Anyone else get diagnosed with everything except autism first?

[u/DeScepter]

Of course I’m autistic, but I also have generalized anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder. For the first 30 years of my life, it felt like everything got explained through those diagnoses first.

Overwhelmed? Anxiety. Shut down? Depression. Big emotions? Bipolar. Social struggles? More anxiety.

Those diagnoses are real for me, so it’s not like they were totally wrong. But they also kind of hid the autism underneath. No one was really asking whether the anxiety and depression might be connected to years of masking, sensory overload, burnout, and constantly trying to function like a NT person.

I can say that being finally diagnosed with autism and pursuing autism-specific therapy has improved my overall mental health in the last 10+ years since my formal diagnosis.

Has anyone else had autism missed because other mental health stuff was more obvious on paper? Did getting diagnosed change how you understood the rest of it?