I often say that receiving my ADHD diagnosis at the age of 49, followed by my autism diagnosis two years later, didn’t change who I was. It simply gave me a different lens through which to understand the person I’d always been.
People sometimes ask whether it was a relief to finally have an explanation, and the honest answer is yes… but probably not in the way they imagine. There wasn’t a single moment where everything suddenly made sense. Nobody handed me an instruction manual explaining fifty years of feeling different, and I certainly didn’t wake up the following morning understanding myself completely. If anything, diagnosis marked the beginning of a different kind of journey altogether; one that’s been far gentler, far messier and infinitely more fascinating than I could ever have imagined.
Every so often something happens that makes me stop in my tracks. It might be a conversation, a memory that surfaces unexpectedly, a comment somebody makes in passing or, as happened this week, a question I absent-mindedly typed into Google without thinking very much about it.
Those moments have become strangely familiar over the past couple of years because they’re almost always followed by exactly the same thought.“I wonder if that’s been autism all along.”
It’s an extraordinary experience, looking back over more than half a century of your life and finding yourself gently reinterpreting moments you thought you understood years ago. Not because your memories have changed, but because your understanding of them has.
Sometimes those moments are quite significant. Sometimes they’re surprisingly ordinary. This one began with a birthday. Not my own, but my daughter’s.
As her birthday approached, we found ourselves exchanging messages about what she wanted to do to celebrate and what that might look like. It was one of those lovely, honest conversations that only really happens when both people feel safe enough to admit that they don’t actually know the “right” answer.
The more we chatted, the more I realised that neither of us was expecting very much at all. In fact, we were both trying so hard to make sure the other person didn’t feel under any pressure that we almost created pressure by trying to remove it.
It made me smile because it felt so wonderfully familiar. At one point I found myself replying that I think I have “mild trauma” around birthdays. Mine, other people’s… all birthdays really.
I meant it light-heartedly, but after I’d sent the message I found myself staring at those words for a moment longer than I expected. Because, if I’m honest, they didn’t feel like a joke. They felt like a truth I’d never quite allowed myself to acknowledge.
I’ve never thought of myself as someone who dislikes birthdays. I certainly don’t dislike celebrating the people I love. Quite the opposite, in fact. I’ve always cared deeply about making sure the people closest to me know how much they mean to me, which is perhaps why I found my own reaction so confusing.
If birthdays are about love, why have they always felt so complicated? That question stayed with me for the rest of the day and, later that evening, I found myself doing what so many late-discovered autistic people seem to do when another little mystery about themselves appears. I opened Google and typed, almost absent-mindedly: “Why do I feel so weird about birthdays?”
I wasn’t expecting very much, certainly not to find autism staring back at me.
As I began reading, I found myself nodding along. The articles talked about sensory overwhelm, social expectations, routine disruption and the pressure of being the centre of attention. None of it felt particularly dramatic, yet all of it felt quietly familiar. It wasn’t that I was reading something completely new; it was more that somebody had finally put words around experiences I’d never quite been able to explain.
What surprised me most, though, wasn’t what I was reading. It was what happened next. Memories I’d almost forgotten began quietly resurfacing.
I found myself thinking about birthday parties when I was little, and one memory in particular came back with remarkable clarity. I remember becoming so overwhelmed at my own birthday party that I disappeared to hide. I stayed hidden for most of the party while everybody else carried on looking for me. At the time, nobody really understood why I’d vanished and, if I’m honest, neither did I. I certainly wasn’t trying to upset anybody. I wasn’t being ungrateful, and I wasn’t unhappy that people had come to celebrate with me. I simply remember feeling overwhelmed in a way I couldn’t explain. I wanted it to stop.
Another memory followed almost immediately. Everybody crowding around me singing Happy Birthday and then asking me to make a wish. I was far too overwhelmed to even think about what to wish for, so I pretended.
Even now, all these years later, I can still remember how painfully uncomfortable that felt. I didn’t know where to look or what expression my face was supposed to have. I wanted the song to end almost as soon as it began because having everybody’s attention focused entirely on me felt almost unbearable.
