[ This page is the continuation of Part 3: Reflections and Acknowledgements ]
Discovering that I’m autistic has been the most important revelation of my adult life. For the first time, the patterns that once felt paradoxical now make sense — not as random contradictions, but as expressions of a consistent neurocognitive system.
Interestingly, I had already built many autistic-friendly adaptations long before I knew why they worked. This realisation didn’t require a full reset — just a fine-tuning of existing rituals. I’m not starting over. I’m updating the system.
🌩️ The Pattern Beneath the Chaos
What once looked like random chaos in my life now reveals itself as a carefully constructed ecosystem of rituals. Long before I discovered I was autistic, I had already built complex, multi-layered systems — not simple routines, but rituals that gave me predictability, freedom, and emotional regulation all at once.
These rituals weren’t designed intellectually — they emerged organically, shaped by sensory sensitivities, executive struggles, and emotional needs I hadn’t yet named. They held together traits of autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, and C-PTSD — offering both structure and flexibility, like living maps.
I’ve written more about this in a separate post, but the essence is this: my brain was solving the right problems long before I understood the system it was building.
🛏️ Daily Life & Sensory Care
I’ve long used smart lighting, heavy blankets, solo nature time, and minimal social scheduling — all of which now feel not just comfortable, but essential. I carry noise-cancelling earbuds alongside my headphones, and I’ve started exploring efficient stims to regulate sensory input and emotion.
Even dental care has become part of this adaptation. Discovering that composite fillings hijack my sensory focus made me realise that sensory needs are valid medical needs. Where some get veneers for aesthetics, I need solutions for sensory relief. My first targets are the teeth that disrupt focus when touched by my tongue — tiny things with big mental costs.
🧠 Health & Body Signals
I used to think meltdowns were rare episodes — but in truth, I’ve avoided them for years through hypervigilance. That wasn’t peace; it was containment. Now that I understand the triggers, I’m learning to monitor my internal state before it hits crisis.
Because of alexithymia, emotional overwhelm doesn’t always register clearly. So I’ve started using routine disruption as a stress proxy: if I’m reacting intensely to small changes, I probably need regulation. It’s a map I can follow even when words are missing.
Sometimes, I lose the thread mid-conversation — not always because I wasn’t present, but for different reasons.
- Sometimes my mind wanders deep into the forest, chasing patterns or tangents, and I forget where I was.
- Other times, the words won’t surface — the meaning is clear, but the label evades me. It’s like knowing exactly what a tool does, but not remembering what it’s called.
- And occasionally, I speak phantom words — echoes of holistic patterns that don’t match the intended sentence.
I’m learning to name these gently, without shame. They’re not mistakes. They’re signals of a richly-mapped, non-linear mind.
🤝 Social & Emotional Navigation
Recognising the traits of C-PTSD has helped explain my discomfort with emotional closeness — especially the tendency to withdraw or go silent when someone gets too near. I now know that connection doesn’t have to feel unsafe. I’m practising asking for help — especially with small things, where trust can begin.
I’m learning to name when I’m overwhelmed or struggling to process. I explain when I need buffer time, not to avoid the conversation, but because I can’t respond meaningfully yet. They should get it — and that understanding has changed everything.
And most importantly: I’m learning to unmask. There’s joy in making people happy — but now I ask: do I have the energy to give right now, without cost? If the answer is no, I hold my ground. Boundaries are no longer resistance — they’re care.
💼 Work & Executive Function
I haven’t tackled career planning yet. I want to stabilise my personal foundation first. But I know that even if things still feel unsettled by autumn, I’ll likely dive in anyway — that’s how my motivation loops work. But I’ve got several guidelines in mind already.
I’ve reclassified my passions for computers and outdoor exploration as special interests. I’m not trying to limit them — just to channel them with awareness.
In work and beyond, I’ve started asking for clarity — not just what’s being asked, but why, by when and also the expected quality. Understanding the purpose lets me engage without spiralling into resistance, anxiety or guilt.
And I’ve stopped rushing when someone behind me gets impatient behind me at the supermarket. My body doesn’t handle urgency well. When I rush, I drop things or lose sequence. Now, I give myself permission to go at my own pace, even in public.
