Why Autism Shows Up Later In Life

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]What if I didn't become more autistic as I got older? What if I just ran out of ways to pretend I wasn't?

[00:00:07]That's a big question and one that I want to explore today. This is kind of a continuation of my last video where I talked about autistic skill regression and how that can show up for adults.

[00:00:17]Um Today I want to talk about kind of a phenomenon that I've noticed within our mom on the spectrum community of adults realizing and many of you have found your way to me and this channel um after a major life event like graduation, marriage, divorce, having a child, COVID. COVID is a really big one where a lot of you found your way to me because you started realizing that life all of a sudden felt very different and things that you used to be able to handle now seem much more daunting. Um and again, the skill regression which I talked about in the last video, I'll put a link to right here if you want to start there and come back here. Um but either way, if you could like this video and subscribe to the channel, I sincerely ask if you're somebody who's watched videos and you've been around but haven't subscribed, it helps me out so much. I'm a single mom with two autistic kids and all the support really makes a big difference. So, thank you so much.

[00:01:12]Um So, I want to talk about why this experience happens for many of us.

[00:01:18]>> [sighs and snorts] [gasps] >> And I'm pulling up my notes here.

[00:01:23]I like to keep my videos unedited because I don't like [clears throat] how curated everything is online. Um okay, so this this experience of of realizing you're autistic when you're an adult after a major life event, some things it might feel like um I didn't struggle like this before.

[00:01:42]Maybe you're asking yourself, why can't I handle things the way I used to? Did I get worse?

[00:01:48]Um was I always like this? Maybe you go back in your head like surely I wasn't always like always like this. Like I was able to I was different. I was different and now my capacity has dwindled and I don't like that word dwindled. Um my capacity has decreased and yeah, I don't like that word. Oh, now it's stuck in my brain now.

[00:02:08]Um >> [snorts] [laughter] >> So, anyways, these things that we that we feel as an undiagnosed autistic person before realizing we're autistic, um it's incredibly common. It's becoming more and more common um and we're going to talk about why.

[00:02:26]So, I >> [snorts] >> I already named I've got to watch out for my Texan I already I already named some big life events.

[00:02:33]Um marriage wedding planning, divorce, having kids career shifts, graduation, loss of structure. This one was huge for me because education provided so much support for me. It's also a lot of challenges, but in high school and college, here's your schedule, here's what's expected, here's when this is due. Everything was laid out for me.

[00:02:55]More or less. And once I got out of college, it was like, seriously, nobody's going to tell me what to do?

[00:03:01]Like nobody's going to give me a framework or a structure? And that loss of structure was really disorienting to me and I did not understand why it seemed a lot easier for everybody else to kind of make a path when I was like I've never had to like make a path this way before. It's always there's always been a structure. So, that was a huge one for me. I think I started therapy pretty soon after I um graduated college cuz my world was just like so different. Moving. Oh my gosh, can you believe that people move all the time? Like I last time I moved, I was like, how how does everyone do this and not just talk about it 100% of the time that they're moving because it is so freaking hard. Moving is horrendously awful and the whole transition that that encapsulates for autistic people cuz autistic individuals generally speaking, um transitions are really difficult.

[00:03:57]Um illness or burnout. COVID was a huge one. A lot of people realized when they were stuck at home, hey, actually, it's easier for me to be stuck at home. I like this. I like being required to stay in my safe space. Or um some people had a huge sensory aversion to the mask.

[00:04:12]Maybe they wanted to wear a mask, but it felt extremely suffocating or challenging for them and so they started becoming aware of more sensory differences. Then long COVID, people who had COVID would end up with some version of it for a long time and it really suppressed their immune system. Um just suppressed their ability to handle life and caused a lot of self-reflection.

[00:04:34]What else might be going on here? So, let me know in the comments which one of those, like if you're somebody in our community who realized you were autistic after a big life event life event, let me know in the comments.

[00:04:46]So, the big reason why this happens is because our demands exceed our capacity.

[00:04:51]And [snorts] real quick, when when our demands exceed our capacity, often times it can upset our nervous system which tends to be more sensitive as an autistic person. And I mean sensitive in a very empowering way. It's a video for another day. Um but if you'd like some help for kind of resetting your nervous system or helping regulate your nervous system, I've got a totally free guide, the autistic nervous system reset, which I'll put a picture of over here. Link in the description, totally free to download. Will help you identify kind of which stage of dysregulation you're in and give you some practical support strategies for feeling better today.

[00:05:28]>> [snorts] >> So, let's go back to our our demands exceeding our capacity. What does that mean?

[00:05:34]>> [snorts] >> Before we've been able to carry a certain amount of responsibility, but you as as we know, as an adult and what I'm feeling now at 37, more and more and more responsibility and demands make their way in. And as those all pile up you start to realize that you're processing them differently.

[00:05:55]You might need more time to process them. You might need more support to process them. That's not because you're broken, it's because your life looks a whole heck of a lot different than it did when you were a child and probably had more responsibilities taken care of.

[00:06:07]Maybe. We're all different there.

[00:06:10]>> [snorts] >> Um So, we all have a capacity in terms of mental, emotional, social, sensory and we all have demands placed on us. And when those demands exceed our ability to respond to them, something has to give.

[00:06:24]That might be chronic health issues.

[00:06:26]That might be um that that might be that you develop chronic health issues. Um that might be [clears throat] um that your work suffers, that you lost a promotion, that you lost a relationship.

