I wasn’t diagnosed as autistic until age 41 in 2021. What I thought was autism was the stereotype you see in the media of the non-speaking rocking and hand-flapping white boy, or the incorrect stereotypes such as Rainman (actually a savant), and the stereotypes I didn’t relate to such as the unempathetic and emotionless Dr Shaun Murphy in The Good Doctor.
I just didn’t see myself in any of these portrayals. I am a woman, I had friends, I had an excess of empathy, and I had a successful career as a people manager. I didn’t see myself in the media’s representations of autistic people, so it never crossed my mind that I might have been autistic. It also doesn’t help that many of the portrayals of autism in the media is how it looks to neurotypical people, not how it feels to experience it as an autistic person.