What Is ASD, and What Does It Mean for Who You Are?
What Is ASD, and What Does It Mean for Who You Are?
The Quiet Corner | FS Psychotherapy
Autism Spectrum Disorder, or ASD, is a term that has entered mainstream conversation in a way it simply wasn’t a generation ago. More people are being diagnosed, more adults are seeking assessment, and more voices from within the autistic community are shaping how autism is understood and talked about. That is, on the whole, a good thing. But it also means that the term carries a lot of weight, a lot of competing narratives, and sometimes a lot of confusion.
If you have recently received an autism diagnosis, are waiting for an assessment, or simply suspect that autism might be part of your story, this post is an attempt to offer something a little quieter than the noise. Not a clinical definition, but a reflection on what a diagnosis might mean, and what it doesn’t have to mean, for who you are.
What ASD Actually Is
Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition that affects how people experience and interact with the world. It influences how you process sensory information, how you communicate and connect with others, how you think and organise your experience, and how you relate to routine, change, and uncertainty.
It is described as a spectrum not because some people are a little bit autistic and others are very autistic, but because the presentation of autism is extraordinarily varied. Two autistic people can look and feel very different from one another. What they share is a particular neurological profile, a brain wired in a way that diverges from what is statistically typical, with its own distinct strengths and challenges.
Autism is not an illness. It is not something that happened to you or that needs to be cured. It is a way of being in the world.
Why So Many Adults Are Diagnosed Later in Life
For a long time, autism was understood primarily through the lens of a particular presentation, typically in young boys, typically involving obvious differences in communication and behaviour. That understanding missed a great many people.
It missed girls and women, who are often socialised to mask their differences more thoroughly and whose autism can look quite different from the recognised profile. It missed people of colour, whose presentations were more likely to be misattributed or overlooked. It missed highly intelligent people who compensated for their differences so effectively that the underlying struggles remained invisible. And it missed everyone who simply didn’t fit the narrow picture that clinicians had been trained to look for.
Many of these people are now adults, some of them reaching diagnosis in their thirties, forties, fifties, or beyond. They have often spent decades with a sense that something about them was different, without ever having a framework to understand what that meant.
Why So Many Adults Are Diagnosed Later in Life
For a long time, autism was understood primarily through the lens of a particular presentation, typically in young boys, typically involving obvious differences in communication and behaviour. That understanding missed a great many people.
It missed girls and women, who are often socialised to mask their differences more thoroughly and whose autism can look quite different from the recognised profile. It missed people of colour, whose presentations were more likely to be misattributed or overlooked. It missed highly intelligent people who compensated for their differences so effectively that the underlying struggles remained invisible. And it missed everyone who simply didn’t fit the narrow picture that clinicians had been trained to look for.
Many of these people are now adults, some of them reaching diagnosis in their thirties, forties, fifties, or beyond. They have often spent decades with a sense that something about them was different, without ever having a framework to understand what that meant.
The Question of Identity
Receiving an autism diagnosis as an adult raises profound questions about identity. If you have been autistic all your life without knowing it, what does that mean for how you understand yourself? Which parts of you are autism, and which parts are simply you? Is that even a meaningful distinction?
These questions don’t have quick or tidy answers. And different people find their own way of relating to a diagnosis. Some people embrace it fully, finding in it a language for things that have always been true of them, and a community of others who share their experience. Others hold it more lightly, finding it useful as a framework without wanting it to become the primary lens through which they see themselves. Both responses are valid.
What matters is that you have space to work out what the diagnosis means for you, at your own pace, without being told how you should feel about it.
Autism and Masking
Many autistic adults, particularly those diagnosed later in life, have spent years, sometimes decades, masking. Learning to suppress or disguise the things about themselves that felt out of step with the world around them. Mimicking social behaviours that didn’t come naturally. Performing neurotypicality so consistently that it became second nature.
Masking is exhausting. It is also, for many people, so automatic that they are barely aware they are doing it. One of the most significant things a late autism diagnosis can offer is permission, slowly and carefully, to unmask. To begin exploring what feels natural rather than what feels expected. To stop spending so much energy on performance and redirect some of it toward simply being.
That process is rarely quick or straightforward. But it is often deeply worthwhile.
Autism, Relationships, and the Therapy Room
Autistic people are not less capable of connection, warmth, or depth of feeling. That is a harmful myth that persists despite the evidence. But autistic people may connect, communicate, and experience relationships differently, and navigating a world built around neurotypical social expectations can be genuinely tiring and isolating.
Therapy can offer a space to explore these experiences without having to perform social ease you may not feel. In my work with autistic clients, I aim to offer flexibility, directness, and genuine curiosity about your particular experience, rather than expecting you to adapt yourself to a standard therapeutic mould.
If you are wondering whether therapy might be helpful, I’d warmly invite you to get in touch for a free 20-minute consultation. A gentle, no-obligation conversation to see whether working together might feel like the right fit.
Federica Savoré is a BACP Accredited psychotherapist and COSCA Practitioner offering counselling, supervision and training in Aberdeen and online across the UK. To get in touch, visit https://www.fspsychotherapy.com/contact-me