[00:06:37]Um life starts to look different when we don't have enough capacity to respond to the demands.

[00:06:43]Oh, [snorts] I I got ahead of myself.

[00:06:45]Yeah, what what usually gives for autistic people, um our mask starts to break down. We're less able to conceal um our >> [snorts] >> we're less able to conceal our overwhelm and our sensory dysregulation. Our executive functioning drops, so our ability to make decisions, our ability to follow through, to plan, um that drops significantly. That happens in the prefrontal cortex of our brain and it's like computer overload.

[00:07:15]Our [snorts] sensory sensitivity increases. This is a big one. So, you'll notice lights seem brighter, sounds seem louder, textures feel more upsetting.

[00:07:24]That's a very real thing. You are not making it up.

[00:07:28]Your social tolerance decreases. You find yourself saying no to more and more social events. Um you find yourself being more upset by conversations that are happening in the workplace or with your loved ones and burnout hits. Often times we and this is let me post I'll put a link to a video up here.

[00:07:47]Often times when we're undiagnosed, we think that burnout is depression. So, I've got a video here about the differences between depression and burnout because it changed my life to know the difference between those.

[00:07:59]Um so, all these things usually happen whenever our demands exceed our capacity. So, the systems that we have been holding together, everything starts to fall apart cuz it's just not sustainable.

[00:08:13]So, I wanted to mention the masking piece of this. A lot of people who realized they're autistic later in life, especially women were relying heavily on masking and compensation. So, um like relying on social scripts, over-preparing for situations, people-pleasing, controlling your environment to reduce unne un to reduce um unforeseen things happening, you know, we we've had our own coping strategies for dealing with this which often times looks like overworking ourselves to the point of exhaustion because we didn't know what accommodations we needed. Um people-pleasing, fawning, pretending like everything's okay when it's not.

[00:08:55]Um but yeah, the reframe here is that you didn't suddenly become more autistic. You just lost the you just you didn't Let me try that again.

[00:09:06]You didn't suddenly become more autistic. You just lost the ability to override your needs.

[00:09:11]And I'm going to say that one more time.

[00:09:12]You didn't suddenly become Oh, I said it wrong anyway. So, let me just go ahead, clean slate, delete, Men in Black memory delete. Okay. You [snorts] didn't su sud Words today are challenging.

[00:09:26]You didn't suddenly become more autistic. You just lost the ability to override your needs.

[00:09:33]So, [snorts] in the past when you're able to push it down and suppress it, um now your body is saying, there's more responsibilities.

[00:09:41]Uh I got to keep these kids fed. I got to keep the bills paid. I got to keep my my plants watered. You know, sometimes that's the last straw for me when I'm overwhelmed like, oh, I have to water my plants. Um yeah, you just kind of lose the ability to override things. And it's actually I think it can be a gift because it's it's your body inviting the opportunity to slow down, to be present, to take stock of what you need in this moment rather than pushing through. Because the goal isn't productivity, the goal is wholeness, health, enjoying this moment, right? Why are we Why are we hurrying everywhere? And this message is for me, too. I I still find myself hurrying. It's like, why?

[00:10:21]The goal is to be here now.

[00:10:24]Be present. So, when our body is shutting down and we feel more autistic than ever, this is an opportunity to say, "Okay, I'm here.

[00:10:33]What What can I do to better support myself in this moment? How can I better enjoy this this stage that I'm in? What can I How can I show up more fully here? How can I better support myself?"

[00:10:48]>> [snorts] >> So, let me close this up. No, sorry, I still have another section.

[00:10:54]Part of my brain is distracted cuz I have to pick my kids up from school and my ADHD was like, "Let's shoot a video 14 minutes before you have to leave to pick your kids up." Um it's okay, don't worry. They're They will not be waiting for me. I'll get there in time. Okay, so why the realization happens here, um oftentimes we hit those really hard moments where we're like, you get to that breaking point of like, "What is happening to me? What is wrong with me?"

[00:11:17]And that's when people start researching, that's when people start listening to other people's stories.

[00:11:20]There's a lot in my online community.

[00:11:22]I'll put a link to the description if you want to check that out. Things start clicking and your identity shifts. You start learning, you know, the the older I get the more I learn about myself and it's really kind of a cool thing, um but a very overwhelming thing. So, >> [sighs] >> yeah, these moments invite reflection, basically. Um yeah, cuz you can't just keep pushing through. You're You have to You most of us hit a wall and it's like, "Well, how did I get here?"

[00:11:52]You know, and that's when we do that self-reflection and probably autistic levels of research.

[00:11:57]So, this is where we'll close. I want to just let you know, you know, you're not broken if you're in these situations, you didn't fail, you didn't like suddenly become much less capable, um you just Your body's just giving you some feedback about the stage of life that you're in, about the responsibilities that you carry, and probably, you know, this is a a topic for another video, but the weight of the trauma that you're probably carrying from being autistic and undiagnosed for a long time.

[00:12:23]That's a video for another day. Um but, check out if you're feeling overwhelmed and you're feeling like you're in a stage of like, "Oh my gosh, burnout, overwhelm, sensory dysregulation, whatever," check out the free autistic nervous system reset guide that I've created for you.

[00:12:44]Link in the description. Please like this video if it was helpful to you.

[00:12:47]Subscribe to the channel and I will see you in the next video. Thanks for watching. Bye.