. If I got the right counselling to support my mental health, if I tried harder, if I worked harder, if I made more effort to make friends, if I was more kind and generous, if I made an effort to look nicer… then people would let me be part of the world.

But now I realise I am permanently different, and the gap between me and other people is not something I can fix. They have excluded me because I’m autistic, and that won’t change. Ever.

Late diagnosed at 42 here - after finding out my youngest is autistic I applied for assessment myself. After years of bullying and exclusion in school and college, I finally knew what had caused it.
I still somehow managed to meet my (differently neurodiverse - he's dyslexic and probably has ADHD) husband and have had 3 lovely children.
The youngest is now 17 and I'm trying to help her get through college successfully (I didn't).

I found that the knowledge of being autistic can bring a lot of forgiveness - not only from other people but also myself for "failing so bad at life". Like you said, you can't not be autistic, it is a part of you, but you can learn to work with it. You can allow people to help and accommodate you. You can find work-arounds for skills you find difficult (executive function is a major one for this). Stop trying to change yourself to please other people - this is making and it just causes us to be more anxious and overwhelmed. You can be unapologetically yourself and know that if other people don't like it that's on them.
I don't expect everyone to feel the same but I was relieved when I finally got my assessment results.

Give yourself time to accept your diagnosis.

The issue is that I always thought “How do I fix myself to stop people being so mean?” I thought if I could just figure out what was wrong with me and fix it, then I could be like everyone else.

And now you know that you cannot do this so you can stop wasting time and energy on trying to be like the neurotypicals and instead look at things that might help you cope better with the noisy bright overstimulating hellscape known as planet earth.

Also, make sure that you are claiming everything you are entitled to and consider using your diagnosis to help you apply for PIP.

https://benefits-calculator.turn2us.org.uk/

@Silmar You may feel like you can't fix the gap between you and other people, but in understanding your limitations and the reality of what makes you happy and calm, you can at least control your environment to a certain extent. It also helps to reassess who you choose to spend your time with and get really real with this, do they make you feel like you can be yourself or not? If that means letting go of people, so be it. If you need them to achieve something (work colleagues, shop staff etc) then accept that you may have to mask there and then deal with the known consequences of that. I found compartmentalising things like that actually helped me establish more control and understanding in my life. You are learning the new you and it will take time, be gentle with yourself and be your own kind friend.

Another one in the 40s club here.

The thing is, folk often say you can't fix the past. This, to me, is an exception - because you can forgive yourself for all the times in the past where you thought you were wrong or broken. You aren't.

You know what else you can do? Talk to other autistic people. Trust me, there are loads of us out there. ADHDers, too. And you know what? We all tend to get on great; autistics speak the same language, and ADHDers - somehow - fill in the gaps our oddities leave with their own adaptations to life, and vice-versa. I'm married to one (neither of us knew, we just kind of...fit...together); everybody's always said that between us we make a complete person. What they don't see is that, behind closed doors, our life is hilarious because not only do we fill in the gaps left by each others deviance from "standard", our oddities multiply and there isn't a single bit of our home life that isn't fun or entertaining, even while we're helping each other cope with the crapness of life in a neurotypical world.

I'm not saying it's all unicorns and rainbows; it isn't. However, there's a hell of a lot of great stuff that so many of us forget to think about when we're focusing on deficits and trauma when diagnosed after a lifetime of struggle.

I have looked at support groups for people with autism, but they all seem to be for people who are profoundly disabled and have learning disabilities. Not for people like me who are normal intelligence but have sensory and social problems.

I get what you mean about forgiving yourself. I always thought I was a particularly crap normal person. And I’m not. I’m an autistic person. There are so many times in my life where people have abused and bullied me, and I couldn’t understand why I was a target. It’s because I’m autistic. That's why I get rejected for jobs. That’s why people don’t want to be my friend. The difficulty is that understanding why doesn’t change the fact that it happened, and is still happening.

Well I relate to the particularly crap normal person.
It takes time for the diagnosis to settle. Years others have said. I'm two or three years in... still settling but getting a bit easier. Still difficult though. And I am not currently looking for work.

There are loads of support groups on Facebook, they are really useful and specific for different experiences.

Diagnosis grief is brutal.

I don’t know if this is helpful or not but I noticed an enormous difference in how adults responded to my ds’ difficulties with and without the word “autism” attached.

There’s this strange, I don’t know, anger (?) under the surface about difference and perceived weakness. Teachers would look at me, incredulous, when I’d say he was struggling to concentrate sometimes with the noise in the classroom, and shrug and tell me classrooms are noisy. Or when he got distressed about being jostled or angry if he perceived it as an attack, I’d be told he needed to toughen up, and to consider football or rugby.

But once issues like this were framed as autism, (most) teachers bend backwards to accommodate. It’s curious. Because huge swathes of social and educational problems could be solved if neurotypical people would be kinder and less rigid in their social expectations to everyone, not just those they perceive as legitimately different.

You may well find that being open about your autism (if you choose) might be the thing that helps bridge the gap in relationships and job interviews. Subtle differences can be very challenging to neurotypical people and having a reason or a way to parse it, seems to calm that defensive reaction.

For some. Arseholes will still be arseholes of course.

I got diagnosed just before Christmas at age 50 ,I feel exactly the same .