For as long as I can remember, I lived with a persistent, quiet realization: something about me was different, but I could never quite put my finger on why.
While everyone around me seemed to possess an unwritten handbook on how to navigate the social world, I felt like an actor constantly attempting to learn their lines in real time.
My journey to answering that lifelong “why” took over a decade, navigating misattributions, cognitive behavioral therapy, and understanding masking, before culminating in an official autism diagnosis at age 30.
Here is how my understanding of my own brain evolved and the signs that ultimately led me to seek an adult autism assessment.
1. The Initial Misstep: Social Anxiety
My search for answers began in my late teens while studying for my undergraduate degree in psychology. During my studies, I came across the clinical diagnostic criteria for Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD).
Reading through the symptoms, I resonated with them deeply:
- I had always been remarkably quiet, shy, and reserved.
- I experienced overwhelming, uncontrollable anxiety in social situations.
- I spent an enormous amount of time worrying about how I was presenting to others.
At the time, social anxiety felt like the missing piece. Armed with this new framework, I sought out professional help and underwent a course of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).
2. The CBT Paradox: Learning Skills vs. Learning to Mask
CBT gave me valuable tools to manage acute anxious thoughts and pushed me out of my comfort zone. My therapist introduced me to social scripts and behavioral techniques designed to help initiate conversations and manage social exposure.
Overall, I became less anxious about being judged negatively thanks to CBT. However, something still felt off.
CBT reduced my fear of negative evaluation, but it didn’t make social communication feel any more natural. Instead, I realized I was using therapy to learn how to perform as a more confident person, whilst not feeling like this was authentic.
On reflection, I feel that CBT helped me to mask my autism better. Autistic masking is the conscious or subconscious suppression of autistic traits to pass as neurotypical.
Instead of developing genuine self-confidence, I was constructing a high-effort social persona:
- Manual non-verbal control: Forcing eye contact, managing facial expressions, and monitoring body posture in real time.
- Conversational timing friction: Constantly calculating when it was appropriate to interject without interrupting.
- Topic auditing: Second-guessing whether my interest in a topic met standard social expectations.
I was masking prior to therapy, but I feel that CBT exacerbated these behaviours to some extent.
I do not blame my therapist, who didn’t realise there was more underneath the surface of my social anxiety. I think that because understandings of autism were less developed at the time, it wouldn’t have been a consideration for someone like me who doesn’t adhere to the autism stereotype.
Social anxiety vs. autism:
- Social anxiety focus: “They are going to judge me negatively.”
- Autistic social processing: “When is the correct turn to speak?” “Is this topic contextually appropriate?” “Am I holding my face and body in a normal way?”
Note: It is common to experience socially anxious thoughts alongside autistic social processing and they can interact with each other.
3. The Seed of Doubt: An Honest Conversation
About ten years ago, while working at a previous job, I clicked immediately with a colleague who happened to be openly autistic. Our conversations flowed effortlessly in a way I rarely experienced with neurotypical peers.
During a deep discussion about my ongoing struggles with what I still called “social anxiety,” he paused and asked me directly:
“Have you ever considered that you might be autistic?”
My immediate reaction was denial. Like many people at the time, my understanding of autism was shaped by clinical stereotypes – media depictions that failed to capture how autism often presents in quieter individuals who may be masking. I thought, “No, that can’t be me.”
Though I rejected the idea initially, his question planted a seed that quietly lingered for years.
4. The 2020 Pivot: Unmasking and the Relational Shift
When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in 2020, enforced solitude brought an unexpected sense of relief. Stripped of daily social obligations, I didn’t have to perform. For the first time in my adult life, the constant exhaustion of maintaining a neurotypical persona was significantly reduced.
I had to wear a face mask for my job, which, funnily enough, reduced my pressure to wear a social mask on my face. I didn’t have to worry about performing the “right” facial expressions if half my face was covered.
During lockdown, I dove into adult autism research, clinical literature, and personal accounts written by autistic adults.
Learning about other people’s experiences of being autistic and masking highly resonated with me. I felt like I was hearing about my own life and everything fell into place.
The Diagnostic Criteria Realization
Looking back at the formal diagnostic frameworks (such as the DSM-5) through an unmasked lens, the core criteria lined up across my entire life course, not just my recent adulthood:
- Persistent differences in social communication and interaction: Struggling with social nuance, tone, and reciprocal conversation flow that went beyond mere shyness.
- Restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior and deep interests: A lifelong pattern of intensely focused research, hyperfixations, and reliance on routines to process the world.
- Longitudinal consistency: Realizing these traits were not recent anxiety responses, but lived experiences present since early childhood.
Everything clicked. It wasn’t that I was “failing” at social anxiety recovery, I was simply processing the world through an autistic nervous system.
I also recognised that a lot of the social anxiety I developed was a possible consequence of trying to anxiously navigate the world as an autistic person.
5. The Path to Diagnosis
Realizing I was autistic spurred a period of intense focus. I read books on neurodiversity, analyzed academic literature on adult presentations, and systematically evaluated my own history against the diagnostic criteria.
Eventually, I asked my GP for a referral for an autism assessment through the NHS. After navigating the waiting list, I received my official diagnosis in 2024 at age 30.
Summary Key Takeaways
- Social anxiety and autism can look similar on the surface, but their root causes differ. Social anxiety is driven by a fear of negative evaluation; autistic social friction often stems from underlying differences in processing social cues, timing, and communication structures.
- CBT can sometimes inadvertently teach masking skills. While CBT is effective for anxiety, applying standard behavioral tools to autistic traits can teach individuals how to “perform” neurotypicality rather than accommodate their underlying sensory and social needs. CBT should be delivered with neurotype in mind.
- Peer recognition is common. Autistic individuals often communicate with one another with greater ease—a phenomenon supported by research into the Double Empathy Problem.
- Late diagnosis brings clarity, not change. Receiving a diagnosis at age 30 didn’t change who I was; it provided an accurate framework for understanding my past, shedding self-blame, and learning to live more authentically.