For most of my life, I simply assumed I was shy. Or perhaps a little oversensitive. Maybe just awkward. Those explanations seemed perfectly reasonable because they were the explanations I’d heard throughout my childhood. Nobody was talking about autistic girls in the 1970s and 80s. Girls like me were described as quiet, sensitive, highly strung or lacking in confidence. Looking back, it’s hardly surprising that I accepted those labels because I had nothing else to compare them with.
What strikes me now is that I never questioned those experiences. They simply became part of the story I told myself about who I was. I was the person who found birthdays oddly uncomfortable. I was the person who dreaded everyone singing. I was the person who never quite understood why celebrations left me feeling exhausted when everybody else appeared to be having such a lovely time. It never once occurred to me that there might be a reason.
As I continued reading, one sentence in particular stayed with me. It wasn’t about sensory processing or executive functioning. It was the suggestion that birthdays are often full of invisible social expectations, and I realised that this was the part that resonated most deeply with me.
If I had to summarise everything I’ve been reflecting on over the last few days, I think it would probably be this: it isn’t birthdays that I’ve struggled with, it’s the non-communicated expectations that surround them. The expectations that nobody ever says out loud because everybody assumes everybody else simply knows.
Looking back, I can see just how much time and mental energy I’ve spent trying to second-guess those invisible expectations. Had I made enough of a fuss? Was the gift thoughtful enough? Would they have preferred a surprise, or would that have felt overwhelming? Should I organise something or leave them to choose? Even my own emotional response seemed to require careful consideration. Was I showing enough enthusiasm? Too much? Getting it “right” often felt less about the birthday itself and more about trying to navigate a set of social rules that everybody else seemed to understand instinctively.
Perhaps that’s simply one of the ways my autistic brain has always tried to make sense of a world that often feels full of unwritten rules. Or perhaps it’s one of the reasons so many late-discovered autistic women spend years believing they’re overthinking everything, when in reality they’re working incredibly hard to decode expectations that have never actually been communicated.
As those thoughts continued to unfold, another memory quietly found its way to the surface. In fact, it wasn’t really another memory at all, but one I’ve reflected on many times before, both privately and in my book Meeting Myself for the First Time. The difference is that, until now, I don’t think I’d ever fully understood it.
My wedding day. I couldn’t wait to marry my husband. That was never in question. I loved him then and I love him now, and there wasn’t a single part of me that doubted I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. What I struggled with wasn’t the marriage; it was the wedding itself.
My husband had always imagined a big celebration surrounded by family and friends, and I completely understood why. Weddings are supposed to be joyful occasions. They’re one of those milestones that society tells us should be celebrated in style, and I wanted everyone to have a wonderful day. More than that, I wanted to be the bride I believed everyone expected me to be.
What I couldn’t explain at the time was just how exhausting the whole experience felt. Looking back now, I can see that I wasn’t simply getting married; I was trying to navigate an endless stream of social information. I wanted to make sure I’d spoken to everybody without neglecting anyone. I worried about whether our guests were enjoying themselves, whether everything was running smoothly and whether I was doing all the things a bride was somehow supposed to do. There never seemed to be a moment when I could simply stop, breathe and be present because my attention was constantly being pulled towards everybody else.
By the evening, my nervous system had simply reached its limit. Long before our guests had gone home, while many of them were still celebrating, I quietly left my own wedding in floods of tears because I couldn’t stay another minute.
For years, I carried that memory with a quiet sense of shame because I couldn’t understand why I’d reacted the way I had. Surely your wedding day is supposed to be one of the happiest days of your life? Surely I should have wanted to stay until the very end, dancing the night away and soaking up every moment?
Now, I don’t see failure. I see someone who was completely overwhelmed, who loved her husband deeply, but found the experience of a big wedding almost unbearably difficult. I see someone whose nervous system had been working overtime all day, trying to process the noise, the constant social interaction, the sensory input and the invisible expectations that came with being the centre of attention.
None of those experiences changed because I was diagnosed. My understanding of them did.
As I’ve sat with all of this over the last few days, I’ve realised that my autism is only part of the story. The other part, I think, is the world I’ve grown up in.
