5 Ways to Support Yourself after a Later in Life Autism Diagnosis.
Image description: Over a pink background there is a white box with the title written in black letters that reads: “5 Ways to Support Yourself After a Late in Life Autism Diagnosis.” There is a grey box that says “read now” and a picture of two hands holding a colored red wood shaped heard with a white rectangle that has the words “support on it.”
Before I received my medical Autism & ADHD diagnosis I had been self diagnosing for months. I felt fairly solid in my self diagnosis, even though there would be still moments of self doubt and invalidation. But still when I received my “official” diagnosis, it felt incredibly big and life changing. Suddenly there was a huge wave of deep grief, anger and despair-all swirling around my deep in autistic burnout self. It was a really hard time and looking back I can see that I just wasn’t prepared for the bigness of realizing my neurodivergence later in life. Like many other late diagnosed autistics, for years I had thought there was something “wrong with me” and I had assumed that it could be healed through therapy, somatic trauma resolution and other healing modalities. While I do have a history of complex trauma, my neurodivergence was actually the missing piece that I simply was unaware of. But realizing that I was autistic, not knowing how to support myself as a late diagnosed autistic person and being in deep autistic burnout didn’t just feel overwhelming-it felt traumatic. It was a classic definition of “too much, too fast, too soon.” It’s been 3+ years since my Autism and ADHD diagnosis and as a coach who has been honored to work with other late diagnosed autistics and AuDHDers here are 5 tips on how to support yourself after a later in life autism diagnosis.
Note: While these 5 ways have worked for me and many of my clients, you might find one, some or none of these work for you-and that is totally fine! Please take the tips that feel supportive and leave behind things that don’t feel supportive.
1.) Get support before, during and after the diagnosis process.
Whether you self diagnosis or pursue a formal diagnosis please layer in any as many different types of support as possible before, during and after the diagnosis process. Realizing your neurodivergence later in life is life changing and it will likely bring up a lot of feelings. You might struggle with your mental health and experience a wide spectrum of emotions-from excitement to grief and sadness. Your internalized ableism might get extra loud and things might feel pretty overwhelming. Whether you find yourself struggling during this process or not, can you gift yourself with different layers of support. That could include:
Working with a neurodivergent affirming therapist or coach-or both!
Making neurodivergent friends.
Connecting with autistic culture and community.
Making things 2% easier. Now might be the time to do the bare minimum in areas where you can, getting support with tasks that you find challenging right now, limiting demands when possible.
Prioritize things that are supportive at a basic body level such as sleep, resting, sensory breaks, eating and drinking.
If you’re doing a formal assessment, increase your self care and support before and after the assessment.
Tip: Make a list of 10-15 things that are soothing and supportive for you. Then hang that list somewhere you see it everyday-can you do one thing from the list every day?
Image description: Over a pink and yellow and beige background there is a title that reads “5 Ways to Support Yourself as a Late Diagnosed Autistic.” There are the numbers 1-5 with each number in a blue circle, next to each number are tips such as “get support before, during and after a diagnosis, meeting your autistic needs, validate your feelings and emotions, create your own autistic manual, advocate for your autistic needs.” There is an illustration of a woman with brown hair who is wearing a blue shirt, she looks overwhelmed and has one hand to her forehead. There are two black squiggles around her head.
2.) Focus on meeting your autistic needs.
As a late diagnosed autistic you’ve probably gone the majority of your life having your core autistic needs go unmet. So one of the best things we can do when we realize that we’re autistic is to slowly and in small doable steps work on getting our autistic needs met. But you might find yourself feeling stuck because you don’t even know what your autistic needs are! It makes so much sense that you might not know what your autistic needs are. Here are a few areas where you might start to explore meeting your needs:
Sensory needs: this could look like identifying your sensory profile, exploring different accommodations to support sensory challenges, advocating for your sensory needs, taking sensory breaks.
Meltdown & Shutdown care: it can be so supportive to learn some basic information on what autistic meltdowns and shutdowns are, as well as how to care for yourself post meltdown and shutdown.
Autistic Burnout support: this might look like learning about autistic burnout, identifying 1-3 ways you can support your burnt our self and learning how to recovery from burnout.
