As someone living in a country with universal Healthcare, it was easy once I knew I may be on the spectrum:

I went to a psych, and told him I made a self test and here is the result. So, he did some more tests and I got my diagnosis.

Depending if you are from the US or a country with universal health care, your millage may vary

I did a lot of therapy and getting misdiagnosed with stuff in my teen years and none of it was helpful. Talk therapy and group therapy actually probably gave me more trauma and drugs for conditions I didn’t have were pretty counter productive. I got a bi-polar diagnosis, did the whole lithium with blood monitoring thing, and hearing in my weekly group therapy the stories real bi polar people were telling was like that scene where Dave Chappelle goes to NA for weed. I’d never had a manic episode in my life. So I told that doctor I was just done and wasn’t coming back to see him again and he was like “That’s a bad decision, you’re going to regret it.” Spoiler: I did not regret it. Finally in my second year of college I had a professor on the spectrum who recognized what was going on with me and he recommended me to the University Mental Health services and gave them some info on me, and I got my diagnosis. It was actually a huge relief to finally understand what was going on, and knowing I am autistic gave me tools to better understand myself and my learning and socializing issues, but other than that, it hasn’t made a huge difference. I generally need some small accommodations at work but nothing major, and if I have to work closely with other people in group settings I like to let them know in case I do or say something puzzling to the normies, but other than that, it’s basically just nice to have an explanation, the knowledge to lean into my strengths and avoid my weaknesses, and stay out of overstimulation/highly social/meltdown causing situations.

That depends on where you live. In Germany afaik you can get diagnosed either by a specialist, but have to pay for it yourself, or at an autism centre, where it’s hard to get a place, but you don’t have to pay for it.

Hi there I’m have been diagnosed with autism, 38yo, in April this year. My wife started suspecting that I had something to be diagnosed after episodes of meltdown (by that time we didn’t know that those episodes were known as meltdown). I just thought that there was nothing wrong, just some things that annoyed me and drove me mad and led me to having those meltdown crisis. But then I started noticing that I would enter on the meltdown state and after that I would not even remember clearly why that all started, sometimes for pointless discussions.

And then I started watching some videos made from others in the autism spectrum about “things that could be symptoms of autism”. And I felt that I had most of those things since childhood and told my wife, which helped me finding an Autism specialist that made some interviews with me, wife and my mother and wrote a “technical report” based on all her studies. And then she sent me to a psychiatrist (because to get an official autism diagnostic here in my country, it need to be signed either by a psychiatrist or a neurologist and they will ask you first to do have a proper report from some psychologist or someone related that has specialized in autism). The psychiatrist read the report, made an interview with me and my wife and gave me an autism diagnosis.

It is not easy to get diagnosed, because, as you can see, I’ve spent 37 years of my life undetected, under the radar, masking it somehow… After I got my diagnosis and told family, some of them where “Oh, so when you where young, that episode could be autism… wow”. I was diagnosed as a level 2 support and even my mother is still like “I think that level 2 is too much, I think that you are level 1” and some long time friends still make some jokes of me faking it, but actually I’m not caring about it as I’m still trying to rediscover what I can do and what can trigger crisis episodes. I have some friends that told me that they suspect that they could be in the spectrum, but they still couldn’t find someone that is specialist in autism in adults. Some of the people that made those videos about late autism diagnosis tell that it took them some time to find someone who could identify them as belonging to the autism spectrum.

So, if you suspect that you may have autism, you better ask an specialist, and don’t be sad if the diagnosis does not meet your feelings: either if someone diagnosis you as autistic or not, if you feel that the diagnosis does not answer all your doubts, try another specialist.

I’m not saying that if you feel like you have autism that you should go search forever until someone does say that you have it (or vice-versa, when people say that you are autistic but you feel that you’re not), because there are some other diagnosis that may be “like autism” but may have other “treatment”. Autism does not have cure because it is not a disease, but some of its comorbidity and some other diagnosis that may look like autism sometimes may have some treatment that would help you live better.

For now, I still didn’t look for other tests to check for possible comorbidity and therapies, but I started to try identifying what triggers me undesirable feelings that could end up in meltdown and try avoiding them.

Keep in mind that if you don’t think an official diagnosis will help you, it also isn’t strictly necessary if you’d still like to consider yourself autistic. If it seems like autism is explaining the person you’ve been your whole life then you’re almost certainly autistic!

Diagnosis is useful for getting disability benefits or certain accommodations but most of those accommodations are things you could get if you have other mental health conditions or neurodivergences that are less stigmatized in the workplace. Also once it is on your medical charts you may run into more issues with medical care. You want to be very careful about who you tell in the workplace because you’ll likely get discriminated against and it really won’t help in cases where you’re likely getting discriminated against anyways (most workplace situations since most people discriminate against autistics). Yes I know discrimination based on disability is ‘illegal’ in most places but it is extremely hard to prove especially in certain parts of, say, the United States. Diagnosis would also get rid of the nagging thought of not being “really” autistic. It’s up to you.