When the Life You’ve Built No Longer Fits

On late Autistic identification, ADHD, perimenopause and finding my way back to self-trust.

 

My head has always been one of my favourite places to be.

I love thinking, exploring, questioning, making connections and understanding why things are the way they are. I can spend an extraordinary amount of time in there. And I know that, at times, retreating into my head has also been a trauma response. A place that felt safer than the world outside it.

But I’ve also spent much of my life moving at a hundred miles an hour.

I’ve worked in PR, events management, accounts, retail, therapy, life coaching and sobriety coaching. I’ve changed direction more times than I can count. And now there’s podcasting, writing, educating and speaking.

From the outside, I imagine it can look a little flaky. But from the inside, every change has felt deeply meaningful and true.

One of the things I love about my ADHD is the novelty seeking. The excitement of a new idea, the possibilities, the curiosity, the energy that comes with discovering something that captures my interest.

And then there’s my Autistic self, who needs things to feel right. Meaningful. Aligned with what matters to me.

When I discover something new about myself, I can’t simply file it away as interesting information. I need to explore what it means for how I live.

So perhaps what looks like inconsistency is actually something quite consistent.

A need to live in a way that feels true.

And then things got very speedy uppy.

For a long time, I think my ADHD was driving much of the pace of my life. Always rushing. Always doing. Always another idea, another commitment, another thing to organise or figure out. And there was great enjoyment and fun in that life.

But somewhere around perimenopause and my Autistic identification, things began to change.

I couldn’t keep going at the same pace. Everything felt far too speedy uppy.

That’s a word – or series of words I kept hearing myself say. Alongside overwhelmed, peace and contentment.

Looking back, I find those words interesting. I was beginning to recognise just how much of my life had required me to push through, accommodate other people, keep the peace and override what I was experiencing.

Alcohol had played a part in that. So had people-pleasing. So had the momentum of ADHD, which could carry me into and through experiences that perhaps weren’t always particularly enjoyable or sustainable.

And then I began to see things differently.

Groups, for example.

I’ve come to recognise that I often find groups exhausting. But more than that, I can find them silencing. Limiting. A strange dance of keeping everyone comfortable, saying the right things, maintaining the peace. And I’ve begun questioning whether that’s actually the joyous freedom of friendship I want in my life.

Then there were the spaces and faces I didn’t particularly enjoy without alcohol.

Perhaps they were simply spaces and faces I didn’t enjoy. Full stop.

I’ve realised how much I love being at home. Cosy. Comfortable. In my own space.

I’ve become less willing to overlook what I experience as unkindness.

And I’ve recognised that while my work as a therapist has been deeply meaningful, I want to change how I show up in this space. To bring more of my own voice, experience, curiosity and creativity into the work I do.

None of these realisations came neatly packaged.

And I don’t think it was simply identification or simply perimenopause. I suspect there was a lot happening together. My capacity was changing at the same time as my understanding of myself was deepening.

The life I’d been living no longer fitted in quite the same way.

Understanding myself was only part of it.

After identification, I spent a lot of time learning.

Understanding my nervous system. Recognising what overwhelmed me. Questioning old expectations. Reconsidering relationships, work, environments and the things I’d spent years telling myself I should be able to manage.

And that understanding was incredibly important. But understanding something doesn’t automatically mean you’ve created a life that accommodates it.

That’s another piece of work altogether.

I needed to begin adjusting how I lived. Not to make my life smaller, but to make it fit. And somewhere in that process, something else became clear.

How often I’d looked outside myself for reassurance about things I already knew.

Soundboarding decisions. Self-help books. Social media. Explaining my feelings over and over – and never feeling understood. Questioning my reactions. Wondering whether I was being unreasonable, too sensitive, too much, not enough.

Sometimes I’d think something through so many times that I could barely remember what I’d felt about it in the first place.

And I began to wonder – when had I stopped trusting myself?

Because there was a time when I’d known what felt right for me, without needing to make a case for it.

Somewhere along the way, I’d learned to question that knowing.

To make room for everyone else’s interpretation before allowing myself my own.

And it was time for that to change.

Coming back to self-trust.

This has become one of the most important parts of my post-identification experience.

Not learning something entirely new about myself, but returning to something I’d abandoned.

My own truth.

The ability to recognise what feels right, what doesn’t, what matters and what I want, without putting it up for discussion.

That doesn’t mean I don’t value other people’s perspectives. I do.

And it certainly doesn’t mean I’m always right.

But there’s a difference between being open to another perspective and needing someone else to give you permission to trust your own.

I don’t want to keep soundboarding every decision or questioning every reaction.

I don’t want to spend hours ruminating about whether something that felt wrong to me was actually wrong.

And I know rumination is something I’ll probably always need to be mindful of. My mind loves a deep dive, and not every deep dive takes me somewhere useful.

But I’m learning to recognise when thinking is helping me understand something and when it’s simply pulling me further away from what I already know.

Sometimes the most useful thing I can do is stop questioning myself.

And trust.

And then I got bored.

Recently, I was on the beach in Rosslare.

I was feeling safe, connected and genuinely joyful. There was something about that experience that brought me back to how important connection and joy are, not just for getting through life, but for actually enjoying it.

And I noticed something unexpected.

Boredom.

Not an uncomfortable, restless boredom. No – I mean something much lighter.

A sense that I had room for something else.

I’d spent so much time trying to understand my nervous system and rebalance a life around its needs that I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to have capacity left over.

And there it was.

I wasn’t overwhelmed in that moment.

I wasn’t trying to manage everything.

I was content.

And I was ready for a little more.

I want to be careful here, because I’m not suggesting that everyone should be moving towards something more. For many of us, particularly after late identification, creating space to rest, understand and recover is exactly what’s needed. And there is no timetable for any of that.

But for me, that little stirring of boredom felt healthy.

It felt like lightness returning.

Like curiosity finding some room again.

And perhaps most importantly, it felt like I could trust myself to recognise what I needed next.

When does self-understanding become self-preoccupation?

I’ve been thinking about that question.

Because I know how easy it is for me to spend hours in my head, analysing, questioning, understanding, revisiting.

And sometimes I wonder whether there comes a point when all that understanding can become another place to stay.

Another place that feels safe.

I’m not suggesting we should stop exploring ourselves. Far from it. For many late-identified people, that exploration is necessary, ongoing and life-changing.

But I’m beginning to recognise that, for me, there are times when I don’t need another explanation.

Or another opinion.

Or another conversation about whether I’m making the right decision.

Sometimes I need to trust what I’ve learned about myself and allow myself to live accordingly.

To enjoy the people I enjoy.

To leave the spaces that don’t feel right.

To change direction when something meaningful calls me towards it.

To create, explore, laugh, connect and experience joy.

And to accept that I might change my mind again.

I’ve spent a lot of time learning how to create a life that fits my nervous system.

But perhaps the most important part of that work has been learning to trust myself enough to actually live it.

Not perfectly. Not without overwhelm, uncertainty or the occasional spiral of overthinking.

But with a growing willingness to stop asking everyone else whether my life makes sense.

Because it makes sense to me.

And perhaps that’s what living differently means.

Not needing to justify a life that feels true.