Why Your Late-Diagnosed Neurodiversity is a Call to Adventure
Note on Language and Scope:
This blog post focuses primarily on individuals who have been late-diagnosed with Autism or ADHD and are considered Level One—those who are often able to “mask” their traits and appear neurotypical, sometimes at great personal cost. These are people who may not require daily support, but who still face real challenges in a world not built for neurodiverse minds.
It's important to recognize that neurodivergence exists on a wide spectrum. Many people—especially those diagnosed as Level Two or Level Three—have profound support needs and may face barriers that are not simply overcome through mindset shifts or lifestyle changes. This blog does not attempt to speak for or about those experiences, which are equally valid and deserving of support and respect.
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Thoughts from Your Professional Home Organizer
Receiving an adult diagnosis of ADHD or Autism can come as a shock.
If you’re lucky, there will be some sense of relief—finally, an explanation for all the difficulty. But it’s important to mention that this kind of news can sometimes seem like the end of the world. If you get stuck in a fixed mindset upon discovering your “deficits”, a determination of neurodivergence might plunge you into deep feelings of sadness and regret.
Prone to rumination in the first place, you may look back at your years of struggle and wonder what might’ve been different if only you’d known what was really going on with you. And it’s hard to accept that things won’t suddenly “get better” in the way we once hoped—because you’ll never be neurotypical.
But things can get better. In fact, they can get much better, and the path to a brighter future lies in your self understanding, responsibility, and bravery. (Ever heard of a growth mindset?)
I speak from both personal experience—as someone with a divergent brain—and from working with clients on home organizing and productivity projects.
When overwhelm and difficulty with task initiation start to quietly chip away at the peace of mind and overall happiness of the people who reach out to me, I am afforded the opportunity to help them build systems that align with how their unique brains actually work.
And because this struggle and the ensuing process is personal, it is deeply satisfying to me.
I know quite well that when our mental wiring clashes with the demands of everyday life, the ripple effects can be far-reaching—impacting our relationships, our work, and the sense of ease we feel in our own lives.
For this reason I’m a firm believer in bravely asking the hard questions and doing the inner work to find our optimal flow. It takes courage to look at ourselves honestly—to identify strengths and limitations without shame or ego—but that clarity is where real transformation begins.
Cultivating Self-Awareness
Carl Jung once said: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
I love this quote because, in my experience, the work of excavating the truth about ourselves and our lives is a required step in the journey toward happiness, one that offers great rewards.
Luckily, self-awareness is a superpower that can be developed by anyone. That is why I call the dreaded neurodiversity diagnosis a Call to Adventure.
No doubt the internal growth process takes resilience for all kinds of people, divergent or not, but we weirdos have to be extra willing to get curious about ourselves and how we’re bumping up against the world.
This means questioning societal norms and the narrow definitions of success we’ve inherited. It means stopping the wasteful attempts at getting good at normie things we’ll never be good at and accepting our weaknesses so we can focus on our strengths. It means getting out of survival mode and into the driver’s seat, and seriously evaluating the unfit jobs, environments that drain us, or relationships that exacerbate our struggles.
It’s time to stop telling ourselves that if we just try harder at this old way, everything will be okay… or stop wishing that maybe we might just wake up one day and magically be normal.
Let the denial go.
This is your moment of responsibility, and the beauty of this is that it can lead to your freedom.
What’s Going to Be Hard
Hey, Hi!
Did I mention this is going to be HARD?
Yeah, all adventures are hard. That’s why they’re adventures. And that’s what makes them so satisfying. So I’m just telling you now, if you answer this call, you’re going to come up against some tough stuff.
Sidebar on the subject of the author:
It has come to my attention in the past few years that I have a special spot on the “spectrum” somewhere around the location of Level 1 AuDHD. That’s a mix of (in my case, highly-masked) Autism and ADHD. It’s a recent diagnosis. But I’ve known I was “different” my whole life.
I was diagnosed with dyslexia at the age of six. My family figured out my learning disability early on because I had been put into kindergarten as a four year old with an extensive vocabulary and a high IQ test. So when I appeared to be at a complete loss at school, my mother knew something was wrong. I had the privilege of years of tutoring to learn to read and I became a lover of books...
But I immediately went into high-masking mode at school. I didn’t want special ed. I was very socially oriented but stayed under the radar academically as much as possible and basically missed my primary and secondary education. This became the theme: HIDE IT.
