The Deafening Silence
In my last article After the Relief Came the Exhaustion I wrote about the first weeks after my ADHD diagnosis. I spoke about the validation, the grief, the elation and the exhaustion that followed. As part of that process I was also screened for autism, but my psychiatrist suggested we focus on getting the ADHD under control first.
In this article I’ll talk about my journey to get an Autism diagnosis. The feelings, the disbelief and eventually acceptance. If you know someone that might find this helpful please feel free to share.
When I first started ADHD medication, the constant chittering in my head finally went quiet. For the first time there was peace in my mind. But with the inner noise gone, the outside world came rushing in. The chatter in pubs, the clatter of dishes, the overlapping voices at airports. I realised that it wasn’t tiredness or low blood sugar making me anxious, as I had always assumed. It was sensory overload.
That quiet in my head seemed to make space for all the sensory information that was flooding in. I began noticing how much I struggled in noisy places, and how draining unstructured social situations were. Before, I had just pushed through, numbed myself with alcohol, or busied myself being “helpful” to avoid small talk. Now it felt harder to keep forcing it. I started retreating from pubs after work, realising that I could bear to be with myself, and that I didn’t need to surround myself with people to be happy.
At first, I didn’t believe I might be autistic. But researching what it actually is, and thinking about family traits made it harder to deny. ADHD treatment had unmasked something else. Disbelief gave way to recognition.
When the time came for the autism assessment, I was unusually nervous. I even phoned the clinic in advance to ask what the questions would be, because I was stressed out by not knowing what to expect. Looking back, that in itself was very autistic - needing clarity, needing to feel prepared. The interviews and exercises felt strange, like being asked to explain things I had never put into words. It was unsettling, but also illuminating.
The assessment confirmed what I had begun to suspect, but it was uncanny to see my life described in such detail. They noted my need for predictability, like calling ahead to check the questions. They picked up on my sensory sensitivities: fluorescent lights that made me dizzy, clothing textures I could not tolerate, the way I always need a fan on for work and sleep, and how I carry earplugs, a worry stone, or a fidget with me. They saw how I can talk at length and sometimes dominate conversations, how I rock or wander about to regulate, how small talk drains me, and how I hyperfocus on hobbies until they spiral into extremes.
Reading the report felt almost like an out-of-body experience. It was like reading about someone else’s diagnosis. It was so clearly autism, so clearly true, but it was also about me. I could not deny a single word. If the report had carried someone else’s name, I would have been immediately convinced. With my own name there, it took a few days, maybe weeks, for the two realities to coalesce into a single truth.
Nowhere was this clearer than in airports. For years, I thought my near-meltdowns in security queues were about hunger or tiredness. But the truth was sensory overload: fluorescent lights, long queues, echoing voices, endless instructions — belt off, shoes off, liquids out — all while navigating times and gates.
I travel frequently for work, and JFK was a special place in hell. Three-hour queues for immigration left me hyperventilating with my headphones on, terrified that security cameras would see my anxiety and single me out.
Learning about the sunflower lanyard scheme changed everything. For the first time, I requested special assistance. Instead of three hours of panic, I was in a cab within minutes. At first, I felt guilty, like I was cheating. But then I remembered standing in those queues. Most people were restless or bored. For me, it was survival. The difference was not inconvenience, but panic and fear.
That guilt turned into validation. Autism meant I could ask for help, and that help was legitimate. It wasn’t indulgence, it was accommodation.
What struck me was how different this felt from ADHD. People don’t often think of ADHD as a disability, even though it is. I wasn’t sure I did either. Autism, on the other hand, seemed more outwardly recognised and understood as a disability. That made it easier to accept accommodations without feeling like I was cheating. But it also showed me where my own internalised ableism needed work.
I’ve since realised that many people don’t think of their own neurodiversity as a disability. But disability is not about the person themselves. It is about the way the world is set up, or not set up, to enable them. In that sense, the barriers are external. The world disables people by failing to include them. Understanding that helped me begin to integrate both diagnoses, and to accept that “disabled” applied to me too.
One of the most surprising shifts was seeing my family differently. My mum shows all the same traits as me. There’s even a term for people like me who are both autistic and ADHD: AuDHD. Her stories about her grandad on a croft in Shetland made everything click. A man who devoured books, built machines to make ball bearings, fixed boats, and invented contraptions. For generations, these patterns were unnamed.
For most of my life, I’d felt like the odd one out, never fitting in. But realising my traits run in the family gave me a sense of belonging I’d never known. Autism didn’t make me different. It showed me where I came from.
Since my diagnosis I have thought a lot about what we call ourselves. Some say “person with autism,” others “autistic person.” In the UK, the community often prefers identity-first language because autism is not seen as something separate, it is part of who we are. Terms like “high functioning,” “low functioning,” or “Asperger’s” have been phased out. They don’t reflect reality, and in the case of Asperger’s, the history behind the name makes it harder to use. Still, I understand that some who were given that label feel attached to it, and that is ok too.
For myself, I now call myself autistic and ADHD, or AuDHD to those who have heard the term. Sometimes I am simply an ADHD’er. The words matter because they shape how I see myself. I am not less because I am autistic or ADHD. I am both, and that is part of my belonging.
I’ve also learned not to be ashamed to say that I am Autistic. It’s who I am. If you don’t like it, then we probably wouldn’t have got on anyway.
If any of this resonates, or you would like to share your diagnosis journey with others to help them, please leave a comment.
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Hull, L., Petrides, K. V., Allison, C., Smith, P., Baron-Cohen, S., Lai, M.-C., & Mandy, W. (2019). Development and Validation of the Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (CAT-Q). Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 49(3), 819–833. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-018-3792-6
Kiehl, I., Pease, R., & Hackmann, C. (2024). The adult experience of being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder: A qualitative meta-synthesis. Autism, 28(5), 1060–1074. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613231220419
