Someone recently asked me if, as an adult with a late diagnosis, wouldn’t you have compensated enough by now to adapt? Why get diagnosed? The question is a little ableist, so I wanted to offer up a thoughtful response.
I’m Brett, and on my channel, I talk about ADHD and autism in the workplace. I myself have ADHD and autism, and I’ve been in a corporate leadership position for over 10 years. Recently, someone asked me a question that really made me stop and think: “Why at your age would you go ahead and get an autism and ADHD assessment? What is the point of getting a diagnosis, or even a self-diagnosis, at your age?”
I have to admit, it made me a little annoyed. So, if you’re a late-diagnosed individual like me, you’ve probably gone through a similar process.
The “Owner’s Manual”
Being on the other side of knowing that diagnosis, whether it’s a self-diagnosis or a formal one, it’s like getting the owner’s manual to your life. It’s like finally understanding and having endless “aha” moments.
Certainly, there are struggles, a continuation of struggles, and new struggles on the other side of getting the diagnosis. There are new struggles upon understanding what autism and ADHD are and how to process those things. However, not knowing those things beforehand made life a lot harder, frankly, a little bit darker.
To oversimplify why this matters, it’s about getting your needs met. It’s about understanding yourself. It’s about finally discovering why the struggles were there and why they were so much harder than they needed to be. Getting an autism and ADHD diagnosis opened up many things.
Understanding Yourself and Your Needs
It opened up the knowledge that there are comorbidities with ADHD and autism, that there are other health things that come up because of being neurodivergent, and knowing how those things connect and intertwine. It helped me understand my anxiety so much more, because the anxiety is often born out of the autism and ADHD.
I began to understand the struggles that I have in the workplace: why I can’t do this, or why I can’t do that, or why is this harder for me, but not for this colleague. Why do I struggle with this thing? It’s about having some sense of understanding who I am and why I need things the way that I need them.
It’s about having my needs met, but it’s also about giving myself permission to go, “Oh, I need it done this way. I need to do things this way. I need to be allowed to stim. I need to be allowed to feel this feeling this way. I need to be allowed to verbal process.”
Being someone who verbal processes, it can be kind of annoying for other people that are around me. But now that I know that I’m a verbal processor and that it comes from my autism, then I can manage the expectations of those around me more specifically and with more kindness. I can say to someone, “Look, I just need someone to verbal process with. You can tune me out. You could be a part of this conversation, whatever you’re comfortable with, but I need 10 or 15 minutes to just ramble on this thing so that I can get it out of my system.”
The Impact of Undiagnosed Autism and ADHD
When you’re undiagnosed, even with self-diagnosis (which is valid, especially if you’re like me and you are a high masking individual), you spend years hiding behind that mask, not having your needs met, and not understanding what your needs were in the first place. You don’t understand what your likes and your dislikes are. You don’t understand that there are certain things that you need accommodations for. You give so much of yourself for other people’s needs, other people’s likes, and other people’s interests, that it kind of suppresses your own likes and interests.
It takes a really long time to actually go, “Well, now wait a minute. What are the things that I like? What are the things that I need? What is that thing that makes me me?” Learning and understanding what is autism, what is ADHD, and in some cases, the comorbidities like OCD, helps me understand all of that and all of myself.
Now, it takes years to figure these things out. You never really stop learning. That journey continues and continues, and I strongly recommend people do that process with a trained therapist who understands autism and ADHD. I’ve had experiences with therapists who don’t understand, and I have therapists that do, and I can tell you, having a therapist that does understand is a night-and-day difference in understanding, processing, and all these different things.
Relieving Years of Negative Self-Talk
A diagnosis also allows me to relieve myself of years of negative self-talk and self-guilt, feeling like I couldn’t do something, feeling like I wasn’t smart enough, feeling like I wasn’t capable of doing one thing or another, when in reality I am capable of those things, but maybe I need to do them a different way, or maybe I really don’t have an interest in that thing, and so why am I beating myself up over it?
For example, I really don’t like making budgets at work. I need to know about the budget, but I don’t like making the budget. I know people who love making the budget, who live to make the budget. They love an Excel sheet. I hate Excel sheets. Great. I’m going to go pair up with somebody who loves to build an Excel sheet and also loves to build budgets, and I’ll ask them to help me through this process so that I can get what I need to get for my job, and they can enjoy doing the thing that they enjoy doing, and we both win.
Addressing Concerns About Resources
Another question that tends to come up is, “Well, if I’m a late-diagnosed person or I’m trying to learn about this thing, am I taking resources away from somebody else?”
The answer is no. Getting to know more about yourself is not taking a resource away from anybody else. Maybe all of this is a journey just for yourself so that you better understand yourself and you can self-accommodate.
