getting diagnosis at age 68 changed everything. I finally understood that all my lifetime of failures, misunderstandings, and all the ways I disappointed others was not actually "all my fault" but that autism had worked behind the scenes there all my life and nobody knew! I could finally forgive myself , and it was not all because I did not try hard enough. What a relief!! !
Today I have made lots of self accommodations and I have stopped trying to do things that others expect of me, I am simply not equipped to do almost anything in "real time" or "face to face" without failing.
So now I rarely try to do things "everybody else" does with relative ease and comfort. I have substituted many "expected" social activities to ones that I don't have to fight and struggle with, and that I can accomplish without feeling sick distressed or upset over. It has changed my life completely.