New late diagnosis

Hi Jamie, welcome. I recieved my late diagnosis in February of this year. I felt the jigsaw pieces falling into place and everything made sense whilst I was coming to terms with the possibility of being Autistic and whilst waiting for my assessment. When I received my diagnosis I was not expecting it to impact me so severely but I had an immediate crash and wasn’t able to return to work for 3 months due to burnout. Everyone’s experiences are different but it does seem to be very common to initially experience a challenging period. I found it helpful to acknowledge what a big discovery it was and why, and also that a diagnosis is a starting point (which is often disguised as an end goal if you have had difficulty accessing diagnostic services). Acknowledging this helped me to treat myself compassionately and take things slowly. I found there was lots of great resources available to help me understand Autism more and prompt thoughts about my own Autistic experience. For example YouTube videos, TV documentaries, books and resources on local and national charity pages. It was helpful for me to take it slow and not overwhelm myself when seeking out these things though. Now I feel grateful that my body forced me to take the time to understand myself better, I still feel a bit lost but things are much less overwhelming and I’m comfortable to do further exploration at my own pace and able to do this alongside work and other commitments. One thing is for sure, having a diagnosis feels very positive now but initially I was struggling to see any positive. I hope you are starting to feel better since writing this post and something I have written might be useful to you. 

Hi Jamie, welcome. I recieved my late diagnosis in February of this year. I felt the jigsaw pieces falling into place and everything made sense whilst I was coming to terms with the possibility of being Autistic and whilst waiting for my assessment. When I received my diagnosis I was not expecting it to impact me so severely but I had an immediate crash and wasn’t able to return to work for 3 months due to burnout. Everyone’s experiences are different but it does seem to be very common to initially experience a challenging period. I found it helpful to acknowledge what a big discovery it was and why, and also that a diagnosis is a starting point (which is often disguised as an end goal if you have had difficulty accessing diagnostic services). Acknowledging this helped me to treat myself compassionately and take things slowly. I found there was lots of great resources available to help me understand Autism more and prompt thoughts about my own Autistic experience. For example YouTube videos, TV documentaries, books and resources on local and national charity pages. It was helpful for me to take it slow and not overwhelm myself when seeking out these things though. Now I feel grateful that my body forced me to take the time to understand myself better, I still feel a bit lost but things are much less overwhelming and I’m comfortable to do further exploration at my own pace and able to do this alongside work and other commitments. One thing is for sure, having a diagnosis feels very positive now but initially I was struggling to see any positive. I hope you are starting to feel better since writing this post and something I have written might be useful to you.