This Isn’t Just About Traits—It’s About Time

By Michelle Labine

May 2025

When people talk about autism, especially from a diagnostic or clinical perspective, the conversation often centers on traits. These may include differences in social communication, sensory sensitivity, focused interests, or emotional regulation. While these markers can be useful in understanding autism from a diagnostic standpoint, they represent only part of the story, particularly for women who are diagnosed later in life.

For many of us, the experience of discovering our autism is not simply about identifying traits. It is also about time. It is about the many years we spent living without language that could explain our inner experiences, the years we carried invisible effort and confusion, and the years we learned to shape ourselves around what others expected rather than what felt natural or true.

For many girls and women of our generation, autism was not something we were encouraged to recognize within ourselves. It was rarely visible in the environments we moved through. It did not appear in the media we consumed, in the conversations happening in schools, or in the diagnostic tools being used to identify neurodivergence. In many ways, women were absent from the narrative.

Because of that absence, our differences were often interpreted through other labels. Instead of being recognized as autistic, many of us were described as anxious, overly sensitive, moody, difficult, dramatic, controlling, or simply too much. Over time those words began to shape how we saw ourselves. They became explanations we carried, often accompanied by a sense of shame we could not fully articulate.

At the same time, women were praised for qualities that masked the effort happening beneath the surface; we were described as intelligent, responsible, capable, kind, and successful. Outwardly we appeared composed and reliable, yet internally many of us were struggling to manage an intensity of experience that no one around us seemed to recognize. We became highly skilled at reading a room, anticipating expectations, and presenting calm even when our nervous systems were overwhelmed. We learned how to carry emotional responsibility and maintain connection while quietly suppressing parts of ourselves that did not fit easily within the environments we were navigating.

We were not supported, so much as shaped. We adapted in order to survive socially and emotionally within systems that had little understanding of how our minds and bodies processed the world.

By the time women encounter an autism framework in midlife, whether through formal diagnosis, self-identification, or a gradual process of recognition, we have already lived decades without a coherent explanation for our inner experiences. When that framework finally arrives, it reframes entire chapters of our lives.

This recognition often reveals that the impact of a later in life diagnosis is not only about identifying autistic traits. It is also about acknowledging the passage of time and the ways that time shaped our sense of self. It can feel less like receiving new information and more like a turning point. It can bring a powerful shift in how we relate to our past and how we understand ourselves moving forward.