Birthdays, weddings, Christmas and so many of life’s milestones don’t just happen; they arrive wrapped in layer upon layer of expectation. Some of those expectations are spoken, but many of them aren’t. They’re simply absorbed over the course of a lifetime until they begin to feel less like choices and more like truths.
We learn that birthdays should be exciting, that children should love birthday parties, that Christmas should be magical and that weddings should be the happiest day of your life. We absorb the idea that making a fuss is how we show people we love them and that the bigger the celebration, the more meaningful it somehow becomes.
I don’t remember anybody ever actually saying those things to me. They were simply woven into the fabric of everyday life until they became part of the script I believed I was supposed to follow. Looking back, I suspect I spent much of my life trying to perform that script, quietly assuming that everybody else had somehow been given the rulebook that I’d missed.
It’s interesting because, as a coach, I spend a great deal of time exploring the stories women have inherited about themselves. We talk about the “good girl” conditioning that teaches us to put everybody else’s needs before our own, the pressure to keep people happy, the guilt that so often accompanies saying no and the countless invisible rules we’ve absorbed without ever stopping to ask ourselves whether we actually agree with them.
As I’ve been reflecting on birthdays, I can’t help wondering whether celebrations come with their own collection of inherited “shoulds”. They’re woven so deeply into our culture that we rarely stop to question them. Instead, they quietly become the backdrop against which we measure ourselves, often without even realising we’re doing it.
I don’t think I was simply trying to celebrate birthdays or survive my wedding day. I was trying to live up to a set of expectations that I’d never consciously chosen for myself, measuring my experience against an invisible standard and quietly concluding that, because I wasn’t enjoying these occasions in the way I believed I was supposed to, I simply wasn’t very good at them.
One of the things I love most about coaching is witnessing the moment someone stops asking themselves, “What’s wrong with me?” and begins asking a very different question instead. “What do I need?” It’s such a small shift in language, yet it changes everything.
As I’ve been writing this article, I’ve realised that I need to offer myself exactly the same compassion. The little girl who hid at her own birthday party wasn’t being difficult or ungrateful.
The bride who quietly left her own wedding in floods of tears wasn’t failing to appreciate one of the happiest days of her life.
The woman who feels relieved when Christmas is over isn’t lacking in love for the people around her.
She was simply navigating experiences that felt genuinely overwhelming, long before anybody understood why they felt that way.
For so many years, I judged myself against expectations I’d never consciously chosen. I believed there was a right way to celebrate birthdays, a right way to enjoy weddings and a right way to experience Christmas and, because those experiences never felt the way I believed they were supposed to, I quietly concluded that I simply wasn’t very good at them.
Now, I see things rather differently. I don’t think my autism diagnosis has given me all the answers. If anything, it’s given me better questions. It has encouraged me to become curious about the things I’ve always accepted as fact, to question assumptions I’d carried for decades and to recognise that understanding ourselves isn’t about rewriting the past, but seeing it through a kinder, more compassionate lens.
Did I actually enjoy birthday parties? No. Did I enjoy being the centre of attention? Not at all. Did I enjoy my wedding? I loved getting married. I didn’t enjoy the wedding. And that’s okay.
Understanding that doesn’t make me ungrateful. It doesn’t diminish the love I have for my husband, my family or the people who’ve celebrated alongside me throughout my life. It simply means I’m finally beginning to understand myself with far more kindness than I ever did before.
Perhaps that’s the greatest gift of late discovery. Not finally becoming someone different … but finally giving yourself permission to be the person you’ve always been.
Two and a half years after my autism diagnosis, I’m still joining the dots. And with every new one, I find myself feeling a little more compassion for the woman who spent so many years believing she was simply getting life wrong.
If this resonated with you…
I explore many of these childhood experiences, and what it was like growing up with unrecognised ADHD and autism, in my memoir, Meeting Myself for the First Time.
If you’re navigating a late discovery of ADHD, autism or both, you’re very welcome to explore my other articles, or find out more about my coaching services here.
Photo by Sung Jin Cho on Unsplash