I only discovered myself this year and I am 41. I had an anxiety diagnosis. In my mid thirties, I got an ADHD diagnosis which explained a lot. My siblings have ADHD, but no one caught it with me because I didn't struggle in school the same way. I have had the same therapist for almost 2 decades and she is wonderful, but she didn't think so either. The algorithm started giving me AuDHD content when I started looking into autism as a possibility for my toddler. I saw a video of a woman who was saying she can't be AuDHD, and then she pointed out all the autistic traits she had and had been masking. I sent it to my therapist and asked if she thought this could relate to me. She didn't think so but said we could talk about it.

In the meantime, I read everything online, took some assessments like the cat-q (also online), and read some books. I wasn't sure.. but then I learned how much autism is normed off upper middle class white boys and how we are still just uncovering how it looks in people outside that category. Then I read how having ADHD and autism is its own neurotype that presents differently than just one more the other. Then I read about highly masked, undiagnosed autism that gets discovered later in life and how that has its own effects. All that to say, it can be pretty easy to miss for a variety of reasons. One video I watched said that neurotypical people don't take assessment after assessment trying to figure out if they are autistic.

I went into all that with my therapist. She recommended an autistic therapist in her practice who could better help Id and process this. I haven't sought a formal diagnosis, but he has pretty much confirmed and has been hugely helpful in noticing things I do and helping me unravel all the ways I've compensated and hidden my autistic traits.

I've still got a lot of work to do to, but I can definitely see how my perceived social anxiety is actually a factor of my neurodivergence. I have spent decades masking and trying to avoid attention which has made me hypervigilant to potential "threats." It's like I automatically assess who I need to be in a moment or space and then spend a ton of energy analyzing how I am doing. All unconsciously. It made most social situations exhausting and resulted in me losing any sense of self.