“I feel like I sabotaged my life. But I was just trying to survive.”
That one raw, unfiltered sentence appeared on a Facebook post and, within hours, went viral, with more than 46,000 likes, thousands of shares, and hundreds of deeply personal responses from adults who had recently discovered they were neurodivergent. Autism. ADHD. PDA. CPTSD. Or, more often than not, a tangled mix of them all.
For many readers, the comments felt like a mirror they had been missing their whole lives. People came forward with their stories of diagnosis at 30, 40, 50, and even in their 70s. After decades of believing something was fundamentally broken inside them, they were beginning to see that the problem wasn’t their brains; it was the world that had never been designed for them.
This wasn’t just a digital outpouring. It was a collective reckoning. A kind of late-in-life awakening.
Subscribe to stay updated with the latest blog posts from Leone Centre.
The Hidden Struggle Before Diagnosis
For many late-diagnosed adults, the years before recognition are marked by confusion, frustration, and misdiagnosis. Countless individuals spend decades moving between therapists, psychiatrists, and medical professionals, collecting labels like depression, anxiety, or PTSD.
Treatments often address fragments of the struggle, such as mood swings, difficulties at work, and chronic exhaustion, without ever uncovering the underlying cause.
One striking story illustrates this gap. After years of therapy sessions, medications, and endless attempts to “fix” isolated symptoms, the turning point came not from a clinician but from an unexpected source. Sitting quietly in the hallway of a community centre after a group session, a person was approached by a janitor who paused mid-sweep and asked a startlingly direct question:
“Hey, are you autistic?”
At first, the suggestion seemed absurd. If trained professionals had never raised the possibility, how could a stranger notice it within moments? Yet the question lingered. Curiosity led to late-night searches about adult autism and ADHD, primarily how they manifest in women, people of colour, and those long overlooked by traditional diagnostic models. That research prompted a formal assessment, which finally confirmed autism and ADHD.
This story highlights a painful truth: sometimes, the people closest to the clinical process miss what a passerby can see with clarity. For many, the journey toward a late neurodivergent diagnosis begins not with years of therapy but with a single moment of recognition outside the medical system.
Why It Takes So Long to Be Diagnosed
So many late-diagnosed adults echo the same story.
The primary culprit? Masking.
Masking may be understood as a set of cognitive and behavioural compensation strategies, enacted to manage sensory, emotional, and processing differences in contexts of social demand, often motivated by stigma and the pressure to conform to neurotypical norms.
In practice, this looks like performing “normal” social behaviours, ex, maintaining eye contact even when it feels unbearable, mimicking gestures, suppressing stimming, or forcing small talk despite exhaustion. Over time, masking becomes so automatic that even close family and professionals may not recognise the underlying struggle.
“I was the quiet, clever child,” one commenter wrote. “I knew if I performed well in school, nobody would look too closely.”
For women, people of colour, and LGBTQ+ individuals, the barrier is even higher. Diagnostic criteria were historically built around white, cisgender boys. Everyone else slipped through the cracks. A Black woman with ADHD was seen as “difficult.” A gay man with autism was misread as aloof or detached.
The result? Decades of misdiagnosis, confusion, and internalised shame.
Survival, Not Sabotage
A recurring theme in late-diagnosis stories is the feeling of having “sabotaged” one’s own life. Failed relationships. Dropped careers. Abandoned dreams. But reframed through a neurodivergent lens, these choices look different.
“I drank just to socialise, I didn’t know it was sensory overwhelm.”
“I kept quitting jobs thinking I was the problem. I was burnt out from masking.”
Behaviours that seemed destructive were really survival strategies. What looked like chaos was actually resilience, a way of navigating a world that didn’t accommodate their wiring.
The Aftermath of a Late Neurodivergent Diagnosis
Getting a late autism or ADHD diagnosis is not an endpoint. It’s a beginning. Many describe it as a second adolescence, a chance to rebuild identity with context.
