There is a particular kind of grief that comes with being diagnosed with autism at 47. It isn't grief about being autistic. It's grief about the life you lived without knowing. The relationships that broke down, the opportunities that disappeared, the emotional reactions you couldn't explain, and the years spent wondering why you seemed to experience the world so differently from everyone else.
For most of my life, I believed I was simply someone who felt things too much, too much depth, too much reasoning, too much in general. I was passionate, driven, emotional, reactive and, at times, incredibly difficult to understand. I built businesses, travelled the world, grew teams and established a successful career. On the outside, I appeared confident, capable and strong. But internally, there was an entirely different experience unfolding, one that I couldn't explain, even to myself.
I now understand that so much of what I experienced was connected to living with undiagnosed autism, alongside other challenges that went unrecognised for decades. The constant overwhelm, the intensity of my emotions, the exhaustion of trying to regulate my responses, the inability to simply let things go, and the overwhelming sense of injustice when something felt wrong or when people didnt care as much as I did about finding out the truth. These weren't always things I could consciously control, despite desperately wanting to.
When you don't understand why you're reacting the way you are, you start believing what other people tell you about yourself. That you're too sensitive, too angry, too intense or too complicated. That you need to calm down, change your attitude or stop overreacting. Eventually, those words become part of how you see yourself, and you begin to believe that the problem is simply who you are. Ill never forget most people around me saying, you are just too much Bec.
I had imagined that finally understanding myself would bring relief and a sense of justice. Talking to what I knew was different about me and why all my hair fell out not once but three times was enlightening, overwhelming and intense. But what followed was something I could never have anticipated. The diagnosis opened up 47 years of memories, experiences, relationships and emotions that I suddenly saw through an entirely different lens. Everything I thought I understood about myself began to unravel, and rather than feeling liberated by this newfound understanding, I became overwhelmed by the uncontrollable sadness of what it meant.
The grief was intense. It wasn't just sadness about the past and the reason I dealt with things the way I did. It was an overwhelming realisation of how much I had been through, the endurance of sadness, of overwhelm, of intensity, without knowing why. I began questioning everything: every failed relationship, every conflict, every time I had been criticised or misunderstood, and every time i felt that I had pushed myself beyond my limits simply to appear capable. I couldn't stop thinking about the little girl I had been, the young woman who desperately wanted to fit in, and the adult who had spent decades trying to prove that she was strong enough to cope with anything.
What followed was a profound emotional breakdown. The woman who had built businesses, managed people, travelled internationally and navigated enormous professional responsibilities suddenly found herself struggling to manage even the most basic emotional demands of everyday life. I was overwhelmed by grief, anger, exhaustion and an almost unbearable sense of loss. My reactions became more intense, my ability to regulate my emotions deteriorated, and I found myself withdrawing from some people while becoming increasingly reactive towards others. I could recognise what was happening, but I couldn't seem to stop it.
I wasn't simply struggling to accept it. A huge part of that, and something I remember discussing with the psychologist, was the justification to everyone around me. Finally I was able to put into words why I was the way I was, without being confronted with criticism. I was trying to process an entire lifetime of experiences all at once, without having the emotional capacity left to do so. Years of masking, surviving, achieving and holding everything together had taken their toll on me and finally I had to let it go. The grief of finally understanding myself, combined with the enormous pressures I was already carrying, became more than I could manage. Perhaps the cruelest irony was that the very diagnosis that finally explained my struggles was followed by a period in which those struggles became more visible than ever. A profound thought that still plagues me every moment of every day is this, would I have risked pregnancy knowing there would be a high chance that the child I created would live with the same difficulties I did.
To people around me, I may have appeared to have changed overnight. I was angrier, more emotional, less tolerant and seemingly less capable of coping than the person they had always known. But what they couldn't see was the extraordinary internal collapse taking place. I was no longer able to sustain the mask that had allowed me to function for so many years, and instead of being met with understanding, I often found myself having to explain or defend why I was no longer the person everyone expected me to be.
It was one of the most frightening periods of my life because I knew I was hurting myself and damaging relationships. I knew I wasn't functioning as I once had, and I desperately wanted to get back to the capable, resilient woman I remembered. But knowing something is happening and having the capacity to change it are two very different things. I was grieving a lifetime, and I didn't yet have the tools to manage that grief.
Eventually, I reached a point where I understood that insight alone wasn't enough. A diagnosis could explain my past, but it couldn't, by itself, help me recover from the emotional collapse I was experiencing. I needed professional support, treatment and help finding my way back to myself.
Following my autism diagnosis and subsequent emotional response, I began receiving treatment that included an antipsychotic medication, carefully monitored by my doctors. The effect it is having on my life is something I am still trying to comprehend, because for the first time in as long as I can remember, I am beginning to experience a sense of calm in situations that would previously have overwhelmed me.
Things that once triggered intense emotional responses don't seem to consume me in the same way. I can pause, think and process what someone is saying without immediately experiencing that overwhelming internal reaction. It is changing how I work, how I communicate, how I respond to people and, perhaps most importantly, how I experience myself. There is now a little more space between what happens to me and how I respond to it, and that space is changing almost every aspect of my life.
What fascinates me most is that I haven't lost my passion, intelligence, ambition or personality. I haven't stopped caring deeply about things, and I haven't suddenly become someone who doesn't feel emotions. I am still the same person, with the same values, interests and determination that have always defined me. The difference is that my emotions no longer seem to take control quite so easily. I am beginning to experience situations without the same level of intensity, and I am discovering how much energy I previously spent simply trying to manage my own reactions.
