What Does Epilepsy Have to Do with Neurodivergence?
Before we get stuck into the grief, rage and oddly satisfying relief that comes with a late diagnosis, let’s clear something up: yes, epilepsy is a neurodivergent condition.
It’s not just about seizures or flashing lights in films (although, yes, those can be dangerous triggers). Epilepsy is a complex neurological disorder that affects the brain’s electrical activity. For many, it impacts memory, mood regulation, cognitive processing, energy levels, emotional stability, and in some cases, even speech or sensory perception. In short: it can reshape how we think, feel, and engage with the world.
But here’s the thing: while autism and ADHD have entered the public lexicon with hashtags and awareness months, epilepsy still gets left in the dusty margins. It’s more “medicalised,” less “understood,” and barely ever framed as part of the neurodivergent umbrella, despite the daily impact it has on brain function.
So when I was diagnosed with epilepsy at the age of 45, it wasn’t just a medical label. It was a key to an entire internal world I didn’t know had a name. It explained the brain fog, the memory lapses, the burnouts that hit like trains, and the peculiar energy crashes that made me feel like I’d aged 20 years in an afternoon.
When the Penny Drops at 45
As mentioned above, I was diagnosed with epilepsy at the age of 45. There it is. No sugar-coating, no neat little bow, just a hard, gritty fact that arrived far too late and shook everything I thought I knew about myself. For years, decades even, I danced through life with this uneasy feeling that something wasn’t quite right. I called it clumsiness. Others called it dramatic. Turns out, it was my brain quietly waving a red flag while everyone else looked the other way.
Late diagnosis isn’t a quirky plot twist in a midlife memoir. It’s betrayal. It’s the system telling you, in hindsight, that your struggle was real, but no one could be bothered to notice in time. It’s the grief of meeting yourself for the first time in your 40s and realising just how long you’ve been living in survival mode.
Diagnosis Delayed Is Support Denied
Every missed diagnosis is a missed opportunity – for care, for guidance, for understanding. In childhood, it’s labelled as bad behaviour. In adolescence, it becomes emotional instability. By adulthood, it morphs into chronic anxiety, burnout, and the sense that you’re just ‘not good at life’.
For neurodivergent adults with autism, ADHD, dyslexia, or epilepsy, late diagnosis often comes after years of mental gymnastics trying to fit into a neurotypical mould. You’re told to try harder, to toughen up, to stop being difficult. But what no one says is that you’re doing all that and more – just to stay afloat.
Would Knowing Sooner Have Helped?
Ah, the haunting question: would a timely diagnosis have changed everything? Maybe. Maybe not. But what it would’ve done is explain everything sooner.
There’s a particular flavour of regret that comes with late diagnosis. It’s not just about the missed treatments or accommodations, it’s the countless years of self-blame. The school report that called you ‘bright but lazy’. The job you lost because you couldn’t mask your burnout anymore. The friendships strained by misunderstandings.
We’re left to grieve a version of ourselves that never got the chance to bloom in the right conditions.
The Common Threads in Late ND Discovery
Though the diagnoses vary, the storylines often rhyme. Many of us have spent years chasing our own tails, wondering why life felt like an uphill scramble.
We’ve been misdiagnosed with anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder. We’ve overcompensated, over-apologised, over-functioned, anything to dodge the sense of failure that shadowed us like a bad smell.
And worst of all? We believed it was our fault.
Late-diagnosed neurodivergents often report a lifelong pattern of:
- Social exhaustion from masking
- Self-doubt so ingrained it feels like truth
- Unexplained physical symptoms from stress
- An endless list of coping strategies passed off as ‘quirks’
Not Just One Condition – But One Shared Story
Autism, ADHD, dyslexia, epilepsy, each has its own set of traits and challenges, but what unites us is the silence. The invisibility. The consistent message that we were ‘fine’ because we could perform fine, until we couldn’t.
For many women and marginalised groups, the late diagnosis is even more common. We’re missed because we’re quiet, or because we smile when we’re melting down, or because we hold jobs and raise kids while quietly falling apart inside.
The diagnostic systems weren’t built with us in mind. So we slip through the cracks until something snaps – burnout, breakdown, or in my case, brain activity that could no longer be ignored.
So… Is It Better Late Than Never?
It is. But it’s not a cure-all.
A late diagnosis is a double-edged sword. On one side, there’s relief. The “ohhhh, that explains so much” moment. On the other, there’s rage. At the schools that missed it. The doctors who brushed it off. The employers who penalised you. Yourself, for not knowing sooner, though how could you have?
You mourn the years wasted chasing normality. But you also begin, perhaps for the first time, to rebuild on solid ground.
Diagnosis Isn’t a Fix. It’s a Fork in the Road.
Getting a diagnosis at 45 didn’t fix me. It gave me language. It gave me frameworks and it gave me permission to stop performing for a world that never saw me properly anyway.
Now, there’s room for rest. Room to say no. Room to choose environments and relationships that don’t demand constant compromise.
And that’s where healing begins, not in erasing the past, but in no longer letting it set the pace.What about you? Were you diagnosed later in life, or suspect you should’ve been? How has that knowledge changed your story?
