You might be waking up the morning after your diagnosis, struggling to take in how much your life just changed, and waiting for a much-anticipated report to land in your inbox in a week or so. 

Or you’ve scoured the internet for books and done enough research to find yourself clearly in the profile of a late diagnosed AuDHD woman with a heady mix of excitement, confusion and exhaustion. 

You could also simply be at the curiosity stage, with a sense that diagnosis might be somewhere down the road and the research is enticing. 

Wherever you are on this rollercoaster ride of meeting and understanding yourself, this journal entry is for you. 

It’s important to say that I am not you, but I have my personal understanding of this moment, and the weight it brings. Right now, your whole life may feel as if it has been turned upside down and now it comes sharply into focus and into question. This might be happening at inconvenient times, interrupting concentration and sleep.  

So, if you feel a sense of joy, whilst also swallowed up by moments of confusion, grief and isolation, and tiredness that no amount of sleep can touch, then looking at this through a polyvagal lens and nervous system perspective it actually makes complete sense. Your whole life is suddenly being scrutinised and looked at from a very different angle; this period is fraught with threat. 

So, what now? 

As you grapple with a sense of your new and emerging identity, the masking and performing sense of self that has been borrowed from other girls and women along the way is demanding space to be acknowledged and given a voice.  

It can feel like a wild rollercoaster ride you want to get off but equally want to keep queuing up to go on again and again. It’s a thrill and nosedive in equal measure and the drive to research and hyperfocus and make this ‘special interest’ central to your days is likely to be consuming. Of course, you can go deep into learning but appealing to your wisdom, I want to remind you that this is a tender time, and you could deplete your reserves further. I invite you to go gently, take breaks and consider your capacity, as if you were conserving your phone battery. 

At this sensitive moment, history can demand a replay, with trauma, abuse, bullying, difficult relationships, friendships, day to day struggles, grief and exclusion, everything seen through fresh eyes and a new perspective. 

Your life can start to make sense.

Supporting your nervous system as a late diagnosed woman

Through a polyvagal and nervous system focussed lens, your nervous system has spent decades doing an extraordinary job of keeping you safe in a world that wasn’t designed for you and often wasn’t safe. That’s worth a pause, and a moment of recognition for your strength and utter resilience. The masking, adapting, reading rooms, fawning and managing other people’s comfort, whilst often abandoning your own. Your life in a state of survival has come at a cost. 

The autonomic nervous system, the automatic and below consciousness part that governs how safe or unsafe you feel at any given moment, does not just fall into trust and safety because you have a diagnosis. The diagnosis changes the way you view your life and world but brings with it uncertainty, and in a life often touched or trampled by trauma and challenge, this can bring further disruption. 

You may find yourself more sensitive than usual. More easily overwhelmed. Quicker to reach limits, and those limits can be for anything from relationships to concentration, to everyday functioning and socialising. So, think about what is best for you right now and see if you can make some adjustments. 

This response is not you falling apart, this is you waking up, this is a period of recognition of how hard life has been, trying to fit in, and to understand the rules of connection and to never quite get it right enough, or fit in. Take a breath, because despite the beliefs you held, it was never your fault, you were not broken or wrong.   

You can also feel that despite a diagnosis that this outcome is a mistake, an error. There are various reasons for this, including the assessment criteria seeming to be different to you, and women do not present the same as men. It can be your own routine dismissal of yourself, you’re good at masking, therefore you’ve managed to convince the diagnostician.  

The fact you may be questioning your diagnosis or sense of who you are often supports diagnosis, because presenting as neurotypical is something you’ve been doing for a lifetime. As a woman, you routinely learnt to mask and camouflage.  

My experience, both personally and professionally, is that this is a tough period to navigate, and it can feel chaotic and emotional, but it can also be the start of the safest period of your life. Because with the dawn of this new understanding comes clarity and a realisation that you deserve more and you always did. Things can change because you understand more than you ever did before, and it is time to meet your needs and seek professional support.  

Your map leads the way 

Now you know, and you have some answers there is no going back, it can be the beginning of the end for minimising and apologising for your very existence.   

Imagine, trying to get through life with the wrong map, a map created for a woman on a very different journey. Today you have your own map, and you are starting to understand where your journey started and where you are heading.  

If reading this makes sense and you are looking for nervous system, neuro-affirming and trauma sensitive coaching, I would love to hear from you. We can arrange to chat about how I can support you, with safety at the heart of what I do, and with compassion and a deep personal and professional understanding. I live this too. 

With kindness, 

Jayne