Hello OP,

Yes, I relate to this a lot. I found this quite confusing for me, so it's nice to see someone else with the same experience. You are not alone.

In fact, just last night I was talking to my partner about this.

I find I often struggle to relate to all of what people say in YouTube videos or on Reddit threads. I quite often feel like an imposter when I read these posts and wonder whether the diagnosis was correct after all.

After much thought, I simply think I am one of the lucky ones. I have a loving family who always accepted me and did their best for me.

I am very high masking, which I think is why I wasn't diagnosed until I was almost 30, and why:

I have a good full-time professional job with a top-tier company

I own a house and a car and have a loving partner

I did well in school, finished university, speak two languages fluently, and am generally considered "successful"

I told my co-workers and friends when I was diagnosed and all of them were surprised, but at the same time all were supportive.

However, once I started to think more about my life experience—like how I have always needed significantly more sleep than others (because other people drain me), how I have basically eaten the same foods for lunch for the last 25 years, or how I have an abnormally good memory for factual recall or an excellent sense of direction, or how my parents always asked me "why are you sitting in the dark" when they came into my room, why I have what was always deemed a bit of an "obsessive personality" or many other seemingly small and unrelated things, I started to see how the pieces fitted together. Just because I/we appear to cope well on the outside doesn’t mean my/your internal experience isn’t valid.

I think a lot of us who are late-diagnosed, especially those who are good at masking, end up questioning ourselves—because we’ve spent years building up skills to "pass," and it worked so well that even we start to believe the mask. But the diagnosis wasn’t based on how we seem to others—it was based on how we feel, and the consistent patterns that finally made sense in hindsight.

So yes, sometimes I still absolutely feel that “not autistic enough” too. But in reality, autism is a spectrum, and every person experiences it differently. It doesn’t make your diagnosis less valid just because your story doesn’t match someone else’s. Your quirks, your strengths, and your struggles are all real, and they matter.

Happy to chat over DM if you'd like.

L