Now you have a tool that will help you understand how your brain works. I got my dx when I was 41... about five years ago. I had no idea that was what was going on. I have other mental health issues that I just could not work through... there was something big going on I could not understand. After my official DX the pieces all came together. It helped me understand why I was vulnerable as a child to abuse other children may have escaped using social norm tools. I felt like things were my fault and that I was just dumb or something. I was an emotional mess with all that stuff.

The DX gave me understanding of that little me. It also made me furious realizing how older kids had honed in on my innocence. They used my literalism as a weapon to blackmail me and scare me into things they wanted that I did not want. It was such a huge breakthrough when I realized that it was not my fault for what happened to me.

And it helped me understand that not all my issues were PTSD. The PTSD was being compounded by the autism, All of that caused dissociative events. It is a perfect storm.

I finally saw I could not "work through" some of the issues like noise sensitivity. And that was liberating. I stopped blaming myself saying I was not working hard enough to get well.

Maybe you can now enjoy understanding why you are who you are. It sure helped me!