There is considerable stigma attached to the words antipsychotic medication. Even the name carries assumptions about the person taking it. But these medications can be prescribed for a range of clinical reasons beyond psychosis. They are not a treatment for autism itself, and they are certainly not appropriate or necessary for every autistic person. In my case, medication is helping with particular symptoms and responses that have made everyday life extraordinarily difficult. It is a treatment that requires careful medical monitoring, and I recognise that my experience will not be the same as everyone else's.
I wish I had understood years ago that accepting medical support wasn't about changing who I was. It was about finding a way to live without constantly being at war with my own nervous system. There is something incredibly liberating about realising that emotional regulation doesn't always have to involve an exhausting internal battle, and that support can sometimes make it possible to respond to life in ways that previously felt beyond your control.
But alongside this relief comes an overwhelming sadness
Because I cannot stop wondering what my life might have looked like if I had known. What if someone had recognised my autism when I was younger? What if someone had understood that my emotional responses weren't simply a reflection of my character? What if I had received appropriate support, treatment and, where clinically suitable, medication decades earlier? Would my relationships have been different? Would I have handled conflict differently? Would I have experienced less rejection, less shame and less exhaustion?
I wonder whether I would have made different decisions, whether I could have avoided some of the periods in my life when everything became so overwhelming that I struggled to function, and whether some of the people I loved might have understood me differently. I cannot know the answers, nor can I know whether the medication helping me today would have been appropriate for me years ago. But I genuinely believe my life could have been very different, and that thought is heartbreaking.
Not because I regret everything that has happened. I have built an extraordinary career, experienced wonderful things and, most importantly, become a mother to a beautiful little boy who ultimately led me towards understanding myself. But I also know how much I have suffered, how hard I have fought to hold everything together, how many times I have been misunderstood by people I loved, and how often I have blamed myself for reactions I didn't yet have the knowledge or tools to manage.
There is something profoundly painful about discovering, halfway through your life, that some of your greatest struggles might have been approached differently had you been understood earlier. It is not simply about wishing you could change individual experiences. It is about recognising that the cumulative impact of decades of misunderstanding shaped how you viewed yourself, how you related to others and how you navigated the world.
Medication isn't about taking away autism. It's about improving quality of life.
One of the most important things I want people to understand is that autism does not need to be cured. Being autistic is not inherently a problem. But the difficulties that can accompany autism, including overwhelming emotional responses, anxiety, sleep disturbances and co-occurring mental health conditions, can significantly affect someone's ability to live and function. There is an important distinction between accepting neurodiversity and recognising that some individuals also experience very real distress that deserves appropriate clinical support.
We need to be able to have open conversations about medication without implying that an autistic person's identity needs to be suppressed. Medication is one possible form of support, alongside psychological care, practical adjustments, understanding and acceptance. The right treatment will be different for everyone, and for me, this isn't about becoming someone else. It's about finally having the opportunity to be myself without experiencing everything at such an exhausting level of intensity.
What strikes me most is how quickly my perspective is beginning to change. I am starting to recognise that some of the situations I once found impossible to navigate might not have needed to be so painful. Conflict didn't always have to become overwhelming, criticism didn't have to feel devastating, and I might have been able to protect relationships, make decisions and cope with life's challenges without the enormous emotional cost I have carried for so long.
I also recognise that understanding the reasons behind my behaviour doesn't remove my responsibility for it. I have hurt people, reacted in ways I regret and made mistakes. There are relationships that have suffered, and I have to take ownership of my part in that. But there is an enormous difference between taking responsibility for your actions and spending your entire life believing there is something fundamentally wrong with who you are. Understanding my autism is helping me separate those two things, perhaps for the first time.
I am still grieving
At 47, I am beginning to understand a version of myself that I wish I had met much earlier. A woman who can still be strong, ambitious, outspoken and passionate, but who doesn't have to live in a constant state of emotional survival. I am grateful for my diagnosis, grateful that treatment is helping and grateful that I finally have professionals who are looking at the whole picture rather than simply the behaviour that other people see.
But I am also angry that it took this long. Angry about the years of misunderstanding, the absence of support and the fact that so many women from my generation were able to achieve extraordinary things professionally while quietly struggling with challenges that nobody recognised. We were often praised for our achievements and criticised for our emotional responses, without anyone stopping to consider whether there might be an underlying explanation for the contradiction.
I am particularly sad for the younger version of me who tried so hard to be understood without ever having the ability to explain what was happening inside her. I think about how much effort she put into being accepted, how often she questioned herself and how desperately she wanted to understand why certain things seemed so much harder for her than they did for other people. I cannot go back and give her the diagnosis, the treatment, the knowledge or the compassion she needed, but I can give those things to the woman I am today.
I can also talk openly about my experience, because somewhere there may be another woman who has spent decades believing she is simply too emotional, too difficult, too reactive or too much. Perhaps she has also built a successful career, raised a family and appeared completely capable to the outside world, while privately struggling with an intensity that nobody else can see. Perhaps she, too, deserves the opportunity to understand herself differently.
The greatest grief of a late diagnosis isn't discovering that you're autistic. It's discovering how much of your life you spent suffering without understanding why, and realising that with the right knowledge, support and treatment, some of that suffering might have been avoided.
I cannot change the first 47 years of my life, and I cannot undo the emotional breakdown that followed finally understanding them. But I can acknowledge what happened, take responsibility for my recovery and begin rebuilding a life that is no longer defined by simply trying to survive. I am learning that understanding yourself is only the beginning; healing requires support, time, treatment and the willingness to accept that the future doesn't have to look like the past.
For the first time, I am beginning to feel that the next chapter of my life might be very different. Not because I have become a different person, but because I am finally beginning to understand and care for the person I have always been. And perhaps that is where the healing begins.
