I HAD FOUND myself being introduced to my potential for being autistic via two routes. Firstly, the TikTok algorithm suggested it. Yes, really. I started to see videos of late-diagnosed women talking about their experiences of what it’s like to be autistic, and the similarities were uncanny.
Around the same time, my counsellor also suggested it, during a session where I think I woefully recounted my frustration at never being able to learn how to drive, my utter revulsion at the feel of a wet kitchen cloth, and how using the London Underground always gave me panic attacks (turns out they weren’t panic attacks, but autistic meltdowns).
Months later, having sat with a psychologist in the final moments of a 5-hour assessment for Autism Spectrum Disorder/ASD, I was told that yes, I’m autistic. I felt… vindicated. Relieved. And, very frustrated at the impending credit card bill. This is very much my story, it might not be the same for all people in this situation, so keep that in mind. This is how I came to find out I was autistic, in my 40s…
Trying to access the darn ability to find out on an official basis whether you’re autistic or not once it’s been recommended to you, feels next to impossible. It is incredibly difficult to get an autism assessment as an adult in Ireland unless you can go privately and pay out of pocket. It’s a pattern mirrored in the UK, where there are currently around 140,000 people on a waitlist for an autism assessment. So ultimately, there are going to be a considerable number of people who never have access to an official autism assessment, and that fact can be a very hard pill to swallow. As if being unaware you’re autistic hasn’t been hard enough, now trying to get it recognised is a huge barrier.
It can make one feel rather hopeless about it all, but what I will say is that in the absence of official testing, the separate official autism tests online always came up with an answer for me — autistic. I’d feel relief when it told me I was, then would gaslight myself into thinking I wasn’t because I must have exaggerated the test answers somehow and effed up the results.
Whether officially diagnosed or whether you suspect you’re autistic, our experiences pre- and post-realisation all seem to be pretty similar. I didn’t know I was autistic until 2023, at the age of 40.
Most of the human........