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Much of the difficulty in realising and accepting that we are autistic much later in life comes, in part, from the fact that we have been exposed to so many ableist stereotypes of it through our lifetime. The rest from the reality that much of the information we may have, is either outdated, or such that we struggle to see ourselves in it. It means that we have to spend a considerable amount of effort both in digging out and dealing with our internalised ableism, a somewhat ongoing process for many of us, and also educating ourselves on the reality of what autism is.
Such education quickly reveals that what it mostly is, is a spectrum of difference. It really is true that no two of us are alike. It may only be in the difference in which something affects us, its intensity, or the degree to which it affects our ability to function or cope. Or it may be in the aspects that we experience that others don't and vice versa. We also have to realise that whilst autism is often described by the way that it manifests, in terms of the various traits associated with it. That doesn't mean that you have to manifest all those traits to be autistic. Nor does it mean that there is one and only one way that those traits can look. Each of us, in this, really are different.
To further muddy these waters. The older we are when we begin this process, the longer we've obviously lived. In other words, the longer we have lived with what being autistic meant for us. Not by name obviously, but in terms of the ways we've learnt, as often as not the hard way, what we can and can't do, how we struggle, when we don't, our strengths and our weaknesses. And we haven't just ignored this, as much as possible we've built our lives around it. Obviously not ideally, we didn't always have the knowledge to be able to set the right boundaries, or the paths we should, or shouldn't walk down, regardless of what others wanted from us or even how we thought we should be. But still, as much as we could, we walked a path that was a reaction to what we were. That meant that over time we could learn to hide and compensate, to try and take advantage of our strengths and fear our weaknesses, adjust and compensate. In fact to continually layer the products of false awareness and understandings, of guess work and trial and error, over our behaviours, like papering over a crack, until the original could hardly be seen any more and we could at least get by.
This is why it can be so difficult to realise that you are autistic and everything about it now. So much of what is described is the cause of our behaviour today, but not the behaviour itself. And seeing past that to the root of the behaviour and the way we are and that it can still be different from how others are, is the reason why it takes so long and why so much of it, is still an ongoing process.
@pathfinder @actuallyautistic Diagnosed at 51, I am also finding the experience of sensory unmasking difficult. It's as though some unconscious part of my mind has suddenly decided to stop filtering sensory information.
Prior to diagnosis, there were situations of "too much" yet they only made me irritable. Now, I experience similar as physically uncomfortable, emotionally disregulating, and debilitating.
It is as though my own nervous system has been lying to me for most of my life.
@elight @pathfinder @actuallyautistic I'm not officially diagnosed, but on realizing I'm #ActuallyAutistic in my adult years, it's like now all the truths of what I really face are more prominent, I can actually recognize sensory overload but can't always find my way to fixing it, etc. The masks we put up tend, I think, to mask the truth even from ourselves, then when the truth comes clear, it's another overwhelm all in itself sometimes, because we don't have the buffer we once had.
@Tarrenvane @elight @pathfinder @actuallyautistic
#ActuallyAutistic
#actuallyautistic
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I’ve spent my entire life fixated on them and their problems, the “normal,” people, so much so that I managed to forget my own problems, and my own quite disabled childhood and this kept me masked from myself forever.
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I was THIS old when I figured this out. 
@pathfinder @Tarrenvane @elight @actuallyautistic
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like I did this comparison very young, and said to myself, “at least I don’t hit kids,” and so maybe I was messed up but not as bad as them, kind of deal - but of course it was bad enough, wasn’t it.
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I’ve made a whole life and I’m trying to make science out of, “Never mind those mean kids, you’re a NICE boy,” but I must say, it hasnt been much of a life.
@punishmenthurts @elight @pathfinder @actuallyautistic I was kinda pressured into being like them. Because I was a blind kid, heaven forbid I should be anything different.
@Tarrenvane 
@Tooden @punishmenthurts @elight @pathfinder @actuallyautistic Only for my needs as a blind person. No one ever thought that maybe the things they were calling "blindisms" and constantly saying "You don't want people to think you're autistic?" about might *actually* be *gasp* autism. I was supposed to just be normal.
@Tarrenvane Well, obviously you can't have more than one thing wrong with you *gasp* /s
(They couldn't be with you all the time, so they did what they thought was right to keep you safe). My parents did much the same for me and my sibs, and I did what I could for my boys, without knowing about my - or their - autism. @punishmenthurts @elight @pathfinder @actuallyautistic
@Tarrenvane @Tooden @punishmenthurts @elight @actuallyautistic
So many of us thought we should, just be normal. Even though we knew that it never really cut it, despite everything thing else.
Finally realising the truth finally frees us. But, of course, being able to get others to see that, is a whole different story.
@Tarrenvane @pathfinder @actuallyautistic I understand this to be called "sensory unmasking" by those better informed than I.