What I didn’t know was that, all this while, I was masking more than dyslexia.
I mention this because at times in my life I would determine to tell people about my learning disability and sometimes their responses were downright bizarre. I once told a colleague and she responded by speaking loudly and slowly in my face every time she spoke to me after that as if I wasn’t able to understand her.
So the masking is real because the masking has been necessary.
Perhaps you have had a similar experience?
All of this is to say, if you’re going to unmask and let your freak flag fly, be mentally prepared. There will be plenty of judgement and all sorts of assumptions because that’s what humans do. Humans need to compare and contrast and they’ll want to peg you and/or decide if you’re worthy or smart enough for them to contend with as a way for them to understand what’s going on. That’s how humans do it.
I know this sounds incredibly harsh on our fellow humans, but it’s a mad world out there.
As your life starts to shift and reflect who you really are, people will have opinions. And yes—some won’t believe your diagnosis. There’s a weird trend out there at the moment asserting that everyone looking at their neurodiversity is trying to come up with an excuse for their “laziness” and that it’s “popular” to be neurodiverse!
I find this assertion hilarious.
And you should too.
Please remember that a neurotypical person might make a bunch of pretty neurotypical assumptions that the version of reality they live in is reality itself. Of course the culture we live in tells them this assumption is true, so you can’t really blame them for not understanding that other people aren’t experiencing life the way they are.
So…yeah. Having compassion for people who aren’t able to extend beyond their own experiences will help get you through some tough interactions. We’re all doing our best. So maybe just give these people some space.
And just to state the obvious, it doesn’t really matter what other people think. All that matters is what you do with the information that your self-awareness is bringing on-line.
Creating the Conditions for the Best Possible Outcome
Remember what I said earlier about questioning societal norms? Well, this will likely be necessary for you as you create a life based on your strengths because, well, we live outside the norms anyway, and so to be authentic in your life, you’ll likely need to step outside of “normie” expectations.
Creating the right conditions may involve asking for accommodations—at work, in relationships, in daily routines. But here’s the catch: those accommodations only work if you are also doing the work of learning about yourself.
Building scaffolding for yourself and your needs is a crucial part of this process, and because this is an adventure, it doesn’t happen overnight.
Personally, my diagnosis has changed how I see myself and how I approach my life in the most profoundly positive ways.
Now I know what I need and can design my life for the best possible outcomes.
For instance, because my ASD makes me hyper-focus on creating order and pleasing aesthetics, I determined I could leverage that quirk into a business helping folks who have trouble organizing their lives.
As a Professional Organizer I find real meaning helping clients create the systems & structures that work for them through home organization. Meaningful work is a big f’n deal. Helping someone take ownership of their space often becomes the first step toward taking ownership of their life and I get great satisfaction out of it.
In this process of getting to know my adult self, I’ve worked hard to understand the systems I intrinsically created over time and how and why they work, and I want to guide clients in doing the same. Setting up systems that suit your needs and then building the habit of working those systems is the key to making structures stick.
(Go here for the downloadable Thrive Guide to help you capture your day with a few simple systems.)
Don’t underestimate the power of getting knowledgeable support at this time of discovery (or at any point in your self-discovery journey!)
So! In summary:
When you take responsibility, you create the conditions for the best possible outcome—not just for you, but for everyone around you.
Take a little time out to ask yourself:
What am I really good at? Is there a way I can monetize my strengths into real, satisfying employment for myself?
Where do I truly struggle, and how can I find ways to get support for things I’ll never be good at?
What changes can I make to my living environment so I can create a solid, satisfying foundation for myself?
What kinds of communication in my relationships is needed to reach an understanding about expectations?
How can I celebrate this news and take responsibility for myself in a new way?
Where are the friction points in my life and how can I come to win-win solutions for them?
Leading the Way
It’s your story, and it’s up to you to lead the way. Take my word for it, how you communicate with others, reach an understanding about expectations, and take responsibility for your optimal functioning will be the clear difference between struggling and thriving.
My dedication to helping people thrive stems from a deeply personal passion: guiding clients to recognize and harness their unique strengths so they can create lives that truly reflect who they are. With this new insight you’ve gained about yourself, where might your own passion and sense of purpose begin to take shape?
Remember to stay curious and keep moving forward...
This is your call to adventure. Will you take it?