Unmasking exploration: Learning about the nuances of unmasking and small doable steps to explore unmasking can be deeply supportive.
Tip: To prevent overwhelm, can you focus on 1-2 areas and then identify some small steps you might take? Perhaps you decide to focus on tending to your sensory needs and the first small doable step is to explore 1-2 ways to accommodate your sensory needs.
3.) Validate that how you feel makes so much sense.
Many late diagnosed Autistics and AuDHDers have unfortunately experienced invalidation around things like their sensory needs, experiences and ways of being. Being exposed to invalidation around our experiences can have a big impact and might make it hard to trust ourselves, our needs and our feelings. Which is why a great way we can begin to repair our self trust is by validating that our needs, experiences and emotions make so much sense. You might do this by:
Honoring the full spectrum of your feelings about your later in life neurodivergence and gently welcoming them in. Can you make space for both the positive emotions (such as excitement and relief) as well as the more challenging emotions (such as anger, sadness or grief)? Perhaps that’s having a supportive container with a therapist or coach where you can tend to your emotions?
Identify your experiences and needs and name that what you’re experiencing is true and valid. That could look like naming that you’re experiencing sensory pain and saying “My sensory pain is real and valid” or naming that it makes so much sense that you experienced a meltdown.
Since we’ve often experienced invalidation relationally, it can be so healing for others to validate our needs and experiences. You could do this by working with a neurodivergent affirming practitioner or telling a loved one: “I’ve been experiencing __________________ (insert what you’ve been experiencing) and I was wondering if you would be able to validate that my experiences are valid and make so much sense?”
Tip: Can you perhaps focus on noticing small needs that you have as an Autistic person and validate that they make so much sense? Think very simple things like noticing a noise that feels sensory painful and saying “that makes so much sense.”
4.) Create your own neurodivergent manual.
Image description: Over a peach and purple background there is an illustration of a book with a pressed purple flower taped to one page and the words “My lovely autistic manual with tips, education and support for how my brain works” written on the other page. The book cover is blue and there are wildflowers underneath the top and bottom of the book. There is a purple paper border on each side of the corners.
For many late diagnosed Autistics and AuDHDers you’ve been going through your life operating with a neurotypical manual and let’s face it: probably struggling. But imagine if you were trying to operate an Apple computer using a Windows computer manual. There would likely be a lot of glitches, things that just didn’t work and it would take a lot of time to complete what you wanted to do. But it’s not that your Apple computer is slow or unusable, you just need the right manual! It’s exactly the same thing for your lovely neurodivergent self: there’s nothing “wrong” with you, you just need the right manual for your wonderful brain. A great way we can create our own neurodivergent user manual is by:
Learning about neurodivergent education. This could look like learning about the neurodivergent and interest based nervous systems, neurodivergent affirming education on autism and things like sleep, emotions and burnout from an autistic lens.
Exploring different autistic tips and seeing how they work for you. Perhaps that’s reading a blog post or an Instagram post with tips on executive functioning and trying out 1-2 tips. Can you be curious and notice how they work for you?
Putting on an autistic lens. You might have grown up hearing messages about how a person is supposed to do something or what is considered “okay” and “not okay.” But these messages are often rooted into neuronormative standards-and you get to bring a neurodivergent affirming lens to your life. Perhaps that’s using a stim toy while you work because it helps you focus or wearing headphones to a date because it helps block out the background noise. Perhaps ask yourself: “Can I look at this with an autistic lens?”
Tip: What’s one thing you could view with an autistic lens? Perhaps naming: “if I look at this with an autistic lens, I’m inclined to _______________ (insert thing you’re inclined to do” or “if I look at this with an autistic lens, this is a way I can make this more supportive to my autistic needs.”
5.) Explore small ways of advocating for your needs.
A big way we can create a life that feels supportive and accessible for our autistic self is by learning how to to advocate for our needs. This might feel challenging at first so it can be supportive to take small doable steps. I think to think of advocating for our autistic needs as building a muscle just like we might build strength by going to the gym or gain expertise by spending hours researching a specific topic. Self advocacy is about:
Identifying your autistic needs. What are your autistic needs and accommodations that you need for life to feel good, supportive and accessible? You might spend some time on this step just getting to know your autistic needs and naming them for yourself.
