I didn't figure it out. That's the honest version. I broke, during the COVID years, and in the wreckage somebody qualified finally looked at the whole pattern instead of the latest symptom. I was 50. It was 2022. I was lucky to get a social worker who actually cared, and that's what got me support and an assessment.
What I can tell you is what was hiding in plain sight the whole time, and how most adults end up asking the question. Because if you're reading this, you're probably somewhere in the middle of asking it.
So, how do adults find out they're autistic? Usually something forces it. A breakdown or burnout. A therapist who notices. A kid who gets diagnosed and the parent goes "oh no, that's me." Or a late night reading something online and feeling like somebody wrote down your life. Then, if you want it confirmed, a formal assessment.
The stuff I lived with for 50 years
None of this felt like a "sign" at the time. It felt like me. Or like a flaw in me.
The tics and habits. I've had them all my life. Little repeated things. I didn't think they meant anything except that I was weird, which I'd already been told.
The obsessions. When something grabs me, it really grabs me. Websites in the early days. Diving. Photography. Games. Writing. I'd go all in, learn everything, talk about nothing else. My career kind of happened that way. People called it passion. Sometimes it was. Sometimes it was the only gear I had.
Boom, then crash. Huge energy at the start of everything. Then a collapse nobody around me understood, least of all me. I've written about the boom-and-crash cycle on its own because it deserves its own post.
Running a room, with nobody close by. This one confused people the most. I can be social. I ran an agency, I can hold a crowd. And the close friendships I do have are long-distance, nobody I see day to day. That doesn't add up unless you understand that what people saw in the room was effort. Work. Something I did. Afterwards I'd need days to recover. More on that in I can run a room, but my close friends are far away.
The robplosions. A friend coined the word nearly 20 years ago, when I was running Raincity Studios. It meant me losing it and exploding on people when something went wrong. Anger, anxiety, all of it pushed outward. I didn't see it as part of a bigger pattern until therapy, in the last few years, made me look. Some of it might have been overload. Some of it was me being a jerk. Both can be true.
Put all of that in one person and you get a guy who's "intense." Difficult. A lot. Nobody, including me, put it together into one word.
Why the penny drops so late
Part of it is history. The guide on adult diagnosis hosted by the Fédération québécoise de l'autisme points out that today's criteria were built in the early 1990s, so a lot of adults went under the radar. Part of it is masking, which is the work autistic people do to look like everyone else. If you're good at it, nobody sees anything. Including you. I've got a whole post on what masking is.
And part of it is that the other stuff gets the attention. Depression, substance use, anger. Those are loud. They get treated. The thing underneath them can go unnamed for decades.
How adults usually get from "maybe" to an answer
There's no one road, but it tends to go like this.
Something makes you wonder. You read. A lot, probably. Then you might try a screening questionnaire. The Embrace Autism tests page has free versions of the common ones with explanations (they're a private autistic-run clinic in Toronto). The AQ, or autism quotient, came out of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge.
A screen isn't a diagnosis. It's a reason to keep going or not.
The Québec guide gives one piece of advice I'd underline twice. Before any assessment, write down examples from your own life, starting as far back as you can remember. Moments that match what you've read. Bring that list. Some assessors will ask for it anyway, and it saves you from going blank in the room.
Then the actual assessment. The NHS describes it as questionnaires, questions about your early life and present, and sometimes a talk with someone who knew you as a child. In Québec there's a public route and a private one. I've put both in getting an adult autism assessment in Québec.
One book that felt uncomfortably familiar
John Elder Robison found out as an adult too. He builds things, he never fit the script, and his book is a good read if you're in the "wait, is this me?" stage.
Look Me in the Eye
John Elder Robison
My take. A guy who found out at 40, who builds things and never fit the script. Reading it felt a bit like reading my own mail.
Good to know. Uses the older 'Asperger's' label.
Fair warning, it uses the older "Asperger's" label. That word isn't used for new diagnoses anymore.
What I'd tell you if you're wondering
Don't wait for the breakdown. That's the expensive way to find out. If the pattern above sounds like your life, start reading and start writing things down now, while you've still got the energy to think it through.
And be a bit careful with yourself. Seeing 50 years through a new lens can knock you sideways for a while. That's normal. I wrote about it in grief and relief after a late diagnosis.