My learning style isn’t linear. I don’t thrive on step-by-step plans. Instead, I gather nonlinear fragments until something clicks — a pattern emerges, and structure forms around clarity. This theory explains a lot in my education, where I was average, but either I was struggling or thrilling, but never between. I need to create learning rituals accordingly.
🧭 Identity & Communication
I now describe myself as self-identified autistic, not self-diagnosed. I’ve done the research, matched the patterns, and had my reflections validated by those who know me best. Diagnosis is available where I live, and I plan to pursue it — but this label already fits.
I’ve started embedding subtle signals in my communication — like occasionally adding sensory notes to Strava activities. If even one person feels less alone reading them, it’s worth it.
When thinking or communicating, I often need to move — pacing, stretching, cycling. Movement isn’t a distraction; it’s part of how I process. During webinars, I use a home trainer and absorb the information even if I don’t feel “focused.” I also retain ideas better when walking with someone — though wind or noise can disrupt that, so context matters.
Visual anchors help too. I’m considering adding a few around the house. Calendars, sensory maps, symbolic objects? Not to remember facts, but to remember where I was in the pattern. It’s not memory loss; it’s sequence drift.
Getting Help
I’ve come to recognise that some of my struggles — while currently manageable — represent an invisible disability. I’ve built rituals and strategies that allow me to function well, but they require focus and effort. My ability to ride a bike long distances while avoiding sensory overload means I’ve developed effective workarounds. That could change with age, health, life stress, or even work obligations.
For example, I used to say, “Driving just isn’t for me.” But the truth is: I tried, and I couldn’t do it — not safely, and not without distress. The analysis of this episode in my life made me accept the label disabled beyond not fitting well in my environment. That’s not a quirk. It’s a functional barrier. The same goes for sensory overload, emotional exhaustion, or executive dysfunction. They don’t always stop me, but I know what happens when they do.
I’ve come to recognise that my traits shift depending on energy, stress, and environment. When I’m well-regulated, my ADHD traits (flexibility, energy, divergent curiosity) show up clearly. But when I’m tired or overstimulated, my autistic traits (need for predictability, sensory sensitivity, reduced adaptability) tend to amplify — while my ADHD traits seem to recede.
I’ve also noticed that some of my other traits can sometimes mask or distort how my autism and ADHD show up. For example, hypervigilance can reduce distraction, making ADHD traits less obvious in structured settings. When I’m tired and safe at home, though, I feel unmistakably autistic: sensitive, shutdown-prone, and flooded by small disruptions — while my stream of ideas diminishes significantly.
That can also explain why sensory sensitivity can shift suddenly — for example, background noise that I barely noticed can become overwhelming, as if a switch flipped. This shift isn’t limited to sound — I’ve had similar experiences with clothing. A fabric or tag I was wearing for hours suddenly became unbearable, to the point that I once had to cut a tag off mid-day because I couldn’t tolerate it any longer.
With this interplay, I believe a professional who’s qualified to diagnose both Autism Spectrum Disorder and ADHD makes sense as this internal variability makes checklist diagnosis tricky, but it reflects a deeper, layered reality I hope a professional can help clarify.
Why I’m Seeking an Official Diagnosis
This isn’t a decision I’ve made lightly or impulsively. It’s the result of deep reflection, observation, and lived experience. I’ve already done the work of building rituals, regulating myself, and finding language. But I’ve reached a point where formal recognition could bring clarity, protection, and long-term stability.
At first glance, I thought autism wasn’t a disorder for me — I run smoothly 99.9% of the time. It’s my rituals, my environment and my self-adapted workflows that make it possible. But that remaining 0.1% can be extremely disruptive. A simple example: a honking car can collapse my entire system. And without my compensations, my uptime may significantly drop.
Similarly, I’ve compensated for ADHD traits through physical activity — regulating my dopamine with daily sports. But if that routine breaks, the fallout is immediate: executive function collapses, focus vanishes, and I risk burnout.
Another difficult area is to manage my emotional regulation — especially in the context of alexithymia. I don’t feel the light emotional fluctuations most people seem to track naturally. I can access them if I consciously check in, but even then, they shift rapidly and often contradict each other. What’s more disruptive is when strong emotions break through — because those I do feel in real time, and they can overwhelm my system instantly. If my relationship to alexithymia shifts — if I begin to feel more emotional nuance in real time — that introduces another threshold level that could trigger overwhelm. And it will affects my uptime.
