The Hidden Mental Health Legacy of Late Diagnosed Neurodivergence

I have a client I'll call David. Smart, funny, genuinely one of the most creative people I have ever worked with. When I first met him, he was in his late thirties and had spent the better part of three decades quietly convinced he wasn't very clever.

Not in some dramatic, tortured way. Like a background hum if you get what I mean. A quiet assumption he'd carried around so long he'd simply stopped noticing it.

It stopped him in so many areas of his life. And he had no idea why he would think like this.He had many things in his life that were positive, good and proved his skills.

But it wouldn’t go away.

Then he gave me the answer.

He was diagnosed with dyslexia at 34.

This is the thing I’m searching for as a therapist - where did David’s mind learn that he wasn’t clever?He didn’t learn it at 34.The diagnosis wasn’t the learning.The 34 years he’d lived as undiagnosed dyslexic was the school for his lack of belief.

What happens in the gap

It’s important for me to say that I’m using David’s situation here as an exmaple.This isn’t about dyslexia.This is about any type of neurodivergence; ADHD, Autism, Dyscalculia, Dyspraxia and the many others I don’t have space for here.I’ll show you what I mean once I’ve explained Davidand the legacy of dyslexia a bit more.

In the early days of Primary School, when a wee child struggles to read and nobody explains why, that child isn’t thinking “I’m pretty sure my struggles are because my brain processes written language and symbols differently to most people." They're five, six, eight, ten. They don't have that framework to work from.

What a child’s brain thinks is much simpler. Much more basic.

“Everyone else can do this. I can't. So there must be something wrong with me.”

That might sound really hard but the kid isn’t being hard on themselves. This is just a kid making the most logical conclusion available with the information they have.

“The rest of the class seem to be smashing this and I’m not…and that must mean I’m different from everyone else.”.

The problem is, that conclusion doesn't stay as she throwaway thought. For a dyslexic kid, this happens every day.Every reading task, every writing task, every presentation.Shame and difference pile up and strengthen that belief.

Still no-one can explain why. No diagnosis. No understanding. It doesn’t take long before this thought becomes something much more stuck. It becomes a belief.

David told me about being called on to read aloud in class once. He was about 8.

He tried his best, actually did really well considering we now know he was dyslexic, but there was a key passage where he stumbled and got caught on a word. The teacher told him to take his time.He didn’t want to take his time.He wanted to run out of the class.

He remembered the embarrassment, the heat in his face. And then, to compound this, he watched the other kids do it easily, like it was nothing.There he was, gripping the edges of his book, hoping the teacher would skip him out and move on.She didn’t.

By the time he was ten he'd already decided who he was, academically at least.He was stupid.There was no point in trying. No point in concentrating. So he distracted from his shame.He started acting up, shouting, annoying other kids.He was entirely disengaged from learning simply because the adults around him didn’t help him understand what was going on.

He was wrong, of course. He wasn’t stupid.But he didn't know that then. And he still didn’t know it when he came into my room at 36 years old. He’d decided.And why wouldn’t he, the evidence was clear. Wasn’t it?

It's not just dyslexia

And as I said before, I see versions of this neurodivergent legacy happening with ADHD, autism, dyscalculia, sensory processing differences. The specifics vary but the shape of it is always the same.

A child who experiences the world slightly differently, in a way that doesn't quite fit the standard mould, goes looking for an explanation. And in the absence of the right one, they find the wrong one.

With autism, it often sounds like "I don't understand people and people don't understand me, so I must be broken somehow.”. The legacy is often an adult who believed their weird, that people don’t get them, that they are unlikable and in extreme situations that they are weird.

With ADHD, it might be "I can't concentrate on things that matter, so I must be lazy or stupid or both.”. The legacy of ADHD is exactly this - adults who still believe they are lazy, stupid and can’t concentrate.

These aren't overly dramatic conclusions. They're based on what each individual would say is concrete evidence.The experience of growing up with no better explanation.

And because it establishes itself as child, by the time we’re an adult it’s become furniture. After a while you stop seeing them as beliefs. It’s just facts.

So what do we do?Well this is where the masking starts.

As an example, here’s how a kid with undiagnosed autism will start to mask;

• learn to copy

• learn to rehearse

• watch how other people behave in social situations and do a reasonable impression of someone who looks like they know what they re doing

• work twice as hard as everyone else just to look like you're keeping up

And this will work, to a point. But it's frigging exhausting. And more than that, it is constantly (and quietly) reinforcing the idea that your natural way of being isn't acceptable. That the real you needs to be hidden.

The bit the diagnosis doesn't fix

The amazing thing about all the work recently on neurodivergence is, when someone gets a late diagnosis, something begins to shift.

First, there's usually a relief - there’s nothing wrong with me. It’s just that I wasn’t seen and understood and I’ve spent my life trying to be someone I thought the world wanted me to be.

And, for many, many, late diagnosed people this is quickly followed by grief. It may even stretch into anger.

“Why was I missed?” - “Why did no-one help me?” - “I’ve hated my younger self for so long and it was never my fault”

But here's what I've noticed in my work. The diagnosis gives you the right explanation. It doesn't automatically undo all the wrong and damaging explanations you've been living with all these years.

You’ll quickly start to get, intellectually, that your brain is wired differently. Yet still feel, in your bones, that you're not quite enough. You’ll ]still second-guess yourself in rooms full of people. You’ll still hear that wee voice that says "you only got this far because nobody's noticed how weird you are yet."

The issue with neurodivergence diagnosis is not a knowledge problem. It's a belief problem. And, unfortunately for us, beliefs don't shift just because new information arrives. If they did, I promise, therapy would be a lot simpler.

When someone comes to me in this situation, the work isn't really about the diagnosis. It's about the story that grew up around the misdiagnosis and therefore the story that defined ‘you’.

All your conclusions, that made perfect sense to you as a child, are quietly running the life of you as an adult.

The good news?

Those beliefs can be changed. I am fortunate enough to see that happen all the time. But the thing that puts people off is you’re going to have to go searching around inside your head to find those beliefs first.

That’s where therapy helps. And transforms.

Because doing that alone is often fruitless.Often frustrating.And often just a way to confirm the beliefs you’re trying to change because every time they don’t change it’s just more evidence fro your mind to confirm how crap you think you are, isn’t it?

A thought, if this sounds familiar

Your not alone.

It can change.

There are people that know what to do.

If you were diagnosed later in life, or you're starting to wonder if any of this applies to you, it might be worth asking yourself a simple question.

Don’t ask “what does my potential neurodivergence mean about me" but "what mistaken beliefs have I come to believe about myself because I’ve not fully understood how I experience the world?"

That's where the real work needs to be. Not in your new, shiny label but deep in the story you’ve used to create your identity.

If you'd like to explore that and let go of the legacy of your neurodivergent past, please come and have a conversation with us at HeadStrong. We work with so many people who are in exactly this situation, and sorting it tends to be more straightforward than people expect.