On Being Late Diagnosed AuDHD

I was diagnosed with ADHD at 37 and Autism at 46, I am now 51. Being late diagnosed means simply or rather literally complexly that I spent the first 46 years of my life playing a game where I did not know the rules and kept trying to mimic what everyone else was doing, but the game and the rules kept changing and I never could keep up. I made a video recently talking about things I struggle with being a small business owner and content creator, but wanted to expound upon some additional experiences.

I was heavily and over medicated at times due to being twice misdiagnosed as bipolar and once with borderline personality disorder because my symptoms and features were shoehorned into diagnoses that I didn’t have. My ADHD features were misread as mania even though I never had a manic episode. My depressive episodes were reactionary to trauma. The C-PTSD diagnosis didn’t come until 2020, ironically prior to the Covid era.

I have spent a lot of time since I was diagnosed with Autism in 2022 trying to figure myself out. I’m not on any psychiatric medications so it’s been easier to find what was hidden by the years of masking and being subdued by antidepressants and antipsychotics.

I can’t expect myself to deconstruct all the maladaptive coping “skills” and masking personalities immediately. I tend to be what you see is what you get now, but that was not the case in the past. I had various work masks, social masks based on different social groups, etc. I don’t mask very much now though there are times when I struggle with things and just wish that I could be normal and just yank a mask out of storage and just get on with it — but I can’t.

I wish I was diagnosed at a younger age where I would have better coping skills and understanding of blundering my way through the autism spectrum. One of my exes who was younger than me grew up with ADHD interventions and healthy coping mechanisms and practices. I learned a lot on how to regulate crashouts due to burn out, overstimulation, sensory issues, and even some ptsd triggers. It was evident though of what was accessible at different times depending on your age. There were no interventions or even diagnostics. I Was Just a weird kid who talked too much, was never prepared, and didn’t pay attention. 

I wish I had more time to dedicate to building better skills to work through being AuDHD, however and unfortunately, my physical health and disabilities have taken precedence. The best I can do is regular therapy with a therapist I can work through some of my autism issues, but depending on the week I may be focused on medical anxiety and PTSD.

My most frequent struggle is being a Hyperverbal and hyperlexical autistic person. I can sound flustered when I’m trying to explain some thing and the person is either dismissive because to them — I’m triggered, agitated, anxious, giving red flag behavior — when I am explaining the answer to the question. This is despite the person continuing to ask me the question whilst I am explaining it or dismisses it before I’ve finished the sentence — and then suddenly it’s my fault and I’m being gaslit for being flustered to the point of shouting “just let me finish the fucking sentence without interrupting me”… true story as it happened last week at a doctors appointment to the point I grabbed my bag and was about to storm out of the office. We managed to get back on track after tearfully trying to explain how my autism and adhd manifest for me. I realize the irony of interrupting people cause that’s one of my ADHD features though I’m getting better at realizing when I do it and will be like “shit, sorry I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

After that, it’s all of my sensory issues, most of which I keep to myself because I know if I expressed them it would come across and rude or offensive — and I get it because telling someone their voice is like nails down a chalkboard would in fact be blunt and rude. However, it does not minimize the fact that this persons voice feels like on a sensation level like nails down a chalkboard. If I have the option to avoid such things, great! Sometimes that’s not always the case so I just have to suck it up and deal with it as best as I can.

Lastly, I often say that the worst mistake I made before I was diagnosed with autism/adhd was getting a BFA in art history. I did a year into an MFA program as well. My BFA was split between two stints hence why I spent a combined 7-8 years learning how to describe things without any guard rails as to soften criticism or why someone would be offended by any of it. Now combine that with not being able to recognize when I’m being too blunt or that someone might be offended by that.

Here’s an example, I’m in a painting class a year prior during crits I said something about how this persons style and use of color was reminiscent of Paul Gauguin. No big deal. It wasn’t an insult by any means. Fast forward, a year or so later in a 19th century art history class that person went off on how “someone once describes their work akin to Gauguin” about what a horrible person he was — which he definitely was — but it never occurred to me that there wasn’t a separation between the art and the artist. Mind you this was probably twenty years ago. Stylistically Gaugin paintings are what they are, but I wasn’t calling my fellow student a syphilitic lech! 

I basically have a weirdly not useful degree that gave me a keen skill set of describing things, oddly. The problem is that I often describe things that fly under or over my radar without realizing that I am coming across as being an ass. Using the above example, I had no idea I offended this person so grievously that they had to do the passive aggressive callout in a different class a year later. If they were offended enough to hold on to it then they probably remembered who said it and used the opportunity to inform me of such indirectly. To be honest, I was mortified. 

Right about now, my rejection sensitivity dysphoria kicks in because I don’t want to offend people and the overarching fear of doing something wrong based on those times that previous masks failed or I missed a social cue or said something weird out of context or had emotional reactions and was treated like a dog that peed on the carpet. I know that I do sometimes fuck up and genuinely regret that. Most of the time at least online, it’s contextual miscues, tone absence, flubbing up people’s user names where I think I’m responding to someone I interact with and it’s just a confused stranger going WTF??? Which I totally understand because it’s embarrassing when I realize it. Sometimes I comment on something I think is pithy in a dark humor kind of way and just come across as an ass. I genuinely do feel bad when that happens.

Much of this is why I have an incongruous online presence both personally and professionally and why I haven’t worked to build a community around my business and content creation. I tend to keep things from personal accounts private with gated community level access. I’m fairly disengaged with professional social media.  I make content when I feel like it and mostly don’t care about the algorithmic analysis — because that never makes sense to me. 

I made one exception with Threads — I mostly use it for business posts and love being able to follow the goings on abroad and my Central/Eastern European friends who have helped me along my ancestral research and other things. However, the constant doomerism, performative rage bait, all the AI slop, general meanness, and Russian bot farms and trolls. I find I like it even less or actually hate the app and drift off for days at a time. 

I don’t know that this post has some witty or thoughtful conclusion other than me processing being a late diagnosed AuDHD person and trying to figure out how to navigate a world that makes no sense and I still don’t have the rule book and no idea what game we are playing. Is it Angry Birds? World of Warcraft? Spit? The Sims? Dungeons and Dragons? Strip poker? I have no idea and that’s my story for now.