That’s why diagnosis matters to me. Not to define who I am, but to map how my traits interfere — especially when compensations fail. Below are the main reasons.
🛠️ 1. To Protect the Life I’ve Already Built
- My strategies work — but might not always. Life is unpredictable. Ageing, stress, or illness could weaken the coping structures I rely on. Diagnosis gives me a safety net before crisis hits.
- My adaptations need recognition. Daily nature rituals, social filtering, sensory withdrawal — these aren’t quirks, they’re survival tools. A diagnosis won’t replace them, but it could validate them.
- I already self-identify. Labels helped me map my experience. Now I just want the formal clarity to match what I’ve already discovered.
🧠 2. To Clarify Complex Patterns Others Might Misread
- My traits shift by context and state. I’ve learned that sensory overwhelm, shutdowns, and even “flatness” often stem from dynamic interplay between autism, ADHD, trauma, and alexithymia. Without a neurodivergent lens, they risk being mislabelled as personality flaws or overreactions.
- My reactions may seem disproportionate without context. I’ve had meltdowns or overwhelm responses that were misunderstood. A diagnosis won’t excuse these — but it might explain them.
- I need help untangling trauma from neurodivergence. I’ve done the introspection. But I can’t fully separate emotional blindness, fawning, or flashbacks without professional support.
🧭 3. To Make Sense of Myself — and Help Others Understand
- I’ve felt like an impostor in the neurodivergent community. Even when I clearly relate, I hesitate to speak up. A diagnosis might not change my traits — but it could help me speak without second-guessing my validity.
- I don’t fit stereotypes — and that’s part of the problem. I’m athletic, independent, systems-minded. That can hide how much energy I spend decoding the world. If I’m visible, others like me might be too.
- I’ve masked, adapted, and blended for decades. That shouldn’t disqualify me from being recognised — it should make the need clearer.
🧷 4. To Prepare for the Unexpected
- I don’t want to wait for a collapse to be taken seriously. This is proactive, not reactive.
- I’ve had flashbacks to events I once forgot — including a meltdown that nearly led to school expulsion. There may be more. I want to make sense of them while I still can.
- I’ve already had situations misunderstood — like the car honking incident. If it happens again, I want documentation that reflects my neurobiology, not just behaviour.
Getting my CISSP didn’t make me a better security professional — it made me legible. Clients trusted me. Auditors stopped challenging me. I think this diagnosis could offer something similar: validation without endless explanation.
I’m not seeking diagnosis to explain every quirk or redesign my career. Most of my day-to-day adaptations — rituals, sensory supports, task flow — work because I’ve built them from lived experience.
What I need diagnosis for is legitimacy in the places where self-insight isn’t enough: when accessing support, explaining needs without over-justifying, or protecting myself from collapse in environments that don’t recognise my limits.
I’m currently on a waiting list for an initial consultation with a specialist whose curriculum looked atypical enough to me to inspire trust.
Giftedness and Twice-Exceptionality
During my introspection, I began to notice patterns often associated with giftedness and twice-exceptionality. At first, I hesitated to even mention them. Unlike autism or ADHD — which carry social stigma — the word gifted is often socially associated with talent or high achievement, and can feel presumptuous to claim. But avoiding the topic doesn’t help either. I’ve come to understand that giftedness is also a spectrum — and recognising some of its traits doesn’t mean I see myself as exceptional. It simply means my brain might operate with certain intensities, sensitivities, or patterns that align with that broader profile.
For example, I taught myself — entirely alone — how to manually troubleshoot SSL/TLS handshakes at a protocol level. (I’ve kept the description of the task on purpose — not to brag, but to show how obscure and technical it is.) This involved cryptography, binary data structures, network traffic analysis, and deep security concepts — each field typically requires specialised training, and this skill is at the intersection between the four. I was driven not by obligation, but by genuine fascination. (Today there are automated tools doing this.)
I earned my CISSP certification — often seen as the gold standard in cybersecurity — with surprisingly little effort, though not because I skimmed the surface. My first iteration was simply to map the course structure. To my surprise, I’d already absorbed most of the material through years of personal research. A few topics were new, but I couldn’t just memorise terms — I needed to understand how things connected and use them in practise.
