The late-diagnosed autistic unmasking process can leave one naked, exposed, and astounded. You ask yourself, how did my brain hide this from me? How did I not see all of this? It’s so obvious.
These days for good or bad, I am very exposed. It’s freeing sometimes and scary other times, but most of the time, it is just surprising how much I held back for so long and how much I could not be a witness to my autism most of the time.
It amazes me how many ways in which I am very autistic and didn’t see it before.
I know the whys and the wherefores of how I missed it given that everyone missed it, including professionals, but even after I knew the criteria forward and backward, learned about countless autistic traits that are not explicitly listed in the DSM V and finally sought out a formal diagnosis, I still feared that I had fooled the assessor and wasn’t actually autistic.
Yeah, imposter syndrome is a heady mistress. I see my traits more clearly two and a half years since I first realized I actually am autistic.