“It Was a Long and Costly Process”: What It’s Like Getting an Autism Diagnosis as an Adult

For outside observers, my autism diagnosis at age 27 appeared to have come out of the blue. Perhaps they understood me as anxious, awkward, blunt, weird, highly-strung, sensitive, rude, overwhelmed, exhausted, odd, erratic, intense, stuck up, or strange… but autistic? No, surely not. 

I know plenty of autistic people can relate to this, the ‘you don’t look autistic’, and ‘you must be very high-functioning’ kind of comments that can come along with disclosure — particularly for anyone who does not fit the ‘young white male’ mould on which autism diagnostic criteria was built.

This is because culturally, the understanding of autism is still quite limited — partly because of the legacy of that mould, and also because of how autism is most often portrayed in media — all meltdowns and maths geniuses, and nothing in between.

People comprehend autism through the lens of a small number of behavioural characteristics — certain outward presentations that capture a fraction of what the experiences of being autistic might be like.

Autism is also very much still considered a childhood condition, as though we disappear when we turn 18, and so ‘you are not like this autistic child I know’ can be another common reaction. I don’t know many non-autistic adults who resemble non-autistic children in their behaviours, but that does not seem to be of consequence to sceptics.  

Written for POPSUGAR, read the entire piece here.