I know for me, I hate amusement parks. I hate them. I do not ever want to go to another amusement park ever in my entire life. I do not want to go to a fair ever again. I cannot stand anything along the lines of rides and all of that stuff. It’s too loud, it’s too obnoxious. I do not find joy from that thing at all.
Knowing that those are huge issues within my autism about things that I just cannot stand and how it impacts my feeling and my wellbeing, I can actively say, “No, I don’t ever want to go do something like that.” Now, I have friends who love those things. I have friends that really want me to go to those things, and so I go knowing I will hold their bags while they go on rides.
I know now specifically that if I’m going to go to an event, even an event that I want to go to, I need to build in recovery time for after the event. I need to build in a mental plan for when I’m at the event, ways to accommodate myself so that I can manage my way and manage all of my super duper autism awareness stuff while I’m there.
I never would’ve known any of these things. I never would’ve understood myself. I never would’ve understood my likes and my dislikes had I not found my way into an autism diagnosis, and even at first getting that self-diagnosis of figuring out, “Oh wow, these things really track for me. These things really make sense for me.” Once again, learning through self-diagnosis is not taking resources away from anybody. It’s helping you learn more about yourself. It’s you figuring things out for yourself.
The Impact on the Workplace
Now, specifically, as I say at the start of every video, I am a boss. I’m in a corporate leadership role, and I have a team that reports to me. What I’ve learned on the other side of my diagnosis is what a hot mess I was pre-diagnosis: how my ADHD would drive me crazy, how it would take me to all these different places, how my autism would make me think different things or have certain specific rules.
Now, on this side of it, if someone starts to question or wonder, rejection sensitivity dysphoria comes up a lot. I can stop and recognize the triggers. I can ask myself: “Am I overwhelming my team? Am I going off on a verbal process? Am I going on a tangent? Am I not being helpful for other people whom I manage? Am I making things more difficult for my team?”
Now, I can stop and recognize those things, but also more importantly, I can articulate these things to my team. So if I do something odd or do something strange or do something that they can’t make sense of, I can stop and say, “You know what? I’m so sorry. That is an accommodation that I need, or that is my autism, or that is my ADHD, or that is my OCD.” I don’t go into huge detail about explaining those things. I just sort of explain that because of my autism and ADHD, I do this as opposed to that.
Now, we can work together. I am able to communicate those things out to somebody, which makes a huge difference from not knowing on the other end, feeling bad about myself, having a miscommunication, or somebody getting upset about why am I acting that way? Now we can understand. Now we can have a dialogue. Now we can figure those things out and sit down and talk and process and figure out a better way forward to having more productive conversation and a more productive working relationship.
Of course, that comes with a lot of trust. It gives my needs a voice. It gives my accommodations a voice—things I didn’t have a voice for before. That’s the ultimate benefit to knowing, again, whether it’s self-diagnosed or formally diagnosed. That’s what matters.
Are You on the Fence?
So if you’re on the fence and you’re sitting there wondering, “Should I pursue this further? Should I not pursue it further?”, there’s something else I will add, and I’ve heard this from multiple assessors and multiple people who go through this process: neurotypical people don’t spend time thinking about this. They don’t really question these things. They don’t really sit with these feelings.
Sometimes what happens when we’re in the beginning stages of self-diagnosis and even formal diagnosis, we have a tendency to gaslight ourselves. We have a tendency to convince ourselves, “I don’t need this,” or, “Oh, I’m taking resources away. Oh, this isn’t for me. This is for somebody else.” I went through that process as well.
No one spends this much time thinking about it, researching it, watching videos about it, learning about it, understanding it, unless somewhere there’s a connection, unless somewhere within that space, there’s something calling to you. That little part of you that starts to tell you, “Oh, we don’t need to do this,” or, “Oh, this isn’t for me. Oh, it is that thing that’s causing you to pull away, that’s connected to masking, that’s connected to that part of us that masks and says, “Oh, this is for somebody else, not for me.”
No, no, no. Back up. Pause. Ask yourself, “Am I getting my needs met? Is there a feeling there that I’m suppressing? Is there something that I’m turning myself away from that I feel inside of me that I should be exploring further?” If so, keep going.
If not, okay, will it bother you tomorrow? If you don’t think about this, will it bother you later today? If you don’t keep questioning this, do you want to keep questioning this? If you want to keep questioning this, keep going. Keep having those conversations, keep having those questions because that means there’s something there.
Now, I can’t diagnose you. Certainly, this isn’t going to diagnose you, and none of my content can diagnose you, but it’s okay to keep going. It’s okay to keep asking. It’s okay to keep looking into that. A lot of neurotypicals and autistic people, they don’t think about these things. They don’t spend this much time thinking about it. So if you are, there’s probably a reason for that, and it’s okay to lean into that.
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