A few months later, I returned to the course for a focused weekend, this time approaching it as a framework — tracing how each domain interacted with the others. I took the exam soon after and passed on the first try.
Most of my peers described the experience as long and difficult. For me, it felt almost playful — like solving a well-designed puzzle. I sometimes nod along with their stories to express solidarity, but the truth is: when something aligns with my internal logic, learning becomes flow.
At the same time, I’ve always struggled with reading — especially aloud — and still find collaborative tasks involving multiple people nearly impossible to manage.
My thinking often feels sharp and intuitive; people have been impressed by my abstract reasoning, but I often forget what I was doing mid-task, or why I entered a room. These contradictions make more sense when viewed through the lens of twice-exceptionality.
In school, I was described as “full of potential” but underperforming — mostly because I didn’t study hard. When I didn’t understand something, studying harder rarely helped. But when a concept clicked, I would often surpass others, ask questions beyond the curriculum, or even correct the teacher. (Apart from passionate teachers, I haven’t found what triggers that switch.) I also had a habit of re-deriving laws or theorems from scratch during exams because I had forgotten the formulas — which often meant I didn’t finish in time.
Other times, I would complete an exam in a quarter of the allotted time and panic when I saw others still writing, convinced I had missed something critical. Now I recognise that I was likely in hyperfocus mode, and it all makes sense.
I’ve noticed a strong asymmetry in motivation: when something fascinates me, I’m unstoppable. When it doesn’t, it’s like trying to walk through a wall. Not because I’m unwilling — but because the access just isn’t there.
Some days, I genuinely feel stupid. Not modest, not humble — but lost in brain fog. Advanced reasoning that usually comes easily takes forever, or vanishes mid-thought. It’s frustrating, especially knowing what I can do when conditions are right.
I don’t seek to be evaluated for giftedness as a goal. In fact, I sometimes see it as a curse — especially when it amplifies existential anxiety. For example, understanding climate change at a systems level caused emotional distress that mimicked anxiety, though it wasn’t anxiety in the clinical sense. I would only pursue formal evaluation if it could meaningfully support research or deepen understanding.
For now, while I’m comfortable discussing autism, ADHD, and related traits openly, I feel a psychological barrier to talking about giftedness with people unfamiliar with neurodivergence. It feels too easily misunderstood — and for now, I’d rather keep that part of the picture quiet unless the context is right.
Closing Thoughts
What began as a simple dental concern led me down an unexpected path — one that uncovered the deeper patterns beneath my anxiety, my sensitivities, and ultimately, my sense of self. A single sensation I couldn’t explain turned out to be a signal — not of pain, but of unseen wiring. Following that thread changed everything.
I know I haven’t explored every part of this map and I don’t even know where its boundaries are. There are traits I haven’t discovered and others not explored — like possible OCD tendencies — that I’ve noted but not pursued, mostly because they haven’t caused harm or disruption in my life. When you only have yourself as a reference point (and you are considered as atypical), it can be hard to know what counts as “normal.”
I’ve noted a few traits that might resemble OCD tendencies — like, as a child, being completely unable to drink from a glass or bottle someone else had used. The idea felt dangerous, even irrational. One day, dehydrated, I gave in — and discovered I didn’t die. Since then, I can do it, but it still feels wrong. Whether that’s sensory defensiveness, old anxiety coding, or something else, I’ve left it unexplored — because it no longer interferes with my life.
But that’s part of the journey, too. This isn’t a checklist to complete. It’s a pattern I’m still learning to read.
Throughout this process, I’ve been guided by the same values that drew me to the open-source community: the belief that sharing knowledge — even imperfect, evolving, personal knowledge — can help others find clarity, or at least feel less alone. If any part of this story contributes to someone else’s understanding, I’ll be grateful.
There are still hundreds of threads I could follow — but for now, this is where I pause. Not at the end, but at a clearing. From here, the path continues — layered, nonlinear, alive. My new discoveries are published as posts and stories, depending on their size and relevance, but I do not exclude a few updates on those self-discovery adventures — if the change is important, I will create a post of the summary.