Learning You Are Autistic Late in Life Involves Grieving

Being an autistic-centered therapist really means that I am equally a neurodivergence-affirming, trauma-treating, and grief therapist. Because to be Autistic means to have experienced trauma and to have some measure of grief. Grief for the mistreatment we’ve experienced, for the lives we never got to live due to lack of support, awareness, or acceptance. Most, if not all, late-diagnosed Autistic people were forced to live lives and contort themselves in order to fit into a world that was hostile toward them without ever knowing why.

My strategy for dealing with being undiagnosed Autistic was to grow up as fast as I possibly could. I stopped playing with toys early; I became fixated on working. I began calling restaurants from the Yellow Pages at around age 8, trying to get a busser job. Of course, no one wanted to hire me. I did eventually snag a real, bona fide job at age 10 at an ice cream shop, where I stole cigarettes from the scoopers (they were 18+) and saved up to buy high-heeled shoes and makeup. At age 10, I was no longer a kid, and I never got to be a kid again.

I moved out at age 16, graduated high school early, and worked full-time. There was no slowing down. From the clarity of 20/20 and an Autism diagnosis, I see now what I couldn’t see before. I was sprinting toward adulthood, hoping that the agency afforded by money and independent living would shield me from the unmet needs that plagued me. I was so wrong, but I understand why it felt like the only way.

All late-diagnosed Autistic people have had to give up so much to survive. Whether it was our autonomy, our bodies, our personalities, or our psyches… we have all had to contort and mold and fake and hide and push ourselves into being people we never really could be. Because we couldn’t survive otherwise. It is only now, from the safety and privilege of knowing my neurotype, of having stability and the ability to unmask without dire consequences, that I am able to survey the damage and see how much I lost—how much we all have lost.

Late diagnosis involves loss and, therefore, involves grief for what we lost that will never be rectified.