“I’m 42 and finally meeting myself for the first time,” one person wrote.
Another said, “At 59, it’s like the puzzle pieces finally fit. I spent my whole life thinking I was broken.”
And the diagnosis also triggers grief. The realisation of what might have been, friendships, careers, opportunities, can feel heavy. Burnout, nervous system collapse, and waves of sadness often follow once the mask is lifted.
“It took me three years post-diagnosis to feel like myself again,” someone shared. “That’s how deep the burnout went.”
And yet, there’s resilience.
“I’m back in college at 45,” another added. “For the first time, I feel capable.”
The Role of Abstract Thinking
A surprising number of late-diagnosed adults note that the very traits they were criticised for, like overthinking, rumination, and abstraction, are also what helped them survive.
“I intellectualised my emotions to cope,” one person wrote. “Turns out, that skill is powerful in therapy.”
Rather than being flaws, these cognitive styles can serve as bridges in the therapeutic process, if therapists know how to meet clients there.
The Risk of Mis-attunement in Therapy
Unfortunately, many do not. Over and over, adults shared stories of being misunderstood in therapy. A calm presentation was mistaken for dissociation. Masking was misread as manipulation. Abstract thinking was pathologised as avoidance.
“If a therapist sees me as something I’m not, I shut down,” one person wrote. “It feels like being a child again, told I’m wrong for who I am.”
This isn’t oversensitivity. The human psyche is wired for accurate reflection. When misattunement happens repeatedly, especially in therapy, the very space that should heal becomes retraumatising.
What Healing Really Looks Like
Healing doesn’t mean changing who you are. It means finally being seen for who you are, without flinching.
Healing looks like:
- Accurate mirroring: “That sounds like it took everything you had.”
- Collaborative meaning-making: “What do you make of that pattern?”
- Pacing and presence: “We can stay with this. No rush.”
- Permission to adapt: “You didn’t fail. You adapted.”
Most of all, healing means recognition:
You weren’t lazy.
You weren’t broken.
You weren’t sabotaging yourself.
You were surviving with what you had.
The Power of Community
When that viral Facebook post exploded, it wasn’t because people suddenly discovered autism or ADHD existed. It was because adults across the world recognised themselves in someone else’s words. In one day, over 46,000 people resonated so deeply that Facebook had to shut down the thread due to sheer engagement.
This is not rare. This is not fringe. This is a global wave of adults discovering they are late-diagnosed neurodivergent individuals, finally naming what they always suspected.
“I was misread,” one commenter wrote. “But now, I see myself.”
Moving Forward
If you’ve stumbled upon this article because you’re wondering whether your lifelong struggles might have roots in autism, ADHD, or another neurodivergent condition, you’re not alone. Late diagnosis is becoming increasingly common as awareness grows and diagnostic frameworks slowly evolve.
The journey is not simple; it involves grief, reframing, and rebuilding. But it also offers clarity, compassion, and community.
And sometimes, the spark of recognition doesn’t come from a medical professional at all. Sometimes, it’s an offhand question from a janitor who sees you more clearly than anyone else ever did.
Final Word
To live decades without knowing you are neurodivergent is to live in a fog of misinterpretation by others, by systems, and often by yourself. But a diagnosis, even late, clears that fog. It opens doors to self-understanding, to therapy that fits, and to a community that embraces rather than excludes.
You don’t have to do it alone.
You deserve support, recognition, and a chance to rewrite your story, not as someone broken, but as someone who adapted brilliantly until the truth finally had a name.
At Leone Centre, our experienced therapists are here to walk that path with you, whether in person in London or online.
Book an online therapy session with Olena Baeva
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
Olena specialises in supporting <a href=”https://www.leonecentre.com/therapy-issues/neurodivergent-affirming-therapy/”>neurodivergent</a> clients, partners of neurodivergent people, and those exploring Gender, Sexual and Relationship Diversity (GSRD) and Ethical Non-Monogamy (ENM).