When the Way You've Understood Yourself No Longer Fits

On late recognition, diagnosis and the strange experience of seeing your past differently.

There is a strange moment that can happen when a new understanding of yourself begins to make sense.

Nothing about your past has changed, and yet suddenly parts of it look different.

Experiences you dismissed, compensated for, misunderstood or simply endured begin to acquire another explanation.

A late Autism or ADHD diagnosis can do this. It can answer questions. It can also create new ones. Because recognising a pattern is one thing. Deciding what that pattern means for the person you have understood yourself to be is another.

When the explanation changes

For some people, recognition comes after years — sometimes decades — of feeling that something doesn't quite add up.

Perhaps you have appeared capable while expending enormous effort behind the scenes. Perhaps things other people seemed to manage automatically required conscious planning, rehearsal or recovery. Perhaps you became very good at adapting to expectations without noticing quite how much adaptation was taking place.

Research into Autism has increasingly examined experiences that may contribute to later recognition, including masking and presentations that have historically been less readily identified, particularly in women (Loomes et al., 2017; Milner et al., 2019). Adult ADHD, too, remains an important area of recognition and assessment, with Australian clinical guidelines emphasising careful evaluation across development, functioning and context (Australasian ADHD Professionals Association [AADPA], 2022).

But statistics and diagnostic criteria only tell part of the story.

The psychologically interesting part is what happens when a new framework meets an old life.

You may begin mentally revisiting school, friendships, relationships, work, exhaustion, conflict, sensory experiences or choices you made years ago.

Was that part of it?

What else have I misunderstood?

What was adaptation, and what was simply me?

A diagnosis can change the explanation without changing the history.

And that can be both clarifying and unsettling.

A diagnosis is a map, not the whole landscape

A useful diagnosis can provide language for patterns that previously seemed disconnected. It can help organise information, guide treatment or support, and make previously confusing experiences more intelligible.

But a person is never reducible to a diagnostic category.

Two people with the same diagnosis can have profoundly different personalities, histories, relationships, values, bodies, environments, strengths and difficulties.

This is why I find the question “What do I have?” useful, but incomplete.

There are other questions.

How does this show up in my particular life?

What else is contributing?

What have I learned to do in response?

Which adaptations still serve me — and which no longer do?

What deserves my attention now?

Diagnosis can provide a framework through which to understand yourself. It does not have to become a prescription for who you are.

The body belongs in the conversation

Understanding ourselves psychologically also means paying attention to the body in which that psychology is occurring.

Autistic and ADHD people are not physiologically identical, and physical experiences should not automatically be attributed to neurodivergence. There is, however, growing research examining relationships between neurodevelopmental differences and areas such as autonomic function, pain, joint hypermobility and gut–brain processes (Baeza-Velasco et al., 2018; Csecs et al., 2022; Inchingolo et al., 2023; Wong et al., 2021).

That does not mean every symptom shares one explanation.

It means context matters.

Sleep matters. Stress matters. Physical health matters. Sensory load matters. Hormonal changes may matter. Relationships and environment matter. So do the meanings we attach to what is happening to us.

Mind and body are not competing explanations for human experience.

They are parts of the same person.

This is one reason I am interested not only in what somebody thinks about an experience, but in what happens to their capacity when they are tired, overwhelmed, threatened, overstimulated or chronically stretched.

Insight is valuable.

But insight is easier to use when you have enough capacity to do something with it.

Understanding is not the same as excusing

One of the more complicated parts of receiving a diagnosis later in life is deciding what to do with the explanation it provides.

Understanding why something happens does not make its consequences disappear.

Nor does accepting a genuine limitation require abandoning agency.

Sometimes greater self-understanding means recognising that you have been demanding something unrealistic of yourself.

Sometimes it means recognising that an environment genuinely isn't working for you.

And sometimes it means noticing a pattern that makes perfect sense given your history, and deciding that you would nevertheless like to change it.

These things can coexist.

We can be compassionate about why a pattern developed and still be curious about whether we want to keep it.

That distinction matters to me.

Psychological understanding should create more room for choice, not less.

The strange business of looking backwards

Late recognition can produce an unusual kind of retrospective reorganisation.

You may feel relief.

You may feel grief.

You may feel vindicated, irritated, sceptical, curious or surprisingly unmoved.

You may wonder what might have been different had somebody noticed earlier.

You may also discover that some things you had attributed to Autism or ADHD have other explanations: temperament, anxiety, trauma, family dynamics, physical health, learned behaviour, ordinary human variation, or some complicated mixture of several things.

This is why I am wary of explanations that become too total.

A framework is useful when it helps us see more clearly.

It becomes less useful when we have to squeeze every part of ourselves inside it.

The aim isn't to replace one rigid story about yourself with another.

It is to develop a better understanding of the landscape.

So who are you now?

Perhaps the answer is: substantially the same person you were before.

You simply have more information.

And information creates possibilities.

You may decide to change your environment.

You may become more deliberate about rest, sensory demands or relationships.

You may seek therapy, assessment, medical care or practical support.

You may reconsider expectations you've spent years trying to meet.

You may decide that something you once considered a flaw is simply a difference that needs no correction.

You may also identify things you genuinely want to work on.

None of this requires adopting a prescribed identity or arriving at one final interpretation of yourself.

In fact, one of the most useful things about self-understanding may be discovering how much remains open to question.

Understanding yourself is a beginning, not an end.

The better you learn your own landscape, the more choice you have about what you do next.

And perhaps that is the more interesting question.

What becomes possible now that you understand yourself differently?

References

References

Australasian ADHD Professionals Association. (2022). Australian evidence-based clinical practice guideline for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). AADPA.

Baeza-Velasco, C., Cohen, D., Hamonet, C., Vlamynck, E., Diaz, L., Cravero, C., Cappe, E., & Guinchat, V. (2018). Autism, joint hypermobility-related disorders and pain. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 9, Article 656.

Csecs, J. L. L., Iodice, V., Rae, C. L., Brooke, A., Simmons, R., Quadt, L., Savage, G. K., Dowell, N. G., Prowse, F., Themelis, K., Mathias, C. J., Critchley, H. D., & Eccles, J. A. (2022). Joint hypermobility links neurodivergence to dysautonomia and pain. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12, Article 786916.

Inchingolo, A. M., Patano, A., Piras, F., Mancini, A., Inchingolo, A. D., Paduanelli, G., Inchingolo, F., Palermo, A., Dipalma, G., & Malcangi, G. (2023). Interconnection between microbiota–gut–brain axis and autism spectrum disorder comparing therapeutic options: A scoping review. Microorganisms, 11(6), Article 1477.

Loomes, R., Hull, L., & Mandy, W. P. L. (2017). What is the male-to-female ratio in autism spectrum disorder? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 56(6), 466–474.

Milner, V., McIntosh, H., Colvert, E., & Happé, F. (2019). A qualitative exploration of the female experience of autism spectrum condition. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 49(6), 2389–2402.

Wong, G. C., Montgomery, J. M., & Taylor, M. W. (2021). The gut-microbiota-brain axis in autism spectrum disorder. In Autism Spectrum Disorders (pp. 95–114). Exon Publications.

Disclaimer

This article is provided for general educational and psychoeducational purposes only and does not constitute individualised psychological, medical or clinical advice. Reading this content does not establish a psychologist–client relationship.

If you require psychological support, medical advice or personalised guidance regarding your mental or physical health, please consult an appropriately qualified registered health practitioner. If you or someone you know is in crisis or immediate danger, contact emergency services or Lifeline on 13 11 14.