Instead of NOT picking up social cues it's more like picking up ALL the social cues due to being hypervigilant while masking, including your own emotions, and having to constantly adjust and course correct to the situation. Which leads to stress, anxiety, over thinking and self doubt. It is exhausting.

Extreme heat & humidity kill me, plus the street noises and aggressive energy from strangers while food shopping. I love being alone, never lonely or bored!!

I hate being alone, but I love being by myself.

The night before an appointment, having company, A trip, going out with a friend -- I'm lying in bed going over every aspect: my outfit, the drive, having cash, bringing food or water, should I bring a gift...
Because all of this is going on in my brain I don't get enough sleep!!!

Getting stuck in the ‘why’ and ruminating forever is so real: turning all the data around like a sphere on an axis continuously

One thing I have heard little about is humiliation trauma. This has got to be common for autistic people. I would love a deep dive into that.

I'd like to see a video on how to be ok with unfulfilled potential/expectations, especially for those of us that started out "gifted."  People expected big things from me, and it's hard not to feel guilty about struggling to maintain even a fairly average life.  (Especially as I can't get diagnosed and don't have an official "reason" not to be a world-changing success.)

I am sixty‑five, and only now do I finally understand the shape of my own mind. Only now do I have the word that explains the shyness, the exhaustion, the confusion, the lifelong sense of being slightly out of phase with the world.

Autism.

A simple word. A seismic truth.

And with that truth comes a grief so heavy I can barely hold it.

Because I look back at my life — the jobs I couldn’t keep, the workplaces that overwhelmed me, the supervisors who thought I was slow or strange or unreliable, the years spent masking until my nerves frayed — and I see it clearly now:

I was never broken. I was never lazy. I was never failing.

I was undiagnosed.

I was navigating a world built for different minds without a map, without language, without recognition.

And now, at sixty‑five, I stand in the wreckage of that misunderstanding. No savings. No super. No stable work history. Just decades of trying to survive systems that were never designed for me.

It is hard to express how this feels — this sudden clarity, this late revelation, this ache of knowing the cost of being unseen for so long.

It feels like waking up in a life that was half‑lived, half‑understood, half‑possible.

It feels like grief for the man I might have been if someone had recognised me earlier — the man who could have built a future, the man who could have rested, the man who could have belonged.

But I also feel something else, quiet and fragile, like a small flame in a long‑dark room.

I feel the beginning of self‑compassion.

Because now I know the truth: I did not fail. I endured. I survived a life that demanded too much from a nervous system that was already carrying the weight of difference.

I survived misunderstanding, misattunement, misinterpretation. I survived without the one word that would have made everything make sense.

And now, at sixty‑five, I finally have that word.

I finally have myself.

And even though the future feels uncertain, even though the practical fears are real, even though I cannot start again in the way I wish — I can start from here.

From truth. From clarity. From recognition. From the quiet, steady knowledge that I was never the problem.

I was simply waiting for the world to see me.

suddenly being "done" is something I really have never heard anyone else express before. I have never been able to explain this feeling beyond I have nothing else to give this situation, I have no desire to continue being involved, I have nothing to gain from it, I have no feelings positive or negative about the situation, I am simply *done*. Whether its a personal relationship, a job, something I'm doing in life, etc. If I'm done, that's it. I'm over it and it's like it never existed for me, there is a void where that thing once existed.

I always knew I was different. Everything you say connects to me. I cancel everything the last minute. I know i have to do these things but I just can't. The wind is different for me. I could stand in the wind for hours. The feeling on my face and in my hair is calming as is being underwater. The silence is what I crave. Im by myself 99.99% of the time. I have no desire to be around anyone. I love my house, my books and music and my little dogs. I'm sure it's not healthy but I'm happiest there. Thank you so much for validating us. It's nice to know we're not alone. ❤

Knowing I have an appointment in 2 weeks keeps me looking at the phone calendar and sighing, already feeling burned out and depleted. The only immediate "cure" would be for them to cancel/ reschedule, which would really just put me right back into the cycle. It'd feel good in the moment, though.

9:53 I dont want to be alone. I want to be left alone. So having someone with me but doing thier own thing is best.

I was diagnosed by accident at 50 years old with 2E AuDHD.  I found out my adopted mother was told I had an issue, but kept it from me. She didn't agree with the diagnosis because I wasn't "retarded".  Her words.  She didn't want me to "Use it as a crutch".  The story is a lot crazier than that but my DNA has markers all over it for my autism and my Tourette's.  The Tourette's diagnosis came at age 45.  I had been masking everything until the death of my best friend, and my mask broke.  I wasn't able to mask anymore, and the truth came forward.  It's been a crazy ride.  She once moved my bed to another wall when I was 4.  I ended up in the hospital because I didn't sleep for 5 days and was in a meltdown they couldn't recover me from. I don't like things being moved and apparently that started very young.

I've always known I was different, but I never figured out the core answer of why until a few years ago. This is definitely me.

The problem is, that when you are so close to being an NT, that you have managed to somewhat fitt into society. But ND enough that you will never have a prosperous and normal life. You walk through life, thinking that it is all your fault. That you have a problem and you just need to pull yourself up by the bootstrap.

Then you can live the first 40 to 50 years of your life, before you get a diagnose and help. Most of the times it will allways happen by mistake. Where as you should have had help, in order not to have wasted half a life on getting nowhere.

"Do not diagnose yourself alone ." Immediately goes off to diagnose self . 😁

I'm 64 and I was shocked when my grown son who was going to therapy called one day to tell me I have level one autism. A new world of understanding myself completely opened up and rocked my world. So much can now be explained. I have so many of the symptoms and I just remember never feeling like i belonged or fit in . I feel the most comfortable by myself and decided not to have friends. People are exhausting.

My chair, my tv and my iPad are my happy place….having even one “to do” is overwhelming.

I was technically diagnosed with Asperger's as a child, but it was considered a socialization disorder. They just put me in socialization classes to fix it. I didn't find out that Autism is more than that until the pandemic.  Luckily, I am hyposensitive due to my Cerebral Palsy. Honestly, I'm pretty sure Mom is autistic, and both her kids are, so these things seemed normal to us.

First and only diagnosis at 64 yrs. along with PTSD, OCD, and Bipolar. The diagnosis was specifically stated as Asperger's. This was during a recovery period following open heart surgery when I experienced an NDE. Am grateful to not have been diagnosed as a child when the treatment for Autism was institutionalization as more the vehicle for control and not so much educational/treatment. The diagnosis cleared much of the cloudiness of my life.

Thank-you for taking the time to put this video together. 🙏♥🌹