For almost 40 years, I carried a feeling that was difficult to explain.

I felt different.

Not necessarily better. Not necessarily worse. Just different.

Sometimes I felt like an alien trying to understand the rules of a world for which everyone else seemed to have received an instruction manual. At other times, I thought of myself as the black duck in a flock of white ones: part of the group, but somehow experiencing the world differently.

Over the years, there had been many explanations.

Perhaps I was too sensitive. Too emotional. Perhaps I overthought everything. Perhaps I was disorganised. Perhaps I simply needed to try harder.

Each hypothesis explained one little piece of the puzzle, but none explained the whole picture.

Because there was another side to me.

I could learn quickly. I could see patterns and connections. I could think creatively and become intensely absorbed in subjects that fascinated me. I could understand complex ideas and find solutions that were not always obvious to others.

So how could I feel so capable in some areas and struggle so much in others?

For years, I adapted. I found workarounds. I compensated. I pushed through.

I became very good at appearing as though I was coping.

I did not know I was masking.

I only knew that life sometimes seemed to require an enormous amount of effort.

Then my son held up a mirror

The turning point did not come from a textbook or a checklist.

It came through my son.

Watching him, listening to him and recognising aspects of his experience in myself made me question things I had spent decades explaining away.

He was, in a very real sense, holding up a mirror.

Suddenly, things I had considered isolated quirks began to look like pieces of a pattern: sensory overwhelm, intense emotions, exhaustion after certain social situations, periods of hyperfocus, difficulties shifting attention and feeling overwhelmed when there were too many demands or too much stimulation.

After almost four decades of different explanations and unanswered questions, I reached a point where I no longer wanted another hypothesis.

I needed to know

Not because I wanted an excuse.

Not because I wanted to be defined by a label.

I needed to know because I finally wanted to understand myself.

The reality of being diagnosed as an adult

Seeking a diagnosis as an adult is very different from having someone identify a difficulty when you are a child.

By the time I began looking for answers, I had already lived a big part of my life. I had developed strategies, built a career, relationships and a family. From the outside, there was plenty of evidence that I was functioning.

But functioning is not the same as finding life easy.

My assessment identified Autism Spectrum Condition, Level 1, alongside ADHD-related attentional and executive-function difficulties. It also highlighted a long history of masking and compensatory strategies, together with emotional exhaustion, anxiety and burnout.

The diagnosis did not suddenly explain every moment of my life.

But it gave me a framework.

Instead of constantly asking, “Why can’t I cope like everyone else?”, I could begin asking: “What if my brain is processing the world differently?”

That question opened a door.

Being diagnosed as an adult also meant looking backwards with new eyes.

I began revisiting childhood, school, relationships and work. I could see the strategies I had developed without understanding why. I could recognise that some things I had called weaknesses were actually ways of coping.

Perhaps I had not been failing.

Perhaps I had been adapting.

More pieces of the puzzle

The deeper I went, the more I realised that my experience could not be reduced to one diagnosis.

There were sensory differences too. My assessment found significant sensory sensitivity and avoidance, helping explain why certain environments could leave me completely depleted.

There were also longstanding mathematical difficulties.

For years, my explanation had simply been: I am bad at maths, even though I did Maths main in my HSC.

But my assessment identified significant difficulties consistent with dyscalculia alongside strong cognitive abilities, particularly in reasoning and processing speed. It also highlighted a twice-exceptional profile, where gifted cognitive functioning coexists with a specific learning difficulty.

That taught me something important: Being capable and struggling can coexist.

Being gifted does not cancel out a learning difficulty. And being good at some things can sometimes make other difficulties invisible.

For years, I judged myself by what I could not do easily.

I am learning to look at the whole picture instead.

The journey that started after the diagnosis

The diagnosis was not the end of my journey.

It was the beginning.

First came self-understanding.

I started to understand why certain environments overwhelmed me, why some tasks drained me disproportionately and why I had spent so much of my life compensating.

Then came self-respect.

I began to understand that my limits were not moral failures.

Needing quiet did not make me antisocial.

Needing recovery did not make me lazy.

Finding mathematics difficult did not make me unintelligent.

Being highly emotional did not make me weak.

Needing support did not mean I was incapable.

Self-respect gradually became self-love: the ability to acknowledge my difficulties without being ashamed of them, while recognising my strengths without using them to invalidate my struggles.

And that led naturally to self-care.

For me, self-care is no longer simply about doing something pleasant. It means recognising overload before I reach breaking point, allowing recovery, setting boundaries and understanding that rest is not something I have to earn by becoming completely exhausted first.

Sometimes, rest is part of functioning.

Finding my self-esteem and my voice

Years of struggling with things that seemed easy for other people had affected how I saw myself.

Understanding my profile allowed me to reinterpret that history.

I no longer had to choose between “I am capable” and “I struggle.”

Both can be true.

And accepting that helped rebuild my self-esteem.

Today, I am at another stage of the journey: self-advocacy.

Once you understand yourself, you begin to understand what you need.

I am learning to explain when an environment is overwhelming, ask for what helps me function, establish boundaries before reaching exhaustion and speak about invisible disability without feeling that I owe anyone an apology.

Self-advocacy is not asking the world to revolve around me.

It is being able to say: This is how I function. These are my strengths. These are my challenges. And this is what helps me participate fully.

From self-advocacy to advocacy for others

It is perhaps no coincidence that this journey has led me to become an ambassador for the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower.

For me, the Sunflower represents something I now understand very personally: You cannot always see what another person is carrying.

Someone can be working, laughing, parenting or simply going about their day while managing an enormous amount beneath the surface.

My own experience has made me increasingly aware of how many people may be living with invisible difficulties without having the words, support or confidence to explain them.

This is particularly important in Mauritius.

When an adult begins questioning themselves, where do they go? How do they know which assessment they need? Who do they speak to? How do they find the right expertise, particularly when years of masking may have hidden their difficulties?

Mauritius has professionals and assessment pathways, but knowing that support exists and knowing how to navigate it are not necessarily the same thing.

And if you have spent decades believing that you are simply too sensitive, too emotional, too distracted, too difficult or not trying hard enough, you may not even realise that there could be another explanation.

That is why awareness is only the beginning.

We need understanding, accessible pathways and spaces where people do not have to prove that an invisible difficulty is real before they are believed.

This is also why the vision of La Maison Hidden Disabilities matters to me. A welcoming place where children, adults and families can find understanding, support and connection can send a simple but powerful message: You do not have to hide to belong.

What if there was never anything wrong with me?

For years, I asked myself:

Why am I like this?

Why can’t I cope like everyone else?

Why is this easy for other people and so difficult for me?

I don’t have every answer now.

But I have better questions.

After almost 40 years of feeling like an alien, like the black duck in the flock, I no longer believe my greatest challenge is to become like everyone else.

My journey has taught me to understand myself, respect myself, love myself, care for myself, rebuild my self-esteem and, finally, advocate for myself and others.

Perhaps there are people in Mauritius still at the beginning of that journey.

People who are wondering why everything seems to require so much effort.

People who have become experts at masking.

People who have spent years believing that something is wrong with them.

Maybe they do not need someone to tell them what is wrong.

Maybe they simply need the opportunity to understand who they have always been.

Because sometimes finding the right answers does not change who you are.

It changes the way you finally see yourself.

And after all those years, perhaps the question I should have been asking was never: “What is wrong with me?”

Perhaps it was: “What if there was never anything wrong with me at all?”

Delphine TOULET
Ambassador for Hidden Disabilities Sunflower