Sharing your needs and accommodations with others. We can share our needs and accommodations with others by sharing our needs, naming our autistic boundaries and using the tools that are supportive for us. It’s important to know that you don’t have to disclose in order to share your needs. You can not share that you’re autistic and simply state your need, partially disclose such as “I have sensory sensitivities” or “I’m neurodivergent” or share that you’re autistic. You get to choose!
Sharing our needs can sometimes feel scary if we have a history of trauma or if we experience a lot of internalized ableism. Which is why we want to do this by taking one small doable step at a time. Can you focus on just naming your needs first for yourself? Perhaps then with a safe friend or even with a trusted neurodivergent affirming therapist or coach?
Tip: Can you identify 1-2 autistic needs that you have and explore a small doable way you might get them met?
There’s a bigness to a later in life diagnosis.
Image description: In the graphic you can see a notebook on top of a wood table, there is a pencil to one side and pink flowers on the other side. The text says “When I think of the bigness of a later in life diagnosis I think about how important it is to have so much support. Can you surround yourself with so much neurodivergent affirming care? Perhaps part of caring for your late diagnosed autistic self also looks like working with your sensitive nervous system, honoring your pacing needs and taking things one small doable step at a time. Can you be gentle with yourself and call in all the different layers of support that would be supportive for you?”
Whenever someone shares with me about their later in life autism diagnosis I always like to name the bigness of it. It’s a big deal to realize later in life that you’re autistic and it makes so much sense if it brings up a lot of emotions. I hope you know that the full spectrum of your experiences and emotions after a later in life diagnosis make so much sense.
When I think of the bigness of a later in life diagnosis I think about how important it is to have so much support. Can you surround yourself with so much neurodivergent affirming care? Perhaps part of caring for your late diagnosed autistic self also looks like working with your sensitive nervous system, honoring your pacing needs and taking things one small doable step at a time. Can you be gentle with yourself and call in all the different layers of support that would be supportive for you? I also always like to remind clients that even when there’s difficulty, can we also notice and perhaps celebrate what is working? Not as a way to bypass the bigness of a specific difficulty but as a way to honor there’s some health and ease here too. As you navigate a later in life diagnosis, can you make space to celebrate each small thing you do to create a life that’s supportive for your needs? Think super simple like “today I wore my noise cancelling headphones before I got sensory overloaded” or “today I tried one autistic tip.”
Sending lots of care to you as you come home to your autistic self in small and big ways.
Resources consulted :
I’m grateful to Dr. Megan Neff of Neurodivergent Insights for speaking on the connecting between being invalidated for our sensory needs and a lack of self trust which I learned about in their talk “Sensory Awareness and Self Advocacy.” I also first learned about the concept of designing your own manual for your neurodivergence (specifically in the context of designing a manual that works with your interest based nervous system) in the workbook “Interest Based Nervous System and ADHD” by Dr. Megan Neff of Neurodivergent Insights.
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Thank you for reading!
I hope this blog post was supportive. If you’d like to share a bit about your experience with realizing that you’re Autistic later in life-please feel free to share in the comments.
The information contained in this blog post is for general educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical or mental health advice. The information provided is not a substitute for advice from a qualified professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation. We expressly recommend that you seek advice from a professional familiar with your specific situation.
Your healing matters.
Hi, I’m Tiffany and I’m passionate about making healing neurodivergent and queer centered. Your healing matters.
I hope this blog post was helpful in your own autistic healing journey. I truly believe that us late diagnosed autistics deserve autistic affirming healing and I hope you have the best practitioners, tools and support for your own healing.
If you’re seeking autistic support and healing, I’d love to support you in my 5 month program The Autistic Mentorship. It includes:
An intensive intake session & healing map to identify your goals and developmental objectives that we’ll work on in our program together.
Three (75 minute) sessions a month.
Lots of support & education: think recap emails + personalized practices sent to your inbox, neurodivergent workbooks and resources and two optional 30 minute check-in calls.
Tiffany Landry is a somatic coach who works with queer and autistic clients. She works with clients in her program The Autistic Mentorship and in Coming Home. Tiffany also writes a free newsletter on Substack called The Queer Autistic Newsletter.