I’m asking you good people if you too are on the trail of finding self-identity after “late diagnosis”? If you are, can you share how you go about it best please?

Glad you are finding it useful!

Hi Lotus  the book arrived and I find it quite absorbing.  turning the lens around from trying to understand oneself as neurodiverse to trying to understand neurotypical behaviour and then reflect upon how one relates to that is, as they say, a game changer.  i am 3/4 of the way thro' it and it is already causing ripples...  Thanks again for the tip :-)

Good luck to you too Lotus   -/\-  :-)

You are welcome, Phased 

Yes, work was the most challenging area of my life and I was extremely relieved to be able to retire a couple of years early. I agree that as one ages, the ability and desire to continue masking can deteriorate, but unfortunately by that age we usually have many learned default responses that we've always done to get by, which can be difficult to change.

I wish you luck with your journey.

I appreciate your pragmatic stoical response and respect it Martin  Thank you.  Best wishes :-)

Thank you for your wish of good luck and your considered response too White_Dragon   I am especially drawn to your comment about an identity board as I too constructed one a few weeks ago.  I would like to share what I found most interesting from this process if that is OK?  I considered what I am conscious of from an internal and external perspective - including my sensory experience and my experience of thoughts, feelings and behaviours.  From this I reflected that there are both conscious and subconscious experiences that affect all this.  So I then thought is there such a thing as "super-conscious" and googled it.  It turns out that I am not the first to have thought of this question.  :-) It seems perhaps that one's subconscious is more related to the past and the super-conscious to the future.  In one of the models of it I found that it is the superconscious that fuels the willpower to create one's future.  Getting used to being able to exercise willpower to a happier future unburdened by past experiences is quite a challenge and perhaps the hardest thing to get used to.  Good luck to you too :-)

Thank you for your response Lotus  I appreciate your recommendation on the book and have ordered it for delivery on Wednesday. I have so far tried 2 books on autism.  Looking at the one you recommend I think the humour and perspective it takes may be different to these and perhaps more suitable for me to learn from too.   :-)  Yes masking is necessary - however especially as one grows more mature the desire to do so grows less - ideally at the same rate as ones need to declines also.  As by necessity I am still in the world of employment being comfortable has some distinct challenges - in fact it is work related stress as an autistic person that i find most difficult which I believe you imply?  Please accept my best wishes for being authentic for a long and comfortable time :-)

Thank you Beetroot   I also find it difficult to know what to share.  I concur with being honest with oneself however sometimes i only learn something about myself from what I say to other people and how I interact with them.  I do believe that social encounters have become easier for me since diagnosis.  That sense of being broken is hard to overcome - especially since many people contribute to the belief that you are rather than consider their own behaviour.  The steps that you refer to are I imagine the small steps back to trusting other people?  It is easier to balance when taking small steps, this balance is good to work on as it is essential for building up momentum safely for taking metaphorical leaps of faith in others.   Best wishes and thank you for contributing to discussion.

Thanks Roy   You most closely reflect how I felt after diagnosis.  3 years on and I am beginning to acquiesce to a few truths that have been hidden from me regarding myself and acting accordingly.  Accepting one's vulnerability can be hard and rebuilding from burnout is gradual.  I concur about understanding not to push oneself - except perhaps from using the legs to do so :-) If I may share my experience? - I spent some time substantially withdrawn after diagnosis and it probably reflects how withdrawn I was before diagnosis.  It was part of what I had to do to be safe until I could emerge to be myself if that makes sense?  I too do not experience loneliness - sadness at missing people that I am not with, but not loneliness.  It has become easier over the past few years since diagnosis for me to be with people.  When I am with other people there is a sense in me of wanting to share with them and, if I can, help them - unfortunately one encounters people who want most to take and have no interest in helping others.  I am learning how to stay safe from such people. In the little we have communicated I see nothing not to like :-)  best wishes and thank you for responding 

I concur with you.  Except that when one cooks, the ingredients do not interact with one in the same way as other humans do.  In some ways I consider that part of the recipe that is how one may behave socially in some situations is confounded in me as an expression of autism and therefore it needs recognition and respect from both myself and others.  Thanks you TheCatWoman Best wishes

Thanks for your response Jalapeno  I agree that self advocating for one's own needs is a good thing to do. Personally a difficult one as i am so used to trying to solve other persons needs or the problems that I see happening around me.   I concur that it is difficult to be strong enough to do this.  The book that you mention is one that I have too - I am unable to properly review it as when I read it I was even more confused than I am know!  Maybe on that basis it did some good :-) best wishes to you

6 months in from my diagnosis and at first when I read about masking - i first thought "so I'm not the real me" but its more I play to the different situations and people: at work mask, talk to neighbours mask, with my parents mask, the married with kids mask etc.

