Member-only story
The Deep Tiredness of a Later in Life Diagnosis
And how taking heed of it is the way to a more authentic and aligned life
The fallout of a late diagnosis of autism then ADHD was not due to this new information about myself but due to not knowing it for many years. Decades of living with an unexplained self has made my life much harder than it needed to be and it’s taking its toll in middle age.
Available “supports” for neurodivergent, particularly autistic people, target the neurodivergence itself, treating it as a deficit to be overcome in the name of “capacity building”. But this is the opposite of what we need as late-diagnosed adults.
We don’t need to try and overcome our neurodivergence because that’s what we’ve been doing all our lives; hiding ourselves to perform whatever version of normal we could muster. We need support to heal from what we have endured and to build lives that align with our neurodivergent needs.
Developing coping mechanisms as we move through adulthood doesn’t make our lives easier. It might make them more functional from an external perspective, but we absorb the additional effort invisibly and silently. We’re forced to inhabit lives that aren’t an authentic reflection of ourselves because we don’t know there’s an alternative.