The unmasking bit I'm figuring out, so work in progress and think it will take time, but expect for me this will largely be me starting to self-advocate for my own needs, something I've not been strong enough in the past.  So maybe start there, where do you put the needs of others always before your own ?

BTW last night I just started to listen to an audiobook "Unmasking Autism" by Dr Devon Price on Spotify.  I don't do podcasts/audiobooks normally but another member recommended it, and it seems a really good book for late diagnosed.

Being autistic is just another aspect of myself, I've been trying to integrate all the different aspects of myself now for a few years, I don't know If I'm there yet or even if thats a question worth asking or if the answer would mean anything. Is my cooking any different if I describe myself as someone who loves to cook, or as an autistic cook? Surely they're the same thing, I'm the same person, I cook the same things in the same way, the autism part is irrelevant. Autism is part of who I am, but I don't let it define me and I don't make it into my "identity" in the way some others do where it seems to define and preface everything they do. I don't "do" autism, I am autism, just as much as I'm a woman, a mother, a cook, that mad woman who does all the weird stuff etc.

I’m 57 and diagnosed three weeks ago, I  still don’t know how I feel or what of me is fact or fiction. I feel a certain amount of closure, but obviously still have the same problems and thoughts. I’m quite happy not socialising, it was asked at my assessment if I ever get lonely? I can honestly say that I don’t. The chatter inside my head doesn’t allow time to be lonely. I waited 3 1/2 years for an assessment, I still wasn’t really prepared.

Planning helps with a lot of daily tasks, I try not to push myself into burnout, the ‘spoon’ theory really helps. Masking is now draining, I’ve got to the age that if someone doesn’t like me, I really don’t care.

Yes I am. I find it difficult to know what and how much to share with others. I think it's important to be honest with yourself but I'm still trying to work out what is helpful to share with other people. Maybe there isn't a simple answer, on some level everyone masks but with autism it needs to be on another level which takes a lot of energy. Allowing time after social encounters is a small step I'm going to start incorporating. Trying to accept I process life a bit differently but it's ok to do that, for too long I've just felt broken. For me its small steps because I've had a lifetime of feeling out of step.

I was confused at first as I didn't understand quite how I was different - I had thought everyone thought and felt pretty much like I did. Then I found a book called "A field guide to earthlings - an autistic /asperger view of neurotypical behaviour" by Ian Ford. This explained the differences between NT and autistic minds and helped me to work out which of my behaviours were " learned", or copied, and which were me.Sometimes you need to mask to a certain extent to cope with certain situations, but everyone does.

I made a conscious effort to do only what felt comfortable to me, which has been helped by me retiring last year. I feel more authentic now.

This is the process I am currently working through, it is not so easy to unpick after decades of masking. I don’t have any expert advice I’m afraid as I am still in the thick of it. Slowly I am trying to work out what parts are authentic and what is not. I have developed a bit of an identity board to see if I can try and map things out a bit. Understanding your values and priorities was pretty useful at least to me as a bit of a backbone. A lot of things I thought was me, especially traits seem to be Autistic things….which confirms further. I guess a lot will come with time and getting used to things. A lot is still new to me….good luck.

I am by nature pragmatic and stoical. When I was diagnosed, at 59, it validated my discovery that I was autistic; it was an overwhelmingly positive experience. At last I had an answer to why I am the way I am. I felt that I was exactly the same person I was before finding out that I was autistic - I had, obviously, been autistic since birth.

I came cross the concept of unmasking, held out as a panacea  in some autism community sources, and while masking made sense to me, unmasking did not. I can not see how to do it or how it would benefit me in any way. I have painstakingly built up defence mechanisms throughout my life to make interactions with the neurotypical world easier and these camouflaging strategies have been of great benefit to me. As an example, I do not make eye contact in a 'natural' way, it does not cause me great distress to do so, but I do not do so unconsciously. What I do is time when to make and break eye contact. It takes a tiny effort on my part, but makes other people feel comfortable with me, which is of material benefit to me in creating relationships with people. The other camouflaging I do can be tiring, so excessive socialising can be exhausting, but masking does not cause me any real distress.

I, in my pragmatic way, decided that my various masking and camouflaging strategies were both too useful to dispense with, and were also as much a part of who I am as my autism. Therefore trying to remove them would be impossible anyway.